Welcome to ghost Wax, a foreign Tall Tales production. The following story may contain graphic content. Listener discretion is advised. Hello, and welcome to the post mortem Q and A of Ghost Wax Season one. Oh, we're doing it. We're doing ghost claps. Is that what that is? Or spirits figuer? Yeah? This is also asl for applause. Oh okay, wonderful. Okay, So we have slogged through forty five to fifty episodes, depending
on what you count an episode Patreon episodes, little bonuses, remembrances. I don't even know how many we've actually done, but that has been a wild year and we were able to churn out that much content. Of what I have of equality, I'm very proud of only because as our little snowball started rolling along, started with with my now husband Aaron, and I, Yeah, thank you, sem just like making something just for us that we really
wanted to make. And and the little little Ghost Wax snowball rolled along and rolled along, and as we went we started accumulating actors and other writers and other creatives, and two of those are here with me today, also my cat Lily. Before we get started, I just want to make an announcement that this is the post mortem, this is after the show. This will be full of spoilers for the entire series. We're not going to hold anything
back. We're not gonna tiptoe around anything it you know we will. We will not be spoiling stuff for future seasons, but we might hint at some stuff. So really, don't listen to this until you've listened to the show. Thank you and enjoy, so would you. Why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves and tell us what episodes you wrote. Well, Hello, I'm Stephanie, and you'll if you listen to the last post mortem Q and A. You heard me rambling at Robbie on that one. Yeah.
Also, if you've listened to any of the shows, Stephanie my voice Pip and have written just a hodgepodge of episodes, all of the big Pip ones, Yes, I wrote, and then the Woman at the Piano. I wrote the Final Countdown, Yeah, which I love. How device are by far most, by far most divisive episode. It gives me life when people hate that episode because I'm like, yeah, we're not taking any of this no serious and echoes. I've written a number of episodes and love every minute
of it. Ah, so happy. The other thing that you've done is make have injected like massive amounts of character focus and character evolution, like throughout the throughout the season. It's so funny because some of the episodes that other people have written, like I've injected stuff into, but a lot of the ones that I've written like ideas or concepts or especially character stuff because we you know, I've got a Dungeons and Dragons background, so I have a tendency
to be like, well, this is your character. What do you think? You know? Which is is very not typical of a lot of showrunner shows, is that you know, you don't like have characters as like avatars or vehicles. But we're kind of doing that a little bit with some of the characters and it's paid paid some dividends. Thank you, Steph. I'm so glad you're here. I had to be here, all right. And on my left is mister Brian. Hello, why not? Hi, I'm
Brian. I have both acted and written in the show. I acted echoes and I was the one who re recorded episode one yeah remaster. So depending on when you listen to that, you either heard Robbie talking to himself or me implying I was there from the beginning, which I was not, and we had we had like one I don't remember what platform it was on, but there was one review that was very like, this fucking asshole just sitting here talking to himself, and I was like, it was it was me
talking to myself. I was all alone. How dare the pilot episode sound rough? Hey? You know? Fair? Fair critique fans up. Then I've written a few. I wrote Schism Slash Cold Case, and then both my skins and I both wrote and acted in the Patreon episode Balancer, which you should absolutely pay money to listen to. Oh please please give us some money, some money, we need money, right, And then I have dug myself in like a tick. I've written eight or ten episodes now that
are just sitting in a drafts folder. Maybe for eventual use time, oh most definitely for eventual years. Yeah, I have come out. This is how we keep him busy. Oh yeah, keep it. I don't know, maybe once we hit you'll get there some day. I just want to have me another episode, please. Yeah. It is a very fun world
to play in, so I keep having ideas God help me. Oh yeah, well, see the thing the thing about the world is that I mean, as as mister said, as mister Sid said, everything is real, and so like this is a fully a yes, and like we if we've got a friggin weird idea, we are gonna make it work and make it creepy and then like mold it into the the cannon and make it like make it vibe for us like that. One of one of my goals with the show is like when you tune in, you're like never sure what you're gonna
hear. I really really want to surprise people all the time, which is why episodes like Final Countdown where you tune in and it's just like a full
like shrill comedy episode. You know. I love that idea. Oh you did such a great job on m freaking Battles, who is just one of the absolute heroes of this season with holding down some incredibly difficult like voice voice work and playing Margot and jeers Uh cannot wait to work more with m. She's amazing and she's very like she clearly loves doing it or is lying to
me to pad my ego, but she's very, very into it. So that is always incredibly energizing, like, oh and right Eron's here, yes, okay, And the fourth microphone in the room, no one can see me up here. I know you're on. I literally can't see you. Yeah, the fourth microphone in the room belongs to my beautiful husband, mister Aaron. I'm Aaron. I voice Luca obviously, and I don't write a thing, but I do edit and produce sound effects, music all that stuff.
So so he's the reason it's a podcast and just literally the reason that it is. We should release ramblings from a living room. Yeah, hey, that's the show. That's what we're doing now. Yeah, Aaron, your folly work. Oh yeah, I've been trying to do as much as I can. You know, sometimes it's just a lot easier to go into a database and pick something out. But yeah, I've been trying to do as much of that as I can. When we eventually get to the finale
remasters. One thing that I know Aaron was very like was really trying to find a lot of We're Tentacle sounds. Oh yeah, that's my one. I mean, I spent so much time I'm working on that last episode, and then I got to the end of it, when like the Hamsa that is von Sid comes out emerges. I just could not find like, I mean, how do you google tentacle sound effects? Like, I don't know it just yeah, it was very difficult. What does a dentical sound?
Right? To make something for that, here's what we do. We get a pack of uncooked hot dogs and just like smack them together. Absolutely, I think, I think literally we managed to find just like sort of drippy wet stuff which but whips in there. It could go a long way. Yeah, some hot dog sounds if you will. Yeah, we are gonna we have a litany of questions that we are gonna have Aaron read to us
from our wonderful discord many. It is such a great community. I'm so so like proud to have, like again collect I feel like the collector, you know, like, yeah, the mysterious benefactor is me just like collecting toys for myself. But so we're gonna have Aaron read some questions from our discord, which, by the way, come join us on Discord, come
join us on Patreon too. We have a bunch of fun bonus content and I guess I'll just run a little commercial for this We are doing an expansion season called Ghost Wax nineteen ten, which is set in nineteen ten, both America, probably London, maybe a few other places in the world because we're just getting working on it now. But it will star von sid Olivia and
Amiya and some other some other characters that you might find familiar. But back at the like turn of the century, and yeah, give a little bit
of like backstory and context and like really changed things up. The like the resurgence of occultism, like in the mid eighteen hundreds, like through the turn of the century has always been so fascinating to me, this like obsession with mediums, the way that new technology suddenly opened up all of these avenues for people's you know, relationships with the dead, the like the spirit photography, which you know, it's just a double exposure, but it gave people this
feeling that their loved ones were standing, you know, right beside them. And what that does to people psychically and what that psychic surge may have done to the world or what it might have awoken. So that's where we're going with with nineteen ten. It's basically the whole the whole season is going to be a bunch of cases like like we've done before, but then also an overarching sort of who done it? Or like what done it? So yeah,
and probably like ten episodes and that'll be up on our Patreon. Any level of support you get to listen to the episodes, and then maybe maybe we'll actually just like sell the season on other platforms. I know that sometimes they do that. But the more more info on that soon, and we're writing that right now and are very excited for it. But so, yeah, come join us on Discord. That's where these these questions came from. And yeah, Aaron, do you want to just drop some on us and
we'll Yeah. Sure. I sort of grouped them into categories, okay, but for the most part they're just random. So yeah, So all these questions are from our lovely Discord and I have pulled a smattering of them. We'll see how many we can get to. And god knows, I have already eaten up a significant portion of our time with just rambling nonsense. So all right, So the first one I grabbed was how long an episode actually take to create? From script writing, recording, mixing, editing. How
long does a thirty ish minute episode really take? Oh? Man, this is a so how long so so a couple of days for writing. I think the longer episodes have taken me a couple of The longest one probably took me a few weeks. That was probably that's episode thirty, the scene on a battlefield that was that that that is I'm very very proud of the writing
and that one that was a full short story as an episode. That that one took me a long time to to like, you know, an evening, you know, and and then after that then there's coordinating with actors, you know, call you know, gally, some text, some emails,
getting actors down, so some coordination. Then they have to record, and if you're recording an hour long episode, it probably takes you ninety minutes to two hours to record it with going back and and then gosh and then so multiply that amount of couple an hour or two or maybe maybe like an hour. Multiply that by the number of different actors then and then Aaron, if you want to speak to the actual how much time you know, chucking down
raw? Yeah. So yeah. So once we have cast sort of assigned, we try to give you know, people who have their own like recording setups, as much time as possible to record and send it in, and then local people who don't have that or just want to come over to record to you know, get get more feedback, get more direction. So I'd say collecting all of the recordings usually takes. Sometimes it's fast. Sometimes it's
like three days. Sometimes it's like a week. We sort of have like a group of people that we were working with on the show a lot, that window has come down a lot now that we have a good, like you know, stable of people who like working on the show, like you know, doing voices, and we can we don't have to hunt for people
so so so much anymore. But yeah, then once I have those I typically try to do I'll take one evening and I'll go through each track and you know, cut out unnecessary information, you know, select the read that I think is best for the scene, and I'll do all I'll do each character like that in an evening, you know, give or take sometimes, you know, depending on this also balloons based on how many characters there are. So like the finale had like twelve characters in it, So each one
of these steps took like twice as long. But yeah, so typically an evening to do that, and then the following evening I'll take each of those and put them together so that the scene sounds conversational, and then I mix all that together, and then another evening to sort of sit down and set
on track and pull and plug in sound effects things like that. And sometimes, particularly when Rob is writing the episode, he'll get through writing and be like, oh, I have this idea in here that's going to require some sound work. So in those instances, I try to like plan ahead and like start looking for, you know, sounds that will work, knowing that I'm going to have to have you know, multiple things mixed together and fading in and out effects on them and stuff like that. So I'll try to
do some of that ahead of time. But yeah, I mean a typical, a typical ghost WEX episode where it's you know, Vonson and Luca in the beginning or whoever, and then a reclaiming and a story and then I, like, you know, Danuma or wrap up on my end, typically takes three sessions of around gosh, two to four hours for each step, I would say at this point, so I don't know what that adds up to. Someone else can add that up. Yeah, And when he says
evenings. Sometimes that is Okay, it's eight o'clock, we've finished dinner, and then we're talking three in the morning. I'm like, hey, bedtime, buddy, dragging him to bed. Particularly in that like first part where it's just sitting down with each track from each actor and like selecting the take I want to use and cutting out all the other stuff that I don't want to use. That's sort of the most like fiddly and less engaging part of
the process. So I will typically, you know, sit down, do a couple of those, and then like watch something on YouTube and then come back to it. Yeah, so you cannot fry your brain by just doing it straight. Yeah, when you look. I've seen some people post where they post like the audio tracks, like all the different colors and all the
different audio things and the music lines and stuff. And then and then you think about like our finale episode that had twelve different people who trained themselves to record, sat down to do it, recorded, sent it in, it got edited, it got mixed, it got cleaned up, it got music put over it. Stephanie's husband Colton, wrote music for us, so he had to sit and do that learn how to play the guitar. You just think about the amount of work. He knew how to play the guitar the
show, But I'm just like deconstruct He's just committed. He learned the guitar and formed a band. Transition too hard. But but if you think about like all the skill, the time, the effort that goes into it by like a dozen people, by the end of that, it's it's a it's a huge amount of work. But if you think about it on the terms
of like one person, it's nothing crushing. So my advice to anybody who wants to actually do a podcast is don't don't try and do it by yourself, because the more like people and talent you add into it them, like, the less heavy the load is for any particular person. So, like, you know, the ideal for Aaron would be to have another editor who does that, who does the does part of it, you know, and then he can do the fun stuff. But sorry, you can cut that
part out. But well, one thing, and I am so sorry because this might come up later. It just feels like that's a good time is I've seen people ask why we don't record all together and why you edit it? Yeah, in sections, and so the biggest part of that is just getting a clean recording. The more people you add into a room, you know, a brings distractions. As we learned from our large Cat Cattle Call recording for the finale where we had like six people over here. I'll take
turns took forever, it really did. But yeah, so that that's that's the the biggest reason is that when you have one person in a quiet room recording on one MIC, you just get a cleaner file from that. Now, sometimes when we do it here, we'll have of you know, Robinson on the couch and read the other lines along with the person recording, so
that it feels conversational, but we're actually only recording one part. And the other part of that is that I like to have the clips to be able to move around at will, and when it's being read with someone, there's
like timing and pacing built into that. So I like to take that sort of out of it so that I can put that back together in the way that I want to construct it. Ironically, it can wind up sounding more natural when you have it can if you're gonna edit, like because if you've got like Brian and I are doing a take and he says line A,
and I say line B in response to that. But Aaron doesn't like how I said line B, but he likes how Brian said line A. He probably can't split lift those two lines apart if they are really, like really clearly connected. But so he likes Brian's line A more than you know. But being able to frankenstign it together, I can see that. I can see. I see what you mean. It's just it's just a preference that I have, honestly, And yeah, it creates more work, but I
think that the end product comes out better. I mean, for instance, we did god sixty nine plus episodes of Could Have Been Heroes and that was you know, six hot mics in our living room, and holy crap, was that a bear to edit down? You know when I want to take out this thing that Amanda said. But Andy and Josh were talking about this at the same time, and Rob and Katie were laughing, and it's like, where where do I cut? You know, Like that was the most
like crucible trial by fire? What the hell were we thinking with that? Like, Oh, we'll all get in a room and we'll play a dungeon and direct, well, you know, a TTRPG together, and and then we'll just that'll be what we did, That'll be what we recorded. And then Aaron sit sound to edit and like just the top of his head blew off and hit the ceiling and like realized when we were you know, and I was pretty new to this specific form of like sound engineering and editing and
stuff like that. So you know, now I know a lot of very helpful tricks that I really wish I had known then, because I did a whole bunch of work on that that I did not need to because I could have had the computer do it for me. But has the problem with being autodidactic when you teach yourselves, you got to find the tricks all on your
own. Yeah, so christ Yeah, So the answer is to that question about how long does it take a massive amount of time, But that amount of time is put in by like lots of different people, probably less time than the amount of time it took us to actually answer that question. Oh yeah, a lot of invisible time too, so it's hard to gauge. Yeah, how long before an episode starts being written? Do you count time? Yep? Like how much thinking counts? Yeah? What even is time.
Yeah, Like, for example, I have been developing the like the metaplot in nineteen ten for like a month and a half. Now it's been in the back of my head. I think about it all the time. I have a bunch of scenes like like the train, the guy on the train who sees the eye in the hand, the arrival at the house, the for seance that like, like I have the all of these scenes like
already like kind of constructed in my head like a little movie. So now I just got to sit down and write, you know, write the first episode and connect those together. But that that's taken like a month, And this is God damn. My mom used to look at me and see my vacant eyes, my eyes like staring off in the distance, or like with a bunch of little toys in my lap or whatever, and and and she's like, what are you doing? You're not doing anything, you know,
Or my dad would be like, why shouldn't you be doing something? Shouldn't you go make a friend early? You know, you know, because they just see you sitting there like a lump. And but what I should have said is I'm I'm I'm creating, like I'm creating mother, I'm creating father. Yeah, so okay, Well but that's okay. If it's compelling, that's fine. My ADHD is fucking us up. I'm sorry. And now for question two. Question please, so let's get this one done because this
might be long. But oh god, who is your favorite character, either to write or perform or just in general in the story? Well, Stephanie, I feel like this will be easy. We talked a little bit about how we we've been doing kind of like avataring, So do you want to
talk about that a little? I mean, obviously I love my girl Pip, everybody else great, Yeah, I mean character man, when I first apologized for all the horrors that we've subjected her too, well, I remember this always when I you first were bringing me on board and trusting me to create characters, and I told you about this concept I had for a tarot reader who could see the future but had to act like she couldn't because it
was bad business if people actually found out what was going to happen and then just were like, well that's bad anyway, and like working that in the problem of the true truth. And then I had this first episode created where she gets her throat cut and I had it even from then. I'm like, and then in a few episodes, she's going to get this big necklace to cover it and it's going to be super sparkly. And Robbie just stopped me and he goes, wait a minute, are you just creating a character
so that you can cosplay her later? Yes? And and I look you dead in the face, and I'm like, obviously expect. A small detail that you have to know is that Stephanie is a like professional level cosplayer, that she is a spectacular cosplayer. She has a cosplay like building crafting room and has like has some very very great cosplays. And then I was just really, you know, yeah, we were adding costume details, and that's
the thing. We bring what we love to the characters. But you know, I could just visualize who this person was so perfectly, and yeah, I've put a lot of myself and my own quirks in there. My job title aboard this this crew is the uh uh general manager of Swears, because that's what I add to the podcast. A lot of the times, Yeah, yeah, a lot of the times you go in and you're like, and then they got to say there's not enough curses in this person. Yeah,
but yeah, so that would be mine, I'd say. I'd say secondary is I love writing the dead characters or like the new like the people were just bringing in because you can make them whoever you want. And frankly, my favorite episode is Video Horror Story and writing those characters because again we kind of knew who they were. That was. That's a collaboration with the Just School with it, Yeah, and we were kind of basing it a little bit on them, But those were my other than Pip, those were
my favorite characters to write. Awesome, well you wrote, but I was like feeding you. Yeah, we collaborate a lot. So anyway, all right, Brian, how about you got a favorite character in season one? Oh Will? I really enjoyed of the stuff I've written that has come out so far. I really enjoyed writing the Balancer episode because that was an attempt.
All of my episodes that I've written, whether they've been made yet or not, I've been trying to play with something new, mostly because of my own probable but as yet undiagnosed ADHD where I just have to keep trying new things because once I've done them once well, that pathway worked it doesn't work. It doesn't give me the dopamine anymore. I need new for dopamine,
right, I need to play with the structure of this one. For no reason, but Balancer was an attempt to make an antagonist that was entirely a moral in a very literal way, not just a moral in the now. They can be a serial killer and I can do messed up things. The Balancer is a personification of a universal force of attempting to balance energy, which means sometimes they're going to really brutally kill the innocent, and sometimes they're going
to save the innocent. It just depends on how things are skewed in this situation. If things are skewed towards what we would call injustice, they're going to bring justice, and if things are skewed towards peace and prosperity, they're going to bring really painful chaos. It's just it was an attempt to play with a character that used a very different system of what was right and wrong.
And we're right and wrong. We're almost completely meaningless words. Yeah, And I think that's something that we have been really playing with in Ghost Wax a lot is the concept of like things that are really alien to people and that being scary, like like us realizing that there are things about us, about humanity, about people that you don't associate with humanity, but they're in there, they're underneath there, like these ideas and notions that like, uh
anyway, so yeah, I think I think that was a very cool that's a very cool thing, and we got to play with that some more. The you know, the we talked about about like the pattern and how like things have to match the pattern and if they don't, they have to be excized and that's not positive or negative, it just is what it is,
you know. And you know and again that everything, everything in Ghost Wax is a monster as a metaphor type thing, and like we you know, there are you know, difficult decisions in all of our lives that we have to make and we don't want to make, but you got to. You've got to make changes, and that can be really painful and that's scary, like deep down, like you know, you're working without a net kind of
stuff. So okay, So obviously, uh, you know, this season one, the main the three main characters uh are probably would probably would be Luca and Pip and and von said, and so I gotta I got a soft spot for my boy. Vaughan's said. Obviously, you know, we all have these sort of avatar characters that we love so much. But I think I'm just massively, massively proud of that character. I think he's really unique. I think he's he's from a book I started writing like a long
time ago. I wrote, like, you know, a third or like half of a fantasy novel. And then I realized that I had spent so many time writing like different like test chapters, that I'd written half of a novel with no with no actual like anyway, I'll just release some of those as short story as you as can read them and see if they're they're good, but I'll release the original, like von said, chapter it was a character who came in and found a person who had been brutally murdered and cut
up and like sewed them back together and brought someone out of a dungeon to use their power to reanimate it and interviewed the guy after they you know, were reanimated. And so just this idea of someone using using neckermancy to investigate the dead, right, I thought that was really interesting. But then when I started writing him for ghost Wax, he showed up as kind, compassionate,
like cares very deeply about these people who have passed. And I realized that in you know, in between the time that I had sort of written that and now you know, I've you know, I've processed a lot more of my own you know, dealing with death and grief, and you know, you know, it's been a lot. You know, my my little sister died gosh, almost ten years ago or is it ten years ago now? And so clearly the character of Vaughan Sid was like, wouldn't it be
great if we could talk to people we've lost? But then, you know, almost a decade later, it's not it's about like not trying to clutch onto that and just realize that, but to try to put some sort of piece to to that loss or whatever. So it's interesting how you're sort of like these characters wind up his vehicles for for things inside of you and things
you're dealing with. And so but I think he's amazing and I love him a lot, and I I'm really excited to dig more into Luca's backstory, and I have a whole bunch of new characters that I'm really excited about. But the most fun. Yeah, he's he's he's like easy for me now, Like I just know him so well. I just know what he'd say. And so that is a cool thing to have happen, where you get to know a character so well that you they become like second nature to write
or to record as Like his voice is really easy to do now. And writing monsters is fun, trying to make them genuinely scary and not going to like they jump out and make a loud noise or they have like, god, it's Gary voice, but like but like that, they're they're giving monsters some humanity, you know, I don't know, that's something that we've on. I don't know. I don't know. I obviously Von said he's my
boy, So there there is that. It's the obvious answer. And I think my favorite continuing character to write about is Luca, partly because Luca's as as much as any character is the audience stand in, because he is the one, so what's going on? He's one hundred Watson, Yeah, absolutely, And partly because he's got the Swiss cheese soul thing going on that's just
interesting. So throwing Brian had some incredibly interesting concepting for that, and we've we've got some really cool Lucas stuff in season two that you are, Yeah, and I'm not trying to explain all the holes in his soul, but I think I can explain one or three of them. Yeah, uh yeah, I mean I very much like doing Luca. I am not I would
not consider myself an actor. So part of what I like about Luca is it's kind of strange, but I've sort of asked to like not know much about him so that like just in the moment when I sit down to record him, I can just sort of like make little decisions about things as I'm like reading it for the first time. And yeah, so that's been really fun. But my favorite are the Monstery characters, because that's just me sitting down with a recording, going how can I fuck this up and make it
weird? But then like doing more than that, you know, doing like, well, what does this sound like? And why do you have more questions for us? Aaron? Yeah, get that clicker, like, yeah, start clicking at us the couch. How much of this were you actually gonna be able to use? I hope you're all enjoying yourselves at least it is like, no, I want to go home. Okay. I liked this one. Someone asked, do all approved practitioners of magic work for the
HAMSA? And what about folks who have magical ability but refuse to work with HAMSA? With the order? I need an emoji. I need an emoji that's like the grimace face, Like, what do you guys think? What do you what do you think about that? I don't know what would have happened if Pip had been like nah, man, fuck off, like getting into the weeds. We can skip that. It's a great question. It's a great question. I just feel like you are the like, okay,
So I'm like, I don't know how about this? What do you want? Since the official word wants to be KOI, why don't we have two unofficial words who could both be right or wrong? Yeah, I'm so. None of our stuff's canon. We're just knowledgeable. Answer the question. I like to think that it depends on the person's abilities and what they are already
doing with it. So if it's like I think of Pip, if she basically said nah, fuck off, I want no part of this, what she was doing before she was brought into the fold wasn't really affecting the Like, yes, it's so people who could have magic, but they're not looking for power. Yeah, like money was great, but it wasn't like I'm trying to rule the world. It was just I'm trying to get by.
I think I like to think the hompside keep an eye on it, but they wouldn't necessarily interfere in every single instance because they just have too much to do. But if it's a point of I have magic that I'm actively harming the people around me for my own gain, then it's a i'm I mean
they obviously they would just kill them. Well, episode I don't remember which what the number of the episode was, but the one the Shaper episode where you know her powers are not in her control and she's hurting the environment around her and then she winds up as part of the Observer program at the end of the episode. So yeah, that's what I think. Okay, all right, Brian, what I would Yeah, pretty much agree. I think
it is a question of scale. If someone at like Pip's power level was just being uh uh boardwalk psychic, then I think they might be approached based on what their raw abilities were, what their potential was, and if they refused, fine, they'll get like passive aggressive postcards a couple of times a year about how we're contacting you about your magic's extended warranty. You're wasting your
potential. We're just worried, yes aggressive, yes, right. And I feel like even if they were going for just worldly power, like they used their their tarot cards or their Crystal ball or whatever their their particular focal point is to like pull the powerball numbers to get six hundred million dollars, or they wanted to become the resident of the United States and used that route to figure out what the steps were and how to do them. If it was
just worldly power, I still think the HAMSA wouldn't care at all. They would get the exact same passive aggressive postcards as if they were earning twelve bucks an hour reading poems. But then as soon as one of them went like, Okay, you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to take on the cipher myself, then yeah, Blade's Gold would be out at their house that day. It does feel the HAMSA, as much as they are
in their organization, is the protagonists of ghost Wax. It still feels like they have a level of need to control everything that can be as villainous as any of the glorious that they face. And it just depends on what perspective you're coming from. And if you're coming from the psychic version of Cat's perspective where they want to be an independent agent and do good but on the our own terms, then yeah, this is just Disney buying up a little VFX
studio. Yeah, so the question becomes, yeah, so what would have happened to Pip if she had said, you know, I don't want to be part of this. We're thinking that that would be different than what if like Adriana said, like, no, I don't want to be helpful. I don't want to be trained at how to control my shadow. I don't want to right, that's probably right, that sounds right. Every listener could see the expression on Robbie's face, the sheer glee. Well, well,
yeah, I don't have any any listen. I was working on a superhero like thing once. And how they did it is like they had classifications like if you're a Delta or Sta or whatever and you don't want to be part of the like superhero thing that's probably not that big a deal. But once you get up into them them betas and alphas like, oh now you can topple buildings and derail trains, and now it becomes like a real issue.
That sounds right, It sounds right to be Okay, God, all right, So let's see, all right, this was asked in several forms in one way or another. But they want to know why are reclaimers so rare the effort control of the practice to a select few? Yes, and then as a follow up, what happened to the other ones? Okay, so there we actually in the show, in the canon of like of season one, we actually talk about this a little bit that or kind of reference it
there. Von said has some line where he's like, I basically admitting that, like I want to teach necromancy to more to people, but they don't want us to, or the higher ups of the order, the Veterum in particular, don't want certain arts being taught to people that we can't totally control,
we can't inhabit. So basically what they're saying is we want to keep certain magics within the ham saw themselves, the like the Twinned beings that that are these like cosmic traveler puppeteer creatures who have reformed themselves now inhabit living humans with like their consent. So that's part of it is that there's certain techniques
that like they are particularly dangerous, particularly corruptible. Historically, necromancy has been one of those, like in every fiction, in every history, raising the dead, talking to the dead, to the dead, it's a little bit more wiggily, but raising the dead, trying to extend or prolong your life, you get vampires, liches, zombies, all, you know, because it's something we all want, is more life, and so it's something that
we create this taboo around that it would be bad to have more life because it's a coping thing. We need to be able to cope. So anyway, however, there were so the reclaimer order. I don't think everyone who was a reclaimer historically has been like a specific like like necromancer, like von sid Is. I think there have been spirit spirit mediums and channelers and other
another folks who have like basically necromancy dabblings, you know or whatever. And I and in nineteen in the nineteen ten story, we're actually going to hear where Von Sid becomes a Reclaimer. So he's a necromancer and he's been a
necromancer since ancient Sumeria. But he meets a woman named Ida who is the leader of the Reclaimers at the time, who has sort of a different philosophy behind necromancy behind so that's where this idea of taking their last statement as a sort of like giving peace to the dead, not just as an investigative tool or not just as a way to fight evil, which is the way that
kind of Sid has been doing it so far. He meets her and she teaches him something and he like, you know, so the season one is very much him as a like, as a teacher and a mentor, and so nineteen ten is going to be him him learning some stuff. However, light spoiler, something bad happens to the Reclaimers and he winds up as the leader of the without any more of them because of a trauma, because of
a bad thing. So there is a sort of a I don't call it a purge because that will put things in your head specifically, but there is a there is a a traumatic event, and then he's left wanting to be able to take more apprentices and teach more people, but unable to do so because of the constraints put on him by the veteran who he's no longer a part of. Because of the way that he has his power is lessened and he's crippled himself by holding on too long to his them. But then after
season one, like, maybe that's not the case anymore. Maybe maybe he he takes on some apprentices in season in season two, So yeah, that's that's the answer. I don't know if you want to beep any of that or bleep any of that out, but okay, let's see. Uh, they want to know how does living at the ardent Uh? For characters like Charlie, how does that work? Hmm? Is it like a college dorm situation or more summer camp style where everyone sleeps in one large room. Oh,
I don't remember. I don't know the context exactly. But there's a podcast called not Another dn D Podcast or is that right? Is that what it's called? Yeah? Yeah, not Another NAD pod? Yeah yeah, where there's this there's this these images called one Big Bed where they it's all the major characters sleeping like in one big bed, all snuggling. Oh that makes me so happy and the thought of like I do have in my head
an image of von said Luca Pip Kat like deep like Indelia. They invited her because no one wants to talk to her because they all think she's like
recording them or whatever. And she's in the dark because she's a dark yeah, Nash, and like, uh, you know, all the characters like hanging out having a movie night and they've all fallen asleep and it's like Christmas, Like Vonsien's like watching all the kids asleep, and like again, it is very easy to get like trapped in the the sort of especially when they're they're characters that are so routinely traumatized. So it's a hotel. It's like a big, giant Art deco hotel. It has lots of rooms. Most
of the rooms don't have people in them. It's also probably it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. So yeah, I think it's like a hotel. There are common spaces and uh yeah, it's probably got a lot of amenities that they probably have put things in like a swimming pool
and movie theaters. We're gonna do an episode in season two where like someone breaks into the Ardent and has to be either interviewed or reclaimed like after they But so we're gonna get like a good look of the interior of the Ardent from an outsider's perspective, like them describing like them sneaking around the art and trying to steal stuff. So, but do you guys ad anything, cause I think this is a we could like riff on this. What is your
sort of imagination on what it's like in there? I picture lower levels that's like not allowed, you know, you need a key card to get a lot of places whatever. But the upper levels I picture of the Overlook Hotel. Oh for sure, I definitely picture It's like, yes, it's there's everybody gets their own bedroom, you know, everything like that. But yeah, you'll just turn a corner and like what the fuck is you know what?
Never mind, I'm not gonna worry about that right now. Yeah, the higher and lower you go, like the closer to the vault you get, the more like limit all the spaces get. But also the higher you get to the upper chamber, which is like a huge like ceremony room where they do the vanishings. So the high closer you get to that, the more limit all the spaces get like rooms will connect in weird ways. It
gets a little eschery as you go higher up. But yeah, the like ground floor and the like first like four floors or something are probably like it just like a really nice art deco hotel mixed with like they probably have a library in there. Yeah, it's very campusy, very dormy. Season two is going to be very like campus collegey because we're gonna have the apprentices and
they're going to be like learning stuff and competing with each other. And I can't wait for Sid to like throw them in a room with a knife and be like, I only need one of you. I picture. So there's there's a lot of fandoms where there's where it has this flavor that I really love. It's problematic, it is as it is now Hogwarts. Yes, there's yes, there's uh hey, yeah, I love Hogwarts. Yeah, Hogwarts has a lot to it. There's the Tartists, there's Deep Space nine.
There's a lot of Firefly fire and Firefly Spaceship. I actually so in the last episode in the finale, I talk about how it's unmoored from reality. That's based on my favorite, maybe my favorite horror film ever called a dark song where they sort of they have a house and they start performing this magical ritual and you can see out of the house. But he talks about it is like we aren't actually here anymore. We're sort of like between places.
And I love the idea of a house as like a spaceship. Almost Constantine the comic book, Like the character Constantine, he has a house that can be like in a Yeah, basically basically had no continuing apartment. Yeah, I forgot about this. My brain went to Keanu Reeves. I was trying to love I do. It's not a good adaptation, but it is a good movie anyway. But in the comic book version, he has a
house that like exists in a pocket. I'm sure some comic book person is screaming at me right now, but yeah, and it moves around and that's where he keeps all his ship and all this stuff. Yeah, the arden, I think is physically located in I think it's it's Ida's house from it. So it's located like in the woods of Philadelphia, somewhere like just you'd be traveling through the woods. Oh my god, there's a huge art deco
hotel here. But there are entrances to it in New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Like there's doors that go into We didn't really talk about this much, but there are some transportational things happening, especially like in a couple of those earlier episodes they talk about like getting in through the hallway closet and we'll have to take the special mode of transportation. So like, yeah, the world of ghost Wax is full of a lot of like secret modes
of transportation that haven't come up too much yet. But right, yeah, I just I keep picturing the building as very abrupt and sometimes very hard to find things. I definitely for the Cold Case episode, I was picturing like a very modern hallway with a key card door that opens up to an ancient runic chamber carved from the living rock. Yeah, and it's not because of a dimensional door. There's literally a carved rock chamber behind a modern door.
Yes, it's just that they were designed by completely different people who had no communication with each other. No, yeah, and for totally different purposes, right, Like this is a this is a theater. We built a movie theater and a pool and a recreational room. Those are to keep people from going crazy. And right next to that is the insanatorium, where we need to make people crazy so that they can see phanfasms, like you know what I mean like that. So these rooms are off for different, very very
different purposes. And that's right across from the storage room, which I only find on every other Wednesday. I can look for it all I want, but I only find it on every other Wednesday, and it's always right there. Yeah, or the the Lost and which you can only find by getting very very hopelessly lost Narnia style, Nardia style. Yeah, there's a lot of like Nardia, Neil Game, any like sort of ideas going on here.
And yeah, and the farther down you go, the more it becomes like like just columns of white stone and an impossibly black expanse, and the more like Moria it becomes, the farther down you go. Yeah. Yeah. There's one full time employee at the arden whose only job is to clean the mummies out of rooms that just get found often enough that it's a full time job. It's like where did this mummified corpse come? There's another staff
person whose only job is putting mummies in rooms. They're the same person, they just have amnesia. Oh god, this is the kind of weird that I love so much, and I think you can see why we all jive together so well. All right, so you mentioned the new recruit characters. Yeah, they want to know, on a scale of one to ten, how gay are they? Well, Stephanie, how gay can we make? Has anyone been straight in terms of ardent? Like humh okay? Straight characters?
Well, I think, I mean Margo and Nash probably are. Probably, I don't know. It hasn't really come up functionally, at least so far. Yeah. I've stated on the discord and I'll stay here. Every character I've ever written is canonically by unless explicitly stated otherwise. Yeah, I think just everyone in the world of ghost Wax is that is probably by that
We're against no straight characters. It's just we right from our Yeah, that is an entire Yeah, I don't know if if this has really come up, But then this is like an entirely queer like we have, like like Mark straight, You've got a couple of straight people involved. Uh, it's gonna be a good mix. We're gonna get I've got at least three new apprentices that I know about, Like in my head that I'm like starting to like are starting to like make themselves known to me mentally. So we're gonna
get some good representation in there. We need to, uh get an ace character in there. We need to get you know, some some We're gonna be as diverse as possible with orientations and races and ideas and so we want to Yeah, we want to keep it, keep it. Uh, it's gonna be queer as hell. It's just good. Everyone's gay. They're gay. How they're going to be in a big gay pile? I mean, it's it's gonna happen. We will all have to stretch our writing skills by
writing a straight character. Yeah, okay, there's your writing challenge. Yeah you, Stephanie, I choose you to. All right, where were we? Uh? Oh, big gay pile? Got So this one says how much direction do the actors get on the screaming? And how fun is it
to just let it loose? Oh it's actually terrifying. I find I hate doing it because I like feel it, like I can't help but put myself in Like Von said's like sorry, I'm just like bringing this down and making this incredibly depressing immediately, But like Vaughn said's like whail after as I was gone, was I mean, like I was like fucked up for a couple like a day and a half after. I was like, ah, that's
like yeah, it's really emotionally like brutal. And listening to Stephanie when like Charlie cuts her eyes out, fucking the noises you made make bank me so so unhappy. Uh, just just fucking brutal recording. That sucked. I hated that so much. I mean you feel guilty because you're like, I guess I've am partially responsible for this, like and then you're like, well, it's not real. None of these people are real, you know, it's it's it's tough. It's tough. I'm I'm, I'm I have kind
of a hyperactive like empathy gland. So you know, yeah, uh yeah, I no know, steph what do you think about that? Because the most unfortunately, like there was some fun screaming earlier, like you know, uh, you know, just your basic monster be kind of screaming, but like the one that's very fresh and in our our mind right now is the finale, which was none of that screaming was very fun. Yeah, I
was when I did when Pip subducted at the end of forty two. Oh yeah, I record most of my stuff at Robbie and Aaron's house so they can give direction and that I was a little worried about your neighbors, like calling the police because I had to do that one like that one that was loud, Yeah, that was I actually like kept an eye out for the neighbors like after that one, like if their lights came on or something. Yeah, because that was loud enough that I was like, oh shit,
that doesn't you told me. I know, but I wasn't expecting your your pipes. I didn't expect your your volume to be so high. Yeah, that was like that did not sound like a horror movie scream. That sounded like a fucking like a real scream. And well, that's why I like to do the recordings here is so I have people who can give me hugs. When I have finished with the traumatizing stuff, literally come out of the recording studio and like, someone hug me, and then there's usually a group
of people so fine, yeah, yeah, Okay. A few people wanted to me to ask what jobs would the cast have if they didn't have a brush with the other side, architect and cupcake bakery owner. And that's who all of them, all of them columns. They have nineties rom com movie end up coming together anyway, and yeah, someone's design those, dude, let's do this. This is a great question. Top down, I think
that von sid was I think I think anthropologist. I think that his history with like, well, well, oh that's actually the episode that was Pip's fantasy. Yeah, archaeology questions a writer and writing sci fi. Yeah, so he'd like be a writer on the side, and and uh so like if he were a normal human man in his like current iteration, yeah, college professor slash anthropologist, I think he'd be more interested in anthropology than archaeology.
But I got the reference. I thought it was really fun, So we because I think he's very interested in people. Oh here's my question. I'm assuming that his sci fi novels are just absolute garbage pulp grocery store novels, and he loves that that's what they are. But are they published under Owen von sid or does he have a really obvious suitedym. Uh yeah, Luca would probably work for like probably have gone to like m I T or
something and do whatever people do with that. Yeah, he'd probably have I don't know, he'd probably be some I don't know, some sort of an engineer, maybe like a theoretical physicist, but like a computer programmer, but for something. He'd also have like a side job at a movie theater just so he could watch see the movies for free. Yeah, maybe'd be like a visual effects artist or something. I don't know, yeah, movie knowledge.
Oh, he'd be like there was a NASA engineer who left NASA to invent the super Soaker, that sort of just that would have just left SpaceX in order to invent some much better form of movie being. All right, so Nash of the faradays. So the faradays are have been like like order hunters for forever. They're like a storied family. And so he'd probably just be a freaking rich playboy. You'd probably just be a jet center. Oh
yeah, he's absolutely shot animals most of us haven't seen. Well that's definitely true. But so yeah, so yeah that and he's also you know that based on a character from another thing that we we made. And uh yeah, so I think that's right. Yeah, Margot was a police detective. She would have stayed a police detective. I think that that's just like built
into her blood. What was cat did? What she did probably something very mundane, Yeah, because I feel like the catalyst for her becoming a hunter really changed her trajectory in a way that like maybe even some of the others aren't. Yeah, she just worked in an office and then on the weekends
got all her joy out of just ruling karaoke or something. He'd be like into kickboxing and oh yeah, do like iCal stuff and maybe an athlete because she I think she's pretty strong, So maybe maybe she'd play like like volleyball or something on the weekends or yeah, man, she would. I feel so bad she would have had such a like normal fun life if things hadn't gone so sideways. How about Pip is performer. I mean she went she got a theater degree. I guess she had opened her shop before. She's
the brush. I feel like that's the brush with the other side part, because her original brush with the other side is her lineage, like grandma or great grandma. So if that hadn't been the case, would she have I can't even think she'd be an entirely different person. Like that's a that's a ground up yeah, you know her, her grandma basically instilled all of this in her since she was born. So if it was if that had never happened, I guess there's no way to know who that person would be.
Even in the this is this is Your Life cipher episode, She's still in the shop. That part is unchangeable. Oh god. Well, yeah, And if we're going just ground up changes, I feel like the SAME's true of Luca. Like whatever touched Luca happened before Luca was a living, breathing baby, So whatever holes and the soul didn't happen when he was seventeen.
But I feel like with Luca, like if if the like nastiness around his skills hadn't happened, and he hadn't been like taken into the order, he probably could have just like gone through his life never really knowing that what he was doing was mystical in any way. Yeah, right, if it hadn't gotten so sideways. Yeah. Well, and also depending on what got excised out of him, did he lose things, right, things that would have
given him limits? Yeah, right, because that's like another bit that's that like unchangeable part, because it's just you know, who he was born to we're parts of We're parts of Luca carved away to limit him. That's a massively interesting question. I wonder No, No, I just love the idea though, that that's why they're besties. Is they just have so much stuff in kind they do even they don't know yet. There's two puzzle pieces together.
Mm hmm. All right, Well we've been at this a while, so let's do one last one pizza waiting with We just got the pizza here. So you may have noticed a distinct succinctness creep into some of the answers here, but all right, well last one here? Uh, do y'all make popcorn on release day and watch Discord freak out there? Nothing gives me greater joy in my life right now than watching the like the Live channel where people like pop in their their reactions, or going on Tumblr and seeing like
what people are saying or who they're shipping, or seeing fan art. I mean, like, good lord, my heart is very full. Every time anybody evangelizes for us or recommends us on Reddit or yeah, that stuff that means just the world to me. I can't believe you know, it's it's been me and my like close friends who have cared about the fictions that I've made up my entire life and finally like putting that stuff out there and having
anyone at all a click and care about the things we're made. Stephanie and I've talked about this quite a bit, and yeah, so yes again to make it sappy and not, you know, to take a fun question and make it modeling, Yeah, very much. So we don't we don't make you know, we don't make popcorn, but bust out whatever snack And but I am always very excited because I typically like finish an episode and then post it and then go to bed, So I'm always very excited to pick up
my phone the next day. It is a very a Christmas Yeah, And I'll say I like, I've always enjoyed watching people, whether I write the episode or not, even just knowing, like you know that I sometimes I'll read scripts ahead of time to help proof readA stuff, and so like knowing
there's gonna be a response, which is great. But I feel with the last five episodes it was even more so then than the regular episodes, because it was like we knew what we were doing was gonna was gonna cause emotions seeing how early people picked up on Charlie like early, And just to be clear, that was the plan for Charlie. It wasn't just a response to the discord. But you guys figured it out before I did. Oh wow, because I knew there was I knew some of the things planned for Charlie,
but I didn't know everything. But I do know he was. He was evil before y'all picked up on it. He was antagonistic before he y'all picked up on it, But you picked up on it before I did. I remember Robbie being a little bit like people already think he's bad, like I just introduced, and I'm like, Robbie, it's because he's the only character you've ever introduced who had no trauma, no like so happy and people
don't trust it was he was. He was trying to be positive, yes, and that because it was him like trying to cope with what he'd agreed. But it just felt like people were like, wait, this is he's happy. We don't trust that. It was one hundred percent one hundred percent. And and again it's not a like who done it mystery where I like
feel like I like, oh shoot, I but you got it. You can never underestimate how savvy consumers of this kind of fiction are, Like they they know all the tropes, they know all the counter tropes, they know all the they are one hundred percent. So that's why with with Charlie, like when I introduced him, I didn't even really when I first created the character, I had no idea that he was gonna be like a major antagonist
this season. I didn't know if that would happen until later, or if it was gonna happen at all, But I just kind of knew that, like something had happened before they got to him, and and then that fester and grew, and I was like, oh, no, it's bad, It's really really bad. But so what I tried to do as I made the character rather than I was like, oh, should I leave this in this is going to make people suspicious, or should I leave this element?
And sho, should I clearly show that he's being manipulative or whatever? But then I remember, like you are hearing all the recordings together, there's lots of other stuff that happens in their lives, and in between these things that
distracts them confuses them. Von sid is normally very sharp but he's like not at his a game, like right now, he's very kind of sick and and so like I kind of got to the impression where I was like, actually, it might be kind of cool if you to have that dramatic irony of like you, the listener, know more than the characters in it. It's that car crash that you see coming, but nobody's looking the right way.
And to play with the horror, like we've all had people who let other people into their life and you go, oh no, that's a fucking bad one. That's a user, that's a manipulator, and there's nothing you can fucking do most of the time. So to play with that horror trope of letting people kind of see like, oh no, But then what I really wanted to do, and I think I did it. We did a pretty good job. Was to eat to once you realize that he's bad.
We even put a recording of him talking to the oversoul and being like freaking out because he's like, I can't do it. I can't be the bad guy, you know, And and you could if you really listened, if you really like analyzed that, you could probably figure out who it was. But but we I thought that it would be it would be cool to have a thing where it's like you know it's coming, you just didn't know how bad it was gonna be. And that was that was what the vibe is.
And I think that's something that we'll do again in voice wax where voice wax in ghost wax where you you you might figure something out, but we'll still find a way to to have it be shocking just by its like its intensity or depth, or we'll pull one over on you people eventually. Yeah. We like going back to the discord the day of I love seeing people like speculate wildly, but when it's like sometimes it's like, oh man, you guys are spot on, you just don't know. And sometimes it's like
what are you talking about? Sarah being like I don't know what anyone in the discord is talking about right now. It was so and I love the ones that are parallel where it's like you're right in everything but every detail. Yeah, like that's exactly what's going to happen, but you got every name wrong. Oh this is going to be tasty when this unfold. So good, all right, folks, Well, there are a lot more questions,
but This is getting long, so think we will wrap it there. If you guys want to ask us more stuff, come see us on discord. Yeah, yes, all right, anything else to add y'all? Thank you, Thank you for listening. I've said this before, but I don't know if I've said it here. We could absolutely do this without our fans, but it would be really sad, would be incredibly it would feel very hollow
and very pointless. Thank you, And it is so. It is so just damn enervating to have people who will take this horrible pain and trauma we put out and eat it with great big spoons as fast as they can, and then and then complain about it, and then complain that there wasn't more that said. Many of you have asked we cannot pay your therapy bills but you join Patreon Patreon, yes, your own give it the Patreon level free
therapy. Yeah, yeah we will. We promised to put some cozy's up on h on Patreon, so that that can that can be our little like dropping the bucket towards the therapy that you that you will that everyone needs. Frankly, oh yeah, we'll just post like cute videos of bunnies and stuff. No, No, I mean, like, well, we'll cut episodes that are like about nice things. Well, actually, right, the beach day beach day episode, We'll just video Aaron, Robbie and myself sitting on
a couch watching movies. Yea, and call that hey look it is Yeah, let's do a beach Adevnston definitely wears those like like black and white stripulators. Yeah. Yeah, whoa, I just can't picture out like uncomfortable that would be yeah, I definitely I want to want to echo that. Man. That's that's just thank you so much for caring about our sad, doomed, pretty little world that we're we're making. It means the world to us.
We are so like flattered and thrilled to be part of such an incredible medium, Like there are so many people telling so many cool stories because it's audio and it is an equalizer for people to create stories without that are indie and also like really puts a focus on on the writing and the acting, and boy are people stepping off to that challenge. And I just there is amazing shit out there and it is just so cool to to be able to be part of it in our you know, small way and please join us
on Patreon. It is it is such an you know, an awesome way to engage with people and and to to support the show and and keep it rolling along and expanding and and we've got lots of fun stuff and cool ideas coming. So yes, thank you, and keep listening and and excelsior. And if you can't afford to join the Patreon, absolutely fine, we fully understand. Join Discord, tell friends about it. Yes, there is so many ways to support support the show, and nothing is like word of mouth.
Absolutely, get on Discord and tell us we're pretty that'll be oh man, no idea? How you have no idea? And we are pretty? So yeah, especially especially in Stephanie's case. Yeah, all right, well until we made again. Goodbye, everybody, good bye. Thank you for listening to ghost Wax, a production of Foreign Tall Tales. Find us at Foreign Talltales dot squarespace dot com. Ghost Wax is an independent podcast, so if you liked the show, please rate and review and consider joining us on
Patreon at Patreon dot com slash Foreign Tall Tales. Also give a listen to our fantasy roleplay show could Have Been Heroes for something completely different. Ghost Wax is written and directed by Robert Knutsen, Production and editing by Aaron Schoenrock. Our theme song is by Bo Hoover.