oh man that museum heist was insane. going from practically wiping out to roasting the competition in an easy bake oven chamber was WILD. imogen is ruthless. I really enjoyed it, very harsh measures.
the fucking museum owner taking selfies and inserting himself in paintings was so aldjdjs so good. his mannerisms too, and all the ellipses. fun fun npc.
I've had some old episodes of Bell's Hells on in the background while doing stuff over the holidays. If you need a pick-me-up, I highly recommend rewatching c3e20-21, which is a hilarious, deadly romp of a story as the team breaks into and searches the Twilight Mirror Museum as part of a job to free Ashton of their debt to Jiana Hexum. Plus there's a lot of stuff in there that's either important later or an ongoing theme of the campaign: the first (?) mention of the Grim Verity, the name drop of Ebonold Kai, some information about Oltgar and the Hishari, hints about the failed burglary at Hexum's house, Chetney attacking Orym, and Ashton trying (and failing) to pickpocket Fearne while Ashley is out sick.
I also hope we get to see more of their rivals, Hutchin and The Verdict, as well as the owner of the museum and lover of ellipsis, Evon Hytroga. I would love to check in on how Hytroga and Hexum's rivalry is going. Have Hytroga's connections to the Clasp come back to bite him? Is the museum bankrupt yet? How are Zardro and Estani doing? After all their adventures, do Laudna and Imogen still want to build a cottage in Heartmoor Hamlet to retire to?
I for one am deeply interested to find out just what the rules for FCG's stress point system are. Especially because the party doesn't know yet, either.
It's not simply 'low HP FCG go smashy'. That's Chetney's thing. FCG was at real, real low HP yesterday for like half a day, and was still firmly and cheerfully himself, though admittedly he may have been accumulating points of stress during that time.
What set FCG off was talking to Dancer (and then getting smacked by Chetney, but let's be real, once he bluescreened there weren't a lot of other ways for that whole situation to go). He had full HP! They'd just had a long rest! Sam was actively, visibly breathing a sigh of relief about it!
FCG accumulates stress, here and there, under rules I'm very interested to learn. (I imagine that those times they've glitched out for a moment -- used the wrong names for people, repeated themselves weirdly, tried to remember or talk about the party slaughter, etc -- probably stacked them up.) I wonder if there's a way for them to reduce stress aside from exploding. I wonder if he ever went off on Dancer & Co before that time. I wonder what his triggers were back then, before he massacred his way into whole new trauma.
...hell, and now I'm thinking about A Familiar Problem, too, with its version of murdermode freakouts so much funnier and less deadly than FCG's. Especially I'm thinking about it because of what it vaguely connotates: FCG as a familiar. A companion, but not a character in their own right. Not quite a person, just a little creature accumulating stress.
The heartbreak of finding out that Vespin Chloras’ diary is a fake.
Calamity has done something to all of our brains and now I’m most eager to get a cameo/mention of any of the ring of brass gang in the main campaign and latch on to any reference to calamity times.
I hate Ashley not being in this episode, it makes me feel like she isn’t coming back for a long time! She’s never allowed to get sick again!
Also they pretape now, how was Ashley able to text and tell them what to do? Did someone set up a computer for her to watch on zoom or is someone just giving her a constant update on their phone?
im finally catching up on the last episode and i saw people talking about grass not thinking horses have souls but i didn’t see anyone mention ashton saying “i wouldn’t talk if i were super chill all the time. i’d just be like, ‘eh’”.