- [Brennan] A list of the topics,
themes, and subject matter
featured in this episode has been included
in the video description.
[spooky scary music]
[spooky music continues]
[spooky music continues]
[spooky music continues]
- Hello, one and all!
Welcome back to another thrilling episode
of "Dimension 20: Neverafter."
I'm your humble Dungeon
Master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me, as always, are
our intrepid heroes.
Say hi, intrepid heroes.
- Hi, intrepid heroes!
- Wow.
Last we left off,
tumbling into a new realm,
we're kind of looking, we're looking...
[Emily laughing]
Do you pick the bits
before, or do we just-
- Are we doing Darrell
Hammond doing Bill Clinton?
- You think we talked about this before?
When Brennan says the thing,
we're all going to do-
- We're going to go like this,
and then we're going to
read a too small newspaper?
Last we left off, our
intrepid heroes had stumbled
into The Lines Between, a
citadel of parchment and paper,
text and tales, hanging in
the midst of the Auroratory,
the sea of stories here
between all of the lands
of legend, heroes, and fairy tales.
Within the Auroratory,
you met not only Scheherazade and Sinbad,
who you'd been having communications with,
but also the legendary Aesop
from the Land of Birds and Beasts,
who was accompanied by none
other than a familiar face,
and quite a long one at that.
The mule Alphonse, who had escaped there
from the Neverafter,
seeming to indicate again
that the barriers between
realms are growing
thinner and stranger
with the passing of time.
We also saw that Alphonse had,
in traveling from the
Neverafter after your battle,
had come across some
strange glowing in the woods
before finding the border of this place,
and seeming almost like light
issuing forth from a door
before tumbling through parchment
and arriving in Aesop's homeland.
Aesop seemed to indicate that
his realm had managed to repel
Aesop seemed to indicate that
his realm had managed to repel
some of the times of shadow that had come.
Again, that time of horror either presaged
or perhaps manifested
itself by The Gander,
but also sought to introduce you
to other areas of The Lines Between.
You saw not only the doors
to the Endless Nights
and to the Land of Birds and Beasts,
but also the Realm of Heroes
and the Lands of the Tall.
Also, some of you were a
little bit more adventurous.
Pib ran off and found, next to your hall,
the library with all of your
stories, and managed to k*ll
Pinocchio's now disconnected
familiar, Pinocchi-Crow.
We love you, Pinocchi-Crow.
- Truly wistful.
[players laughing]
- You met the first two of the
staff of The Lines Between,
Key and Legend, who introduced you
to some of the issues that were happening
and various environs
within The Lines Between.
You learned of the Auroratory,
and Ylfa, upon hearing
the stories of the beautiful
Auroratory, swam out,
good gut instinct, immediately
proven possible to do,
and realized that the most
common version of her tale,
what some might call the
destiny of her once upon a time,
was actually not the version of the story
that she had lived through.
Key and Legend also brought you
to the steps of the Canonade,
a massive shrine with locked double doors.
But with some careful distraction
on the part of Gerard and
Rosamund running Key and Legend
through some sword forms
that they found sick as hell,
Scheherazade and Mother
Goose became invisible,
and looking through the
keyhole, Mother Goose,
on a nat 20, saw the ink at
the center of the Canonade
from which the permanency
of these true destinies
might be preserved here
in The Lines Between,
and saw through that
ink the terrible force
that the librarians were aware of
that seemed to manifest
and wield that power.
The creators of you, your lives,
and all the horrors that
had been visited upon them.
At that very moment, Ylfa called for help
as she sunk further and further
with a weird, swimming,
red energy dropping her
further down, saved by the veteran sailor
Captain Pib and his vessel Pinocchio.
[players laughing]
Brought back as you were
with a strange image
of a burning wolf, and arriving
back, the information about,
and I speak their name
here aloud, The Authors.
[Siobhan gasps]
- Don't!
- Don't.
- Don't.
- Don't.
- Dude!
- Shh.
- Was shared.
With some shrewd, cunning work
between our various sort
of fictional storytellers,
Scheherazade, Aesop, and Mother Goose,
Key and Legend were split
up after also indicating
that there were other staff members here
such as Index and Glossary,
who seem to have more information,
but also that there was
something in The Lines Between
with them, and that some horror
had originated from within the Neverafter.
You also saw problems
within The Lines Between
other than that, strange
cutbacks after being introduced
to the Sword of Truth that found its voice
here in The Lines Between.
However, you've all rushed your way
back to the room with your stories.
Pib, you are still holding
the copy of The Frog Prince
and the strange, desecrated
copy of Cinderella,
and the strange, desecrated
copy of Cinderella,
and upon realizing that
the image Pinocchio saw
in your first edition, so to speak,
of a handsome man in an
etching on a bedside table
may have originated in this
extra-dimensional space.
At that moment, the door shut and changed,
and this is where we begin this episode,
once again returning to the library.
All of you hear the voice that spoke,
last time you heard it,
in the Golden Chair,
where only Ylfa and
Pinocchio were able to behold
the face of this... entity.
No such face appears now.
Books are falling rapidly,
and you can hear the doorknob rattling
as the figure outside attempts to open it.
What I will say right now in this moment,
without any confusion,
is that when you saw this
figure in the Golden Chair,
and Pinocchio, indeed, anytime
that you've ever communed
with your mom, it has always
felt like you were at a remove,
with your mom, it has always
felt like you were at a remove,
her arm lengthening to
come get things from you.
Her presence in this place
is so much more potent.
There is no feeling
of what you might call
an avatar of her persona.
There is no projection of a
symbolic representation of her.
There is no projection of a
symbolic representation of her.
The rattling on the door
will expose you to the horror
of the thing that tore across
a sky of paper after you
in the moment before Scheherazade
pulled you to The Lines Between.
So you think whatever
is going to happen here
is going to be closer to that than it is
to some other type of
more verbal or magical
or symbolic confrontation,
and you feel a power
vaster than you can sort
of imagine within that.
Conversation is possible, but also,
if people think they
want to leap into action,
we should probably roll initiative.
- I don't think fighting
this is a good idea.
- I can hold the door.
- I mean yeah, definitely,
we don't want her to come inside.
Can I make an arcana check?
I mean, just the fact that
she cares about doorknobs,
is there any part of me that thinks
that if I tried to Eldritch
Blast this doorknob off,
that somehow it would
not allow her to enter?
- Hell yeah, you're going to
go ahead and Eldritch Blast.
- I'd like to make an arcana check.
Do I think, I don't know,
do I get any sense that...
She cared about the doorknob,
so there's part of me...
I'm going to Eldritch Blast the doorknob.
I want to go to work.
- Ooh!
- So here's what's interesting.
Pinocchio, you go to Eldritch Blast.
You know your connection to
Pinocchi-Crow was severed.
- That's right.
- You go to Eldritch Blast.
I'm not going to just tell
you your magic doesn't work
and we move on, but I am going to tell you
that the source that
you draw your magic from
is no longer granting it to you.
So in this moment,
you are holding your strings
in your hand.
What I actually kind of
need is an arcana check
if you want to immediately, in the moment,
tap into something and gain power from it.
But because you're a warlock,
this is not like making
a new oath as a paladin,
it's not like.
This is you giving your
strings to something.
- Do I know what that something is?
- I think you would have to make a call
right here in this moment to give it
to one of the entities
in this space with you,
or you can do something f*cking crazy
and do an act of blind faith.
You're in this room
with all of these books
of all of your stories.
You could try to wrangle
something out of that.
But giving your strings
to something is so intense
that you know it'll work
if you choose right,
but you're in the moment, in the darkness,
with the doorknob rattling,
and so it's sort of like...
I'm not going to f*ck you
any more than you're already f*cked
by having so limited options.
- I'm playing a child.
I'm going to give away
my strings immediately
to whatever entity is
present and would like them,
if it means they'll give me enough power
to make my mom go away.
- Oh my god.
- Okay, you throw your marionette handle-
- Put them in the book!
- You throw your marionette handle up.
and I think that if it wouldn't occur
to anyone's characters
here, I'm trying to think-
- [Zac] I feel like I've seen
him do stuff like this before.
- [Brennan] Yeah, Pib, you've
done stuff like this before.
- I'm going to look, can I
make an investigation check
real fast to see if there's any book
that feels more on our
side than other books?
- Give me an investigation
check with advantage,
if you'd be so kind.
- Nat 20.
- No way.
- You've got to be f*cking kidding me.
[satisfied laughter]
You have got to be-
- Find the Christian Bible.
- [Lou] Jesus, help!
♪ Our god is an awesome god ♪
♪ He reigns from heaven above ♪
- Okay, there it is. There it is.
- [Ally] No copyright!
- Folks, welcome to Dimension
[players laughing]
- I am now a Cleric of the Life domain.
[everyone laughing]
Would anybody like some manna?
[players laughing]
- A nat f*cking 20.
Okay.
- What do I see?
- So here's, on a...
[cool battle music]
On a nat 20, Pib, you see
Pinocchio reaching for magic.
On a nat 20, Pib, you see
Pinocchio reaching for magic.
On a nat 20, especially investigation,
an intelligence-based skill,
you immediately clock,
you were traveling with
this kid for a long time.
You were partners in crime.
You're like, kid's got the right idea.
This idea is gonna work.
- Okay. Let's look around.
- But he just needs whatever,
it's like throwing up
a plug and being like,
if that hits an outlet, we're all saved!
- Okay, be careful.
[everyone laughing]
- Pib, you look over
and see a shelf that is distant to you,
and you look up and see the shelf
has all of your books on it.
Puss in Boots, Little Red
Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty,
Mother Goose's book of nursery rhymes
that you know also has Muffet
and the Itsy Bitsy Spider
and all that other stuff in
it, and you see Pinocchio
is way up on a high shelf
as that marionette handle is sh**ting up,
and you feel like if you
wanted to throw something,
you could hit that bookshelf
and pop everything off.
- Yeah, I'll throw a dagger
or something and see if that-
- So everyone watches Pib whirl around,
cape and boots swirling.
- This makes sense to me!
[sound of knife being thrown]
- You go, bang!
[sound of knife hitting wood]
Pinocchio, you watch your
marionette handle sh**t up.
Go ahead and give me an
attack roll, actually,
for this shelf here.
- Okay.
- Okay.
You hit it, pop the book off,
and you see that the shelf, on
a 12, sort of wobbles wildly.
You hit the shelf, the
dagger thuds into it,
and it sort of swivels back,
and Pinocchio flies off
at it comes on the top,
but there's also sort of,
all of the books are about
to come tumbling off.
Pinocchio begins to fly out,
and as you throw your marionette
handle, the book opens
and with the same golden
light that was echoing
from Scheherazade's book,
from Aesop's scroll,
that has been for all of
your adventures thus far
come from Mother Goose's,
Pinocchio glows the brightest
of any of them you have ever seen
as you throw your marionette handle
into the light of your own book.
Whoosh!
All of your strings illuminate.
[shimmering sound]
- I can't believe I planned all of this!
[everyone laughing]
This was a great decision!
- Uh, yeah, kid!
- I'm doing it!
- I'm going to ask you to give me
whatever saving throw
you feel is appropriate,
but I want it to be one
of your mental stats.
- And what is this to do?
- It's for you to be able to handle
this new magic that's surging through you.
So if you think you would
rely on your intellect
to understand what's
happening, your wisdom
to observe what's
happening, or your charisma.
Charisma would be you asserting
your identity over it.
- I'm going to go with wisdom, I think.
- Cool, give me a wisdom saving throw.
- That's a 15.
- Okay, solid.
- [Lou] Solid.
- You throw this marionette
handle up, connect to the book.
All of you watch Pinocchio glow.
[reverberating, magical echo]
Coming down through the
strings, golden light.
Eldritch Blast.
Go ahead and give me an
attack roll with advantage.
- After all this, you're
going to miss the knob.
- It's only an AC 10.
It's an object standing
right in front of you.
- Thank god.
- AC 10.
- That's an 11.
- Wow.
- [Brennan] Okay, so-
- He got two fours.
- Wow!
- Holy sh*t, you're going
to barely hit that knob!
[Lou screeches in a piercing falsetto]
You've learned to trust in yourself,
and now you can graze a knob!
- Oh god.
- [Emily] Maybe you shouldn't trust
in yourself so much.
- A dagger hits a book
perfectly onto the thing,
and then you miss the knob.
- Incredible, so as you
blast that knob off,
you see you've clearly done something
very clever
from a list of quite bad choices,
because what you do is
essentially interrupt and k*ll
a powerful, trans-planar
spell in mid-casting,
and the spell is shunting
all of you off somewhere.
It's not like, great,
we got the doorknob off
and now we're safe in the library.
Instead, you go, not this!
Boom!
[glitching, static sound]
And begin to move through
space, and as you do,
the books just come tumbling
down and you are surrounded
by illustrations of all
of your own stories.
On that 15, I'm going to hand over
some narrative control of the universe
to you in this moment.
- Okay.
- With wisdom, you seek
to understand your story.
The first story you find is yours, right?
You're not sort of Twice Upon a Time.
You find your story, and
you can kind of reject this
You find your story, and
you can kind of reject this
and not go into it, but then
you think you and your friends
will probably just sort
of be falling into...
whatever this weird,
extra-dimensional space is.
You know, the sub-basement
of The Lines Between, falling forever.
On a 15, as you reach for
understanding, what do you think
you're trying to understand
about your story?
[twinkling, curious music]
- This is wild.
This is an insane level of meta thought
between me, why I chose this character,
me playing it, and now me the character.
I think Pinocchio seeks to understand
because he wants to know why
his life has been so hard,
why it needed to be this hard,
why everything has always
been as hard as it was,
why nothing has ever worked out.
Why do other children get to lie and steal
and still live good lives,
and why does anytime I
choose to do those things,
I get hung or my feet get
burned or my father gets eaten?
It's like every time I
fail or have a misstep,
I suffer the ultimate consequences,
and that doesn't happen
to other kids, and I want to know why.
[strung-out stuttering]
What was the goal? Why
did I have to suffer?
- You connect your strings into
the book of your own story.
You,
as the third member of this group,
connect your strings, and your
strings actually branch out
from this book into all the other copies
of Pinocchio that have existed.
You feel a pull, like you can go
towards where your story deviated,
deviated from the mean,
deviated from the average,
because I think in this
moment you also realize
that there are other
versions of your story,
stranger than this one.
You feel a pull. It's safe.
All of your strings feel
secure in your hand,
but you also see your friends
falling away from you in this moment.
- So I feel myself being
pulled into my story?
- You feel yourself being
pulled into your story
in a safe way.
That's where your strings are anchored.
- Got it, but my friends are going-
- Are falling away, and
the risk of this is not,
you could easily grab your friends,
but I think the thing you're realizing
is if you save your friends,
you might be dragging them
into your story with you.
- But the opposite is
that they just descend
into the darkness of The Lines Between?
- Yes.
- Amanti's not that bad
for people who aren't me!
[everyone laughing]
I'd like to attempt to bring them with me.
- Hell yes, is there any magic
that you would like to summon
in order to do that, or what do you think
it looks like as you reach out to them?
- I mean, I don't know what control
I feel like I have over my strings.
Could I use them to anchor my friends,
or to lasso my friends?
- You absolutely could do that.
I thinking hanging above you
in space, all of you falling
suddenly feel a golden
string descend to you,
and for a moment, you are
all marionettes together.
- See? It's not that bad!
- Yeah.
- I don't hate it.
[Ally laughing at Zac's cat antics]
- Yanking to get out of this
sort of tumble of books,
you pull yourself through this place,
and as you do so,
I'm going to ask you, Pinocchio,
again, ask for this sort of control.
You went for wisdom, and
you wanted understanding.
The questions you've asked about,
why did my life have to be so bad?
If you think of a face from your story
that you would imagine to
give those answers to you,
what face would it be?
- Probably the Fairy with Turquoise Hair.
- So as you guys all move,
suddenly the five of you,
Pib, Gerard, Red, Mother Goose, Rosamund,
you're standing in the
village square of Amanti,
and quickly unfolding,
you see the scene
from Pinocchio's story,
the very first chapter
of this story of the Neverafter
on the road to Shoeberg.
[soft, creeping piano music]
You see children in a town square
being asked the name of their
fathers, and for a second,
you don't even know
what you're looking at,
because of course, the
Pinocchio in the town square
at this point is a real little boy.
Rosamund, you see the Wicked
Fairy, whom you recognize.
Rosamund, you see the Wicked
Fairy, whom you recognize.
You hear the screams in the
town as the children are honest,
give the names of their parents,
[children's screams]
and then you see a little boy...
tell a lie,
and die.
And then we see a part of the story
that we haven't seen before.
Pinocchio, this is a
memory of this moment,
and it's you waking up in your wooden body
in the moment after you
told a lie to that fairy.
Your father Geppetto
wakes up with a start.
[Brennan gasps]
He can hear shouting out in the town.
Looks around and goes, Pinocchio!
Pinocchio, are you here? My son!
- Father! I'm up here!
I'm back in my...
I'm back in...
I'm trapped in...
- Pinocchio.
What have you done?
- Father!
- [Brennan] We have been
through this so many times!
- Father, it's-
- Why have you come back?
The fairy, she made you a real boy!
- Father, you don't understand!
There was another fairy,
a different fairy!
- There is no excuse for
telling a lie, Pinocchio.
You see he comes and gets
you off the wall and says,
this is a terrible mistake you have made.
I thought you had learned your lesson.
- Father, you're not...
It's different! Something is different!
You have to go, we're not safe here!
- I do have to go.
I have to go and find the
Fairy with Turquoise Hair
and explain to her
that you have clearly
not learned your lesson.
- No, father!
I'm going to grab his hand
and try and pull him away from the door.
- Go ahead and give me an athletics check.
- You got it, dude.
That's a natural one.
- You go to reach for
him, and in the confusion,
he turns around and knocks
you down onto your back.
[Lou laughing in pain]
- I think Pinocchio
takes a second to get up.
- He looks at you, concerned for a moment,
but also clearly upset.
Why are you trying to stop me?
- Father, it's not...
It's not safe!
There was a fairy. All the
other kids were naming-
- There was a fairy. Always an excuse.
Always something, some reason.
You throw the mallet,
you k*ll the cricket.
The fox and the cat, all of this!
We were stuck inside a terrible dogfish,
massive fish,
all because you could
not learn your lesson!
I am a simple man.
All I ever wanted was a son,
and you insist always to misbehave.
- Sometimes you have to lie.
- [whispering] What did you say?
- Sometimes you need to lie,
to save someone, or to keep someone safe.
- [whispered] I should
never have made you.
And he wraps a cloak over his shoulder.
Do you think you look at his
face in this moment, or no?
- I would,
for some glimpse
that he spoke out of anger,
or some glimpse of regret.
- Give me an insight check.
- 14.
- You see him weeping,
but you can't be sure if the weeping
[sounds of sobbing]
is because you have so upset him,
or if he is weeping because
he knows he has said something
deeply untrue himself.
All of you in this room, and by the way,
the other five of you here, watching this,
you guys can give me insight
checks as well, as you want.
- A 19.
- I also got a 19, but it becomes an 18.
- [Brennan] Gotcha.
- Nine.
- My best roll of the season.
- 23.
- [Brennan] 23.
- Just a 12.
- Just a 12.
- Sorry, insight. 14.
- I think Ylfa, Rosamund,
and Mother Goose,
you all look and clearly
see on the man's face
a deep, potent, immediate regret
for saying what he said,
the kind of regret where
he is already thinking
about as soon as he gets back
from finding the Fairy
with Turquoise Hair,
how he can explain...
why he was so wrong to say what he said,
and will never say it again.
You see that from the
angle here in this memory.
You see the father walking
away, and then you see
a light go on elsewhere in that
house, behind a closed door,
and Pinocchio, this is the
first time you heard it.
Little one,
it's not right.
Your father didn't mean what he said.
Can you hear me?
- Yeah. I'm going to look
for the source of the voice.
- You see a doorway to
your father's workshop,
and there's a light on.
Someone must've lit a candle
or something behind it.
- I'm going to go open the door.
- You open the door,
and as you open the door
and take a step back,
a completely friendly silhouette
of a woman stands in the door,
but you do notice that the
light in your room dims
such that you can't see her face.
Only the bright light of the candle
behind her fills the doorframe.
She looks at you and says, Pinocchio.
I know your name.
I'm your mother.
- How?
- It took great bravery,
knowing that you would
become a wooden boy again,
to do what you did.
Your father doesn't understand.
- Yeah, he wasn't there.
If he had seen it,
if he knew what I saw, he
would- he would understand.
- You deserve so much better.
You are brave and clever, little boy.
Pinocchio, I have been kept from you
by the Fairy with Turquoise Hair.
She has used spells for a long time
to keep me away from this place.
I don't know why, but she
wants to keep us apart.
She doesn't wish for us to have
love or friendship or joy.
- She always thinks that
she knows what's best.
There's no room for anything else.
- Pinocchio, I think you know
that the times of shadow are here.
If you wanted, I could
keep your father safe.
I could keep him away from
all of those fairies out there
that mean him harm,
and I could give, well,
I think I should need to give
you some magic of your own.
- I mean, yeah.
He doesn't believe me.
If he needs to be, I don't...
You can keep him safe?
- I can keep him safe.
Would you help me
do what needs to be done
in order to keep him safe, Pinocchio?
- Uh-huh.
- Well, in that case,
I think you deserve some presents.
And there's a swirl of jacks and toys,
And there's a swirl of jacks and toys,
but also coins,
and a little thing of like, ooh, a cigar!
And other things from Toy
Island and other places
that swirl in motes of green light
and [gasps] hit you.
Just give me your strings, Pinocchio,
and I'll take care of everything.
- Okay.
Someday, we'll all be together?
- I promise.
And she takes it.
The five of you witness this,
and from the doorway of this cottage
where you see this unfold,
you see your Pinocchio,
much more rotted, covered
in moss and fungus
from the battle in the
Kingdom of Elegy, and you see
he's tramping up a hill a
little ways on from here.
You're going to the home of
the Fairy with Turquoise Hair.
Let me ask what you all do in this moment,
if there's anything you
want to do here in the home,
if there's anything.
You're sort of seeing your Pinocchio now.
- That fairy that was
talking to those children
is the one that cursed me.
- There's a lot of mean moms around, huh?
- So many.
- Is Pinocchio here with us?
- Yeah, do I-
- Can we reach out?
- I guess I'm wondering,
can we talk to Pinocchio?
- Yeah, you see him a
little distance away,
sort of walking up the hill.
Pinocchio, you're just going, I think.
You got separated from these guys.
But if you want to wait for
them to catch up with you,
you absolutely can.
- Are we present?
That was a memory.
- That was a memory.
That memory has ended,
and now you are still in
the village of Amanti.
- [Lou] Okay.
- You guys have seen that unfold,
and you see that that
Pinocchio makes that deal
with the Stepmother, who disappears,
and that young Pinocchio
that you recognize
as just sort of part of
this book that you're in,
part of this story, begins to walk away,
and you catch sight of your Pinocchio,
the one that just saved you
and that you have been traveling with.
- Pinocchio!
- What?
- Pinocchio!
- Pinocchio!
- Okay!
- Hey there, champ.
- We saw your memories.
- [Ally] Are you okay?
- Are you okay?
- We're sorry that...
- She seemed so different.
She was so nice.
- You totally got used.
- We're sorry your dad
said that stuff to you.
- Yeah.
- I saw your dad's face, though.
He really, really did love you.
Seems like he was a really good guy.
- He was, and he wasn't-
- He was also kind of wrong.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, he was totally wrong.
I think that your argument
was completely sound.
- Sometimes you say things
in the heat of the moment
because you want to protect somebody.
- There was a lot going on.
I mean, we've all had our encounters
with the time of shadow.
I mean, that's why, I mean,
I'm glad we're together now,
because I think I want to figure this out
and get us, get him back.
- Yeah.
- It's a lot.
- Yeah.
- It's a lot but, you
know, we're moving forward.
- Right, but you were right.
- [Emily] You were.
- [Murph] We all need to lie sometimes.
- Thank you. Okay.
- You did the right thing.
- I feel like a lot of children,
the entire moral of their
story, they're just a tool
to tell some stupid moral, and
the morals are f*cking wrong.
The adults are wrong, like, so often.
- So often!
- So f*cking often.
He was wrong. You were right.
I could see that from the outside.
- Thank you.
- Not only that.
What you did was brave.
- Mm-hm.
- Yeah.
- I think so, too.
- That's kind of why I ended
up, I mean, going with Mom.
Again, not my mom, but
until we get a better name-
- But in that moment, I
would've said yes too.
She said everything right,
and she seemed really gentle.
- The message that she
said was true, but she's-
- Do you think she
got turned bad, or was that
just really manipulative?
- [Murph] I think she's
just being manipulative.
- I think she was just manipulative.
- Oh no.
- Are we still in that same moment?
Can we go into the house
and look for his dad?
Has he been taken yet by her?
- Well, that's why I'm actually,
this is who my dad came
to see when he left.
- This is the last time that you saw him?
- That was actually the
last time that I saw him,
but this is where he was headed.
- Okay, well then let's go find him.
- [Ally] Let's go, yeah.
- Pinocchio.
These other fairy tales
have all just looked at you
and said that you were right.
Do you think some portion of that
hits Pinocchio in this moment?
Is there anything about
that that's clarifying, or?
- I think so, I think
it definitely feels good,
but I think Pinocchio can't also shake
that while all of his
friends are telling him
that he was right and that in that moment,
that he was right and that
he made good decisions,
he can't shake the reality of the fact
that it all came back to bite
him, much like it always does.
It's a moment of, as much
as he wants to internalize
the idea that the moral
of his story is not true,
he has yet to escape
the moral of his story
in reality,
or in the world.
- This reality, yeah.
- The existence that he has.
- Yeah, it feels plenty
real. Feels plenty real.
- So I think there's a part
of Pinocchio that lights up,
but I think there's still
so much that he's carrying
with regard to recent decisions
that it's not like a turning point
that he goes like, wait, it was good!
If anything, he now feels motivated
to try and capitalize on this feeling
that his friends are
trying to instill in him.
- You feel as you walk,
you put your marionette
handles inside your own story,
and there's parts of
your story that you like
and there's parts of it that you don't.
So it's almost like you've put your soul,
that handle's like your soul,
and you put it in a thing that
you like and you don't like.
And you're walking along,
and I think you feel
enough of that positivity
that as you walk through
the streets of Amanti,
it kind of shimmers and becomes
almost like illustration,
like you're walking,
sort of the dark shadows of
the forest at night fade,
and now it's sort of an illustration,
and you almost feel that magic in you,
like you're holding the strings to this.
It might still be holding
the strings to you,
but maybe you're holding its strings too,
a little bit, at least.
And you get to the beautiful,
sort of wood etching outline
of the Blue Fairy's door,
and can knock on it if you wish.
- I'm going to pound on it.
- Bam bam bam bam bam!
All of you feel a sudden surge of magic.
Suddenly a weird thing, the
illustration town around you
Suddenly a weird thing, the
illustration town around you
sort of flickers, and the ink moves.
[glitching sounds]
The door opens,
[door creaking]
and you look through the door
and see a deep forest glade
back in the Neverafter.
The door is open, and there is a portal
standing in front of you
back and sort of out of The Lines Between,
out of these books that
you are traveling through,
out of your books, back to the Neverafter,
and turning around, you see
the fairy who spoke to you
when you awoke after death.
- Right.
- You see a fairy with turquoise
hair. She turns around.
You see she is glimmering
with golden light.
She immediately looks at the book
at your side, Mother Goose.
Eyes go wide at that and goes,
Pinocchio?
- Yeah!
- Pinocchio!
- Yeah!
What's up?
- You're wooden again.
- Oh! Oh, you're surprised?
Are you surprised?
- Why are you taking this tone with me?
- Oh, don't play! Don't play
like you don't know what it is!
Okay, I lied to save my dad, and you-
- You told a lie?
- That's normal stuff!
- Oh my god!
- Everybody tells lies all the time.
- That's just normal stuff.
- [Emily] I'm so sick of adults!
- I told a lie, yes.
- And also, you were acting all weird
when I was asking questions about my wife!
You just didn't say anything!
- [Brennan] Well! Well, okay!
- Not saying anything sometimes
is just as bad a a lie,
or maybe it's even worse!
- She flies up to the doorway,
and she's still on the Neverafter side.
She's like, okay! Everyone relax!
- Can I say, I don't f*cking know you.
- Don't tell us to relax.
- And that's not a lie!
- I put my foot in the doorway,
kind of holding the door open.
- Okay, yeah.
- I say, this young boy
needs to have an honest
conversation with you.
As I'm doing that, I am
casting Enhance Ability
and I'm giving you advantage
on charisma saving throws.
- Amazing, incredible.
You feel Mother Goose's
hand on your shoulder.
You look at this Blue Fairy,
this moralizing force of
what you're supposed to be
and how you're supposed to act,
and she looks and says, all right.
Pinocchio, I can tell that you're upset.
- [Lou] I am!
- It seems like you've...
Who broke your nose off your f-?
- I broke my nose off my face, all right?
Because I got tired of...
Do you know what's going on out here?
Do you know what's happening?
I guess it's actually
in there. You're in it.
You understand what's going on?
- Yes.
How much do all of you...
Where are you right now?
- We're not telling you.
- You're the one getting asked
questions! Go on, Pinocchio!
- Hey, she doesn't know you.
- That's right.
- Yeah, guess what?
- [Emily] I never met you.
- She doesn't f*cking know you!
- And guess what?
- No idea who you are.
- She doesn't know who you are!
- [Brennan] Okay! Okay!
- So why don't you fill her in?
- I'm the Fairy with Turquoise Hair.
- That's kind of crazy even you say that.
[everyone laughing]
Don't you have a name?
- No! Because we don't
need names all the time!
- Kind of a full phrase.
I guess I can't talk.
[everyone laughing]
- Hey!
- You see she says, all right, all right.
You have clearly been
through a great deal.
- [Lou] Mm-hm!
- Are you...
Can I ask, Pinocchio, who
has your strings right now?
- I have my strings right now.
- Okay.
- I had given them
to somebody who actually helped!
Well, they didn't help, I don't think.
I think in the greater scheme of things,
they will not have helped me,
but somebody who actually was
there when things went bad,
and who wasn't turning
me into a damn puppet
for trying to save my father's life!
[tense, pulsing piano music]
- Okay.
Pinocchio, I'm here to help.
I think that all of you
should come with me,
because you are in a great deal of danger.
- Can I make an insight check?
- [Brennan] Yeah, give
me an insight check.
- Me too, please.
- Why not?
- [Siobhan] 18.
- That's a two, becomes a one.
- Unnatural 20.
- Unnatural 20, cool cool cool.
- I got a 21.
- 10.
- 17.
- Cool, hell yeah.
Pinocchio and Gerard, she's not lying.
You are in danger,
but you can tell that
she's got a clear motive.
The vibe you're picking up from this fairy
is that her motives are
ulterior but not sinister.
- Got it.
- So she says,
I want to do whatever,
as always, Pinocchio,
I want to do whatever I can to help you.
Do you...
What is it you need information about?
I don't know how much you know.
I don't know where you've been. I-
- We watched Cinderella k*ll your sister.
- Okay, so you're...
So this is...
So you've been in more than
one version of your story.
- Can I just see if she
reacted to that huge lie?
- I'll keep the insight check going.
She doesn't react to it as being a lie.
- And we know you're
working with the Wolf!
[Ally cackling]
- Anyone who wants to,
give me an insight check.
- I got a one on my insight check.
- You got a one?
- That's a natural 20.
- Nat one.
- [Brennan] Nat one?
- Cool, cool.
- I think you're distracted
because you're like, Ylfa is a master spy.
- Can I message Ylfa?
- Message Ylfa.
- [Ally] How does she
come up with this stuff?
- How'd you know that?
- [Ally] That's crazy.
- I just put one and three together.
- Hell yeah. Two.
[Brennan and Emily laughing]
- On a nat 20,
you see the fairy react with astonishment
that the Wolf has been mentioned.
That looks incredibly significant.
I think she looks stunned
in a way that suggests
that she doesn't know where the Wolf is,
and that that's a big problem.
You see she looks and says, so I take it
that many of you are now
twice or more upon a time.
- I'm still in the first one.
- But you're not-
- We had to rip another Pinocchio out,
and he got sucked into my mom's book, but-
- He did what he had to do.
- I did what I had to do.
- And I don't think he did
it. I think that she did it.
- That's true.
- Yeah, she sounded really manipulative.
- Who is she?
- My mom, temporary placeholder name
until we actually find out
what this entity is
called, the person who...
- Is behind the door.
- Was behind the door,
generally a silhouette,
seems to be kind of like a-
- [Emily] I saw her.
- [Zac] Rattles the knob.
- [Emily] She is sort of
like, when people see her,
they claw their eyes out,
but not in a fun way.
- No, not in a fun way at all.
- Oh!
- And all these people
are crawling underneath her flesh,
and then she eats them, and
sometimes they crawl back out.
- Yeah, what's her name?
- [Lou] Do you know this person?
- The Wicked Fairy pulled her eyes out.
- Yes.
- I know. I know.
Listen, we are in a great deal of danger.
I understand that you're upset with me.
You have some complaints.
I assume they are complaints
about things you don't
like about your life.
- I mean, bigger picture, yes. Yeah.
- The fairy looks at you
here, Mother Goose, and goes,
you've seen them.
You've seen them.
Yes?
- Who?
- [soft whisper] The Authors.
[Lou gasps]
- You see the Fairy
says, you've seen them.
- How could you tell?
- Because we've seen them too, all of us.
All the fairies have.
Look, I'll come clean.
I don't agree with
every one of my sisters.
The fairy that k*lled
those villagers in Amanti,
it was part of a ritual
she was trying to do.
I don't practice magic like that.
The godmother of Cinderella, yes,
Cinderella threw a shard
of glass into her chest,
and the betrayal and the
hurt of that drove her
to try to raise an army of
these objects in the woods.
She was missing in action for
longer than I can remember,
and of course I know
that you fought her in that other world.
Fairies, we...
we have often been able to travel
through the different versions of ourself.
That's not a new thing.
That's been happening
for a long, long time.
We have a connection to them
in that all magic is...
in some way or another,
rooted to their will,
if you would call it that.
- When they want big moves to happen,
they pull you guys out.
- For good or ill. And I weep
and cry and hate when it is for ill.
You should not have had
the Wicked Fairy's gift.
It was not right, but there are a lot
of people recently, it seems,
who have some things to say
about their stories,
and I understand that.
Cinderella felt so
strongly about her story
that she ripped the heel
off her glass slipper
and threw it into her godmother's chest,
a godmother who had tried
as hard as she could
to get her to happily ever after.
Now, some people think
that things can get better.
Very few of those people have seen them!
[dramatic music]
We are trying as hard as we can
to get the Neverafter back
to happily ever after,
to get it back to how
the stories are written.
- But we have no control over that.
- No.
- They're on the other side
of that keyhole, they don't care about us.
- Yeah, how do you know
that this isn't just what
they're writing right now?
- Yeah, they're just up there
doing some f*cking cut
story Bukowski sh*t.
- Yeah, don't you think probably
Charles Bukowski up there?
- We're screwed! They're all
surrealists now, wake up!
[everyone laughing]
- You see she looks and says,
I understand that some of you
have been contacted, by...
other creatures that can move
through editions of these stories,
that can move through all
of the onces of upon a time.
Princesses,
wolves,
and in some cases, even The Gander itself.
- Where do you stand as far as
the princesses and the Wolf?
- Where do you stand as far as
the princesses and the Wolf?
What is your relationship to those groups?
- We are in deep trouble.
The Wolf has gone missing.
The Wolf is in grave peril.
- Are you scared about
that? I don't understand.
I thought the Wolf was a bad guy.
He's called the Big Bad Wolf.
You're called the Fairy
with the Turquoise Hair.
It seems like we're being
very literal with names.
- What is your power, by the way?
Just to have turquoise hair?
- No, she can-
- She's the cool stepmom.
- She can summon thousands of
birds and thousands of fish.
- That's wild.
- You don't want to summon
thousands of birds lightly.
- That would destroy an ecosystem.
- It might be kind of interesting.
[everyone laughing]
- I mean, the one time you did it,
it was just to trim down my nose,
because I had lied a bunch,
and then you summoned
a thousand birds to trim
it back down to size.
- Overkill, in hindsight.
A smaller number of birds.
Most of the birds didn't even get-
- [Lou] No!
- Gerard, that's t*rture, right?
That's, like, f*cked up sh*t, right?
- [Siobhan] Yeah, did that hurt?
- [Ally] For the birds.
- No, no.
It didn't hurt that bad, no.
- That bad? So it did hurt?
- Yeah, but it kind of, you know,
in more of an annoying way, you know?
- You couldn't have just cut it off?
Why did it need to be birds? I, mm.
- We don't know where the Wolf is.
Why are you and the
princesses seemingly at odds?
- The princesses are trying their hardest
to stop us from ending
the times of shadow.
We've been trying to do it
from inside the stories,
because that's always a
safer way to do things.
That's an easier way
for the magic to work,
and we are trying to get
things back to the way
that the Authors want them,
the canon, the original.
- But what if we don't
want to be in the stories
that the Authors want?
- Yeah.
- Well, there's no guarantee
that the story they would replace you with
wouldn't be 100 or 1,000 times worse!
I'm- I understand that there may be issues
you have with your story.
It does end in happily ever after.
- But what does that mean
when Gerard, he ended
in happily ever after.
- I'm a g*dd*mn frog again.
- And he's a frog again!
- [stressed] We're working on it!
- Also, I'm pretty sure
I didn't end in a happily ever after.
How come some people
get happily ever afters
and other people don't?
- You are supposed to have
a happily ever after, Red.
- [Ally] In the canon?
- Yes!
- We all have happily
ever after? All right.
- Is the canon a place?
- The Canonade.
- The Canonade. So, you
have seen The Lines Between.
You know of it.
- Yeah.
- What is required to go
back to the way it was?
- Great power has been missing.
We wished to, there were
some things we could've done
if we'd had the aid of the Big Bad Wolf.
The Big Bad Wolf has gone
missing, and we cannot find him,
and he is rapidly vanishing
from many stories.
Something is-
- I think it's my fault.
I ate him.
- I was going to say,
we're hanging out with you,
and you just look more
and more wolf-like, right?
- As you say that, all of
you tumble out of here.
You can make a decision
to reach out a hand
to pull the Fairy with
Turquoise Hair through or not.
- I'm going to reach to grab her.
- You reach out and throw a string to her
and, whoop, get two on either
shoulder and pull her through.
Ah! She comes through with you.
[glitching sounds]
The five of you are in a dark cottage.
- Oh boy.
- Oh no.
- [Brennan] The door opens.
You see there is a bed.
- [Ally] We saw an earlier
version of his. Maybe it's good.
- You see a bed with a large shape,
a little nightcap on,
[tense, scary music]
a gown, and the door opens,
and a completely non-lycanthropic
Little Red Riding Hood
walks in with a basket.
- Grandmother, it's me! I
brought cinnamon toast rolls.
- Cinnamon toast rolls?
- And lollipopcorn, just like you like.
- Lollipopcorn?
- Yes, it's a popcorn
ball on a lollipop stick.
- [Brennan] That's...
- Okay, this is canon.
- Wow, all right.
- Okay.
- All the good stuff that's
going to help you heal,
because I know you're not feeling well.
There was a bunch of
broth, and I dumped it!
[players laughing]
- [Brennan] Well, okay,
dearie. You didn't...
You dumped all the broth?
[players laughing]
- Yep, it was weighing down
and I needed space for lollipopcorn.
- Where did you dump it?
- A river.
- So you took the broth halfway,
found a river, and said,
this is where the broth goes!
- Yes, Grandma. Yes.
- Okay. All right.
Let me get it, okay, yeah, so-
- But I did pick up fresh
flowers along the way.
- Oh, that's lovely.
I hope you didn't stray
off the path to get them.
- Oh! Okay, Grandma, I did.
But it's because I followed a caterpillar
that was chasing a
butterfly, which actually-
- Sorry, a caterpillar
was chasing a butterfly?
- [laughing] Yep. A
caterpillar- [laughing]
- I guess, sort of, how?
- Well, I think-
- I guess, sort of, how?
- I think they were friends, right?
And one had turned into a butterfly first,
and the butterfly was not flapping.
- Oh, so this is a tragedy.
This is a full tragedy.
- Are we in control of it?
Can we go back in any way?
[players laughing]
- It's about 20 minutes of this, and then-
- I wanted to actually go back.
I don't want to skip this.
- You want to see the
caterpillar and the butterfly.
- I want to watch the
caterpillar chase the butterfly.
- Oh, good. For sure.
We're going to move forward.
[players getting their last laughs out]
You see, you notice Grandma
is looking a little funny.
Her ears are kind of larger than normal.
- Grandma.
Your ears are honkin' big.
- All the better to
hear you with, my dear.
- Grandma, your teeth are honkin' big.
[everyone wheezing hysterically]
- Wow, just...
[still wheezing]
- Honking...
- All right.
All the better to eat you with.
- What?
- And here,
you see that Grandma gets up.
The sheets, the cap, all of it falls away,
and somehow,
without this cottage getting bigger,
you're looking at a wolf
that seems to tower in this space
like some ancient monument.
Its gaze is completely neutral.
It is enormous and powerful,
and it rests on the bed.
There is a hum expectantly in the air,
like something is supposed to happen.
[intense humming]
Something is supposed
to unfold in this space.
The Wolf said, all the
better to eat you with,
but it makes no motion
to leap at Ylfa.
In fact, you notice that although
it towers over all of you,
it is lying down on the bed.
- I met you on the path.
What did you do? Where's my grandma?
- I've eaten her.
She is in my stomach now.
- Why?
- I am a wolf.
- Okay, well, the Woodsman's
going to come along,
and he's going to show you
the sharpest side of his ax.
- Perhaps he will.
Time passes, and all of you
watch Ylfa standing here, waiting.
Hours turn into days.
You actually feel the turning of pages
as you watch Ylfa stand,
waiting for the thing that, at this time,
she just had an inkling
was supposed to happen.
But now you know, all of
you, the feeling of, yeah,
this version of Ylfa's
story went really wrong.
Went really, really wrong.
You see an Ylfa who is shaking
and almost passed out
from just exposure,
dehydration, lack of food,
having been frozen in
this moment of terror
for... too long.
The Wolf has regarded you,
still as stone this entire time.
After this small eternity, the
Wolf looks at you and says,
After this small eternity, the
Wolf looks at you and says,
you are dying.
- No, I'm just waiting for the Woodsman.
- If you cannot eat, you
will die. This is the law.
- What would you have me do?
- Go to the fireplace,
and there pick up the ax
by the wood that rests at its side.
Come to the foot of the bed,
raise up the ax, and split my skull.
When I am dead, eat of my flesh,
and you will be strong enough
to wander the woods on
your own and return home.
- That's... ridiculous.
No, I don't even think
I could lift up an ax.
That's not, that's...
I'm just a little girl,
and a nice one at that.
No.
No.
- [Brennan] The Woodsman is not coming.
[intensifying string music]
- He often comes and stops by.
If we just keep waiting, I'm sure that...
This is not my place to
even have any part in.
[Brennan sighs]
- I told you.
My teeth were made to eat
you, and one day I will.
- So then eat me! So then just eat me!
Then just eat me and get it over with!
- It is not your time.
- It was my grandma's
time, but not my time?
- Yes.
- Well, I don't trust you,
[sinister string music]
because everyone told me not to trust you.
So if I can't trust you,
then what you say isn't true,
and the Woodsman is coming.
So I will turn my back
from you to the window
to behold the entrance of the Woodsman.
- Do as you will.
Ylfa, you go to the window
and look into the woods.
What do you think you see there?
- I think my...
I think that sort of
probably, because of hunger,
it's just kind of blurry.
I mean, I don't see the Woodsman.
I think if anything, I maybe see a bird
swooping in and eating a
worm or something like that.
- Mm-hm.
- But I don't see the Woodsman,
and I probably wait here until
my personality kind of fades,
and I probably wait here until
my personality kind of fades,
and I'm just hunger, and I'm just animal,
and then I sort of think
that it's like the instinct
takes over, and it's not
really Ylfa doing it.
It's just something deeper,
and then at that point,
I think I pick up the ax and...
Maybe there's a moment
as I'm about to do it
that I kind of realize
that once I do this,
I'm never going to be able to undo it.
But then I think that gets
drowned out by my stomach,
and I probably just heave the ax over,
and kind of dead-eyed,
split the wolf's skull
and consume his flesh.
- In the moment before the ax comes down,
the Wolf,
[heart beating]
who has sort of had his
chest proudly up like this,
lays his head down like an
animal going fully to sleep
and flattens his ears against
his head as the ax comes down.
[ax thuds]
[flesh squelching]
[creature growling]
[coughing]
[sickening crunches]
[Ylfa gulps]
All of you watch Ylfa,
with hands and teeth
rending into the Wolf's body and eating,
face covered in blood, to stay strong,
and see the blood of the Wolf
coursing through her veins.
And as this memory of your
friend leaves this place,
to go to the cottage where
her mother and siblings await,
where we know what they will do
when their monstrous daughter returns.
- [Emily] [echoing] I can
fix it. I can fix everything.
Something's gone seriously wrong.
Did they leave through the back door?
- You are now simply
standing in this cottage,
empty, the bed soaked with blood,
but no wolf nor girl here save for Ylfa,
but no wolf nor girl here save for Ylfa,
your companion once
again, who is with you.
The Fairy with Turquoise Hair is stunned.
She looks at you and says-
- I'm sorry. He told me to do it.
I knew it was wrong. It feels wrong.
It feels really wrong
whenever I think about it.
I don't know what happened.
I just, I just, I just
did it. I just did it.
I don't know how to explain it. I'm sorry.
Am I the reason that
all this is happening?
Am I the Stepmother?
- Stepmother.
Stepmother.
[haunting piano music]
No. No, child, you are not the Stepmother.
You are...
You are a young hero of your own story,
and we're going to set it right,
and you met a wolf
that I have not seen in quite some time.
I'm sure you've heard, if you've
been in The Lines Between,
some of the staff there
say that the Auroratory
is where most of our stories
originate, and that the Authors
created the ink within
the heart of the Canonade.
What I will tell you now is this.
The Wolf that you met, I think,
was something old and very powerful.
The Big Bad Wolf,
as we know him, is death.
As the Gander and the
Goose have their powers
within the realms of the
Neverafter, times of shadow,
times of plenty, the Wolf
is death, which is endings,
which, in a land of stories,
endings are perhaps the
most important thing.
But I have not seen that
wolf in quite some time,
because I think the Authors changed him
because I think the Authors changed him
in many versions of these tales,
and that this version of
him came back lets me know
that something truly strange
has happened within the Neverafter.
You are not the cause
of the times of shadow.
I believe based on this
memory that you encountered
a version of the Wolf from long ago,
something deep and old and powerful
in the land of tales and stories,
and I believe that he truly
wished for you to live.
- Oh.
Okay.
Thank you, that is much
more helpful than Aesop.
- You met Aesop?
- Yeah.
- Did we meet Aesop.
- Did he do this?
- He's all about crisp.
[all saying "crisp"]
- He got right up in our faces.
- Honestly, it was us too, though.
- Well, I mean.
- We were having a bad day.
- We gave it as good as we got it.
- That, by the way, has not
finished. I am very tired.
- I think it's weird that
his lion gets nosebleeds.
[Murph laughing]
- That is weird.
- What is his lion eating?
- Everyone needs to leave the lion alone
because we've, okay.
- Oh, the one that saved the mouse?
- [Siobhan] Yes!
- Yeah, well that would
complicate the story, wouldn't it?
So he tries to sweep that under the rug.
- Okay, yeah. We thought
you were on his side.
- No, no no no. No no no.
- He's annoying, right?
- Oh, so you think that
what you're doing is right,
but what he's doing is wrong?
- Rosamund, have you spoken to
any of the other princesses?
- Yes.
- Okay.
They, I'm sure,
talked about all of the
problems that there are,
and sometimes people talk about problems
and they're doing it to let
you know that they're mad
and that they've figured out
that something doesn't work.
- Yes.
- And that's fine,
until it comes down
to what we can actually do and accomplish.
- Well, you know, maybe have
agency within our own stories,
and have the power to choose
what it is that we want,
and live a three-dimensional
life beyond happily ever after.
- Or maybe by rebelling,
we alert them to what we are doing,
and they rewrite all of these
stories to be even worse.
- So you want us all to go
back to the way things were.
- Yes.
- And how do you think we could do that?
- We have been looking for a kind of magic
that could help us do that.
The times of shadow have lingered
in these lands for far too long.
There is some force
that I believe the Wicked Fairy beheld
that we believe is causing
the times of shadow to stay.
We believe that she is the reason
that these times cannot depart,
but there have been many
options we have been exploring.
If we'd had the Big Bad Wolf on our side,
it's possible that the
Big Bad Wolf would've had
the strength to oppose
whatever this creature is.
- You've got the Big Bad
Wolf on your side. [growls]
[all laughing]
- As you go to change,
you see a flash of the Neverafter.
You see something that's sort
of like an image, almost,
of deep fire, and for a moment,
you see soot and ash
against the glow of fire
on a giant brick wall.
- Oh my god, the Wolf.
The Wolf is burning.
I didn't eat him. I didn't end his life.
He's somewhere, burning.
And even, if I'm thinking about it,
excuse me, I'm going to
need a minute with them.
- Give us a second.
- Ears. Earmuffs.
- Just give us one second.
- Sing a little song.
- If you want to listen to a podcast.
- [Emily] Could you listen
to a podcast real quick?
- Mother Goose's podcast.
- Just this new context,
I don't know if I want it
to go back to normal, because now-
- I don't want it to go back to normal.
- I definitely don't.
- I met death,
and death wants me to live!
I don't want to go back to my other story
where I listen to my f*cking elders!
[Brennan laughing]
- Amen.
- The other versions
of my story that I saw were awful.
- We just have to figure out
the magic that they want to use
to get things to go back to normal
and use it for our purposes.
- Okay, just wanted to get
on the same page about that.
- Give me insight with advantage there.
- Can I?
- Yeah, you can give me
an advantage there too,
Mother Goose, if you want.
- Nah.
- Do you have any bardics?
- [Ally] 13.
- That was only a nine.
- [Brennan] Nine and what?
- 13.
- Okay, cool. You continue.
So you say, we just need to-
- What if I think that it's my book?
- I think in that case,
you don't need a roll.
- Okay, yeah.
- You say, we just need
to figure out that magic.
On that, Mother Goose,
you look at Pib saying,
these fairies clearly have
some way that they think
from within the stories we can get things
back to how they're supposed
to be, to happily ever after,
and you see the fairy eye the book.
- Yeah.
- And I think you remember
back to what was going
on in The Lines Between
and remember all the
ink within the Canonade,
the weird stuff that Key
and Legend were alluding to,
and this book you've got,
and I think that you see
the fairy eyeing that
book, because you know
what they're trying to
do and what this fairy
seems to be saying is all
about a lack of resources.
It's like a perfect storm.
The Wolf is gone, the Gander's
been here for too long,
and we think the reason
that that's happening
is there is some force
that our Wicked Fairy saw
that is moving upon everything.
And I think as you look at your book,
there's another book,
Pib, that you look at too
that you still have, especially
because you've just traveled
into two of the books that are
tumbling through the library.
You have that torn up Cinderella book.
And the fairy sort of keeps
the fingers in her ears.
- Just one second more.
Do you guys think I'm
f*cking disgusting now?
- No!
- You're so cute.
- My whole-
- You guys watched me do it.
You watched me gargle sinews.
- I literally can't believe
what you kids have been through.
- I mean, yeah.
- It's awful.
- I ate a ogre.
- I'm sorry that you-
- What'd you say?
- A whole ogre?
- Well, I tricked him into
getting tiny, and then I ate him.
- Oh.
- Respect.
- Really clever.
- We eat nasty stuff sometimes.
- We don't think you're gross.
- I had to eat
a lot of nasty stuff when
I was escaping the briars.
- Okay, okay, so there's no judgment,
and I personally just affirmed
that my story actually rules.
Okay, you can unplug your ears now.
- Actually, I had one more thing.
- Plugs!
- Thank you!
- So sorry.
- I have this little book, okay?
The Cinderella one. It's
missing a lot of pages.
I don't fully know that I get it,
but if anybody wants to
take a look at it right now-
- Is it different from
the Cinderella stuff
that's in Mother Goose's book?
- Could I see, is she doing something?
- As you pull that book out,
she's about to do something, yeah.
[Zac making noises of panicked confusion]
- Tim!
- Can we put it in my
book? Does it react to it?
- Oh sure, is that what you do?
- No no, I mean, can I, ooh! Ooh!
- Do you want to put the
f*cked up Cinderella book
in your book?
- Ooh, oh no! Ooh!
- Hey, hey! Cool it, cool it!
- You see as you pull that
Cinderella book, however,
the Fairy with Turquoise Hair
has been already looking
at Mother Goose's book
and now sees that, and her eyes go wide
as if suddenly something has
snapped into place for her.
Gerard, you are first to act.
You see there's this fairy here.
You hear Rosamund and Ylfa
bonding over a sudden understanding.
bonding over a sudden understanding.
You just heard Ylfa say
something to the effect
of what Rosamund had said earlier of,
the way my story's supposed
to go, I don't agree with,
and you see there's a
third book in this room.
You see The Frog Prince
in there, and this fairy
is looking like she's about
to spring into action,
but also this fairy's just told you
that the thing the fairies
are most trying to do
is get everything to go back
to the way it was before.
How's Gerard feeling right now?
- I think that is a tempting proposition,
but Gerard
has already lived his story,
and what happens after happily ever after
is that more things happen,
or I'm just going to be a two
dimensional piece of paper.
or I'm just going to be a two
dimensional piece of paper.
So I think I'm going to
try to help Pib.
I guess maybe I'll try to grab
my book and try to open it up
I guess maybe I'll try to grab
my book and try to open it up
and see if I can just grab
these guys and pull them in.
- All of you watch as you
reach, and just like Pinocchio
throwing the marionette,
you get your webbed hand
onto The Frog Prince-
- Ugh!
[everyone laughing]
- Honestly, what am I even
doing? You... [slurps]
- Sorry!
[everyone laughing]
- The book glows as it
sucks into your mouth
and you are able to, almost
like throwing a sack,
open the pages and throw
it over your friends,
and all of you are standing
by a pool full of lily pads
and all of you are standing
by a pool full of lily pads
in a cool, mossy forest
not too far from a great stone castle
that rises like the tall trees around it.
And actually, I think Gerard,
because you made the call
to come here, I think you're
not with your five friends
but are a little way away yourself.
There was a long time
before Elody found you.
You got turned into a frog
when you were a little boy.
What was the average thing you were doing
on a night in a cold pond,
not knowing how to get
back to your family,
not knowing if you'd ever get home,
living amongst the lily pads
out here in the woods at night?
- Well, I think Gerard probably
spent quite a bit of time
throwing frog temper tantrums,
just sort of wobbling around in the water.
[Emily and Zac laughing]
And then at a certain point,
as the months and the
years went by and stuff,
I think he's very much trapped here
and is almost trying to quiet his mind
and act like a frog
to, I don't know, kind of
try to bury the memories
of everything that he squandered
and didn't appreciate
when he had it before.
So I guess he would just try to join
the chorus of other frogs
and just croak a little bit differently.
[Murph croaks morosely]
[Ally laughs]
[Murph croaks]
[Murph croaks pathetically]
- A frog leaps onto a
lily pad next to you.
- Hey.
Do you...
Are you a-
[Brennan croaks]
Yeah, yeah.
You know, you'd think that
with a fairy godmother
running around turning kids into frogs,
that there'd be more kids
who were turned into frogs, you know?
[Brennan croaks]
Yep. Yep, yep, yep.
Well, I'm going to call you Fred.
- A beautiful figure
emerges from the wood line,
and you see with beautiful
white feathers and a long beak
and you see with beautiful
white feathers and a long beak
a heron emerges from the wood line
and takes a stately couple of steps,
a tall, long-legged, very stork-like bird,
and walks into the shallows
of the water's edge.
[Brennan croaks]
- Hello?
- You say hello.
It sort of comes in this
small, little froggy voice.
Just... [croaking]
The other frogs around.
The heron doesn't seem to
respond to spoken words.
It's just, like, a heron.
- I guess I'll...
- The heron steps over,
and you see that Fred hasn't
really made eye contact
with you because Fred
can't make eye contact,
because he is a frog.
[Brennan croaks]
The heron goes down and kills Fred.
- Not good at being a frog yet.
- Grabs frog and it crushes his spine.
It breaks, and it swallows him
and eats him, and Fred dies
with only you knowing that
his name was ever Fred,
and the heron eats him, and
neither of them experience
any emotion or sense of
self as that happens.
- Ah!
I'm just off to the side,
suddenly feeling very
emotional about Fred.
What is this barbarism?
[Lou laughs]
Guys, we need to get out of here!
There's a freaking big thing gonna eat us!
We need to get the hell out of here!
- The heron sort of looks
around for the noise
that you're making as you
yell to the other frogs.
- sh*t, sh*t. I just hop around.
[players laughing]
sh*t, sh*t, sh*t! f*ck!
Guys, they k*lled Fred!
I know you don't know who Fred is!
We need to get the f*ck out of here!
- The heron steps over in your direction,
looks around regarding everything,
and you suddenly hear...
[arrow whizzing]
And an arrow pierces the thing's side,
and one of the royal hunters comes out
and just grabs it and snaps its neck.
- Ah!
- Got it! There's supper.
And walks away from the lake.
- Wait!
Hold!
There's been a terrible misunderstanding.
I'm actually a prince, and
I would like to go back to-
- He lifts up his boot and is
going to try to squish you.
- Ah! [laughing] I run!
- Talking frog. Talking frog.
- It's not normal! I've been in the pond!
No one else talks here!
- No, not any more talking animals.
And misses you with a boot thudding down.
- I'm going to run in the
direction that he was coming from.
You have more...
I'm going to be...
You're going to be in
trouble, because I'm a prince,
and once I start being a
prince again, you're fired!
- Awesome, as he does that,
[players laughing]
a dog runs up and bites you
and picks you up in its mouth.
- Help!
[players laughing]
I just wiggle.
Ah!
- You wiggle helplessly in its mouth.
You have one hit point. You're a frog.
- No!
Secrete something! Some
poison or something!
- Use your tongue for the dog's
uvula so it throws you up.
- That's so smart.
- I French the dog.
- Go ahead and give me
a death saving throw.
- Five.
- That's a failure.
- Can we do anything?
- Can I touch the dog's uvula?
- [Brennan] You're watching.
- So this is how Prince
Gerard of Greenleigh dies!
- No wonder he hated being a frog.
- I get it.
- I'm so f*cking stressed.
- If this was my childhood,
I would want to be at ba*ls every day.
- For months, he just sort
of shook around, and now...
[players laughing, Murph laugh-wailing]
- Give me another death saving throw.
- No!
- Can we do anything?
- Bring me to your owner! I got an 11!
Bring me to a person!
- Great, great great great.
The dog drops you out of its
mouth as it's called back,
so you have one failure, one success.
Give me another death save.
- Eight.
- Eight. That's two failures, one success.
- 18, pass. I'm on two and two.
- You're on two and two.
Give me another one.
- Come on, Gerard. Come on, Gerard!
- 15!
- [Ally] Yes!
- When you come to,
you're covered in blood.
There are huge punctures in your frog body
from a dog biting you.
Do you go back towards the
castle where the dogs are,
or do you go back to your frog pond?
[players laughing]
Prince Gerard?
- Pretty loaded question.
- Yeah, a little leading, I might say.
[players laughing]
[Murph whimpering]
- [sorrowfully] I'll go back to the pond.
- Go back to the pond.
That's where it's safe.
- [Ally] Take a little bath.
- [Brennan] You're a frog.
- Make some coffee on the lily pad.
- Make some coffee.
- Frog stuff.
- Frog stuff.
- So years of that go on
before a young Princess
Elody first comes by,
and you guys all see,
much younger obviously,
but the young maiden who will one day
fall in love with Prince Gerard.
This is the first thing
that's not one of the royal hunters
or their dogs or a heron.
You see she's out playing,
and this wonderful golden ball rolls away.
You know, after years of that, Gerard,
you still have a human intellect,
so it's like, you know, you
can survive a little bit-
- You guys are eating all of the spiders,
but the spiders catch the flies,
and it just makes it easier.
They've just got it all there for us.
You just steal it from the spiders,
and you eat the spider at the end, Fred 2.
[players laughing]
- A real Wilson Castaway kind of vibe.
- I just have all these
frogs, and I'm like,
Fred 3, you need to leave Fred 2 alone!
[players laughing]
- And a golden ball rolls into the pool,
[sound of ball rolling and splashing]
and you see Elody go, oh no!
That's very important.
That's an expensive toy.
- I think at this point, Gerard's
a little afraid of humans,
because I feel like that dog incident
is not the only thing that has happened.
[Ally chuckling]
He's lost many Freds along
the way, and I think that he,
maybe without totally giving himself away,
is going to go and hop down
towards the ball that she dropped.
- It's sunken into the water,
so you'll have to swim down to go get it.
- I will swim down to go get it.
- Swimming down, eating is hard.
It's hard to get enough
food to not be hungry.
It's hard to keep yourself
safe in this place.
Do you want to really burn
the energy it's going to take
to shove this incredibly heavy golden ball
up out of the muck and the
weeds at the bottom of the pond?
- Probably not. I start swimming back up.
- You swim back up, and as you do,
you look up and see this young woman
who appears really forlorn.
She sort of reaches in
to see if it's closer to the shore, looks.
You see that she's
clearly maybe not supposed
to have been playing this
recklessly or this far out
in the grounds away from
the castle with this.
- Okay, please don't, like-
[Brennan shrieks]
I'm sorry! I thought it was-
- Ah! Who is that?
Is it a ghost?
- I'm a frog!
- Is it a ghost?
- I'm a frog!
I'm a frog, I'm a frog.
- Who's a frog?
- I am, down here. That's
Fred 2, that's Fred 3.
- What happened to Fred 1?
- Fred 1 was m*rder*d.
[Emily laughing]
- You can talk!
- I can. I can talk.
[gentle music]
Yes, listen,
you probably shouldn't be out here.
There's, like, witches and stuff
who turn people into frogs,
and whenever I ask for help,
people just think that a
talking frog is kind of weird,
and then they try to step on
me, and then they sic their-
- [Brennan] That's awful!
- Yeah.
- I don't want to step on you.
- [Murph] Really?
- No.
I don't, frankly, I hope
it's not weird to say,
I don't really want to touch you either.
- No, that's fine. No, I'm a f*cking frog.
- [gasps] You said a full curse word.
- I mean, I'm a frog. I can
say whatever the f*ck I want.
[players laughing]
- Wow, cool.
- So you're, okay. So
you're cool to talk to me?
Because I've been talking to other frogs
for, like, a really long time.
- What do the other frogs say?
- They just croak. It's
insane, it's maddening.
I'm going crazy here.
Why are you cool with this?
- I don't know, it wouldn't occur...
I don't even know what would
make me not cool with it,
so I can't really answer the question.
Why did the...
You said a witch or someone?
- Yes, yes. I was admittedly...
I was admittedly a little bit
of a prick when I was younger.
- How old were you?
- Like, 10?
- I don't think you can be that-
I don't think you can be
a prick when you're 10.
I think you're just 10.
I mean, you can be bad when
you're 10, but that's not-
- I was like a- I was a prick, though.
I was, like, yeah. I don't know.
- What'd you do?
- I was just kind of being a jerk.
Just kind of, I don't know.
I would just, like, run
around, and honestly, I would-
- You ran around and
she turned you into...
- I was just, like,
yelling a lot and stuff.
I'd be like, look at me, Mom and Dad!
Mom and Dad, look at me!
Running around.
- Sounds like you were starved
for attention from your parents.
- Yeah, no, and they haven't
looked for me that hard.
[players laughing]
They really haven't,
because I've been missing.
[Emily laughing]
- I'm so sorry.
- [Murph] Thank you.
- What's your name?
- It's been so long since
anyone's asked me that.
My name is Gerard.
I'm from Greenleigh.
- Oh, I'm Elody.
- I'm the prince, the
prince of Greenleigh.
I don't know if there's
been missing posters
or anything like that?
- Oh. Okay, okay.
- [Murph] Have they tried?
- Got it. You're a prince?
- No, but I am actually-
- Okay.
Nice talking with you,
Gerard. That's very nice.
- Okay, no no no no no.
- [Brennan] I'm sure-
- Okay, see, this is what I was afraid of.
Okay, I'll prove to you that I'm a prince
by showing some royal chivalry.
I will fetch
your ball for you
and prove to you that I am indeed
a royal prince.
- Would you fetch it?
Do you know where it is?
- I saw it.
I think I could get
down there. What is it?
- It's an heirloom.
[soft piano music]
It's not really a toy,
but I just love the feel of
it and I like to play with it.
It belonged to my mother.
- You said that in the past tense.
Is your mother no longer with us?
- Neither my mother nor my father.
I'm steward of this place,
and when I'm old enough,
will be tasked with ruling.
But it would be nice to have
some company, I suppose.
Would you fetch it? It
would mean a lot to me.
- Yes, of course.
Grab a quick fly for the carbs.
- [Brennan] [laughing] Quick carbo load.
- Quick carbo load.
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- And then I dive down.
- You roll the ball back
up, and she admires it
and looks and says,
that's a very noble thing.
Even if you are just a
frog that learned to talk,
it is very princely of you
to do something that noble.
- Well, thank you.
- Do you like living in the pond?
- No, I hate it.
- Do you want to come
to the castle with me?
- Yes. Yes, yes, maybe...
- You are very nice. Frogs are kind of...
- I'm not going to be a
frog forever, is the thing.
- Okay.
- It's just a temporary curse.
But yeah, I would- I would love to.
- Here, and you see she
takes a handkerchief
and puts it on the ground and says,
do you want to hop in that and
I'll take you to the castle?
- [crying happily] Yes, please!
- [Brennan] Oh god!
- Take me to a castle!
- Oh god. Okay.
- I'm very...
I'm an inside frog. I'm a castle frog.
- [laughing] I'm a castle frog!
- What ends your curse? Do you know?
- Do I know?
- I think I'll cede that to you, Murph.
I think in this version of
the Frog Prince's story,
does the Frog Prince know
what lifts his curse or not?
- I think maybe Gerard
knows, but knows that it's
going to make it super
awkward and is just...
This is a weird thing.
[Ally laughing]
Like, if someone were to, like,
fall in love with me-
- Okay, Gerard. Bye bye.
- I'm just saying-
- Bye bye, Gerard.
- If you were to fall in love with me!
- Bye bye.
- Hey, there's a little handkerchief!
You're supposed to carry
me in the handkerchief!
- Don't touch me, ugh!
- I'm not!
- We fade from this memory.
- Oh my god.
- Gerard, you are still
on the banks of the pond,
but you are holding the book.
Your friends are safe, and the
Fairy with the Turquoise Hair
is gone, and you still have
the copy of Cinderella.
- Nice.
- Oh.
- Whew.
- [Zac] That was so dark.
- [quietly] Gerard!
- [Lou] Yeah, that was dark.
- Being a frog was-
- Poor little boy.
- Sheesh.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, no.
- You were shaken around.
[slow piano music]
- Yeah, no, it was...
- Do you think that you found true love,
or do you think that you
just found the first person
that could turn you back into a prince?
- Oh man, that's...
That's dark.
No, I mean,
we became friends, and
eventually we fell in love.
- That's a great way to start, I've heard.
- Yes, I do believe I found my true love,
and it was after that that it went wrong.
- You were friends, and
then you fell in love,
and then you had your first kiss?
You didn't have your first
kiss and then you wake up,
and then you get married?
- No, no no no.
First you're a frog,
and then you become friends with somebody.
- Okay.
- And then you sort of fall
in love, but then it's weird,
because it's like hey, this guy's a frog.
- Right.
- But then it's sort of like,
I'll give the frog a little kiss.
She gives the frog a little kiss,
and then I became a prince again.
So that's how relationships
work as far as I know.
- Oh, okay.
- All right.
- Maybe stop writing that down.
[everyone laughing]
- By the way, as a young man I think,
- These are all really good
notes as far as I'm concerned.
- No, one day, I-
- Maybe stop writing. Hey, Pib!
- One frog meets a person.
- I actually think
I can turn into a frog.
- [Ally] Okay, there are other options.
- So this works for me.
- So you don't have to
start as a frog, though.
I see a lot of you writing that down.
- You could start as a
puppet! Turn into a real boy!
- This is true, this is true.
No, but truly, I don't really know
anything about relationships.
- Is this like a pickup artist class?
- It's a pickup artist class.
[players laughing]
First thing you do is you're a frog.
- You're a frog, then you say
nice dress, it's kind of loud.
[players laughing]
- You could turn back into a frog,
and you wouldn't have
to go back to that pond.
It seems like the pond sucked
more than being a frog.
It seems like the pond sucked
more than being a frog.
- That is true.
Honestly, this time around, being a frog
is not as bad as the
first time, certainly.
I certainly have better company,
as nice as the Freds were.
- That's nice.
- I get why you loved ba*ls.
[Murph laughs]
Like, as in celebration. Celebration.
- Oh, right.
- [Ally] Oh wow!
- I've done that before,
I've done that before.
I do that all the time.
Talking about going back to
the frog brain, I can't, yeah.
It's been a long time
since I've been to a ball.
That is true, yes, but I don't know.
I guess a reason I don't
want to side with the fairies
and bring everything back
to how they used to be
is that I think there's
more of the story to tell,
and mine was kind of just
over, as nice as it was.
- Yeah.
- But, I mean,
what if Elody is fighting
with the princesses?
She is a princess.
Maybe by not going with the fairies,
you'll get to see Elody again.
- Rosamund, it occurs to you here
that you know the princesses are traveling
towards the world that produced
these incarnations of your story.
Were you to return to the Neverafter,
they're headed to that world.
- Great, so I convey that to everybody.
And they did tell me to look
for a princess by the sea.
So maybe we could meet them there?
- How close is the pond to the sea?
- Would the kingdom have
been anywhere near the sea?
- No, not really, but also,
you're in your own book
right now, so you're sort of in that.
You're sort of dimension
hopping away from this fairy
at the moment, so you're safe
in a memory of your life.
- What if we wrote in the book?
- Just described it, really?
- Just to describe there was a princess
by the sea or something, I don't know.
I don't want to put words in your mouth.
- Yeah, we could definitely try.
- Why not? I think that
sounds great, Rosamund.
- Yeah, I open up the book.
- Well, if we did that, wouldn't
that change Elody's story?
- Yeah, we don't really
know how it works yet,
so I guess you're right.
We don't really know which-
- Yes, so along with the rest
of my relationship advice,
I should say the second part,
which is that my marriage
was absolutely falling apart.
So I don't totally know what Elody wants.
- That's the problem here, right?
- I don't know what she wants right now,
because I can't talk to her.
- So you could meet a true
love, and it could fall apart?
- Yes.
- That's so sad.
- Well, that's what's interesting.
These stories have their ups and downs,
and then there's the happily ever after,
but that just feels like a flatline.
- It's lazy.
- It's a cop out.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- Things keep going if you're alive.
- I was in my happily ever after,
and then a bunch of freaking
giants came out of nowhere.
- Yeah, that's when the fairy showed up.
- I wonder, Timothy,
if perhaps we were like the version
of yourself that you felt when
you looked in the keyhole,
when you became like paper.
- Oh yeah.
- I wonder if that's how we were before.
- Oh, you only knew each other as that?
- If we were two-dimensional,
and now we're three-dimensional.
- Three-dimensional.
- And things are getting more complicated.
- [Emily] Yeah.
- Right.
- Because you could fall in love
with the one-dimensional version.
- I'm also saying for everyone.
- I'm sorry, don't we have a way
to get back to that library?
Is there a way to leave
from here, or do we...
- Wait, is the ball still in this memory?
- It's moved off into
the castle, but yeah,
you could potentially go get
the memory of it for sure.
- Should we go get the...
- Put it in the book?
- Does it tell us anything?
- I don't know.
- What do we think of
the book at this point?
- I don't know.
- Tim's book?
- It's powerful magic
that the fairy wanted,
so it's definitely...
- They wanted the book to be
able to write things to them,
put it back to happily
ever after and all that.
- But the ball, that was
part of our origin story.
- But the ball, that was
part of our origin story.
That happened, so I wouldn't
feel bad about putting that in.
- Yeah, it's going to be in
there no matter which version.
It's an integral part.
- Like the shard.
- And the spindle.
- [Murph] Like the shard, exactly.
- Let's do it. Let's go to the house.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- You go into the castle,
and up there, you find something,
and I think you look at
this and realize, like,
it almost feels, because if
you had gone and found Elody,
you would've had to take
her golden mace away.
- Yeah.
- And weirdly, there's
a feeling of like, oh,
this is the ball I was
supposed to put in here.
I was supposed to put
a memory of this here.
That was the thing that mattered.
That was the thing that
was significant to me.
- Her ball turned into a
mace for her when she was-
- You've seen her mace,
and the golden ball
is at the head of her golden mace.
She's got a golden kite shield
with a lily flower on
the outside and a giant-
- She sounds rad as hell, man.
- She's pretty rad.
- [Siobhan] I get it.
- I didn't see it as
much at the time because
I wasn't very interested
in fighting or politics,
and then they destroyed
our castle and I ran away
with a bunch of other
people who were scared.
- Hey, same here.
- Like who?
Who were the other people?
- Mostly children.
- Okay.
- Children and
old people.
- Well, somebody needed to protect them.
- Yeah, is that why?
- I was running in front.
- How old were you?
- 30.
- Oh, okay!
- [Zac] Wow!
- But you had 10 years in a swamp!
So you're 20, which is also not great.
- Which is also bad, yeah.
- Which is worse, maybe. More capable.
- You're what, 18?
- Yeah, I was in my prime.
- Or 118, depending on
how you're counting.
- So you go and grab
the golden ball off the
shelf, and do you open?
- Yeah, if you're still
feeling okay about this.
Let's see if it responds to the book.
- You put the golden ball in there.
[dramatic choir music]
[whooshing]
Your copies of these books
that you have already,
you actually see that your
version of The Frog Prince glows,
and as it glows, you
see Pinocchio's strings.
His book glows there, and behind Ylfa,
the story of Little Red
Riding Hood glows as well,
and yours as well.
The Cinderella book sort
of shudders uneasily,
and your Frog Prince, you
put that ball in there,
and in this moment, Murph,
I think that you've kind
of left behind the quest
you had at the start of this,
which was to at any
cost go back to things.
As you give one of the most
significant objects in your life
into the book, what is
the wish or the intention
that goes into the book with it?
What does Gerard want?
- I think...
Gerard hopes that Elody's story
is going in a way that she wants it to,
or at least it gets there eventually,
and it would be great if I had
a chance to be there for it,
and I hope we can break the
curse the same way we did
the first time, by getting
to know each other again.
- Mother Goose, your
book [thrumming] moves,
and in putting the ball into the book,
you have this feeling of hope
and a feeling of uncertainty,
and two things sort of
happen simultaneously.
Your version of The Frog
Prince, you see that the ink
on the written pages
glows incredibly bright,
and it moves through the air
and fades into your chest.
And all of the ink illuminates,
and you see that sort of
disappearing from the final page
as it twirls and flips around, it says,
"And they all lived happily
ever after, the end."
You see that
the words "end" and "the"
and "ever" and "after"
turn into light, and it just leaves,
"And they all lived happily,"
and that moves into your body,
and the motes of light
move towards your crown,
and you feel suddenly
released.
You don't feel released from
every panic or every fear.
This world and these lands and realms
are strange and dangerous,
but I think you feel
some magic protect you from the fear
[epic string music]
that you are not living
your life the right way.
The book moves inside you.
Your book, the ink begins to
[static crackling]
move, twitch, move around,
and all of you watch as a hole of shadow
opens in Mother Goose's book
and sucks Mother Goose into the book.
- Oh.
- Timothy!
- [Brennan] What do you all do?
- Is the book still there?
- I dive in after him!
- [Brennan] The book is still there.
- Timothy! I'm your bodyguard!
- Dammit, I dive in after Little Red.
- Little Red Riding
Hood grabs Tim's ankle.
Sleeping Beauty grabs Little Red's.
- Are we trying to pull him out?
- Yeah, I'll try to.
- [Brennan] Pib, Gerard.
- I get behind Pib.
- Aw, Pib!
[laughing as Pinocchio
weakly tries to help]
- One, two, three, voom!
And both of you still have your books.
Pinocchio and Ylfa, you
have your books as well
that still have this sort
of residual golden light.
You feel stronger with
these books near you.
But Gerard, I think putting that ball
into Mother Goose's book, you feel,
even getting sucked
into this shadow vortex,
this thing of like, that ball was
one of your most significant
memories and you put it away,
and there was some act of putting it down.
It's still there. It's in
the book, that's where it is.
Whoosh! Into shadow.
You are all strung out
in a torrential storm,
and you see the Lullaby Lands,
the little village of Tuffeton
at some wild intersection
where its landscape is like a weird mirror
fracture intersection with
the lands of Neverafter,
and you see other kind of
realms orbiting around nearby,
huge tempests, and a
massive, winged gander,
its wings the size of
hurricanes, screaming.
[Brennan screeches]
[eldritch] Honk honk!
As lightning erupts from its beak.
You see an image of other
enormous birds behind it
moving from place to
place throughout time.
Anyone who wants to can
give me an insight check.
- [Ally] Yes.
- An insight check?
- [Brennan] Insight check.
- 22.
- [Brennan] 22.
- Natural 20.
- [Ally] Yes!
- Hell yes.
- Crit city, baby.
- With that nat 20,
you get one other thing
in addition to looking at the Gander.
Is there anywhere else
you direct your insight?
- I want to see what that fracture...
- As you see it, you see those
fractures are everywhere,
and I think you really see,
you're looking down at the
landscape of the Neverafter,
and you kind of see the full map of it.
You're hanging in the upper
atmosphere over the Neverafter
within Mother Goose's
book, and you begin to see
that Mother Goose's book is one
of these planeswalker tomes.
It's this thing that has some
ability to reorient reality.
It's this thing that has some
ability to reorient reality.
Looking at it, though,
you see the kingdoms of
Reverie and Elegy and Tapestry,
Greenleigh is there, but you also see
that those places are fractured,
and that whatever canon is,
whatever the will of the Authors is,
your stories were never
really supposed to touch.
It was never supposed
to get this complicated.
It was never supposed to get this strange.
- All of us talking is f*cking them over.
Everyone kiss each other.
[everyone laughing]
- I'm not kissing a child!
- I'm trying to be
sucked out of this book.
- Pinocchio, we're age
appropriate! Kiss me!
- I haven't turned into
a frog yet! What? Okay!
- Whoever's holding my
feet, I'm going to kiss you!
- Both Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots,
you look up at the Gander, and
on your high insight checks,
you see this massive, demonic figure
reeling back in lightning, and
on that high insight check,
you can tell that though
it is demonic and monstrous
and as enormous as the sky, it's in pain.
It's not in pain in a
fun, sympathetic way,
like a lion with a thorn in its paw,
but it is having that feral reaction
of something being
exposed to some kind of-
- Can I cast Speak with Animals on it?
- Yes, absolutely.
You go to cast Speak with Animals,
and you tether this magical connection,
and this godlike figure wheels around,
and it's your gander, Mother Goose.
It goes... [honks and hisses]
[glitching sounds]
- Are you okay?
- Oh, am I?
- Are you?
- I'm fine, Your Highness.
Seems Tim wanted you to see the shadow.
Seems Tim wanted you to see the shadow.
Well, take a look!
[crackling]
[thunder rolling]
And storm clouds roll
out over the Neverafter.
You think it's bad now? I'm
cooking something up even worse.
[pained screechy inhale]
- Can I tell what's hurting it?
- On a nat 20, yeah.
It's flying, and the wind
is constantly pushing it
back towards the Neverafter,
and as it pushes it, you see little seams
like the cutbacks you
saw in The Lines Between.
Some external force,
some force from that world
of parchment and text,
on that nat 20, you truly are like,
maybe this gander is just
the Gander while it's here.
Maybe this thing, when it
goes to the Lands of the Tall
or the Realm of Heroes or whatever,
maybe it becomes something else
and this gander gets to go
back to being what it was.
This is just a force of shadow.
It's a force of chaos and
upheaval in times of darkness,
and something is keeping
it from flying away.
You see it goes, [heavily inhaling]
you're worried about me?
- Yes, actually, whatever
it is you're doing,
we kind of like it, honestly.
- What?
- It's been kind of hard,
but good lessons to learn.
- Don't learn lessons from my torment!
Don't learn lessons from my torment!
- It's kind of what we do, I'm sorry.
- Well, stop!
- You have kind of an interesting
take on the whole thing.
- No, I don't! I'm hurting you!
- But in a good way! To heal!
- There's a pretty clear connection
between pain and kind of growth.
- Stop it! [roars]
[players laughing]
[lightning]
Lightning surges out.
As you say that, you see your book
again shaking in your hands, and again,
you're holding onto this
Cinderella text here.
- I want to look at it.
- It seems like the stories
are intimately tied to us,
the real us.
If Cinderella's story is all f*cked up,
do we have to- do we fix it?
- Maybe.
- Do we go into that book?
- Do we go in and fix it?
- Yes! Yes, yes!
We go in! Let's go in!
- Wait, is this just because
you want to see your wife?
- Sort of!
[everyone laughing]
- The Gander looks at you,
Mother Goose, and says,
nice little princess you got here.
It'll be a shame to
see when she dies again
how much the briars take on round three.
You're going to like this world
when you go back to it, Tim.
Jack didn't have you here,
and he's a real piece of work!
- You're clearly hurting.
We're getting close to solving this.
Am I in my own book, or can I access it?
- You haven't started your own poem
in your own book, I don't think.
You see the Gander says,
that was a bum wish.
You wanted to save your son.
You wanted to save the Neverafter.
You're going to get scared soon,
and I'll be waiting for that third wish,
and that's the last thing I
need to take all of this down.
and that's the last thing I
need to take all of this down.
And as the Gander says this,
all of you watch Tim emaciate
and understand that Tim is one wish away.
And all of you watch Tim's story unfold,
the version of him from this life
where Jack was never his
son, the version of him
from the world where you
all died where Jack was.
You see the desperation
of a wish to understand,
and then a wish to help,
but Tim's on his last wish.
You see all of those things
that Mother Goose tried to do,
and is holding something dearly bought.
The Gander goes, it's getting close now,
and rears its head back.
What do you...
- I'm looking for an exit,
and it might be the book in my hand.
- I think so too, let's just-
- Since it's so f*cked up, I'm like-
- Hey, if it's not, Cinderella's so cool.
- I mean, there's just
a lot of pages missing.
- The princesses are the only ones
we could maybe quasi-trust.
- Yeah, let's do it.
- Let's do it.
- f*ck it. I'll take quasi-trust.
_ I like them.
- You open this next book.
You all dive into it.
As you do, you see The
Gander goes like, no!
Leaps forward, and for a second
you think it's lightning,
but you see it's not lightning.
As you open that book, those cutbacks,
those seams or whatever of
fractures in space and time
start racing like lightning
towards the book as you open it
and almost take the
shape of a massive hand
reaching for the book.
- Can I cast Gust?
Can I use my Big Bad Wolf
breath to blow him away?
- Hell yeah, you want to do it?
- Yeah.
[Emily exhales sharply]
- You cast a big gust, and all of you
are buffeted through the
sky, through storm clouds.
Pib, you open the book
and then one, two, three,
four, five, six, whoom,
and the page shuts just as
that last crackle comes away,
and you are all standing
in an unfinished,
or should I say
mostly erased story.
There's parts of the sky
that are just not there,
and when I say not there,
I mean when you look,
you don't see a blank
page, you don't see void,
it's just, you can't quite look there.
As you watch in this space,
it's the feeling of a word
I'll bring back all the
way from our first season
of making this show together,
it's a little bit of a palimpsest,
a thing that has been scrubbed.
You are looking, though, at a place
that even though some of
the lines and outlines of it
are strangely gone in a way
that makes you nauseous and uneasy,
a home that you recognize
from a previous life.
Cinderella's home.
- [softly] Oh, yeah.
- You behold a different time, though.
You hear the ringing of
distant bells in celebration,
and you see,
running screaming from a flock of birds,
two young women holding
their bleeding faces
as the birds peck out their
eyes and peck at their faces
and peck at their throats,
running and screaming,
and you see a woman go
out and try to throw
a thick blanket over the two
daughters and cover them,
and you see
the face, partially there.
You see something's tried to
erase this as hard as it can,
something powerful, and Pinocchio,
you feel a deep attachment to this.
You recognize the magic here.
This is a story that was
attempted to be erased
not by them,
but a character tried to
erase their own story,
or perhaps tried to
consume their own story.
You see this woman rush
out, throw a blanket
over the two daughters, and
then there's a leap forward.
Part of the story erased,
it jumps forward in time,
and you see the mother tending
to these two deeply injured
women, and she says,
it's going to be all right.
It's going to be all right.
I love you.
Your stepsister
is the princess now.
She is not going to, if she is decent,
going to allow you to live in misery.
I will find a way to fix this.
And you see this woman
addressing a prince and princess.
This Cinderella does not wear armor.
She is still in her gown.
The woman says, given that
they were so grievously injured
by the birds that seem to
help you, Your Highness,
whensoever you wish them
to, I cannot help but wonder
if it does not fall to
the prince and princess
to see that they are helped.
You see Cinderella looks
at the Stepmother and goes,
I am sorry that they are wounded.
I am sorry that they have been injured.
Respectfully, I did not
cut the toes or heels
from their feet so that they
could fit into a glass slipper.
I knew that you were jealous!
You're a spiteful girl!
I am sorry I cannot help you.
You see the Stepmother
thinking by a fireside
and then saying, there
are those who can help me.
I will save my girls.
You see her don a cloak
and ride out on a horse,
and you see long days of
travel, and you see this woman
who was spiteful and cruel to Cinderella,
but it cannot be argued
that she did not love her two daughters,
a woman who seems possessed
of some conviction or determination
as well as some degree of
spite, but astride this horse,
you see her in deep snow in
a deep and ancient forest.
She says, there are those who know.
There are those who know. I
will find why this has happened.
And you see her arrive
at a small cottage in the woods,
and as she arrives, she is
suddenly very frightened.
The cottage
stands
on two chicken's legs.
[Emily gasps]
- Oh my god! [squeals]
- You see that the woman gets
off of her horse and says,
- You see that the woman gets
off of her horse and says,
hello?
My name is...
[fabric tearing]
A seam opens in space
as she says her name that you cannot hear.
I have ridden far, a long way.
I asked all I could, though
it made me seem mad or a fool,
of any witches that might
know the secrets of healing
or might know why our lives
have come to such ruin,
and I was told to come here
to the greatest witch of all.
The cottage uneasily
shifts on its chicken feet.
Right behind the woman's
ear, a voice goes,
you have come far,
and a woman hovers out flying
in a giant stone mortar,
kind of rowing with a pestle,
is an old and ancient witch,
looks like some primeval
spirit of the forest,
and here, she is rendered
in explicit detail.
It seems that the reason you are able
to perceive this story at all
despite all of the attempts to erase it
is that the story exists
in the mind of this witch,
and she will not allow
anything of hers to be erased.
Completely, at least.
So, you have come far to this place,
riding on your horse.
What is it that you seek?
You see the woman says,
help. Understanding.
I'm a proud woman.
My daughters are badly injured
and hated in our kingdom,
as the princess is quite beloved,
and the story has spread far and wide,
her side of the story about
how she was... treated.
You did mistreat her.
What?
Of course you did.
You are Wicked Stepmother.
I was not a wicked stepmother.
I did not say you were
a wicked stepmother.
You are Wicked Stepmother.
Don't you know?
If you will agree to give me
one favor of yours,
binding,
maybe I tell you why
your life is so rotten.
Not understanding the ways of witches,
you see the Stepmother agrees.
Baba Yaga, ancient and most
powerful witch, looks at her.
Baba Yaga, ancient and most
powerful witch, looks at her.
I give you something now
which will break you,
because you have asked for it,
and let this be a lesson to
be careful what you ask for.
And you see here that Baba Yaga shows,
and you can see the light
of text and parchment
[shimmering]
on this woman's face, and
you see her awakening,
as all of you did, to this reality.
Why are you showing me the
story of my stepdaughter?
This is the story you are from.
Show me my story.
You don't have a story!
You don't even have a name.
Yes I do. I do have a name.
No, no, no.
You might have a name
in some frivolous way,
You might have a name
in some frivolous way,
but it's not important
that you have a name.
It doesn't matter that you have a name.
You want to know why your life is ruined?
Do you want to know why
you hate your stepdaughter?
You hate your stepdaughter so that
we can love your stepdaughter,
because the crueler you are
to her, the more we like her.
This is what you are.
You see the Stepmother goes,
I don't even have a name in my own story.
I don't even have a name in my own story,
and my own story isn't even my story.
I don't know how I feel about that.
Or maybe I do.
Who makes these stories?
Where can I find them?
You want to find them?
You will have to sacrifice
much to find them.
How about I start with my name?
I so clearly don't need it.
You see the Stepmother takes a knife,
plunges it into her chest,
and blood splatters all over
the page in front of you
as you see the Stepmother
not move to the next edition of her story,
but move out,
move out beyond the world,
move into the spaces between worlds.
[tense music]
You made me to be evil.
You made me to be a monster,
and I never had a choice.
Every bad thing that happened to me
was planned from the start.
I don't think I like your story.
I don't think I like any stories.
And you see this blood red ink grow,
and see other versions of Cinderella,
other versions of these stories.
You see her reach down
and pick a little illustration
off a page and eat it,
and start to move through
The Lines Between.
[Brennan growling]
Doesn't matter. I'm not
even really a person, right?
And you see her begin to move
through these texts and
parchment and pages,
having ascended to a higher reality.
As that happens,
you see her growing
greater and greater and vaster and vaster,
until she starts devouring stuff
that's not even in
Cinderella's story anymore.
You see she's gotten powerful enough,
she opens Snow White's book,
sees an evil queen with a huntsman.
Close enough.
[snarling and feasting]
Devours it.
And you remember a mirror in a carriage
telling you to talk to the Stepmother.
All of you in this space
see her moving, and
suddenly have the awareness
that you are moving quickly
towards the present of
the Stepmother's story.
- How do we get out of there?
- Yeah, do we feel any sort of agency
with regard to moving
away from that space?
- I think that there is a
worry about not being able
to go back to any of the
places you have already gone,
but you probably need to get
out of this story, and quickly.
but you probably need to get
out of this story, and quickly.
- We've run out of books, right?
- Does anybody have any?
- Does anybody have anything
that can move us somewhere?
- We still have our books.
- I mean, yeah.
- I mean, what about the stuff
that we got from the spider?
- Stuff that we got from the spider,
a couple of cloaks.
- Yeah.
- And this sword.
- I'm out of tricks.
- What do the cloaks do?
What do the cloaks do?
[Brennan snorting ravenously]
- Children? Children?
- Can we go back?
- You see the Stepmother begin to move
on the pages of her own book.
What are you going to do?
- I don't have anything I can do.
- What about the cloak?
- This cloak only takes one.
- Does it seem like we
could go back to Pinocchio,
back to my story, or back to Red's story?
- Yeah.
- Potentially.
- Can you go to the library, grab a book,
come bring it back, and
we all jump into it?
- Can I?
- In order to reach out
and get your book, because
you're so far gone into this one,
you're going to have
to reach out in a way,
ask for some magic.
[Brennan snarling]
- I open the package
that Cinderella gave me,
and inside it, I find a poison apple.
- [Brennan] Yes.
- And I throw this poison
apple at the Stepmother.
- You throw a poison apple.
As it does,
you see she turns around.
Within her, you see
a crowned woman
inside her mouth,
and that crowned woman,
from inside her cheek,
shoves the cheek so that the
apple goes into the mouth,
and you see that the queen
catches it, looks at you,
and falls back to be devoured again,
holding the poison apple
with a look of recognition
that maybe she was the one
who made those poisoned
apples to begin with.
She falls back, and you
see the Stepmother goes
[Brennan screams]
and just starts slashing
at pages around here,
and as she does, you
all tumble back through.
All of you tumble out.
As you tumble out of here,
she sort of vomiting out,
books tumble with all of you.
Pib and Rosamund, with
her going sort of wild,
each of you watch as tumbling towards you,
a volume of Puss in Boots and
a volume of Sleeping Beauty
both thump onto your chests
out of the tumbling
parchment as you land here.
It was the right move to
investigate the Stepmother,
but the Stepmother's attention
has ejected you from The Lines Between.
That poison apple was just what you needed
to get out of here,
and you are back in the Neverafter.
You are no longer in The Lines Between.
The Stepmother's as*ault has
ejected you from this place,
and you recognize storm clouds.
You don't feel the
weird lightness of being
of being in that other realm.
You don't even recognize where
you're standing right now,
but you see it is choked not
only with rain and storms
but the thick smell of ash and soot.
All you smell is ash, soot, iron,
and sort of waste.
- No sea salt?
- No sea salt anywhere.
You look around and you see
there are some other alleyways
or places around here, and looking,
you see that you've all
basically been shunted
out of a door that, the moment it's open,
sort of collapses off its
hinges, and there is now
no longer a door there
for you to worry about.
- Mother Goose, I want to meet that witch.
- The one that gave her the power?
- [Emily] The Baba Yaga.
- I don't know.
She seemed really scary.
- The scariest person
I've ever seen in my life.
- Yeah, by far the most intimidating.
- Yeah, I also was scared,
and I didn't think it was rad.
[players laughing]
I also thought I was scared.
I also was scared. I
didn't think it was cool.
[Brennan laughing]
- [Brennan] It was cool. It was very cool.
- Is there an inn around here
that we could maybe slink off into?
- You look around, as you start
to look around for an inn,
you leave the alley and
get onto a main street.
Smokestacks everywhere belching smoke out,
huge brick buildings
everywhere, massive warehouses,
and you see trudging menial laborers
with carts filled with cannons and swords
with carts filled with cannons and swords
and weaponry and armor, and you see-
- Is this the w*r you left?
- I think the w*r I left
is the same w*r that hit everywhere.
- You see a poster up on a wall that says,
all able-bodied and willing
subjects of the City of Chimneys
all able-bodied and willing
subjects of the City of Chimneys
must report for the draft.
Active compulsory military
service is required
to defend our glorious city
and serve the Council of Kings.
- The City of Chimneys?
Well, I mean, if chimneys,
then there's a fire,
and this might be where the Wolf is.
- Maybe.
- Are there any pigs walking around?
- You look at the bottom of
the poster and see a seal
of the City of Chimneys,
and an elaborate boar's head
of the City of Chimneys,
and an elaborate boar's head
with the seal of the Baron of Bricks.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- This is...
Wow.
- Maybe we tuck the tail under the cloak.
- Yeah, that's a good call.
Maybe I could just try and
stop the change. [grunts]
I turn into more of a wolf.
- Can I kind of do her makeup?
[Emily and Brennan laughing]
- Yeah, you want to do
a little disguise check?
Yeah, give me a little disguise check.
- Me and Mother Goose are
going to do a full makeover.
- Wow. Turn me around.
- I have a disguise kit.
I'm going to, like, okay kid. Let's see.
- Contour me. Make me look so skinny.
[players laughing]
- All right. Your nose is
now two slits in the front.
- [Ally] Pib, great job.
- You sort of gussy them up.
So I think all of you,
just also checking in,
all of you have escaped
interdimensional chaos and horror.
How's everyone looking and feeling?
- Are we in a new book, or are we-
- I think we're in
The Big Bad Wolf and
the Three Little Pigs.
- Go ahead actually, anyone,
and give me a history
check if you want to.
- Yeah, who are the Council of Kings?
- Nat one.
- I got a 21.
- Also a nat one.
- [Brennan] 21?
- 19.
- Haven't lived long enough.
- Makes sense for a
princess to know history.
- 14.
- You've been so kind
of thinking of the stuff
you've learned in your first
lives, and you go back,
realizing that you sort of have
these two sets of memories,
you go back into, okay, the
world that we departed from
when we went into The Lines Between,
and you realize it's not ancient history.
So stuff like the Council
of Kings seems somewhat new,
but the City of Chimneys
you'd heard about,
but it's all recent, it's
all Neverafter stuff, right?
You think you're back in
the world you departed from.
You are back in the Neverafter
that your princesses are headed towards.
- [Siobhan] Okay, great.
- And it's all brick,
so these are the pigs that lived.
This is the progress that was
able to defend from the Wolf.
- As you say the pigs
who lived, Mother Goose,
your book is still glowing,
and as you thumb through it,
your book, as you start
talking about the pigs,
that text floats to the front.
You believe that your book,
in being in that tumbling
inter-dimensional space,
may have absorbed tons of information
from The Lines Between,
so things that you didn't know before
about other fairy tales,
you now have absorbed that information,
and the story of the Three
Little Pigs comes up.
The version you pull up
is not whatever the City of Chimneys is,
but you can pull up
the original fairy tale
of the Three Little Pigs.
- Okay.
- And your book may now also
cast Legend Lore once per day.
- Cool.
- Are we alive?
- I mean, are we ever alive?
- I just am feeling sort
of a tonnage of bad things
have happened to us.
- I could use a sit down,
maybe a nice nap.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- I could lay down in an alley.
- There's probably a market, right?
This little pig went to market.
- While we do that, do
you guys mind if I sing?
- A big stack of mattresses
with no peas underneath.
- Yeah.
- I would love for you to sing.
- Oh, great.
- Yeah.
- Don't f*cking sing right now.
- I would love if we found
just an appropriate place,
and then you are more
than welcome to sing.
- It's been such a long time
since I heard anybody sing.
- I was just wondering if
while y'all are asleep,
if I could just kind of-
- Sing?
- [Ally] Do a little bit of singing.
- While we're sleeping?
- [Ally] Mm-hm.
- Why are you asking us that?
- That sounds so delightful.
- I don't know, I just have
a bit of a Song of Rest
that I'm hoping to use.
- Is there anyone around?
- Yeah, there's menial
laborers and workers around.
- Can I go tug on someone's cloak?
- Yeah, you see sort of a mill worker
turns around and says, hello?
- Hi, mister.
We're from out of town and
looking for somewhere to sleep.
Is there a nearby inn or tavern
where ones such as us could seek refuge?
- No inns, no taverns. City of
Chimneys ain't for visitors.
No tourism here, lad.
This is a place for work.
- This is a human, right?
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- Got it, yeah, we're
reporting to work right now.
- Yeah.
- Sure.
- We're from out of town to work.
- I know what work is,
and I've done it a lot.
- I'm going to k*ll this man.
[everyone laughing]
Or just knock him out.
- Yeah, you see he says, oh.
Where are you reporting to?
- Oh, right here.
[Ally laughs]
I rolled a 14.
- [Brennan] You hit, and
this guy has four hit points,
so he just goes right down.
- Wait, before you die,
do you know where any oceans are?
- Thump. Yeah, he's gone.
[splatting, body falling]
- Help me. Help me.
- Okay, all right.
- Okay, I have minus two to strength.
- Is there anything in my
book that would help us?
- You can read the original
story of the Three Little Pigs,
and you do know that the
Big Bad Wolf is there,
and I think you look up at
the top of the hill here
and see that at the top of the hill,
there is a truly massive
fortress of bricks,
and you see that it has the crest on it
of this massive boar's head.
- There's only one boar, though.
- Only one.
- Mm.
- Because only one survived, right?
- [Ally] It's the boar that lived.
- It's the boar that lived.
- [Ally] It's the boy that lived.
- And then they probably, yeah.
- Everybody roll around
in soot. [laughing]
- Okay, don't have to ask me twice.
[Brennan laughing]
- [Lou] Can I just rub
it? I'm just going to...
- I'm not rubbing around in soot.
I don't know what what
you're talking about.
- I'm kind of just thinking out loud here,
but I do want to pin this.
If we think that putting stuff in the book
is really limiting and a
little bit too containing
for what we want, do
you think we could put
the evil stuff in the
book and try to suck that
out of our world and contain
it just in this book?
- Like essentially a sin eater?
- Like the reverse of the
Nat- the King Cole situation.
- Yeah.
- [Zac] Maybe.
- But then we already trapped
some good people in there.
- I'd let them out.
- [Siobhan] King Cole
wanted to be in there.
- Anyway, I just wanted
to say that out loud.
Maybe we can all be thinking about that.
- Something to think about.
- Give me a arcana check
with advantage now, if you'd be so kind.
- Yeah.
- Oh yeah.
- Hm, interesting.
That's a 14.
- 14.
As you say, could we do
some stuff with the book,
I actually am going to give an answer
maybe you're not expecting.
I think you think even on a
and I think that what
you're coming to realize,
especially on your
interactions with the fairy,
especially on your interactions
with the Stepmother,
your interactions with the Big Bad Wolf,
the Gander, all these
things, is that yeah,
these stories have tremendous power.
There's than ink in The Lines Between
that seems incredibly potent.
But there's still parts of it
that need some magic
from the world, right?
Even the fairies, the
fairies are like, yeah,
our magic aligns with the
power of the Canonade.
It aligns with the power of the ink.
But we still gotta get the
Wolf to help with something.
It seems like there are
these limitations of like,
we can push the story,
but you can't push it
to the point where it stops making sense.
You've got to, like,
so I think that what you're realizing is,
the book kind of naturally
was seeking canon.
It was seeking the way, especially
for your nursery rhymes,
which are often so simple
and short and pure,
and you think about what Aesop said.
Things like Little Miss
Muffet or Old King Cole,
their stories that they cared
about were quite simple,
and you were able to nail them
in a way that aligned with
this force of destiny.
But you think the book is
more powerful than that,
because why the f*ck is everyone
looking at it like it is?
- Yeah, it's like a holding room.
I could put people in there safely,
but we could let them back out,
but then we could try to
trap something in there.
- Maybe we could resurrect someone.
If the Wolf died here, then
maybe his ashes are here,
and we could make an ink from
his ashes, and you could write
about the Wolf as something
other than just Big Bad.
- [Ally] Totally, I mean,
I'm down to try any of that.
- And maybe he would be resurrected.
- Yeah.
- But Cinderella's story
is already in the book.
So if we want the princesses
to come here, maybe we can just-
- Well, she has a huge gap
in her story right now.
- Yes, but she's in there still.
- Yeah.
- When we put the shard in.
- Yeah.
- So the shard's gone
in, the ball has gone in.
Did you put your spindle in there as well?
The spindle's in there as well, yeah.
- Ball made it very unhappy.
- Oh, it did.
- Oh yeah.
- The book has this potent power,
but understanding it more
would certainly help,
because I think you think it's like, yeah,
you can make moves with this
that are not prescribed.
You can get creative with this.
You could probably do
some wild stuff with this.
But there would be hoops
you had to jump through
and stuff you had to figure
out, and I think thinking of,
is there anyone out there
that knows stuff like that,
and it seems like everybody's
got a piece of the puzzle.
Fairies seem to understand some things,
princesses seem to understand some things.
the Wolf, the Gander,
and now you're looking
at this weird Council of Kings,
and there's also that woman
in the chicken-legged hut
you saw in that vision.
- That you love. Your best friend.
- I just thought she
was really cool, okay?
- Yeah, I think she's cool too.
I guess, should we go try
to see what the kings know?
- I think we should try to find the Wolf.
- Yeah. Gerard, have my back.
And then I'm going to
walk over to someone here.
- Oh my god!
- And just say,
where's the Wolf?
[Murph and Siobhan gasp]
- Huh?
- Where's the Wolf?
- It was me that said that.
Look at my face carefully,
not hers. Where's the Wolf?
- The Wolf? You're enemies of the state!
- No, no!
- [Brennan] Enemies of the state!
- Ah!
[flesh squelching]
- Dead. Don't even roll.
- The Swallow Flies Southward! I'm sorry!
- I don't know if we're going
to know someone who knows-
- Yeah, we just need to go break him out.
- No, I think we-
[Ally laughs]
- [Emily] I just thought
maybe I'd catch him off guard.
- I think to find the Wolf,
we need to find the pig.
- Yeah, feels like the Council of Kings-
- No, there's a fortress, right?
- The pig is probably in the fortress.
- There's a big brick fortress.
- Let's go sneak into this fortress.
- Let's go sneak into the fortress.
- Do you think the fortress
has little bars up,
and the wolf is being held c*ptive?
- The fortress is probably
the first brick house.
- Yeah, totally.
- So there's probably
the original chimney.
- Ashes.
- We're not going to be
able to talk to anyone.
- Mm-hm.
- The boar is not going to like us.
- Mm-mm.
- We just need to try to find the wolf.
- [Siobhan] Everybody
here is mean and sad.
- Okay, then I guess we should try to get
a little bit of rest while I sing.
[Emily cackling]
Before we go.
- What are you going
to sing, Mother Goose?
- Come on, let's get in this
alley and you sing at us.
- Let's do it. Let's go.
- Does anyone need hit points?
Just in case they try to
fight us when we get up there.
- [Emily] I curl up on Mother Goose's lap.
- I just need spell slots.
- Do we need some spell slots?
Do we want to be smart about this?
- Sing to me, Timothy.
- Go ahead, sing for us. Come on.
- Sing to me!
- We'll go camping,
and then tomorrow we'll
sneak into the brick place.
♪ Sha la la la la ♪
♪ Sha na na na na, sha la la la la ♪
- So soothing.
- So you guys are going
to go camping real quick?
- We're just going to pull up in an alley
and just, you know.
♪ Oh, oh ♪
- Are other people, because
I didn't really get hit
in the last-
- I didn't get hit.
I'm just out of spell slots,
but it's not the end of the world for me.
- I haven't been hurt yet.
- [Ally] Oh, okay.
- I can also just go. I can also just go.
- No, we'll go together.
- What? No way, no separating.
- No, no, no. You definitely can't go.
- No no no, that's not what I meant.
I'm saying I'm good to
just go to the fortress.
- Oh yeah, let's go.
- Oh yeah, of course.
- With no spells for our spellcasters?
- I used definitely most of them,
and I guess I would get some of them back.
- [Murph] We haven't
slept since spider fight.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Okay, then I think that
we should go camping.
♪ Sha la la la la ♪
- I want to find an alley nearby.
- I think we need to go camping.
- Yeah, you guys, it's fine
to be f*cking exhausted.
You've been going ham since spider fight.
- Let's climb up on a roof or something.
- Ooh!
- These people all want to k*ll us.
- Yeah, so we shouldn't be on the ground.
Let's go on the roof.
- Oh yeah!
- The last time somebody went
on one of these brick houses,
they fell down the
chimney and got burnt up.
- Only because he was trying
to climb down the chimney.
- [Murph] Let's just camp.
- As long as we don't
get into the chimney, we'll be fine.
- Great, let's go on the roof.
- [Lou] Let's go on the roof.
- Dammit! Fine!
- You guys go on the roof.
Give me a group stealth check.
- [Ally] Oh my god.
- Group stealth.
- Oh, I'm going to use,
one of the things we found
was the cloak of rushes,
which was the cloak
with the stuff on it to
hide, so I now have advantage
on stealth checks.
- [Brennan] Hell yeah.
- So I'll do them flat.
- Do them flat, great.
Just a frog wearing a
huge thing of rushes.
- I got a freaking five.
- [Siobhan] Jesus.
- [Brennan] Okay, what'd
we get here? Ylfa?
- 21.
- [Brennan] 21.
- 16.
- [Brennan] 16.
- Nine.
- 12.
- 10.
- So 12 is our highest
there up on the roof, great.
- The roof, huh, guys?
- Well, everyone else is on the ground.
- I can use a luck point.
- And we don't know yet!
- Okay, you want to use a luck point here?
- What was the middle?
- [Emily] I'm 21.
- Will it move the needle a little bit?
- Who got a 12?
- [Brennan] You got a 12.
What'd you get?
- No, I got a 10.
- 12.
- [Brennan] You got a 12.
- [Emily] So you were in the middle.
- You could pop up
higher with a luck point.
- Okay, I will. I'll definitely do that.
Hey!
- Hey!
- 19.
- Oh sh*t, so 21, 19, and-
- [Zac] 16.
- 16, okay.
- Okay.
- Can we sleep on the roof, please?
- Yeah, how about the roof, Gerard?
- You guys have a long rest.
- Yes!
- Yes!
- Incredible.
Good use of a luck point.
- Does Mother Goose sing?
- [Murph] Keep the singing very-
♪ Sha la la la la, sha na na na na ♪
- So soothing. I love this.
- So, you guys awake the next morning,
sleeping out in the open rain
on a soot-covered rooftop.
- Why? Why?
- The people are down there.
- Right, but we can go to,
like, there's woods nearby.
- I'm freezing cold and I'm so dirty.
Good morning, everyone.
- Incredible.
Yeah, I'm going to need
everyone to give me
a constitution saving throw real quick.
- Were there woods nearby?
- Far away. You're deep in the city.
- All right, they were far away, Gerard.
- I got an eight.
- [Brennan] Eight, okay.
- [Emily] 12.
- Natural 20.
- [Brennan] Natural 20.
[Ally whistles]
- 19.
- [Brennan] 19.
- Eight, but I'm a frog.
- [Ally] 12.
- [Brennan] 8, 12.
- What does that mean?
- Frogs can be wet.
- [Brennan] Great, cool.
- [Ally] Oh yeah, that's true.
- This is pond life.
- So there's just going to be,
for the Frog Prince and Rosamund,
there'll be a level of exhaustion.
- Oh, come on.
- But he's a frog!
He can be wet and dirty!
- I'm a frog!
- How're we all feeling
today? We ready to do this?
- Hashtag pond life.
- [Murph] Hashtag pond life.
- How you guys doing?
You guys ready? I'm good!
[stretching] Ah!
[Emily laughing]
Ah! There it is, ha ha!
- Honestly, I feel pretty f*cking ready.
- You have bardic, right?
- I feel good.
- You look so good.
- Hey, thank you.
- Oh yeah.
- You look so rested.
- I slept well.
- What did you guys need to roll, though?
Could I have blessed
them? I have Bless now.
- Yes, you could've blessed
them, if you wanted to.
- You guys want to add a d4?
- You want to add a little d4 to that?
- [Siobhan] Sure.
- [Murph] I mean, I rolled
a three, so I got an eight.
- [Brennan] Eight.
- That's a four.
- [Murph] But I can do a d4, maybe.
- So I got a 12.
- [Brennan] 12.
- [Murph] Oh, I rolled a four as well.
What did I say I had to start with?
- Eight.
- [Emily] So that's 12 also.
- [Murph] So 12.
- [Brennan] DC was 10.
- [Murph] Great.
- Phew.
- [Brennan] Way to go, Mother Goose.
- That singing actually really
lulled me to sleep, Tim.
♪ Sha la la ♪
- I'm making weird coffee,
but it's just soot with
some water in a pot.
Good morning, everyone!
- Oh, thank you. [gags]
Why?
[Emily laughing]
- Sometimes it's just what it looks like.
- You have to keep some rituals in place.
- To where do you go
that following morning?
- All right, I know-
- It seems like the people
know where the Wolf is.
- I think the Wolf might be
in that fortress in some capacity.
- So why don't we go in there?
- Just sneak in.
- You're a kingdom-minded person.
That sounds so religious.
- [Murph] Of course.
- You might know how
we could get in there.
Do you know anything about
castles, or a good way to enter?
- I mean, I'm the Princess of Reverie.
I could say it's a diplomatic mission.
- An envoy.
- [Ally] Diplomatic envoy!
- Okay. I could turn into your horse.
- You can?
- Will you turn into a horse,
or will you turn into a
little girl who has hooves?
- I'll turn into a little
girl pretending to be a horse
who's really preternaturally fast.
- What if we just got closer
to it and saw what was there?
- Yeah, why don't we see
what the situation is,
because I fear that if we try
to go talk to the boar
or something like that,
then we're going to have to
k*ll the boar, which seems hard.
- [Emily] Pinocchio.
- Yeah?
- Do you have Pinocchi-Crow anymore?
- Pinocchio is... [laughs]
Because the last time
Pinocchio did anything magical,
it was with relation to
his book and the strings.
Does Pinocchio feel
magical in this moment?
- I think you do. I think
you still have your book.
You have, of course, the
book, but then the four of you
each have your book with you.
- Except Gerard's is, like,
in his heart, right?
- [Brennan] Inside him, yeah.
When he put the ball in there,
he fully absorbed his book.
- I ate the book.
- For you guys,
as you're examining that magic,
where is it you want to go?
Do you want to do this
diplomatic plan, going up to-
- Or we try to sneak in.
Why don't we just get close?
- Let's just scope out
what the entrance looks
like from a safe distance.
- [Siobhan] Good idea.
- Then maybe, I don't know,
Maybe our books are the answers
that we need before going in.
- [Ally] Yeah.
- Yeah, I'll keep an eye
on my book as we get closer
to see if it has any reaction to wolf.
- Y'all walk up towards
this massive fortress
at the top of the hill.
It is brutalist and just, like,
this squat cube of bricks.
There's no windows in it.
It is just this monolith
with huge smokestacks,
and not even a grand pair of doors.
There's no courtyards, nothing like that.
It's just a vaulted door at the base,
so you're not seeing a lot of
crannies to sneak in, really.
It's like you'd pretty
much only be able to go in
through the chimneys, if that, which-
- Oh.
- Oh no.
- We know how that ends.
- Boar is a prepper.
Can I investigate to see...
- You see there's a knocker on the door.
- I say we run envoy.
- Okay.
- Diplomatic envoy.
- I think we go envoy.
- All right.
- From the Kingdom of Reverie.
- You're going to become a horse?
- You're going to be a horse?
- Just not a wolf, I guess.
- I think I'll just
hide in the background,
and if someone really notices me,
then I'll try to act like a horse.
- Maybe you wear this other cloak.
You're not that tall. You
can just hide in the cloak.
- Yeah, oh, that's a good
idea! I'll just dye my cloak.
- Dye your cloak? Like, a different color?
- Little Blue Riding Hood?
- Like, right now?
- Do we have time?
- We have no time.
- Let's knock on the-
- Maybe dip it in the soot coffee.
- All right, we're going with Rosamund?
- [Ally] Yes.
- Because I'm a frog, so
that's going to weird them out.
- [Ally] Oh, yes, right.
- [Lou] Yes.
- [Siobhan] Right.
- We are your diplomatic envoy.
- [Murph] All right.
- Great.
- And you are here with
news about your kingdom,
and you want to know what's
happening in their kingdom.
- Yes, the w*r effort.
- [Ally] Yes, the w*r effort.
- Oh, you could propose a
marriage. A political marriage.
- All right, everyone
act very high status.
I go over and I knock.
- You go propose marriage.
- Okay! Calm down!
- [Ally] We knock on the door.
- I knock on the door.
- This is a lie.
- I don't think a princess is
allowed to propose marriage.
- [Emily] Okay, okay.
- You knock on the door.
[knocking on metal door]
There's a long pause.
After a moment,
[metal clunking]
you hear wheels turning inside.
The door swings open,
and red light emerges from inside.
You see, standing there in a
sharp looking military coat,
You see, standing there in a
sharp looking military coat,
some epaulettes, is a tall boar
standing on his hind legs, long snout.
[Brennan snorts]
- Hello there,
Sir Boar.
[tense, eerie string music]
I am a princess
of the Kingdom of Reverie, and I'm here
to offer myself in marriage.
[Emily cackling]
- [Brennan] I'm going to
say persuasion, advantage.
[Emily cackling at the idea of
Sleeping Beauty x Little Pig]
- What are you-
- I feel like the last
thing you just said...
- Oh.
- That's an 18.
- The boar looks at you
and goes... [snorts]
- The boar looks at you
and goes... [snorts]
- For an allegiance-based reason.
- Milady.
I am honored,
flattered,
and above all,
I accept.
- Oh!
[players clapping hesitantly]
- That's fantastic.
- Enchanté.
[Emily cackling once more]
Weird hoof.
Slimy hoof.
- Slimy hoof?
- It's wet.
Oh, it's much wetter than I-
- Covered in blood and ash.
- Well, this calls for a
celebration! Let us in!
- Let's go in.
- Please.
Come into my home.
It is so nice,
and I hope you enjoy it.
I'm glad you didn't have
to huff and puff to get in.
[Brennan chuckling darkly]
[players laughing nervously]
- This is my entourage.
No need for introductions.
- Turn into a horse now!
- And that's all for this
episode of Dimension 20!
Tune in next week as we meet
the Baron of Bricks in
the City of Chimneys.
And what are you holding there?
- Oh.
- [Brennan] Your book?
- I love to be read
a bedtime story at night
to send me to sleep.
- And we've hit such hard times
that now I have to read to her at night.
- The world is only as
mean as the people in it,
so every time you wake up with a smile,
you're making the world a little less sad.
- Honestly, I can't decide
if I love this [laughing]
or if I'm gonna get real
tired of it real quick.
- You have come in here
and made an offer of love
to a very lonely and dangerous man.
- I made an offer of marriage.
- We didn't know you were lonely.
- To a very lonely and dangerous man.
- Bam. Pib, you're a pro with
this thing at this point.
- I could see myself
doing something like this in the future.
- Seven!
[players cheering]
This is the biggest and baddest thing
in all of fairy tale,
and you want to set it free.
[ominous music]
[ominous music continues]
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16x09 - Origins
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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.