- Live like a rat, die like a rat.
- A helix of rats swarms over her
and as they crash down, she is gone.
We're looking for a 16 or higher.
- We got this
- No f*cking way.
- 20!
Hey everybody, let's take
a little trip to Dreamland,
slumber slumber, z z z.
The train rockets.
- I make eye contact with
Pete, and in my mind say,
I owe you an explanation and an apology.
- Come.
Let us walk here in the Sixth Borough.
Welcome, one and all,
back to another episode of
The Unsleeping City.
Oh, you're spicy today.
- So loud!
- Look at this!
Say hi, intrepid heroes.
- Hi, intrepid heroes!
- Last we left our intrepid heroes off,
they had miraculously fought
the ghosts of New York's crooked cops,
commanded by the onyx
badge of Epona Cirillo,
since hastily eaten by rats,
and summoned the train to Dream,
making the I Train run on time for once.
As the train to Nod
pulled into the station,
the heartbreak of Pete's knowledge
that words had been said about possibly
having to deal with Pete
through means of violence
had left the party shaken, trust damaged.
However, arriving at Nod,
apologies and amendments were offered
not only by Kingston
Brown, but also by Nod,
the Monarch of Dreams, who also said
an apology and an explanation was owed.
The shimmering star-filled
skies of the Sixth Borough,
snow rising from the streets,
into the celestial heights,
all of you exit the L-Train.
Purple, sparkling with gold,
the unicorn skitters off into Nod.
See y'all later!
Make sure to hit me up if
you got some time to party!
- How?
- Exiting the train is the six of you,
Nod, who begins to float
towards a diner, and—
- Oh yeah, in like a creepy way.
- Creepy way, just sort of still,
jet-black eyes unfocused, staring ahead.
- This is fine.
- Alejandro walks off the train as well,
takes his hat off, and goes,
I can't believe it.
Nod, Land of Dreams.
This presents a ripe
opportunity for some study.
I can't believe I am
seeing it here in the flesh
and not through a crystal ball.
This is really cool.
- You have a crystal ball?
- I have like 100 crystal ba*ls—
- Can you show me my
way around one one time?
I just... I got an ex-husband.
I'm curious.
I know it's not healthy.
- For sure.
- Darling, I gotta tell you, look.
- Yeah?
- Between you and me, I've
been married many, many times.
The first time is rough
but you get used to it.
- We're in an... this place is crazy.
- You're right, you're right!
- You guys see that the
little driver's door
of the I Train opens,
the driver door opens up,
and Wally walks out and he goes,
Aw, dang, this is not Canarsie!
- This is my son, Wally.
- Oh my god, go say hi!
- Yeah!
- I'm a rat.
- Okay, I'll go over.
Excuse me, sir.
- Oh, dang, okay.
- Hi, excuse me, sir!
Hi!
- I'm a firefighter, I'm here
if you have any questions.
- Yeah, thanks sir, thank you.
I got turned around, they
promoted me to conductor,
but I think I took the train
to the wrong dang place.
- You—
- Wally, I'm your dad!
- What?
- Can you see me?
- Rat Jesus?
- It's—
- You're my da?
- I'm your da, I'm your dad.
- Listen, I'm so, that explains so much,
but my real dad is the man who raised me
and his name was Bruce Kugrich
and I understand that you
might be my biological father
but somewhere out there is Bruce
and he's the man who raised me.
God, am I part rat?
Can I fit through stuff?
- Wally, the way you're,
you're not believing the wrong,
like we're in a magic world, can you see?
What do you see here, Wally?
- Does it look like a
Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper?
- It does look like a
Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper.
- I think he's seeing all right.
- Wally, I am Bruce Kugrash, I was...
I was, Kugrich rather,
I was turned into a rat.
- Huh?
And he just starts crying
and sits down, he says,
So wait, all those
messages from Rat Jesus,
it was my dad the whole time?
- Yeah, exactly.
Wally, I've been...
I didn't know how to tell you
'cause I thought that it would,
I guess I didn't give you enough credit,
I thought this would...
Screw you up more, knowing
that your dad was a rat,
but I think maybe I
just prolonged it and—
- Wait a minute.
So, David said that you did a bad thing.
That you were bad and you
had to flee the country
and you were on a tropical island
with a bunch of stolen money.
- That part is not, see,
David's a ball-buster.
He's mostly right, I am a piece of sh*t,
but I never got away.
I was polymorphed, you
don't know what that is,
I was turned into a rat
permanently by a curse.
By somebody who I screwed over.
So your brother's right
about most of the stuff.
About me being, you know, a bad guy.
- He takes his hard hat off.
Whoo, that's a lot to take in!
- Yeah.
That's a, but you know, Wally,
I was gonna, there's this whole
other magic part of New York
and you know,
I've been afraid to kinda
show myself to you for
my own selfish reasons
but I think this is really
good, I think, you know,
I know you've been lonely, kid,
and I think maybe we can, you
know, make you some friends.
Pigeons talk and stuff.
- What?
- Yeah!
- There's a pigeon that's got
a hard crush on your father.
- Yeah.
- Oh!
What's his name?
- Perry.
- That's cool.
- Should we hug?
Is that cool, are you mad at me?
- You see he looks at you and says,
I thought you were mad at me.
- I absolutely start bawling.
I could never, ever be mad
at you, Wally, god dammit.
- He picks you up and goes,
you're way fluffier than most rats.
- Sofia takes out a disposable camera
and gets some pictures.
- Ricky's just openly weeping.
- Oh god, this is beautiful.
- He gives you a big hug and says,
I always thought, I always
knew there was a big rat
in the sewers and the tunnels
that was looking out for me,
nobody ever believed me none,
and I always thought it was Rat Jesus,
'cause it was like, you know,
I lost having a dad when
I was young and then,
sort of like, I dunno, the city
or someone upstairs
was looking out for me.
It means a lot more to know it
was you the whole time, Dad.
- Wally, I do not deserve you,
you absolute beautiful b*stard.
Know, truth be told, you
helped me when I was first,
your brother was right, I
did a lot of bad things,
I stole a lot of money from people,
and I was punished for it.
I was turned into a rat,
that's why I don't look like I used to,
and I was a bitter, angry person
and I was just hiding in
the tunnels wasting away,
but you know, I would watch you
and I would see the way that
you know, you treated people,
and you know, you helped me
more than I could ever help you, Wally.
- Well shucks.
That means a whole awful lot.
And now that we know,
we can find a way to
turn you back from a rat!
- Yeah, you know, I kinda
don't mind it at this point,
my life's been a lot better
since I've been a rat.
- Yeah, you should see him with a perm,
he's actually very attractive.
- Okay, then we'll turn me into a rat!
- That would be cute as hell,
do you wanna be a rat, Wally?
- All right, you—
- This is the g*ng, by
the way, Wally, this is—
- Hi!
- My name's Wally Kugrich,
I work for the MTA.
This was supposed to go to Canarsie
but we're gonna get this
as a maintenance issue
so we're gonna get this
fixed as soon as possible.
- Wally, you don't have to,
you don't have to do that.
- Okay.
- Just enjoy it.
- Why don't we go get some food?
- Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.
- Nod is already sort of progressed down—
- Oh, the gray baby!
- You see Nod turns around and says,
Nod.
I prefer Nod to gray baby.
I am gray but I'm fully not a baby.
- What did the gray baby
say, it's too far away.
- Don't call it the—
- Would you say you're Nod
a baby, Nod yet a woman?
Or a man, that was a
Britney Spears reference.
I'm so sorry!
- I'm Nod a girl!
- I'll show myself out
- I'm just making eyes at Kingston like,
how do we get involved with
all of these f*cking idiots?
- This is easily, this is
some of the wildest sh*t,
We're in Nod.
- And all of these people are
focused on like, whatever.
- The rat man just met his son, and...
- You see that Wally, without even asking,
picks you up and puts you on his shoulder.
- Hell yeah.
- Hell yeah.
- As you ride around, he goes,
My dad's a little rat wizard!
- Wizard?
- Just absolutely—
- Oh my god.
- Who does, we don't deserve you.
- I'm crying too.
- We don't deserve you, Wally.
- Yes!
- Ox is playfully jumping
around as you walk.
Everyone here, make perception
checks if you'd be so kind.
- Everything was so sad—
- I would also like to take a look around
with my Mirror of Mananan.
- Ma-nah-nan?
- Ma-NAW-nan.
- Mananan, and see invisibility.
- Did you, ooh, what'd you get?
- Is it perception?
- Perception, yes.
- 19.
- 16.
- 19, 16.
- Do I still have magic,
do I still have my powers?
- As you guys walk, so
anyone that beat a 15
on a perception check, as you're walking,
you kinda suddenly going,
Wally's kinda talking excitedly,
also Alejandro's casting Identify
on the different magical items
you guys got from the bodega.
So that's the kind of stuff going on
and it feels really wild and fun here.
Also there's a lot of
noise coming from Nod.
I would say that there
are, at any given point,
between five and 20 sh**ting
stars crossing the sky here,
and they do make a kind
of noise
and you can hear kind of
bubbling and chattering
from inside various buildings,
although the streets are kind of open
and not very populated here.
Those that beat a 15 notice,
as Kingston walks through this realm,
everything here is mist on the ground
that goes up to about your ankles.
Where Kingston walks,
the mist recedes from
Kingston a little bit,
and Kingston is walking on sidewalk
that appears underneath him.
- Cool.
- And therefore the snow
doesn't kind of hit him
'cause the snow is issuing from the mist.
You got a 19, right, Pete?
- Mm-hmm.
- You look at this and it is
somewhat melancholy
as you look at it.
The Dream World is receding from Kingston
out of respect for his station
and the power that he represents
in the same way that you're able to tap in
to wild abilities when
you're in the Waking World,
but as a result of that, this
sense of whimsy and wonder
and joy that everybody else seems to
be able to partake in while they're here
seems to, out of respect and deference,
but abandon Kingston.
Kingston doesn't appear able to see
the reflections that you guys are seeing,
the fun house mirror of the
glassy buildings that you pass by
where you guys see all
these strange potentials
and images and fun illusions,
Kingston's reflection remains his own here
and doesn't change into something else
and there is a stoic silence
that reflects a deep sadness
as Kingston walks through this place.
- Whoa.
- I'm glad I rolled low
on that perception check.
- It's so sad.
- It's kind of a burden.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I think it was made even sadder by
the fact that nobody else notices,
and everyone's just like wow.
- Wow!
Hey gray baby, can I fly?
- Do you wish to fly?
You begin to
float up into the air.
- I grab her ankle
- I grab his ankles!
- You see that Misty,
your umbrella pops open
and you—
- I got you, I got you!
- You see that Ox jumps up and
grabs onto your purse, Sofia.
- Good dog, good dog.
- And you guys whisk away,
off into the night sky.
You see that the woman in the
moon turns around and goes,
Oh, lovely, it's been so long.
- It's been so long, you look great.
- You look great.
- You look great!
- You see she
swirls a wind of moon dust around you,
all of your clothing sparkles,
and you see that all the denizens
of this place start going,
Hey, it's Misty Moore!
And they start clapping.
- Just like kind of shaking.
- As you—
- No days off.
- As you fly away, you see
that there is this incredible
marble statue at a flying grand piano
that begins to twirl around
you in the air and says,
Ladies and gentlemen, the
incomparable, the one and only,
Misty Moore.
- Fly me to the moon.
Let me see sing among the stars
- Go ahead and give me a
performance check with advantage.
- A free Misty Moore show?
- That is a 26.
- Incredible!
Misty, your illusion magic
doesn't even cost spell slots here.
You watch the most
heart-rending performance of
"Fly Me to the Moon" as
this statue plays the piano
in accompaniment, you
actually fly up to the moon
and as you sort of hit
the last, final note,
the moon actually leans and
kisses you on the cheek.
You are effectively blessed.
- Obviously.
- You see she says,
I loved you my whole life.
- Oh no, I loved you my whole life.
- You see she looks at you—
- I make out with the moon.
- You see the moon,
you guys see Misty and this giant moon
start really kinda going at it.
- What's happening up there?
- You're holding onto her leg.
- I'm holding on to his.
- Her mouth goes open, her tongue, mouth-
- Oh yeah, full 1940s Hollywood,
there's like a lot of laws
about how much you can kiss,
so it's like full closed mouth,
but moving back and forth.
- I like to think there's one
little cruel intention spit
that falls on us.
- Ah, so nasty.
- Misty, you feel incredible here.
You also have a lot more control
here over how you appear.
Your illusion magic, you think
you can kinda cast it here,
kind of without too much trouble at all.
So it feels very elementally
similar to Faerie here
which you haven't been back to—
- Great.
- In centuries.
The only difference between
this place and Faerie
that you can kind of feel
intrinsically is weirdly,
Faerie is a little bit more
conservative than this place is.
- Mm-hmm.
- Faerie has kings and
queens and hierarchy
and laws about eating food in places
and doing favors for people.
- Ugh, why else would I leave?
No kings, no masters, that's
what you get in New York City.
- Exactly, so you're having a ball here.
You eventually descend back down.
You guys follow Nod towards
the banks of the East River
and you see that Nod just starts
walking into the East River
just submerging in the water
and starts to kind of glide effortlessly
underneath the water of the East River.
- I'm gonna follow.
- You guys follow—
- I take out a little nip, let's do this.
- You guys go down, the water exists
purely kind of on the surface,
and as you go through,
the sound is the quality
of being underwater
but you're not wet,
it just feels very chilly
and brisk down here.
- How's Kingston doing?
- Yeah, is this—
- Is he just sopping wet and unable to—
- Did I, I see all of these things,
like I watch her kiss—
- Make out with the moon, yes.
- It's just for me, there's
no flying or those sorts of—
- You are unable to fly here
and as you approach the water,
the water parts as you get here.
- Can I run up to Kingston and hand him
a little Tupperware salad
that I had in my pocket?
- You hand Kingston a Tupperware salad.
- Hey, man, I got this to go
at a restaurant I was at earlier.
I don't know if you're getting hungry.
- Oh.
- Are there drugs in the salad?
- No.
- Did you put drugs in the salad?
- It's sober, it's actually a sober salad.
- It's just a salad.
- I mean, the fact that you
have a word for a sober salad
as opposed to—
- This one is a sober salad.
- What's not a sober salad?
- You just put ketamine over the tomatoes.
It's fine.
- That sounds good for a—
- Absolutely wild.
- But this one isn't like that!
- Thank you, Pete.
- Yeah.
- Apprecia- Maybe I'll eat it later.
- Yeah, cool.
- You hold this sweet thing,
as you hold the salad from
Pete, you feel, Kingston,
a little bit of the
joy of the Dream Realms
seep in through your fingers,
through this little Tupperware of salad,
and you see that a bunch of
the little cherry tomatoes
in the salad turn around and
eyes pop out and they go,
We're good for ya!
- f*ck this!
I thought you said it was a sober salad!
- It is a sober salad!
- Why are the cherry
tomatoes talking to me?
- We're in the Dream World, man.
- Okay.
- Wally, look at the tomatoes!
I hold it up to him.
- Oh, look at that, what ya guys' names?
And you see they say,
we're all named Esteban.
- I take some of the cherry
tomatoes and eat them.
- Jesus Christ.
- We all have the same name!
We're gonna make him strong and healthy!
- Thank you, tomatoes,
for your nourishment.
- Are you religious?
- I feel like you and Wally
should hang out, Ricky.
- You see Wally says, I-!
Oh man, look at you!
He says, I think I seen you before,
I got the Fireman's Calender
'cause I love heroism.
- Oh yeah, definitely,
I'm Mr. March in that.
- Hi, I'm Wally Kugrich,
I work for the MTA.
- Nice to meet you, Wally.
We could be really good
friends, if you'd like.
- Okay!
- Okay, great.
- Okay, you're my best friend!
- Awesome, you're my best friend.
- Awesome!
He puts an arm around your shoulder.
- I think that Kugrich is on-
- Just crying on both of you.
- Oh my god, this is—
- Just such disgusting grubby tears.
- You guys begin to walk along
the floor of the East River.
As you walk along the
floor of the East River,
you see there's a bunch of
sort of toilets filled
with treasure down here,
and bathtubs overflowing
with silver coins.
You see that on little anchor
chains covered in algae
and sort of seaweed, there
are these giant king beds
that are just floating
partially in the water
and you see that each
bed has a little mobster
in a pinstripe suit
with a bunch of fishes—
- Aww, he's sleeping with the fishes!
- Are they pixies?
- Human mobsters.
- Oh my god.
- I mean, that's so peaceful,
do these kind of bad guys
deserve such a nice end?
- Yeah.
- Look, as again, they may be mobsters
but they're great supporters of the arts.
- Can I try to wake one up?
- Oh.
Wha-who is- I'm trying to sleep here.
You wakin' up all my fishes.
You see the fish just
start swimming around.
- What you do to sleep with the fishes?
- Hm?
- What you do to sleep with the fishes?
- I crossed the Don, I
ratted him out to the feds.
- Oh.
- Which Don?
Don Confetti?
- Oh, no, Lucky Luciano.
- Oh.
- Okay.
- Had to try.
- All right.
- Well, good work.
- Well Ricky, you're
gonna get a clue soon,
I'm serious, man.
- I feel like it's coming.
I feel like eventually I'm
gonna figure a thing out.
- Yeah, you can text Esther about it.
- Do I have service?
- Only people that have
Sprint have service here.
- Oh, amazing!
- You guys continue on.
You see this enormous
diner at the bottom of the East River
called Poseidon's Diner
and you see there's a
huge statue of Poseidon
holding a trident up on the top of it
but inside it's like
chrome milkshake machine,
Formica countertop.
You see that there's a
bunch of merfolk waitresses
but they are like, you
see that there's a very
big, broad mermaid woman,
older, in her fifties,
she's holding like a cigarette,
and those horn-rimmed glasses
with a chain around them,
seashell bra, but then
a little waitress apron
around her fish tail, swimming around,
and there's a little name
tag on the seashell bra
that says "Helen" on it.
Hey, you guys trying to sit down and eat?
- Yeah.
- We'd love to!
- I do have a little quick question about,
I don't want to be rude, but,
as a faerie, you know
where I'm coming from.
If we eat here, we can still leave, right?
- Oh yeah, there's no
rules about that here.
- Okay.
- You're not worried about that.
- I just needed to know.
- She's looking out for us.
- Look, there are a lot of strange rules
in these other dimensions
and it's better to—
- Do you have turkey burgers?
- When you go to another place,
it's good to know about the culture.
- We have turkey burgers.
- Do you have a low-cal menu?
- Oh, for sure, sweetheart.
- Okay.
- Yeah, we got the whole,
and she hands a little thing,
It's at the very bottom,
and they have the
beverages on the last page.
- Oh, this is great,
it's not just cottage cheese everything.
- Oh, cool, I understand.
You see that the menu is the
thickest menu in the world,
gleaning diner mints in a silver bowl
up at the front counter,
and a bunch of these
mermaids sort of swim around,
you see there seems to be a lot of
different Greek myths here,
you see some dryads over in a corner,
there appears to be some
tritons and various,
there's a parking lot outside that has
a bunch of hippocampi,
like giant seahorses and stuff like that.
- Can I look at the mints?
- Yeah you do, you see
some little mints there.
- Okay, and I'm just gonna take one.
- Question them about Don Confetti.
- Cool, you take a mint,
you see that the mint
looks up at you and goes,
Know this.
I am intended to be eaten after the meal
to freshen your breath.
Should you hold onto me for too long,
I will get chalky and
crumbly in your pocket
and you may wash your clothes with me
and there will be a sticky
patch on them for eons to come.
- It's a risk I'm willing to take.
- Ask the mint if it's true
that's lots of pee on them.
I saw a 20/20 and they said
there's lots of pee on mints.
- Just a quick question.
What's your name?
- My name is Ronaldo Manticaster.
- Ronaldo Manticaster, do you,
are you covered in pee by any chance?
- Only my own.
- Thank you.
- Kugrash eats a mint.
- You guys sit at this giant corner booth,
Alejandro finishes identifying
the objects and he says,
These are truly some remarkable treasures
from the bodega of La Gran
Gata that you have discovered.
You see he says,
This here is the Grill of Persuasion.
By putting it in your mouth,
you have honeyed words
that can affect the hearts
of those that you speak to.
- Sick.
- This is the Holy Grail Detergent.
It can restore not only the clothes,
but the very soul of the wearer.
This is a really jacked-up
Thousand Hour Energy, it can,
I mean, this will put some pep
in your step for a long time.
And this is the Bagel of All Things.
You see he says,
The bagel's toppings contain
everything in creation,
in microcosm,
simply shake some of the
toppings onto a paper plate
and you can read the fortune of the world
in the toppings themselves.
- Sick.
- Hell yeah.
- Oh my god.
- I'm glad you didn't eat it.
- Yeah, I definitely almost ate it.
- Sorry I really encouraged you to eat it.
- I mean, your shits would've
told some real stories there.
- He says, if you consume
the Bagel of All Things,
you will disperse your essence
throughout the universe.
- What a way to go!
- Is that good?
- It's supposed to be,
it will destroy your
ego and your identity,
but bring your
consciousness into alignment
with all of the cosmos.
Also, it's very good toasted.
I hear you should get it toasted.
- Maybe I'll get it toasted
and then maybe if I'm like
about to die, I'll pop it.
- Okay, yeah.
- You'll pop it?
- Yeah, that makes sense.
- I might pop it, I might pop a bagel.
- It lasts for for real two days?
- I can unhinge my jaw,
did you see how many mints I just ate?
- Should I just drink this now?
- Yeah, his Thousand Hour
Energy will last for 42 days.
- Geez Louise.
- Wait, so you just don't sleep?
- Once consumed, the imbiber is immune to
sleep effects and exhaustion,
could I just not sleep for 42 days?
- Mm-hmm.
- Oh my god, I'm not telling
you what to do, Mr. March—
- Dude, eat first, don't drink
that on an empty stomach.
- Yeah.
- Let's grab some food, do you
have huevos rancheros here?
Can I talk to—
- Oh yeah, for sure, we
got huevos rancheros.
- Oh, I would actually
love some cottage cheese
with some fruit on top.
- Cottage cheese.
- Can I get an egg cream?
- Yeah, we gotcha egg cream for sure.
- The f*ck is an egg cream?
- You haven't had an egg cream?
- Oh my god, an egg cream is a classic.
- All right, can we get two egg creams?
- Actually, I'll get one
too, I love an egg cream.
- You know, I'll do an egg cream.
I want a chocolate egg cream!
- And you see Nod says,
Hey Helen.
- Egg cream please?
- By the order of Nod, egg
creams for the entire table.
And you see that Helen brings
out your various orders.
They come out right away, it's
diner food, it's the best.
The lighting in here's perfect,
you guys can talk as loud as you want
and you just have this feeling
of wholeness and oneness here.
- I'm slicing into my egg cream.
- You need to get your egg in-
that fork and knife out of the glass.
- It's a drink.
- You get an egg cream,
which is an old Depression-era
New York delicacy.
It's seltzer, chocolate syrup,
it's sort of a—
- And eggs?
- No eggs in it.
- But there's milk in it.
- I think it's basically a—
- It's sparkling milk.
Sparkling chocolate milk.
- Sparkling chocolate milk,
it's a low-rent milkshake
from the era of the Great Depression.
- No!
- That's fine, it's not for everybody.
- But thank you, but
thank you, but thank you.
- Egg creams aren't for everybody.
- There's a Turkish
carbonated yogurt drink
that I tried a little while ago,
and I felt the same way about that.
- Oh, I might like that.
- Yeah, maybe.
- Fermented things are very good for you.
- You see that Nod is sitting next to Pete
and Nod is just leaning
their head against Pete's arm
and kind of, Nod looks
very much like a little kid
whose beloved older brother
has just come back from college
and is just
holistically and warmly
just obsessed with Pete,
leaning their head against Pete's arm.
And you see that Nod looks up and
can sort of hear your bottles of stuff
rattling around in your coat
and just opens up their hand
and makes a bunch of insane
purple gold-flecked pills
show up in their hand.
- What? What is that?
- If you want it, I don't know.
It just seems like you
like that kind of stuff
so I thought I'd make some for you.
- Oh, that's, well that's a perfect segue,
you guys, I-uh
I'm gonna try to rein in the drugs.
- Oh, great.
- You know, it's, I get it,
there's a lot of things
I'm learning right now so,
it's gonna be hard enough sober
so why, you know, why add mushrooms?
- You want a drug?
Go for a run.
- Anyway, Nod, thanks again.
I'm gonna just pretend that I didn't
scroll past that in my feed.
That's really nice of you,
I'll just keep these,
you know, but thanks.
- Nod smiles.
As I've stated before,
welcome, all of you, to the Dream Realm.
Nod.
I'm so happy that you're here.
Pete, you saved my life.
Thank you so much.
- Yeah.
- As I was saying before,
I owe you an apology
and an explanation.
Dark forces are moving against
the will of New York City,
both the Waking World and the Dreaming.
Every so often, in a time
of great peril and change,
it has fallen to me, the
Gray Orphan of New York,
to select a champion to
fight for and advocate
and wield the power of the Dream Realm.
Because of the dismissal that most humans
give to their dreams,
forgetting them upon waking,
and the cynicism and realism
that pervades most people's waking minds,
the Dreaming cannot send a message
to this champion beforehand
because these messages would
be dismissed and batted away.
Even you, Pete, for so long,
believed that your role
as the Vox Phantasma was simply
an illusion or a hallucination.
- Yeah, I thought I was going crazy.
- And I'm so sorry for that.
- No, that's fine, I mean you
just entered this too, right?
This is nuts.
- I mean, I thought I was
drunk for a while, which I was,
I shouldn't say I wasn't drunk.
- I thought I was high
for a while, which I was.
- Which you also were,
yeah, you could tell.
- Yeah, maybe you should
start a sobriety club.
- I'm gonna do a dry January
but I'd like to enjoy the holidays.
- That's... all right.
- Nod looks over and says,
So, unfairly and unfortunately,
the only way for me to make
contact with the Vox Phantasma
is to choose one, which means that you
didn't get a say in receiving these powers
and for that I'm sorry.
- Yeah, that's okay,
it's been cool so far.
- I'm glad.
I think I chose right.
You saved my life and I think,
for whatever it's worth,
Pete, you're a pretty good hero.
- Oh, god, this means a lot to me.
Thank you, thanks.
- You see that Nod looks out and says,
There's some other
business to discuss though,
which is that Robert is
moving against New York City.
- Yeah.
- What is Robert's deal?
- Why does he wanna
control the flow of magic?
- He also—
- It seems he's trying to create spaces
that cannot be accessed
by magic and scried upon
and are confusing magic in other boroughs.
- Robert Moses constructed what
the Gramercy Occult Society
understands as the Highway Hex.
You see Alejandro's eyes
go wide as this is said.
You see he goes,
This... I can't believe that that's true.
You see that—
- Does he have anything
to do with the ferry?
- You see that Nod sort of
acknowledges that and says,
Mr. Moses wanted
wealth and power above all else
and therefore sold his soul to Hell
and to Faerie.
- Oh!
- That double-dealing m*therf*cker.
- I actually meant a
different faerie but go on.
- You see Nod looks up and they say,
If nothing else, Robert Moses
is one of the most proficient
deal-makers and power-brokers of all time.
By selling his soul to Hell and to Faerie,
he was able to capitalize
on both sources of power
through magic for most
of his living career
and when the time came for him to die,
neither party could collect
without risking angering
the other faction.
- So it was just double-dealing,
he pretended like,
how do you sell your soul twice?
Isn't there some sort of proof
that you would still have it?
- I mean, look.
I gotta say, Faerie is
not great at paperwork.
- Okay.
- You see Nod points to Misty and says,
He made the deal with Faerie first,
knowing that their
bureaucratic record-keeping
wouldn't reach Hell in time.
- Which is like, it's no fun.
We're like a real fun-focused people.
We don't love paperwork,
it's like oh, we trust you.
Bad idea, always bad.
- You see that Nod says,
Robert, I do not know Robert Moses' plans,
I do not know what he is doing
or why he is moving against us,
but I do know that his mind is fixed
on that thing which Pete summoned forth
at the beginning of his powers,
which is what I was referencing
when I mentioned the words of Lazarus.
Misty, would you be kind enough to
share with us the New Colossus?
Emma Lazarus was a very powerful caster.
- Yeah, this is definitely a
thing that I know off by heart.
Just give me a second
to remember what it is.
- Why did I have to look
in a mirror to get you,
why did Robert Moses have
me look into a mirror?
- You see that Nod looks at you and says,
the Dream World is a
reflection of the Waking World
and there's a powerful
connection between dreaming
and mirrors and reflections of all kinds,
if you remember falling
through that puddle
the first time you came here.
They're an easy way to
access these other realms.
- Whoa.
- Dreaming and the
Waking World have some...
They can exist in harmony,
but more often then not
they exist in conflict
and a lot of that has to do with
the values that are espoused by each.
- Hmm.
- You see Nod
looks at you and says,
The nature of this
realm is a chimeric one.
And by that, I mean it
is the ephemeral axiom.
In Dream, and you see that Nod summons
a little twirling thing of
smoke and light and says,
Take for example, a child's wish.
And you see
this child's wish kind
of manifests in the smoke
and you see it is a trip to Disneyland
and a new bicycle and having a superpower
to stop a bully at school,
and this other thing,
shifting and shifting and shifting
and shifting and shifting
and shifting and shifting
and then Nod looks at you and says,
But, well, you already know, Pete,
that when you cast your
magic in the Waking World,
a thing that can be multiple things,
when it comes into contact
with the Waking World,
You see there's just a bike, stationary.
Has to be just one thing.
- Mm, mm-hmm.
- That's the power of the Waking World.
When you take a dream from the Dreaming
and you bring it to life,
all the things it could've been die
and only the thing that it is survives.
As soon as Nod says that,
Sofia, you in your head hear,
It is what it is.
You see that Nod looks
sort of blankly ahead,
Wally kind of goes, wow, I get that!
- I do have a little
bit of signal down here
even though I don't have Sprint.
- You can borrow mine if you want.
- No no, no, it's fine,
oh what is that, a Galaxy Note 5?
- That's huge, that's a massive phone.
- Yeah, I like it, I
can see a little better,
I can read it like a magazine.
- Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
with conquering limbs
astride from land to land;
here at our sea-washed,
sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
glows world-wide welcome;
her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor
that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your
storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
"your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free,
"the wretched refuse
of your teeming shore.
"Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me,
"I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
- At the words "golden door,"
Pete, you feel above the
sky here in Dreaming,
in New York City,
the golden rectangle that
first appeared to you
when the voice started speaking.
Start spreading the news.
Nod looks up.
The Golden Door.
- What?
- Did I do that?
- What was that?
There was a golden rectangle
and I think Lazarus was talking about...
- Lazarus was a powerful
Vox Phantasma.
In her time, in the mid-1800s,
she was the voice of Dream
and the dream behind the Golden Door
was what those tempest-tost were seeking.
You see that—
- Citizenship.
- You see that they
kind of actually nod and say,
But the Mother of Exiles lifts her lamp
beside The Golden Door.
Prosperity, opportunity,
and you see that the black eyes shimmer,
the American Dream.
It's a very powerful dream indeed.
You see that Nod looks and says,
When you call a little wish
or a figment into the Waking World,
it can become a spell.
A moment, a flash, a
joke, a little bit of joy.
There are dreams that are
so large and important
that they represent a threat to the cosmos
if they are brought into the Waking World.
They're called paragons.
Dreams of such magnitude
and importance that
causing them to manifest in waking life
would break or rupture them.
Just in the way that that
wish becoming a bicycle
destroys all the other versions,
bringing something from Dream to Waking,
if that thing is a
paragon, destroys so much.
- Hm.
- There have only been
three paragons before this one.
The Golden Door is what
we call a paragon doorway.
It is something that is created
when a dream is so powerful
that its meaning
keeps moving back and forth
from Dream to Waking.
The Golden Door exists because of
all the people that
came here looking for it
and all of their belief in
it and questing after it
means that it starts to
become realer and realer.
These doorways happen and they represent
a success of a dream becoming so important
but also great danger in its ability
to be pulled into the Waking World.
- What are the other two?
- Was one of them the Grand Canyon?
- You see that Nod shakes
their head, looks up and says,
There were three before
and they were all a long time before,
not even anywhere near this part of Nod.
The three paragon doorways
that existed before were
the Pearly Gates, the Mouth of
Hell, and the Road to Faerie.
- Mm.
- So, let me get this straight.
What I hear from you is
that the American Dream
is one of these paragons
and you think that in some way,
Robert Moses is trying to bring
the American Dream into the Waking World?
- And so that there's a static meaning
for the American Dream?
- So as to destroy it.
- I think he wants to create
a fourth space, right?
- Like a fourth—
- Like Heaven, Hell,
Faerie, American Dream.
- Can I do a history check on this?
- You can make a history check.
- How is my history?
Oh its uh-
How 'bout a nine?
- You've got no,
so the guesses so far were
creating a fourth space,
and then also this idea
of like bringing it out
would create that fourth, or yeah,
dragging it into the Waking World
would give it a static meaning.
You see that Nod looks at you and says,
Taking the paragon
doorway that has existed
in New York City for centuries
and bringing it into the Waking World—
- Would close it?
- Dreams shouldn't have just one meaning.
Not dreams that big and
not dreams that important.
- I agree.
- So then who was saying
"spread the news, I'm leaving today?"
- Nod shrinks a little
bit at that and says,
Whatever was on the
other side of the door.
- Oh god, it's not the
Protestant work ethic, is it?
'Cause that is exhausting
and I've had enough of it.
- So this guy Robert Moses also does
a lot of business in the Waking World,
'cause I knew him in the 80s.
- Yeah.
- So—
- So this could be business-driven.
- So what does
all of this have to,
why would he wanna hurt you?
Why did he wanna k*ll you?
- Because I've barred
his entrance into Nod.
I think he saw it as an
opportunity to capture me
and finally get access to the door,
I haven't allowed him entrance here.
- He deals with real estate, right?
Is it like a certain amount,
does he wanna be the first
person to get all this land?
- You see Nod kinda shrugs and says,
I don't know what Robert
does or doesn't understand
about this place.
Robert is, or was, undead.
Undreaming.
Can't come here other than physically.
- You know, I am old
enough to remember when
m*therf*ckers like that used to live
in god damn Westchester.
- Does he want it-
- Why they think they can
come into my New York City...
- Hey Wally?
- Yeah?
- What were you, where
were you on the train?
- I was in the conductor's little room.
The little conductor's place
where you drive the train?
- And there wasn't, you were by yourself?
- I think it was Alejandro's music.
- He goes, yeah!
I was there by myself!
- I cast Dispel Magic on Wally.
- You see Wally goes,
Wow!
- Just making sure, bud.
- Okay.
- Hold on Nod, I got one
more bone to pick with you.
With regard to the Dreamfolk
who we had to deal with in Brooklyn,
I mean what was that about?
- The Bugsters.
- You see Nod says,
Nod looks a little bit troubled at that,
and kind of almost glares at
you a little bit, Kingston.
Nod says,
they escaped because Pete
gave them permission to leave,
Pete wields the power of this realm.
Some...
Something was able to tip them off.
- And what was that, gray baby?
- I don't know.
I don't know.
In order to create a Vox Phantasma,
I have to give a piece of myself
and it means that I'm not as powerful here
as I would otherwise be.
- Who did you give a piece of yourself to?
I start crying.
Which piece?
- So you're telling me that
there's something going on
here in Dreamland that
is leading to people
wanting to come to,
the folk of Dreamland to come to New York
and you don't know about it?
- The Vermians that went to
Astoria, they're around here,
they're kind of a pest or a parasite,
mostly the rest of the Dream
World can keep them at bay
but something managed to make
its way here and tip them off,
not Robert who can't come here.
- What do you mean by tip them off though?
- Let them know where Pete was going to be
and trick him or take advantage of Pete
not understanding his
powers to get into New York.
- I think what Kingston
is saying though is,
what is creating the desire to leave
the Dream World for the
Waking World or is that just—
- It's great here, why
would you ever wanna leave?
- Yeah, why would anyone wanna leave?
- You see that Nod says,
Every night, millions of people come here.
So why wouldn't the people here
wanna go to the Waking World sometimes?
- Oh, you're right.
Hey look.
If you want tickets to the
premiere of "Midsummer Nights,"
here, let me just—
- Wow!
They have popcorn?
- They don't have popcorn but you can get
a little bag of mixed nuts.
- Okay!
- And a tiny little sippy cup of wine,
like you're a tiny child
but you're drinking wine.
It's great, I love it.
- I love those, you just rip the top off.
- No, you just sip it from the sippy cup.
- Nod goes, I like the sippy cup part.
You see that Nod says,
But,
what's important to remember also is that
within the aspect of all the
things happening here in Nod,
Pete saved me and Robert is
not allowed to come here.
There is a degree to which the Golden Door
has already started to slip into New York.
Since Emma Lazarus wrote that poem,
it's been partially there
in the Waking World,
but mostly it's still here in Nod
and I have taken precautions.
Robert Moses can't come here.
Also, the door is locked
and can't be opened.
- Key to the City.
- The Key to the City, someone
has it, someone stole it.
- If he has the Key to the City,
could he open the door, gray baby?
- I would thank you not
to call me that again.
- He means it in a respectful way,
like hey, baby that happens to be gray
like a term of affection,
not that you are a child.
- You see that Nod,
Nod sort of acknowledges that and goes,
and you feel something
change in the Dreaming.
Nod goes, okay.
I'm glad to know.
There is no longer a
lock on the Golden Door.
- Like a punch code?
You can trust us.
- You see Nod shakes their head and says,
So the door is both locked right now
but also does not have a lock any longer.
- Okay.
- Does that mean that the
American Dream is unavailable
for the people coming to New York now?
- It's done?
- You see that Nod looks at you and says,
Maybe you can all go
back to the Waking World
and then I can open the door again,
or at least let it be unlocked
so that those coming here can go through.
But for maybe a day or two.
You see that Nod kinda looks sheepish.
Maybe for a day or two,
it'd be better just to
keep it shut all the way.
- So as the door slips from Dream World
into the Waking World,
does that mean that the
many paths to success
become less and less and
fewer and fewer and fewer?
- You see Nod sort of agrees.
- If there's like a gradient?
- They say,
The paragon doorway is the vessel
through which the paragon comes
so the Golden Door
becoming more and more real
makes the risk higher and higher
that something could draw the
full paragon on the other side
through into the Waking World
and the closer that is to happening,
the closer we are to it
being one thing forever.
- Destroying many paths, yeah.
- He can't come here,
but can he go to Faerie?
'Cause Faerie, I know, is adjacent.
- Robert Moses won't leave New York City.
He owes his soul to both Faerie and Hell
and they sent people
to collect on his debt
and by the time they got there,
he had finished building the highways
and they could no longer
scry through or enter.
I'm sure you're well aware, Misty,
that no one's been able
to come seeking justice
for things owed to them for a while.
- Yeah, no—
- What does that mean?
- Why would you know?
- Oh, well,
- Can I make a perception check?
- I may not have left
Faerie on the best of terms
but look, everybody comes to
New York City for a reason.
I felt like Faerie wasn't, you know,
I wasn't growing in Faerie.
There's a very strong hierarchy
there and you're just like,
whoa, God, how many more hundreds of years
do I have to pay my dues?
- So they're just coming
to claim your presence?
- Well that and I may have taken
a little tiny baby
little souvenir with me.
- A baby souvenir?
- Was it a baby?
- Like a rattle?
- It was not—
- Not gray baby?
- Well look, you may,
faeries are pretty allergic to iron
and iron is pretty prevalent
in the Waking World and especially—
- Don't worry, all this is real gold.
- Thank you, I appreciate it,
but you may have noticed—
- Can I do an investigate to
see if that's actually gold?
- It's all real
gold, I get it from—
- Ooh, I got a five.
- Dude, that's real gold.
- Okay, cool.
- Ebay, they have to verify.
- Oh yes, no, it's beautiful.
They're beautiful rings.
Yeah no, my shoes may have,
technically still belong to Titania
but she wasn't using them,
she never leaves Faerie,
like what a waste of a beautiful thing,
do you know what I mean?
- Titania from the show?
- Oh, Titania, oh, well,
Titania from the show, but
also Titania from Faerie.
- Wow, so you embodying
her on stage is kinda like
a f*ck you to someone
you already stole from?
- No, I would say it was
a tribute or an homage.
- An homage, okay.
- She's gonna k*ll you.
- Only if she can get here,
and I have her god damn shoes.
- God damn, Misty.
- Wow, Misty, I mean,
I didn't think I could love you any more.
- Jesus.
- You see that Nod
smiles and seems so happy
with all of you being here.
Alejandro's just in a daze looking around.
The diner food is delicious—
- I put a little Kahlua in my egg cream.
- That sounds real—
- That's disgusting!
- That does sound great,
I will have some Kahlua.
- Do we wanna use the bagel to,
do we have a theory about—
- What's the bagel do?
- The bagel lets me do a
divination, kinda like ask—
- Okay.
- A god.
- Oh.
- Yeah, let's figure out
what's really going on
with Bob Moses.
- My feeling is that there's still,
maybe I'm harping on an old thing
that no else is still thinking about—
- The laundering souls.
- The laundering of the
souls and trying to,
I almost wonder what's going on there,
is he trying to like, I don't know.
- I guess the question is,
is he trying to get into
these type of places
or is just trying to like—
- Keep people out.
- Keep people out.
- I think he's trying to make his own—
- He's trying to be the king of New York.
- I think he needs to be
somewhere, he can't be,
like, I dunno, in Hell and
Faerie, he can't leave New York,
yeah, I think he needs his own—
- What about the Pearly Gates, though,
that's a different thing.
- That's exactly what it is,
if he sold his soul to two people,
he's trying to make it harder
for other people to get into New York.
- It's his soul he's trying to launder,
I don't think there's
any other souls involved.
I think Robert Moses is
trying to make himself—
- Dang, I have this really good theory,
I guess I'm just gonna...
- A new soul so that he doesn't—
- Can sell it to Heaven?
- Maybe, maybe a third place?
- You're right.
- You that Nod speaks up and says,
If you wanted to investigate, remember,
those three realms,
Hell, Heaven, and Faerie,
all used to be dreams
before they were so loved
that they became real, so—
- Are there any other- oh my.
- Can we go to Heaven?
- I don't feel super great
about going, let's go to Hell!
Hell sounds great!
It's warm.
- You see that Nod smiles and says,
Misty, I would never
send you into harm's way,
but there are some
neighborhoods where those doors
Bless you.
He says, there are some neighborhoods
where those doors used to be,
so there's a big faerie neighborhood
up near Carnegie Hall where
the Road to Faerie starts.
- Oh, great, do they have
mana there, do they make,
I just have not had a good drink of mana.
- You see Nod kind of like goes,
you see that Helen actually, no,
Helen, your mermaid waitress, says,
Oh, they do a Manahattan there
that'll knock your socks off.
- Oh!
- Oh my god.
- I love a Manahattan!
This is what's so great about New York!
You take these fusions of ideas
and foods and thoughts and dreams!
- And you see that Nod also says,
way far into Brooklyn also,
the Pearly Gates are near there as well.
You could go—
- Oh.
- You could, or where the
Pearly Gates used to be
before they left, but there
are forces around there,
it's the border of the Dreaming
where it borders on these other realms
if you wanted to go and investigate.
- I wanna investigate these three spots
and then use the bagel with what we found.
- Yes, I think that's a good idea.
I do feel compelled to also
meet up with my brother.
As much as I don't wanna see anyone from—
- Can we get him to come over to Brooklyn?
We can tube or, oh, where's Hell?
How do we get to—
- Hell's Kitchen?
- Hell's Kitchen?
- You see that, yes.
- Got a clue.
- Hey, good job, man.
- You did it.
- I've grown to really like Ricky.
He's just honestly pure.
- He's just a good boy.
- I was waiting for
the other shoe to drop,
and you to be a piece of sh*t, but—
- You know, sometimes you're
just a skeptical person,
and you're like, there's no
way that this guy is this nice.
- I read people, I read
people for a living,
you know, and I was just waiting for it.
- You see Nod says,
There's a bunch of ground for
us to cover while we're here.
Also at some point, Pete,
and anyone else is
welcome to come as well,
I know that you've been
struggling with your magic.
I would love to fix that up for you.
We could head over to the
Metropolitan Museum of Memories
and give you all the knowledge of arcana
of all the past Vox Phantasmi.
- Yes, I would really appreciate that.
- Oh my god.
- I try to do a good job, okay.
I work hard, and really the
only thing I'm good at is drugs.
Okay?
- Hey, don't say that.
- And so sometimes when
I'm not doing good at
something else, I go
back to what I'm good at,
I dip back in the well.
- You know...
- My hand instinctively
reaches to a Ziplock bag
and I whip it out.
- Don't, don't, you don't—
- Hand 'em over, kid, hand 'em over.
Hand 'em over, I'll take
them for safety's reasons.
- Incredible.
- And the other one, and the other one.
- Pete hands out all of his drugs
and you see that each
time you empty a pocket,
you see that Nod, each
time you empty a pocket,
Nods fills one of your
pockets that is empty
with material components for spellcasting
so like, a little bit of magic gold dust
and a deck of tarot cards covered in runes
and a bunch of dope magic sh*t
starts going into your pockets.
- The backpack, here.
- Awesome jacket.
- Damn, Pete, you look much thinner.
- What do you mean?
- I just had kilos on me at all times!
- Very thin!
- You just dropped 22 pounds!
- Stop it!
- Does anybody have a
Bag of Infinite Holding
'cause actually, this stuff is very heavy
and I'm a small old lady.
- I feel so much lighter, everywhere.
- Pete, if you can't make money now,
I'm sure Wally, you know,
might have a place for you to crash.
He's kinda—
- I've also got that guest
room in Staten Island.
- Cool, cool.
Yeah, I...
Well, I was kinda staying with Kingston.
- It's still open to you.
- Yes.
- Cool, yeah, then I'm sorted, thanks.
- Cool, so you see that you guys wrap up,
you see that Helen comes
over with the check,
puts it down, you see that
Nod looks up at you and says,
I rule this entire realm
but I don't have any money, I'm a kid.
- Oh cool.
Um, yeah, we can help out.
- I take out a Visa gift card.
- You put it down.
- Dale got this for me for my birthday
and I've been waiting to spend it.
- Helen runs the thing, you come over,
you sign for the check.
- Your husband got you a Visa gift card?
- Yeah, I told you things
weren't going well.
- That's progress, you know.
That's progress.
- Thank you, I know,
I've had it for a while.
Feels good to spend it.
- You see
the check is settled up,
and Nod smiles and says,
While you are here, none may harm you.
Feel free to cover as
much ground as you like.
I've told you the location
of the other paragon doors,
if you wish to go and investigate them.
- And, just to double
check, again, Faerie,
just generally distrustful
of riddles and twisted words,
is there a person or a being
called None who can harm us?
- You're so good at this.
No, there's nobody that's gonna harm you.
- Okay!
What about Nobody?
Is Nobody gonna hurt us?
- You see Nod goes, I don't know.
- God dammit.
Well, we'll see.
- Yeah.
I'll be mistrustful if I encounter any...
I have a question, while we're here,
can we spy on other people's dreams?
- Yeah.
- Holy sh*t.
- You can do that but you'd have to go
all the way to Staten Island.
- You see that Nod says,
Shouldn't be hard, you can all fly!
Up up and away!
- Can I fly?
- Kingston, you can't fly.
- I can't fly?
- Can I pick up Kingston?
- You can pick up Kingston.
- I got his bottom right arm.
- I don't like this.
I don't like this at all.
- You each have an
ankle, you're just like—
- And then Nod looks at you and says,
Pete, you wanna head over to the museum?
- Yeah, sure!
The Museum—
- The Metropolitan Museum of Memories.
- Memories, cool.
- Rad.
So where are you guys all taking off to?
We'll start with whoever
wants to go wherever.
- Some of us should go to the Fae
and some of us should go to Heaven.
- Yeah.
- And Hell?
- I don't think we're good on Hell.
- I can, I feel like I
kinda belong in Hell,
I'm a bad guy.
I could go to Hell.
- Could I go to the Statue of Liberty,
just to check it out?
- I have a question, so I can't
talk to my brother right now
'cause we're in the Dream World, right?
- Yes, that's correct.
- Okay.
Where would we go to spy
on someone else's dream,
I'm not saying I'm going to do it.
You see Nod says, you
just have to find 'em.
- Oh.
But if we couldn't find them in real life,
it'd probably be equally hard
to find them in Dream World.
- It'd probably be
easier to find them here.
- Hmm, okay.
- Sof, if you need some support,
I'll go with ya if you wanna—
- No, I'm thinking of a selfish mission
that has nothing to do
with the greater good.
- Sof, I have a completely fake set of
online accounts to stalk my ex
and it always sounds like
a good idea but boom,
five hours is gone, it's
there's a piece of pizza on your chest
'cause it's resting there while you scroll
and it's just, you got nothing there.
- Yeah.
- You know?
- You're right, that's a dead end.
- It's not worth it—
- I'm gonna end up with pizza on my chest.
- The past is dead and buried.
Focus on the pizza.
- Focus on the pizza,
thank you so much, Pete.
- Men are dessert, you know?
It's nice to have 'em
but you don't need it.
- Oh my god, I love you.
- That's fair, I'll take that,
I believe men are dessert.
- Yeah.
- I don't... that's gross.
- What, I'm a firefighter,
I could just go to Hell.
- You wanna go to Hell?
- Yeah.
- Whoa!
- Wally, wanna go to Hell?
- You know what, I'm gonna go to Hell.
- Okay Dad, sure thing!
- All right, so is everybody going—
- Look, Faerie is gonna be much more fun.
- I'll come to Faerie then.
- Great.
- So no one's going to Heaven,
I'll go to Heaven then I guess.
- You see that Alejandro says,
I will keep you company to Heaven.
- Okay, yeah.
- So Alejandro and Sofia
are going to Heaven,
Kugrash and Ricky are going to Hell,
Kingston and Misty are going to Faerie,
and Pete's going with Nod to
the Metropolitan Museum of Memories.
Let's go ahead now and see—
- Cool.
- Where we go first.
Cool.
Awesome.
Ricky and Kugrash, you guys
head out with Wally and Ox.
You make your way all to Hell's Kitchen.
- Our two familiars.
- Hell's
Kitchen is fully burning.
Huge just like raging fire here,
it's like nightmare has a
lot of pull in this realm.
- I got just a rag out,
and I put some water on it,
and just kinda
- You're walking along,
you hear a
Yah! Yah!
And you see that there's a bunch of demons
crouched like gargoyles around here
and again, you're not in
Hell, you're in Dreaming,
so these might be demons
or they might be nightmares
that are wearing a demonic guise.
Whatever the case, it
looks like it's sort of
elementally-aligned with that place
and you see that a gate opens up,
you hear a shot go off,
and you see thousands of little rat men
looking much like Kugrash
looks, same height,
same kind of build, all wearing suits
start running after a sack of money
strapped to a little
zipline like at a dog race,
going
and all these rats start going
and you see that they're
knifing each other
and biting each other.
- This is a rat race?
- Ooh, this isn't subtle at all.
This is, that's me.
- You see that one of the
guys looks over and goes,
Holy sh*t!
Bruce Kugrich!
- How you doing, Randy?
- I'm out of the race!
You see he's holding his guts
spilling out of a slit stomach.
Holy sh*t, man!
Slap slap, bloody handprint
on your little cape.
You look good, man, how's it going?
- Yeah, man, you look
great, life was awesome
when we were partying all
the time and sh*t, right?
- Dude, are you still alive?
- Yeah!
- Dude, I lost all my money in 2008
and I blew my f*cking brains
out in a closet, dude!
- Holy sh*t, man!
- Dude.
Hey, do you have any money?
- No, I live in the trash.
- f*ck, dude, I hear that.
Aw f- I'm always in pain, dude.
- Dude, me too.
Life sucks so god damn bad.
- We are f*cked, dude.
- We are so f*cked.
- We are so f*cked.
- I've got my son Wally, we've
got Ricky, and we got my son
- Hey, do you have any money, dude?
And you see he takes a little knife out.
- Calm down, don't give him money, Wally!
- Ah, dude, my feet are always burning!
- I try to smother him.
- Ah, it f*cking hurts, dude!
- I try to k*ll him.
- Oh, we gotta go, dude!
And you see they start taking off.
- Aw, sh*t.
- This is f*cking horrifying.
- You see, Ricky, do you have
your divine sense active?
- I can.
- Or no, actually, both of you guys
make a perception check for me.
- Cool.
I'd also like to, I still wanna see if,
'cause I'm seeing all these rats.
I was turned into a rat by Gabriella,
I guess I wanna see if I
sense any kind of witch magic
or anything like that.
- Mm-hmm, go for it.
- Perception...
- I got perception, 20, not nat.
- I got a 17.
- Cool.
You're looking for magic stuff,
you're looking for the perception stuff.
You see that it seems like
there is still some connection,
like you could reach
Hell through this place.
Your axe is gleaming very brightly
and you actually hear your
axe kind of saying to you,
you for the first time
hear your axe speak,
This is a wicked place.
Ricky—
- What's up?
- I'm saying this is a
wicked place, Ricky Matsui.
- It's a wicked place.
Kugrash, I gotta call on my axe.
- Okay.
- This is a wicked place.
- Just so you know, I think
it means wicked like bad,
not wicked like awesome.
Just so you know.
- Do you mean wicked like bad—
- He means bad, he means bad.
- Or wicked like cool?
- Wicked like bad, it's a bad place.
- Oh, okay.
- You start to notice something,
which is as you're
looking for witch magic,
you see that the thing
that turned you into a rat,
that magic, weirdly,
has a sense of justice
or purpose to it.
- Mm-hmm.
- Like, you were turned into a rat
because you deserved to be.
The reason you became a
rat is because your soul
already looked like this.
In other words, that spell didn't—
- If I was a good guy,
it wouldn't have worked.
- If you were a good guy,
it wouldn't have worked.
And the reason that your body turned into,
in other words, Gabriella
didn't turn you into a rat,
Gabriella made your body
take the form of its soul
and you were destined to look like this
and had you died, you would
have been with these rats.
- Thank you, Gabby.
f*ck me.
- You see, you also notice and see
little sort-of burning scraps
of money flitting around
and as you look,
you see this weird thing,
Nod is already kind of ephemeral,
but you see, at the corner of your vision,
dollar signs moving around.
Ephemerally, even for
Dream, they're illusory
but you look up and see in the distance,
the Golden Door hanging
in the sky over the city
and you see that literally, the
thing far away in the harbor
that the torch of the Statue
of Liberty is lifting towards,
she is pointing to the Golden
Door hanging over the city
and as you look up, you
see there's something there
that's gonna require you to
look for magic, basically,
but you get a feeling of—
- Can I?
- Yeah.
- Can I go to the torch
of the Statue of Liberty?
- Yeah, you guys can fly over, absolutely.
- Yeah, I wanna see that.
- You guys fly out.
You start flying there and you
see the statue turns to you,
Hello hello, how are you doing this way,
looking to see Statue of Liberty,
are you here for our guided tour?
- I'm not here for the guided tour,
I wanted to talk to you
about the Golden Door
and also your torch.
What's going on with your torch?
- I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.
- I hold up my axe.
- Oh!
- Similar.
- Tres bièn, it's good to see you!
- It's good to see you.
- You are one of New York's bravest, yes?
- I'm just doing my job.
- To spend your life saving those
who are still doomed to die,
it is an act of heroism but also of loss.
You are truly a hero, Ricky Matsui.
- Okay.
- You see that the statue turns
to you, Kugrash, and says,
Ah, and you a filthy little rat man!
- Yes.
- You have come here to see where I point.
You can see the Golden Door.
But, there is something dark at work.
You guys, from this vantage point,
you see that the Statue of Liberty
casts this incredible glow over the city
and you see that there
is something issuing from
and towards the Golden Door
and she illuminates almost
this sickly, branching
cardiovascular system that appears to be
overlaid on top of Dreaming
and you see, like blood
moving through veins,
thick green dollars moving
all throughout this realm.
You see that they go
towards the Golden Door
and come from the Golden Door
as though a heartbeat over the city.
- Is this like the wants of people?
Are people dreaming
about, is this like greed?
- Being corrupted by money, yeah.
Could we—
- People are always just dreaming
about the things they want, right?
- Yeah.
- You see that the statue says,
The Golden Door, beyond
it is a life worth living,
prosperity, opportunity,
the things that people came here to seek.
And yet, that dream, however pure,
it can accomplished through these
acts of power and wealth.
The danger of course
lies in losing the dream
in the pursuit of your
ability to obtain the dream.
And Kugrash, the second she says that,
you think back to your early life
and what made you want to
be rich in the first place.
To, you know, have the power and wealth
to determine your own
life, freedom, your family,
having them go to whatever
college they wanted to go to,
and at some point in the pursuit
of whatever lay beyond that door,
you were unfaithful to your
wife, you abandoned your kids,
you never went home, and
you see that the Golden Door
is shining but this weird
overlay of rooting money
is in and of itself like a
virus that has wedged itself
in between the door and
the people seeking it
and is feeding off of
the dreams of this city.
- Deep.
Let's fly up and get
a closer look at that.
- Okay.
- Ball of dollars.
To put it poetically.
- You guys fly closer,
go ahead and give me an investigate check.
- Oh, not perception.
- Come on.
- Investigate, 14.
- You guys snoop around up there.
Are you guys using any magic
or spells at this point or no?
- I'm getting pretty low on spells.
You know what, I might,
I think I do have a level 1 spell left.
I'm gonna cast...
- Eating wasn't a short rest, right?
- Eating was a short rest.
- Okay.
- Mm.
- I wanna try to cast Cure Wounds
on this virus money
that's up in the thing.
- You cast Cure Wounds and you
see that a lot of the money
shrivels and turns to dust under your hand
as it would do, you think,
with certain healing spells working on,
it's hard to say,
you wish you could've gotten
a better glimpse of it,
but as you burn it,
you get a smell of the
burning money, Ricky,
and a similar smell flashes into your head
that you smelled a little
bit at Bethesda Fountain
and it is the smell of undeath.
- I cast Divine Sense.
- You see
this weird, infected blood
system in the Realm of Dream
and somewhere deep
within it in the tangle,
as it goes downtown, there
is some force of undeath
that is tapped into this
and is not fully responsible for it
but is able to command it to some degree.
- The vampires, right?
- Seems right, yeah.
- And that is all that you guys
are able to glean from there.
And we're going to cut over to:
Sofia!
So how's it going,
you and Alejandro are
flying on just like—
- As we're flying, I just wanna
turn to Alejandro and say,
Alejandro, I got pretty
f*cked in that fight
and then we had a short
rest and, you know,
I can roll the dice as it
were to see how much I,
but you have like a heal on
you or anything like that?
- I have nothing on me, I'm afraid, so—
- Kay, all right then.
- You, arriving, Sofia's
mind is also on Dale, right?
At this point?
- No, no, that was a good
pep talk that they gave us
- Cool.
- So I'm not, it's kinda
like I use the gift card,
I feel like I took a step
in the right direction.
- Cool, you get to the Pearly Gates,
you fly all the way off
into, you're actually near,
you see that the Pearly Gates are kind of
hanging over where JFK Airport is.
- Oh my god.
- And you see
that sort of through there,
you see there's like
airplanes kinda coming
in and out through Dream.
- Okay, I like that.
- And you see that
there's a bunch of people
that kind of are passing
away in New York City
that get into this little
airport and take off,
you see way in the distance
there's like pearly gates.
- Wait, you gotta pay five bucks extra
to take the air train to heaven?
God dammit.
Everything in this city is a grift.
- You and Alejandro look
out and are looking up
at these pearly gates.
Go ahead and give me an investigate check.
- Okay.
Hmm.
It's gonna be seven.
- So you're kind of just
sort of flummoxed by it,
you're looking around,
this place doesn't feel as, you know,
Heaven, the force of celestial,
and you see too, the Pearly Gates,
you can even sense through
there's other divine realms too,
like maybe it's the Pearly Gates to Heaven
but there's also maybe the
Roman Elysium past there,
maybe Valhalla somewhere
past there as well.
- Ooh.
- There are all of these
realms but of reward and peace
and lives well-lived.
You are kind of taken in
by the peacefulness of it
and just the sort of
of these dreamy airplanes.
Alejandro kind of smiles
along with you and goes,
Some day I am going to
go through those gates.
- What do you think is on the,
where do you think your plane lands?
- Where does my plane land?
- Yeah.
- It lands on a runway next to
beautiful buildings and happy people,
kids playing out on the street
with hopscotch, and my wife.
- Wow.
- I have missed her for quite some time.
As you say that, you suddenly hear,
Sir! Sir sir sir sir!
And you look and see a commotion
up at the Pearly Gates.
You see a bunch of angels
absolutely getting their asses kicked.
- Alejandro, let's get into this!
- He looks up and says,
I think if we go there
we might actually die.
That's beyond Dreaming.
That is Heaven through there.
- Okay, well someone's in
need, so we should probably go.
- You see some insane
and in that sort of anime way,
a bunch of angels all fly back
in a circle at the same time.
- Oh my god, this is like
a Renaissance painting.
- And you see Dale,
in a little white short
sleeve button-up shirt,
little skinny black tie, black pants,
thick black-rimmed glasses,
kicking a bunch of angel a*s,
and charging out of the pearly gates
and zooming with this
incredible otherworldly leap,
tears streaming down his face.
Dale has the most cherubic,
handsome boyish face
and is just jacked as
hell, incredibly muscular
with a couple little, you know,
little name tag for the accounting firm
where he used to work and he
bam!
Lands on the ground in front of you.
- Can he see me?
- He can see you.
- Dale, what the f*ck are you doing here?
- Listen, I don't have
a lot of time, sweetie.
They're gonna drag me
back there in a second.
- I don't understand.
I thought you were with Isabella Infierno.
- He reaches out, takes
your hand, and says,
That text was very sweet,
Sweetie, I would never.
I've been there,
and he points to the Pearly Gates,
Isabella is the reason
that you haven't seen me
but not for the reason you think.
I haven't been in the Waking
World for quite some time.
- So you're in Dream World?
- You see that you can hear angels coming.
He looks down to you and says,
Sweetie.
I know this is hard
and we don't have time.
I'm not alive anymore.
- That's really f*cked up.
- I'm sorry that I left.
You know it wouldn't have been my choice.
I'm so sorry.
He looks, the angels are
coming closer, he's like,
You'd have to be crazy
to leave Sofie Bikes.
And I got your text.
I wish you the best too.
You see tears stream down his face.
He goes,
When you get to the top, I
know what it'll seem like,
but there is someone there,
there is someone there.
- The top of what?
- You see angels grab onto his arms
and begin to pull him back.
- I'll fight the angels.
- I attack an angel,
I use all my Ki points attacking an angel.
- You see Alejandro says,
I cannot, I am a bystander to this,
I did not attack an angel.
You see that as you're hitting the angels,
each time you wallop one
of them you see they go,
I get it!
Fair!
I'm not taking it personally!
As
But you see, eventually,
go ahead and give me an Athletics check.
- I got a 23.
- That's not gonna beat a Nat 20.
- What?
No they didn't!
- They're angels, baby.
- You see they restrain you
and they're bleeding from
the nose and they're like,
We do not hold it against you,
we know that you're coming from
a place of rage, we get it,
and we're not gonna be assholes.
- Oh my god, do not speak down to me!
- Hey, no one's speaking down—
- But don't tell me you're
just doing your job here!
- We can't, he's gotta be,
he can't be coming down here.
- He has a job to do on Earth!
He's got deer in the backyard to watch,
who's gonna watch the deer?
- You see Dale is almost
back at the Pearly Gates
and he yells out and he says,
Also, what's the problem
with a Visa gift card,
you know what you like the best!
- And disappears.
- It was very practical!
- He says, I try to always be practical!
Tell Jackson I said hi!
- Jackson?
- All of this—
- What the actual f*ck?
My husband is f*cking dead?
- Alejandro looks around and says,
Well, this is a lot to process.
- Oh, oh okay, sorry, let me
f*cking hold your hair back
while you f*cking process this.
My husband's f*cking dead!
I thought he left me and now
I find out he didn't leave me
which is a cool thing but you
know what's worse than that?
Him being dead.
So let me hold your hand
through this, Alejandro.
- So what I
said, I do take back.
That was
the wrong thing to say.
- Yeah.
I thought you might, we've
all said wrong things
and this was your f*cking turn.
Wait, so Isabella Infierno
k*lled my f*cking husband?
- As you say that,
you feel a crackle of
something around yourself
and a bunch of magic
wraps around your fists
as you say that.
- I'm gonna f*cking k*ll her.
And I don't think she's going to
the great big airport in Brooklyn.
- We're gonna cut from there over to...
We're gonna cut from
there over to Glamour.
Over near Carnegie Hall,
this incredible three-story
very swanky faerie bar
appears and it is just
decked out and gorgeous.
This is very much one of those Broadway,
where the stars come
to drink kind of place.
- I am gonna cast Disguise Self on me
just because I don't want
anybody snitching to Titania
but it's, I'm just basically
like Eliza Doolittle
at the beginning of f*cking...
- Dr. Doolittle?
- Oh, "My Fair Lady?"
- "My Fair Lady," thank you, I was like,
"Pygmalion," that's not right.
So I just have very obvious
dirt splotches across my face
and then a very silly little
hat with flowers coming out.
- I can see my d*ck!
- Incredible.
- Blimey, this bar—
- Do you want me to
call you something else?
Are you still Misty or...
- How 'bout "Liza"?
Go, blimey, look at this bar then!
- You see a little—
- Oh blimey!
- You see that riding a little pot of gold
is a tiny little leprechaun,
crazy red muttonchops
and a bowler hat with a shamrock.
Right then, and welcome to Glamour!
h* h*!
Brring!
Gold everywhere!
And can I be gettin' ya a drink then?
- Yeah, I'll take one of
your Manahattans, please!
- One Manahattan coming
right up and for you, sir?
- I'll just take water?
- He'll have a Manahattan too!
- I stand on the bar and start.
Two beautiful sparkling faerie drinks
appear in front of you.
Are you crying?
- I'm fine.
- These two drinks appear.
Yeah, two Manahattans appear.
They are delicious.
Go ahead and roll investigation checks,
what are you guys checking
out while you're here?
- Ooh, investigation I have is very low.
- I have very high,
what are we looking for?
- I don't fully understand.
- I mean, I guess we just came
to have two delicious drinks.
- I'll have another round of Manahattans!
- Cool, you guys just get
f*cking blasted, I guess.
- What are we doing here, no,
we're supposed to be
looking for something,
what are we—
- See, those are the thing with Faerie,
you come here for one
reason and then you're like,
oh, god, I can't remember.
- We're looking up what you
see about, oh, we should—
- The door!
- And his soul, we
should be seeing about—
- The soul.
- The soul is there.
- Is there anybody around
here that I feel like,
let's roll for an investigation check.
Have you got any tiny nuts?
- Modified 20.
- You see, a modified 20.
- I also got a 10, that's
pretty helpful, right?
- You see that the leprechaun goes,
Oh, you want some snacks then?
And you see that a little ring of perfect
red with white spot mushrooms
grow out of the bar in a little circle.
And good to eat they are,
and good for ya as well!
- Oh, thank you, maybe
you shouldn't eat these.
I don't know what the human
digestive system would do.
- Yeah great, I, you know, am good.
- Thank you, this is my favorite!
- You see in a long,
beautiful navy peacoat,
this coiffed, stunning
man with purple eyes
and sort-of elfen ears,
at the end of the bar,
speaks to the leprechaun,
and he comes over with
another two small things
of little absinthe shots with
floating Lucky Charms in them.
- Well, thank ya kindly, good sir!
We are two but humble normal people here.
- Yeah, we're both humble and normal.
- You know that this guy, this
person at the end of the bar,
clearly is in some awareness here
and you can also tell Kingston,
Dream Land or not, you know
when people are new to town,
and this guy's new to town.
- Hmm.
Oh, what's your name, sir?
- Oh, it's nice to meet you,
my name's Bobby Goodfellow.
- Oh!
- New Yorker born and bred.
- Mmm.
- Ask him if he's related
to Robin Goodfellow.
- The second you say that, you
recognize this person's eyes.
The form is different
but the eyes are the same
and you speak to the Puck himself.
- Oh, hello.
Darling, it's so good to see you.
- Good to see you.
I understand that I guess
all of our mutual
glamours have fallen away.
- Ah, well, you know.
Lehayim!
- Hey, sláinte.
- Do you know each other?
- You might've read about me.
Puck, Robin Goodfellow,
"If we shadows have offended,
think but this and all is mended?"
- He does a great bit where
he pretends to be a stool
and then whips himself
away at the last minute.
If that's ever happened to
you, that was probably him.
- That's me.
- It's a great bit, it's a great bit,
every time you do it, it's funny.
- You see that the costume of
Bobby Goodfellow disappears
and there is a tiny little
butterfly-winged goat satyr boy
standing there with fuzzy
ears with a little wineskin
hanging around his bare chest.
- How's that b*tch Peaseblossom?
- He says,
Oh, she's just awful, she's
always chattering on—
- Oh god, still?
- Terrible, yes, true.
Listen, love.
I've come to tell you
she's coming for you.
- How?
- You got my mirror, didn't you?
- That was your mirror?
- Sorry, gotta do what the orders are,
Lord Oberon demanded it.
- Oh no, she's not back
with Oberon, is she?
- I think they're just f*cking,
I don't think that they've
moved in together again.
- God, it's the worst
when they're together
because then they're like
trying to one up each other
with helping but it just
f*ck everybody else over
and then, uh, it's exhausting.
- You're talking about all
the characters in the play,
right, the play you're doing?
These are real people?
- Yes, I mean Shakespeare was a great bard
and spent a lot of time
in his youth in Faerie.
- You see that Robin looks
at you and just goes,
I've come to warn you, right?
And looks around
puts Bobby Goodfellow back up.
Darlin', you gotta understand
you owe centuries of glamour.
She's coming for you and she's
coming for the Don as well.
He has not been paying
his taxes like he should.
- Darling, I get my glamour
from the people of New York City
and all of the bridge and tunnel people
that come and watch my shows,
I don't owe nothing to Titania.
- Well, you and her are
gonna have to hash that out.
You see this is like the
most theater bar in the world
'cause everyone's changing their disguises
and doing accents for each other.
Someone's all, right no, a
Scottish accent's like this,
no this, no this, like this, no,
deeper, deeper, from the resonant here.
Just a bunch of faerie actors
all talking to each other.
- Nightmare.
- He looks over at you and says,
Also.
You gotta know, sweetheart,
Titania's heard.
Something's happening in New York.
The world of mortals is
not long for this world.
Come home.
We miss you.
- Ah.
- Hey, buddy, what was that?
What was that you said
about the world of mortals?
- Hey.
Best of luck to you.
You see he looks and says,
You wanna throw in your
lot with a bunch of humans?
- I mean, look.
Here's the great thing about humans.
They're mutable, they're changeable,
everything in Faerie
is just always the same
and then you're just
there and you're immortal
and then you're like,
I guess I'll throw out these flower petals
on the bed again 'cause that's
the thing that I do every day
and then I'm, it's like, the only,
that's why people are always
doing tricks, you know,
'cause it's so boring
there, it's like, well,
all I can do is go to the mortal
realm and f*ck with people!
- You see that Bobby Goodfellow says,
Your call.
- Aren't you... baby, come
here, I have a great agent
and I'm sure he would love to see you
come and play in New York.
- You see he smiles and says,
When the chips are down,
remember who your people are, Misty.
And vanishes.
- I will!
I'll remember!
- You see that he vanishes
and Kingston, you look around
at all these faeries looking at you
like they know something that you don't.
- I don't like this place.
I felt like I had no,
I'd like to leave.
Can we go?
- Folks, if you wanna learn
an authentic New York accent,
you talk to my friend
Kingston Brown over here.
- A bunch of faeries,
teach us your accent!
Teach us his accent!
- No, I'm good, I don't really,
I don't really have one,
I don't talk like...
I don't, goodbye!
- You split, awesome.
Pete, you head over to
this incredible museum
that is in the middle of Central Park
where in real life there is no museum,
it's halfway between the
Museum of Natural History
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It's resting there, it's at
a weird, funny little angle,
and you see that there's all
this magic pouring into it
of all the memories of people in New York.
- Cool.
- And Nod, actually says,
Come on in.
- Is there entry or is it like
a pay what you can kinda thing?
- There's a suggested donation but—
- f*ck yeah, let's go.
Let's just go walk right
in, just kinda, you know.
- And you see Nod kind of pulls out
their little dress pockets
and a little dream moth flies out,
and you see it says,
Buncha bums, you're bums!
- Art should be free!
- You f*cking walk in and
start looking at this place.
You feel, as you walk in here,
your wild magic surge at the vampire club
coupled with your True Strike
that you cast on Robert,
as you're walking through
the thing of memories,
you start hearing his voice in your head
but you think that it is
not him talking to you.
You think you might have
f*cked him up so much
with your expl*si*n that
you're walking around
in his mind right now.
- Okay, like the room I'm in is his mind.
- Yeah, well you can feel him in your mind
as you start walking
through all these exhibits
and the exhibits are
of the incredible deeds
of all the previous Vox Phantasma
that have been in New York City.
And Nod just starts to
kind of show you things,
the art kind of comes to
life and moves around,
it's like the dopest
museum you've ever been in
because all of the exhibits
are moving and changing
and chimeric and flowing.
And we can actually update
two things on your sheet right now.
- Cool!
- You are proficient in
arcana as of this exact moment
as you begin to absorb all the memories
of the previous Vox Phantasma.
- What does that mean?
What does it go up to?
- You add your proficiency bonus.
- Oh, sick.
- Add your proficiency bonus.
- Yeah!
Yeah!
- Aw hell yeah.
And Nod asks you,
as you start to absorb all this awesome
and you are fully getting,
like you see this rich woman in the 1920s
throwing these giant parties
and making the dream of
the Gilded Age come to life
and you see Emma Lazarus
in the mid to late 1800s
writing "The New Colossus"
and this dream of America
being this place and
people coming to New York
to start a new life
and basically that each Vox Phantasma
has summoned forth this time
of dreams and change and chaos
and it was up to them whether that chaos
would change things for
better or for worse.
- Cool.
- You see that, as you're
running through, Nod says,
For your magic, I leave it up to you.
Do you wish
to have the wildness of
your magic be restrained
or do you wish to embrace
it and by embracing it,
seek to mold it towards your vision?
- Ooh.
- You see that Nod explains,
You will, if you choose to restrain it,
your bursts will happen more infrequently.
If you choose to embrace it,
they will happen as often,
but you may have some
say in how they manifest.
- I like that.
So far they've been great.
They've really protected
me and looked out for me
but what's the worst
thing that could happen
in a wild magic surge?
- You see that Nod, they shrug and go,
Chaos is chaos.
Dreams have a role to
play in the Waking World
and sometimes, it shakes things up.
- Could I k*ll everyone I love?
- There's a risk of that, but,
whether you choose to
embrace it or restrain it,
you will have powers at your disposal
to help you avoid that.
- I say embrace it.
- You continue to roll
wild magic normally,
but now you will roll with advantage
on the D100 that I roll back here.
- Oh, cool.
- Meaning that you'll
get two possible effects
and you can choose between them.
- f*ck, cool!
- God, that's dope.
- Yeah.
- That's awesome.
- Yeah, you see, you're beginning
to understand your magic,
you're learning it and teaching it.
- I reach into my pocket
and pull out a little baggie
but it has cherry tomatoes in it.
- Pop a cherry tomato.
Nice healthy snack,
you're learning your sh*t.
- Ricky's got a lotta great tips.
- As you walk through, but yet you do hear
Robert's voice partially and
you're partially in his mind.
- Cool.
- As you walk through, you see
you enter a little hall here
'cause this is all the memories
of everyone that's ever lived in New York.
You do see a hall here and see that
there are names on the exhibits
of Kugrash, Misty Moore, Ricky Matsui,
Sofia Lee, and Kingston Brown.
- I look at them.
- You think that it's getting late,
late is the hour of the day,
you could probably have time for one.
- I mean Kingston, duh.
- You begin to walk through
Kingston Brown's life.
- I feel bad that I'm doing
this but I'm just like,
that's the person I'm connected with,
for better and worse, the most.
- You walk through
and you hear two voices
running through you.
It gets really weird and trippy here
as you're going into
someone's active memories.
You hear Nod speaking
and at the same time,
you hear Robert's subconscious
mind speaking as well,
like almost as though he is unfocused
and getting weird images of this,
not in his conscious mind,
but in his subconscious somewhere.
- Oh, wait.
If I'm doing this, will
Robert then have some of
Kingston's memories at his disposal?
- You don't think so.
- Okay okay, cool cool.
- You think that weirdly it's like,
you just have a weird
connection to Robert now
because you surged on him so hard.
- Cool, cool cool.
- You start to go through
Kingston Brown's life.
You see, you know, in
the late 60s, early 70s,
a young boy running through
the streets of Harlem,
surrounded by family and community.
- Ah, lucky you.
- Lou-
you see passing images of things.
Lou, I'm gonna throw a
curveball at you right here,
- Of course.
- I'm gonna ask you to play Kingston Brown
throughout the ages.
- You got it.
- You see Kingston Brown
as like a six year-old
watching as a young
girl on this playground
outside of a public school
is crying over in a corner
with a skinned knee,
having been pushed down
by some of the other boys
here on the playground.
What does Kingston, young, seven,
eight year-old Kingston do?
- Excuse me?
- Yeah?
- Do you need a band-aid?
- They wouldn't let me
play the game with them.
- Hey, that's fine.
Kids can be mean but we
can get that patched up,
and then we can play.
- You see the
scene shifts to Kingston—
- What a good guy.
- Kingston giving up his own recess
to walk this little girl
to the nurse's office
and showing up there
and being there with her
while she gets a band-aid on her knee.
We cut over to
Kingston in his sort of teenage years,
a little bit younger.
You see that Kingston,
this is a time in your life
where your grandmother,
who's no longer with you
in the present day, is very ill,
and you see that there's
a meeting at school
where there is sort of a teacher talking
and speaking to both of your parents,
Winston and Victoria, and saying,
Kingston is a very gifted athlete.
We would be able to take
him around the country,
you'd travel around,
he would obviously not be
able to be here in New York,
but this is a potential for
Kingston to really shine.
And you see your parents
kind of look at each other
and look at Kingston.
- I can't.
Not when Grandma's sick.
Maybe we can talk about
it in the future but,
I'm sorry, but I need to be here.
- We see a Kingston in his college years
speaking to an admittance
counselor at a high school saying,
With these scores, Kingston,
if you're interested in medicine,
you could be a doctor, you could be making
hundreds and hundreds
of millions of dollars,
I mean that's hyperbole,
but you could be making a lot of money.
- Yeah, but the problem, I mean,
is there anywhere in my
neighborhood where I could stay
because I'm not really trying
to be too far away, I mean,
especially 'cause I know it's
about eight years of school
and that's just a long time to be so far.
- But we're talking about
scholarships to Cornell,
we're talking about
places where you could...
Think of yourself!
- Yeah, I mean, that's easy to do.
But there has to be a way
to make this work here.
- You see a Kingston around the age of 30.
This whole time in your
head, you hear Nod going,
Dreams and the Waking World.
You represent the force
of an individual's dream,
the need for a person to be themselves
and shine their own light.
Kingston represents the other side.
He has always and forever made the choice
to serve those around him.
And you hear Robert going,
f*ck' schmuck.
Look at this f*ck' idiot.
Every advantage and opportunity
thrown away and for what?
And you see
Kingston is 30.
There is this insane
dragon on Bleaker Street,
like this long, multi-legged dragon
handing him this subway token and saying,
You will be the Vox
Populi of New York City.
- You're gonna have to
say that again, Vox what?
- You have given of
yourself time and time again
and now images staggered up and up and up,
just like Kingston missing a
party to help someone move,
Kingston showing up at
someone's doorstep with food,
Kingston showing up at a
rally for the neighborhood,
Kingston showing up at City
Hall to speak on behalf of
people that can't speak for themselves,
like over and over and over
and over and over again
and the entire city, you can hear,
Thanks, Kingston, thank you,
thanks, Kingston, thank you.
And all of those "thank yous"
flooding into Kingston's body,
and you hear Robert in your head say,
No.
Everybody's got one time
they do something selfish.
Everybody's got one time.
They make the call to enrich themselves.
That's in our nature.
And you see a young Kingston
Brown looking at Liz Herrera
walking down the street and Nod saying,
To invite her into his world
would be taking all of
what was destined for her
and forcing her into the
madness of the Unsleeping City.
But you see this bond of true love
connecting the two of them
and you see Kingston's
heart break and reach out
and he and Liz twirl around in memory
until many years later, you
see him and Liz and Liz saying,
We could have a house,
we could have a car,
we could have kids!
- I can't leave the city.
I've explained this before, all right,
you can go but I have to be here.
- Where am I...
You could get your doctorate
and we could have a good life together.
- I don't, that's not a good life.
Not for me.
My good life is here.
And with you.
But it has to be here.
- You see she looks and says,
Then I think our lives
shouldn't be together.
And vanishes, and you see that
images of possible futures,
you're at the edge of memory
now, going back into dream,
and you see Kingston with
an ephemeral changing
happy child in his arms and
that vanishes.
And you hear Nod say,
Dreams and the Waking
World, often at odds.
And Robert says,
Only a fool would give up what he wants.
Look at all that that idiot
sacrificed and for what?
To be alone and sad.
And vanishes,
and you are at the exit of the museum.
- Whoa, dang.
- You see that Nod holds
your hand and says,
Dreams and wishes are your domain.
Not Kingston's, I'm afraid.
- Yeah, dang.
Well, cool.
I feel like I understand him a lot more.
- You see that Nod sort
of agrees and goes,
I think a lot of what's
different about you
probably makes sense.
Kingston's given his whole
life to make sure that
people and places and communities thrive
based on his effort and sacrifice.
But those things, like
family and community,
were never there for you.
- Yeah.
Yeah, I don't have that connection at all.
Whoa.
- You see Nod looks and says,
I know I'm not supposed to say
this because I'm Team Dream,
but there's something to be
learned from both, I think.
And you guys come back from
your various quests and missions.
You guys appear back at the I Train.
Wally gets it moving
again, Nod waves and says,
I'll see you guys in a little while,
I'll be here and again,
I'll keep this place as safe as I can.
You guys look variously
blasted from Manahattans,
and also extremely haunted.
- I go straight up to Kingston like,
Kingston, look, I went to
this museum and I got to pick
one person from the party
whose life I could go through
- And I picked you and I feel
like I've seen a lot of things
you didn't tell me and I'm sorry.
- What?
- And then I hug you.
- Aww.
- As you leave Dreaming
and cross Dreaming to the Waking World
and Pete gives you this hug,
your see that both of your
magics intertwine, intermingle,
and for a second, Sofia,
you look and see that
yin and yang from the
Monastery of the Midnight Sun
complete above their head
and something broken in
New York is made whole.
You continue on your way,
you've arrived back at the
Union Square Subway Station.
- There's a great pizza place
and I really want some pizza,
just, on University Place,
just right by the bookstore,
we could...
Does anybody wanna buy a book?
- We saw, we saw—
- Yeah, we saw some kind of
greed money ball
as it were, not the film, or the book.
- You guys watched
"Money Ball" during this?
- You guys just watched "Money Ball?"
- We didn't watch "Money Ball!"
- Greed, okay, greed—
- Wish I watched f*cking—
- Greed has some part to
play in what's going on here,
there was some kind of
sort of cosmic greed
that was sickening the city and we,
there was blood, cursed blood too,
it's vampire stuff, it seems.
- Hmm.
- I think I'm just gonna drink this
- Cool.
- Should we head to that—
- What's it, Sof, are you okay?
You look shocked and angry.
- Doesn't really affect any of your lives,
but my husband is dead.
- What?
- He didn't actually
leave me, he was k*lled.
- Oh, that's good- is that bad?
- Or k*lled, I don't know, honestly,
we didn't really speak in,
it was all sort of vague—
- So what's up with that
b*tch who stole your husband?
Do you want us to go f*ck her up?
- Yeah, I do wanna f*ck her up.
- What?
- I don't even know though,
if she k*lled him or—
- I'll f*ck her up!
- I think she k*lled him,
but I can't even leap
to those kind of conclusions,
all I know is that
he did not, in fact, leave
me and he is, in fact, dead.
- Do I still have Divine Sense active?
- Yes, you do, yeah.
- I'm just wondering if
there's anything near.
- While you guys are looking around,
you guys are also still very
f*cked up from the battle
so you guys might wanna
like head home and rest
and recuperate and stuff like that.
The next day, you guys see
that actually, this next day—
- Ah, thank god.
- Is the 20th of December,
which is Priya's art show
over in Brooklyn.
- Oh, great.
I've given the Polaroid around
to everyone as the invite
and only Kugrash refused.
- I'm not f*cking taking, that's weird—
- It's cool!
- I'll crawl through a
f*cking vent before I do that.
- Ah, come on.
- So you guys all have this
invitation to this art show
that you're headed to.
That day, before the art show,
some people, I'm sure, have
stuff they gotta do, Sofia.
- I wanted to stop by and see Mario.
I think I'll probably still go
through the motions of that.
- You find Mario on Staten Island.
He's not there with the whole family,
but you stop by the family
house while Mario's there.
- Okay.
- He looks up and goes,
Hey, Sof, finally, geez,
cancel at the last minute,
what's the f*cking deal?
You got time to look at
some alligator shoes?
I actually think I fixed the problem.
- Okay, I don't need this whole
f*cking dog and pony show,
I'm honestly more of a cat person,
so just get to the f*cking point of it.
What the f*ck is our
family doing consorting,
also how long have you been
seeing the Unsleeping City
and you never once thought
to mention it to your sister?
- Look.
We f*cked up.
You know that Dad had ties
to the mob for a long time.
We pushed our luck a little
bit and got into the Confettis.
There's something going on with Confetti
and there's a representative from—
- Is it Robert Moses?
- He looks shocked that
you know that name.
He goes,
Basically, Robert...
Robert asked us to shuttle money,
launder it from the
Confettis, and by money,
I mean crazy sh*t like
baubles and you know,
chunks of magic sh*t
and all this crazy stuff
that was part of stuff
that Confetti was paying
to a representative from Hell.
This is a person who's been working
with Moses for a long time.
Make an insight check.
- 15.
- He's—
- Oh, I'm sorry.
Actually, 17.
- He's treading carefully
around a thing that has to do
with Dale, you can tell.
- Okay.
Again, just be way more direct,
I know that Dale is dead,
I know that he's not
with Isabella Infierno,
I don't know what the f*ck happened
but I have a feeling that you do.
- Okay.
You know how you often called
Isabella Infierno a succubus?
- Yes?
It was small of me, I know,
I hate it when women
go after other women—
- Sofie, Sofie, shut up shut up shut up.
- I know there was—
- Sofie, it's not, no.
You—
- Look, I don't need you
to preach to me why I was—
- Sofie, she is a succubus!
- Oh my Nod.
- Oh my Nod?
- Oh my Nod.
Sofie, you were f*cking right.
Isabella was a succubus.
We were laundering money
from the Confettis to her
and Dale was—
- To her, she's the representative?
- She was sent from Hell to look at—
- So she's tied in with Robert Moses.
- Yes.
And Dale started, you know,
Dale was an accountant,
and he started looking at the books
and adding things up
and he got close and—
- So who called the shot
to have my husband k*lled
because right now, I cannot
confidently 100 percent
say that it was not my own f*cking family.
- Look.
Did we know it was gonna happen?
Yeah, but he wasn't from the neighborhood.
He was not right for you.
He was a... he was a...
You know, he was a, this...
You know that he was into
some kind of magic, right?
He was like a chosen one from
this monastery or whatever.
He was some champion
who was trained to stop
something or other and he was
f*cking around and he was nosy
and he got his nose into
some bad people's business.
Did we do it, no.
Did we call the shot, no.
- All right, well,
the only reason I'm not
gonna go after you right now
is because I'm not
organized enough to give you
the f*cking revenge you deserve.
- You see that he just
sort of shakes there
a little bit and he's like,
Sof, if you go after Isabella,
you got no idea how
f*cking powerful she is.
- Maybe you should've
said that to Isabella
before she went after me.
- You see...
You hear a purring behind you.
And raised hackles and extended claws.
Mija.
Let's go hunting together, you and I.
- Yeah.
I'm ready to sniff out, not rats though,
rats are my friends.
Kug is a rat, we're not going after rats.
- We could get some rats later.
- Okay, no rats, can we just
do mice instead of rats?
- You see—
- Okay.
- And you take off into the city.
The rest of you guys variously show up
at this old Brooklyn
brownstone loft art space.
Ricky, immediately you're
looking around, and it's like,
the windows are barred with iron
and there's no active
sprinkler system and—
- I don't know.
- We gotta go in, man, come on.
- We do, okay.
But if I see anything, I'll say something.
- Okay.
- You guys enter the space.
You know that Priya wanted
to talk to you here.
You look up into this loft
space and see a bunch of people
gathered around this kitchen table
and you see that there's also
a roof party sort of upstairs.
As you go, Priya goes,
Peter, darling, I'm so glad you're here.
Come with me.
And she takes your hand and
leads you through this art space
to this table in the middle
of a bunch of onlooking people
and has you sit down and says,
I present to all of you,
"An Exploration
of a Relationship."
Peter, put your hands in my hands.
- Not only is this so f*cked up,
this is a pure ripoff
of a very popular performance art piece.
This is so dumb.
- You see everyone gasps
and Priya goes like,
What the f*ck is wrong with you?
- If you're gonna publicly f*ck with me,
at least let it be original.
- Yes, b*tch!
- You see—
- Picasso is art, this is bullshit!
- Is there free wine at this?
- You see as Kingston—
- This place is not up to code!
- As Kingston yells that,
you feel your heart,
Kingston's approval of this moment
fully heals your broken heart.
You can write down on
your character sheet,
"Over Priya Danger."
- Yeah!
- Sofia—
- Her last name is Danger?
I hate this b*tch.
- Priya Danger.
- Sofia, you burst through
the door downstairs
and with that, I think,
we'll decide where some
of you are in a moment.
Who is, there's also a big rooftop party
where there's food and stuff,
who thinks they would be upstairs
at the bigger party with the food,
who thinks they'd be on the middle story
watching Pete and Priya?
- I mean, I'll always see a show.
- Middle.
- Pete.
- With Pete.
- I'm probably on the roof.
- On the roof, scarfing food.
Sofia, you burst through the lower level.
- It's just two levels?
- Three levels, there's a
rooftop party happening as well.
Actually Sofia, you have crazy jumping,
I'm gonna say that you probably
show up on the roof as well
- Yeah.
- With La Gran Gata.
- I think I'm just jumping roof to roof.
- Yeah.
- Any time that there's a rooftop party,
I'm grabbing a drink along the way.
- I think I'm at the
entrance to the second floor.
- Cool.
- 'Cause like, figuring out what's okay.
- Cool, awesome.
Rad.
You, as you say this the
people start
Ricky, you're looking around.
You smell smoke.
- Fire!
Everyone.
- You hear up on the
roof, Sofia, a voice say,
Oh, Sofie Bikes.
I didn't think you were classy
enough to go to an art show.
And you see Isabella Infierno,
and all around her on the roof
fire and people scream.
- This from a f*cking woman
who went to a David's Bridal,
bought a dress, and doesn't
even have a wedding?
- I do have a wedding.
Just not to your stupid, dead husband.
- I mean, I attack her.
- Roll initiative!
And that's it for this episode
of The Unsleeping City.
Tune in next time, where things
heat up at this art show.
See ya then!
Ah, there's a fire in the building!
The downstairs is already
fully engulfed in—
- Holy f*ck.
- You see a water tower,
this is an old condemned building,
there may be water in
it, there may not be.
You breathe in the noxious smoke.
- Oh my god, I'm gonna go
down before I k*ll this b*tch.
- A bunch of artsy devils appear.
- These guys have already
f*cked us up so much
and I don't know how to stop 'em.
- Willy, is that you?
- Is this you dog?
Dalmatian?
- Yeah, why?
- All of you f*cking
b*tches are gonna burn.
You're all gonna burn.
- You f*cking kidding me it?
- What, are you f*cking kidding me?
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03x09 - Borough of Dreams
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A tabletop role-playing game show produced by and broadcast on Dropout and created and generally hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the show's regular Dungeon Master.
A tabletop role-playing game show produced by and broadcast on Dropout and created and generally hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the show's regular Dungeon Master.