ANNOUNCEMENT: The New Worlds Beyond

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Hello everybody and welcome to the fireside chat for episode 54. There is a path and we are on it. I am your host, Erika Ishii. And with me, as always, is my dear friend, Aabria Iyengar. Ahoohoo, crackle, crackle. Oh my god, we did it. We did it! We did it. We did it with Brennan Lee Mulligan. A hoo-hoo, crackle-crackle to make this podcast with all of you would be an... He's going to say it!

And speaking of honor, we are here with a very, very special guest. It's me, Lou Wilson. It's the first ever Book One Talkback. First one. Glad to be there. Sorry, Aabria, I will not be at the last Solari talk today, but I will be at this, the first ever...

book one talkback. I'm so glad we have you in the studio, but just as a point of order, this is actually not the book one talkback. It is the episode 54 talkback, but we do have you here in the studio, which is really exciting. Oh, wait, hold on. It's the episode. It's not. Oh, okay. Well, I got it. Don't go near that door. Barring the door. Close that door. It's fine. It's fine. I'm here. I took a break. Oh, good. You know, Panama will be continued. I'll continue strolling in the near future.

Speaking of strolling, my God, the stuff we have coming up for you guys on the Patreon and on the podcast writ large, for those that are here in the hoopla and the hootenanny celebrating the end of book one. Baby, we got so many exciting things on the way. We got tons of celebration coming to you with not only this talkback about episode 54, the grand finale, but also a public book one, the entire, all four arcs all together.

chatted about, we'll try to make it a little beefier so that we don't short shrift chapter four, but we will be talking about the entire adventure, chapter four and previous and the whole summary. of this. For Friends by the Fireside, we will have a producer's chat with our very own Taylor Moore to talk about leitmotif, composition, music, the music of the spheres, the heavens. Why do vibrations communicate information cosmically?

It's an interesting question and we, and we deserve answers. And, and I also, and that's just a fun celebration of book one. We got some NPC playlists coming your way that I've curated. Now that I'm not keeping any more secrets about what people's deals are. that you know of. Maybe I'm keeping secrets for book two. Don't do that, brother. Don't do that. That's a little immediate future fun that we're going to be having together on the Patreon.

But let us look, I think, to the horizon. I'm looking at... some very accomplished game masters here and i'd like to hear a little bit about what we've got cooking for our friends for all of the who we're putting the s in worlds beyond number here uh let's start with erica you want to tell us anything about what we got cooking up for right after, for coming this fall for people?

That's right. After our celebration of book one of The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One, we are moving for a brief moment into the space of mystery and thrilling adventure. With a game by me as the GM. It's me, Erica. For hint! Exclamation mark. Is what we are calling it. I don't know. I think, is it time to announce the game system? Yes.

Yes, it is. Okay, well, don't tell anyone. It is. Don't tell anyone. We have to tell them because it's so great. So far, Erica has GMed a game called Roll for Shoes, and Roll for Shoes is... for those that are fans of a county affair, is a lovely, I'd say it's a rules light system. You can explain it in five minutes. Like not even a page. Not even a page. And so when Erica was going to come up at bat again for GM, he said, oh my God. Are we going to get even...

crunchy. Like we've done the rules light. Maybe we're going to play something crunchy. Maybe we're going to go and play GURPS. Maybe we're going to play some ancient rules heavy things. Tables for days. But instead I said let's use The game system of Clue. We're going to play Clue, everyone. Only we're going to modify it so it even has less rules than that. You know, it's very roleplay heavy. It is essentially navigating based on...

the traits of the characters and a lot of, it's almost LARP-like, if you will. In my dream of dreams, perhaps one day we'll play something like this, you know, all in costumes. costumes. But in this case, yes, we will be moving from room to room trying to solve the mystery of whodunit. There will not be any dice rolls, but there will be...

Sort of all the other traditional trappings of figuring out whodunit. Yeah. It's so exciting to take a board game and go, no, no, no, you don't understand. This is now an RPG. It is the most... When Erica pitched it, I was like, I was like, this, I love it. I love a challenge. And let's get into it. And we had so much fucking fun. I will say the actual, like...

The mystery at the heart of this is so good. That's why they call him Erica John Grisham Ishii. That's why they call him. There it is. They do say that. Consider your Pelican briefed, everyone. Yes, consider your Pelican briefed. With consent. It's so goddamn exciting. It's so, so, so fun. I cannot wait.

And then, yes, that's going to be a fun series. That was an absolute blast. And after that, Lou. Yes. Well, we're soon to be recording the first ever episode of Nacho Sins, which I think is just going to be a real hoot. We're going to eat nachos and talk about... No, I'm also running something. I'll be running something next week for all of... of us that is a little action adventure using the system Star Wars 5E. And it is called The Flight of the Icaron or-

The flight of the Icarion. We'll decide pronunciation later. Maybe it's a regional dialect thing. The carry-on is fun because I like the carry-on, like that sort of vulture sense. Yes, the carry-on. It like evokes airport. Oh, I was thinking of the carrion bird eating dead meat. It was immediately spooky. Oh, I was thinking carrion bird. Carry on. Like smaller suitcase. We like optionality. This is like if Icarus had his wax wing melt and then a bunch of other...

Cretan youths saw him fall to his death and then went and ate his bones. Yeah. Which I think they did. Tough. That's a tough beat. Huge part of my campaign. Absolutely massive spoiler, Brendan. It was like a little baby bell where you've got to break the wax and then you eat the little cheese inside. I'm going to be honest. Lou as ever is... demurring about how fucking sick this campaign is going to be. I, the, when he, Oh no.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Bless you. When Lou started talking about the like, crunchy- like sci-fi science behind this setting, I got so fucking amped, my jaw dropped. It was for me, it was the timeline. The timeline of the technology in the world is what got... that has affected everything else. But let's be clear. All right. I'm taking us kind of just relatively from earth to like, you know, near the moon.

In the new year. Bang. Zoom. We go beyond. Straight to just the moon this time. I'm just the moon. Aabria wants to give you the cosmos. Look. We're ever expanding outward. We were on a planet, then we were in near space, and then we're going into deep space. 2026, baby. Solari. I would say if a carry-on doesn't work out, Lou Wilson colon just the... moon is uh is not a bad that sounds like your first comedy hour just the moon

I don't need the stars. I'll take just the moon. I'm not going to lie. I got more stressed out about you talking about us eating nachos together than I have ever been stressed out by any game. Because I was like... Do I have to eat cheese? Oh, come on. You guys can't wait for nacho sins. Everyone's dying for nacho sins. But even inside of everything else that we're doing, we're not actually done with Umura yet. Oh, no. Wait, what?

What you say? What you say? There will also be... Some lovely little interludes in Umura scattered throughout the fall before we get to our next long form campaign. Let's go. We just had... a big character generation session. Aabria, can we say some little stuff about it? No, not yet. Today is for the finale. The future is for the future.

I'm so fucking excited for everybody's guys. I love my little guys so much. Everyone's guys are so good. Okay, everyone, shut up about space. Okay, back to the world. Oh, so we had the finale episode and Brennan has promised to tell us everything about steel, everything, every lingering question, every, every doubt. It all, it all is coming out.

And that's where this little preview stops, dear listener. Hello, producer Taylor here. And to sum up, yes, you heard right. Our feed will not be going cold, but instead remains the white hot. pipe of high-pressure audio art that you're used to without missing a beat. To sum up, we've got not one but two miniseries coming up.

at you this fall. Hint from our beloved Erika Ishii and the Flight of the Icarion from Lou Wilson. His first time in the GM seat. My boy sent me his sci-fi style historical timeline yesterday. And folks, let me tell you. It puts the mid-century masters to shame. Eat our shorts. Robert Heinlein. Finally, we're taking it to that old crank. And we'll have more than one mysterious interlude with new characters set in entirely new locations within the world of Umura.

When will those interludes come out? Perhaps it's a surprise, dear listener, though mayhap you look for the first one when the veil between the worlds grows thin and spirits walk amongst the mortals. But I dare say, no more. No gore! Anyway, listen! And also, we'll be having, of course, multiple talkbacks, discussions about the music and sound design of The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One, which I personally am very excited for. And then we...

begin Aabria's first long form campaign with a sci-fi space opera that's going to melt your ear balls out of your head. Did you know you had those? You do. for a few more months and then they're melted and gone sorry not sorry one more thing one more thing okay

I'm recording this, this message to you, I'm recording on Sunday, August 17th. And tomorrow on Monday, I start work on assembling our first... original soundtrack for The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One, which we are hoping to release before the holidays. And folks, we've got a crazy plan. Listen to me.

I've been looking at the data, and we think if we time it right, and you, our listeners and our patrons, are amenable to the idea, and you stand with us, we think that we can get the Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One soundtrack to the top of the Billboard charts. I'm not kidding. Benson Boone, we're coming for you and hell's coming with us. More on that soon, fam. Stand by. In the meantime, if you haven't joined us by the fireside yet, now is the...

perfect time to do so. This very fireside chat is, I think, one of the best they've ever recorded. I'm not kidding. Brennan's conversation about Steel is a masterclass in character and just writing and kind of everything. And we also get a ton of never-before-heard insight into how... Lou thinks about playing as a player performer when we talk about that final scene. You know the one I mean. And yes, obviously, they talk about the Great Bear and what he's got going on down below the belt.

Combining highbrow and lowbrow, folks, we're the first to do it, and we do it so well. And who knows what other surprise wonders await you behind that very affordable door of Ivy at patreon.com slash worldsbeyondnumber or just like... Everybody else is going to do it. Google it. You know what I'm talking about? All right, look, fam, we're just getting started, dear listener. Come with us if you want to live, and I'll see you by the fireside. Crackle, crackle.