episode 002 | accomplice 02

INTRO

SATAH: Welcome to Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. I’m your host, Satah, and I’m showcasing multiple possible experiences of self-paced games by inviting guests to play them alongside me so I can compile our stories together. I started laughing when I said that because it sounded like I was like, [Boastfully] “I’m”, like, pointing my thumb dramatically at myself like a little kid in overalls in a musical about to start a song. Is that relatable?

Today we’re continuing our game of Accomplice, a roleplaying game about researching the unknown by Michael Klamerus. With me again are Caleb Zane Huett and Tomas Gimenez Rioja. Check out the physical edition of Triangle Agency, a roleplaying game of paranormal investigation and corporate horror, and get yourself on the list to be notified of the Kickstarter launch for Magnolia: City of Marvels, a systemless setting of art, punk, and rebellion. All of the links are in the episode description.

As a reminder, as we keep going, we are in the research phase of Accomplice. We’re pulling a card, we’re rolling a D6, we’re pulling a couple more cards.

I love the way that Michael’s prompts in Accomplice intersect with each other. There’s something really wonderful to me about being directed to figure out what you’ve found in part by considering the platform you found it on. I really like the thought process of like, what sort of possible weakness is most likely to be found in a newspaper versus a magazine or an eyewitness account? How does the nature of evidence change if you find it in a video in your personal library versus finding that exact same video in a museum or online? It’s really cool, I found it super generative, and I loved hearing how my guests interpreted the prompts as well. Which is, in fact, why I’m making this show. So, just noting, mission accomplished. Internally checking that off.

So for this episode, I experimented with constructing a previously-on. I’ve always appreciated a good previously-on segment, but my respect for those editors has multiplied about a thousand fold after compiling this one. If I can find a more efficient workflow for it, I will bring it back. But if I don’t, this will be the last one you ever hear, because it was kind of a nightmare to put together. Let’s give it a go.

PREVIOUSLY ON

[Music shifts]

SATAH (last episode): When we were kids, this is what we did. We were a supernatural investigation crew. So there have been these like crop circles appearing on people’s perfect like manicured lawns and whatever. The hero was off at college and has like come back and is like, “Why does everybody think that we’ve always had a neighbour ‘Ms. Gleebglorb’?”

CALEB (last episode): I’m in Atlanta around Dragon Con. I’m not from the future, but the hero is from the future. We are dealing with a bunch of different problems that might cause this like horrible apocalyptic future the hero came back from, that he returned from. They have a lot of energy. They have a lot of heroism. And I think probably I’m in love with them.

TOMAS (last episode): Today I’ll be fighting a doppelganger. Jorge Pugnales is an investigator of the occult; I am a librarian. I don’t work full time anymore because Jorge is very good at what he does.

SATAH (last episode): They have integrated themselves into this community in order to get elected to the head of the PTA and then question mark. Brenda Gleebglorb’s cover photo on Facebook is a night sky. And I lean in: “That can’t be taken from Earth.”

CALEB (last episode): So Zyll brought with him this data pad of historical record from the future. There’s a spike of android sightings beginning in 2024, a scientist or a company that have begun making androids and have been losing control of them. An android that looks like a pop star. If they’re out of the sun for a whole hour, they will shut off despite how strong they are.

TOMAS (last episode): There is a map hanging on the backside of the bed. Maybe some sort of message that the doppelganger wants to help us know. Maybe he is trying to do something with the president. Maybe the police have some sort of connection with the doppelganger. Maybe he has infiltrated in the past or changed some aspects within it.

GAME: RESEARCH ROUND TWO-ISH

SATAH: Time for round two of research. I’m gonna pull a card.

TOMAS: For my second place of interest, to find some information, we head to a new location by taking another card from the deck.

CALEB: All right, we’re entering research round two, the continuing adventures of Zyll and Charlie. Zyll so far not heavily featured in this, but we’ve been learning a lot about Joey One, the android who will eventually take over the world according to my not-boyfriend Zyll’s future encyclopedia of rebellious knowledge that I’ve been calling a datapad. And that’s what you missed on me.

Next up, we’re going to pull another card to determine what my next source of information is. A ten of hearts. Ten is a magazine and a heart is “personal library and artefacts gathered from previous cases”. Which is the same thing that I got last time, was hearts, which is why I talked about the datapad. But this makes me wonder if there’s something that I gathered in a previous case that can help us here, like another future enemy that we went up against? Something from my personal library about androids? I don’t know. Maybe this has to do with my personal experience with DragonCon. We’ll see.

I’m going to roll the die and we’ll see how much information I’m going to get from this. Okay, I got a two this time, so I’m not getting as much from this one. And I’m going to draw two cards.

I got a five and a nine. A nine is “folklore or rumours about the foe” and a five is “origin info”.

Something I’m bumping up against is that I feel as if I’ve over explained in round one. Like I’m ready now. I’m like, okay, I get what we’re doing. I get the weaknesses. I had six of them there. Now I look at “origin info” and “folklore or rumours about foe” and I’m like, what new can I learn? But I think– okay, I’ll think about this in terms of physical actual space.

So in our first round, we were looking at the data pad. We were doing research. We were projecting holograms out onto the wall to see the possible future and raise the stakes and learn what they’re– um, what we need to do, and this time we have gone to DragonCon. We’re at DragonCon now, we’re exploring the convention, looking for signs of this robot. And so in context of trying to find them I think is what this research is going to be about. And so we’re drawing on my history with DragonCon as I attempt to lead us to the problem.

So, origin info. I’m trying to figure out, okay, where was that video taken? Because there wasn’t a super clear idea of its location. It was in one of the hotels. And so I’m having to figure out like, where did this problem start so that I can follow the trail of where this robot has ended up.

I’m seeing carpeting in the video. I’m seeing some activity on the walls. I’m seeing a couple of room numbers and I’m able to put together that this started in the Hyatt Hotel, which is one of the host hotels for the– DragonCon, I think? And in that hotel in one of the lobbies, something like activated this robots fury and they destroyed someone’s costume. And it seems related to– and so I’m curious about like, why were they attacking this particular person?

And I got folklore or rumours about foe– and I think someone’s costume must have set it off. And that as I go to that hotel and start investigating and talking to people, everybody has put together that this person, this robot is causing havoc based on a particular type of costume or a particular fandom or something that has like triggered this robot’s defensive energy. My first thought is that it’s anybody who’s using those weird stilt things is like registering to this robot as a danger?

Oh, maybe it’s weapons. Maybe people have like– maybe this robot was originally– my guess, as Charlie, is that this robot was originally designed to be both like a pop star and also their own bodyguard. So if someone approached them with a weapon, they were trained and told to destroy the weapon, get rid of it, try to protect the people around them. And so whenever they see someone with a fake sword or a fake firearm, they go into full-on defensive mode, which has already started causing some injuries.

And I think that we’re getting that information because… I had access to a couple of costumes that me and Zyll put on. We’re dressed as like, um– we’re dressed as .hack characters is the first thing I thought of. So I’ve got on kind of like a masculine version of Black Rose and he’s got on like a Kite outfit. And– actually, I think it’s the other way around. I think he’s– I think Zyll is the Black Rose because he’s the fighter and I’ve got on like my little hacker Kite cute twin blade outfit, which means we both, ourselves, have big fake weapons with us, which is good to know.

But because I had access to that costume, that is my like, that’s my personal library and artefacts gathered from previous stuff– I think my personal library of stuff has allowed us to talk to these people and gather that information. Am I bending it a little? Maybe. Maybe. But what is a solo game if I don’t bend it, right?

And I think as we investigate and we start discussing like what could help us here, I think Zyll might have remembered something to the effect of like that these robots stayed away from and didn’t get along with a particular like alien– a group of aliens who we have actually already dealt with and have some of their tech of, who were able to do things like throw up these large drones that would use special technology to like blot out the sun in a particular area, or would– or had like access to this kind of technology-disrupting sludge that like when you fire it at a piece of machinery, it like is almost living and climbs its way into the cracks and crevices of a robot. And so we might have some of that sludge in storage somewhere. We’ll see if I need it. And that’s enough for that one.

That was two cards, both pretty quick, but we have a really good sense of place now. We’re in DragonCon, we’re dressed as .hack characters, and we are using our wits to try to track down this enemy.

TOMAS: The two of diamonds. The diamond signals that the sources are from the internet such as websites, forums or social media. The two indicates that we are finding all this information within a website. This all just makes sense.

The next step is for me to roll the dice again– the die. The D6.

[Three cards being pulled]

The first of them all is the two of spades. The website contains “previous sightings of foe or one of their ancestors”. I like to think that this doppelganger is trying to lay false information about himself or themself on social media or sites like that. Maybe there is a site created by some conspiracy theorist that may actually be the doppelganger. We are not sure of that, or maybe we may find if there is an actual conspiracy theorist or if it is just the doppelganger trying to misguide us.

That’s the two. Upon researching we find within the website that there are places where are known for supernatural events to occur. For example, within the cemetery of Ricoleta there are known to be some taxis that appear that when people get on it they are never found again. Maybe this may be some sort of connection with the doppelganger. Maybe it’s just the conspiracy theorist trying to guide us. We don’t know yet. We need to continue the investigation there.

The next card is the Nine of Hearts. The nine means folklore or rumours about foe. I’m assuming that this website may have all sorts of information about the doppelganger. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s false. We don’t know yet. But the rumours indicate that this being is gooey, that they may move through the sewers. These are rumours. These are– we don’t know if they are true.

This supposed researcher from the site indicates that he found some of this goo from the doppelganger amongst the sewers from the city. Maybe the conspiracy theorist works for the government and actually has passage to the sewers of the city.

Let’s keep the investigation going, shall we? The last card is a three, background information on them. More information appears on the website saying that they come from the seas, that this is an entity that has been living here in Argentina since the colonisers appeared in boats. When they arrived to the city of Buenos Aires, one of them was in fact the doppelganger, or maybe one of the ancestors of the doppelganger. Maybe this isn’t the only doppelganger in the city. Maybe this is an ancestral being that has plenty of years that has been living here for centuries. We don’t know yet. But this website sure has been plenty useful– supposing it has real information, that is.

Let’s get another card. A three of diamonds. This means that we get some more information from sources from the internet such as websites, forums or social media. A three indicates that this is a book.

Now maybe there is some information on a new book that has just come out, and the writer, the author of this book, is promoting it through social media. He talks about doppelgangers, about a story of a doppelganger. We have reason to believe that the doppelganger may have impersonated this being. We know already that doppelganger likes to leave clues. He wants to distract us, or maybe they want us to find them– to play this game of cat and mouse. They enjoy being one step ahead, but we may find them. Morpher is not that far from us.

Let’s roll the dice to find some more information on the posts from the author. That’s a two. We don’t find that much information, but enough to keep investigating.

We start with the six of spades. The six means that there are clues about why they are behaving the way they are. We know this is an entity that may have travelled from another continent, from Europe. We know that they like making a show. In the book here, called, let’s say, How to Catch a Doppelganger, it starts saying that one of the first things you need to do is making yourself known as the actual rival of them– this Morpher. And I think that Jorge is already doing an excellent job at this. Jorge Pugnales has talked in some podcasts. He wants to make himself known in the city of Buenos Aires. And he has said that he is going to trap Morpher.

We have already set the principal rival to Morpher, and that is Jorge. We need to set a place to meet with them. We are sure that because they like to show off, to show how superior they are, they will come if we call on them.

Second thing that we get from this book is number 3, background information. More information. It seems that the book on How to Catch a Doppelganger says more information on the doppelganger nature. It says that they were originated from the hills in Norway. They come all the way from Norway. Some sort of weird calling created them. Upon further investigation, we have a reason to believe that the actual god Loki may have had something to do with the creation of the doppelgangers. And they may have travelled all the way throughout the world to disperse and do more trickery.

That’s the information we have. This particular doppelganger, Morpher, likes to make an appearance. And we will catch them that way.

SATAH: The eight of spades is “a historical document” from “a museum, library, or building devoted to research”. Hell yeah. So because this was the thing that inspired my job, I’m gonna try really hard to see if I can make this into something we find at the art gallery? That might take some massaging and work and so it might not work out, but I would like it to, because that would be very fun to me.

[Die clattering]

Four. Cool. So we’re gonna get four pieces of information. I’m gonna draw four cards. One, two, three, four. They are all face down.

Flip the first card. We got… five. Origin info. Mm!

So we’ve established where this person is from. The… Thoth. Thoth C-94. So what else do we need to know about the origin? I guess when they got here.

Oh, I think this one is going to be pretty simple. I’m going through, um, like newsletter archives and it’s like, you know, these go out once a month. And the one in November doesn’t mention… [Reluctant tone] Brenda Gleebglop… I gotta commit to it or I gotta make a new one. Let’s go with Brenda for now. Brenda is our alien. Last name… Schrodinger’s Gleepglop.

The November newsletter does not mention her at all. The December newsletter is like, “We continue to be thankful to Brenda for her tireless work in sourcing…” I want something that is like important and boring. Oh, like, it’s like, “In our efforts to source our frames more ethically, Brenda has been invaluable, using her contacts in the industry to get us all of these handcrafted biodegradable painting frames.”

You know? It just basically is like, she isn’t mentioned at all before that and then suddenly in December, it is established that she has helped this gallery so many times before in so many ways and we are so thankful to her.

Question number two, seven. Info about an incident caused by them or sighting. Maybe I really was placing us a little bit too far in the narrative, but I think it’s okay. Like, I can make all of this work, but there’s def– my assumption about where we were supposed to be in the narrative of this confrontation was maybe a little bit far ahead, but that’s okay.

“Info about an incident caused by them.” Right, okay. I fucking totally forgot that part of the established thing was the crop circles.

Ooh, oh, I’m percolating. It’s something, okay, so this is going to be something to do with the crop circles. I think the crop circles were a lead up. The crop circles were caused by investigation, like being like, “Is this where I’m going to land? Let me figure out everything about it.” Kind of like, you know, landing her craft on a lawn and checking things out. The pets– the crop circles on the pets were from drones. She was landing drones to keep investigating. They don’t have companion animals on Thoth C-94, so there was much to figure out. They had to figure out if those were the primary residents, you know? They were like, holy shit, everybody has a dog. Or do dogs have people?

Wow, isn’t that the question though? You know? Who saved who?

Okay.

So, okay, this is related to the crop circles. I’m digging through like exhibitions from around the time it seemed like she appeared. Maybe we’re trying to pinpoint, like we’re like, “We know that she wasn’t here for the November newsletter and was here and having an effect on people’s recollection in the December newsletter. Let’s narrow our search to that amount of time and see what was happening around then.”

Trying to figure out if I want to retcon having known about the crop circles. Eh– I don’t think it makes a huge deal. I think– so– I’m digging through old exhibitions and there is like a photography exhibition that I don’t remember at all. Maybe it never even got up. Maybe– the thing I’m imagining is like photos of these crop circles? Like somebody just took these beautiful photos of these crop circles that were appearing everywhere and they were going to have an exhibition about it. Oh, it’s when everyone still thought it was a prank, you know? Maybe this artist actually got blamed for the prank, or would have, except this exhibition never got aired, never got put up because Brenda– Brend appeared and was like, uh-uh, and had it buried. And so I’m looking through these photos and seeing these crop circles and we’re like, why didn’t these photos ever go up? This is a small town or a medium town art gallery. We will display anything by local artists because that’s what we care about. Why wasn’t this ever put up? And we’re like, oh, it must be connected.

So the incident that was caused by them… it’s kind of both: the crop circles are a sort of sighting. We just didn’t know, right? Yeah, maybe we still think it’s a prank. It’s like everybody talks about like, remember that weird prank that that weird art kid was doing? Where they shaved a weird circle pattern into all of our dogs and then took a picture of them? When they think about it all, which is rare. I think that, you know, Brenda’s reality distortion field generally doesn’t allow this, but there’s only so much you can control for, and so sometimes, you know, someone sees the weird still-growing-in patch on Spot and is like, “Ugh, right, that, that, that prank, that prank that happened to us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it’s like seeing the crop circles, realising that they’re connected and realising that Brenda has buried this exhibition because she doesn’t want people to know about it and connect it with her. Oh, because the other thing that the exhibition would do is get eyes out of the suburbs on it, right? And so it’s more likely that somebody would like walk into the gallery and be like, I’m, “I’m an alien expert. I’m an alien expert who also loves local art. And I’m here to tell you that the thing you photographed is an alien– is what it looks like when an alien spacecraft lands.” And so Brenda’s just trying to keep things quiet, you know?

Piece of information number four is folklore or rumours about foe. A decision I want to come to here is how localised these invasions have been. Like we know that this has happened before, from the Mother’s Day post. I’m trying to think if that was also here. I think yes, partially because it like– is kind of one of the things that happens in this genre, you know, the monster of the week. Like the Hellmouth, it’s, whatever, everything always happens here. But I don’t want it to be that– I want it to be something like this town, because of its geography, is amenable to this specific alien species? Maybe because of like, you know, a history of industrialization changing the quality of the air, or it is at the exact right elevation to have a mixture of oxygen in the air that is, you know, easier for them to adapt to or something like that. I don’t have all of the answers to that yet, but I think what I want to establish here is that like, it seems like these aliens keep coming back here specifically. This sort of geographical area. Or at least, or at least– I guess we don’t know if it is happening in other places, but we know at least that it is happening here repeatedly.

And folklore, I think is the way to do that. Like it’s like, again, looking through the archives of this gallery, and being like, oh, somebody once did these beautiful prints of classic stories, you know, or old, old stories that used to be passed down orally, like the tales of this town. There’s a poem, it’s like one poem, and it’s hard to prove, you know, but it’s an old poem…

Ooh, no, no, no, sorry, okay. They did screen prints of songs. Like songs that were written in this region, folk songs that were just written in this region that were passed down and carried stories and are very like– they are all narratives? And so it’s the kind of thing where we’re like, “Wait, all of these songs are supposed to be made up, but what if they aren’t?”

And we read this song that like tells the story of a woman who came to town and was everyone’s best friend immediately. The lyric that popped into my head was Carly Rae Jepsen saying, “before you came into my life I missed you so bad”, which is very funny.

It’s a song, it’s a song about this happening hundreds of years ago, written by somebody who could– I think is probably in a similar position to my character, who is outside enough to see through parts of it, but not entirely, is still a little bit fooled, like has a like interesting like half melancholy verse about like, “I know that I haven’t known her my whole life but I still feel like I have and she’s one of the only people I can talk to”, like that’s true. And I think it’s, it’s, this song has been known as like a metaphor for alienation and connecting with people and seen as a song that is very much about the narrator changing their perspective on somebody?

I bet absolutely– actually it’s like we listen to an old, like the first known recording of the song, me and the hero, and it is like this poignant weird moment where we’re like, oh this is kind of what’s happening to us right now. Like we’ve known each other our whole lives and also still feel a little bit like we don’t know each other at all because we’re both changing and growing so much. And it’s both that, like we get that emotional poignant moment where we are like having an experience with the emotional reality of the song, which, which we’ve always assumed is the entire reality of it. And then we’re like, “But what if it literally happened? What if it’s true? What if this– what if the person who wrote this song wasn’t writing feelings? What if this is a very straightforward narrative song about a woman who appeared and made everybody believe that she’d lived there the whole time and the narrator was one of the– the writer of the song was one of the only people who kind of thought maybe something weird was going on.”

Yeah, absolutely.

The next piece of information, 10 of hearts, info on associates of your adversary. Ooh. My first instinct is like home base? Again, historical document… I’m trying to decide whether to have something new here or play more off of this folk song.

I think it’s the song. I think it’s the kind of thing where we get a montage of us sitting up all night playing this record over and over again. Oh, it’s not just that. It’s us listening to the record; it’s me digitising the record and you see I’m listening to it like while I’m just walking around, like you see me with my fuckin AirPods in and the song is playing and I’m cooking and the song is playing and I’m on hold on the phone and I’m humming the melody of the song, like just going over and over trying to like extract more information from it.

And this is where we start maybe to have a plan come together because we learn something about how this older version, the one from hundreds and hundreds of years ago was communicating with people off planet. Like there’s an image. I get really stuck on an image in the song, in the bridge, you know, talking about this woman, everyone’s new best friend, everyone’s new old best friend…

They have advanced technology, you know? Like the aliens who have been here have to, even then, have had advanced technology. They’re spacefaring while we’re still like, we’re pre like everything, almost pre written history. And so the narrator of the song describes in the bridge this image of this woman, everyone’s new old best friend lighting a fire. Like a strange small fire, holding a torch and singing directly to it. And I’m listening to the song, you know, we’re in we’re in one of these montages. I’m doing dishes. I’m listening to the song. Something hits me and I look out the window and I repeat the bridge a couple of times and then I call the hero and I’m like “The fire in the bridge.” and the hero is like, “Yeah,” because the hero obviously has also been listening to the song over and over. And I’m like, “What if it wasn’t a fire? What if they just couldn’t understand what it was?”

And then we follow my eye line from when I looked at the window and we see, you know, the beautiful backyard of Brenda where she has these odd, like, lighting fixtures everywhere– at least that’s what she’s using them as. And it’s like a communication device, you know, it’s an advanced communication device that if you don’t have, like– if you’re pre electricity, you might interpret what she’s doing as holding a torch when actually she’s holding like this communication device that lights up as she talks into it.

And so what we learn there is that something is being reported to somewhere else. Like, she isn’t working alone and maybe is like continuing to gather information and somebody is, you know, paying attention. We know that that that she probably has allies, maybe even a boss. Who knows?

Hell yeah. Do I want to do round three? Oh, I accidentally ruined my headings. Death would be kinder.

CALEB: Oh, you know what? Last time I said the card that I pulled for round two was magazine and I didn’t pull that in at all. I know I said a magazine during round two and then I ignored it.

So, to go backwards: in round two, the magazine came into play when I… when I pulled out my .hack quarantine strategy guide to show off the costumes that I had available and Zyll agreed to them and my heart was all a-flutter. And we’re going to say that that’s enough of mentioning the magazine.

GAME: RESEARCH ROUND THREE-ISH

TOMAS: Let’s do one more research on this to see if we can finally set a trap for them.

CALEB: [Skipping like a record scratch] R-r-r–r-r-research round three.

SATAH: Sitting in my room with the windows closed and the door closed, after about an hour, which it has been, starts to get very stuffy in here. My CO2 monitor would probably be beeping if it weren’t turned off. And so I was like, do I want to take a break and, you know, air out? And absolutely that is what I would encourage other people to do, because you should take care of yourself and your body. And what I’m going to do is say that that’s perfect; I absolutely should be loopy and exhausted because that’s a part of the narrative that we’re at.

Ooh yeah, let’s maybe establish some stakes. The election is next week or whatever, you know? And we’re like, we don’t know why she wants to be head of the PTA, but we know that we shouldn’t let her. And so we got to figure out what’s happening and stop it.

So I’m, uh, you know. Fucking… uh… the thing where you stay in character all the time and annoy the shit out of your castmates. Method. I’m method. Suffocating myself a little bit with my own breath because cinema verite or whatever.

Let’s pull a research card. Three of spades. Three is a book. Spades, again, is “museums, libraries, buildings devoted to research”. Okay. I’m trying to think if I want to pull that again so that I can have a chance at a different suit. No, that’s okay. I will. I will stick with it. I do think I won’t make this be at my workplace unless it– unless it, unless it fits really well. And then you know, it is what it is. And isn’t that adulthood? You’re like trying to do something cool and fun with your friends and save the world, but then you’re like, I gotta be at work.

Rolling a d6. Five. Holy shit. Okay. Five pieces of info. I liked doing them one at a time. So again, I’m going to do them face down. One, two, three, four, five.

Flip… eight. Again. Okay. “Facts about the identity of the enemy such as their appearance and name.”

Oh, I think it’s like, we’re like, uh, resuming with the astronomer again, you know? Who has been delving into like, there’s, uh, I think that like under the surface, there’s like this vague implication that maybe the astronomer has been pulled into, you know, an X-files or whatever? Like as a student, for sure, is studying astronomy, but also at certain points, seems to hint obliquely at having been conscripted into some sort of conspiracy. And so has gone like into the archives of this conspiracy that she’s part of. And the book that we find is, um, like a zine, a zine from like the sixties, the seventies, that has absolutely just been– this is necessary– this is always, this has to happen in an alien narrative– this is like a zine that was discounted as being like made by a crank, you know, who was studying probably the person who was in the mother’s day post and managed to provoke this person enough to see their true form and, and drew a picture of it. So we see a sketch of what is probably this alien’s true form.

It doesn’t matter, but I’m trying to check my age range. I want this– the other alien to be too old to have theoretically been this person’s mother. Um, so I’m actually, I’m just going to– fuck it. Let’s put it all the way back in the thirties. Um, zine, a thirties zine, I guess so. I don’t know what they would have called them, but like, whatever. This person had the ability to self publish in some way. People have always made shit, whatever.

Information number two is a two. Previous sightings of foe or one of their ancestors. Okay.

I mean, this is like, this is the big deluge of information, right? Like this is our friend being like, “And here, um, here’s another, like– it’s, it’s this tiny line in this history from a nearby town.” Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s information about times when the invasion didn’t work. Like– oh! Yes. Cause that’s, that’s, that’s part of what needs to be like figured out to figure out how to defeat them. Right? So, so it’s like a book with a history of like, you know, it’s, it’s a book about alien invasions in this part of the country that has been suppressed specifically by like, you know, it’s– there was like a very intense propaganda campaign being like, “This, this is, this isn’t real! This is, this is written by somebody who has, who has alien insanity and they made it all up. Don’t pay attention to them.” It is real because it’s always real. It always has to be real.

Um, so yeah, this, this is like a, a very offhand thing– because that’s the thing, it can’t quite be the answer yet, but it is an offhand note of like somebody recounting the story of like. “An alien came to our village and convinced us all for a while that we have always known them, but we managed to shatter the illusion and ran them out of town before they could do their nefarious plans.” And it’s the kind of thing where like the hero is like, “Well, how did they do it?” And our astronomer friend on Zoom, like sort of ruefully shakes her head and I like nod grimly and I’m like, “Yeah, they never say.” You know.

Uh, so info number nine, “folklore or rumours about foe.” This is going to be a rumour and it’s something our astrologer friend isn’t supposed to tell us. And I’m realising like, I don’t want to get too far away from the fact that I’m supposed to be doing the research here? But one of the things that the book, the, the game also mentioned is like, you’re, you’re, you’re– you can find this stuff out through like interviews of, of people in the town and that kind of thing, you know?

And so it’s like, we’re, we’re, we’re going to hang up the call and the hero is already too frustrated or, or is like, “Well, that’s all the information we get.” And I’m the one like, I pick up, like, “There’s something you’re not telling us or there’s something you want to tell us, but you can’t.”

And I start, like– oh, we have a conversation in references to the old show, right? Like I, I realise that there’s something our friend wants to tell us, but, but she can’t, you know, she’ll, she’ll get in trouble. And so I’m trying to give her a way to tell us what it is in code? And so I sort of like pause and I’m like, “The more I think about it, the more that this reminds me of X story.” Like I’m like, “When this one thing happened and we defeated it.” and there’s like a light, you know, kind of a flash of recognition in the astrologer’s eyes.

And she’s like, “It’s interesting that you say that– I’ve actually been thinking it was a lot more like Y story.” And I’m like, “Oh, interesting.” And then the astrologer friend has to like calculate things in her head for a little while, like just a few seconds and go like, “Especially that thing that… Mr."… why was the first name I thought of Mr. Raticate? Like the Pokemon, I guess? I’m really bad at coming up with names off the dome, which again, thank you fantasy name generators dot com for your service. I’m just gonna go to a random generator– cafe name generator. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Um, so she’s like, “Yeah, it especially reminds me of, you know, what we learned at the Eats and Treats coffee shop.” And I like laugh and I’m like, “Yeah, totally. Alright, it was great talking to you. Come visit soon. Bye,” and hang up, turn the computer off, and turn our phones off. And the hero’s staring at me like, “What the fuck did that mean?” And here’s where I have to stop narrating and figure out what that does mean.

[Laughing]

So we learned something at the Eats and Treats coffee shop that can be applied to this situation. And it’s a rumour that for some reason, the astrologer couldn’t tell us because of their weird conspiracy group rules… I have twisted such– I’ve put myself in such a web. It’s going to be very exciting. Do you– do– there’s this game that we played. This might be a drama kid thing– like– a theatre kid thing. There’s a game of like, everybody holds hands and then you tangle yourself up a lot and then have to try and get untangled without letting go of your hands. That’s how I’m feeling right now. I liked that– I liked that game. In my memory. But that was also a collaborative effort and this one’s just me and I’m carbon monoxide poisoning myself. No, I’m not. That’s very dramatic. I’m stalling. Okay.

She wants to tell us that the house is the ship. Like we have been assuming that the ship is hidden somewhere and that she just sort of like magiced scienced this house into existing and she’s telling us that the house is the ship and so that’s something we should investigate. And so the thing that she’s referring to is like we were sitting in the Eats and Treats coffee shop when we learned that we’ve been investigating a monster and then it turned out that it was a Monster House situation. We were like in the coffee shop and we were like, “Oh, it isn’t Mr. Parsons that’s eating the neighbourhood kids; it’s the house that’s eating the kids.”

So maybe it’s not even just that the house is the ship actually. It’s that the house is the alien. The house is the alien.

And um, remember I said, you know, I said earlier about like some of the crop circles were created by drones, like landing on dogs and whatever? Brenda’s also a drone. Like she is just an apparatus of the alien who is the house.

[Laughing at how stupid this is]

So this is like, and then we have like a flashback, you know, to like the common threads of research. Like I’m like flipping through the photos of the screen prints and we’re listening to the song and all of this and we’re realising that like, “Oh my god, we didn’t even think about the fact that like, uh, these stories always mention the house.” You know, it’s never like the alien shows up and moves into an abandoned house or starts staying with somebody. They always mention that a new house or hut or whatever– tent– appear. And that’s because the alien has been the house and the person that we’ve been investigating is just one of their limbs. The thing that they send out into the universe to get information.

The thing I’m thinking through right now is just trying to square that with what we learned about the communicators. In shows like this, it could just be fridge logic– “Wait, why was, why then were they using communicators?” I don’t want to fridge logic it. I want to find a reason. It’s just that, well, they can’t talk probably is one part of it. The alien is a house. The alien can’t talk. And there’s some data that they can send to each other, but they need– that’s one of the reasons why they developed, like, these drones. These like, these like sentient– sapient drone creatures, uh, is because like that just makes it easier to, to communicate with each other.

And I think like– it’s a rumour, right? So it has to just be a theory. But also it’s correct cause it’s fun. It doesn’t matter. This is what we’ve learned. The alien is the house. I’m just going to write down the alien is the house. Period. That’s all I need to know.

Okay. The next piece of information we get is background information on them. God, how do you top the alien is the house? That got me so excited.

Background information that we learned from a book… oh, we get a, we get a book. We get a, we get a PDF from our friend, uh, with like, it’s an email that makes no sense. Like, it’s like, “Hey, I know that at the gallery you’ve been working on a, uh, uh,” what’s the fucking– oh yeah. Um, I was looking for the word architecture. “I know that at the gallery you’ve been working on this whole exhibit about historical architecture in the town. Here are some scans of this amazing book I found about a local architect.” And the hero like looks at me like, “Have you been doing that?” And I’m like, “Nope.” And so we like, lay out the– images, like the scans from the book, from the thing, which are all a bunch of like– it’s, it’s photographs and history of various buildings in the town.

And I think the thing we learned here is that a bunch of the buildings in our town might also be aliens. Like you know, we’re drawing these connections being like, “Oh yeah, they, you know, this building says that it was built in 1840, but it isn’t actually mentioned at all until 1955.” And in fact, there are photos where it’s clearly not there in the, in that hundred years or whatever– I don’t remember the dates I said– in the, in the years where it’s supposed to have already been built, there are photos where it isn’t there. And so we find out background information: they’re not alone. Some of the other buildings in this town are also aliens.

And they don’t have… they maybe don’t have people? I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet, but they maybe don’t have people. Like maybe this is a very specific type of thing. Like, like they’re, they’re going for a power grab, which originally, so I was like, Brenda wants to be president of the PTA so that, you know, she can influence kids. And I think now that we know, now that we’ve learned finally the truth that, that Brenda– Brenda is an alien, I guess. To be clear, like Brenda is still an alien, but, but, but she’s an alien’s robot or whatever. Um. And the house is the alien. The house is the alien. We know this now to be fact, finally.

So Brenda, Brenda wasn’t trying to influence the kids. She was trying to influence the school. Like the building of the school. It’s a kind of thing where like she was going to put pressure on the necessity of building an extra wing or adding certain structural features that maybe would make it easier to blend in if they wanted to replace the school with another alien? Or something? Like we don’t know totally what– we don’t know exactly what her plan was, but she wanted to influence the building of the school, not necessarily the people in it. Because– can’t stress this enough– the house is the alien.

[Card fwip]

I got another three, which is more background information. Oh, this is super simple. This isn’t really found from a book. Oh, it is supported by a book. Not so much from those locations, but whatever. We’re, we’re, we’re getting loosey goosey with it. We like ask around and we’re like, “Yo, have you ever been inside Brenda’s house?” And everyone’s like, “Oh, of course I have! I mean…” and they sort of brush it off and they’re like, “Well, well, maybe not, but we all live so close and her back– her backyard is so beautiful. Why would we even need to go outside?”

And we are shown like a photo book. Because like, you know, there’s somebody in, in, in the suburb, there’s that one, one person who takes photos at all the events and she orders prints of them– like Google Photos and I think maybe, maybe some of the, the, maybe the iPhone photo app also does is like, “Hey, you took 50 pictures on this one particular day. Would you like to order a photo album of those pictures?” And she always clicks “Yes.” She she loves those photo books, those auto generated photo books.

And so we’re looking through– oh, I know how to tie this at least to the astrologer, which is that it’s, it’s, it’s her mom. We’re like catching up with her mom in part because we’re like, “Oh, we just, we just talked to your, your kid for a while.” And she’s like, “Look at all my photo books.” And we’re looking through like, has anyone, are there any photos inside Brenda’s house? And we just see… Brenda has hosted a lot of parties and they are always in the backyard. It’s just like, so many photos of people hanging out in the backyard. Absolutely no photos of anybody inside, even though the parties at other people’s houses have pictures of them, like in the kitchen, in the living room, whatever. Brenda’s house, it’s always just in the backyard. Because they can’t go inside the house. Because the house… I don’t know if you– I don’t know if you remember. Is an alien.

So the background information is no one has ever been inside Brenda’s house parentheses because the house is an alien parentheses. So they can’t go inside.

So that’s the research round three.

TOMAS: From the deck, I pull a card. This is a ten of spades. Spades means that it’s “a museum, a library, a building devoted to research.” I’m going to investigate at my own library, the one I work at. A ten being that I get information from magazine.

[Die clattering]

Four. This is plenty of information. [Counting cards out] Two. Three. Four.

If you align the letters from one of the pages, the first letter of each line from page number five in the magazine, it says, “Jorge: come for me”. At first glance, I thought this might be some sort of weird joke, some sort of sexual joke, sexual innuendo that the doppelganger was playing with. We know already that this doppelganger infiltrated within this magazine and wrote some stuff.

[Card flipping over]

More folklore. This talks about places from Norway. The promotional page that talks about a hotel set there. Talking about the waterfalls and the beautiful landscapes. Why on earth would the doppelganger talk so much about tourism and travel? It has a small section about shadows appearing within the place to attract tourists to go there for the morbid curiosity of it. If they are promoting a place that is so far from here in Argentina, it is surely to get those who are actually looking for reasons to escape, for curiosity. They may be curious about these entities of dark that may appear in Norway; attracted by them, trying to go investigate on their own and find more information just because they are curious or want to know more about it. That’s when the doppelganger attacks. Maybe that’s what I’m suspecting.

The next piece of information we find is an ace. “Possible weakness.” Ok, here in this magazine, upon the many pages in it, there are some models appearing in it, but for some reason, every time that a mirror appears in these photos within the magazine, the mirrors show another person in it. I have a reason to believe that this doppelganger wants to show us the way that the mirror shows them is not what they look like at the moment. Maybe it is some sort of way they looked in the past, some sort of other course they have taken before. We may need more information on this, but I’m starting to develop a plan for Jorge Pugnales to use.

I keep turning the pages of this magazine… [Pages flipping] and I find more information. Another ace. A possible weakness. Doppelganger keeps laying information for us. But why? We may find sooner rather than later.

Another thing they are indicating by the position of all these models and people appearing within the images: all of them appear to be under cover of the shadows. Maybe they don’t like the sunlight. A being of the night. If something weird would happen to the way that Morpher looks, they may be able to hide within the dark, within the shadows. That would make sense.

These are all just conjectures, we can’t be certain of this.

The last piece of information that I find within the magazine is another ace. A possible weakness. Again. The last sentence… the last sentence in the magazine says, “I will be waiting for you.”

All these pieces that are weird within the magazine are the reason why it has been brought to my attention. There is something weird going on here. There is something weird going on in this country. Maybe more than one doppelganger is here. Maybe the president has already been dispatched– has been replaced. A trap needs to be held here. The plan.

CALEB: Welcome back to the continuing adventures of Zyll and Charlie at DragonCon looking for android, Joey One. We’re going to do some more research this time and I’m going to hope, deep down in my heart, that I don’t flip over a heart. No hearts in these cards, please. We’ve honestly worked through many many heart cards so the chances are getting slimmer. Let’s see how it goes.

It’s still a red card. My heart sunk for a moment, but then I saw that it is not hearts, it is diamonds. And these diamonds are arranged in kind of one of those light whip patterns in front of one of those Kirby enemies that has a big eyeball and sometimes does a little light whip like that. I forget what those are called, but I’m sure it’s got something like D or Do in the name. Here we go.

Six of diamonds. A diamond is “a source from the internet such as websites, forums, and social media” and a six is “a film or video.” There’s a film or video from an online source that is helping me with this research. How much research is it giving me?

[Die clatter]

Two more! Another two. So we’ve got a video giving us two more chunks of info, we’ve got more “folklore or rumours”, and we’ve got “info on a crime they committed and how.” A nine and a king.

This is great. This is obvious. We are moving through the convention. We are hunting for this person. We have no idea where they’ve gone. The crowds are huge. It’s the busiest day now; it’s like Saturday. We are sure that they’re hiding out here somewhere, that they’re observing people, they’re learning something, they’re like, trying to adapt to their new environment. But if we don’t catch them and they escape now? They escape in these crowds and they find their way out of here before anybody knows there was an android here the whole time? We will never catch them again. In fact, by the end of this weekend they might change their appearance. And this video shows us– ooh, this video shows us that they already have.

Learning to camouflage themselves with costumes, Joey One has already stolen someone’s costume and put it on, wig and all, making themselves difficult to track. I think probably they’re not hiding from us. They don’t know we’re even there. But they might be hiding from their original creators, the company that built them, because they’re trying to escape. They’re a whole person already. A whole person with thoughts of evil for the future. Unless we stop them!

Maybe we manage to turn this around and Joey One, instead of growing full evil, becomes our friend. That’s gotta be the hope. And then you have a celebrity star who’s a recurring character, who’s part of the team… it seems like we need a robot, honestly. We have a spunky future boy, we have a nerd doing research who’s in over his head. Feels like Joey One might be a future cast member. That’s the vibe you’re getting at this part of the episode. It’s like, wait a second. They’re setting up– we’re watching too many videos just of this person moving around in space and not doing as much research. It must be because, first of all, they wanted to get lots of footage of this famous guest star, and second of all, they are setting them up to be a recurring character, so they need more development.

So “info on a crime they committed and how” and “folklore or rumours”. I think now they’ve changed costumes. They’re dressed up as– in like a full on– they’re in a very silly video game mascot, like a Crash Bandicoot. They’re in a Crash Bandicoot outfit. But we recognize from a video that goes viral again, we recognize that they have somehow seen a Crash Bandicoot video and are using their strange mechanical body inside of the costume to do the actual Crash Bandicoot bizarre spinning and weirdness. They’re doing that full tornado move. They’re like flopping around, jumping up high, doing double jumps. And again, people are really excited until someone starts to get hurt.

And you see that security has been hunting for this person too who’s like causing this problem? But we now know that they’re using costumes trying to get away. I have the revelation that if they’re in that costume, they’re probably not getting much sunlight. So they’re not going to stick to that costume for very long. They will be taking it off. But if they’re learning to hide in that way, they might find a simpler costume, a better wig or whatever, rather than a full body Crash Bandicoot mascot suit, and so if we can’t find Crash– which we see is in another hotel, so we’re running outside, into the crowds of people, trying to move through all of these cool costumes as we try to find our way to the Hilton or whatever– the Marriott, maybe– that in the… that somewhere in this crowd, we’re either looking for a Crash Bandicoot or a Joey or a Joey that has changed costumes. And the video that we saw of that sudden cartoonish violence was in the Marriott, so we’re heading there immediately. And we found it fast because I’ve been keeping a close eye on the tags, the DragonCon tags on every social media platform. I’m a whiz with my phone.

So with that information, this folklore or rumours and this info on a crime they committed, which again is that they have committed some violence as Crash Bandicoot causing the security to start hunting for them, we have all the information we need to build a plan. Everything is moving into place. The security is maybe going to help us here.

They’re in a costume that is blocking out their energy level for the moment as they try to move through space. They might not even be as aware of their battery limitation as I am, thanks to my information from the future. And we have a rough location that is very immediate. So Zyll and Charlie are rushing their way over to the Marriott to try to find Joey One.

OUTRO

SATAH: This has been Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. To find where you can find the show, check out foliopod.card.co. Maybe if I could make myself stop saying it so rhythmically, it wouldn’t be such a problem, but I don’t know that I can, so I’m going to continue to think about it still.

You can find Tomas Gimenez Rioja at T-G-I-M-E-N-E-Z-R-G-M on Blue Sky Twitter and Instagram.

You can find Caleb Zane Huett at hauntedtable.games and calebzanehuett.com.

You can find Satah– that’s me– at posatahchips on Twitter, and check out my other work at gaygothvibes.online.

Next week, Tomas and Caleb and I will finish our games of Accomplice by Michael Klamerus. Thanks so much for listening, take care out there.