This is the ad-free patron cut. Timestamps have been removed for readability.
Dumbgeons and Dragons will begin in a moment.
Let's go to the basement. Maybe there's a dragon.
If that's what she thinks down there, let's head on down.
Absolutely.
Well, I feel like we should like just try a couple more things in this room before we go.
Yeah, right. We move some things around.
Yeah, that did some stuff and then we'll do like the rapid fire round.
Just see if anything takes.
Yeah, OK. Look, look, look.
And I open up the ledger and I say, this one, this one, nobody signed it.
Is there a pen?
Or do you have a pen in your bucket in the bottom with some mints and stuff?
I gave you some writing utensils that should be in there.
OK, who wants to sign it?
I don't know if anything I sign is legally binding.
That's a great point.
I feel like you also maybe are a student.
Because of the thing with the pending to the present.
Maybe I'll sign it.
Hold on. Hold on. Wait, wait. Hold on. Is it finished?
It's penned. What do you mean?
Look at the other pages. Did they finish the day?
I flip through.
It's the same, right? It just isn't signed.
It says attendance complete, dismissal complete, transition complete,
continuity maintained on every other page.
You see that continuity is also complete.
Oh, but this one says continuity maintained.
Oh, no, I guess that is different.
So do we need to complete continuity?
How do you? I don't know.
OK, maybe we sign this at the end.
Oh, God, do we have to do a school? OK.
Well, we're in a school continuity.
She gives him a look like, I'm just going to sign it.
Let's see what happens.
I mean, we don't know what it even means.
I'm going to try to sign it.
You sign the page, try to sign it.
Yeah, you take your pen, put it to paper, you sign your signature.
It's on the page.
You hear from the basement
that low grumble, the low rumble again.
OK, the heavier gears that you don't hear those.
It's just that same kind of comes up and then down.
OK, so we got some kind of reaction there, and that's something.
That's information.
What else should we do in here?
Oh, let's write on the chalkboard.
Oh, sometimes when it's cold outside,
our teachers would let us draw pictures and stuff.
So me first.
And I draw a picture.
I write, Hi, my name is Alydin.
And then I draw some hearts and the flower and then a sleeping guy.
Is that supposed to be me? Yeah.
Oh, the likeness is uncanny, especially the Z's above his head.
That's how I that's I figure that's how I knew.
It's evocative. It's very good.
Uh, nothing happens to the board.
Nothing happens.
OK. Any other ideas?
Anything else we want to like poke or prod or?
I'm looking around. I don't see anything.
Door. The door that.
Yeah. Joe went into Joe 2.0.
This is not the same Joe.
Our Joe is nice.
Everybody had starts heading back into the attendance room.
And Alydin, you place the chalk back down and as you take a step,
you see that your writing begins to erase on the board.
Oh, rude.
That's rude.
Yeah, this place is just kind of rude.
Joe's rude. The chalkboard's rude.
The names keep, I guess, I'm just going to get putting back. Yeah.
Well, maybe that's because that's where they're supposed to.
I'm just going to rudely walk into this door.
It's possible the educational philosophy here is more self-encouraged.
So maybe we just need to step up and start doing shit.
Bizarre things is like a Montessori school.
Like you really need to be self-motivated to do this one.
Everyone goes at their own pace.
It's interest based learning. Let's explore.
Dumbgeons and Dragons is a D&D actual play podcast.
And I'm your dungeon master, Russ More.
He him also with me today is Amy More as Alydin.
She heard super rude.
You're putting me back into a classroom during summer break.
Carla Maxted is Bonwyn Everbane. She her.
Let's go find him. He never forgets.
Tom Laird is Kavlaran Goldweave. He him.
Pop that floorboard up.
And Kyle Claset is Bizard the Wizard. He him.
I think somebody's maintaining it back there,
so we don't have to worry about that shit.
Dumbgeons and Dragons is a Patreon supported show
made possible by listeners like you.
Join us today at patreon.com slash dumb dragon cast
and get a free seven day trial to try everything out over there.
And now fuck it, let's play.
Let's try both doors.
What if it was just a random click?
I run to an exact door that Joe 2.0 went through.
There you go to open that door and it is locked.
Kind of just jerk.
Hit into it.
Let's try the other one.
It opens and cav as you're following behind.
So the door opens into another room.
I'll describe that in a moment.
But cav, you're looking at the wall and.
For a brief moment, this entire wall.
It to you resembles a complete record rather than a collection of names,
which you guys get kind of moving things around.
As you reach for the door, you hear that same soft click.
And as you turn the handle, you feel like it's unlocking
as you're going through above the doorway.
A freshly polished brass plaque almost appears out of nowhere.
Cabin as you're kind of following in behind, you see it.
It reads observation.
Just observation.
Observation with just observation observation.
OK. It's just when we go in, it's just like a wall of TV screens
with security cameras showing everywhere in Vindersmith.
And it is creepy as fuck.
Pretty startling for.
Yeah, like it's it's creepy and also kind of breathtaking.
So we've never seen anything like this.
Could be Janelle's office.
Hmm. That sunlight again spills through tall classroom windows.
Every desk in this room has been carefully aligned.
Slate tablets, sharpened pencils and neatly stacked lesson
books remain exactly where their students previously left them.
Across a chalkboard in the room, someone has written
observe before concluding, record before judging,
maintain before repairing.
Children's drawings cover nearly every wall in this room.
At first, they all appear to depict this very classroom.
But at second glance,
there's something different about every single drawing.
Each drawing appears ordinary until you get close to it.
And every child appears to have noticed something different.
The windows, a simple drawing of the classroom windows
written beneath it say Mrs.
Vail says sunlight changes first.
The shadows in this drawing no longer match the room.
Instead, they point toward the floor beneath the teacher's desk.
The floorboards.
One child carefully shaded a single floorboard darker than the others.
Nothing about it appears remarkable.
Also in this room, you see
there's a homework basket filled with observation journals
and you see all of these student drawings.
You see the teacher's desk neatly organized rather than abandoned.
And the classroom, as previously mentioned, is perfectly preserved.
No dust or decay.
And then the writing on the chalkboard.
I want to go look at the the homework hand in bin.
Also, Amy would just like to say super rude.
You're putting me back into a classroom during summer break.
Look, Alydin moved from holes in the ground to classrooms, OK?
Right. Step up, I guess.
Step up. Yeah, no, I mean, it's a pretty big step.
I mean, yeah, from a hole.
We're just going to end up in the basement anyway,
which is essentially a hole.
Yeah. But I would like to check out
like the the notebooks or journals or whatever there
in the homework basket with all of these journals.
Each assignment begins with the same instructions.
The instructions are observe something adults overlook
as you begin to flip through them.
You see one that says Mr.
Hollow counts every loaf twice.
Another says Mrs.
Vail checks the weather before opening every window.
Another the hall monitor says goodbye to every classroom.
Another says the hinges squeak every Tuesday.
A final one that you open says, I think the lake moved.
The teacher's response beside the final entry simply reads,
continue observing.
Tell no one until you are certain.
What's the name on the book?
Whose book is it? Is it Janelle's book?
That one is is Janelle's.
We are in the observation room.
And exactly, she was the observation person.
Janelle observed.
Can I flip in her book to see other observations that Janelle has done?
Most of them, as you kind of flip back through, appear rather mundane.
More like the loaves of bread one.
Mrs. Becky picks flowers from her garden bed on Wednesdays.
Yeah, that's the I mean,
there's the hinges squeak every Tuesday.
I think the lake moved is the one that stands out the most.
You said that we saw pictures on the walls.
Yeah. I want to go back
to the one that has a floorboard colored a different color,
and I want to see if that's in this room.
Is there a floorboard that is slightly darker or lighter?
Does this correspond to something? Yeah, sure.
I was going to look over that as well and see if it had a name
of a student on it or not. Oh, smart.
None of the none of the images do have names on them, but
the floorboard.
So again, the floorboard one one child carefully shaded
a single floorboard darker than the others.
Nothing about it in the image appears remarkable.
As you examine it closer and you begin to look around
the room, you look back at the picture and it appears that
they've tried to depict that perhaps it was lifted or
replaced. And as you look to the same place in the room,
you do see a singular floorboard that does appear
darker than the rest.
Oh, I'm going down there with like the screwdriver
in my bucket.
And I'm like, pop that floorboard up,
pop that floorboard up.
Anybody else with a bucket and a screwdriver
would have done the same.
Totally.
Everybody sees Alydin rush over to this one floorboard,
which does appear slightly different than the entire
entirety of the room.
You get your your wedge or your driver and like cracks
as you kind of pull it up.
And you look.
My wedge or my driver, am I golfing?
Yeah.
Okay.
Nice.
I was like, wow, we're really throwing around
the golfing terms.
Hey, those are the two I know.
This is the only two closing.
Oh, you know putter as well.
Oh, true.
I know putter.
Wood, that's one.
Yeah.
Iron.
Wait, that's not all these.
Just put a number in front of iron
and I think you're good.
Yeah, you're right.
You hear the kind of seam on the floorboard crack
as it pulls up.
There's no hollow space beneath it.
The inference you can make is that the child
simply noticed a repair no one else saw.
I want to look on the underside of the board.
It looks like the underside of a hardwood plank.
Son of a bitch.
I put it back down and like hammer the nails back down
with the end of the screwdriver, like.
Not me ripping up the flooring in this very nicely cared
for school.
Okay, not all ideas are good ones,
but how do you know until you do it, right?
Could have been a stairway under there.
We didn't know.
Could have been a tiny stairway.
I wonder what happened to that piece of wood
that needed it to be repaired
because according to the mantra,
maintain before repairing something drastic had to happen
for it to be needed to be repaired is my understanding.
I look up at the ceiling directly above.
Is there water damage?
Is it, did it just have a leaky roof?
No.
Are we focusing on the wrong thing?
No, absolutely not.
There doesn't appear to be any water damage in the room.
It looks well-worn, but nothing up there.
Is there a hole in the ceiling directly above
that would explain why it needed to be fixed?
Yep, I mentioned there's stacks of, sorry,
stacks of paper and writing utensils and that sort of thing.
Desks too, like it's a whole setup.
All right, I'm gonna take a couple pieces of paper
and sit down at a desk with some colored pencils
and I just sit there for a second
because I can't think of what to draw.
As Alydin does that, everybody else looking around,
there are a few more drawings that stand out to others.
There's a sketch of the Academy bell tower
written underneath it is the phrase,
I think bells remember.
There's a teacher response on this one
that reads, excellent observation, continue watching.
You notice that several children drew a corridor outside.
Each picture includes a tall mechanical figure
standing patiently near the classroom doors.
You can presume that it's the hall monitor,
one that you've seen, and one student added,
he always says goodbye.
And another simply wrote, he never forgets.
There's one final drawing.
Zardin, Bonwyn, you kinda come to it at the same time.
And it does not depict the classroom at all.
Instead, it shows the Academy from directly above.
Beneath the building, hidden below the classroom,
someone has carefully illustrated a network of corridors
surrounding a large circular chamber.
A staircase descends from somewhere
near an Eastern hallway.
Written in careful handwriting,
it says, teacher says,
we help downstairs after transition.
The teacher's reply is, excellent observation.
Please wait until your lessons are complete.
Meanwhile, I have drawn an elephant,
like a paper elephant,
like a mockery of the hall monitor with a clipboard.
Like, it's very obviously him.
I have written Joe 2.0 on him.
And then he's got a speech bubble that says,
I never forget.
Sorry, it's my drawing.
Russ, is there a bell tower at the school still?
I didn't remember that.
Yes, yeah, describing walking up.
I can give you that description.
That was in February.
We walked up to the building, I can't remember.
Yeah, fair.
There is a bell tower,
but the bell itself looked like it was tied up.
Like rope wrapped around it, kind of thing.
Mm.
Okay.
Yeah, into that king of shell.
Well, those are doing something, so.
Yes.
Hey, it's the middle.
We're in the middle.
You're in it, too.
We're not gonna tell you
about anything except our patron.
Yeah, the dedicated patron.
Colin Murray.
His name's Colin.
Oh, I went ahead and just spoiled it.
We didn't do any stretching.
Yeah, I just thought we'd dive right in and see.
Yeah, that's fair.
Russ wasn't withholding this information
like he usually does.
No, we knew the answer already.
I just wanted to say it right off the hop, Colin.
Just sing it from the mountain.
You, the bomb?
I think so.
Yeah, and last time we did this,
we did the Patreon one first
and then the public one first, or second.
So.
We're switching it up.
That's right.
We're switching it up for ourselves.
Keeping it fresh.
This is the patron of the day.
Patron only middle.
Yeah.
So you already know
because you probably got an email,
but we're kind of switching up the tiers and stuff.
So like check it out
because there's some new things and different things.
And we took your feedback
from the survey that you did.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you for doing that.
Yes, thank you very much.
I know doing the survey isn't always the most fun,
but damn it, do we love it when you.
We really appreciate it.
We really appreciate it
and made changes based on that.
So thank you.
Yes, and you said.
Data do us good.
We love incredibly lovely things.
So we appreciate that you're here
and that you love us and we love you.
And that's a full support.
Hey, what books is everybody reading right now?
I'm reading Calamities from Chuck Wendig.
It's his new book.
Oh, he's got a new book out.
I was looking for a Wendig Adventure
and I was like, I've read all of these.
This was a few weeks back.
So maybe they just didn't have it in yet.
I'm reading the novella, The Bell Chime.
It's like a psychological kind of creepy,
like getting into the reality.
Is it real?
Like, yeah, that's one person's experience.
For your spooky soul.
For my spooky soul.
Of course.
I have a spooky heart.
Amy keeps recommending very scary books to me.
I do.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm not feeling it
because I'm reading right now Theo of Golden,
which is just so far.
I mean, it's gotten to a very sad chapter,
but it's just like a warm hug to this point.
Old man with money and experience
goes to a small town as like a consultant,
starts doing good things.
The small town is like,
he has ulterior motives,
but he's just an old dude doing very nice things.
Meanwhile, I'm like,
I just finished the exorcist's house.
Yeah.
When Russ is just being old and we're like,
you're being suspicious.
And he's like, no, I'm just an old man with a business.
And you're like, I don't believe it.
Just wait for the twist at the end
where he buys the community center
and knocks it down for condos.
That's right.
Oh God, I hope not.
It's been so like,
what are the kids calling it these days?
Hopecore, is that a thing?
Yes.
I've heard lots of really good things about that one.
I've like, as always have like 10 on the go.
So I'm listening to some old Julia Quinn
romances, audio books.
I'm also reading,
oh God, I can't remember his name.
He's like a Nordic noir guy,
juicy something, something,
but more like you'll see, probably.
Sure.
He, there's this show on Netflix called Department Q.
So I'm reading that series.
I'm like eight books into that.
And it's very good.
I feel like I must have some kind of non-fiction
on the go too, but I can't remember right now.
Always, I gotta have like audio,
I gotta have books
and then different kinds of books for my mood.
Sure.
I don't always want murder in a foreign country.
Sometimes I want sex in England.
Yes.
And then I listen to Julia Quinn.
Sometimes I want sex in a foreign country.
Exactly.
Yep.
Sex and murder, that's it.
What's Carla listening to?
Those are my two,
those are my two defaults.
Y'all are into more fun books than me
because mine are like college textbooks right now
about like game design and stuff.
That's okay.
That's still on season.
Yeah, no, it's interesting and like reading books.
There was this one book I read
that was like the psychology of space
and understanding like what space invokes in us internally
and how we respond to certain imagery and architecture
and think about how that applies
to creating virtual reality spaces.
So that was one thing I read that was really cool.
That's awesome.
What's the name of the textbook
and who are the contributors?
Oh, geez.
What edition are we talking here?
Yeah, is this first-
I got Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton.
Oh, a single contributor.
That's okay.
Yeah, wow.
That Tracy Fullerton don't mess around.
Like Colin Murray.
They're probably right.
With A Force by Eric Zimmerman.
I have another book around here
that's like specifically about using
project management techniques within VR app development.
So it's again, very,
it's fun being back in college kind of
and having to like push myself through reading a textbook.
It's good.
It is good.
I'll have to grab those titles from you later
because those sound like books
that I should probably read from my job that I have.
Hey, we've listed all of these books
and I'm sure Racken's listing being like
none of those are the book club book.
Exactly.
Wait, wait, Tom, what are you reading?
Tom already said.
The Calamities from Chuck Wendig.
Oh, right, okay, that's not the book club book.
Yeah, no, it's not.
Yeah, I thought I was gonna try to get away
without saying anything,
so but I knew that wasn't gonna happen
as soon as we started into this foray.
Yeah, that's okay.
So we read lots of books
and also there's people reading a book together.
And sorry, we're not doing that, Racken,
but you can join that and have a great time
and hopefully you're reading things too.
Yeah, they organize it all on the Discord.
They're all awesome.
We used to go and then I don't know, whatever.
Sometimes I feel like I've dipped in.
Life gets challenging.
Yeah, yeah, but we appreciate
that there's a solid group there.
It looks like a blast, the books.
I have them on my list of books
that I'm working through.
Not at the same pace.
I have this reading thing
where if I don't like it in the first 10 pages,
I will never read again for three years.
So I'm really just riding this train
of like Dungeon Crawler Carl
and other things that are bouncing.
So I've done like eight books this year,
but as soon as I hit one where I'm like-
Russ, that's really good.
I know, right?
As soon as I'm, I'm scared of it though.
As soon as I hit one where I'm like, nope,
it's like, I will never read again.
Then you're like, no, I don't like reading.
I remember now.
This one wronged me.
It's like one of Carla's books.
It touched me in a naughty place.
Yeah.
That is what those books do.
It is.
But with joy.
With joy.
And consent.
Exactly.
And consent, of course.
Yeah, you need to want to be touched
in the naughty place.
Chip, chip, cheerio.
That's right.
So thanks for sharing the books, everybody.
And thank you.
Is this the longest middle
we've ever talked about?
I think so.
10 minutes later.
I noticed the last one we did
with this, this patron focus one was like nine minutes.
So they just tend to be a little longer.
I mean, don't get like, don't get super attached to it.
We might get really good at this at some point.
Anything's possible.
I mean, it's been a while and we haven't,
but we haven't yet, but it could happen.
Kyle might read a book about it and then teach us.
And we'll like get real tight and professional.
Yes.
Oh yeah, there we go.
And then half of the people on this call
have gone to school and graduated
with information on how to do that,
but we're not applying it.
It's a matter of doing it.
It's not this format.
It's boring.
That's right.
This is for meandering.
Oh, absolutely.
With our friends.
Because meandering's fun.
Before we let you go,
that reminds me of saying
that we've been doing this forever
is that next year is our 10th anniversary year.
So maybe, Jess, when you're feeling better,
take a note that we need to start a channel
to plan for the 10th anniversary of Dumbgeons and Dragons.
That's big.
That's weird.
That's huge.
Jess isn't even here and she's getting homework.
I love it.
Jess, we couldn't last 18 minutes and 55 seconds
without asking for your help.
One of us will mention it,
but somehow it'll still be done.
So thank you, Jess.
We appreciate you.
Thank you, Jess.
Okay, we'll let you get back to the episode now.
Thank you for listening to Book Talk
in the middle of this Dumbgeons and Dragons.
We'll talk to you very soon.
Love you, bye.
Love you, bye.
Love you, bye.
Bonwyn, do you think this looks probably similar
to what the layout would look like
going down to Joe's room back in Vintersmouth?
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, I didn't spend as much time down there
as y'all, but it seems.
So we would know exactly where to go
if that were the case.
Yeah.
So I think maybe we just go ahead and.
Why don't you take the picture?
Let's go find him.
He never forgets.
Take the picture off the wall.
It's a great point.
It's a map.
You're right.
I write at the bottom of my picture,
Joe 2.0 is not as nice as Joe 1.0.
And I put it in the hand-in-bin
in the homework bin.
Ready?
Good observation.
Keep watching.
Cap, what are you doing?
I mean, not much at the moment.
There is also the teacher's desk.
Alistair seems to be just examining the pictures,
all the drawings along the wall.
You can see that he's like doing one of these
like red string kind of mentality things,
like trying to piece things together,
but really getting nowhere at this moment.
But yeah, there is the teacher's desk
also in the room.
Sure, I'll take a look at that.
The top of the desk has the homework bin,
stacks of books, some notepads,
nothing really out of the ordinary.
Off the top, there's a couple of drawers.
And as you pull those open,
there's one folded letter inside an envelope.
And the envelope, it's titled,
written on the envelope,
is Municipal Continuity Office.
It's right up his alley.
You have to read this, yeah.
You pull it open and pull out the paper.
And it says, teachers,
continue encouraging documentation.
Discourage assumptions.
Prepare students for transition day.
Observation remains our greatest defense against forgetting.
The document ends without any explanation or signature.
Forgetting what?
I read it out to the crew.
So it seems like they realized
something crazy was going on, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah, so they knew.
Don't people just write like history books
about stuff instead of training children?
But sometimes those things aren't as,
they're smaller things in the personal life
that's more important.
Looking back on Banh Nguyen,
your situation with the forge.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you're right.
Hmm.
Huh.
Alydin, you come to a bit of a realization.
A lot of the notes from the teacher,
a lot of the notes that the students have written,
you see anywhere where there's seemingly praise
given to the students,
that they're never praised for cleverness
in any of their notes.
They are always praised for paying attention.
This is not how June is running the school back home.
All this stuff is really obvious stuff.
Yeah.
Like these kids are getting gold stars
for saying, you know,
Jimothy has his shoelaces tied every day.
That's so stupid.
But what happens the day where Jimothy shows up
and doesn't have his shoelaces tied?
Maybe that's what they're watching for.
Like the lake moving.
That was a change.
It's like same, same, same.
Well, I think shoelaces and lake are...
Oh, I agree.
The scale of the change of those two things
is quite different.
But is there a copy of Portals,
Portals, Portals on the desk?
Are there any pictures or anything
that have like negative feedback?
Like, I think you've missed the mark on this one.
Try again.
Yeah.
No, where there is...
Just poor.
You idiot.
Let's roll the one.
No, you see anywhere where there's a teacher
who's written a note to the student,
it is a positive in the instance of good observation,
excellent attention,
keep watching, that sort of thing.
Anywhere where they've written something
that doesn't seem to align with that sort of thought,
it's just left blank where there's no comment left.
This is a Montessori school.
It's so positive.
Is there another door in this classroom
to like continue further?
No, just the door you entered.
I think we should find our way down to the basement,
see if there is that passageway behind a bookshelf
and get to the bottom of this.
Cause we're going to the basement.
Good one.
Is there anything to indicate which desks
belong to which students
or they are all like totally clean and pristine without?
You're thinking nameplates or?
Personal effects.
Yes, no nameplates.
You see, there's books and papers
and that sort of thing.
There are some names you see.
Of the ones that you recognized before,
you see kind of scattered throughout this room.
No real assignments on their desk.
Everything's either been handed in
or is up on the wall at this moment.
Okay.
See what other crazy observations Janelle's making
but I guess she already shared them all with the teacher.
There's no inside of the desks?
No inside of the desks.
Okay.
I was ready to rifle.
Yeah, no, me too.
Let's see what these kids got going on.
I agree, Bizard.
Let's go find Joe 2.0.
Let's see if we can find that room if it's the same.
Yeah.
As you finish examining the room
and you begin to head out,
what's everybody's passive perception?
I'm just gonna write that down.
10.
12.
10.
15.
Damn.
All right.
Fuck.
Yeah.
I got the one of you.
That's Kav so quiet.
He's just looking.
No smarts but lots of wisdom.
Kav, do you take the letter with you?
Do you leave it there?
I'll take it with me.
Okay.
You're putting the letter back in the envelope
and following behind your friends.
And as a couple of them filter out,
you think you hear water dripping somewhere below.
You hear it once, then again.
Sound is echoing up through the floorboards.
And at nearly the same moment,
that final drawing I described,
the one with the-
Bird's Eye video of the school.
Bird's Eye view of the school.
Bonwyn, you took that one?
Is that what I heard?
Or did you leave it?
Yeah, cause it was kind of seemed like it was mappish.
Mappish, yeah.
Kav, as you hear this water,
do you do anything to notify your friends or call out?
I try to like pry up some floorboards
to see if I can get like a visual on it
before I call out.
Okay, so-
Action Jackson over here.
Right.
Perhaps you go to the floorboard
that Bonwyn or Alydin rather had started to pull up,
easier access.
You hear wood creaking behind you,
everybody else, what do you do?
Turn around.
Yeah.
You turn around and you see Kav pulling
at the floorboards.
What are you doing?
You okay, buddy?
What's going on?
Oh yeah, totally fine.
I just, I could hear some water down there
and I just wanted to see if I could like get eyes on it.
I immediately as a child would drop to the ground.
I know, I was like, I pause and open my eyes.
My floor is against the ear.
Really wide.
Your floor is against the ear?
Everybody's ears to the floor, Kav,
you maybe stop just for a moment
to give them a little silence to hear over top.
You begin hearing that and Bonwyn,
you have this map, you know,
map like drawing in your hand
and you see it begin to change before your eyes.
The faded blue lake surrounding the archive entrance
has almost completely disappeared.
The stone doorway now stands exposed
within the dried basin.
It's outline flickers.
One corner fades entirely before slowly returning.
Guys, the map's changing.
Cool, cool, cool, cool.
Like that?
So it shows us what's going on with the door?
I guess.
So the lake on the map is disappearing or sorry, appearing.
So it was previously, it looked like a lake,
but it transitioned and faded from a blue lake
to the dry lake bed that you see.
And like the actual doorway location is now,
what did I say?
Fades entirely before slowly returning.
So it's doing what you've experienced
in the real world outside.
Gotcha.
Well, that's neat.
Yeah.
Not as good, it means we have a way to keep track
of if we're like hot or cold.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, between this and like your little
string-a-ling-a-ding-dong,
we got all kinds of signs telling us
we should probably keep exploring this school
and not worry about the portal.
I look hopefully at my friends,
but they know I don't really mean it.
Alydin's on board with this.
For now at least, yeah.
For now.
For now.
For now.
So the dripping sound is,
can I see the lake from the window in the classroom?
Okay, I just wanna go and take a little peeky peek.
You see the doorway and it is actually
much more visible than you saw it before
and it's holding it a lot longer than it did before,
but its edges, you can see, are wavering.
They appear to be noticeably less stable.
When it did fade in and out,
like it was, it felt to you,
like visibly it was a solid piece,
but now there's this wavering
that's happening to the stone archway.
Remind me, the double doors went
into the attendance room
or they went into the classroom?
Double doors are into the attendance room.
So you came in,
double doors went into the attendance room.
You went into the right door,
which is now this room that you're in.
And the left door was locked.
The left door, which is where the Joe figure went in,
but it was locked when you tried it
at this kind of the same time.
Great, I can open a locked door.
I can certainly try.
Same.
I wanna keep going.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, should we unlock that door?
I think, I mean, we have to, right?
I mean, you're enrolled here.
You should get to go into the rooms
that you learn in.
That's true.
We have to learn what's back there.
You try the door.
We have to observe what's back there.
Yes.
We need to observe before concluding
that there's nothing of worth back there.
And then we can record it before we're judging,
is it actually worth it?
Someone read the school brochure.
I think someone's maintaining it back there
so we don't have to worry about that shit.
Okay, I go back up to the door
and I try it again and I assume it's locked.
As you all leave the classroom,
you're the first to kind of head out there.
Everybody hears like a ruffle of the pages in the room,
like the drawings on the walls.
You look and it's like a small gust of wind
came through the room and like resettled everything.
If it was a skew, it's now back in place.
Does it rip the page out of my hand
that I took down off the wall or I still have that?
Does not, you still have that.
Okay.
Oh my God.
And as you step out into this room
and as you move towards that door, Alydin,
you hear that same gear, mechanical sound
coming from below you.
This time, however, they don't appear to be stopping.
Above the next doorway across the room
where the Joe hall monitor went,
where the hall monitor went,
cause it's not Joe,
the next doorway hangs another polished brass plaque
that says memory.
You hear a soft click as you go to reach for the door
before you open it.
Oh, I opened it.
It swings open and the room smells faintly
of dried flowers, old paper and polished cedar.
Rows of desks face a chalkboard
covered in careful handwriting.
Above it are three simple lessons.
Remember accurately,
share generously,
forget only with purpose.
Take that.
Shit, that last one.
Amy.
Cannot.
Each student.
I would excel with that middle one.
That is where I would excel.
I would not be accepted to this school.
I would not.
Each student's desk contains a small wooden
keepsake box engraved with a name.
Hundreds of tiny glass bottles hang from the ceiling.
Inside every bottle rests a single folded slip of paper.
Well, I want one of those.
Right?
Like, are they reachable or are they like a pie?
Can I just go to Cav and be like, upy?
I was gonna say,
Cav or Bizard could likely reach them.
Yeah.
You can reach them.
I see you looking.
You have the ability to reach them.
You just need to magic hand it.
She like hates that he's turning this
into a lesson right now.
I'm already at school and you're making it school?
God damn it, Magic Daddy.
Okay, all right.
Nobody look at me.
Don't look at me.
Okay, I'm gonna start looking
for names I recognize on the desks
while very obviously not looking at Alydin.
That's right, everybody look busy.
And I reach my hand out and I like screw my face up
and I'm concentrating the shit out of this thing
to cast Mage Hand to grasp,
I don't know, a blue bottle
that I see hanging from the ceiling nears me.
Mage Hand flickers into existence
and it begins slowly moving up towards the bottle
as Bon, when you're examining the desks and the boxes
and some names that jump out to you are Janelle Foisen,
Harren Linger,
Malen Everbane.
There's one that stands out because there is no name,
but it appears still that the,
whatever the activity was has been completed
at this desk.
There's an open empty box
with a single folded card in front of it.
Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.
Your hand unhooks from the string
that's kind of holding it up there
and you pull it down and pop the top off
and pull out a note inside.
And the note says,
we all waved goodbye to the hall monitor today.
She's having a hard time not like,
just like, ugh, rolling, rolling cries.
Like I worked so hard for that.
Bon, when do you go for any one in particular
of the names I listed?
I'm gonna go the one that's open
with the card in front of it and see what that says.
Sure.
You go again, the box is empty,
it bears no name on it
and this folded card, you open it up
and it says, some memories are still being written.
Dumbgeons and Dragons, season four, episode 64,
starring Amy More as Alydin,
Carla Maxted as Bonwyn Everbane,
Tom Laird as Kavlaran Goldweave,
Kyle Claset as Bizard the Wizard
and Russ More as your dungeon master.
Dialogue editing and sound design
of today's episode is by Russ More.
Our community manager is Jessica Babyok.
Music is from Epidemic Sound
and sound effects are from Epidemic Sound,
Boom Library and Sound Ideas.
Our amazing cover art is by Matt Garba.
A huge thank you to our supporting producers,
Gabriel Lynch, Jessica Babyok,
Angur Rangkirzan, Perry Matey,
Count Waterflame, Jacob Madden,
Old School Gamer D, Craig Zeiss and L.A. Branton.
Dumbgeons and Dragons is a Patreon-supported show
and because of our Patreon supporters,
we get to keep telling bigger, weirder,
more heartfelt stories in this world we love.
And honestly, that's something
we will never take for granted.
Join us today at patreon.com slash dumb dragon cast
and help us tell the stories that you want to hear.
We hope to see you over there.
Have a great week and we'll talk to you soon.
A cogs worth Quackleton dragon.
I don't know.
I hate that you did this to me.
I don't wanna fight now.
Why are we in the fight?
Cause I'm too hot to pick up where I left off
and I don't listen to me.
You did it, it's fine.
I was just waiting for anybody else to respond to you.
Dumbgeons and Dragons is a Dumb Dragons production.