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THE DREAMING PROPHET: Episode 9, “A FIELD GUIDE TO DAIMONS”

[PODOMATIC LINK]

The Voices could drown you in jargon and rules. Don't worry, we've got you covered. Let's talk all about what exactly a "daimon" is - or at least, what we know so far. A special research project episode. Talking points: Daimon meta, Daimon rules, Daimon biology. Featuring cohost, Xaviul.

Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:30.

Content warnings: General horror, unreality & hallucinations, narcotic drugs, possession, murder, brief mention of child abuse.

EPISODE LINKS:

complex visual hallucinations triggered by eye closure and condition-specific release phenomenon, by huang et al.

nat geo article on the pythia/oracle of delphi

lore masterdoc

lore comics: part 1

transcript masterdoc

official discord

the blackout club lexicon, for player/game lingo & terminology

Credits: - lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan - astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things - be11amy: advertising - xaviul: host, moral support - special thanks: olive & coolguy - intro & outro music, "ringing bells": a weirdly handsome individual - transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games - the blackout club: question games (https://www.blackoutclubgame.com)

LAVANYA [00:00:20] Hello, lovely listeners, and welcome to the Dreaming Prophet. Now tonight is a very special Public Service Announcement, sponsored for and paid by the state representatives at my door, right now. Remember, kids: when the Feds come knocking, you answer, even when your doorbell isn't rigged with a mind controlling music box! They were very insistent on tonight's topic, so buckle on in, because I'm legally required to say it and you're legally required to listen, no matter how all of us mutually, tearfully regret the experience.

 LAVANYA [00:00:56] Because, tonight, we will be discussing the birds and the bees.. on the astral plane! Because our slashed funding didn't cover avocados, so we're stuck talking about Voices. Improv, kids! It's wonderful! Put down your hand, Xaviul, we aren't taking questions.

 LAVANYA [00:01:11] My name is Lavanya -.

 ASTRO [00:01:13] And I'm Astro.

 BELLAMY [00:01:14] I'm Bellamy.

 XAVIUL [00:01:15] And I'm Xaviul. [laughing]

 ASTRO [00:01:17] This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players, with minimal speculation, all lore, and a focus on the known facts. Our topic of the day is Daimon 1 0 1.

 XAVIUL [00:01:27] There will be a test afterwards, so stay tuned.

 LAVANYA [00:01:30] Now, our spoiler warning for today is everything related to Daimons. We're not digging into the individual characters, because we have separate episodes for that - which, hopefully you've listened to, especially the Speak-as-One one. The most important one.

 LAVANYA [00:01:41] *The best one.*

 LAVANYA [00:01:43] But we are digging into the general rules of how they form. That means our content warnings are general horror themes, as always, unreality and hallucinations, narcotic drugs, possessions, genocide, and general murder.

 ASTRO [00:01:57] There will also be a brief mention of child abuse.

 LAVANYA [00:02:05] So our big question of the day that we're gonna start off with is: what are Daimons? But, before we get into that, we should discuss the themes of the Blackout Club and the use of children as protagonists, because that is a huge part of what the Daimons are, and why they function the way that they do.

 LAVANYA [00:02:25] So the main characters of the Blackout Club are children. It was mentioned in the official Discord that actually an initial development of the Blackout Club back when they were first throwing around ideas, they were going to have adult player characters, but then they changed their mind. So, the player characters being children is important to the narrative and important to the themes.

 LAVANYA [00:02:46] Adolescence is a time of discovering agency, identity, and overcoming the learned helplessness that is being a kid. As a kid, your parents tie your shoelaces, and eventually, as you grow up, either you discover the beauty of velcro, or you learn to tie them yourself. The main characters of the game are children, and in light of that, the Daimons can be seen as the ultimate authority figures. As the enemy say repeatedly throughout the game, Speak-as-One are your parents, your teachers, they're every adult in town. If your mom isn't possessed by SAO, then your neighbor might be possessed by TID. Daimons are the adults narratively to the PCs children, especially when they and Unknown Caller are the only characters that we actually interact with.

 LAVANYA [00:03:30] And this ties into the rules that they follow in the narrative of the story!

 LAVANYA [00:03:35] The adult characters are all bound by various rules, and by laws, most of all, which becomes evident in the fact that childhood is the process of learning them - and breaking them, as seen by the fact the PCs run around tranqing people, vandalizing buildings and breaking and entering. Daimons have the authority that the PCs give them: narratively speaking, they are ideals, and all of them want you to conform to theirs. And they are trying to teach you to conform to theirs, or order you to through their god talks - but as any high school teachers can attest, that doesn't mean that a player characters actually do.

XAVIUL [00:04:10] The Daimons themselves have defined themselves in multitudes of ways through dreams and interactions. Speak-as-One holds that the Daimons rose from patterns, but came prior to humanity, while the Song connects Daimons and Speak-as-One.

 XAVIUL [00:04:25] The-Measure-Cuts says God is an imprecise moniker for Daimons. Dies-for-You agrees, saying Daimons are simpler and they are driven to motivate humans to action. The-Measure-Cuts also says they exist on a scale between a parasite and hallucination: he says the gender of Daimons depends on the perspective. Thee-I-Dare says they are affected and changed by humans gradually. He believes Daimons don't exist without humanity.

 LAVANYA [00:04:52] Thee-I-Dare, when he's speaking of Speak-as-One's treatment of humanity versus his, stated that they think they came to be first. "I think we owe ourselves to you." Is that true? Is that false? Who knows. But that's Thee-I-Dare's perspective.

 LAVANYA [00:05:08] He also stated that animals cannot host Daimons, only humans can.. and this may be related to animals lacking sapience.

 BELLAMY [00:05:15] Vaguely, we consider having sapience to involve possessing a great deal of amount of wisdom, and in some cases, we even define it as inherent to the human species. We are, after all, Homo sapiens! But more concretely, science often considers qualities like advanced reasoning capabilities and language skills as a prerequisite for sapience.

 BELLAMY [00:05:30] This is why we're so interested in studying animal languages, as with teaching apes Sign Language, and learning dolphin whistles, as well as with animal ability to reason recalling used tools as crows. However, while many animals possess some of these abilities, they are invariably nowhere near the level of what humanity can perform. We can ask apes to memorize symbols with highly specific meanings, for example, but they will peak around the same amount of words known as about a three year old, and be unable to utilise syntax the way that we can.

 BELLAMY [00:05:56] Of course, there are examples of humans lacking some or all of these abilities as well. Case studies of children, like Jeannie and Victor, who were found at age 13 and twelve respectively in abusive circumstances that prevented them from learning language, show that it was impossible to teach them native fluency in any language. Interestingly, that is also shortly before the same age that the voices consider to be a limit for taking people as hosts.

 BELLAMY [00:06:20] Aside from age, we don't know what the Daimons requirements for their hosts are, but the differences between human children and animals may offer us some insight and food for thought.

LAVANYA [00:06:27] And that leads us into the next topic:

 LAVANYA [00:06:30] The differences between humans and Daimons.

 LAVANYA [00:06:33] To start off, we're going to dig into the origin of the Daimons! Speak-as-One is our only narrator that actually has a good idea on how Daimons might have been created in the first place. They say that they, as the first Daimon, were born out of recurring patterns - always changing, always evolving. These patterns were created by the first branches of humanity, way back when we were still in caves and we didn't have any specific genetic species names to refer to.

 LAVANYA [00:07:01] Speak-as-One, in this early stage, was defined and changed by human thought. Because Speak-as-One, per themselves, were every facet of humanity that was conscious at that point. That appears to be the case for most Daimons: in reality, they are all defined and changed by human thought.

 LAVANYA [00:07:20] And that's one of the key points of their characters. The birth order of Daimons, as far as we know, was Speak-as-One, who was the original collective and consisted of everything. At that point in time, at some point afterwards, Thee-I-Dare was born and split off of them. He was born presumably from the defectors from that initial massive collective.

 LAVANYA [00:07:41] In-Her-Teeth was the third born with the concept of death and time, as people first began to acknowledge things change, but in the end, everything is gonna fucking croak. We don't know with the rest of the Voices the exact order of their birth, but we do know that Seed-the-Grudge is confirmed to be younger than the majority.

 LAVANYA [00:08:01] Daimons as a whole are symbiotic to humanity, and they are spawned from our sentiments. Basically, they wouldn't exist without us, and they rely on us for their existence.

 LAVANYA [00:08:11] But the real question is would we be able to survive without them?

 BELLAMY [00:08:15] And with the Voices being being symbiotic to humanity, it might be worth exploring the different kinds of symbiosis that occur naturally summarizes itself as a beneficial relationship between two different organisms or they exchange things like resources safety or even services.

 BELLAMY [00:08:27] Sometimes this can be a mutually beneficial relationship, but oftentimes it's a pretty one sided as well!

 BELLAMY [00:08:32] Symbiosis that is mutually beneficial is called mutualism. An example of this is plover birds that pick out old food scraps from the teeth of crocodiles.

 BELLAMY [00:08:38] This seems pretty dangerous for the bird to be sitting in the mouth of a crocodile. But in reality, it's preventing the crocodile from infections caused by rotten food that's stuck in its mouth. Meanwhile, the bird itself is getting the benefit of a meal out of this exchange.

 BELLAMY [00:08:49] Symbiosis where one organism is helped, while another as unaffected, is called commercialism. For example, a tree frog is using plants to hide. This helps the tree frogs, obviously, but doesn't do much to help or harm the plants either way. Meanwhile, symbiosis that involves one organism benefiting to the harm of another organism is called parasitism: fleas or ticks living on an animal host, for example. These feed off of the blood of their host, harming it, and offer it no benefit in return. In fact, we usually want parasites off of us as quickly as possible.

 LAVANYA [00:09:17] Do Daimons offer a benefit to their hosts, in mutualism, or do they only take, which would be parasitism? Or do they just take from their host, to the result of no help and no harm? It's not entirely clear and the answer probably changes depending on what facet of Daimon behavior you want to pay attention to.

 LAVANYA [00:09:35] The characters don't have a consensus on it. The player base definitely does not either. But regardless of what specific definition that they follow, Daimons rely on humanity.

LAVANYA [00:09:35] When Daimons don't have a host, they cannot experience physical sensations and they can not affect the physical world.

 LAVANYA [00:09:54] Daimons can not speak to each other or interact without host as intermediaries. So when they're just fucking around where the Daimons go when they're not hosting, they are entirely alone - which is pretty fucking sad, if you ask me.

 LAVANYA [00:10:10] Luckily, they do have host to communicate!

 LAVANYA [00:10:11] So the ways that this communication can go is basically..

 LAVANYA [00:10:15] Sleep talking is the biggest one of them, and working through their hosts dreams.

 LAVANYA [00:10:21] Sleep Talking means that when somebody goes unconscious, their lips keep flapping, but they're not talking about their dreams: they're being used as a neat little finger puppet meat sack.

 ASTRO [00:10:32] Thee-I-Dare worded it this way. He said: "sleep talkers serve as a 'summit' for the voices".

 LAVANYA [00:10:41] And a less intimate and viscerally upsetting turn of phrase.

 LAVANYA [00:10:47] The second option is dreams.

 ASTRO [00:10:48] Daimons can hear all answered dreams. Even if the prayer was not addressed to them, and even if the players receiving that dream are not their hosts, as Thee-I-Dare says, in dreams, the walls are thinner.

 LAVANYA [00:11:04] This isn't speaking to other voices directly, as far as we know of: two Daimons cannot be in the same dream, unless two Daimons are sharing a host. This is implied to be a form of intimacy. Of the Daimons, we know that Laugh-Last and In-Her-Teeth frequently used to share hosts, and also referred to themselves as married before their unfortunate and deeply tragic breakup.

 LAVANYA [00:11:27] Die for You stated that he might have to share host with Thee-I-Dare before he went ahead and he pledged loyalty to him. But not only did he pledge loyalty, he pledged loyalty to him for the entire span of a human lifespan - which seems pretty intimate to me! Not with the Redacre children's lifespans, but if you're talking in the abstract, that is pretty intimate.

 LAVANYA [00:11:48] But that's not the only way that Daimons communicate with each other, or to their hosts. The other way is through speech. Speech seems difficult for the oldest Daimons. Thee-I-Dare says that it's hard, which may be due to the fragmentation, but Speak-as-One says that is actively fucking painful for them. Younger Daimons don't seem to have this problem, to the degree that they pretty much never shut up.

 LAVANYA [00:12:11] They're always talking and always using those stolen words, because daimons are not actually capable of producing voices that are not taken from their host. It's implied that the voices that we hear when Daimons are talking are essentially taken from their favorite hosts: which is most explicitly stated by TMC.

 XAVIUL [00:12:32] Also a little fucked up.

 LAVANYA [00:12:33] Also a little fucked up, but in a way isn't it touching? The fact that even after you die, your favorite eldritch abomination will steal a part of you to clutch close to them.

 LAVANYA [00:12:45] Flesh puppet you.

 XAVIUL [00:12:45] I was about to say, you don't get to talk about finger puppets and then say that that's touching.

 LAVANYA [00:12:51] I mean, well, if we're finger puppets, it's literally touching.

 ASTRO [00:12:55] I'm quitting the fucking podcast.

 LAVANYA [00:12:59] Now, there may be an actual difference between the Voices that speak and those that use text, because text voices such as Thee-I-Dare and Speak-as-One, you can only see what they're saying when you close your eyes.

 LAVANYA [00:13:16] Speaking from experience, no matter how hard you close your eyes, no matter how hard you ignore, you can't ignore a voiced Voice. Sorry In-Her-Teeth, I tried.

 LAVANYA [00:13:24] And no matter how much Speak-as-One complained that speaking is physically painful for them, it's interesting to note that their most hostiest of hosts -.

 XAVIUL [00:13:34] The host with the most?

 LAVANYA [00:13:36] The host with the most - the Voice - does in fact speak! Not only do they speak, but they use two sets of vocal chords to do it.

 LAVANYA [00:13:45] So, that seems pretty interesting, but outside of game play, what's interesting is that there is an implication with the spoken voices, that other people cannot hear them.

 LAVANYA [00:13:58] They seem to be speaking to one person at a time. When Hoadley is being antagonized and terrorized by multiple voices, there is no mention anywhere of the fact that he heard voices, or that anyone heard demonic creatures fucking following him around and nagging him.

 LAVANYA [00:14:13] There is never a mention in the overall lore of multiple characters hearing a spoken voice, so it's interesting to examine is - is it an aspect of gameplay that everyone in the game can hear the spoken voices, or is that something that's supposed to be unique to the PCs? We know wth the written voices, either their text messages can appear to all the players in the game, or to individual players.

 LAVANYA [00:14:39] When it comes to the written voices - so basically, Thee-I-Dare, Speak-as-One - we know that they can either speak to an individual player, or else they can send their messages to every player in the game.

 LAVANYA [00:14:48] So, theoretically, it should be the same possibility for the voiced ones, but like I said: game player lore, it's up for grabs, since we're speaking about the spoken voices..

 BELLAMY [00:14:58] Which leads us back onto the topic of the written voices. What's interesting is there is a clear phenomenon in place and an understanding for the spoken voices. Everyone understands how you can hear voices in your head, but how does it work when you close your eyes and you see written words?

 LAVANYA [00:15:19] There is a book in the early prologue that basically hints that one of the ways that this could be explained. It's called the Prisoner's Cinema. What the Prisoner's Cinema is basically a light show of various colors that appear out of darkness, when someone has not achieved enough stimuli from their overall environment.

 LAVANYA [00:15:37] This is called a form of closed eye hallucinations.

 BELLAMY [00:15:41] As for closed eye hallucinations, there's actually several levels of them. Five, to be exact! Level 1 is just random light and dark visual noise, with no particular pattern or reasoning to it. This is pretty normal for everyone to see with their eyes closed, and some individuals with conditions like visual snow might even see some with their eyes open.

 Following that, we actually see this in-game whenever the player closes their eyes!

Level 2 is characterized by light and dark flashes that occur with relaxation and concentration. It's a progression of the level one visual noise to larger, more intense patches of white, black, and sometimes even faint colors.

 Level 3 is, again, a progression of the previous level to form patterns, motion, and more prominent colors. For most people who aren't in deep meditation, or on psychedelics, this occurs when they're on the edge of sleep.

 Level 4 is where we begin to see what might more traditionally be referred to as active hallucinations of specific objects and people. These can get pretty complex. For example, one study that we'll link in the episode notes, done by Hwang and Wang in 2016, shows a patient developing intensive visual hallucinations of a pastoral scene with an unknown man in it that only appeared when he closed his eyes - not when he blinked, not when he was in a dark room, but only in the physical sensation of closing his eyes and keeping them shut.

Now, think of the lines that the player character spout when they're shaped. Does this sound familiar at all?

 Level 5 is defined as involving hallucinations that override a physical perception, which is also something that happens in our R.E.M. sleep. In fact, achieving this in a waking state usually involves deep relaxation, typically in a sensory deprivation tank, or as referred to by the Prisoner's Cinema name, the long term sensory deprivation and isolation of the light that people experience in the prison cells of Alcatraz, or solitary confinement, which prison guards illegally often kept dark. Brain systems that normally stop this depth of hallucination have been inhibited in these circumstances, and your physical senses interpret hallucinations as entirely real.

 XAVIUL [00:17:23] So if I'm understanding Bellamy's TMC-worthy lecture right, does that mean that Lavanya is my parasite? Because I have to carry them through almost every mission, and all I ever get from it is getting dragged by the lucid, while they get all the snacks.

 LAVANYA [00:17:41] If I was your brain parasite, I would make sure that you hallucinated that I was never there, so I never had to hear you talking in the game.

 ASTRO [00:17:49] There are also several references to a similar, but also quite different, sensation called synesthesia. Oxford Lexicon defines synesthesia as the production of a sense impression, relating to one sense or part of the body, by stimulation of another sense or part of the body.

 ASTRO [00:18:08] Surveys of synesthesia show possibly seventy three or more different types of synesthesia, but the most common types are grapheme two vision - displayed by 61 percent of respondents - musical sounds to vision, displayed by 18 percent of respondents - and general sounds division, sixteen percent of respondents.

 LAVANYA [00:18:26] Now we know that TMC and SAO have set up Redacre to be their own special sociological study camp, but music to sound synthenaesia would be awfully useful for the Red Acre kids.

 ASTRO [00:18:41] It is mentioned in this context there is specifically a voice line that refers to a child who finds their way into the maze, who shows signs of synesthesia, which interests the Voice.

 LAVANYA [00:18:51] Hallucinations during blackout dreams are a fascinating example of the Prisoner's Cinema at play.  And so is the moon. From our point of view, players are physically transported by the Daimons: per their own rules, they can't actually be transporting us. They can't move us! They could only make us move ourselves and no amount of determination, pep and teenage spite for the rule will allow you to travel through like 60 million miles of deep space to climb onto the moon. So it has to be a hallucination.

 LAVANYA [00:19:24] And as we discussed above, it pretty much is guaranteed to be a closed eye hallucination: specifically level five, because it involves the physical perception. The ambience changes when you're on the moon, everything looks different. Unfortunately, no matter how high you jump, you will not float off of it, so even that's a little bit different. Now you can close your eyes on the moon, so it's not a traditional blackout. And we know that it's not literally the moon, because it's been confirmed as such by the Daimons: Die-for-You specifically says that the Moon, however, even if it does have air and oxygen and strange furniture that you could theoretically sit on, is bad and dangerous. Players are taken there when time runs short.

 XAVIUL [00:20:08] I can't believe Laugh-Last made me black out when I was getting dragged to my death by a lucid.

 LAVANYA [00:20:13] Laugh-Last just thought it would be funny if they *tried* to shove you into the door, and Speak-as-One tried to climb into your ear like the worst sort of earworm, but they just kept getting a "CURRENTLY OCCUPIED :)" sign.

 LAVANYA [00:20:25] So they had to wait.

 XAVIUL [00:20:27] SAO just standing outside the door of my mind, hitting on it. Let me in! LET US IN!

 LAVANYA [00:20:34] Speaking of Laugh-Last, Laugh-Last dodged the question about where the moon actually is, because out of all of the Daimons - and this is a "the Dreaming Prophet" verified fact - he's just the fucking worst.

 XAVIUL [00:20:48] Wow.

 LAVANYA [00:20:48] That was a wow of awe, that I could say something so honest, yet brutally true.

 XAVIUL [00:20:56] Some humans are naturally resistant to hearing the voices some can hear them very well. The Voice, in fact, are two humans with unique ability to hear and translate the Song into words that, you know, us humans can actually hear.

 XAVIUL [00:21:10] Redacre exists to create a population that can hear the Song very well. This is partially through genetics, but it's also largely through upbringing. We're told that Nayeli, who was presumably born and raised in Redacre, is so unused to conflict and dissonance that it actually makes her sick. Redacre culture encourages conformity, getting along with each other and a high focus on the community: the same things are hard to work well within the Song. Humans can hear all the voices until around 15, and some into adulthood, like Hoadley the pastor - who.. well. Well! Let's not say it's always a good thing to be able to hear them.

 LAVANYA [00:21:51] Sometimes, having good hearing is just a curse when you can't tune out the riffraff.

 ASTRO [00:21:55] And now a word from our sponsors.

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 BELLAMY [00:22:25] And for those truly dedicated to strike fear into the hearts of children, who can do better than a baby mask series? Buy your Halloween mask today!

 ASTRO [00:22:36] The Daimons have a few abilities that have been laid out in the lore of the game. The first is the Old Tongue. This is the language of movement and sonic elements. That is their native language. A few of the Daimons have commented that they sprang from it. Daimons are very used to using it. However, humans after their minds were corrupted by the Word, can be driven mad if they tried to form complex thoughts in it for long periods of time.

 ASTRO [00:22:59] However, they can deal with it in limited quantities. Characters can perform the gestures that we have in game, and can be forced into performing them by Dance-for-Us, and potentially other Daimons. These gestures appear constantly on projectors in the Cryptogram Library. The Cryptogram Library is also where we can witness what is called a "Rare Gesture". The only documented instance of a rare gesture currently in-game is the Old Tongue phrase, "Drink the Sky".

 ASTRO [00:23:25] This has been confirmed to be a story about Dance-for-Us: not her name, but a legend, which records her history of forcing humans to perform the Old Tongue and other dances until they die.

 LAVANYA [00:23:37] The Old Tongue is one of their abilities, but it's not their only ability. In-Her-Teeth implies that she has something that is unique to her. She states in her sacrifice table that she can see someone's death, and tell them how it will occur. Is this a bluff? Is this a fact? Or is this is just trying to comfort someone? Because humans die, but Daimons don't.

 LAVANYA [00:23:59] So, theoretically, she might have seen every single form of death available to someone, because humans aren't that creative when it comes to certain things. We have no fucking idea. In-Her-Teeth-ites, that's something to ask her! How will you die?

 LAVANYA [00:24:12] Make it dark.

 XAVIUL [00:24:14] They're not In-Her-Teeth-ites, they're called Cavity Creeps.

 LAVANYA [00:24:17] Daimons have a poor grasp on our means of tracking time, so In-Her-Teeth Daimon is doubly interesting. Dear listeners, personally speaking, I think it's just bullshit.. but what do you think?

 LAVANYA [00:24:29] Another ability that we actually *know* that daimons have is body-jacking.

 LAVANYA [00:24:35] This can be suppressed and fought off by other Daimons, but an individual by themself cannot fight off a Voice. SAO and Chorus note that they have means of putting Daimons to sleep in the sleepers tales, but as far as we know, once a Daimon has chosen someone as a permanent host, you can't just rip them out short of killing the individual.

 LAVANYA [00:24:56] Dies-for-You refers to the entire Daimon situation of Redacre as being too many mouths and not enough food. This could actually be assumed to be the case for the entire world! Because all of the Daimons, for one reason or another, crept over to Redacre. So what does that mean about body jacking?

 LAVANYA [00:25:13] We know that body jacking is just a basic function of Daimons, and the ability that kind of defines them. Because if they were not body jacking us, you wouldn't even know they fucking existed. But not all body jacking is necessarily just - closing your eyes to discover that there is a voice in your ear, whispering, trying to take over your thoughts. TMC waited to take his current voice as a host until he was ready to be taken! However, this sort of, like, consideration for hosts' actual desire, his thoughts and plans, is not at all typical. It is not required and most don't bother to do it, not even SAO. Consent: they're all bad at it!

 XAVIUL [00:25:57] TMC is just, as Lavanya has said before, one of those human sympathisers.

 LAVANYA [00:26:04] There's one in every family.

 ASTRO [00:26:05] Human-a-boo.

 LAVANYA [00:26:05]  Human-a-boo.

 XAVIUL [00:26:13] Fucking human-a-boos. Ruining our conventions!

 XAVIUL [00:26:13] And circling back around to the moon and hallucinations.

 XAVIUL [00:26:21] The moon landing was a hoax, brought upon us by the voices in our heads. WAKE UP, PEOPLE.

 LAVANYA [00:26:28] This has been authorized as one hundred percent true by your loving hosts at the Dreaming Prophet: #moonlandinghoax.

 XAVIUL [00:26:35] But we can see that, even when we are taken by the Shape, that we are actively hallucinating.

 XAVIUL [00:26:44] If you happen to make too many mistakes and get Shaped, you'll notice that your kid produces lines, such as talking about how the sun looks amazing today, and you're not sure why you never seem to notice. Just look at it! I mean, wow!

 LAVANYA [00:27:01] We've covered the abilities of Daimons, so let's cover the abilities that humans give Daimons. Or more accurately, let's discuss the effecs of humanity upon them.

 [00:27:13] Now we discuss parasitism and everything else, earlier on in the episode. But there are some benefits that Daimons give to humans. Mostly, these are just effects from outside of their fucking Daimons, but you take what you can get. Daimons can serve as a second pair of eyes: as far as we know they can only see through your eyes, but with that said, they might notice things that you don't notice, like hidden messages left by other Daimon.

 LAVANYA [00:27:36] The Daimons somehow, even though it's never made explicit, and we're never informed which Daimons are responsible for it, are responsible for the sanctity of the clubhouse.  The children are not hidden away from the antagonists of the game because kids are just fucking good at hiding their trail and not shoving snacks into the river. They are hidden away because the Daimons on their side are actively working to hide them from Speak-as-One.

 LAVANYA [00:28:01] Humanity can also use Daimons to understand things that they otherwise would not be able to see or understand. The Old Tongue is the biggest example of this. Humans will go insane if they try to form complex thought in the Ol Tongue over extended periods of time. Presumably, if they're trying to sit around and read it as well, or watch it, or hear it, then things are going to go full King in Yellow on them.

 LAVANYA [00:28:27] However, Daimons can process the Old Tongue, because that's their native language. Or, depending on how you want to see it, that's their natural way of being. Speak-as-One uses their human hosts in the Somniliquoys, along with the gas that they funnel up. They place their human host into a trance which allows those hosts to see things that the Daimons could not see - and, in turn, the Daimons can actually process and understand them.

 LAVANYA [00:28:56] It's worth noting here that the stage 5 of closed eyes hallucination involves sensory deprivation tanks to achieve full blown hallucination, because it is pretty, fairly difficult for most people to drown out sensations. We evolved to hear, to feel, and to see things, and our bodies will accommodate that even if those senses or the ability to use them are taken from us. So, basically, what I'm saying here is: if you can't make your own homegrown sensation, then buying some at the Daimon Hallucination Mart is just fine.

 LAVANYA [00:29:31] It's difficult to know, with the Blackout Club, what bits of history are meant to be Daimon influence, and which are not. However, we've had a pretty steady groundwork laid with regard to the fact that Speak-as-One relies on gas for some reason, and gas is specifically linked to the Daimons. When we see Thee-I-Dare's fragments, it appears as smoke. Speak-as-One submerges as their hosts in the Somnilquoy's gas, in order to see things that they would otherwise be unable to see. The-Measure-Cuts states that Daimons came from cave gas back in the day - which leads us to the historical figure of the Pythia. The Pythia was a historical prophet in Classical Greece, and one of the most well-known ones in the records that we've retained. She existed in the Delphi area, and she was linked to Apollo, the god of prophecy.

 ASTRO [00:30:24] This is a quote from a National Geographic article, titled "Delphic Oracles Lips may have been Loosened by Gas Vapors."

 ASTRO (QUOTING) [00:30:32] According to traditional explanations, the Pythia derived her prophecies in a small enclosed chamber in the basement of the temple. De Boer said that if the Pythia went to the chamber once a month, as tradition says, she could have been exposed to concentrations of the narcotic gas that were strong enough to induce a trance like state.

 LAVANYA [00:30:51] And, interestingly enough a trance-like state is almost exactly the terminology used in game to refer to the host that Speak-as-One is submerging to gain answers.

 ASTRO [00:31:02] I guess you could say it's literally true that SAO is full of hot air.

 LAVANYA [00:31:07] Wow!

XAVIUL [00:31:08] Moving on, let's talk a little bit about the biology of the voices. There's not that much, since, you know, not really actual bodies for us to talk about.

 LAVANYA [00:31:21] Tragically, it turns out my statement at the beginning of this podcast was a lie, and there is no sex education for voices.

 XAVIUL [00:31:28] But we can talk about their name.

 XAVIUL [00:31:33] Humans have some control over Daimons, especially in changing their nature through changing their names.

 ASTRO [00:31:40] In the discord, Null has written a few things about this: "VERB-IS-SOMETHING gods are often stronger in our world. Thus, Speak-as-One, which is an active command, rather than Speaks-as-One. We have exceptions who limited themselves on purpose. The-Measure-Cuts and In-Her-Teeth break the formula because they are iconoclasts."

 XAVIUL [00:31:59] Daimons also seem to be able to change their own names, such as Dance-for-Us, who was once Dance-for-Me.

 XAVIUL [00:32:07] And also, some kids really like to try to change their names for no reason. I'm looking at you, kids that are using Last-Laugh instead of Laugh-Last.

 XAVIUL [00:32:17] That's not even a verb.

 XAVIUL [00:32:20] Some of the voices choose to try to isolate themselves to maintain coherency, such as Speak-as-One. Humanity defines Daimons through their names and their beliefs, so the less you have to do with the outside world changing hat, the better.

 ASTRO [00:32:37] We've also been given symbols to couple with the Daimons names. Symbols are heavily associated with a Daimon, but they are not the "be all, end all", according to our current understanding - which may not be entirely correct! Destruction of a symbol weakens a Daimon, but it does not kill them. Similarly, introduction of a symbol to an area increases the Daimon's strength in that area, but it does not establish the Daimon by themselves.

 ASTRO [00:32:59] What is most likely the name of this symbol the Triskelion was brought into Redacre, potentially drawing her there, but she, the individual, was brought in by the transmission of ideals associated with her, or something else.

 LAVANYA [00:33:12] Daimons are a little bit complex like that, but at the same time, they're also painfully, painfully simple.

 LAVANYA [00:33:20] Now, we're going to start talking care about the life cycle of Daimons, which is as basic as any single celled organism, because they don't have cells at all, can actually be.

 [00:33:30] The first Daimon, Speak-as-One, first as far as we know, was born from patterns. Basically, the reoccurring patterns of the proto humanity and the use of social behaviors that they espouse, created Speak-as-One. As far as we know, no other voices have spawned from that alone. Every voice since then has directly or indirectly basically come from Speak-as-One in that original birth.

 [00:33:53] Daimons can not be born from symbols alone, even though Speak-as-One has an entire archive of forbidden symbols. As we saw with the Nameless above, even though she was associated with the Triskelion, that alone did not draw her into Redacre. Symbols alone cannot create a Daimon.

 [00:34:10] However, they can be created through a number of different ways. Agents are currently the hot topic of the day! Agents are essentially facets of their original Daimons. With Thee-I-Dare, we know that his agents are called Fragments. Functionally, these are the leftover remnants of his host. But each of his fragments contain the memories of the piece of the idea that was with them.

 [00:34:34] Speak-as-One's agents are called Watchers. We know that Speak-as-One steals part of their followers to copy into the Song - "original character, do not steal" does not apply to them. And sometimes they can turn these stolen copies or stolen pieces of their followers into parts of them, which are known as the Watchers.

 [00:34:53] In-Her-Teeth: we don't know how her agents function, but we do know that she has them, because Seed-the-Grudge is a former agent. All of these agents, if they gain sufficient worship, will become Voices in their own stead. Even the Shape potentially could become a voice in their own stead!

 LAVANYA [00:35:10] We don't know the process exactly. We don't know if it's painful, but that sure is a thing that can happen.

 LAVANYA [00:35:16] Another method through which Daimons can be born is if they share a host. This is the case with Laugh-Last and In-Her-Teeth, even though they have not merged into one horrifying entity of death and malice

 XAVIUL [00:35:31] In-Her-Laugh? Last-Teeth?

 LAVANYA [00:35:40] No! We're not doing Last-Teeth!

 LAVANYA [00:35:41] Even though In-Her-Teeth and Laugh-Last have not merged into one entity, and as far as we know, and hopefully no matter what Xaviul says, they will not - we know that demons can merge, and we know that one can eclipse other. The exact mechanisms, though - we have no fucking idea. Hit up your gods for that important talk about merging, kids!

 XAVIUL [00:36:00] It's the parasitic birds and the bees.

 [00:36:03] When Daimon gains a new name, the old name stays alive and the new name becomes a new Daimon. Sometimes it's implied that this process will snuff out the previous Daimon. But we know that Thee-I-Dare's older copies of himself are still running around, so presumably, that doesn't happen every single time. It doesn't always have to be that they flat out get a new name, too. It can also be that ideals or the beliefs of the population about the Daimon have changed.

 [00:36:29] SAO's various progeny were not born from new names, as far as we know, but instead they were born from the realizations. In-Her-Teeth was born because they realized that death was of possibility and death was looming. Thee-I-Dare was born, because of individuality. There's a lot of processes through which Daimons can be born, and there's a lot of processes they would take.

 XAVIUL [00:36:54] Wow.

 XAVIUL [00:36:54] What a good segway into.. ~*death!*~

 XAVIUL [00:36:59] And of course, number one on the death radar is In-Her-Teeth, who has stated before that Voices cannot die. And she wants to fix that, because I guess when you live forever, you want to figure out how to die.

 XAVIUL [00:37:19] I don't know. I don't understand her. This is why we divorced.

 LAVANYA [00:37:23] Everyone needs a hobby.

 LAVANYA [00:37:25] The easiest form of death and arguably the most efficient are the Culls. This is when all of the host of a certain individual are killed. Even during culls, the Voice can be revived.

 XAVIUL [00:37:37] Unfortunately -.

 LAVANYA [00:37:38] *Unfortunately* -.

 LAVANYA [00:37:39] Cullss often also involve shattering and burning the symbols, because the best way to disrupt belief is Just to erase all possibilities of you ever returning to it.

 LAVANYA [00:37:50] Salt the earth!

 XAVIUL [00:37:51] And then you have a fragment thing, which when names are torn apart, they can be reconstructed. At least, we think so.

 XAVIUL [00:38:02] There's also the death by name theft, which is another God just, like, ripping the name right out of you.

 XAVIUL [00:38:12] Apparently, the 8th can do this, and has in the past. Nameless is one example of a God that's still floating around, even though they don't have a name.

ASTRO [00:38:24] Thee-I-Dare has suggested that in stealing her name, one might also steal her entire domain.

LAVANYA [00:38:30] So, even though I'm incredibly enthusiastic about cataloging all the various little nooks and crannies of Daimon physiology, and how it works, it's worth keeping in mind this is not actually scientific literature.

 LAVANYA [00:38:46] So our understanding is apt to change as new things were revealed in the future.

 LAVANYA [00:38:50] And as this is a players led narrative, even though I threw forward my thoughts the start of the podcast, some of these themes may actually change as the game progresses. And if they do, we might expect the rules of the Daimons to shift to match.

 [00:39:06] Or else they might not!

[00:39:08] Ultimately, a lot can be figured out about the various intricate details of the Blackout Club as a setting, through the foreshadowing that has been placed throughout the plot. The 8th was present in dreams from the beginning of the game. The Triskelion has always been in the attic room, and we've always been shown that watches are individuals as much as they are part of the hive mind.

 [00:39:28] Each development we get, once you go back and you look at the whole, is not necessarily a surprise, even if the information in itself is new. We're gonna see more of this as time goes by.

 [00:39:40] As we get new developments, and as this information changes, remember: get excited, don't get frustrated. It's a gorgeous story, and we're all along for the ride. And all of the information will eventually be available for us to see.

 [00:39:52] Or at least most of it, I hope.

ASTRO: [00:40:01] This episode was Lavanya's special research project. Because episodes 8 and this one episode 9 were a lot of work to put together, we're going to have a more content light Episode 10, which will be the end of season one of the podcast.

 [00:40:14] Season 2 will start with episode 11, and we'll be back in the saddle with hardcore lore.

 [00:40:17] Cal, Archers Volley & Skegulium, has made a lord master doc. If you want to know what's been going on in the game since the beginning of recorded God encounters, go ahead and check it out.

 [00:40:28] They're trying to source as much information as possible with transcripts and videos, compiling disparate info into something comprehensible. Cass has made a lore primer comic. This is a compilation of some of the latest in the lore field and also some basics, broken down from an in character perspective.

 [00:40:43] If you know someone who's new to the game, this is a great introduction.

 [00:40:46] Spoderman has made a transcript master doc. If you have transcripts or video links, please send them to him. Information is on the doc, and can be accessed at TINYURL.COM/TBCTRANSCRIPTS. This is a valuable place to see old interactions, because all past transcripts posted publicly in the discord have been compiled here.

 [00:41:05] There is also now an official interaction archive on the discord. This archives both god talks and personal dreams. It's brand new and most of the stuff on it is recent, though a few people have reached out but their old blogs on it. If you're interested in seeing this, or adding your own, join the discord to get involved: discord.gg/blackoutclub.

 [00:41:30] The Blackout Club was made by question games.

 [00:41:32] Our advertising director is Bellamy.

 [00:41:34] Our transcript and video is by Lavanya.

 [00:41:36] Audio editing is by me, Astro.

 [00:41:39] Our publicity is done by Spoderman.

 [00:41:41] Xaviul doesn't like green eggs and ham.

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET, EP 8, THE LANGUAGE OF BODIES

[PODOMATIC LINK]

As terrifying as Speak-as-One can be, we can't beat them unless we understand them - and their creepy doom harp. A special research project episode.

Talking points: The Song, The Instrument, Audio design, Musical science, Architecture, Anatomy and Language of the Maze. Featuring cohost, Xaviul. Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:09. Content warnings: None.

Links:

nathan moody on bandcamp: https://nathanmoody.bandcamp.com/music

interactive sound and fury: https://www.interactivesoundandfury.com

bloody disgusting interview: https://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3580174/interview-system-shock-2-follows-helped-create-co-op-horror-blackout-club/

harry bertoia's sound sculptures: https://youtu.be/YfQ3624z36Q?t=121

using resonant frequencies to break glass: https://youtu.be/Oc27GxSD_bI

effect of sound on the human body: https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/acoustic-weapons-book-excerpt/

harmful sound levels on healthlink bc: https://www.healthlinkbc.ca/health-topics/tf4173

orfield labs anechoic chamber: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/orfield-labs-quiet-chamber

lore masterdoc: https://tinyurl.com/tbcloreguidev2

lore comics: part 1: https://twitter.com/JustJellyJammin/status/1172704758337101827?s=20 // part 2: https://twitter.com/JustJellyJammin/status/1176862814675361794?s=20

TDP twitter: http://twitter.com/TheDreamingPC

transcript masterdoc: https://tinyurl.com/tbctranscripts

The Blackout Club Lexicon, for player/game lingo & terminology [on Google Docs]: bit.ly/TBCLexicon

Credits: - lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

be11amy: advertising - xaviul: host, moral support

special thanks: olive & coolguy

intro & outro music, "ringing bells": a weirdly handsome individual

transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games

vibraphone clip: krol111 on wikimedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vibraphone_music.ogg)

the blackout club: question games (https://www.blackoutclubgame.com)

LAVANYA: Good evening, dear listeners, and welcome to the Dreaming Prophet. Tonight, we have a very special topic - that great unknown instrument whose winsome sound fills up our whole town and lifts up our spirits! 

LAVANYA: And tonight, even better, we have our very own conductor to lead us through this magnificent journey into our vast Song. So, dear listeners, I have a question for you tonight. What's the difference between a conductor and a god? 

LAVANYA: The answer, of course, is that Speak-as-One doesn't think they're a conductor. 

LAVANYA: My name's Lavanya -. 

ASTRO: And I'm Astro -. 

LAVANYA: And welcome to the Dreaming Prophet. 

ASTRO: This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players with minimal speculation all law and a focus on the known facts. 

ASTRO: Our topic of the day is the instrument. 

LAVANYA: As for a spoiler warning: for today, you can consider yourself a rich kid at Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, or whatever seasonally appropriate holiday you want to cram on in there, because tonight, you are going to be spoiled~. 

LAVANYA: Our discussion tonight covers the map and various details of it. It covers, partially, the history of Speak-as-One. It covers what the Song is in itself, and how it is treated and translated.

We will be discussing the game. We will be discussing the sound effects. We'll be discussing some of the people who have worked on the sound effects behind the scenes, in so far as they are credited.

We are basically just dipping our fingers in every single pot! So if you are allergic to spoilers, just tap on out on this episode.

in terms of content warnings, there is surprisingly little. As long as you don't hate sounds, music, joy or human nature, you should be fine. 

ASTRO: So, Lavanya, you know I've been wanting to cover this for a while, but I can't do it without help. Firstly, I'd like to extend a special thank you to Olive and to Cool Guy, who have helped me process the vast amount of information and research we've done for this episode. 

LAVANYA: And when Astro says Cool Guy, what they mean is "Cool Guy", because that's his name. If you open up the dictionary and you look next to the definition of Cool (comma) Guy, you will see his picture there. We have personally gone through every dictionary in the United States and stapled a picture there, just to ensure that this is true. 

XAVIUL: Man, you guys have a lot more free time than I thought. 

LAVANYA: Who let you in?

ASTRO: And as you've discovered, Lavanya, we have a guest today. Also, welcome back to the show, Xaviul. 

XAVIUL: They let me in once, I haven't left since.  Now they have to deal with me

XAVIUL: I will leave to get more snacks, though.

LAVANYA: So, we're going to start off with the Song!

This was loosely discussed in episode 7, which hopefully, you all listened to and internalized and adored - but just in case you didn't, because you're godless heathens - I will go ahead and explain what it is for you!

The Song is both a hive mind and an audible sound. When I say hive, mind what I mean is that it contains all of the memories and individuals from the past that make up components of Speak-as-One. The Song was once easily heard and understood by humans, but now, not so much. This is probably because of the Word, which we discussed in a great deal more detail in episode 7 and episode 5.

So you should go back and listen to those!

LAVANYA: While the Voice interprets the Song, not everyone has this ability. This is a special aptitude that is found in certain individuals that can allow them to be the Voice: for everyone else who doesn't have that special Song in their ear, the Song needs to be amplified, which led to the question.. well. What do you do when you have a mystical magical brainwashing Song that half the population can't hear?

Which, of course, leads us to build a giant fucking instrument. 

ASTRO: The instrument is a giant tunnel network under the town, equipped with massive scale parts of one huge instrument. It can be played by many people at once, and requires constant maintenance. It's constantly being expanded. We see this in rooms like new growth and 920 observation. 

Dax also calls it the maze, which is information from bells in the prologue, and it's kind of both: no part of the instrument is an exact one to one with in real life instruments. 

However, many parts contain elements of instruments that we know.

LAVANYA: Thee-I-Dare says that the instrument is old:  very old. However, we don't have any exact date or age,much like we don't have an exact date for humans being in Redacre.

He specifies that the tech inside of it is fairly new. You can see this on the screens, and in the labs, and a lot of the fiddly fiddly details. And as you can see as you're roaming around the maze l, a lot of the tech inside it looks pretty fucking old: straight from 1950s in the 1980s, whatever difference there may be between those two eras, in those giant LCD screens and everything else.

Which leads to the interesting question: does the instrument pre-date Redacre, or is the Redacre just really fucking old?

XAVIUL: Kind of the chicken and the egg question.

LAVANYA: Smash the egg, embrace the freedom of revolution!

XAVIUL: I thought that was the opposite of what your whole spiel was. 

LAVANYA: I'm flexible. 

ASTRO: Some parts of the maze contribute directly to the Song and some don't. It would probably be more accurate to refer to all the music making parts as the instrument, and everything else as the maze. However, we are going to use them interchangeably here, especially since even the non music making rooms often have music making parts in them. 

XAVIUL: The instrument is played by a mass of people. No one individual can play it. It's just too darn big. So everyone must work together. There are several parts of the instrument which have control panels on them, which explicitly connect to the sound making parts and plexus. There are panels surrounding the giant airbags at the base, and under the walkway at the far side, and between String relay, Signal Relay, and Host Conditioning. They all have two terminals in them. Old Growth’s basement has one terminal. 

ASTRO: There are many other parts of the instrument that contain controls such as this, but we're not getting into all of those right now. It would be honestly too many to count!

Information encoded into the Song is shared with all parts of the Song. This is why sometimes a choice is made to stop encoding. We can see this in the Madi-Shaw logs in the journals: encoding is an intentional action, not passive. Information won't be encoded purely by accident. Information you might not want encoded might be encoded, if you're sleep talking, but that's because consent is a lie and choice is a poison according to SAO.

LAVANYA: However, encoding information is treated as the default choice. Refusing to encode information scares the Watchers! And it is treated as taboo: the Song is supposed to be the truth. 

LAVANYA: If you're excluding things, that's lying by omission!

ASTRO: the watchers sometimes take it upon themselves to make this kind of judgment. They will at times choose to withhold information from the Song themselves.

ASTRO: Encoding is done by chordists. When you are referring to a chordist who is encoding at that time, they are considered the CHORUS to perform it. So, let's say that you're a kid in the Blackout Club - crazy, I know - you're on a mission and you commit a sin.

ASTRO: So what sin do you guys commit? Xaviul, you go first. (Xaviul is an expert on the types of sins that can be committed.)

XAVIUL: Wow this is a lot of perjury and I won't hear any of it. 

ASTRO: Okay I do need a legit answer to continue with this -

LAVANYA: Assault.

XAVIUL: Assault. I put the ass in assault!

ASTRO:Thank you, complimentary Laugh-Last follower. You attack an enemy. Let's say you attack a Lucid in-game. Here's what happens. Lucid reports sin to their Dispatchers.

We aren't sure exactly how this is done, but it's likely done using phones: Lucids have their phones with them. You can see them using it as a flashlight, and you can also see them typing on their phones when they pause in their tracks. 

XAVIUL: Makes you wonder who's the real parasite: SAO, or technology. 

LAVANYA: This isn't a game about friendship. This is a game about the dangers of social media. So turn off that computer and turn off that phone, kids.

XAVIUL: right. 

XAVIUL: Don’t they need the computer to listen to us?

LAVANYA: Stop asking questions.

ASTRO: You know too much.

ASTRO: Lucids report sins to the Dispatcher through their phones. Sleepers can also report sin, but we're not sure if they use the same mechanism or a different one. 

Sleepers do have their phones on them at all times, because when you prank call them, they respond. They ask: is this the Voice or is it music?

This is conjecture, but phones often absolutely record voices and things happening around us. We've seen this recently in our own real smartphones, and it's entirely possible that CHORUS phones do the same thing, which may be why Lucids say speak out loud for the Voice.

The Dispatcher dispatches.

DISPATCHER, QUOTE: More assault. Inform the voice.

ASTRO: The Dispatcher will send out information to the other agents in the field, which include the Lucid and also the stalker. When you are playing in stalker mode, you can hear the Dispatcher's voice in your ear, telling you about the things that the kids are doing. Chordist Lucid, or what I like to call D.J. Lucid, receive information from the Dispatcher and play strings at the terminal. This is a very rare interaction, but if you are very lucky and you happen to be in the right place, at the right time, a Lucid will go over to a terminal - in any of the rooms that have terminals - and will play the organ keys there.

It creates a very specific pattern of notes that is then sent off into the ether to become part of the Song. The Song tracks the player's sins over the night: by the time that information reaches the Chordist Lucids, and becomes part of the Song, everyone in the Song knows about the assault that you committed. They know that you've attacked a Lucid. They know where and they know that you're still out there.

And when that's amount of sin passes a certain threshold - say, that you tackle a few more people, you do some prank calling, you kick in a few doors -The Shape will come out, and he will use the Song to prioritize who he needs to hunt, while hunting players who are seen by anyone in the Song. Sleepers, Lucids, stalker-shaped Kids, they will have their exact location reported to the Shape.

LAVANYA: This leads us into our next section design of the Instrument, and design of the video game itself. Now in the spoiler Content Warning, I said that we'd be speaking of the gameplay systems. This is one instance we're going to be discussing the audio system that underlies the Blackout Club, and various aspects of it which means that we're going to be stepping away from the lore for a moment, and we're just going to be digging straight into the nitty gritty.

As far as we can tell! Because, unfortunately, we don't have access to the engine code. 

ASTRO: Let's talk about the audio design of the game. It's really good. Good audio design immerses you so much that you don't notice it. If you notice it, something has gone wrong. This is why audio designers rarely get noticed for their work, unless they are extremely exceptional in very obvious ways, like making a specific sound or an iconic piece of music - or really bad.

And this is true across all disciplines. It's not restricted just to game design: you can find this in the theater arts, you can find this in the music industry, pretty much everywhere.

LAVANYA: And when Astro says that the sound design in this game is really good, they are not fucking with you. The sound design in this game is fucking amazing! Most of the game can be played with eyes closed. And as someone who, personally, first thing that I do every single time I load up a game is I disable all sounds - if you actually do that in the Blackout Club, you are basically cutting your own hamstrings. You will be playing at half speed the entire time, because it's not only really great to listen to, but it's actually pretty vital to overall gameplay. 

ASTRO: The sound design of the Blackout Club gives you critical information, as Lavanya mentioned. Surround sound, when you're using headphones, means that you can hear exactly where enemies are on a two dimensional plane. In real life, our ears hear only on a two dimensional plane. Each ear receives information independently. If information reaches the left ear before the right ear, our brain registers that that sound is on the left - and all of this happens in an instant. 

XAVIUL: Each enemy makes specific sounds on all types of terrain. Recently, this has gotten a amplified effect in the game to.. we'll call it mixed reviews. But sleepers have heavier footfalls than the Lucids do. The sleepers elites have boots, while the regular sleepwalkers have bare feet.

Makes you wonder why they don't wake up, wondering why their feet are covered in cuts and mud.

But sleepers and Lucid also have different voices, and voice lines that they will say through the night. Camera drones buzz constantly as they move, thouhg mounted cameras are silent. 

ASTRO: You also subconsciously receive information about things further away from you. The way your own footsteps and other sound reflect off the environment and back to you tells you more about where you are.

Even player voices are affected by sound reflection. If one player is inside a cave - say, an exit cave, or even some parts of the Instrument - all of the players voices will echo and resonate, as if they were inside that cave. All entry or exit caves except the one behind 922 Hoadley will do this.

You can contrast this sound with times that you enter soundproof rooms, such as Subliminal Media. Inside Subliminal Media, all sound is more muted. There is no echo at all, to the point that it's kind of unnerving. This information can tell you roughly how big the room is, how close you are to the wall, and what the texture of the wall is. It's less reliable if you're playing blind, due to many different factors, but it still gives you more information which builds your mental profile of your surroundings. And this leads us to one critical fact in most cases. You can tell where you are in the map solely by sound.

So, we are going to play a little game. I have prepared sound clips of different areas of the map, and I would like you two, my lovely co-hosts, to tell me where you think they were taken. 

XAVIUL: A competition. I can't wait to grind Lavanya into the ground.

LAVANYA: There is nothing I love more than listening to loud versions of the sounds that usually I keep at 5 percent! I believe in myself utterly. 

ASTRO: All right. I've sent you an easy clip to start us off. Go ahead and listen to this, and tell me where you think it was taking. 

LAVANYA: Now some of us may think something as foolish as, “oh, this could be the Plexus!” But I want all of you to know I recognize the sound personally from the -

XAVIUL: It’s the Airway. 

LAVANYA: God damn it, Xaviul, don’t snipe me in the middle of my monologue. 

ASTRO: All right, let's listen to another one.

XAVIUL: This is the Plexus.

ASTRO:You are absolutely correct. 

XAVIUL: Can't miss those airbags. 

ASTRO: And one more for good measure.

XAVIUL: Is this strings?

ASTRO: Close.

LAVANYA: Is this Somniliquoy?

ASTRO: Not even close.

XAVIUL: Oh, this is Nerve!

ASTOR: Exactly.

XAVIUL: Three out of three!

LAVANYA: This is why Xaviul is the one at the top of the leadership board with a thousand plus hours. or is it two?

XAVIUL: Now I'm almost at twelve hundred.

ASTRO: The theme song of the Blackout Club was made by an artist named Nathan Moody. We'll attach a link to his bandcamp in the description, so that you can hear all of the incredible music he makes. He makes all of his songs with handmade instruments. The theme song isn't something you can replicate, not perfectly with any conventional instruments we know.

Meanwhile, the general sound design of the Blackout Club was made by an artist named Patrick Balthrop. He also has a website that you can find in our description. His studio is called Interactive Sound and Fury. His position as sound designer means that he is responsible for what we hear in game: the sounds that aren't the theme and the voice lines. But he does control how we hear those sounds too. He worked on Bioshock, among many other things.

Bloody Disgusting had an opportunity to interview Null. They asked a question about sound design, and Null got an answer from Mr. Balthrop. We are going to break down that answer here.

PATRICK BALTHROP, QUOTE: Early on in making The Blackout Club, Jordan pitched me the giant instrument and I got to work. I began to think of architecture that would emit sound by existing in the world. I immediately began to think of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures and sent a reference to the team. Bertoia’s work was an influence on how I began to approach the sound design of the instrument.

ASTRO: So, in the middle of that section, there's a link to a video of Harry Bertoia’s work. If you haven't watched the video, what you see is a large room filled with a lot of things that make  -and we'll call them instruments, but they don't look like conventional instruments.

In the Maze, we encounter these things called Danger Sticks, for lack of a better name. They are essentially steel rods that have been stuck into the ground that, when you walk through by or near them, produce a fuck ton of noise. However, even if you never interact with them, those rods are still making noise. Wind that passes through the maze will agitate them just a little bit and create a gentle musical sound. Harry Bertoia’s room makes music, and humans can act on it to make different sounds, but simply by existing, IT MAKES SOUND. 

PATRICK BALTHROP, QUOTE: Once I established the palette, I set about solving how these sounds would work together musically in the game. 

ASTRO: So this is like a color palette, but for sound instead of visual art. What kind of qualities, what kind of sounds does he want in this design?

PATRICK BALTHROP, QUOTE: All the sounds of the giant instrument are emitting musical notes in a pentatonic scale procedurally. I designed them this way so I could have them overlap one another, procedurally creating harmonies with each part of the instrument contributing to a larger piece of music. When the player is underground in The Blackout Club, they are playing through a procedural musical piece that is evolving harmonically and texturally. 

ASTRO: So, I mentioned sound quality. Sound quality is any attribute of music or sound, and you can use this in different contexts. I can say a sound quality is clear - clear sound quality- or I can say organic sound quality. Different materials make different sounds. This has to do with the makeup of the material on a molecular level. What is it made of, how dense is it, how light, how smooth, and how rough. 

LAVANYA: So, on a fun tangent! Yesterday, we were on the Airways, sipping our mild coffee shop lattes - available now from [BLAH] - remember, shop local!

XAVIUL: Do we get a choice?

LAVANYA: No, you don't have a choice. Choice is a lie, and one day, you will get used to that.

LAVANYA: Anyway, when I told Astro, “hey, listen to those trumpets go!”

- and then Astro knocked me into the ground, sat on me, and forced me to listen to them reading the definitions of woodwinds over and over and over again. So this means now I am properly prepared to explain what that means to you, my favorite listeners! So the sound thatyou get from metal is significantly different from wood, stone, etc.. So you can hear the difference when you're listening to them, in the way that the materials interact. Also create different sound qualities!

ASTRO: So, because I'm a percussionist by trade, I'm going to use my favorite instrument section to introduce this topic. Have you guys listen to an instrument called a vibraphone?

[VIBRAPHONE NOISES.]

XAVIUL: Sounds metally all right.

ASTRO: Now contrast this with this sound clip of a marimba. 

XAVIUL: It got awfully Toy Story here, because this sounds Woody.

LAVANYA: Oh, fuck.

ASTRO: So, as Xaviul alluded to, these instruments are made of different materials. The vibraphone is made of metal, where the marimba has almost the exact same setup, but its keys are made of wood. Critically, the marimba is not made entirely of wood. It also has metal tubes under it.

But what you're hearing is a difference in the material of the keys. Even if you aren't familiar enough with these instruments to recognize them as soon as you hear them, you can tell that there is a difference when you listen to them side by side. And so this concept has been used to create new instruments out of things that already exist. For instance, Adolph Sax created the saxophone, and his goal was to combine the power of the brass section, such as trumpets and tubas and trombones, with the versatility of the woodwinds, who can play very gentle and very quick cadences.

So, there's another word that we need to define, which is pentatonic. Literally, this means of five tones. This means five notes per octave. Now, octave as a word is kind of misleading -because it means 8 Oct, of course, but there are actually only seven true notes in an octave, because the eighth note is the same as the first note, but one octave higher.

Similarly, pentatonic has five notes, and then the sixth note is the same as the first, but one octave higher. Pentatonic scales were developed independently in music around the world. 

LAVANYA: I'm sorry, I tuned out for a second. Are we talking about Pentatonix? Because I love that band. 

ASTRO: [laughter]

ASTRO: So, pentatonic scales were developed in Celtic music, in German music, and Nordic music, Turkish music Afro Caribbean music and many others beyond that. Bottom line is a lot of music uses these scales and you have definitely heard pentatonic scales before because they sound good. For instance, the song ‘Amazing Grace’ uses pentatonic scales. You've also heard them, because you play the Blackout Club.

The point of the decision to use pentatonic scales was to make a pool of - a palette, so to speak - where you could pull any two notes out and they would sound good together. And this was a really smart decision. The last thing we want to convey here is that this was lazy.! It isn't lazy, so don't use this new knowledge to insult the games team. 

PATRICK BALTHROP, QUOTE: When the player is underground in the Blackout Club, they are playing through a procedural musical piece that is evolving harmonically and texturally.

LAVANYA: Now that we're wrapping up that quote, what that means is that the game is writing its own music as we play: the music generated by the game in the background is related to the action of the player. So like I told Astro, the first time they explained this all to me, it's like you're getting your own personal composition every single time. So that's pretty fucking nifty!

We have one more supplemental quote from Null, which is about the design of the maze. 

JORDAN THOMAS (NULL), QUOTE: So we wanted it to feel timeless, like the vision of a mine that is far from human. The hope is that it feels like it transcends technology from our particular time or relies more on the blood and the sweat of the humans who occupy it. 

LAVANYA: So, keep in mind, what this means is that the humans of Redacre are the powerhouse of the Instrument.

XAVIUL: Wasn’t this episode nerdy enough without making nerd jokes?

ASTRO: These two quotes have profound significance when you consider the Instrument and the Song that it creates. Instrument technology has not changed much in many years: as far back as we can find through history and archaeology, our drums are still material of whatever kind stretch over a hollow frame. Our stringed instruments still use tension and string length to create different sounds. And for literally thousands of years, we have made music in much the same ways, even though we've called those instruments different things and made different kinds of music with them.

And now, we need to talk about the language of bodies, after a word from our sponsors.

LAVANYA: So now that we're back from that stunning commercial break: the structure is what we are going to be covering next, because the thing to keep in mind is that the Instrument is not just an Instrument. 

The Instrument is not just a tool for playing the Song and allowing people to hear. The Instrument is a location. All of the rules of the Maze were hand built and planned by the developers, so huge shout out to the team. All of the little details, everything that you see - these are not generic cave designs or maze or anything else! Everything in these rooms has a purpose and is there for a specific reason. 

XAVIUL: They're meant to look and feel realistic, just a few degrees of separation from our reality. Like something you could really stumble into and lose all sense of individuality in! TBC is “low fantasy realistic”, as in air quotes, but deal with it. 

LAVANYA: Fantasy? I don't know about that. Because can we say that eldritch gods really don't exist in our world?

Probably. But have you seen a squid lately? Have you seen them dance, even after they have embraced death?

XAVIUL: I live in Virginia. I haven't seen the ocean in years. 

But part of the horror element is making you question that part of your known reality the Blackout Club straddles the line between real and imagined blurs it wherever they can out wherever it's more interesting. 

ASTRO: So, because of this there are real design principles that came into play when sculpting the Maze. So, let's start with something we know - one of the things we've been told about the Song infection is that it doesn't just need to be heard have an impact, in an older Thee-I-Dare talk. A player suggested: why not use headphones to stop the Song?

And Thee-I-Dare said, unfortunately, it resonates in the whole body.

So let's talk about resonance. This is vibration. The continuation of sound resonating sounds similar to echoing, but there's one key difference: echoing bounces. 

Resonating vibrates.

LAVANYA: Resonance is especially interesting, because eardrums are not the only way that we can hear. We can also hear through our bones, which sounds incredibly fake, but trust me, it turns out your bones can do a lot. To be super technical, even the way that we hear through our ear drums is really very tiny bones. They vibrate the sound vibrates through the rest of us and then we hear it. 

ASTRO: No, that's - not how that works. 

XAVIUL: Two hundred sixty five bones in the human body, and Lavanya is still tone deaf. 

LAVANYA: Hey!

ASTRO: Our ears have three very small bones in them that interconnect to each other. And when the eardrum vibrates, it vibrates those bones. So, technically, all hearing happens through our bones. You can notice bone resonance in your own life, when you're at the dentist's office, or grinding your teeth, or clicking them together.

XAVIUL: Oh, that's horrible for your teeth.

ASTRO: Tuning forks also work this way. They're not great at vibrating air, but they can vibrate other materials, like your jawbone. The sound that you hear from that is that sound traveling through your jaw, to a place where your brain can receive it. Sound travels best through solids, because the atoms are closer together.

All materials have what's called “resonant frequencies”. This is the frequency of sound that makes it wiggle or oscillate, if it's not being affected by any other external force. This is why Glass breaks if you sing at it, which is a real thing that happens - which you may be inclined to chalk it up to cartoon logic, but it is something that you can feasibly do.

XAVIUL: They did a myth busters episode on it!

ASTRO: Glass isn't flexible. So, instead of bending or wiggling, it just breaks. But other materials can bend, like metal, and wood, and parts of the human body, have a couple of fun links in this section - which I'll attach in the description.

But there's an article on Pop Sci, which is an excerpt from a book called ACOUSTIC WEAPONS. Here's a quote from it.

Vic Tandy wrote a paper for the Journal of the Society for Physical Research, not my usual farem called Ghosts In The Machine, in which they describe how they got to the root of stories of a haunted laboratory.

People in the lab had described seeing ghostly gray shapes that disappeared when they turned to face them. Upon examining the area, it turned out that a fan was resonating the room at eighteen point ninety eight hertz: almost exactly the resonant frequency of the human eyeball. When the fan was turned off, so did all the stories of ghostly apparitions.

So humans can hear between 20 and 20000 hertz. On average, age can be a factor in this, and so can many other things. For a frame of reference, the sound of my voice averages at about one hundred seventy eight to one eighty Hertz. At lowest, I can hit about one hundred seventy Hertz.

XAVIUL: Brag about it.

ASTRO: Frequency isn't the only factor. Volume is also key. Volume is measured in decibels or DB. According to Health Link B.C.. normal conversation is about 60 decibels. A lawnmower is about 90 decibels. And a loud rock concert is about 120 decibels.

So, the reason I'm giving you all this information is so that you understand three things. First, your body will not shatter like glass if you listen to the wrong music. You're pretty safe.

Which leads into the second point. The magnitude of what we're talking about is absurd. The volume and the frequency you would have to reach to harm a human with sound is wild. But that doesn't mean that things couldn't vibrate because of sound

Three, we wanted to provide real examples of similar things happening, to give you a better picture of what we're dealing with.

Here's the bottom line. If a sound like the Song is big enough and strong enough, theoretically, it really could vibrate the ground and vibrate bodies to be heard. A better word might be sensed.

ASTRO: So, I know you're all dying to hear more about resonance, so let's keep going. 

XAVIUL: Yay.

LAVANYA: [laughter]

ASTRO: Most of an instrument body is typically made up of what we refer to as a resonance chamber. For example, the wooden body of a string instrument like a violin or a cello residents chambers can come in other shapes and sizes. 

For instance the Mirra, the Shona thumb piano, is often placed inside of a gourd. This acts as a separated resonance chamber for the instrument, which doesn't make much sound on its own. Resonance chambers work by bouncing the sound around inside. As mentioned before, sound travels best through solids. So we need to give it a little bit of a boost to travel effectively through air.

Sound reflects just like light, and it will bounce off any smooth surface. When it bounces, it doubles back on itself, reinforcing the sound and making it stronger or louder. So, this vibrating air that bounces around inside the resonance chamber needs some way to escape and get to your ears to be heard. If it stays inside a sealed rock chamber like the Throat, no one will ever hear it. This is why if you look up, you can actually see a large opening that seems let in a little bit of moonlight to the caverns below. 

A real world analogy to this is the hole in the middle of the guitar, or the S shapes on top of stringed instruments. If these holes didn't exist, you wouldn't hear as well if at all, or the sounds that you make with your instruments.

XAVIUL: And on an added note, if you didn't have ear holesm we wouldn't be able to hear very well either. 

ASTRO: The Throat has connection points to a lot of parts of the Instrument. There are holes to String Relay and arguably to Ingestion, som because of those connection pointsm the sound from those parts of the maze can reach into the Throat, bounce around and then eventually make their way to the surface.

On the flip side, the sound can be caught in between ridges and rough surfaces. Most of the Maze is probably smooth for acoustics, especially parts that contribute to the creation of the Song. You can see crossing from Instrument Supply to Ingestion or Crypto Library. There's immediately a difference.

In the terrain rooms, like 920 Observation and New Growth, they have a lot of rough edges and uneven surfaces. This isn't ideal for acoustics, but they're also new. The sound is getting bounced around in those rooms in ways that don't amplify it as well and it's getting a little bit scattered, but the same concept comes into play much much more with rooms like Somniliquoy and Subliminal Media. Soundproofing is full of rough edges, because sound will literally get caught in the crevices and fizzle up.

So, now we get to talk about something truly terrifying: the echo chamber in Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota. The background noise in this room measures in the negative decibels negative nine point four decibels. Regular soundproofing isn't this extreme, but they really wanted to make the quietest room they could. And if you look at this room, you will see that they have spared no expense. 

XAVIUL: Oh, I hate this room. This is an especially cursed room.

ASTRO: It's a very cursed room. 

Every inch of the walls and even the floor has been layered with sharp spiky bits of wall, and in-between these panels, sound gets caught and tries its best to bounce back and forth, but ultimately can't. The floor has been covered with netting so that they can put even more soundproofing under it. 

XAVIUL: Is this the room where you can hear your own heartbeat?

ASTRO: Yes. You can. This room is so quiet that it's been theorized to make people go crazy. 

LAVANYA: Oh, I love it.

XAVIUL: I just added some damp cave gas in your set. 

ASTRO: So, whatever the cult is trying to hear in Somniluquoy, we either can't be allowed out into the rest of the instrument, or they don't want the sounds of the Song to be let in to allow them to hear more clearly. 

LAVANYA: And what little bit we do know about what they're testing is  mostly about that special special cave gas. Speak-as-One uses the gas as a means for listening to the first voice or whatever voice that they initially came from: essentially, the origin of the species of Daimons. 

They do this by dunking sleepers within the gas, where they enter the deepest form of sleep, and then they go beyond this same form of sleep - which is what allows them to try and decode the names of the other Daimons. Speak-as-One states that truth can be found in the deepest sleep, which comes with the gas.

XAVIUL: The-Measure-Cuts has said that Speak-as-One is listening for something, but they're keeping quiet about it - so maybe the soundproofing is for both directions. 

Who knows? It's a mystery.

ASTRO: So we've talked about volume. Now let's talk about pitch. In a stringed instrument, the length of strings changes their pitch. In the Maze, this happens in a room called String Relay.

In this room, strings move back and forth along tracks. The bottom track is completely horizontal. It's flat, but the top track is at a diagonal. This means that these sets of strings when they move are being not just moved, but stretched and relaxed. If you watch, you can see them thickening when they relax and thinning when they're stretched. 

You can try this on your own. If you have a rubber band stretched between your fingers, the more you stretch it, the higher that sound goes. So these shorter relaxed strings make longer wavelengths and deeper sound, and when they're looser, they vibrate less. Tighter strings, longer strings make shorter wavelengths and a higher sound. They're stretched tighter. They vibrate more in the space of any given time.

In the real world, if you are familiar with any kind of instruments, when you tune guitar strings, turning the little keys stretches and relaxes the string. Similarly, the size of metal tubing impacts pitch. We can see this in the Plexus. Large organ pipes have a much deeper sound than the smaller ones. If you go over to the far sides of the Plexus, when you first enter from the Nerve Center, those gigantic tubes have a deep deep sound. 

But if you stay closer to the center, where the smaller pipes are, you can hear the difference. Think about blowing across the lip of a bottle. If the bottle has more liquid and thus less air, the sound of the air inside it has a higher pitch. If you empty out some of that liquid the bottle will create a lower pitch.

LAVANYA: All right. So now we’re going to move down to architecture, as you were warned about in that ever distant spoiler warning. The Arches create a wind tunnel down from Dream Therapy. Basically, the way that it's setup, you can see from Dream Therapy to Subliminal Message, how the air and what that the sound waves would be push.

Traditionally and in a lot of houses, if you want a natural air conditioning, they'll have two large rooms with a window and each connected by a single hallway. This makes it where, if you open up one window and you open up a window on the other side, the cold air from one side will be pushed and drawn all the way through to the other one: cooling the entire house in the process. It carries the sound in the same way that, say, Georgian architecture carries air from one window to another. 

It carries the sound down to it when you enter the Arches. You can hear a wind sound activate when you enter. This happens once per game. It happens every single time. Keep an ear out, you will notice that.

ASTRO: And now finally we can explain the weird ass title of this episode. 

XAVIUL: Rooms in the bays are based on body parts. It might not be all rooms, but a lot of them are.

LAVANYA: SAO actually spoke to Astro and I about this to get clarification. They stated that the language of bodies is symbolic. The maze is structured like a body, not because it's a one on one match to everything in the Maze, but more because it comforts humans. It comforts them to know that, when they're stomping around downstairs, they're actually deep nestled comfortably into the organs of a strange, eldritch thing, because that's how we are, I guess.

XAVIUL: We aren't ready for the full truth, which is nothing but Lavanya just said, so. The language of bodies communicates to us on a more accessible level, according to SAO. 

LAVANYA: One of the many themes of the game is communication, which Xaviul is not very good at, but we all have to learn. Another theme of the game is the many ways that information passes, travels, morphs and translates through out the process. 

ASTRO: So what is language? Dictionary definitions follow language: they don't predicate it so we're not using those as a source in this discussion, but it is a very wide and far reaching discussion among scholars. You'll find people defining it different ways, but for our purposes, we can think about language as patterns that communicate ideas. 

There are different kinds of these patterns: audible patterns like speech, and singing, and music, but there's also other things like physical patterns, like sign language, quipu, writing, dance, and Old Tongue, and structures and architecture. 

And given this, we need to ask ourselves if the language of bodies is indeed a language - if the structure of the instrument, if that is a language -

What is it communicating?

ASTRO: There was a huge amount of content that we didn't get to talk about, because this episode was already very dense, so we're going to be releasing an episode eight point five. It will be mostly theory, but useful theory. The purpose of the Dreaming Prophet is to arm club members with the facts. Some of this information is really hard to find, and we've spent hours trying to pull it together. Therefore, we'll present what we have. You judge and you decide, but at least you'll have a place to start. 

Cal, Archers Volley and Skegulium, has made a lore master doc. If you're new to the game, or if you know someone who is, please check it out. They're trying to source as much info as possible with transcripts and videos, compiling the disparate info of the community into something comprehensible.

Cass has made a law primer comic. This is a compilation of some of the latest in the lore field, broken down from an in character perspective, so check it out. 

LAVANYA: And also, on the Dreaming Prophet Twitter, we have a new feature called Breaking News. It is a weekly compiled version of the latest news in the Blackout Club, in terms of what has happened this past week -

ASTRO: and it looks sick as hell.

LAVANYA: Feel free to retweet it. Feel free to look at it, if you can't keep up with the rapid fire nature of SAS, and get yourself updated on some of the basics.

ASTRO: You can follow the account at THEDREAMINGPC on Twitter.

Spoder-Man has made a transcript master doc. If you have transcripts or video links, please send them to him. Further information is on the doc itself, which is at TINYURL.COM/TBCTRANSCRIPTS. All of these links are in our description, so visit them as you please.

And finally, if you enjoy the Blackout Club, please leave a review of the game. If you already have, wonderful! If you haven't, time to get on that.

We'll be linking this store page in the description. After you've left your review, use the hashtag the Dreaming Prophet and hashtag the Blackout Club on Twitter to share your favorite Blackout Club memories. 

The Blackout Club is made by question games

Our advertising director is Bellamy.

Our transcript and video is by Lavanya.

Audio editing is by me, Astro. 

Spider-Man is our publicity guy.

Xaviul smells like blue paint. 

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET, EPISODE 7: CHOIR CLASS

[PODOMATIC LINK]

Keep quiet - they have ears everywhere, and eyes, too. We know them, but at the same time we don't know them at all. Who are they? They're Many, and yet, One. Talking points: Speak-as-One, SAO & Humanity, The Shape, SAO's relationships with other gods.

Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:14. Content warnings: General horror, cults, religious symbology, dehumanization, brainwashing, brief mention of suicide.

Cass Marshall's article on Polygon

God Encounter Transcript Master

The Blackout Club Steam store page

The Blackout Club Lexicon, for player/game lingo & terminology

After you review/if you've already reviewed, use #TheDreamingProphet and #TheBlackoutClub to share your favorite TBC memories on Twitter, and read some from other players. We'd like to read some of them in our next show.

Credits:

- lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

- astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

- be11amy: advertising

- xaviul: guest, moral support

- spoderman: publicity, hype squad

- intro & outro music, "ringing bells": a weirdly handsome individual

- transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games

- weird ambiance: Magmi Soundtracks on freesound (https://freesound.org/people/Magmi.Soundtracks/sounds/475737/)

- the blackout club: question games (https://www.blackoutclubgame.com/)

LAVANYA

[00:00:20]  Good evening, and welcome to our favorite listeners.

 LAVANYA [00:00:22] Tonight we have a very special topic, but first we're going to take a moment to consider our mother-father; our mama-papa; our darling grandma and grandpa. When they say that blood is thicker than water, what they mean is that there's music in your soul, and whether you're speaking with your hands, your tongue, or your pen, everyone is ultimately led by the same song.

 LAVANYA [00:00:43] You can ignore it if you want, but it's in your steps. It's in your breaths. It's in the beat of that mistake we call a heart in our chest. You can ignore it but you can't deny what you are and what you are is one of many.

 LAVANYA [00:00:57] Welcome to our Speak-as-One discussion. My name is Lavanya -.

 ASTRO [00:01:01] And I'm Astro.

 LAVANYA [00:01:02] - and we'll be your hosts for tonight.

 ASTRO [00:01:04] This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players with minimal speculation, all lore and focus on the known facts. Our topic of the day is SAO, a.k.a. Speak-as-One.

 LAVANYA [00:01:14] So in terms of spoilers, just like with the Thee-I-Dare episode, this episode is going to be so fucking chock full of spoilers that if you were allergic. you'd instantly enter anaphylactic shock upon reading this transcript.

 LAVANYA [00:01:26] *Instantly,* dear listeners.

 LAVANYA [00:01:29] But thankfully, you probably are not allergic! And if you are, we are *not* legally liable for that~!

 LAVANYA [00:01:35] So let's keep trucking on.

LAVANYA [00:01:37] So our content warnings are basically - we're discussing a massive fucking cult. So if cults bother you, discussion of religious symbology, all of that that - that's your warning for this episode. As always, there is a general horror themes warning in the discussion of death, and injury to children.

 LAVANYA [00:01:55] But we are dipping into SAO, the best God, tonight, which means we're also dealing with dehumanization and brainwashing. Those are kind of their thing.

 LAVANYA [00:02:05] There will also be a brief mention of suicide!

 ASTRO [00:02:17] And we have a guest tonight. Welcome back, Xaviul!

 ASTRO [00:02:20] Wait, Xaviul, what are you doing here? And where's Lavanya?

 XAVIUL [00:02:26] Lavanya went on a...

 XAVIUL [00:02:27] Trip.

 XAVIUL [00:02:27] But it's fine, cause I'm here, SAO's number one fan. I'm all about that.. uh.

 XAVIUL [00:02:36] Bong!

 LAVANYA [00:02:36] You motherfucker, we didn't give a content warning for drugs on this show. This is a family friendly show! You can't just tranq somebody, and shove them in a closet, and try to take over their spot in an episode. That's *wrong.*

 LAVANYA [00:02:48] That's not *friendship!*

 XAVIUL [00:02:51] Is it possible to build up immunity to large animal tranquilizers..? I was pretty sure you're going to be out for at least a few hours.

 XAVIUL [00:02:58] You know what they say about *ass-umptions*, Xaviul.

 XAVIUL [00:03:01] Anyways, I guess it's going to be a threesome from now on.

ASTRO [00:03:07] Let's start with the basics. What is Speak-as-One?

 XAVIUL [00:03:12] I think you mean, we are Speak-as-One? Just can't, like, depersonalize them like that.

 LAVANYA [00:03:18] [vehement] They're not a person, they're all and -

 XAVIUL [00:03:21] They are many people! Wow! Good thing I'm here to set the facts straight.

 LAVANYA [00:03:27] Okay.

 LAVANYA [00:03:30] Okay, now that we're going to have now that we're going to have the children sit down and take their seats... Speak-as-One is known as frequently in the community as SAO, or by the developer team, as S-A-1.

 LAVANYA [00:03:42] Speak-as-One is the name as the Daimon that occupies a majority of the hosts in Red Acre. It is a reference to the hivemind collective in general, where every participant is basically Speak-as-One, because they are One-of-Many. The way that I like to think of it is fingers dipped into a glass may appear to be individual entities to fish in the water, but anyone above the surface knows that they're all connected to the same hand.

 LAVANYA [00:04:08] Every host is Speak-as-One and Speak-as-One is every host.

 LAVANYA [00:04:14] Even if it doesn't look like it.

LAVANYA [00:04:16] So let's get into all the parts that make up the collective. The first of this is the Voice.

 LAVANYA [00:04:25] So, from what we know, this is always a man and a woman who speak as one. This also possibly could be an enby and a woman, or an enby and a man, or whatever other variation you can think of - but Speak-as-One hasn't gotten back to me on the many phone calls about that yet? So we're not entirely sure.

 LAVANYA [00:04:45] These two individuals are not mentally linked in the traditional hive mind. They are two separate entities who simply choose to work as one, much as the entire CHORUS community. Sleepers lines even note that they argue with each other, which they view as alarming and upsetting: as they say dissonance corrupts the Song.

 XAVIUL [00:05:05] Disharmony in my cult? It's more likely than you think.

 LAVANYA [00:05:09] A possible point of interest is, despite the fact that the voice does consist of two individuals, they are referred to exclusively as they, as if they were one entity. When Speak-as-One was discussing was having what my pronouns may be, they said - do they use they, like the Voice?

 LAVANYA [00:05:29] So that's a little fascinating, when Speak-as-One as the collective uses all pronouns.

 ASTRO [00:05:34] They are obsessed with truth and preservation. What the voice speaks is supposed to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, according to the Song.

 XAVIUL [00:05:45] So help us gods.

 ASTRO [00:05:47] There is no God in Red Acre.

 LAVANYA [00:05:48] There is only one, it's *fine*.

 ASTRO [00:05:51] The Cryptogram Library is an extensive archive of the old tongue. You can see this in the massive walls of the projector slides, which also appear in the projector mission.

 ASTRO [00:06:01] Each of those wooden cards contains information on a move in the old tongue, and the walls are literally covered with them feeling the floor. We'll talk more about the old tongue in our next few episodes.

 ASTRO [00:06:12] The Voice does not lie but they do hide things from the masses.

 THE VOICE [QUOTE] [00:06:17] Already has distanced himself from the hated terms - I, you, my - words spat across time by the Adversary. This one rejects them. Most attentive. We approve.

 LAVANYA [00:06:46] Speak-as-One has different rules for how you should talk depending on which facet of them that you're speaking to.

 LAVANYA [00:06:51] With the Watchers, they're more lenient. Overall you should always try to avoid I as the forbidden word, but as the Watchers informed me, they don't really care if you slip up. The watchers are your dead relatives, your dead neighbors, dead randos off the street. Maybe they're dead homeless people that they stuffed into the barracks to die! [laughter] They are apparently not personally invested enough not to forgive you for the sin of using a first person pronoun.

 LAVANYA [00:07:15] With that said, that's a grace that's only given to the player characters. Lucids and sleepers treat I as the forbidden word. It increases dissonance in the Song where everything is weak, and sleepers show that they have a slight amount of discomfort or possibly even pain when they're encountering the word I.

 LAVANYA [00:07:33] However, the voice is hard line. As the watchers warned me, the Voice does not accept first person pronouns. The voice wants you to go full fucking khajit here.

 XAVIUL [00:07:43] I don't get your dated references.

 LAVANYA [00:07:45] Technically Skyrim came out last year, and the year before that.

 LAVANYA [00:07:50] And the year before that.

 LAVANYA [00:07:54] So remember kids, when it comes to in-game visits, you're speaking to a Watcher: you can use as many first person pronouns as you want, but when you're doing rituals, you should go ahead and remember you're talking to the Voice. And whereas the Watchers forgive, the Voice does not.

 LAVANYA [00:08:09] Use third person. Go full Khajiti. Do whatever it takes to avoid that watchful eye.

LAVANYA [00:08:14] Immortality is one of the most important things to Speak-as-One. When I say immortality, I don't just mean of the body: I mean of information, of memories. Watchers are what we considered dead; however, Watchers still stay a part of the Song. We don't know exactly how this compares to Thee-I-Dare's fragment, which SAO has recently claimed, are kind of knockoffs, but we know that there are some differences.

 LAVANYA [00:08:41] Thee-I-Dare's fragments are fragments of his personality ensconed in the memories of his host. His host do not survive the fragmentation processm only his memories and his impressions of them do.

 LAVANYA [00:08:54] If it helps, it's easy to think of it as fragments are when you sit down and you armchair, get a drink, and crack open Thee-I-Dare's live journal to read all of his deepest, darkest secrets. Watchers, this on the other hand?

 LAVANYA [00:09:07] That's just dead people. Just dead people, as far as the eye can see, and they are implied to be individuals with their own consciousness that is retained in the Song, with their own memories.

 LAVANYA [00:09:19] This is most evident in the sleepers line where the Sleepers speaks of the father, whose child was possessed with the fear of the night and eventually died, becoming a Watcher. When she died, she assured him that all was well - showing that she still had a bond with her father, even after death, and showing that she remembered her past experiences of being afraid and she was now assuring him that that was over.

 XAVIUL [00:09:42] Bit fucked up if you ask me, but -

 LAVANYA [00:09:44] But Speak-as-One loves family. Familial love and forgiveness is kind of their whole thing.

 XAVIUL [00:09:51] But you wouldn't know about that, would you? Since Laugh-Last kind of went out for milk, and took, what, nine months to come back?

 XAVIUL [00:10:02] [laughter] Wow. Well, really going for the fucking abandoned father jokes today. All right.

 XAVIUL [00:10:07] Becoming a watcher is frequently the fate of the dead SAOites. But we don't know if it's the fate of all SAOites. I mean, who would want Lavanya in the Song?

 LAVANYA [00:10:19] Wow! I have perfect pitch. I mean, I don't know what pitch is, but I'm pretty sure mine is perfect.

 XAVIUL [00:10:28] Moving on --.

 XAVIUL [00:10:28] SAO wants all of humanity in the Song. It views it as a tragedy when they will not join. The same applies to Daimons - but not all Daimons, hashtag not all Daimons.

 XAVIUL [00:10:41] Hashtag: TID's, do not interact.

 LAVANYA [00:10:45] [laughter] Oh fuck.

 SLEEPER [QUOTE] [00:10:47] Such new things she will learn..

 ASTRO [00:10:51] Underneath everything they do, SAO has an inherent curiosity.

 ASTRO [00:10:55] They want to learn and share the information they learn with the Song. They chronicle their own history and the history of other Daimons, and other humans for eternity, sharing it within their hive mind, and they want to know more about where they came from.

LAVANYA [00:11:11] So you might be asking yourself right now what is the Song? The answer to that question is who the fuck knows?

 THE VOICE [QUOTE] [00:11:18] The Song is salvation. War, famine, strife.. all will end. All will Speak as One.

 LAVANYA [00:11:37] Personally, I've heard a lot of conspiracy theories about what the Song as Astro can attest during my late night ramblings - and by late night, I mean 9 p.m. - [laughter]

 LAVANYA [00:11:52] Luckily, we have kind developers who are willing to clarify things and get us away from our corkboard full of strings. Null said in a quote from the discord that:.

 [00:12:04] "Speak-as-One uses the Song to describe his own traditional connected host pattern of behavior, keeping the host unconscious as much as possible, because of the toxin of self-interest. But it doesn't own the old tongue itself. It can't really, because it emerged from that when identity was not yet a thing."

 ASTRO [00:12:25] So, to summarize: the Song is comprised of hosts, past and present, who communicate with each other via ritualized music sound and dance. To be part of the Song, you have to be asleep. This is how the Song remains pure while asleep. You can't be tempted by other Daimons.

 ASTRO [00:12:41] This is why when you're shaped, the Shape is returning you to the Song. Watchers like to complain frequently about the inaccuracy and inadequacy of the Word. They can't express themselves like they do in the Song, which is frustrating, but they also need to speak to us in a way that we understand.

 LAVANYA [00:12:57] Unfortunately, the Song is difficult for humans to hear now. They rely on the Instrument to amplify it, and the Voice to interpret it for those that can't fully understand. Speak-as-One mentions in a God talk that there is a level of natural aptitude that they seek out in children. This could be linked in with how they train sleepers - hosts conditioning is made to sort out which sleepers can do what, and which are suitable to use as workers jobs.

 LAVANYA [00:13:19] It's up for grabs if no sleepers left behind is a theme for us, but we've got to get batteries somewhere, right? Some sleepers get trained, some get picked up and gently dipped down into the gas tubes of Somniliquoy in order to listen for the unseen, sleeping God.

 XAVIUL [00:13:38] The Song is truth, but not the full truth. In Madi-Shaw Log 1 in the journals, there is a quote: "we advise ending this recording, dismissing the Chordist performing. The Song is truth. But one must give a thought to - to harmony?".

 XAVIUL [00:13:55] In a conversation, the Watchers note that the Voice will not allow information to be encoded, which scares them.

 LAVANYA [00:14:02] The history of SAO is pretty fucking fascinating, because we have a Voice right now and per the lucid lines, we've had a voice back in the 90s. But we don't actually know a lot about the history of CHORUS, or the precursor organizations of it, but instead we know a little bit about SAO.

 LAVANYA [00:14:20] SAO is one of the earliest voices that we know exist, if not the earliest. The first voice is the progenitor of SAO that they're searching for, as TMC mentioned in a dream and has been mentioned in God talks. We know nothing about them unfortunately, but neither does SAO.

 LAVANYA [00:14:40] What we do know is that they are located beneath slow wave sleep, and the experiments that SAO performs in the Somniliquoys with the sleepers, which sometimes involve full submersion into the freaky ass gas, are all aimed towards finding this first Voice.

 ASTRO [QUOTING] [00:14:56] SAO has said your kind were primates, yes? Apes, barely upright nomadic. Some came upon this valley. Even animals may dream. Here, their dreams intensify.

 LAVANYA [00:15:08] SAO refers to humanity semi-frequently as upright apes. You've probably heard this in the sleepers lines in one particular God talk. They state that they discovered humanity back when they were still apes, barely upright and still nomadic. SAO guided these early primates in a symbiotic relationship. They state that they were not fully sentient at that point in time.

 ASTRO [QUOTING] [00:15:31] "This valley was fertile. When the adversary ruined you, some of our kind entered the caves, drew pictures of what we were."

 LAVANYA [00:15:41] SAO has detailed some of their own history in the past in various God talks. What we've learned is that SAO does not know precisely their own origin. They refer to themselves, early on in their past, as being "a pattern, repeating, improving". SAO, as the first voice, we know separated from the old tongue, which is the pattern mentioned, due to the growth of flocking and eusocial behavior in pre conscious humans.

 LAVANYA [00:16:05] So basically, humanity, which at that point would probably there have been Homo habilis or one of the other early precursors of near humans, as they developed social behaviors and began cooperating with one another in forming early tribes - *that* is what eventually evolved into creating SAO. SAO is literally the Daimon of community.

 LAVANYA [00:16:27] Even if sometimes it's a little bit of a xenophobic community.

 XAVIUL [00:16:29] You're either with them or you're against them.

 LAVANYA [00:16:33] While a lot of the Daimons have a bad tendency of lying or distorting stories in order to make themselves sound better, SAO's origin story has actually been further confirmed by TMC, who stated in a private dream that "we were one voice, one species, live host - highly intelligent, but not awake, clustering in caves. A kind of neural dance passed over the area of bodies in great waves, a rapture of connectivity, even death, the tribe's memories would persist.".

 LAVANYA [00:17:05] So, in the beginning, that was SAO, long before anyone had actual words to describe what they were. This rapture of connectivity, as TMC describes it - this happened in numerous places across the world as humanity gained consciousness and self-confidence, naturally, as a species. When the Word was introduced by Thee-I-Dare, humanity split and SAO states some of them fled into caves to leave monuments behind of the Old Tongue. SAO calls this a sacred place. It's from this place that they get their symbol, which is two stones, side by side. We do not know exactly where this place was. They insinuated that it might be Red Acre, but they also insinuated that it could be anywhere.

 ASTRO [00:17:47] More on this after a word from our sponsors.

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 LAVANYA [00:18:27] So, after that lovely commercial break, we're back to the most important thing of the day: SAO! So buckle in your seats, kids, we're back to the cult.

 ASTRO [00:18:38] How do we change the channel again..?

 LAVANYA [00:18:41] You don't. You don't! I put on the child locks, so sit down and eat your pudding.

 XAVIUL [00:18:46] Can I unplug the TV..?

 LAVANYA [00:18:49] No!

 LAVANYA [00:18:49] Modern humanity and SAO is kind of what's going on in the game right now. Red Acre is a perfect example of it. Red Acre is SAO, just like CHORUS is SAO. All of the are involved with CHORUS, and with the cult, whether o not they know it. As Sleepers, as Lucids, as unwilling battery farms - because that's what the In-Her-Teeth claims.

 IN-HER-TEETH [QUOTING] [00:19:11] "I requested to be able to how I will die." So, what I forsee right now, is that you won't even be allowed to die.

 LAVANYA [00:19:51] In-Her-Teeth states that Speak-as-One uses human bodies as a battery farm for the memories of the rest of the collective. The exact meaning of this is of little unclear - biologically, emotionally, spiritually, she doesn't get in detail.

 XAVIUL [00:20:11] What do you mean? I love being backup storage.

 LAVANYA [00:20:15] The Matrix taught me that it is very cool, Xaviul.

 LAVANYA [00:20:18] But we do get a hint of a potential meaning in the Leviathan text, and in the kids text upon entering the maze. And in the Lucid lines.

 [00:20:25] Memories merge, are lost and are gained while in the Song, and going through the red doors. For instance, the player characters have seen the maze before, but not in their memories. "I've seen this before in dreams, but not mine" is a line that your child may say, while descending into the maze.

 IN-HER-TEETH [QUOTING] [00:20:46] The breeders who run this town aren't interested in life as you define it. Or even the death with dignity. You want your body functioning as storage space for their own bodies. Which is to say --

 LAVANYA [00:21:06] An interesting thing to note here is that a point has been made that the adults of Red Acre are in the town willingly. Either they agree with the morals of the town, in the overall sense of community, the exclusion of outsiders, all of that - that underpins course as an organization, or else they're in at full salee because they just fucking *love* cults.

 LAVANYA [00:21:27] But, either way,there is a certain amount of informed consent on the part of the adult. They may not necessarily know that every night, they're being body jacked to go to hard physical labor, or to hunt in the maze before they go to their office job, but they are choosing to be in the town and to participate in the community.

 LAVANYA [00:21:47] It's partial consent, even if it's not full consent, which makes it a little bit interesting in that SAO states in their various God talks that consent is a lie and choice is a deception slash poison.

 LAVANYA [00:22:00] This makes sense in terms of the children of the town being forced into their parents choices into joining the cult - or being used by the cult in terms of the body jacking - but it doesn't make too much sense when SAO exists in Red Acre and does not try to extend past it.

 LAVANYA [00:22:17] Yet, at least.

 LAVANYA [00:22:21] What's fascinating about Speak-as-One history is that it is a perfect example in some ways of the difficulty of collating the Blackout Club lore, especially when it relates to the Daimons.

 LAVANYA [00:22:30] Because the problem, of course, is that all of our references, all of our sources, do not come from, say, journals in game that we can rely on to have some form of authority behind them, but instead, we're getting it directly from the horse's mouth constantly. And sometimes, like all disgusting ungulates, the horse lies.

 ASTRO [00:22:52] This becomes more interesting when you consider the other adults that go missing in Red Acre. When a player questioned Thee-I-Dare about a fragment in the barracks, Thee-I-Dare told us a story about Yutiz,  a homeless man who lived there under the care of Speak-as-One.

 ASTRO [00:23:08] Thee-I-Dare told us that homeless people live in the barracks and we aren't sure if this is the whole population of the barracks, or just a part of it. But we do know that taking in homeless people is a pattern for SAO. The barracks have also been described as a place where the sleepers who never leave the maze stay when their bodies need to rest.

 ASTRO [00:23:27] This brings us to the final arm of SAO's reach, which is the Shape. before we begin I want to emphasize the Shape is scary because it's unknown.

 ASTRO [00:23:38] As a result, the information we have is pretty scarce. But this is intentional. Even the Daimons don't know totally what it is, but if we knew what it was and if we knew what to call it, it wouldn't be scary anymore - and we need to remember this is a horror game.

 ASTRO [00:23:52] With that said, here's what we do know. The first is that Speak-as-One created the Shape.

 THE-MEASURE-CUTS [QUOTING]: “Who is really the shadow, or the angel?” A creation of my progenitors that your kind mistook for a winged being. The truth, as ever, is much worse.

 LAVANYA [00:24:19] SAO describes the Shape as merciful and calls it the angel.

 THE VOICE [QUOTE] [00:24:23] We wish to save you from this lonely waking nightmare you call life without the Song. The Angel is our hand, and it will end a life only when mercy has been proven fruitless.

 LAVANYA [00:24:40] Presumably, this is because of its physical characteristics, but we're not exactly sure.

 XAVIUL [00:24:45] It has a physical form, and it can be foamed, and it must open doors to pass through them.

 ASTRO [00:24:53] The Shape can be changed by changes to the Song. If the Song reports more sin in one playerm other than the one that the Shape is targeting, he will switch targets. Additionally, upon completion of the instrument damper mission, he can lose his target completely. He will still wander the maze, but he won't know who to target.

 LAVANYA [00:25:12] While he has a physical form, he is also linked explicitly to sound - not just in the Song, but overall. Beckoning causes a cacophony of human whispers, which increase constantly as you are shaped.

 LAVANYA [00:25:25] The words almost make sense, the closer you are to joining the Song, but they'll never fully make sense, and the sound is a little similar to what you can hear in Nerve Center if you stand on top of the resonator.

 LAVANYA [00:25:46] When you are shaped, it produces a loud siren as the noise that slowly gains in volume as you are put to sleep. While the Shape is on you, period, other sound around you is slowed and distorted. This is most evident in the sin wires, and it's not clear if this affects all sounds, like the ambience. But it does affect some of them.

 ASTRO [00:26:12] If he wanted to put us to sleep you should look into those sleep aid C.D.S, like wave sounds, come on.

 LAVANYA [00:26:17]  it's like it doesn't even know its job! It could do sleep soundwaves, it could do the brown note, there's a lot of things that he could do instead of screaming at us.

 XAVIUL [00:26:26] Sleep AMSR!

 LAVANYA [00:26:28] Shape sleep ASMR! When can we buy it?

 ASTRO [00:26:31] Being near the Shape produces visible noise similar to TV static.

 XAVIUL [00:26:37] If he can't find his target, he'll grow wings and change, which increases his physical abilities.

 ASTRO [00:26:43] He gets the jumps.

 XAVIUL [00:26:45] Doesn't he also see in the dark?

 LAVANYA [00:26:46] Yes, he does.

 XAVIUL [00:26:47] Slaps on those fucking night vision goggles. Watch out!

 LAVANYA [00:26:50] And to backtrack, despite having a physical form, despite somehow being linked into the Song, despite the fact he's an eldritch abomination and part of the game right now is focused heavily on exactly how you kill those off, we have it firmly established you cannot kill the Shape.

 LAVANYA [00:27:10] The Shape is here to stay, baby.

 THE-MEASURE-CUTS [QUOTING] [00:27:13] “I want to kill the Shape.” I have been working on the same thing. I do not believe it can be killed in the way that you mean. It has always been here. If its body dies, then somehow it persists, whether it has multiple hosts as we did or… or something that defies the law of reason. I sincerely hope it is not the latter.

 XAVIUL [00:27:44] And of course we can't go without talking about SAO and their relationships with the other voices. So we'll start off with the former BFF for life.

 LAVANYA [00:27:57] TMC and SAO used to be tight as fuck, probably to the extent of exchanging friendship bracelets, if SAO was capable of revealing any of the other Daimons as individual entities that deserved friendship.

 LAVANYA [00:28:11] In the past, The-Measure-Cuts and SAO worked together actively, back when TMC was being viewed by society as a forge goddess. We don't know the exact context behind that, but we do know that basically TMC was in with the management at that point. But he isn't right now!

 LAVANYA [00:28:27] We know that SAO is, per the other Daimons, the creator of Red Acre - or at least perceived as such. However, The-Measure-Cuts feels a certain amount of ownership over the town for whatever reason. He states that "I am running a controlled experiment and you are the subject" to one of the player characters.

 ASTRO [00:28:46] The-Measure-Cuts said he tried to remain neutral when Thee-I-Dare was shattered. He's directed players to help Thee-I-Dare before, But he did let TID's get murdered.

 THE-MEASURE-CUTS [QUOTING]: I have a sibling.  Some once called him, THEE-I-DARE.  You could be of concrete and immediate use to him, if you value truth more than life or time.

 ASTRO [00:29:15] The-Measure-Cuts seems ambivalent on actually working against Thee-I-Dare, though he doesn't seem to want to help out SAO's plan either.

 THE-MEASURE-CUTS [QUOTING] [00:29:22] "Our progenitor is an entity who's name I will not speak."

 ASTRO [00:29:22] Names gives power. The-Measure-Cuts is choosing not to give SAO more power.

 LAVANYA [00:29:34] Because he's *disloyal.(

 LAVANYA [00:29:36] The thing about it is does SAO acknowledge that TMC is a completely different person and not just a naugty little body part that got cut off? No.

 LAVANYA [00:29:45] But SAO still wants him to come back. SAO wants to reclaim TMC, referring to him as the Scholar. So while TMC is being a little bit of a dick, refusing to giv SAO power by saying their name, refusing to help them actually finally drop the hammer on Thee-I-Dare, refusing to let Red Acre exist without trying to poke the children with syringes -.

 LAVANYA [00:30:11] Ultimately SAO does forgive!

 XAVIUL [00:30:15] It's kinda like when you bite your tongue on accident. You don't get angry at your teeth for it.

 XAVIUL [00:30:20] Exactly. Exactly! Spit out the blood and move on.

 XAVIUL [00:30:24] Speaking of teeth.

 ASTRO [00:30:28] [laughter] So what about In-Her-Teeth?

 XAVIUL [00:30:30] Well, she likes to call SAO brother, while other voices have their own kind of flavors of words to describe them, like The-Measure-Cuts calls them progenitor, Dance-for-Us calls them parent - In-Her-Teeth is more of a familial sense and In-Her-Teeth is also in the past referred to SAO as those that bore me.

 XAVIUL [00:30:55] Family trees. Are they real? More at eight.

 ASTRO [00:30:56] In-her-Teeth has also referred to SAO as the "Breeders."

 LAVANYA [00:31:02] It's a nasty term, but that we found out in a private dream from In-Her-Teeth recently, that she actually runs r/childfree.

 LAVANYA [00:31:12] After all, what is banning, but the little death?

 LAVANYA [00:31:15] Lavanya, we promise not to lie on this show.

 XAVIUL [00:31:18] We did?

 LAVANYA [00:31:21] Boo!

 XAVIUL [00:31:22] In-Her-Teeth thinks all the Daimons have lived too long and wants to find a way for them to die, but specifically targets SAO.

 IN-HER-TEETH [QUOTING] [00:31:34] I do need hosts to retake Redacre and annihilate the so-called “sleeping god”…

 LAVANYA [00:31:37] This is an interesting contrast to the fact SAO's entire thing is conditional immortality, which probably plays into the fact SAO calls her death fetishist.

 LAVANYA [00:31:46] Familial love, y'all~

 ASTRO [00:31:49] So what about Laugh-Last?

 LAVANYA [00:31:51] Laugh-Last calls essay management.

 XAVIUL [00:31:54] I mean it's what they are.

 LAVANYA [00:31:57] If SAO is management, does that mean that Laugh-Last is the unpaid intern, that they keep taking his card, but he keeps following other people into the building anyway?

 XAVIUL [00:32:05] I'm too young to understand this reference.

 LAVANYA [00:32:07] [laughter]

 XAVIUL [00:32:07] Laugh-Last believes that if SAO has their way, Red Acre will be ~*THE WORST*~. So we have to do everything we can to fight the power! Laugh-Last claims that being serious is death. SAO doesn't want any fun, any laughs, so you can see why there might be friction there.

 LAVANYA [00:32:26] SAO  doesn't actually want anything to do with Laugh-Last.

 LAVANYA [00:32:29] At this point in time, they call him The Fool and they say that it's in his nature to stand apart, and to look for humor at the group's expense. Which is pretty much opposite of anything that SAO wants to deal with, wants to see, or wants to have anywhere near their delicate, delicate meat husks.

 LAVANYA [00:32:46] No anvils, no pianos.

 XAVIUL [00:32:47] No taste -.

 LAVANYA [00:32:47] None of that. So Dance-for-Us. She's an interesting case in that I assumed, personally speaking, that SAO would just fucking *love* her. However, it turns out in a rare instance - once in a lifetime experience - I was wrong.

 XAVIUL [00:33:04]  [laughter]

 ASTRO [00:33:06] She doesn't like SAO, and the feeling is mutual. SAO has said about her: she corrupts physical meaning, and said the Dancer is consumed by vice.

 ASTRO [00:33:15] They say that she is irredeemable: unlike the Scholar, she can't be brought back to the Song. Her followers are encouraged to sing and dance for fun, the way they want to. This is very different from the tradition SAO preserves, which is one of joint dance, done in sync.

 LAVANYA [00:33:30] It's kind of like when somebody burst into your beautiful studio performance of the Black Swan, and starts drop-pop-n-locking and right in the center of the stage.

 XAVIUL [00:33:38] I'd watch it.

 LAVANYA [00:33:40] [vehement] You unplug the TV!

 ASTRO [00:33:43] And last, but not least, Thee-I-Dare. Naturally, he's not a fan of SAO.

 ASTRO [00:33:48] He opposed Speak-as-One in early human history: the creation of the word, causing the creation of identity and the creation of individualism.

 XAVIUL [00:33:56] Now thinks that all Daimons must die, apparently?

 LAVANYA [00:33:59] He's still trying to oppose SAO, even though we know where that got him before. And you know SAO still wants to wipe him off the face of the earth.

 XAVIUL [00:34:09] Nothing personal, though~.

 LAVANYA [00:34:10] It's just cleaning~.

 XAVIUL [00:34:11] Gotta get rid of the trash!

 ASTRO [00:34:13] One final note. One of the newest gods, Seed-the-Grudge has a very specific and very deliberate relationship with SAO.

 LAVANYA [00:34:22] She states that if you want to contact her, you have to send a prayer off to Speak-as-One, and say her name at the beginning of it.

 ASTRO [00:34:29] Where the other gods feared to speak their name, Seed-the-Grudge shows no such fear. She wants SAO to know that she's here..

 ASTRO [00:34:37] And she's using us to do it.

ASTRO [00:34:43] We'd like to think Cass Marshall from Polygon. She writes about game communities and her articles are always a treat to read. She's written a couple articles about the Sea of Thieves community, and her shenanigans in it all are a wonderful read.

 ASTRO [00:34:56] In our description, we're putting a link to a recent article she made, entitled "A HORROR GAME: Where the Devs Spook You Out in Real Time". This is an article that she made in conjunction with Xaviul.

 XAVIUL [00:35:07] Yes! It was so much fun, it was kind of nerve racking, but I had a great time creeping around Red Acre with her.

 ASTRO [00:35:16] She stealthed this article passed us and released it while I was editing Episode 6, so we didn't get to thank her then, but we're thanking her this time. So thank you, Cass Marshall.

 ASTRO [00:35:24] Spoderman, who has been a previous guest on this show, has made a transcript master doc. If you have transcripts or video links, please send them to him. We're trying to compile as much information as we can to help everyone in the club. More information on that is on the doc, which you can find at http://tinyurl.com/tbctranscripts.

 ASTRO [00:35:44] That's all lowercase TBC transcripts. We'll be leaving another link to that in our episode description as well.

  ASTRO [00:35:50] And finally, if you enjoy the Blackout Club, please leave a review of the game, especially on Steam.

  ASTRO [00:35:56] If you already have, that's wonderful. If you haven't, take an opportunity to go do that! We'll be linking the store page in the descriptionn, just make it a little easier for you.

  ASTRO [00:36:05] After you've left the review, use #thedreamingprophet and #theblackoutclub on Twitter to share your favorite Blackout Club memories. We'll read some of them out on the closer of our next show.

  ASTRO [00:36:15] The Blackout Club is made by Question Games. Our advertising director is Bellamy. Our transcript and video is by Lavanya. Audio editing is by me, Astro. Our hype squad is Spider-Man. Xaviul cooks three minute eggs for two minutes.

[deadskepticfiles]

Welcome to the Dreaming Prophet’s B-B-BREAKING NEWS for the week 0f 09/16/2019, your one-stop shop for the latest lore in #theblackoutclub! Looking for more? Check out the links at the bottom, compiled lovingly by our fellow community members - or check out an episode of the Dreaming Prophet..? ✨

THE BLACKOUT CLUB LORE GUIDE - by @skegulium

THE BLACKOUT CLUB TRANSCRIPT COMPENDIUM - by @ryandafox55 on Twitter

The Dreaming Prophet podcasts, episodes @ Podomatic

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET TRANSCRIPT: Ep 6, Mission Possible

PODOMATIC LINK

Welcome to the club! You're joining at an exciting time, but you're going to need to hit the ground running. The good news is, we're all happy to help you learn the ropes, and which ropes to skip.

Talking points: A correction on Episode 5; All missions, all the time.

Featuring cohost, Be11amy. Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:07.

Content warnings: General horror, death + injury to children.

Eric Switzer's article on The Gamer: https://www.thegamer.com/blackout-club-lore-explained/ (+ The Gamer's review of The Blackout Club: https://www.thegamer.com/the-blackout-club-review/)

The Blackout Club Lexicon, for player/game lingo & terminology [on Google Docs]: bit.ly/TBCLexicon

Credits:

- lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

- astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

- be11amy: host, advertising, fact-checking

- xaviul: moral support

- intro & outro music, "ringing bells": a weirdly handsome individual

- transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games

- spooky ambiance: KRISTIANKULTA on freesound (https://freesound.org/people/KRISTIANKULTA/sounds/326962/)

- weird ambiance: Magmi Soundtracks on freesound (https://freesound.org/people/Magmi.Soundtracks/sounds/475737/)

- creepy sounds: JOHNWALLY on freesound (https://freesound.org/people/JOHNWALLY/sounds/32805/)

- the blackout club: question games (https://www.blackoutclubgame.com) 

ASTRO: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to the Dreaming Prophet. The sky is bright. The sun is shining and the birds are singing.

 ASTRO: Or are they? Those aren't birds. Oh God, those aren't birds at all. Wake up! Dear listener, wake up, before the sheep comes back.

 LAVANYA: That's my line. Well! My name is Lavanya and I'm your host for tonight along with this thieving thief of a bastard.

 ASTRO: Hi, I'm Astro.

 BELLAMY: And I'll be joining you for the first time today. You may or may not recognize my voice, but my name is Bellamy Bell for short.

 ASTRO: This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players with minimal speculation, all lore, and a focus on the known facts. Our topic of the day is the missions. We'll be giving you a guide on the basics of missions, and all the things we've learned while playing them.

 LAVANYA: So, our spoiler warnings for today are pretty much none. There are no spoilers unless you are deeply invested in the lore of the missions, in which case, there are a lot of spoilers. So, you have a general horror warning as always, and emphasis on the death, plus injury to children warning that we always do. Because this will be explicitly talking about the missions that do include dead children!

 BELLAMY: B-b-b-breaking news, listeners, we have exciting news for you today!

 LAVANYA: And that is we have received an official correction on our last episode episode 5, A Light In The Darkness, about everyone's least favorite morally grey Daimon Thee-I-Dare. So this correction came from the developers and clarified a point of slight confusion in the podcast specifically about the word in the song.

 LAVANYA: This is the statement that we received:.

 LAVANYA: Word and Song can exist in the same mind without turning instantly lethal. In fact, most minds in Redacre are burdened by both. But the pure expression of the Old Tongue, while *conscious* - has led to madness or death in the rare cases it has happened. Over prolonged periods, even Sleepers who have been induced to peform it have been lost to it, because under the surface, their brains were still organized by the Word, so a corrosive cognitive dissonance builds up if they try to perform a long, complex thought in it.

 LAVANYA: So, to clarify that further, basically what that quote is saying is that the Word in the Song being present in an individual's head does not instantly kill you! It is not an instant game over. Instead, the Word is present in every individual's heads, and Red Acre residents are largely burdened by the song already, which can heard at any point, if you turn down your sound effects or raise your music in-game.

 ASTRO: We are planning a full corrections episode later so you can watch for that. But for now that's the facts.

 BELLAMY: For this episode, however, our main goal is to provide comprehensive info, and some tips and tricks about the missions that currently exist in a game. We'll be going over each mission, individually outlining what's required for the mission, and some tips that we have for you.

 BELLAMY: As a general tip before we start, please remember that if you're ever confused while you're playing, you can always close your eyes, and you should actually see footsteps leading you to the next step of your mission.

 ASTRO: So, in game, there are three mission types. They are search, steal, and disrupt. After a certain level, the missions are randomized. But your first few missions will mostly be the same.

 BELLAMY: So, our first search type mission is the one titled INVESTIGATE: BREAK IN. Break in the purpose of this mission. As it's explained to you in game is that there's been a strange break in at one of the Red Acre houses and you've been tasked by your club members with sneaking over there and recording anything strange that you find there are actually two variants on this mission. The regular variant that you will see for most of your time playing the game and the variant that you actually get the very first time that you play any mission.

 BELLAMY: This one, we'll be calling the NIGHT ONE VARIANT.

 BELLAMY: So, the Night One variant takes advantage of the fact that investigating a break in is one of the simpler Missions you can receive. So, it's used as a pretty good introduction for certain game mechanics, and it will prompt to you regarding how to record evidence in the game when you're first learning.

 BELLAMY: The main difference between the Night One variant, and the regular version of this mission, is just the introductory flavor text that you see when you load into the mission, rather than in the actual gameplay.

 BELLAMY: The Night One break investigation is a fun one, because it provides you with a lot of inner universe fictional details as to what's going on and additional explanations as to what to do now.

 BELLAMY: What you actually do for both variants of this mission is that you need to sneak into a house, and record three strange things that have happened in the house.

 BELLAMY: These can range from a smashed in front door, to dirty footsteps in the living room, even to strange and unnervingly red stains splattered across the bathroom sink. Remember, like we mentioned earlier, these pieces of evidence can be scattered around the house.

 BELLAMY: So, like we mentioned earlier, if you get lost or can't find one, you can always close your eyes and there should be a trail of footsteps leading you to the next piece of evidence. This may even help you identify evidence that you didn't realize was evidence in the first place.

 BELLAMY: A dirt smear to your open eyes may manifest as a glowing footprints one burned into the backs of your eyelids. And when it comes to outside evidence the trail will unfortunately not lead you directly to it. But it will lead you to outside in general which should be your clue to look around the small outside area such as the backyard in which you've ended up. The evidence should be nearby.

 ASTRO: The second "search" type mission that we'll be covering is find a club members phone. The purpose of this mission is to get sensitive information out of the cults hands. Three chests in the maze are locked. Only one has the phone. It's a guessing game, and it helps to have lock picks, although you can kick in chests. It creates a lot of noise and it creates a lot of sin. And in this case, unlike kicking indoors, foam canisters will not save you. There is no way to foam an item chest and kick it open at this time.

 BELLAMY: Now, our next mission category is DISRUPT.

 BELLAMY: The first mission in this category is the dual pick up posters, and place recruitment posters mission. There are actually two variants on this mission as well. There is the House posters variant, and The Maze posters variant. First, we'll be talking about the House posters version as it's the slightly easiest one and it comes up a little bit earlier for most players. The purpose of this mission is to recruit new club members by pasting invisible propaganda all around town.

 BELLAMY: Now, the first step of this mission is "PICK UP POSTERS", of which, eponymously, involves picking up some posters from trash cans or bins around town.

 BELLAMY: When you collect these posters, try to split up who has how many posters, or else you will end up with one proactive member of your team picking up all of themm advancing the mission to the next stepm and leaving no posters for the rest of your group to pick up!

 BELLAMY: A recent update actually allows you to drop quest items for your teammates, so it's not the end of the world if you grab all the items yourself, but it does take a little more work to distribute the quest items that way.

 BELLAMY: And step two of the mission, you place the recruitment posters! For the House posters variant of this mission, you generally put them up on houses and trees. This is pretty easy because posters are absolutely silent to put up. They just take a second, and as long as there's nobody around that can see you, you should be absolutely fine.

 BELLAMY: Now the Maze posters variant of this mission is a little bit tougher. This is essentially the same mission as putting the posters up above ground, but it's more dangerous, because your mission goal is to wake up adults instead of convert children. So you'll be doing the most of your work underground in the maze.

 BELLAMY: Aside from that, the mission details are about the same!

 BELLAMY: You pick up posters and put them up in the maze and, you know, pray that you don't get dragged, kicking and screaming, into the bowels of the Song's terrible underground machine, never to be heard from again.

 BELLAMY: And lastly, regarding both of these mission variants, when you put up those posters, you know ,they do look like regular posters if occasionally rather meme. So if you're wondering how they help recruit the club, or disrupt the adults wandering the Maze, well, just try taking a look at them with your eyes closed.

 ASTRO: The next DISRUPT mission is picking up the yard signs and planting the yard signs. The purpose is to recruit for the club! No need to go into the maze this time. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will begin when you retrieved boxes from inside two houses, which have all of the yard signs inside.

 ASTRO: Like with posters, it's important to split up who has how many yard signs.

 ASTRO: Hammer them into the ground without getting caught. The hammering process takes time: a couple of seconds. You should plan for this. Unlike with the posters, enemies will hear you and will come to your location to investigate, and if they can see you, it's even worse if someone interrupts you while you are placing a yard sign. You will have to start all over from the beginning of the process.

 LAVANYA: The third DISRUPT type of mission is "Foam Party".

 LAVANYA: Foam Party is pretty exciting because this is a pretty active mission. All things considered, if you're heading out into the streets, getting ready to strike directly back against the cult that is trying to murder, brainwash, or possibly just going by some of their call lines, *nag* you back into serving them.

 LAVANYA: So, what you'll be doing in this mission is - you'll be picking up phone canisters at the Maze's entrance. You need at least 10 for it to start into the next part of the mission, but you can gather pretty much a shit ton more, if you feel like just roaming around the level.

 [00:09:09] You will take these foam canisters and you will damage the cult technology. Don't be like me. I literally spent three months, until Xaviul was kind enough to tell me to read the fucking mission, thinking that I was supposed to be disabling the proximity mines. No. You want to disable the mines that electrocute you.

 [00:09:27] So, this is a normal variant. You formally deactivate every speed trap aboveground. There will be 10 total!

 LAVANYA: There is a second variant, which is the Maze Foam Party, which is foaming or deactivating every speed mine underground. There are still 10! The only difference is the location.

 LAVANYA: The maze is more dangerous, and because the maze is fuck-huge, it will take you a great deal longer.

 ASTRO: The fourth DISRUPT type mission is titled "Get the Dampeners". The purpose of this mission is to disrupt the instrument, which keeps track of the player's sins and alerts the Shape.

 ASTRO: The dampers are wooden cases that have been stuffed with pieces of blankets crafted by the kids. Handmade, and each one is perfectly formed to fit onto one string. The soft material will stop the strings from vibrating quite so fiercely, and it will change the sound of the instrument.

 ASTRO: To complete this mission, your first task is to pick up dampers. Collectively, you only need to pick up four, but there are 12 scattered around the map. You will need to put these dampers on four different strings in the maze. They can be anywhere in the maze, in any room, and you may need to change the way you're positioned in order to reach certain places.

 ASTRO: Completing this mission wipes away your sin up to that point, and will often cause the Shape to stop targeting players. If he doesn't go away immediately, he will soon. Sometimes, he just needs to shape someone before he goes. You know, it's his job.

 ASTRO: He wants to feel fulfilled.

 BELLAMY: Our last disruption oriented mission involves audio bugs. The purpose of this mission is to give kids a way to listen in on the adults. After all, we do have plenty of adults trying to snoop in on what the kids of Red Acre are doing, so it's about time that we get a chance to turn the tables on parental controls, and hopefully get some warning ahead of time if there is anything particularly nefarious getting plotted.

 BELLAMY: To get your equipment for this mission, you'll be nabbing one of four boxes located on a delivery bike somewhere outside and above ground in town. These will be your audio bugs. You then take these listening devices and, ironically, very very quietly sneak into the targeted houses to install them in specific locations that the mission will point out to you. The caveat here is that the installation process for the bugs makes a lot of noise, so you want to make sure you'll be safe before starting installation.

 BELLAMY: There's actually a couple of different tactics you can use for this!

 BELLAMY: Firstly, you can scout the house first and tag the Resident Evil resident sleepers. Well, you know what I mean. Secondly, or if you're daring, even alternatively, you can have an escape plan ready to open a window nearby and get ready to book it across the rooftops before you get bodily tackled and sent off to the world's worst overnight camp.

 ASTRO: More on this after a word from our sponsors.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled commercial break with a public service announcement.

Here in Red Acre, we are a lovely and close-knit community. However, we can at times feel slightly detached from the rest of the world. As a result, it is important to keep an eye out for our most vulnerable population: Our children.

Feelings of isolation, distant behavior, and even beginning to speak to “imaginary friends” can be signs that your loved ones need help.

CHORUS provides free counseling for any children experiencing symptoms like these.

Please, don’t hesitate to make the call to help your loved ones today.

BELLAMY: Our third mission type is STEAL. Because who doesn't love a good bit of petty theft, after all? Doesn't that stuff get wiped off your juvenile record?

 ASTRO: I hope so.

 BELLAMY: Now. Our first mission is pickpocketing evidence bags, because, you know, who doesn't want to pretend they're in Skyrim? The purpose of this mission is damage control. A previous Blackout Club mission went awry, and some chorus agent is carrying the evidence. You're here to retrieve it.

 BELLAMY: Your goal in this mission is to retrieve the bag of Blackout Club evidence that a chorus agent is carrying. It's perfectly possible, and in fact, ideal to do this without ever alerting them to your presence.

 BELLAMY: If you dot get noticed, however, you can still freely complete the mission. You'll just have to run very very quickly!

 BELLAMY: There are actually two variants of this mission as well. The first variant is Sleepers Elite. This is the low level version that you'll get on levels 2 and 3 or so, where the chorus agent carrying your bag of evidence is an elite sleeper.

 BELLAMY: This version is on the easier side, as sleepers are blind and will be unable to see you approach. Make sure to stay totally silent!

 BELLAMY: Secondly, there's the regular version of this mission that you get once you're at higher levels in this variant. The evidence bag is being carried by a lucid dreamer. Even worse, the lucid is almost always down in the underground maze. You'll have to dive down and face the nightmare underground to the best of your clandestine abilities.

 BELLAMY: Do your best to snatch the key evidence of your club's doings from a fully cognizant agent that can, and unless you're a master of stealth, probably will see you.

 BELLAMY: Getting the bag from a lucid dreamer without being seen is pretty difficult. So, my best advice for this mission of area is to pack a candy bar for a swift escape and have your exit route in mind ahead of time.

 ASTRO: The second seal type mission you'll encounter is "Carry the Torch!" The purpose of this mission is to retrieve cult tech and bring it home to study at the boxcar. Your objective is to get into the maze, retrieve an item called the First Fire, and carry it out of the maze and to the drop point without being apprehended.

 ASTRO: If you lose the fire, another one will spawn on the table - but try not to lose it. The First Fire makes you highly visible to Lucids and the Shape. There is no off switch on this thing,and it glows brightly in a large radius around you. And lucids, as we all know, have perfect 2020 vision.

 ASTRO: Really, the only hot tip about this mission is to take it and fucking go. There is nothing you can do to make this mission better for yourself. You can try to weave around corners, but that's about it. The faster you get it over with, the more grateful you'll be when it's done. If you should run into trouble while carrying the fire, pass the baton to a teammate! It is Baton shaped, after all.

 ASTRO: You can call it a relay race, whatever makes you happy - but ultimately, the Blackout Club is a co-op game, and your teammates are there to support you.

 LAVANYA: All right. So, now that we're done talking about stealing precious religious artifacts from innocent worshippers, just trying to live their own life, we are moving on to a different kind of mission!

 LAVANYA: In which we are returning what may, or may not be, a priceless religious artifact.

 LAVANYA: Because we're good people.

 BELLAMY: And, to be clear in my opinion, which is otherwise known as categorically, this is the absolute worst and most difficult mission in the game, especially if you have to do it solo.

 LAVANYA: Yes, see, that's wrong, but that's OK, because this is not the Song, and we do accept controversial and incorrect statements.

 LAVANYA: This mission is called "TO CARRY A TUNE". It's one of the most interesting missions, in my opinion, in that we do get explicit lore with it. The screaming head is essentially -.

 LAVANYA: Well, I guess, you could say that is not screaming, but if you look in your heart, it really is screaming -.

 LAVANYA: The screaming head is actually releasing part of what the game refers to as the "Sleepwalker Song." You can kind of reach the conclusion that it is actually transmitting part of the Song above ground, which is fascinating!

 LAVANYA: Our goal with this mission is to take it back underground. You take it off with an electric stand that they've usually set up by one of the house's - sometimes in the road - and then you take it back underground to a randomized location in the maze. It screams whenever you move. It attracts attention and it accumulates a fuck ton of sin.

 LAVANYA: So the best method in which to handle this mission is, If you do not have unstoppable, you can actually throw the head. In early access, there was sometimes an issue where the head would become stuck if you did this. This is less of an issue now, but if it does become stuck then you can just go ahead and get a new one.

 LAVANYA: Throwing the head gives you a certain amount of leeway. For example, if you're standing an instrument supply and you throw your head through the hole that leads to String Relay -

 LAVANYA: You can make that throw. You may not make that throw, and you may regret everything, but you can make it, and the only way that you can guarantee that you'll make it is to try and try again.

 ASTRO: And truly yeet the thing.

 ASTRO: So, now that we've gotten through all of that, you may have noticed that we left out a few key missions. This is because we've categorized these missions as multipart missions.

 ASTRO: These missions require a different kind of thinking and a different approach.

 LAVANYA: The first of multi multipart missions is the Cryptograms. This is a real tight mission. Basically, the point of it is that the player characters discover that CHORUS is researching something interesting down in the maze in the Cryptogram Library, one of the largest rooms. What they are researching functionally appears to either be a very fucked up type of yoga, or else incredibly tepid dance moves.

 LAVANYA: So, it's up for grabs on how hateful your feeling towards the cult on what decision you make here.

 BELLAMY: Spoiler: it should probably be pretty hateful.

 LAVANYA: Don't insult my religious background, Bellamy!

 BELLAMY: Religious background suggests that you follow some sort of moral code, and I'm not sure that Simon says "OBEY" qualifies.

 LAVANYA: As was confirmed by Speak-as-One themself, who does dictate a beautiful and extensive moral code to their followers, so go fuck yourself - the cryptograms are actually written forms of the Old Tongue.

 LAVANYA: As we've mentioned before briefly, the Old Tongue is the original language of the Daimons. It cannot safely be spoken or used by humans, but, for whatever reason, Speak-as-One is just - you know - collecting information on endless cryptograms for them to stare at, I suppose.

 ASTRO: When you spend half your life in a place as dreary as the Maze, I suppose anything will spice it up.

 LAVANYA: The way this mission goes is that you will find the cryptograms in a random room in the Maze. This can be Dream Therapy, this can be Sleepers Lockers, this can be Cryptogram Library. Basically, the range of rooms that the crypto gamescryptograms can spawn in is pretty fucking far ranging.

 LAVANYA: All three of them, however, will always be in the same room. The only exception to this is the Somniloqs, because technically, those aren't the same room they're just on opposite sides just like this.

 LAVANYA: Once you get those, the mission can change slightly depending on what level you are. For low level characters, grabbing the cryptograms sometimes is all that you need to do, but as you gain levels in the game, you'll discover that the mission grows with you. Once you reach a higher level, the game will spawn a projector as the second part of the cryptographic mission.

 LAVANYA: The rest of the mission is functionally the same, but you will now have additional objectives. You will get to put them into the projector, and record the slides that show up, and then escape from the mob that you've probably attracted around you - because when you film their projector, it will make noise.

 LAVANYA: This will attract enemies and as with anything that causes that, it will attract the Shape.

 ASTRO: Our next multipart mission begins with HIDE EVIDENCE.

 ASTRO: We referred to this colloquially as the bird mission. It's a search type mission, and the purpose is to protect fellow club kids who are doing weird shit while they're possessed. Your task is to go to a specific house! Inside this house is a cutting board that has been desiccated with the blood and feathers of a dove.

 ASTRO: Upon finding it, though, you will realize that the dove itself is missing. You will have to follow a trail of four to five bloodstains between the cutting board and the bird's corpse in another house or another location. Cleaning these bloodstains makes a lot of noise, but each one is bonus evidence. So, if you want a top tier clear, it's a good idea to pick up some kitchen cleaner on your way.

 ASTRO: Our third multipart mission is the drone retrieval mission. Like the crypotograms, this is a steal type mission and in this case your club mate, Dax, has tried to steal some of the chorus codes documents by means of a drone. He was ultimately successful, but unfortunately, it's malfunctioned and dropped all of his ill gotten gains across town.

 BELLAMY: Now it's up to you to do recovery, and this mission, you will be hunting around for a few things. First, you must search for and repair the crashed drone itself. It will often be found in a place that requires some climbing to get to, like a rooftop. When you find the drone, you need to initiate a slightly time consuming and loud repair, so be ready to run, or make sure there's nobody around it before you start.

 BELLAMY: After you have the drone repaired, it will begin to fly and retrace its previously malfunctioning flight path.

 ASTRO: At the time of its initial malfunction, it dropped several bonus papers and the all important chorus binder and you need to follow it to find and pick up all of the missing items. This part is pretty easy though: the papers can end up just about anywhere aboveground. On outside rooftops, the middle of the street, you name it.

 BELLAMY: Watch out for adults and you should be fine.

 ASTRO: The next multipart mission we've decided to call: "Find the Kid." There are three variants to this mission, and they change the objectives drastically. However, overall, this is a search type mission. The purpose is to rescue fellow club members.

 ASTRO: The first variant of this mission is called "Untie the Kid". You will follow the marker to your objective underground. There will be a kid tied up in the maze. You have to untie this kid, as the name of the mission suggests. But after that, they can get themselves out just fine. Everyone in the club is very capable.

 BELLAMY: The second vary on this mission is pretty similar to the first, with one very jarring difference. Now, you get told in this mission to find the missing person - in this mission, you follow the marker to your objective. But unlike in the last version, when you find your friend, they're already dead. Your job in this mission is to record the evidence and leave as quickly as you can.

 ASTRO: The last variant of this mission is called "Follow the Trail", and it combines elements from both previous variance. Your mission object marker will take you to the start point of a trail.

 ASTRO: At this location begins a trail of blood, which eventually leads down into the maze at the head of the trail. There are usually about three to four pieces of bonus evidence. The exception to this is Old Growth, at this time of recording. You will follow the trail of blood into the maze, wherever it leads, and at the end, you will either find one of your friends alive -.

 ASTRO: - or one of your friends that you will dearly miss.

 LAVANYA: So, something that's interesting to note here is that the game explicitly says that the lucid do not want to hurt the player characters in the guide that serves as the access to the tutorial.

 LAVANYA: However, in the first part of the mission, when you are just looking to untie your kidnapped friends, it states that they are being interrogated, which is bad.

 LAVANYA: In the "Find the Missing Person" mission, it states that "you just hope that you're in time: free them if so, record the crime if not.".

 LAVANYA: Then, in the final part of the mission, where you are finding a dead child - you're dealing with a dead child. What we can get from this is that the Lucids may not want to hurt the player characters, but when they're interrogating them somehow, this interrogation does involve of risk enough of death that the Blackout Club children are heavily invested in reaching their friends in time - and when they can't reach their friends in time, it's shown that their concern is not hyperbolic, because that's when they're discovering that their friends have been killed.

 LAVANYA: So, our next mission is the recording mission, which is a steal type mission - not actually a Pokemon reference.

 LAVANYA: To backtrack slightly towards a previous topic, what's fascinating about the recording mission is that this is the first example of the Old Tongue that we see directly in play. This mission involves the children gathering some sort of electric boxes, placing them around a circle that they draw with chalk, and activating something on the boxes. When they do so, the symbol that they've drawn lights up and when they lure the sleeper - or Lucid - inside of it, they are trapped.

 LAVANYA: They begin performing a symbol endlessly.

 LAVANYA: What this mission is is that you set up the devices around the symbol and you lure an enemy within it - either lucid or sleepers, it doesn't really matter.

 BELLAMY: It doesn't work in the Shape, but it has no sense of dance moves anyways, so that's OK.

 LAVANYA: Once you get them inside, they will begin performing the gesture "CHASE THE SUN" endlessly on repeat until they are interrupted. As the sidebar notes, if you read it during the mission, sometimes the sleepers perform these even to the point of dying. The mission insinuates that this is the Old Tongue - but a conversation with Speak-as-One actually confirmed it. If you do not tackle the enemy after recording, they will remain kneeling for the rest of the game.

 ASTRO: Extended tasks can be assisted. Examples are not limited to fixing the drone, cleaning blood and untying the kid - multiple people working on one extended task will help it go faster significantly.

 ASTRO: Friendship is, again, the core of the Blackout Club. Without it, you get into a lot more trouble.

 BELLAMY: Some additional notes and game etiquette that I alluded to earlier include trying to leave someone objectives for your teammates, if they want them. Most people do like to help, and they got the game because they wanted to play it - not because they wanted to watch other people play it. Communication is key, and this will also mean that you can finish the game faster, like we mentioned for missions such as the posters and yard signs.

 BELLAMY: It also helps spread sin out a little bit more, so no player will get shaped immediately. And, like I mentioned earlier, the latest update allows you to drop quest items if you're ever in trouble. Take advantage of this, especially for items that attract a lot of attention or might have you spread out all around the map to complete your objectives.

 BELLAMY: There may be more mission types in the future. If so, we'll try to make a follow up to this guide. But for now, this has been a guide to all of the missions currently in the Blackout Club.

 ASTRO: Thank you to Eric Switzer from the gamer who gave us a shout out in one of his recent articles in the description for this episode.

 ASTRO: We're leaving a link to his article entitled: "OK, What the hell is going on in the Blackout Club?" It's a great read, especially if you're new to the game, and it will introduce you to the bare basics of the lore, and also tell you how you can get more of it.

 ASTRO: As a reminder, if you are new to the game, we have another resource to help you - which is our Blackout Club lexicon. That's a bit dot l y forward slash. Capitalized lexicon with the first letter capitalized. That link should be in our podcast description, and in every episode description, so take a look at it. It's a guide to player and game lingo to help you get acclimated.

 LAVANYA: And before we go, Astro almost forgot the most important mission of all!

 LAVANYA: The newest mission, just recently released by the development team, on the public test server, which is the steal type mission called "Recover the Shape Body Pillow --".  

 ASTRO: Lavanya, I love you, but I was trying to forget.

 LAVANYA: You can never forget in the Song. You're welcome.

ASTRO:

Blackout Club is made by Question Games.

 Our advertising director and host is Bellamy.

 Our transcript and video is by Lavanya.

 Audio editing is by me, Astro.

 Xaviul was buried in Grant's tomb.

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET: EPISODE 5 TRANSCRIPT

EPISODE FIVE: A LIGHT IN THE DARK (LINK)

Our kind was never meant to wake, but we sure are awake now. We can thank "the Adversary" for that - but who is he, really? Talking points: Thee-I-Dare, past and present, a spot of theory, and a community talk. Featuring guest, Fluffy Raven.

Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:25. Content warnings: General horror, harm to children, death, genocide.

- lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

- astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

- be11amy: advertising, fact-checking

- fluffy_raven: guest

- xaviul: moral support

- intro & outro music, "ringing bells": a weirdly handsome individual

- transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games

- weird ambiance: Magmi Soundtracks on freesound (https://freesound.org/people/Magmi.Soundtracks/sounds/475737/)

- the blackout club: question games (https://www.blackoutclubgame.com

LAVANYA: Good evening, Red Acre~, and welcome to the Dreaming Prophet. Tonight, we're going to do something a little different. I'm going to ask you to sit back, close your eyes, and cast your mind back all the way out into the murky depths of our origin, ten thousand generations ago.

 LAVANYA: Look at the sky. Look at the stars, and look at the sun shining down on that upright ape.

 LAVANYA: Watch as the sun guides IT - your ancestors - your grandmothers! - leading them out of the cruelty of the darkness and into the warmth of the light.

 LAVANYA: Open your eyes. Look to the sky.

 LAVANYA: Will you let it lead you?

 LAVANYA: My name is Lavanya -.

 ASTRO: And I'm Astro.

LAVANYA: And tonight, we're leading a very special episode of the Dreaming Prophet. That's a joke, because every single episode is special and unique in its own individual way.

 ASTRO: This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players with minimal speculation, all lore, and a focus on the known facts. Tonight, our topic of the day is Thee-I-Dare. We'll be talking in-depth about this Daimon for the first half of our episode.

 ASTRO: We are going to get into the spoiler and content warnings as always with the Dreaming Prophet. If this is your first time tuning in and you are not keen on hearing spoilers about the lore of the Blackout Club, this is your chance to pop on.

 LAVANYA: We will be discussing basically every aspect of Thee-I-Dare lore that is available in-game! So, our general content warnings for this are the same as usual: general horror, mention of children being harmed, and to be more explicit given that this is Thee-I-Dare, we will be discussing the specific death of named NPCs, and the overall death of a large number of unnamed NPCs.

 LAVANYA: One of the core aspects of Thee-I-Dare's lore is the Cull, which is a historical genocide that occurred in Red Acre, in which Thee-I-Dare's hosts were collected and killed by Speak-as-One.

 LAVANYA: In tonight's special guests is Fluffy Raven. Fluffy Raven will be helping us deal with the exciting topic of Thee-I-Dare, and giving us an insight into her own personal views of him. Hi Fluffy!

 RAVEN: Hi, my name's Fluffy Raven. You can find me sprinkled throughout the Blackout Club community, whether it's in the discord, or just meandering about online in game. I am one of Thee-I-Dare's chosen and I'm here to talk about it today.

 LAVANYA: Sometimes we say that Thee-I-Dare's followers can be a little overenthusiastic, but honestly, when we talk about people raving, we're mostly just talking about Raven.

 ASTRO: Let's start off with the question that's on everyone's minds.

 LAVANYA: Who is Thee-I-Dare?

 RAVEN: When the game was originally coming out, Thee-I-Dare was more so known for his rebellious nature. An example of this would be when his siblings and his maker basically said - don't come to Red Acre, and that he was not invited -.

 RAVEN: He ended up showing up anyway, because they told him not to come. If you were to stumble upon Thee-I-Dare today, and Red Acre, you would more likely find out that he represents individuality and choice.

 LAVANYA: And presumably, that's been the case throughout most of his life. We don't exactly know much about Thee-I-Dare historically: who he's been in the past, what he's done, or where he's gone, but what we do know is a few scattered facts from various individuals throughout Red Acre.

 LAVANYA: One of them is - per Laugh-Last, who is definitely, definitely a reliable narrator, absolutely - is that he had a stick up his ass to match SAO back in the day, back when he was still in tight with his makers. We also know that, even though Thee-I-Dare currently is not really in with Speak-as-One or many of the other gods, in the past he was! And in the past, he went by several other names.. who still exist outside of Red Acre.

 LAVANYA: So remember that next time you decide to take a tourist trip.

 LAVANYA: In the past, he's also gone by other genders. We know that he's gone by she and her, and possibly others.

 LAVANYA: As a side note, what's interesting about the voices is that they do not have the traditional relationship with gender that humans and the player characters might have! Voices are not people. That's always something that's worth emphasizing, and that's always something that kind of plays into what pronouns they use.

 LAVANYA: We know that in the past, The-Measure-Cuts has also been referred to as a woman, and we know that Thee-I-Dare has been referred to as a woman in the past. This is not necessarily because of the Daimons exact gender identity - because they don't have bodies, they are voices floating in the void and they are not humans.

 LAVANYA: Voices take on the gender of the host whose voice they are using to speak. When The-Measure-Cuts was using a female voice, everyone uses female pronouns. When Thee-I-Dare was using a female voice, everyone use female pronouns. The voice who is the primary means through which Speak-as-One speaks uses them, he/him and she/her pronouns, because the Voice is two different people, a man and a woman speaking in tandem.

 LAVANYA: For this episode, though, we will be using he/him pronouns for Thee-I-Dare throughout. Because that is the current gender, as far as we know of, his Voice.

 LAVANYA: To get back on topic, even though the Voices are not humans, they do all, with the exception of Speak-as-One, use familial terms to refer to one another. Thee-I-Dare is the first born child of Speak-as-One, and he is the second oldest of the known voices, per Speak-as-One, who, unfortunately, is not always a reliable narrator. He is also the source of some of the other voices.

 LAVANYA: We don't know exactly how that works, but in the end, that may just be Speak-as-One being exceptionally petty, as they don't want to admit, that they have countless or nine children that *all* manage to think they are the absolute fucking worst.

 RAVEN: From a conversation a few months ago, Speak-as-One claims that the other gods split off from Thee-I-Dare and not from the big baddy themselves.

 RAVEN: However, Thee-I-Dare has gone against their claims saying the voices did, in fact, split off of SAO. Right now, there's not a lot of solid facts with that. And this is something that's being disputed over as familial relations are kind of the constant enigma when it comes to the voices.

 RAVEN: Thee-I-Dare often rejects being called the title of "parent", because he feels that it's arrogant, in that it denies the role of humans into his coming of existence and that of the other voices. Thee-I-Dare has stated that he believes that humans came first, and were the ones who created Voices in the first place. However, despite with Thee-I-Dare thinking that the title of becoming a "parent" is more on the arrogant side, he has no issues preferring to Speak-as-One as his makers.

 RAVEN: Which, this can actually be seen with other voices, such as The-Measure-Cuts calling SAO his progenitor.

 RAVEN: After the big event known as the Culling, Thee-I-Dare was left shattered and voiceless - basically a shadow of himself. And because of this he lost contact with his sibling voice. As Thee-I-Dare is regaining his strength, he's been trying to reach out and recreate a relationship with his siblings, and ally with certain voices.

 RAVEN: A few examples of these would be: Dies-for-You, Dance-for-Us, and The-Measure-Cuts.

 ASTRO: Thee-I-Dare views Speak-as-One as his enemy, and until recently, also thought poorly of the rest of his family. He speaks often about how his family moves together: where one goes, the others will follow as a result. When Speak-as-One created Red Acre, all the other Daimons showed up there. Even though Speak-as-One tried to keep them out -.

 LAVANYA: - because, if you recall back to what we were saying just a few minutes ago, it turns out Thee-I-Dare is the spirit of rebellion! The spirit of rebellion: that youthful desire to do exactly what he's told not to do.

 LAVANYA: Is it any surprise that most of his hosts have been 13 year old childrnen?

 LAVANYA: We don't actually know the chronology of how the voices arrived in Red Acre. What we do know is that Thee-I-Dare himself says that he was one of the last of his family, if not the last, to arrive in Red Acre. When he arrived, he was then betrayed by Laugh-Last, who's probably, although he's never said it -.

 LAVANYA: Well, we can all assume here, his least favorite sibling.

 LAVANYA: This led to his fragmenting!

 LAVANYA: Fragmentation is an interesting process in which a voice's name is stripped into pieces. We don't exactly know how it occurs. What we do know is that, when one voice wants another voice dead, that they will initiate a Cull. The Cull are basically where you track down every single human being that hosts a piece of the Voices name, or the voice themselves, and you kill them. By systematically destroying each host and each part of the voices name, you will kill the name.

 LAVANYA: With Thee-I-Dare, for whatever reason, this did not kill him. It resulted in him fragmenting instead into name fragments, which then could be found across the map.

 LAVANYA: As of right now, on August 10th, 2019, you can still find name fragments, and we are still finding new ones each and every day, despite the fact that Thee-I-Dare has regained his name, and does, for the most part, appear to be fully functional as a voice.

 LAVANYA: What's interesting about the fragmentation is that, initially, the other voices did not seem to care. In the early dream encounters, the voices did not seem interested in Thee-I-Dare at all. Laugh-Last was actively malicious towards him. The-Measure-Cuts was disinterested. Dance-for-Us, while she could be read as sympathetic, was not willing to do anything towards helping him, or helping the players recover his name fragments, and in initial conversations with Thee-I-Dare, the feeling of disinterest and downright animosity were largely mutual.

 LAVANYA: While Thee-I-Dare now has begun approaching his siblings with a hand out to try and reconcile the relationship between them, and also gain support in acting against Speak-as-One. In the past, he did not give a single fuck about his siblings, except in terms of how betrayed and how hurt he was in the fact that they had all stood by and watched as their progenitor tried to destroy him.

 ASTRO: In much more ancient history, Thee-I-Dare says that he taught human speech - the spoken word - with the help of another unnamed God, a God who supposedly was another version of himself - the spoken word was used to plot in secret again Speak-as-One.

 ASTRO: Prior to that, they all used what Speak-as-One refers to as the old tongue, which is dance.

 ASTRO: The spoken word was also used to give early humans a sense of self. As they began to speak, they could begin to agree and disagree. They could begin to give opinions, and so on and so forth. It was a tool that allowed them to transcend, or perhaps, simply depart from the idea of one singular collective. He says that these disagreements this sense of identity might be where the other voices came from.

 ASTRO: He also says that he invented the lie.

 LAVANYA: So now we've covered all the history of Thee-I-Dare, and basically the core of him as a person - as a non-person - as a person who is disembodied - and is also an outright leech who lives inside of your head. The most unique kind of person of all! But that's all in the past. What about Thee-I-Dare right now?

 LAVANYA: He is in a lot of ways the face of the voices.

 LAVANYA: He is the one that is most commonly encountered by player characters. He is the one that is the most friendly and the most helpful towards player characters. And until recently, he was the most likely to be encountered by a new player.

 LAVANYA: Back in the old days, prior to 1.0., what Thee-I-Dare used to do was contact new players. He would speak to them, and ask them for their help, and then he would lead them to the cave fragment. When they closed their eyes, they would see a glowing man in chains. He would ask them for their help, and oftentimes he would give them halos.

 LAVANYA: Nowadays, he doesn't do that as much. Thee-I-Dare has regained his name, and he no longer needs all these grubby children rubbin' their hands all over his name fragments. He does not really point out where new name fragments are, but he will tell stories about the dead hosts that represent them.

 ASTRO: He does do a lot of player outreach. I guess you could say he's the public relations team of the gods.

 LAVANYA: Boo!

 LAVANYA: The only God who needs a public relations team, if you're being perfectly honest here, is Speak-as-One. If only they would answer my calls and fully hire me for that important pre college marketing internship, in which I teach them all the ways that they can make their public face, more personable and sellable to the millennials of this age.

 ASTRO: But do you have your work permit?

 LAVANYA: Shut the fuck up, Astro.

 LAVANYA: So, jokes aside, there's been an interesting change in perception and betrayal of Thee-I-Dare since the beginning of the game.

 LAVANYA: Thee-I-Dare, in terms of personality, has shifted a lot as he's gained more fragments, and as he's become more certain of this situation in Red Acre.

 LAVANYA: He used to speak of dead hosts frequently at the start, and anytime that a player character would lead him to a fragment, he would usually have a story at hand. As of recently, he's grown more and more ill at ease with this concept.

 LAVANYA: He's not as interested in talking about his dead hosts, for some *reason*, and he's gone as far as to say that these stories can be depressing.

 LAVANYA: In the past, he would often say to players that they need to survive - that he wants them to survive, and live through the night, and not die as so many of his hosts had died previously.

 LAVANYA: Now, increasingly with certain players, he's begun changing that he no longer says survive.  Now he says survive for me - a little bit of an ominous twist to everything, considered. Interestingly enough, and possibly linked in, is the fact that Thee-I-Dare is one of the few voices that is reluctant to take on every player as a host.

 LAVANYA: Some, like Speak-as-One, canonly have groomed up the children of Red Acre to all serve as their host. Others like In-Her-Teeth have been wildly flailing at any player who might possibly be open to it, asking them to serve as her host. Thee-I-Dare has been more hesitant.

 LAVANYA: When some player characters ask him if they can serve as host, he has actually rejected them, and has had to be convinced to take them on. Others, he has been open and willing to it.

 ASTRO: It's almost like a child being picky with their food.

 RAVEN: Give him the chicken tenders! He wants the chicken tenders!

 LAVANYA: Oh my god.

 RAVEN: Interestingly enough, due to Thee-I-Dare and Speak-as-One being polar opposites of one another, Thee-I-Dare's presence will often suppress SAO's watchers - but they can also suppress him back. I actually have a friend of mine who has a watcher in their head, and Thee-I-Dare actively has to keep them at bay in order to keep the player from being taken over by the Watchers in their sleep.

 RAVEN: Initially, when Thee-I-Dare still had a voice he spoke to players in the form of dreams with a backward speech. It has improved as players have begun collecting his fragments. However, he is currently left without a voice.

 RAVEN: Thee-I-Dare is one of two gods that will speak in text to players during missions. In a dream, The-Measure-Cuts says it's the only way that he is able to communicate with players after he was shattered.

[DREAM] PLAYER: If you see a white eye closing, close your eyes and listen.

[DREAM] THE-MEASURE-CUTS: This one has clearly been contacted by our fallen sibling. Your desire to share this data proves you might make an excellent host for me, however. Indeed, this is the only way he can speak while he remains... dismembered.

RAVEN: I would like to note that speaking in the text form is actually immensely painful for him, as it is not his natural way of communicating.

 LAVANYA: And now with that section done, we're on to the most exciting part of tonight's episode!

 LAVANYA: Now normally, here on the Dreaming Prophet, we're a bunch of old coots. We don't deal with speculation to the point that the podcast's entire purpose is to disseminate the true and real facts of the game to make it easier for players to come up there. However, tonight, things are a little different because this is a God conversation, and we do have a player, right here, ready to come up with their own speculation. So tonight we're going to set aside our petty grebe-ances with speculation and theories, and we're going to let Raven take the lead, and go stork raven mad with any theories that's a conversation she's had.

 ASTRO: We wanted you here, because you know this Daimon well. As you said, you're one of his chosen. This is your opportunity to talk about whatever you want.

 RAVEN: All right. One thing that I would like to touch on, because this is something that is currently happening within the community, and we're experiencing this live - is that Thee-I-Dare is currently going through a name change. Interestingly enough, a friend of mine and I helped to kind of really trigger this accidentally, by showing him a destroyed symbol.

 RAVEN: And so now, all the sudden, just all these changes are happening amongst Thee-I-Dare, where he is, although sickly, he is going through this interesting metamorphosis that apparently happened to the Voices.

 RAVEN: However, normally with the voices, the original Voice tends to die off when the new Voice comes into being. So, it's going to definitely be interesting to see where this goes, whether he'll be able to survive this process or not.

 ASTRO: So, for players that haven't been on the up and up with the recent hubbub, can you describe what you mean by him feeling sickly?

 RAVEN: Basically, the issue is when I was trying to get this information out of him, is that he wouldn't even know what he was feeling - just that he was feeling ill.  I don't know exactly what that is in terms for the Voices, but basically, he just wasn't feeling right - as if, like, you know feeling, I'm just feeling off.

 ASTRO: Yeah, I saw a log where he seemed to be unable to say his name - his own name.

 RAVEN: Yeah, it was. It was really interesting reading that, because a detail that I think people might have overlooked is that he referred to his name - Thee-I-Dare - as his old name.

 RAVEN: And so, this was kind of the first hint of him really going through this change. We have known about this for a few months now, I believe, since April. It just was very slow and nothing just drastic had occurred until now.

 ASTRO: So, of course, yeah, it's kind of unnerving to see the Voice that we've come to see is so confident who has grown so much to suddenly take on unsure traits to become so one study.

 RAVEN: Yeah, it's definitely scary, especially as this is the guy that I've basically followed this since first coming into The Blackout Club.

 RAVEN: So, to see him in this state is just very disconcerting and worrisome.

 ASTRO: All right. Is there anything else you want to talk about?

 RAVEN: I was talking with a friend today about this - is that people are starting to think that perhaps Thee-I-Dare got Bells killed, whether it was inadvertent, or on purpose, or not sure, because one important thing is that the Word and the Song cannot exist in the same person. It basically instantly kills them. And so we're wondering if Thee-I-Dare was within Bells - if it's because Speak-as-One had been trying to take over at the same time something bad happens. So there is a lot of speculations with that.

 LAVANYA: That's all super interesting and also a little depressing. So I'm going to end this on a high note.

 RAVEN: : Yeah! Sad boy hours.

 LAVANYA: It's true. Every hour is sad boy hour with Thee-I-Dar. But with that said, do you have any speculation on what his new name might be?

 RAVEN: I'm kind of assuming that he's going to be going off this current trend of leaning more towards choice and individuality. I'm sure it will be something relating to that, hopefully, unless this changing process goes wrong and we get something completely different, which is definitely a possibility.

 ASTRO: Here's a second question for you! If you had the opportunity to choose his new name, what would you choose?

 LAVANYA: Would it be a bird pun?

 RAVEN: Well, I think one time, when I was going through a rough time, Thee-I-Dare and I - but he brought up sharing a pair of wings. So, maybe like, Shares-His-Wings or something would be kind of cool?

 LAVANYA: Nice!

 ASTRO: All right.

 LAVANYA: That would be fun!  Well, thank you, Raven, for appearing on the show and brightening up our night with a little bit of Thee-I-Dare inside deets.

 RAVEN: Thanks for having me.

 ASTRO: And now, a word from our sponsors:

BELLAMY: Today we have a special announcement for the launch of Red Acre’s very own late night music station! Tune in to 66.6 every night for uninterrupted, relaxing classical pieces played live on locally-sourced string instruments - all located here in Red Acre! No more pesky commercial breaks interrupting your enjoyment of timeless classics - why, our music follows you into your dreams! Start listening to Red Acre’s 66.6 Late Night Music Station today!

LAVANYA: All right. And welcome back everyone. Now that we're back from that wonderful commercial break, it's time to start the next section of our show, which is - hold your applause! - an etiquette section.

 ASTRO: Lavanya, your audio quality sounds much different.

 LAVANYA: It's puberty. Fourteen and a half is a difficult age, especially when you're going to be : 15 in three months, and you still haven't passed basic math.

 LAVANYA: So, jokes aside, the next section of the show is going to be the etiquette section.

 LAVANYA: Basically, this is not us instructing you on the best possible way to host your personal tea parties, even though tea parties are great, I am told. This is instead discussing etiquette and the community specifically towards god encounters.

 LAVANYA: All right! Now that that's been said, this section is not endorsed, approved of, or necessarily indicative of the developers views. They are not involved in this podcast, and all views represented are Astro and mine's, because, ultimately, it's on us players to make the community that we want to be in.

 ASTRO: So, with the advent of 1.0 of the Blackout Club, voiced encounters are back, which is new and exciting to everyone that wasn't here in the beta.

 LAVANYA: Including us!

 ASTRO: We were not here in the beta, we both joined during the early access period. Right now, we're all adjusting to what the new normal of the Blackout Club looks like, with regards to god encounters. Not just us, the players, but the developers too.

 LAVANYA: One of the most interesting things about the Blackout Club is that it is a game that tries to cover several genres at once. It kind of calls out to massively multiplayer online games, like World of Warcraft, which often have large scale events, to alternate reality games such as Marble Hornets or Everyman Hybrid, to traditional multiplayer stealth games like the ever-popular Thief.

 LAVANYA: The problem is - with massively multiplayer online games, there is a large staff for each of those, sometimes getting up to hundreds of people involved in these studios, operating these events, operating these holidays, and helping with bugs, and everything else. They have specific community managers.

 LAVANYA: With alternate reality games, there's usually only one or two puppet masters but the communities for those are pretty small. At their largest, the ones that I've participated in have had about a hundred, five hundred players at the most.

 LAVANYA: And with multiplayer style games, like, say, Left 4 Dead 2 - which isn't quite a stealth game, but work with me here - those don't really have the sort of community where the developers are actively engaging with the audience that the way that the Blackout Club does.

 LAVANYA: Question Studio does not have the massive staff that larger studios have, it has a significantly larger player base than alternate reality games have, and it involves a lot more direct interaction than your traditional multiplayer stealth games. There is no automation, which is a large part of what helps traditional stealth games work. It's literally just the developers pushing forward the story directly with the help of the players.

 LAVANYA: However, Question Studio is unique in all of these. Not only the fact that combining it but in the fact it's a tiny ass studio.

 ASTRO: So amidst all of this it's important to recall that the developers are human. They are limited to everything that mortal humans can do.

 LAVANYA: Arguably! Technically, we do not know 100 percent for sure if the developers are or are not vampires. Their sleep schedule suggests that at least some of them may be.

 LAVANYA: Like I was saying, Question Studio is a very small studio. As far as I know, Question only has about 6 people - and courtesy of our handy dandy fact checkers, we just verified that by the web site.

 LAVANYA: So they are a tiny ass studios far as things go. Even for an independent studio!

 LAVANYA: So with the god encounters, it's important to keep in mind, we do not know exactly how many of the developers are involved with the god encounters in terms of writing them, in terms of scripting them out, or whatever else is involved with them on the developers end of thing.

 LAVANYA: What we do know is that there's only six people, and each of the god encounters can last anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes.

 LAVANYA: So when each god encounter is lasting 10 to 40 minutes, and most players do prefer longer ones if they can manage it, and usually come packed with a shit ton of questions ready to throw directly at their Daimon of choice like fucking softballs, then these encounters can stretch out very quickly to take up a great deal of time.

 LAVANYA: If you only have, say, five god encounters in a night, and each of those is 20 minutes long, this developer just spent over an hour doing nothing except doing these god encounters.

 LAVANYA: And that's assuming that they're not taking breaks in the middle of it. If they are taking breaks, getting up, stretching their legs, making sure they don't get repetitive strain injury from typing, then something like that five god encounters could easily take like two hours. Just dedicated to engaging, and coming up - on the spur of the moment! - with new encounters with the players.

 ASTRO: There are a couple web sites that show you statistics for the steam games you play. According to one of them, simply on steam, the players can peak at around 250 to 300 users every day. At 6:00 in the morning eastern time, when I checked this the first time, there were eighty four players listed as online. This isn't counting consoles, and it may not be entirely accurate.

 ASTRO: If everyone four-stacked at peak time, there would be a minimum of about 75 games for any developer to sort through.

 LAVANYA: So, to summarize this, here's a very limited amount of developers, but there is a fuck ton of players in the game right now, and in this community.

 LAVANYA: So distributing out god encounters, especially at peak times, can end up being kind of difficult, from an outsider's point of view.

 LAVANYA: We've actually had Null, in the main discourse, discuss how they decide on god encounters to a certain extent, in terms of which players get it, and which players don't.

 LAVANYA: To quote him, he stated that: the system has a few metrics, but it favors new players, players who are locked onto a story thread that we want to spool out, and then randoms.

 LAVANYA: At times, there have been targeted influencer encounters, because we want to make 100 percent certain the encounter is recorded and archived, but in those cases, smallish streamers get a shot too. The ratio of guaranteed public vs. private varies a lot from night to night.

 LAVANYA: And a lot of activity is never reported.

 LAVANYA: We have to trust that those players will tell their friends, and some will make it to social, etc..

 LAVANYA: They're meant to feel very rare and always will, even as we expand operations which we will, if there is enough interest.

 LAVANYA: But the bulk of our team's work goes towards making the game fun on its own. So as some player in here put it, gods are gravy.

 LAVANYA: Basically, to summarize his quote, the system favors new players, it favors players who have unlocked certain story threads that they want to distribute, and then it focuses on randoms. So most people do have a shot at getting a god encounter most nights, it's just a numbers game.

 LAVANYA: The thing to keep in mind here is that god encounters are not merit based.

 LAVANYA: They are functionally another form of the RNG that handles Lights of Rebellion, and/or say bonus evidence spawning. You have to be at the right place, at the right time, and then you have a chance of getting it. You are never guaranteed a god encounter. God encounters are not merit based. If you play for, say, 48 hours straight - if you're constantly talking in the discord - if you draw a lot of fan art - none of those are going to make you more likely to get a god encounter.

 LAVANYA: It's not merit based. It is just luck if you happen to stumble across a story thread that the developers want to spill out, and, say, if you are possibly new! :.

 ASTRO: The voice of the gods that you hear in voiced encounters are not developers, they are voice actors, and they are also limited similarly. They can't speak in more than one game at a time. So, if they're in one game, that's 40 minutes they can't spend in another. They also have other gigs besides the Blackout Club, and they also need time away from work entirely.

 ASTRO: Most people's family and friends don't necessarily enjoy it when someone is off pulling 48 hour shifts working, and they haven't come home, or they're spending all of their free time specifically on work.

 LAVANYA: You have to get up from your desk, go outside, see the sun. Stretch your legs. Do your laundry!

 LAVANYA: Developers do have to take breaks from working on the game occasionally, and doing voice encounters, and doing god encounters period in order to take care of themselves.

 LAVANYA: And it's also important for the players to take care of themselves too.

 LAVANYA: If you're pulling 48 hour shifts to try and get a god, for example, that's not great for you. If you're only playing the game in hopes of getting a god encounter, that's also not great for you. Building up your expectations for something that is ultimately relying on a random number generator is always a bad idea in terms of the fact you're investing a lot of time into something that may not pan out, and you cannot rely on it panning out.

 ASTRO: The Blackout Club is ultimately a game. It's meant to be played and enjoyed. If you aren't enjoying it, that's a problem, but it's not an unsolvable one.

 LAVANYA: It is not an unsolvable one! And it's always important to remember that, even if you do get caught in the feedback loop of playing it for this one specific thing - in this case, god encounters - when you do get that encounter, it probably will not be as satisfying as you anticipate it.

 LAVANYA: When I was 18, I played World of Warcraft obsessively for about three or four months. I spent hours daily grinding up specifically for the one achievement, "Insane in the Membrane", and to get some specific pet that I can't quite remember now.

 LAVANYA: As soon as I got them, I dropped playing the entire game. I have not touched it since, because I was not playing World of Warcraft because I was super into the gameplay, or because I was actually interested in the lore, or anything else. I was playing it because I wanted that one achievement. So the entire thing was pointless as soon as I got it.

 LAVANYA: And as a result, the achievement ended up kind of pointless too, because I didn't even enjoy getting it. So, if you're playing Blackout Club specifically for the god encounters - which, remember, are not merit based, but they are just based essentially on random number generator and sheer luck - then that's something to keep in mind! The game should be fun in itself. It should not be frustrating. If you are getting frustrated with it, as even I have gotten frustrated with it in the past - then you get up, you take a break from it and then you can come back to it.

 LAVANYA: Or you cannot come back to. If you're not enjoying it, or it's stressing you out, then you shouldn't be sinking time into it. Because games are ultimately a leisure activity. If you're not having fun and it's not relieving your stress, then what's the point of it?

 ASTRO: In conclusion, like Lavanya has said, we aren't making this segment to tell you what to do. We're trying to foster the kind of community we want to be in, and we care about the people in that community. If nothing else, we hope that you'll consider this food for thought.

ASTRO: Blackout Club is made by question games. Our advertising director is Bellamy. Our transcript and video is by Lavanya. Audio editing is by me, Astro. Our guest today was Fluffy Raven. Xaviul knows how long the hundred year war was.

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET: EP 4 TRANSCRIPT

EPISODE FOUR: TELEPHONE GAMES (LINK)

Two can keep a secret, if none are in the Song. Spread those secrets to a whole boxcar, though, and some may slip through your fingers. Talking points: Secrets of the Prologue, of Hoadly Street, and of the Maze. Featuring guest, Spoder.

Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:03. Content warnings: General horror.

Credits:

- lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

- astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

- be11amy: advertising, fact-checking

- spoderman: guest

- xaviul: moral support

- intro & outro music, "ringing bells": a weirdly handsome individual

- transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games - the blackout club: question games (https://www.blackoutclubgame.com)

 lavanya [00:00:20] Good evening, Red Acre and welcome to your favorite nighttime show, the Dreaming Prophet. Now tonight, our episode is going to be discussing secrets, so in the spirit of sharing, I'm going to share a secret with you. And that secret is, even though some people say that we're yellow journalism, I like to think that we're leaning into McCarthyism and going full red.

 lavanya [00:00:41] I'm your host Lavanya -.

 astro [00:00:44] - and I'm Astro -.

 lavanya [00:00:45] - and we'll be your hosts for tonight.

 astro [00:00:47] This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players with minimal speculation, all lore, and a focus on the known facts. Tonight, our topic is secrets. We're going to be talking about secret passages secret law and everything you can find in the game if you just look a little bit below the surface.

 lavanya [00:01:03] As always, it's time for us to get into our general content warnings. For once, this episode essentially has no warnings beyond general horror warnings. There are no children being harmed. There are no children being injured. And there is absolutely no death, or emotional distress, of any variety.

 lavanya [00:01:20] This episode is good, wholesome fun, and a deep underground cave that exists underneath your town that is slowly swallowing up everything around it. But we do have a general spoiler warning! This episode is going to be heavily discussing the map in general, so we're going to be discussing the secret ways through the maps, some of the neat things that you find in it, and we're also going to be dissecting the prologue to a certain extent.

 lavanya [00:01:46] So if you're the sort of person who really enjoys finding out all of these little niggling wiggly secrets yourself, then this is probably not the episode for you, because we're just going to ruin it all.

 lavanya [00:02:06] And tonight we are going to have yet another co-host: this time, the lovely Spoder-Man.

 spoder [00:02:12] Hi, I'm Spoder. I'm here to represent the Geek Squad.

 lavanya [00:02:14] The most important squad of all. Remember, when you're choosing your outfit for the night, don't go for style. Don't go for fashion. Go for the absolute maximum amount of pink that you can physically cram onto your body.

 lavanya [00:02:27] Grab that baby mask.

 lavanya [00:02:28] Put it on.

lavanya [00:02:30] So there's a lot of secrets in the game and there's a surprising amount located in the prologue. We've primarily discussed the prologue during episode 1, and in episode 2.

 lavanya [00:02:40] So if you need an overview of what happened in that, go ahead and take a minute to scroll on back, and rewatch those episodes. We are going to be focusing on all the interesting little details that you can find in it that you would otherwise miss, more so than explaining the plot itself!

 lavanya [00:02:56] One of the first secrets that you will encounter during the prologue, and that you may not notice initially, is that there is a minor time distortion in the basement hallway as you're walking down it towards the television, before you actually watch the television. You'll notice that it seems to be stretching in front of you. What that essentially is is a time slow. If you walk back down into the basement after you have already watched the television, it will not occur.

 lavanya [00:03:24] It's only when you're initially entering that everything will slow down as you approach that television.

 spoder [00:03:29] After you repair the television and look back down the hallway, you'll see a shadow of your character, Bells, kneeling at the other end. If you close your eyes and then walk down the hallway, you're allowed to skip the trigger of the shadow disappearing and you can get an up close look at it as you pass into the living room again.

 astro [00:03:44] You can also see the shape. His shadow appears on the ground through the window, and when you close your eyes you can see him there. Bells comments on this, saying, "I can see you!".

 astro [00:03:54] But when you close your eyes again, he's gone.

 lavanya [00:03:57] An important thing to note here is, unlike in the rest of the game either in the prologue or in the main multiplayer section, the Shape is completely flat. He has never hit the gym at this point in his development. He has probably never left his house before; this is his first foray into the world. And then, after the prologue, he starts hitting the gym.

 lavanya [00:04:18] He's fully 3D.

 spoder [00:04:19] This pre-swoll Shape might be caused by the fact that there are two different stages of Bells house: one before she wakes up, where the closet garage door and front door is all mysteriously missing and just replaced by flat walls. The second stage of her house is after she's woken up. All the doors - closet, garage, front - have returned, along with sound barriers and trucks in front of her house.

 astro [00:04:42] This dream state also affects other parts of the house, and other parts of the sequence that follows as Bells goes on her quest. She will see things begin to appear in her living room - the unity tree, for instance - and streamers hanging from the ceiling.

 astro [00:04:56] Before the Unity tree appears, though, you can see its reflection in the glass cabinet in the living room. This may be a bug, but it's also a really fascinating little bit of foreshadowing.

 lavanya [00:05:08] In the office, there is a book that describes the prisoner's cinema, which is a fun link in to all these various Easter eggs they have.

 lavanya [00:05:16] Essentially, the prisoner cinema is when you close your eyes and you see unusual lights in the darkness - or, sometimes, unusual shapes. This book adds a fascinating element to the game, on that we're pretty sure from the point of view of the child, that you're playing most of the things that you see are real. But as with basically everything in the prologue, it introduced the question of:.

 lavanya [00:05:40] Is it actually real, or are you just seeing shapes in the darkness?

 lavanya [00:05:44] Or are you seeing cards on your bed? Because, if after you fixed the TV, you backtrack all the way to Bells room and you look at the bed, there will be something added to it: specifically a prom invitation between Bells and a mysterious, identifiable black shape. This only appears during the dreaming state, so it's fairly clear that it's not really there.

 lavanya [00:06:09] But that won't stop Bells from reacting, and freaking out over it.

 spoder [00:06:13] After the Shape comes out and you're encouraged to run into your house to escape him, you're actually allowed to linger. And if you do, you can see them walking around your house. But you don't have to be scared of him. He can't actually see or hear you.

 spoder [00:06:24] You can dance all you want, a foot in front of him, but he won't care.

 lavanya [00:06:28] Bells talks constantly all throughout the prologue, reacting to everything that she sees. If you wait down in the observation room and just hang around - chill out,  check your phone - then, eventually, she will start giving off secret voice lines, basically discussing whether or not she's completely insane, whether she's made this up, if she's actually having creepy detailed outline of her house in her basement, if she has a basement.

 lavanya [00:06:54] All of that. Bells character is very well-defined throughout the prologue. We know what she wants, we know her motives, we know what she's scared of, ultimately, but these little extra voice lines are a fascinating insight into her character that otherwise she may not necessarily get.

 astro [00:07:09] If you managed to break into the last door in the door hallway, you'll find a secret room there where the voice that you're speaking to chides you, saying taking our time, eh?

 astro [00:07:21] And then offers you a replacement lock pick.

 spoder [00:07:24] The code to the key pads later on the prologue are always the same. So if you know it, you're able to rush through that part quickly.

astro [00:07:33] Inside the main game, there's even more secrets. If you look around you can notice a few patterns about the world that you're in. For instance, for a very low tech area, Red Acre has a lot of tech magazines. You can find them stacked up in various houses, indicating the owner's interest.

 astro [00:07:49] In 919, in fact, there's one magazine on the coffee table that you can pick up. It's the only one in the game. There's no reason that you can pick it up and you probably aren't supposed to, given that it's the only item in the game that doesn't have a black and white icon in your inventory, but it is very fun to pick up.

 lavanya [00:08:08] 918 Hadley is.. If you ask basically anyone who's played the game, it is widely agreed upon to be the best house out of all the houses available. And why is that,  you might be asking? It's because it's the fucking SAO house.

 lavanya [00:08:22] 918 Hadley has lovely Chiara's room. She has two of everything in her room: two beanbags, two bunnies on her dresser with a cup wedged beautifully between them.  If you look at the floor, she's even got all of her blocks arranged in stacks of two. She's even had two backpacks, though god only fucking knows what a child needs two backpacks for. And on the wall she has "I'M 11", except the thing is it's not that she's 11 - it's a symbol with her face wedged right between the two arches.

 lavanya [00:08:55] And if you can get over seeing double in Chiara's room, and you head down into the basement you'll end up in Devin's room. And Devin is one of the few named characters in the game, at this point, who we've had the chance to explore their character in depth to the same extent that we've seen Bells.

 lavanya [00:09:12] Devin is featured or mention in 6 of the journal entries, which is the most information that we've had to one character so far. And if you head down into the basement, you'll be in their room! Their room is not quite as amazing as Chiara's room, because there is no religious symbology whether it's from false, fake-ass voices, or the one true voice. They do have posters. They have a picture of what may very well be themself with a slightly questionable mohawk.

 lavanya [00:09:41] And they have a button up on the wall.. but not much else. If you want to hear more about Chiara and Devin, then you're in luck because 918 is one of the few houses that has numerous, as I mentioned before, journal entries dedicated to its inhabitants. You can go ahead and read anything in the 918 category, which includes Harper and the letter to Alberta, Devon's diary excerpts 1 to 3, or the mom call transcript 1 through 2.

 lavanya [00:10:09] If you don't have these journal entries unlocked yet, then this is a great time to either hop to the official community discord and go ahead and ask someone - because people are always willing to give you information - or else you can always just ask your friends. Because one of the best things about the Blackout Club, as always, is sharing information with other people that you're playing with, and being able to share your theories as you're going through it.

 spoder [00:10:36] 920 doesn't have all that much to go on, but we do know a few things, like how the family has twins - as we can tell by the two beds in the kids room. It also has a very creepy inventory manifest as its only journal entry, where we learn the names of the twins: Marshall and Margo Wellesley.

 lavanya [00:10:53] 921 Hoadley's an interesting case in that we know absolutely jack and shit about the residents. What's their names? Who knows. What do they do with their lives? Who knows. There are no journal entries for this house. There is no maze access inside the house, and there are no mentions of the residence or anything else from the other journal entries. We do have some minor information, which leads to a fun secret that you can find in the game!

 lavanya [00:11:20] One - or both of the parents who live in 921 Hoadley - are members of the military. They have a prisoner of war flag outside of their house. They have two medals up on their wall, and they have pictures, and they have military souvenirs all over the place.

 lavanya [00:11:35] Which, at first - this may not seem noteworthy in itself, but if you go across the street from 921 Hadley, and you look at the deer statue, you'll find something interesting. It has a plaque on it that says:.

 lavanya [00:11:46] Deer Fall Park: dedicated to the men and woman of the township who have faithfully served to preserve our freedom presented by its grateful residents in 1983.

 lavanya [00:12:00] So, that's a fun secret to find inside of the game! You won't necessarily notice that normally, but it does give us a rough time for when Red Acre has at least been around since, and it gives a hint at least some aspect of 921 Hadley and that, maybe, whatever they did in the military was so noteworthy, or so well respected inside of Red Acre, that they got a fucking statue for it?

 astro [00:12:21] 922 Hadley is Siobhan and Niolle's house.

 astro [00:12:25] This house has four relevant journal entries. The Niolle Baby Book entries 1 through 3, and the Red Acre police report. In this report, Colm Ryan is mentioned - presumably Siobhan's brother. His room is the storage room and the upstairs across the hall from the master bedroom. It has a weird altar in the corner. There's a symbol on it that we can't quite recognize. And that appears nowhere else in the game. It appears to be a triskelion: three legs, walking in a circle, and it also appears to be broken.

 lavanya [00:12:57] If you head over 1001 Hoadley, then that is the Quiroga's house. Maligras Quiroga is noteworthy in that she has one journal entry that she directly writes, that is Maligra's Letter to the school board.

 lavanya [00:13:13] Essentially, she's one of the few people in Red Acre that is not interested in maintaining complete isolation for the children. And what makes this unique in the game is that she is also the only political figure that we know of.

 lavanya [00:13:27] If you enter her house and you look around, she has a new voice for Red Acre and her mail campaign, which I'm sure is not an SAO slam, but we're going to pretend briefly that it is. The older Quiroga is interested in increasing the children of Red Acre exposure to outside technology, outside people, and the outside world in general. The younger Quiroga is interested in multiculturalism as well, as seen by the fact she's not only making a dress, she's making a flag dress.

 lavanya [00:13:54] We have no direct confirmation of anything about the younger Quiroga or what exactly a new voice for Red Acre might mean in terms of what the older Quiroga knows.

 lavanya [00:14:08] But it's interesting to look at.

 astro [00:14:09] 1003 is one of the most ominous houses -.

 lavanya [00:14:15] or one of the most beautiful depending on who you ask.

 spoder [00:14:16] The House is most well known for its upstairs bedroom, which is covered in clown wallpaper. Walking around the house, you may notice that all the hung pictures are photos of plants. You may think it's just temporary assets, but it is confirmed by a dev that all current pictures were chosen for a reason.

 spoder [00:14:32] So, who knows what these might be for?

 astro [00:14:34] And now for a word from our sponsors!

be11amy [00:15:00] Introducing the Red Acre Sleep Aid! Let’s face it - Red Acre has a thriving nightlife, and it can make it very hard for early birds like you to get a good night’s sleep! Luckily for you, the Red Acre Sleep aid is a highly effective spring-loaded and injection-based sleep aid. Just point the Red Acre Sleep Aid device directly at yourself and pull the trigger for a good night’s sleep. Because sleep is a beautiful thing. Take the Red Acre Sleep Aid, and dream well! Disclaimer: We are not responsible for injuries sustained when using the Red Acre Sleep Aid.

lavanya [00:15:40] So, our next section is going to be discussing the secrets of the maze~. Now you may be thinking the entire maze is fucking secret, but the joke's on you, because it is cram packed full of shit that you will never see unless you in-depth explore or unless you're paying entirely too much attention to it.

 lavanya [00:16:02] There are a ton of secret passageway all throughout the maze, which, if you're careful - you have a grappling hook - or you just have very good timing - you can navigate almost the entire maze without ever touching the ground. This is insanely useful when it comes to dodging the Shape, and it's also incredibly useful when it comes to dodging the Lucids.

 lavanya [00:16:23] Because they may be able to see you, and they will climb up to get you - but it's going to take them fucking forever. And by the time they actually get up there, you will already be gone!

 lavanya [00:16:32] One of the most interesting things about the maze to me is the fact that all of the rooms that play music are a part of the song are actually named after body parts. Unfortunately, I know jack shit about anatomy, I can't lead the way on that.

 lavanya [00:16:48] Personally, when it came time to choose our electives, I did the right moral thing, and I looked the health class in the eyes, and I said no.

 lavanya [00:16:56] So I took CHORUS.

 lavanya [00:16:59] Fortunately, Astro was homeschooled, so Astro is here to lead us through this amazing analyses of the human body. Your turn, Astro~!

 astro [00:17:10] I can't believe you'd expose me like this.

 lavanya [00:17:12] [laughter]

 astro [00:17:12] The Throat is one of the first parts of the instrument you'll come in contact with, and it may not be quite obvious, because it doesn't have any visible strings, but the throat is important because it's a resonator.

 astro [00:17:26] At the bottom of the Throat, there's water which you can only see when you fall into it, which is not advised. For the record, you can also hear it though in the ambient water dripping sound effects. If you stand close to it for long enough, it seems to have an opening to the surface of some sort far above it, if you look straight up - and hopefully when you're not falling into it.

 astro [00:17:47] Ingestion is another part of the Instrument that plays music. This has strings across it that you can climb on and hide from anyone who may be trying to get you. If you're lucky enough to carry a grappling hook, it also has a secret access to String Relay.

 astro [00:18:01] The Nerve Center can be found at the end of Ingestion. At the lowest level, it has secret accesses to the Sleepers Lockers to String Relay, into the airway bathroom.

 astro [00:18:12] Standing on top of - or passing just under the big gong or cymbal - will let you hear weird voices! This is the same part of the Instrument that you see in the prologue, when you're trying to jump across the large chasm.

 astro [00:18:21] The Airway is possibly the simplest part of the Instrument, because it's one long hallway that extends from the Nerve Center to Dream Therapy. It is a straight shot across and it connects to String Relay and the Airway Bathroom. But if you need a place to hide, you can duck up into the catwalk above it.

 astro [00:18:38] And finally, the Plexus. The Plexus has strong fluorescent lamps that you can hide on top of with a very well timed, and well executed, jump. You can also use your hook to shortcut through parts of it, as it's very large and has multiple levels.

 lavanya [00:18:53] When you head down into the maze, 920 Observation is one of the first rooms and it's kind of interesting in that - go ahead and look up when you're either on that platform, or when you're down on the ground, and you can see that the entire house outline on the ceiling!

 lavanya [00:19:07] If you go ahead and you have one of your teammates go into the house, you'll see that it actually lines up perfectly: where it says kitchen is exactly where the kitchen is, where it says garage is exactly where the garage is. And it's interesting in that.. we don't know why it's there.

 lavanya [00:19:24] Instrument Supplies is one of the most fascinating rooms in the game, because you can look all around you and it is chock full of secrets! Secret number one: there are no fucking instruments, there are no fucking supplies. The entire name of this room is a lie. It should probably be called Big Ass Ladder Room, because it does have multiple big ass ladders. However, there are still some secrets that are slightly more obvious than this scintillating fact! But the most exciting thing about Instruments Supply - the most scintillating fact - the thing that sparks the most joy in players heart - is the fact it not only has one, but it has TWO shortcuts!

 lavanya [00:20:10] If you have your grappling hook, like a good decent moral heart player, you can go ahead and throw that across the Throat and make the jump, either into String Relay or Host Conditioning.

 lavanya [00:20:22] Your friends may say: this is crazy! Your family may say: this is crazy! Lucids may weep as they see you hurtle all over the edge of the cliff, towards your inevitable demise into the Throat. But the stronghearted and the best of us all are willing to die for their ideals, for their passion, and in the pursuit of getting that 30 second - or possibly 10 second - shortcut out of the way.

 astro [00:20:49] That's an interesting thing to say coming from you.

 lavanya [00:20:53] Sometimes, we all have to lean in a little bit to our internal Die-for-You, and realize, if saving precisely five seconds at the risk of adding five minutes as your friends chase your shaped body across the maze isn't worth it, then what in life truly is?

 spoder [00:21:10] I stand by these claims.

 spoder [00:21:12] Cryptogram Library is notorious for being one of the largest rooms in the maze, only being rivaled by Dream Therapy. It has secret tunnels on the red side connecting to New Growth, and Sleepwalkers Lockers. The room contains two projectors being fed slides through a conveyor belt, which then are projected onto these little red rooms either side of the cryptographic library.

 spoder [00:21:31] The red room on the south side of Cryptogram Library is the only current known spot where you observe Rare Behaviour.

 spoder [00:21:38] Subliminal Media contains two parts: a room completely covered in soundproof foam, and an all white room projecting a yak video to an empty audience. In front of the beautiful yak video, there is a hole in ceiling, which, if you have a grappling hook, you can use to climb underneath one of the Somniloqs. Beneath Subliminal Media, there's a small tunnel in the back northwest corner, which leads into the well.

 spoder [00:22:00] Back in the soundproof room, there are four tiny cubicles containing three monitors each, projecting a certain portion of the maze. Now these aren't live feeds, you can't go there and dance in front of it, but you can still see certain sections of the maze.

 lavanya [00:22:15] Film Archives is a fascinating room, because at first glance, it just looks like a huge ass cave. Film Archives, as you wander around in it, you'll see that there's shelves up on the walls, and what you should do is go over to them and go ahead and take a look. It is filled with the same sort of projector tapes that are used in the projectors that we see throughout the maze.

 lavanya [00:22:34] And these projector tapes have names! As of July 28, 2019, these names are currently works in progress, and if I remember correctly, the dates on them are not accurate. But what they show, as of right now, is that they are the names of children. They are further examples of the recording that you can see all throughout the maze, in the form of houses being shown, or streets being shown on the television screens, or in the constant fucking cameras that you will always be tripping over.

 lavanya [00:23:08] Sleeper Lockers, despite the names, is not a place where you go to sleep. They do not have any beds in them. They are, in fact, just a locker room for the sleepers. But despite that, they don't have any showers either. It's literally just a shit ton of lockers that are not even linked to the bathroom - the Sleepers Bathroom being the one place in the maze that is not named, and that you never want to go, fragment   aside. In fact, their placement in the maze really just doesn't make any fucking sense. But that's CHORUS funding for you.

 lavanya [00:23:41] So the Sleeper Lockers are not connected to the bathrooms. They're not connected to the Barracks, and they're not connected to any place that would make actual sense. But what they are connected to is the Cryptogram Library! So if you ever need to go to the Cryptogram LIbrary and check out some fascinating slides of people doing yoga, then just remember you can just pop up through the ceiling, climb down the rafters, and go watch them in the nice sweet privacy of the Sleeper Lockers.

 lavanya [00:24:09] From there, the other place that you can reach is - you can head underground into the Nerve Cluster from the Sleepers Lockers, which there's no explanation again on why there's vents in the floor filled with ladders in here, but it's best not to ask questions. There are some things that young minds just aren't meant to know.

 lavanya [00:24:26] Or else you can head off into Ingestion, through climbing on the sin wires. From there, you can also once again reach the Neve Cluster, so, no matter where you go, if you need to go to the Nerve Cluster, you probably can just cut through the fucking Sleeper Lockers. That's what they're there for.

 lavanya [00:24:43] Dream Therapy, once again, despite the name, is somewhat disappointing in that there are no beds here. There is nowhere to sleep, unless you want to go cocoon yourself into one of the creepy recording stalls or huts across the place. Interesting thing about Dream Therapy, though, despite the misleading name, is the fact that its forest themed, much like one of the houses above ground. Dream Therapy is green. In fact, it's so green that you could say that it's Green Therapy. The wood is green, the lighting is green - even the pipes, depending on how you look at them, are pretty much fluorescent green everywhere.

 lavanya [00:25:15] In Dream Therapy, you will see the plants in the form of the strange exotic pillar things above you, or else in the literal form of the ivy that is growing fucking everywhere. If you look at the shadows of some of these strange tree pillar things that they have all throughout, you can kind of see the words "S H" written out in them. Is that intentional? Is that just the human mind desperately grasping at shapes that it recognizes, in what is frankly a pretty fucking confusing shadow? Who knows! But it's there.

 lavanya [00:25:50] At the highest level of Dream Therapy, there's a weird set that is essentially of a school. You have lockers, you have desks, you have tables, and you have the constant droning buzz of a thousand voices, bells ringing, weirdness going on up there. We're not exactly sure what that means, because it's never explicitly mentioned in any of the journal entries, but you can kind of hazard a guess -  especially given that Dream Therapy is only connected to three places: the Somniloq, the Airway, and Hosts Conditioning.

 astro [00:26:23] The Arches have an access to the twist just above it.  If you climb into the crawl space, above the walking area, you can reach that or you can hide from enemies, or stalkers. The crawl space is reachable by grapple or by a lucky jump.

 astro [00:26:37] Signal relay can be found at the end of the Plexus. It has two mirrored chambers on either side, and there are ladders that lead to an attic above it for hiding or for playing the strings. There is a shaped door between the two halves and, other than the placement of a chair and a contraband locker, they are almost exactly the same. There are two Somniloquoys, which also branch off of the Plexus. According to the update notes, with update 7, Somniloquoys, there is a reason for this. We just don't know yet what it is.

 astro [00:27:06] One of these Somniloquoys seems to be in progress. It has scaffolding, work lights, and more sound proofing, while the other one looks much more polished. In the center of each, large tanks hold glowing gas that gets vented out the top. There is usually at least one passage from the control room to the topmost level in both, where catwalks surround the room.

 lavanya [00:27:24] String Relay is a pretty straight forward room. It is a giant fucking cave, much like most of the maze, and surprisingly, it is filled with strings. [laughter] These strings are constantly moving. Some of the interesting things here are that, if you touch the moving wires, at least in the past, then they would make sin / noise. There is a single suspended wire between two of the catwalks that you can walk across. This is the only way. Do not touch that single wires, because you will fall through.

 lavanya [00:27:54] There is a secret hidey hole to the side that faces the throat, where you can kind of tuck yourself away and it is pitch black. The lucid will not see, stalkers may not see you, and for stalkers, players will probably not see you because they're gonna assume you ran out the other way. This hidey hole does have a dangerous secret, though, and that it is filled with the ~danger sticks.~ These dangerous sticks are technically waterphone spines,but we're just going to stick with dangerous sticks for the aeshetic.

 lavanya [00:28:24] If you touch the danger stick, it will make noise. Not only will it make noise, it will make a shit ton of noise. You can not climb on the dangerous sticks. You cannot place your hook on the dangerous stick. These danger sticks will bring you nothing but pain in your life. So, frankly you should avoid them and probably find a better hiding spot.

 lavanya [00:28:44] The Barracks only have one secret tunnel. So, when you're heading down the stairs look to the left. You're going to see that pantry full of supplies with a water tank and a picnic table, perfectly positioned so that you can watch your co-workers sleep. But if you can hold off from that level of casual voyeurism, if you just look up, you'll see a secret tunnel that will let you slip all the way to the wall and out almost towards the back.

 lavanya [00:29:12] That is the only place that Barracks has in terms of secret tunnels! Other than that, it connects to the plexus.

 lavanya [00:29:18] So, Host Conditioning is an interesting place, because as you're walking inside, if you close your eyes you'll see something on the floor. It's an eye symbol! That eye symbol is something made to ward off the Adversary, and all of those poor unfortunate souls that are foolish enough to fall in step with him. This is a fond reminded everyone, but especially Spoder, that just because the eye symbol is on the floor in Host Conditioning, that doesn't mean you're not welcome here.

 lavanya [00:29:46] It means that you should go on in! Step onto the disco floor down below, and accept the song into your heart.

 spoder [00:29:55] New Growth is one of those rooms which are obviously still under construction. It features scaffolding, tarps, and various supplies scattered around the room. On the northeast side of the room, it features two exits: one into the twists and one into the Somniliquoy. It also connects to the well on the northwest side. The well acts almost like an elevator, connecting to multiple parts of the maze. It features a staircase to the barracks on the bottom, along with a tunnel connecting to Subliminal Media, and two doorways connecting to Film Archives above it.

 spoder [00:30:27] It has an entrance to New Growth, and to the Somniliquoy, which is only accessible by using a grappling hook at the top of the well, which is gated off, but will one day connect to oOld Growth.

 astro [00:30:44] There are more secrets here that we haven't covered, and we can't get everything in this one episode. There's quite a lot to cover! Even though the map may not be as expansive as other games, it's deep and that depth extends into the detail as well as the physical depth. Additionally, there will definitely be more secrets in the game after this comes out.

 astro [00:31:04] We're recording this before the full release of the game on July 30th, so we can't tell you about what's going on there. You'll just have to find it for yourself.

astro [00:31:12] Our new show music is called Ringing Bells. It has been provided to us by a generous, anonymous person, who has asked us to credit them as a weirdly handsome individual. This was their explicit request, so we're going to honor it.

 astro [00:31:25] And finally our new logo is by Lavanya. It is gorgeous. I am so happy with how it turned out and I am so proud to put it on our podcast.

 lavanya [00:31:33] Very grateful, but not grateful enough to credit me as a strangely specifically handsome mysterious stranger. So I see how it is.

astro [00:31:51] The Blackout Club is made by Question Games. Our advertising director is Bellamy. Our transcript and video is by Lavanya. Audio editing is by me, Astro. Our guest today was Spoderman. Xaviul is the way shipping arrives by car, but cargo goes by boat.

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET: EP 3 TRANSCRIPT

EPISODE THREE: LISTEN UP (LINK)

The Daimons have their own personalities and agendas, and knowing them is critical to surviving in their weird game of eldritch chess. We're saying their names out loud so you don't have to. Talking points: Speak-As-One, Thee-I-Dare, Die-For-You, Dance-For-Us, The-Measure-Cuts, In-Her-Teeth, Laugh-Last, The 8th god, Other daimons, "Godtalk" etiquette. Featuring guests, Archer and Xaviul.

Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:00. Content warnings: children being harmed/murdered, general horror, genocide ["The Cull"].

Credits:

- lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

- astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

- be11amy: advertising, fact-checking

- archersvolley: guest

- xaviul: guest, moral support

- transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games

lavanya [00:00:01] Good evening and welcome, my favorite listeners, to the Dreaming Prophet. Tonight we're dedicated to bringing the truth that upright ape was never meant to know.

 lavanya [00:00:11] But please be informed that the Dreaming Prophet takes no legal liabilities for explosions, implosions, emotional breakdowns, or existential crises that result from hearing the false gods name spoken aloud. If you are concerned, please contact your doctor and rest assured that CHORUS Insurance is always offering free talk therapy at all hours of the night and day.

 lavanya [00:00:34] So, lean back in your chair, relax and remember: we Speak-as-One as you listen to the night's show.

 lavanya [00:00:42] My name is Lavanya -.

 astro [00:00:44] - and I'm Astro -

 astro [00:00:45] - and we'll be your hosts for tonight. This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players, with no speculation, all lore, and a focus on the known facts. Our topic of the day today is the Daimons! We'll be talking about the Daimons spheres of influence, and what they're like in the game.

 lavanya [00:01:00] So, our content warnings for today are the same as they are for every episode, so we'll start off with that.

 lavanya [00:01:05] There is the warning of general horror, and the discussion of children being harmed, kidnapped, and occasionally murdered. Specific to this episode is the mention of the Cull, which is a historical genocide that occurred in Red Acre, in which TID's hosts were hunted down and killed.

 lavanya [00:01:23] As always, the friendly reminder is that the Dreaming Prophet is a spoiler heavy show dedicated to discussing lore. If you are looking forward to finding out this information in-game, then exit out now, because we're about to rip into all of it.

lavanya [00:01:37] So, as Astro said earlier, the topic of the day is Daimons, who are the gods within the game. They can speak to players and are the cause of all the spooky bullshit that's going on. As far as we know in-game, as of right now, the most powerful of these Daimons and also the oldest is Speak-as-One. Keep in mind that's the command, that is not his name!

 lavanya [00:02:17] They are the main antagonists of the game. And, as you heard, probably from the emphasis on the pronoun there, they are one of the gods that uses non-standard pronouns. Speak-as-One's entire thing is that they are everyone in Red Acre. They are a hive mind daimon that is composed of the memories, and the thoughts, and the beliefs of every single person who lives inside of the town. Even the kids! So they use they pronouns, but they can also be referred to as he or she, because technically, Speak-as-One is everyone.

 lavanya [00:02:50] So, as I said, Speak-as-One is technically everyone inside of Red Acre, and, as far as we know right now, Red Acre exists as an extension of them. This can be seen in the fact CHORUS Communities, and the CHORUS logo, covers everything in the games. And if Red Acre is Speak-as-One, then CHORUS is the backbone that holds it all in, because CHORUS is the company that employs most of the adults within Red Acre.

 lavanya [00:03:17] Bells' mother is employed by it. The logo is everywhere. It runs a daycare, it runs a utilities company. As far as we can tell, it may even run the town. What's fascinating is that, the more you look into what courses and rather reach stretches the more you'll find it throughout the game. When Niolle and Siobhan are discussing their insurance in the baby journal entries, they mention that course insurance may not cover their IVF if they're not careful about the donor. If you read further journal entries that deal with Siobhan's brother arriving, the police report implies a certain involvement with the Speak-as-One cult, as well CHORUS. CHORUS's involvement in the town can even be seen in the Whisper Twins dialogue, in which they note that Red Acre is a lot more diverse than the other towns around them in Virginia.

 lavanya [00:04:02] You can even see, with the whisper twins, that they mentioned that CHORUS brought many of the families into Red Acre, and that it is a great deal more diverse than the rest of Virginia around them. We don't know exactly what CHORUS is, beyond the front for the Speak-as-One cult! But what we do know is that they've got their nasty little fingers in pretty much everything.

 lavanya [00:04:22] So CHORUS is one aspect of Speak-as-One, but it's not the only one. It's important to note and keep establishing that Speak-as-One is not just the voice of the Daimons. Speak-as-One a title that encompasses a great deal of things throughout the game, so it's important to keep noting as we cover Speak-as-One as a topic.

 lavanya [00:04:43] Speak-as-One is not just the name of the Daimons. It is not just the name of the organization or the cold. It is a command and it is a command that encompasses all of the individuals who are part of the Speak-as-One hive mind, who, coincidentally, are enemies in the game.

 lavanya [00:04:59] We can divide this out into the sleepers, who are adults who may or may not be in this cult consensually. It's important to note that sleepers are essentially just the adults who have proven able to hear the song. We don't know the specifics on why some people are able to hear and why others are not! But not every adult within Red Acre is capable of hearing it, and then being controlled by the song. When you can hear the song, then when you go to sleep, you'll black out and you'll be taken over by Speak-as-One to serve whatever weird purposes that they have in mind for you.

 lavanya [00:05:33] When you can't hear the song, you actually get to sleep.

 lavanya [00:05:35] The second enemies are the Lucids, who, unlike the sleepers, are in this 100 percent consensually - or, at least, mostly consensually! They are adults who were awake while they are still involved with the song, and they are the direct hosts of Speak-as-One. We don't know exactly what this means, but what we do know is that it keeps them awake when everyone else in the town is asleep - and even when they want to go to sleep - and that it is a slightly hazardous thing to be lucid!

 lavanya [00:06:02] They refer to Sleepers as constantly being in pain, but the Lucids are the ones who note that their bodies are being worn down, and that they may be at risk of serious harm. Why? We're not exactly sure yet! But sleeper or lucid being involved in the song doesn't necessarily seem pleasant.

 lavanya [00:06:20] We covered this last episode, but the Song is basically an unknown song that everyone mind melds into it. When you are underground in the maze, you can actually - if you go and stand in a corner where no one can see you, close your eyes and hold your breath - you can actually hear the song playing around you!

 lavanya [00:06:36] It is loudest in locations like the Plexus, and in some areas like Dream Therapy, you almost can't hear it at all. Even in the boxcar, you can hear the song playing, and the only reason that the children who serve as the player characters of the Blackout Club aren't actually asleep is due to the intervention of an unknown Daimon.

 lavanya [00:06:54] The last part of Speak-as-One is the voice.

 lavanya [00:06:59] The song itself is the Daimon, which is also known as Speak-as-One and what the Voice is two adults: one man and one woman, who Speak-as-One and who serve the direct hosts of Speak-as-One, the Daimon. You can see an example of them speaking in the Madi-Shaw incident report, where you can hear them talking to a Lucid about Madi-Shaw breaking into the horse industries.

astro [00:07:22] Now, if Speak-as-One is trying to mind meld everyone into the Song, Thee-I-Dare is their direct opposite. Thee-I-Dare focuses on rebellion and individuality. When you look at his tag on the altar, you can see a quote from our very own Isabella Madi-Shaw, who says:.

 astro [00:07:38] Dad tore my ear off. Said I should never sneak out again, etc. But some new voice said: hey. Dare you to do it anyway.

 astro [00:07:46] He is referred to as the Adversary by Speak-as-One and co., but the other voices call him brother. He refers to himself by he/him pronouns right now, but he used to use she/her pronouns, and maybe more beyond that. Speak-as-One doesn't agree with this and often calls him it. He created spoken language in order to keep secrets.

 astro [00:08:06] He's talked about this a few times. Speak-as-One conversely has been trying to use what they refer to as the old language, the Old Tongue, which is dance. All of the gestures that we as players do is are part of this old tongue. But it's not very secretive! Anyone who can see you can understand what you're saying.

 astro [00:08:24] Thee-I-Dare realized that this wasn't good for keeping secrets, and this is where spoken language came in. With spoken language, you can whisper, and if you're not in earshot: too bad!

 astro [00:08:35] Thee-I-Dare once had hosts in Red Acre, but they were all destroyed in what we refer to as the Cull. The Cull is the source of the fragments you can find in game. All of the places where his past hosts were killed now have fragments in them, and you can find them above ground and below ground in many different areas on the map. We have confirmed that at least one of the murders in the Cull was covered up and made to look like a suicide. However, we know that isn't true.

 astro [00:09:01] The cult directly targeted these people and tried to get them out of the way. After this event, Thee-I-Dare was shattered. He was very weakened. Thee-I-Dare has said in god talks that his fragments are essentially - to him - as Speak-as-One's watchers are to them.

 astro [00:09:18] Through his fragments, he can remember select things that those hosts choose to share with him. Thee-I-Dare has spoken in a few dreams, but you may not have realized that you've heard him. He originally only spoke backwards. The audio had to be recorded and reversed to understand what he was saying. And although he has spoken in dreams a few times, he's been significantly more active in god encounters throughout the game.

lavanya [00:09:44] All right. And that leads us into the second best god of all: Die-for-You!

 lavanya [00:09:49] The first and most important thing now about Die-for-You is that he is the Daimon of martyrdom. He focuses heavily on sacrifice, to the detriment of literally everything else.

 lavanya [00:09:59] Thee-I-Dare wants you to survive and be rebellious and be yourself. Speak-as-One wants you to conform at all costs and stop being such a little fucky individual. All of the gods have their own motivations and their own desires in this game, that they are trying to push to be satisfied, but Die-for-You is the only demon whose focus is entirely on the players. It makes him pretty unique!

 lavanya [00:10:23] Unfortunately, this is not necessarily great for the player. What we've heard of Die-for-You from the other Daimons so far has largely been focused on the fact that Die-For-You runs hard with his hosts, and with his followers.

 lavanya [00:10:36] While he is one of the friendliest of the gods and he is super interested in helping players find and pursue their passions, the problem comes towards the end of that. Like any good monkeys paw, Die-for-You will support you to the very end.. hard emphasis on the end, because when push comes to shove, if you're not willing to die for your ideals, he's just not that into it. Die-for-You is one of the gods that has been the most verbal in dreams, and in his dreams, he's constantly coaxing and pushing and cajoling players towards what they're passionate for and what they're passion enough to die for.

 lavanya [00:11:15] Die-for-You ultimately wants you to die. Martyrdom is his province and it doesn't matter what it's for. It can be for your friends, for your parents, for preserving the sanctity of your individuality in the face of this cold, cruel, conformist world. It could be for your shoes! He doesn't care, as long as you're willing to go out there and get shot for it.

 lavanya [00:11:39] According to the other gods, Die-for-You followers burn out quickly and they burn out hard, bu~ut some would say that's perfectly fine. Thee-I-Dare followers also die frequently and SAO's followers live forever, but Die-for-You's followers.. when they die, they're always here to make a point.

astro [00:12:03] Dance-for-Us was once named Dance-for-Me when she was more selfish, as she says in a dream.

 astro [00:12:09] On the altar, her featured quote says:.

 astro [00:12:12] I guess it wants thrills! Woke up still buzzed or eyes like black holes. Bite marks all over me, but, yo, I had two grand in my gym shorts.

 astro [00:12:21] That's from FC Rider. Her hosts have been caught dancing in the woods, then attracting attention from sleepers, which then gets passed onto the Lucid and then to the Voice. We can see this in the dancing sickness log in the journals.

 astro [00:12:35] Gwen also notes that, if you follow Dance-for-Us, someone should tell her to chill the fuck out just a little bit. Back in the beta period, she had a period of time where she issued a challenge to players asking them to bring her music and some of them did. As a result, all players in the game now have the gesture: the "Gift" of Dance. Interestingly, her time in the limelight has not yet ended. Her symbol is being used in the recent dance recording mission, though circumstances around this are unknown at the time.

 astro [00:13:05] We don't know who's placing it there, or why, or what it actually does to the sleepers that step into it. But after they step on the symbol, they're compelled to dance.. even to the detriment of their health, possibly even to death.

 astro [00:13:19] More on this after a word from our sponsors!

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lavanya [00:14:00] So! Now that we're back from our commercial break, I'm excited to say that tonight on the Dreaming Prophet, we are having the first of what may be many exciting guests features. So to wrap up our Daimons discourse - or start some new ones! - we are going to introduce two exciting new people to the podcast for this episode. The first of these people is Archer!

 lavanya [00:14:21] Say hi, Archer!

 archer [00:14:22] Hello, hello, hello. My name is Archer, and I have been invited to come and talk about some of the gods here on this podcast, and let me tell you, I have a lot to say. First of all, it's going to be like, you know, the The-Measure-Cuts -.

 archer [00:14:36] - AND THEN MY PERSONAL FAVORITE, THE EIGHTH GOD. Which, let me tell you about the eighth God. He is hands down one of the most fantastic and best gods that you can all -.

 xaviul [00:14:46] [car horn]

 xaviul [00:14:51] And I'm Xaviul, master of sarcasm and sacrifice.

 archer [00:14:55] Wow.

 xaviul [00:14:55] We're just going to move on!

archer [00:14:55] Rude. All right. So, I guess, since we're not going to go on about the eighth God here.. let's go ahead start off with The-Measure-Cuts!

 archer [00:15:08] The-Measure-Cuts is a really interesting God to talk about. Some of his main themes is precision and knowledge and skepticism. The-Measure-Cuts is very commonly associated with science, especially with his themes of knowledge and precision. This fits in pretty well with him. However, he has actually been around since before the advent of science itself, back in the olden days. He actually used to be a goddess of blacksmithing, which makes me believe that he is less associated with science, and a lot more with the precision that comes with creating things out of metal, and creation in general, and the knowledge that comes with that.

 xaviul [00:15:50] He also helped invent the swirly, if you know what I mean.

 archer [00:15:53] Get out, bully.

 archer [00:15:58] His current host cannot be shoved into a toilet and swirlied, because his host is dead! His current host actually is a scientist who used to study the voices, and refused to host The-Measure-Cuts until he died, because he did not want The-Measure-Cuts in his head to influence and potentially bias his work. The-Measure-Cuts actually respected him heavily for his dedication to his research, so he was pretty OK with this.

 archer [00:16:28] Another thing that plays into his precision as well is that he actually dislikes slang. In one of the public dreams that is out there in the game, he actually gets very very angry when a user uses slang at him - you know, like, oh, you're so chill or chill out - and The-Measure-Cuts just hates it. Says he was going to vomit in his mouth, because he's a dramatic person.

 archer [00:16:55] I don't know why you would say that. Like, disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

 archer [00:17:00] So, he is not a fan of slang and prefers words that are more precise that do not have double meanings. With TMC's interactions with the other gods, he actually used to be quite close with Speak-as-One, and has confirmed that he has worked with Speak-as-One to create the experiment currently going on in Red Acre. This experiment.. we still don't have a lot of information on it, but after The-Measure-Cuts help set everything up, Speak-as-One then ousted them from Red Acre, and now he's no longer allowed around.

 archer [00:17:37] With his relationship with Thee-I-Dare, that's also another point of interest. Thee-I-Dare, when he was first shattered, a lot of the gods stood by, and The-Measure-Cuts was one of them. From what Thee-I-Dare had said to me once in a encounter, and some current dreams that have been distributed out to various players, it seems to be that the The-Measure-Cuts actually regrets this.

 archer [00:18:03] The-Measure-Cuts is also one of the only gods that has not had an in-person voice encounter with the player. The-Measure-Cuts is also one of the only gods to voice contempt for the fact that he has to rely on children as hosts, especially in this upcoming war. He is mentioned in the Treme in a dream, asking if the world war has happened in this universe. He said that that is not the war that we should be worrying about.

astro [00:18:35] In-Her-Teeth is also similarly taking a somewhat scientific approach, but not to the same things that The-Measure-Cuts is studying.

 astro [00:18:44] In-Her-Teeth wants to know more about death and specifically wants to know if voices can die. Her primary domain is death and power. When you interact with the alter, the quote given for her says:.

 astro [00:18:57] It knows how I'm going to die. Says it won't be scary or painful if I go with her from A. Mocal.

 astro [00:19:03] In past dreams, she offered the kids power in exchange for their loyalty to her. She's also instructed players to tie up and leave stalkers to her, and is known for being grim and morbidly curious.

 astro [00:19:16] Somewhat recently in the game, players have been instructed to find and retrieve dead doves that have been left around the map bloodied and disfigured with missing heads. In-Her-Teeth has confirmed that doves specifically are sacred to her, as is the color white in other parts of the world, and has said that this action -  this bloodying of the doves and leaving them around quite obviously to be found -  is an insult against her, and that whoever did it may also be declaring war on another Daimon.

 astro [00:19:44] White symbolizes death and mourning in China, India, Korea, and the Middle East, among others. And so it can be inferred this is probably what she means. She shares hosts with Laugh-Last, and Laugh-Last says that they're married.

 astro [00:19:59] In-Her-Teeth doesn't seem to agree.

 lavanya [00:20:03] What's a good marriage without murder threats?

 xaviul [00:20:05] And gaslighting! You can't forget the gaslighting.

 lavanya [00:20:07] [laughter].

 xaviul [00:20:12] Well, that's all a bit grim, and also a bit nerdy. So let's go on to somebody who's actually a little bit fun for once.

 lavanya [00:20:20] Speak-as-One?

 archer [00:20:21] Boo!

xaviul [00:20:21] Laugh-Last. We're not all about that communal hive mind right now. Laugh-Last, whose main themes are humor, a little bit of betrayal, maybe, and also kind of memes. When he first started off earlier on, he has a lot more sinister. He really only believes that it's funny if somebody else gets hurt in a joke, which I think we can all agree with, right?

 archer [00:20:53] Yes, actually!

 lavanya [00:20:53] Absolutely.

 xaviul [00:20:53] That's the spirit. He's kind of falls a little bit into more base humor, like tight sniffing and asses, but I like to believe that, deep down inside, he's still that same horrible dude that's willing to drop a piano on you, just so he can laugh at the blood splatter.

 lavanya [00:21:14] Let me interrupt briefly to say a friendly reminder that CHORUS offers up free therapy services, 24/7, over the phone at your friendly local Old Growth location of choice.

 xaviul [00:21:26] He was once described as being a comic relief for the voices by Thee-I-Dare. But you know, there's only so much you can take of being a laughing stock before you need to get a few laughs off yourself. He has claimed that In-Her-Teeth is his wife. In-Her-Teeth, you know, seems to have a little bit of problem with that, and make some untoward claims that Laugh-Last might have led her astray in her beliefs, in her domains, and all that. But I like to believe that she's just confused.

 xaviul [00:21:58] Who really wants to listen to her, anyway?

 xaviul [00:22:01] And while we're on the topic of untoward comments towards Laugh-Last.. Thee-I-Dare claims that, once upon a time, Laugh-Last betrayed him and might have maybe led to the shattering. Laugh-Last claims that all he really did was stick out a leg back. Thee-I-Dare was a holier than thou little Speak-as-One!lite, gallivanting around to play rebel. I mean, there's probably still some bitter feelings there, but it's probably mutual.

 lavanya [00:22:31] It's a shame that we'll never speak to Laugh-Last to find out.

 xaviul [00:22:35] Wow! He's just very busy right now, and he will get to me in his own time, but I'm sure, he's like, I'm number one on the list.

archer [00:22:50] Shall I tell you about which list you're on?

 xaviul [00:22:53] The sacrifice list?

 archer [00:22:56] Yes! To Murder God!

 xaviul [00:22:57] Do we really have to give him a section?

 archer [00:23:01] Yes we do. I'm sorry.  There's just no -.

 xaviul [00:23:05] He's not at the table. It's really like he's not a Daimon at all.

 archer [00:23:08] Listen, listen, listen. You're gonna get eaten.

 lavanya [00:23:14] We're feeding every mouth at the table, so they don't eat us.

 xaviul [00:23:18] Yeah, but he's like the dog underneath the table begging for scraps.

 archer [00:23:23] Wow!

 lavanya [00:23:23] Do you hate animals?

 archer [00:23:23] So, about a list that I think you're on here, let's talk about Murdergod -

 archer [00:23:30] Or as he is most likely known as, is the eighth God. He's a god dedicated to ambition, blood sport, strength, and competition.

 xaviul [00:23:40] Rabies!

 archer [00:23:40] No, not rabies!

 archer [00:23:43] But guess what list you're always at the top of, Xaviul? The leader board, and stalkers, and stalkers caught! And guess what the eighth guy really likes? He likes strength, he likes ambition, he likes competition. The murder God has a huge interest in people who show ambition, strength, andcompetition.

 archer [00:24:05] He's only very recently revealed himself to us in the form of a couple of god talks with some select players. However, it turns out through the discovery of some people transcribing old dreams is that he has been around for much longer.

 archer [00:24:22] He just hasn't spoken up this entire time, so he has definitely been lurking there, watching us, keeping an eye on the things that we have been doing.

 archer [00:24:31] When he has talked to players, he has talked about, like, hunting, and hunting them, and their inner strength. In some of his dreams, he's also talked about eating the quick, the special, and the strong. So, he wants to find people who he thinks are good or perhaps even the best of the best. And then he wants to consume them and make them part of himself.

 archer [00:24:58] This is also confirmed by Speak-as-One and Thee-I-Dare in some of their talks they've had with players. Speak-as-One himself has told me in an encounter that the Eigth God considers himself a gourmet.

 xaviul [00:25:14] So he really puts the gore in gourmet. Huh? Am I right?

 archer [00:25:19] No, you're not right. Get out.

 archer [00:25:20] Through other talks with other players, gods have mentioned that the Eighth God is very similar to Speak-as-One in the fact that he does not care about the individual. He only cares about the collective, or what you can do for him. He wants the strongest hosts so he can consume them. He does not care who it is, so long as you are the strongest one.

 archer [00:25:45] The God also likes to fuel competition, because he does not want to eat the weakest. He only wants to eat the strongest!

 archer [00:25:55] Speaking more on his food tastes, the 8th God does not actually think that Speak-as-One or Thee-I-Dare are good enough to eat. This was stated to a player from Thee-I-Dare, during an encounter where they asked Thee-I-Dare about the gods relationship with Speak-as-One. Thee-I-Dare then proceeded to say that the 8th God is not interested in eating Speak-as-One, simply because he does not think that they are strong enough for him to even bother hunting.

 archer [00:26:30] The last aspect to talk about the 8th God - that is also incredibly interesting in regards to the other voices! - is that, not only does he hunt and consume other voices, he actually takes their names from them as trophies. We do not actually know his real name at this point! We don't even know what name he's currently going by. All we know is that he takes names, and he refuses to share his own during an encounter a voiced encounter with players. He actually refused to identify himself to them, and spent most the mission being called the The-Measure-Cuts, and he never quite corrected them. So, whatever he's doing, he likes steal identities. True scam artist?

 xaviul [00:27:17] His true name is Ow-the-Edge.

 lavanya [00:27:21] And let me just cut in here, dear listeners, and let you know that the 8th God's name is not Ow-the-Edge, and that is actually just filthy lies once more being spread by the False Gods followers. When in doubt about the real gods names, just keep in mind:.

lavanya [00:27:39] They're always pronounced Speak-as-One.

 lavanya [00:27:46] So, with that in mind, let's discuss the other daimons that appear in the game!

 lavanya [00:27:51] Or appear in mentions, not actual physical form. Even though there's only seven daimons on the sacrifice board, there's infinitely more out there. Some are named, but the majority of them are not, such as the unknown Daimons who helped Thee-I-Dare create spoken language, all the way back in the days when humans were still in caves and painting pictures on the walls.

 lavanya [00:28:10] Along with there being other daimons out there, it's interesting to note that the way that daimons work is that they are defined by their names.  So whenever their names change, or their followers start changing their views of the Daimons, the Daimons change: sometimes, to the point that they just become an entirely new person.

 lavanya [00:28:29] Speak-as-One has mentioned in a talk that there are numerous versions of them that exists outside of Red Acre, and Red Acre is one of the only places that is free of these bootleg copies. Thee-I-Dare mentioned the same thing roughly in a different talk. With Speak-as-One, they referred to bootlegs and inferior copies and knockoffs that just didn't make sense. But Thee-I-Dare was more explicit. He said that not only are there other versions of him running around outside of Red Acre, but there are other versions that are still explicitly him..

 lavanya [00:29:03] Older versions.

 archer [00:29:04] Well, speaking of the unknown god, it was actually confirmed with Thee-I-Dare to me in a chat last night that he created the Word with an older version of himself - a previous name that splintered off from him.

 lavanya [00:29:20] In the end, it gets even more interesting, because not only is he the only god who's been noted to interact with an older version of himself, but he is also - along with Speak-as-One - one of the only gods known to have fragmented himself.

 lavanya [00:29:36] Thee-I-Dare is fragmented both in the sense that his name was torn to shreds and he was nearly destroyed in the process, but he was also fragmented in the sense that every child who speaks to Thee-I-Dare is not speaking to one overwhelming entity in the way that you are with Speak-as-One. Instead, you're speaking to an individual facet of Thee-I-Dare. When you die, if you become a fragment, that specific instance of Thee-I-Dare is the one who holds all of the memories of your interactions and keeps track of what you do when you die. That version of Thee-I-Dare is embedded into the fray and then it can be reabsorbed into the whole.

 astro [00:30:16] There is one more mysterious other Daimons to talk about, which is for lack of a better name, is Chase-the-Sun.

 astro [00:30:21] Thee-I-Dare has confirmed briefly in a god encounter that the gesture "Chase the Sun" is the name of an old god, a old missing god, a fallen sibling. He says that,  although he doesn't know where Chase the Sun went, we do know that names have power.. and the fact that we have this daimons name may be something worth looking at in the future.

 astro [00:30:45] Throughout this episode, we've talked about god encounters - which, if you're not familiar, is an instance where a God will come into your game and talk to you. You can tell when this is happening, because a giant closing eye will appear on your screen.

 astro [00:31:02] It is very hard to miss, but that's intentional. It's so that you don't miss it when you see this giant closing eye. Close your eyes, follow the prompting, and you will see words on your screen from the Daimons. The Daimons will talk to you, and you can talk back on voice chat, or in text chat.

 lavanya [00:31:19] So! God encounters are very exciting, and players are usually pretty delighted when they get them.

 lavanya [00:31:25] There are a couple of rules of etiquette that you should keep in mind when you're having a god encounter, just to make sure that everyone in your game is still having fun.

 lavanya [00:31:33] If you're unsure who you're talking to, first of all, you can always ask Thee-I-Dare and SAO both speak in all caps. Others Daimons may or may not, because we haven't seen them in text before. If you're speaking to a voice god, then the mission objective will change to "Everything is Fine". So, if you think that somebody may be messing with you with a voice modifier, anything else.. check the mission objective in the corner. People can change their voices. They can't change that.

 lavanya [00:32:02] The second thing to keep in mind with god encounters is to make sure that you're not speaking over other players! If the god shows interest in talking to other people or other people have questions, go ahead and ask them if they can switch over to other players. And keep in mind, if you're in a game where someone has gotten an encounter, and they don't speak to you..

 lavanya [00:32:19] Remember: there is only one god! There's usually several players. They may not get a chance to get to everyone, but eventually, you will have your own chance.

 lavanya [00:32:27] A third thing to keep in mind is, if you are an experienced player playing with a new player, go ahead and help them understand what's happening. If everyone is freaking out around them, and they don't understand the lore, and they don't know what's going on - they may end up more frustrated than they do enjoying the experience.

 lavanya [00:32:45] The gods will not begrudge you for taking a sidebar to explain something that they said, or to explain to a new player what, exactly, is going on. The gods are played by the developers, and they want people to enjoy their game. So it's always nice if we can do our best to help with that experience!

 lavanya [00:33:00] The fourth thing - and the final thing - which is not actually related to etiquette, but it's just a good thing to know. Be careful about saying names! Names have powers and if you say a Daimons name, it invokes them. Some voices really do not like that. Speak-as-One will not appreciate it if you say Thee-I-Dare in front of him, and Thee-I-Dare will not appreciate if you say Speak-as-One.

 lavanya [00:33:24] For the best result, you should use euphemisms where possible, or just go ahead and say the letters instead of the full names. But, of course, if you want to certify it, you go ahead and say the full names.

 lavanya [00:33:34] See what happens.

 [00:33:43] The Blackout Club is made by Question Games. Our advertising director is Bellamy. Our transcript is by Lavanya. Audio editing is by me, Astro. Archer was our guest host. Xaviul is the fact that we drive on parkways and park on driveways.

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET: EP 2 TRANSCRIPT

EPISODE TWO: HISTORY IN THE MAKING (Link)

The story so far, from Prologue to present. Talking points: Bells and her story, Her impact on the world, NPCs, Speak-As-One & Company, How to find more lore in-game.

Spoiler + Content warning begins at 0:53. Content warnings: Discussion of children being harmed/kidnapped, general horror themes.

Credits:

- lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

- astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

- be11amy: fact-checking

- xaviul: moral support

- transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games

LAVANYA: Open upyour eyes, Red Acre, and slip on those bunny slippers. Because tonight, you're gonna follow us down into the depths of the Barracks. We're going to roast marshmallows, open up some pops of can, and untie our loyal friends, and tie up our disloyal friends. Because remember, kids: they're useless as a sacrifice to In-Her-Teeth if they can't talk, so make sure you tie those “friendship bracelets” around the wrist and not the mouth!

 LAVANYA: My name is Lavanya -

 ASTRO: - and I'm Astro -

 LAVANYA: And we’re your hosts for tonight!

 ASTRO: This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players, with no speculation, or as little speculation as we can manage, all lore, with a focus on known facts.

  ASTRO: Our topic of the day is this story so far. So we'll be talking about the prologue more, and we'll be talking about how it plays into the main game, and the things that you see while you're in the game, and the things that you hear while you're playing.

  LAVANYA: So, our content warnings for this time around are just a general horror warning, same as always! This episode will explicitly discuss children being harmed and/or kidnapped. So prepare yourself for that. And here's your general warning for this episode that, as with everything with the Dreaming Prophet, it is not spoiler free.

ASTRO: When you open up the Blackout Club for the first time, you're prompted to play the prologue and the prologue introduces you to a lot of the main themes of the game, which Lavanya talked about in our first episode.

  ASTRO: The prologue follows a girl named Bells - or, her legal name, Isabella Madi-Shaw. She is a teen who is grounded. She's been left home alone while her parents are out, and we later see them in a video call at a restaurant. However, while she's at home, strange things start happening. Now, Bells is part of what's called the Blackout Club, for which the game is named. But the Blackout Club we know now is not the Blackout Club as it originally was.

  ASTRO: The original Blackout Club was a place for kids to talk about their strange experiences. There was no spy investigation. There was no recording of evidence. This was before all of that.

  LAVANYA: As Astro was saying, the kids at the Blackout Club prior to the prologue just did a whole bunch of normal club things. They hung around an abandoned train car out in the woods, practiced parkour, and apparently recorded their parents behaving in all sorts of deviant and interesting ways. Just, you know, normal Virginia things.

  ASTRO: Bell realizes that something has to be done. This is too much, it's something that the world has to find out about, because she realizes this isn't something she can handle by herself. It's not something that kids in Red Acre can handle by themselves. It's something much bigger and much more terrifying than they ever could have imagined.

  ASTRO: Bells has successfully recorded something about the cult. We don't know what, but we do know that she keeps it on a flash drive, and she's planning at the start of the prologue to steal her parents car and drive the flash drive far enough outside of Red Acre that she can get signal. And send it to someone, put it somewhere on the Internet, so that everyone will know. But she's acting alone because, as she says, kids her age are cowards. The other members of the club aren't willing to do the things that she's willing to do, but she knows she doesn't have a choice.

  LAVANYA: Which is actually fascinating in a way, because Bells is the only member of the Blackout Club at the very beginning in the prologue that we know who's actually performing illegal activities in pursuit of this knowledge. And as we find out from the intro, she breaks into chorus headquarters specifically to record whatever she finds on her flash drive.

  ASTRO: She gets a call from her parents telling her that “she'll meet someone as special as she is if she closes her eyes”, and as it turns out when she closes her eyes, someone starts to speak to her. Now we don't know who, because they don't do us the courtesy of introducing themselves. But we do know that whoever is speaking to her is what we consider a “Voice”

  ASTRO: A Voice is one of the main gods, the Daimons of this game. One of them is speaking to her and giving her instructions. It asks her to feed it with images pictures of herself and her family. Your next task is to go around the house and find images of yourself, of your mother, of your father, and close your eyes in front of them and every time you do you get new and stranger messages from this voice.

  ASTRO: And then everything goes wild. You wake up, again, and you're in your bed. But this time the lights are broken. This time you're covered in dirt, and possibly blood, and you have your phone and your flash drive, but nothing is the same as it was. And you begin to be chased by the Shape.

  ASTRO: The Shape is one of the main antagonists of the game, you've probably encountered them. You can only see them when you close your eyes.

  LAVANYA: While they're invisible to open eyes, you can actually see the shadow of the Shape whenever he is exiting the Shape doors and whenever he is walking in front of lighting. So in the prologue, you can see him in front of the windows.

  ASTRO: The Shape chases Bells through her house, and down into her basement, where she finds a secret passage that takes her into “the Maze.” And what she finds in the Maze is that she's been tracked by chorus this whole time. They've taken a layout of her home, put it on the ground, and tracked her movements with red string.

  LAVANYA: So, like, the red string of fate but a little less sweet and a little more serial killer-y.

  ASTRO: Now interesting again, while she's in the maze. Another voice tries to help her escape. We know that there's a difference between these two voices, because the way that they present themselves is different. The first voice speaks in capital letters - all capital letters - but the second voice speaks in normal case. Interesting! We don't know what this means, but we do know that there's a difference between the voices.

  ASTRO: Bells makes it through the underground with the help of this voice, but just as she almost gets to the box car, something grabs her and pulls her away again. We don't have a lot of details about this. In the past, in the main games, when you get dragged, you're either being dragged by an adult or by the Shape. But when Bells gets dragged, we see neither of them.

LAVANYA: All right, so that leaves us off into the main game. One of the most interesting things about the main game is that you do not get information fed here directly. You basically have to collect it from a bunch of different sources and try to piece together the story from all of that.

  LAVANYA: Bells story begins in the prologue, and it continues mildly as a mystery throughout the main game. What we know from journal entries is that Bells’ mother is a Lucid, and that Bells, as she said in the prologue, had previously broken into Chorus Industries. When she did that, we don't know exactly what she was going for from the information we're given, but we do know that she accessed Saturation Control, a special area that players can sometimes be sent to when they're being punished by Speak-as-One, and she released something from it - or she released several some things, because there's a description of several footsteps leaving the area afterwards.

LAVANYA: We also know that Bells, at the point that the prologue has occurred, and the point that the players are in the main game - She's been down to the Maze several fucking times. She has two sets of information that's been recorded. One, we're not given the details on except that it's damning enough that it has CHORUS and Speak-as-One deeply worried about it being released.

  LAVANYA: The second is that she captured actual footage of the Instrument being tuned by the various hosts that serve as the enemies throughout the game, and also that somehow she caught footage of the Song itself - which is the soundtrack that you will constantly hear in the background as you're playing.

  LAVANYA: Bells - we never find out exactly what happens to Bells! Now that may change in 1.0, but we're just going to have to see. As of right now, it's a whole fucking lot of ambiguity, apparently, because the posters that you can see around the town as evidence posters have pictures of Bells, and they say: “Missing child, we're looking for any information on her, please let us know!”

  LAVANYA: They're all Chorus approved. They are put up in there created by the Speak-as-One followers, essentially, so that insinuates maybe they don't have her -

  LAVANYA: Except, if you listen to the Lucid voice lines, then occasionally as you're stalking them around, they will drop this particular one which implies otherwise.

 LUCID QUOTE: Think aloud... Think aloud for the Voice. That girl - Isabella - they say that the Shape you can't see - got her. I wonder.. what it does to them?

  LAVANYA: If you go to the clubhouse, you can see what the overall community outside of the crazy corporation cultists has decided, which is mostly everyone thinks that Bells has either ran away or else she's committed suicide.

  LAVANYA: If you go over to the television, you can see four different interviews depending on what level you are - by the time you hit level 20, you'll have four - four different interviews with her parents that are all begging for information, saying that she'd never run away and saying that she didn't commit suicide. These become more interesting when you consider her the journal entries. Her mother is a Lucid. So her mother is in on all of this!

  LAVANYA: If you go over to the corkboard, you can see that there's bits cut off of newspapers saying that a search was going on for her and that she was eventually dismissed as being a suicide. Is it true? Is Bells alive, is Bells dead? We have no fucking clue. Even the Voices don't know, from in-game interactions. Maybe we'll find out. But maybe this is just going to be one of the big mysteries of the Blackout Club.

ASTRO: So with this mystery at hand, the club has become dedicated to not only continuing her mission, but hopefully finding her. We have a journal entry in the boxcar entitled "Bells Has Gone Missing". And it begins: Alert to all Blackout Club members! It then proceeds to ask us to continue looking for Bells: to find her, to do something. There's clearly an attitude of desperation and wanting to help.

  ASTRO: The message is signed the TBC OG's, or originals, which we can infer to mean or include our two main club NPCs, Dax and Gwen. When you end the prologue, Dax and Gwen both make a pact, eventually, to try to do something more to help Red Acre and hopefully help Bells too. Dax doesn't think Bells is dead. Gwen is fairly convinced.

  ASTRO: In their continuing quest., we hear about Dax and Gwen every so often. As you continue playing through the game, you hear about Dax and Gwen every so often. DAX, for instance, made the drone that you have to fix during a mission. Gwen refers to it as Dax's barely functional sky friend. Gwen then transcribes the papers that you get from that mission, that you can then view as journal entries in the boxcar.

  ASTRO: The Whisper Twins are also part of the club. They were added in a more recent update. The whisper twins are two children that lean against the sides of the box car. As you're going into the sleeper car, you can find them on your left, and they occasionally talk about lore, just trying to process what's going on in the world around them.

  LAVANYA: So that's some of the ways that you can get information out of the game. And that is basically our human cast of it.

  LAVANYA: That is not the only cast, though, and it can be argued that it's not even the primary cast. The major characters of the game, in terms of NPCs, are actually the Daimons, who are referred to alternatively as Voices and as gods throughout the games. Basically, these are voices that exist inside of your head. Sometimes, when you close your eyes, you'll see letters forming in front of your eyes that will tell you what they're saying. Sometimes when you are just minding your own business, sitting in a tree trying to throw foam grenades down at the Lucids, you'll hear a voice in your ears, and that is also the Daimons.

  LAVANYA: What they are, functionally, is concepts and creatures that are created off of human thought. We don't know the exact process yet. We don't have know that that's true, because as the Daimons are so fond of reminding us, they're all compulsive liars. But that's what they've claimed.

  LAVANYA: These Daimons provide us with information about the game world, about each other, and about what we should be doing. What information you get will depend on what Daimon you're talking to. And some Daimons are easier to speak to than others.

  LAVANYA: Speak-as-One is one of the hardest Daimons to speak to, in terms of actually getting a positive relationship with them. Thee-I-Dare is one of the easiest Daimons to speak to -.

 ASTRO: - because what's more rebellious than a bunch of teenagers?

  LAVANYA: Exactly! Exactly, exactly. He craves that teenage fire, that youthful rebellion that encourages you to flip cars, and steal your parent's keys.

  LAVANYA: There are other voices, but we'll get into that more in the next episode which will be digging in all the gods. So, make sure you listen!

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LAVANYA: When children in Red Acre are born, they're all assigned a Watcher, which is basically a CIA agent in your brain that works for Speak-as-One. But as you get older, you will slowly learn your rights as an individual, and begin learning how to shut the door in the face of that watcher, and all the other voices. As kids hit adulthood - and that magical age 15, for some reason - they will move from being able to hear every voice to being able to hear only one. And as the whisper twins saying game:.

WHISPER TWINS QUOTE: Eventually, I think we have to pick one - or it picks us.

  LAVANYA: If you don’t choose one, one of the daimons will choose you.

  ASTRO: Daimons are able to speak to us as humans, but they aren't able to influence us. They're not able to act on their own. They rely on us to be their vessels in the human world. In-Her-Teeth could ask you to sacrifice a stalker to her, but In-Her-Teeth couldn't hunt down the stalker herself. And she also can't throw a car at you if you refuse.

  ASTRO: The Shape is one exception to this. We don't know if he's a Voice. We don't know if he's some kind of ghost, but we do know that he has physical presence throughout the game, without appearing as a human, while being invisible. He's capable of casting shadows, opening doors, and affecting the environment around him, but it's unclear why he has that ability.

  LAVANYA: One of the few things that we do know, one hundred percent, about the Shape, from various talks - from Dance-for-Us from The-Measure-Cuts, and I believe even ones from Thee-I-Dare - back when he was in his troubled garbled stage - is the fact the Shape is functionally a tool of Speak-as-One.

  LAVANYA: Speak-as-One is the antagonist of the game and, not to speculate, because this is pure fact, but unabashedly, they are simply the best god of them all. So take a note on that!

  ASTRO: Save it for the advertisements.

  LAVANYA: So, ignoring the pushback in the background from the haters, Speak-as-One uses they/them, he/his, and she/her. You cannot misgender Speak-as-One, because the neatest thing about them is: they're literally everyone! They're your grandma, your dad, your aunt, they’re that cousin that you don't talk to and you don't make eye contact with at the family reunions, they're everyone in the town of Red Acre. Because, effectively, Speak-as-One is Red Acre.

  LAVANYA: As far as we know, going by what the Daimons have implied in the persistent use of mother father or parent, all of the known Daimons spawned off of  them. Are they the first Daimons out there, period? We have no idea, but we know that all of our main cast of Daimons currently says, from Dances-for-Us to The-Measure-Cuts, all came off of Speak-as-One. They control the cult, they control chorus, they control all of Red Acre.

  LAVANYA: If you listen to the lucid lines, you can hear that they have been around since at least the 90's. And if you listen to the sleepers lines as they're walking around, you can hear that they may have even been around since time immemorial, back when humans still lived in caves and were painting on the walls.

  LAVANYA: What's fascinating about Speak-as-One is - all of the other gods have complicated moral beliefs and everything else - that we will be getting into, as said before, in a future podcast - but Speak-as-One is pretty much straight forward as the antagonist of the game. As they enjoy saying constantly, Speak-as-One is not only their name, but it is the command. You are meant to Speak-as-One every single time that they talk to you. Few succeed. Fewer want to succeed! But you know the intent is there.

  LAVANYA: Somehow Speak-as-One is linked into the Song. Maybe it is the Song. Maybe the Song is a byproduct of it in the same way that the Shape is. It's unclear and the division is not - if there is a division - is not explicitly stated. What we know is that the Song has existed constantly, and that some people in the town of Red Acre can hear it, and some of them just fucking can't.

 SLEEPER QUOTE: Report. The Song is weak here. Some of our fellows may not hear the call. She will make a note to test Acoustics.

  LAVANYA: It's amplified by the Instrument, and the maze, the primary dungeon of the game, exists to hold it. So when you see sleepers walking around welding, or you see the areas like New Growth with new construction, or else you see the lines being plucked and that horrifying music come out of it - that's all the Song! We don't know what exactly the Song is or how it works. There are some implications in game which you can get from some of the voice lines such as this one.

 SLEEPER QUOTE: Dream. He is 18. Lake diving with Mom. Air Tank's all wrong. Too much O2. His head light, lighter - behold! Leviathan! The beast of us - the whole town! The arms of an octopus, made of people - our whole lives! Like time lapse - all human choices? Everywhere we've been or will ever go - stretched in a rope of flesh, from birth to death! The boy. His mother. Other divers - from weeks, months, years back. Arms, legs, heads all blend! All writhe! But the eyes. The eyes turn to stare back. They see him even now!

  LAVANYA: But one of the few concrete things that we do know about the Song is that somehow it is linked into the Shape ,as well as Speak-as-One.

  LAVANYA: When the Shape captures you, the on screen text states that you have joined the Song. When you are freed from it by one of your teammates, it states that the Shape has noticed your absence from it. And when you're all the way on your last strike, the game will warn you by stating that the Shape will no longer add you to the song. If he grabs you at that point, he will not just mind wipe you and forcibly mindmeld you into whatever eldritch shit is going on there - he will just fucking murder you. So there are some hints, but it's a little bit foggy still.

 ASTRO: And what does the song sound like? Well, it sounds like music, and music is played on an instrument. The Maze contains what's called the Instrument, which is a massive system of tunnels and strings and machinery that creates the sound that we might call the Song. Or at least part of the Song.

  ASTRO: And the Song can be heard from all across the map. You hear it better when you're underground, but you can hear it above ground, too. And it seems to have multiple uses - in addition to uniting everyone, it seems to be capable of transferring information across long distances. You can watch a Lucid standing at control panels receive calls from their dispatcher, and then play particular notes on their keyboard to make very specific sounds. And if you're very lucky, you can watch one lucid report on their phone and then a few moments later, watch another lucid seem to get this report and transfer it into the Song.

  ASTRO: We've also seen in the Madi-Shaw logs - in the journals - that “chordist performants” encode information they receive into the song. One of the missions that you can be assigned during the Games is to temporarily silence parts of the Instrument. The Instrument is far reaching, and getting to all parts of it is very dangerous, but you can silence a few key points on it. That seems to interfere with the way it works. Now, it's only temporary, because on your next mission you will find that all of your dampers are gone. But for the moment, it's a band-aid on the cut.

LAVANYA: That's the basic gist of the lore in the game. But if you want to find more in game - which you should because there's always new stuff being unlocked, and there is a whole lot to dig into... - Then here are some of the places to find it!

  LAVANYA: It's pretty spread out, but one of the most satisfying things about the Blackout Club, at least for me, is the fact that everyone finds things in different order, as a result. One of the most exciting things about people finding things out of order is that it can affect the conclusions that they draw so much. The Blackout Club is very great for theories, coming up with your ideas and seeing what sticks, or what is going to be violently beaten like a piñata by the developers as soon as new talks come out.

  LAVANYA: I say this from experience: you'll cry, but you'll feel satisfied when your ideas are smashed to pieces.

  LAVANYA: And with that in mind, one of the best things that you can do is talk to other players, because everyone has different ideas of how the gods are, how they operate, what their personalities are even, because there's so much - there's so much that you can draw from very little information, just because of the way that is dispersed.

  LAVANYA: Players frequently in love discussing their ideas, their thoughts, and their theories with new people and with other players in general, and one of the most exciting things about talking to the other players - and trying to put together your ideas, and form new ones - is each player may have experiences, courtesy of the god encounters in game, that other players don't.

  LAVANYA: The gods do lie. They do tell players what they think that the players want to hear and what will get their goals achieved. So just because you heard it from one person doesn't mean that you shouldn't source and fact check.

  LAVANYA: And on that note: God encounters are one of the best and one of the most exciting ways to get information in game! You're not always guaranteed that this information will be correct and accurate, because each of the Gods is their own individual character with their own agendas, and their own take on you. They also each have their own individual relationship with different players, which means that the information will change sometimes, depending on whether or not that will achieve their goals. It's a lot of fun, you can ask so many questions, and just the responses and reactions that you'll get can be sometimes be even more telling than the information they choose to share.

  LAVANYA: God encounters... you can tell if one is going to happen, because you will see a giant closing eye on your screen. If you see that, go ahead and close your eyes.

  LAVANYA: If you see that, it's also a good idea to go sit somewhere quiet and hold still. I fail at this every single time. Don't be like me, and jump off Dream Therapy because you're so excited to be speaking to SAO. [laughter] They will not be impressed!

 ASTRO: While you're shaped, you won't be able to see the replies that the gods are giving you, so it's very important to avoid being shaped during that time.

  LAVANYA: [laughter] Yes, it is very important and if you are shaped and you're talking with SAO, just remember to have your teammates ask politely and kindly, like good children, if they may retrieve you from the Song first, or else they'll [SAO] get real pissed. I don't say this from experience.

  LAVANYA: The other much rarer encounter - sometimes you won't get a god eye, but there's still something off about your game. This is usually the voiced God encounters. What will happen if you have a voiced God in your game is that the mission objective up in the top corner will change. It will no longer say your mission: it should be something like - “LISTEN,” or “EVERYTHING IS FINE.”

  LAVANYA: It's very ominous. You will see it immediately, and you will probably feel very stressed, but don't worry: it'll probably all be fine. Maybe.

  LAVANYA: When you're in game and performing missions, what you should always do in order to get more lore is go ahead and press tab - or select, or whatever your key binding is for the menu - and read the mission objectives in the corner. Usually this has information on the mission and general lore details on what you're supposed to be doing.

  LAVANYA: For example, you can find out by pressing tab that sleepers are controlled by lights. What are you going to do with the information? I don't know. That's up to you, but it's there.

  LAVANYA: Collect bonus evidence throughout the missions in order to get more snacks, so you can get that cool punk jeans you've been coveting for years, but also so that you can unlock journal entries. Journal entries have a shit ton of lore, and usually this lore is enough to make sure that you fill up your journal. [crosstalk]

  LAVANYA: [crosstalk] This stuff is not accessible in the rest of the game, so make sure that you are collecting at least some bonus evidence in every round, just so that you can make sure that you fill up your journal. You can tell when you have a new journal entry, because the laptop screen will be glowing. This signifies new entries, so go ahead and check!

  LAVANYA: Other methods are the TV. You can watch the TV recordings as they come out, which I mentioned back in the Bells section. So, at level 20, there's 4, and you'll access more with each level that you gain.

  LAVANYA: The Whisper Twins are always an option, as discussed above. You can listen to the enemy voice lines, and you can listen to dreams. Right now, we currently have a muffler that plays when you're in a dream, so you can't hear the other players, but it's generally polite to stay quiet after returning to the boxcar, just make sure you won't accidentally clip over the dream text or something else.

  LAVANYA: Dreams are the primary way that people are able to interact with the voiced gods. Voiced god encounters are pretty rare, but dreams are more common. And even if you don't personally have your dream answered, which is pretty rare, all things considered, you will still get semi frequent dreams, which will update you on lore, or at least give you a chunk of the god in question's personality, which is always good, and illuminating in terms of their overall perspective.

  LAVANYA: And, finally, you can send a prayer! Talk to the gods and they just might answer. Keep in mind, if you fuck up your prayers - speaking from experience here - you can back off of the square and it will reset it.

 ASTRO: Don't open your eyes.

  LAVANYA: Do not open your eyes! Do not open your eyes! That's how I sent an eff bomb of epic proportions to Speak-as-One, which did not endear me. Don't do that - don't talk to your mother-father like that, kids. It's just wrong.

ASTRO: Even though we try to keep this podcast as close to lore as possible, because of the disparate nature of the information in the game, there are some things that we just can't help. We have to infer some things. We have to take guesses in order to present the information to you in a comprehensive way.

 ASTRO: So there's some inherent bias in what we're saying here, but we are trying as much as we can to stick just to the facts. With that in mind, make your own interpretations based on what we're saying. Look for information yourself. It's all in the game. You can find it yourself. Ask questions. Talk to people -

 LAVANYA: - Definitely talk to people. Keep in mind, one of the key themes of the game is friendship. So, go out there and be your sunniest, friendliest self.

ASTRO: The Blackout Club made by Question Games. Our advertising director is Bellamy. Our transcript is by Lavanya. Audio editing is by me, Astro. Xaviul is Updog.

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET, EPISODE ONE [Transcript]

LAVANYA Good morning, Red Acre! And welcome to your favorite nighttime show, the Dreaming Prophet. Now, they may have taken away our phones, and they may have taken away our computers, and they may have taken away that coveted one hour of subliminal messaging that passes as television here.

  LAVANYA But do you know what they haven't taken away? The shitty radios in the garage, which is exactly what we're using right now to bring this especially to you, because we're just that fucking dedicated dedicated to you. You're welcome. Now, my name is Lavanya --.

  ASTRO And I'm Astro, and we'll be your hosts for tonight!

  LAVANYA So make sure you have fun~.

  LAVANYA First of all. We're gonna start off this podcast with a quick explanation of what it is. If you want to do the honors Astro?

  ASTRO Yes. This is a "The Blackout Club" podcast for Blackout Club players, and we'll talk about what that means after we wrap up with our intro. But the basics are that this podcast focuses only on the facts. All lore, no speculation.

  LAVANYA Even though we love speculation.

  ASTRO We do. We love speculation. But we want to provide solid facts for other players use in their own speculation, so we'll try to keep ours to a minimum. We begin each show with a spoiler warning, and a content warning, because this game does deal with some heavy topics. And we will go right into that now.

  LAVANYA Our general content warning for this podcast is that there will be discussion of children being harmed, and children being injured! Nothing in depth, but that is kind of part of the premise of the game, as well as general horror themes.

  ASTRO And as a blanket warning, please keep in mind that the Dreaming Prophet will not be spoiler free. If you really want to experience the game to its fullest, play it yourself, don't listen.

 [Music cue: Sleepers playing strings]

ASTRO If you haven't heard of The Blackout Club game, go ahead and check out WWW.BLACKOUTCLUBGAME.COM.

  ASTRO And there's a lot of info on that page, but I'll read off a little bit. The premise of the game is that you are a child in this suburban town, Red Acre. And you are recording evidence of the strange things that are going on, to try to tell the world about this cult that's taken over everyone - including you, including your parents.

ASTRO When you close your eyes, you get possessed by a god, and so does everyone else in the town. It’s called “blacking out,” and it causes people to sleepwalk, and then wake up with dirt and blood on them, and trails that lead through their houses. Or they may not even wake up in their bed at all. They may wake up outside of town. They may wake up on train tracks. Kids in the Blackout Club are trying to record what’s happening in their town, to hopefully stop it, and they’re also trying to protect their own while they do it. Because as they’ve found out, the organizations behind this phenomenon - the god, Speak-As-One; the organization, CHORUS - They don’t want anyone to know what’s going on in Redacre, and they certainly don’t want it to stop.

[Music cue: Stalker switch]

  LAVANYA The Blackout Club is primarily a multiplayer game, but there are parts of it that are single player. As of right now, there are no plans for single player missions, but we do have the prologue! The Prologue basically involves you, instead of playing your own individual character, you are playing Bells, who is a young woman 14, about to be 15 in three months, if I recall correctly. And she is trying to figure out a way to leave Red Acre!

  BELLS V/O OK, recording... I think... Hi. It’s Bells - Isabella. If you’ve done your homework, you probably know I live in the Radio Quiet Zone. We have no cell signal here, no internet - Nothing. So no one knows what’s happening to us. At night, our town - [stuttering] - it changes. We like, wake up in the woods, or on train tracks, no idea how we got there. If you tell an adult, they just laugh it off, and most folks my age - well, they’re cowards.

BELLS V/O But - so last night, I set up a hidden camera, and I finally got proof. Stuff the world needs to see. The video’s all on this thumb drive, and tomorrow, I’m gonna take Mom’s car, and sneak it far enough out of town to finally get online. To reach you. When you see this, come to Redacre. Help us. Please. Um, thank you.

  LAVANYA OK. So that exciting clip is a line directly from the prologue of the Blackout Club, the single player mission. What we heard there was Bells explaining the basic premise of the game. I personally feel it's important for most players to try to play it, because it sets up the basic themes of the game.

  LAVANYA The basic themes of the game are friendship and also psychological terror. What Belles keeps having emphasized to her throughout the prologue is that she cannot trust anything that she sees or anything that she hears. She's seeing a strange shape that is pursuing her and trying to maybe kill her, maybe mind meld with her, throughout the prologue. The game will instantly end if you're caught by it.

  LAVANYA She's getting mysterious voices in her head: two different ones that are speaking to her and trying to guide her through this to safety. And she's realizing that: are her parents are on this conspiracy that she's discovered prior to the start of the game, or is literally everyone in town?

  LAVANYA She cannot trust anyone in the town and she cannot even trust herself. As is shown by the ending of the prologue, when the voices lead her all the way to the boxcar, and then she is dragged away.

  LAVANYA So, it's kind of a good summary for the overall game, because the children face the same issues during the multiplayer game play as well. You can't trust the adults. You can't trust the other children who might be following opposing Daimons, and you certainly can't trust yourself, because the game keeps empathizing, every time you close your eyes - every time you black out in game - you're being possessed.

  LAVANYA So the only people that you can trust actually are your friends. The player characters operate in missions of up to three other players, all of whom are bound together by friendship, trust, and the knowledge that they are working together to succeed in taking down CHORUS. Bells is betrayed by her parents in the prologue, and she is potentially betrayed by the voices as well. The player character, any time that you play with stalker enabled, is betrayed by the stalker, who is someone in the Blackout Club that is working for SAO instead of the kids. So, when you can't even trust yourself, the only people that you can rely on are the friends that you choose to surround yourself with - which is one of the biggest themes of the game.

  [Music cue: Stalker switch]

ASTRO The prologue, in addition to introducing you to this story, also introduces you to a lot of the core gameplay, which we'll go over here.

  ASTRO You have two different things that you can see. When your eyes are open, you can see the overworld, you can see the adults walking around sleepwalking or not, and you can see the houses and everything else around you.

  ASTRO When you close your eyes, you can see the Shape, you can see footsteps that are guiding you to your next objective, and you can see secret messages that may be hidden somewhere in the map. Among other things, there are several new things that have been cropping up lately, so it's always a good idea to close your eyes every so often, and see what's out there.

  LAVANYA Exactly! Because sometimes it's secret messages, sometimes it's just secret marks that, when you look at them with your eyes open, they just look like scuffs on the ground - and when you close your eyes, they're glowing in red!

 LAVANYA We're going gonna do a quick breakdown of all the basic items in the game. The way that the items are set up in game is that you have two classifications of items, basically.

LAVANYA You have the hero items, and then you have the standard normal items that you use and then they'll be terminated from your inventory. Let's start off with the hero items. Hero items are controversial! They are a controversial part of the fandom, because everyone has their specific favorite and everyone will talk shit about others. Which one you take ultimately just depends on how you feel and what your gameplay style is, because this will change the way you play the game pretty significantly.

LAVANYA So with the hero items, we have three hero items. First off, we have the Taser which is, to quote the game, “a close range stun gun. It requires time to recharge after every use and is not for use by children.” Luckily, we're not children in game. We're 14, going on fifteen in three months. Perfectly safe for us to use!

LAVANYA The way that the Taser works is: it is an item and it is an escape item, basically, that will recharge over time. So if a lucid or a sleeper grabs you,  then you'll be able to automatically tase them as long as you have a charge on your taser and be able to escape from them. It traps them for about three to four seconds in a loop of electricity.

LAVANYA If you have a Stalker in game, you can also tase them. If you have a friend who is shaped in-game, and thus wandering around spouting off voice lines about being asleep, you can also tase them. I don't know why you would, but that option is there!

LAVANYA The second hero item is the grappling hook. The description for the grappling hook is: “will stick to walls and ceilings, and lower a climbable rope.” So it's pretty straightforward! What the grappling hook does is basically it increases your mobility in a game that is already so heavily focused on movement.

LAVANYA With a grappling hook, you don't have to jump up places. You can throw your hook and you can hop right onto it and climb up. I would say it extends about 15 to 20 feet down.

ASTRO On average, it's about two stories. So if you are three stories above something, [you] will have a steep drop, but it'll be less fall damage than if you fell from the full height.

LAVANYA Exactly. And the grappling hook - most places in the game, you'll be able to get with the grappling hook, or else you'll be able to get as long as you and a friend have a grappling hook. Most of the tunnels that connect the rooms in the underground and most of, like, the major shorter cliffs, like Hoadly's Leap, in the first two areas, you can climb up that with a single grappling hook. So it's pretty useful if you want to increase your mobility.

LAVANYA It's by no means required. You can get anywhere that you would get with a grappling hook without a grappling hook, it may just take longer.

LAVANYA The last hero item is the crossbow which says, “modified from an old history project to fire tranquilizer darts with pretty decent accuracy.” Because Red Acre plays history rough, I guess. In a lot of ways, the crossbow is possibly one of the most powerful items in game so long as you have tranquilizer darts. So if you are willing to drop the snacks to buy tranquilizer dart at the beginning of each game, what this does is it means that anyone within - I would probably say, 60 meters or so - as long as you have your crossbow cursor aiming at them, you will be able to shoot them.

LAVANYA You can shoot and tranquilize tranquilize a Lucid from about two houses, down as of June 6th, 2019. This may get changed after we say that. [laughter]

LAVANYA Honestly, the crossbow is my favorite item, when I'm not scampering around the walls like a fucking aye-aye. Because you can use it to take down Lucids. You can use it to take down drones - not the large ones that fly overhead, but the other player drones, if you just want to be horrible for some reason.  You can take it to take down sound mines. You can use it to.. I think that's about it, actually.

LAVANYA So, maybe technically, it doesn't have a lot of use? But it has a lot of use in my heart. I love the crossbow. We have a very special relationship.

ASTRO It's not versatile, but it is useful.

LAVANYA Exactly. It is useful and if you have stalkers in your game you can absolutely buy a ton of tranq darts and load that motherfucker up.

ASTRO The hero items will become obvious to you when you're in the boxcar.  There is a table that has all three of them laid out in a row. And, strictly in my opinion, they're in the order of difficulty.

ASTRO  If you're a new player - if you have just picked up the game - the taser is going to be your best friend as you try to learn how to navigate and how to get out of these scrapes. The taser is your second chance.

ASTRO The grappling hook helps you explore more after you understand parts of the map; after you start getting on your own two feet.

ASTRO And the crossbow, I feel, is extremely difficult to master, but once you do have mastery of it, it is so helpful to everything that you do.

LAVANYA It really is. It takes a minute to master it [the grappling hook] because the walls are not always smooth in the areas in which the grappling hook can actually successfully land are not always straight-cut.

LAVANYA I've been using the grappling hook for three months now, and I still sometimes hit spots where I throw it, it should land and instead it ricochets off the walls. [laughter] Because early access! But once you get the hang of it and you have a general idea for what the grappling hook looks like when it will be able to actually drop down, it is absolutely wonderful.

LAVANYA So now we're just going to cover the in-game items real quick which are largely self-explanatory.

LAVANYA The first of the in-game items is the bandage! The bandage is basically: you can find this in chests, you can start off the game with this if you have the Medic perk, and you can buy them from the snack machines or from the firework vendors in game. What it does is it will heal about one third of your stamina. So if you've taken a wound by falling off a cliff, being grabbed by a lucid, or being fucked up by a stalker, it's here for you. You can bandage yourself or else you can be bandaged by another player, too, which is always useful.

LAVANYA Second up is the energy bar, which is often having debates involving it on the various Discords over whether or not it is OP. Because the energy bar will briefly top off your complete stamina bar, so you have endless energy, and more importantly you will do not get staggered when you fall. So you can jump off as high of a cliff as you want, and when you hit the bottom, as long as you had an energy bar on the way, you will be able to still keep running with no interruption.

LAVANYA Third up is the flash bang, which - it is an escape item. It is a military flash bang, which - we are not asking how these fucking children found this in Red Acre. Red ACre is just stocked the fuck up. What it does is you can throw it and you can blind enemies - in what I'd probably say is a six foot radius around where it lands? - And it will also stun the Shape. It will also make the screen flash white for any players around, but it won't stun them the way it will for, like, Stalkers, which is always nice.

LAVANYA Third up is the noisemaker. It's little fireworks. When you toss them, it will create a ton of noise, and it will attract any lucids or sleepers who are not presently engaged over to it. So it's a very useful method of crowd control in a game that does not necessarily have crowd control. It also seems like it may be one of the most common drops because you will usually have a noisemaker in your games.

LAVANYA Foam grenade.. basically, whether or not its OP, like with the flash bang grenade, is a pretty big topic of discussion in some parts of the community. Because a foam grenade, once you thought it will create a puddle of foam - hyper absorbent foam! - on the ground. When you land on that, it will produce no fall damage. If you walk on it, it will have no noise. It will disable cameras temporarily if you throw it at it. It will disable sound mines and proximity mines permanently if you throw them on it. And anyone who walks through it will start producing footprints you can see exactly where they go. In addition to that, if you throw it at the Shape, it will stun the Shape very briefly, and it will highlight the Shape, so he'll be covered in foam and you can actually see him with your eyes open.

ASTRO The foam grenade as one of the most versatile items in the game, if not the most versatile item.

LAVANYA Oh I think it's absolutely the most.

ASTRO It's quite genius. I think it's one of the highlights of the blackout club as a game..

LAVANYA It is, it is, because the thing is the foam grenade is one item, and people can use it for about five different gameplay styles. Which is very nice, because I almost never use it to actually make - to reduce noise, I use it as a limited form of crowd control to get Lucids the fuck away from me, as a method to stunning Lucids, and also to ensure that I don't take fall damage, so I never have to stop. [laughter]

LAVANYA The next item is basically, uh, a tranquilizer dart. Unless you are carrying a crossbow, it is melee only. It is an escape item. You can use it when you are grabbed, or else you will have to grab a Lucid in order to use it. Or a Sleeper, or a Stalker. Kids can be tranquilized by Stalkers. It is not a big deal. It will stun you for about 5 seconds, but it is fucking infuriating. Best way to make somebody tilt in zero point five seconds! [laughter]

LAVANYA The sleep trip wire is basically the tranquilizer dart for anyone who plays more stealthily. It will create a trip wire across the ground, and any enemies - whether that's Lucids, Sleepers, or other children - who walk across it, will be stunned. In the case of Lucids and Sleepers, it will knock them the fuck out. You can also set it up for the Shape, and it will stun him temporarily the same that it will do for player characters.

LAVANYA Quick note here! Except for shooting other players’ drones, TBC does not have friendly fire. So you don't have to worry about setting up a sleep tripwire and then fucking over your teammates, because they just won't be affected by it at all.

LAVANYA And the last item is lock picks! The locked areas in game are the chest, doors to the houses, and I do believe that's it. You can also “kick in” anything that is locked instead of unlocking it, at the severe risk of drawing a shit ton of aggro. So, it's another matter of gameplay style.

[Music cue: Stalker switch]

Astro [00:06:58] When you play a mission your character has one of four classes. These are called major powers in the game, and the four major powers at this time are Takedown, Prankcaller, Unstoppable and Drone.

  ASTRO Takedown players are your hand to hand combatants. They are really really good at wrestling with sleepers - with adults - which is something that not all of the kids can do. As a 14 year old, a 15 year old, you don't have the strength or body weight of an adult, but Takedown players have trained themselves to be able to do that to be able to stand a little bit more of a fighting chance. Takedown players can wrestle enemies for themselves or for their friends. If you see a friend in trouble, you can grab an enemy and hold them down and try to decrease the danger in that area.

  LAVANYA Takedown is one of the most uncommon powers for people to take, but honestly it's one of the most useful, because what's more helpful than when somebody is jumping for your friend when they're on low health, than being able to just jump in there and pin them for the rest of the session down to the ground? The Lucid! Don't pin your friends.

  ASTRO Prankcaller is a more stealth focused class. Prankcaller asks you to use your tech know-how to hack into phones and other devices, and disable them for your friends. You can call sleepers at the first level, which distracts them with a spam marketing call while you sneak past them. Sleepers can't see you. They can only hear you and so filling their ears with pyramid schemes will distract them pretty well, unless you make a horribly loud noise.

  ASTRO Unstoppable temporarily makes you invulnerable and gives you extra stamina. Your stamina doesn't deplete when you run or jump. At the first level, you have about 10 seconds to do whatever you want and get the hell out of dodge.

  LAVANYA And, my god, you can do anything you want. Fall damage: no. Lucids: no. Sleepers: no. Speedmines: they will fucking destroy you, don't do those. But anything else!

  ASTRO So this is really, really good if you are a player who tends to get yourself in a bunch of bad situations and needs to run very, very fast. Also interesting: Unstoppable recharges when you take damage. If you end up in a lot of scrapes, that will eventually help you down the road.

  LAVANYA Exactly. And if you like going places and you like going to them fast, Unstoppable is an excellent power - but you have to keep in mind when Unstoppable runs out, you will have to take a ton of damage in order to turn it back on. So don't race into danger, race across the map, separate yourself from your team, and then start crying when your unstoppable is gone. That's the classic mistake.

  ASTRO And the last class is Drone. Drone players have a secondary player character, if you want, which is this drone. It's a stolen drone from the cult that you've managed to jury rig into your own device. Drones are a remote camera that you can send around the map within a limited range from yourself that can see other things and at higher levels can perform actions such as recording or tasering. Drone players are able to look around corners and scout out inside houses and rooms without actually going there and putting themselves in danger.

  LAVANYA Yes. If your drone touches anyone, then it will, like, fucking die? But the good news is you can either send your friend over - your friend with Unstoppable - Make sure your team is well-varied! - into danger to grab your drone off the ground and bring it back to you, or else you can manually fetch your drone. So, it cannot be destroyed permanently, as far as I know.

  ASTRO Now these classes all work well together. Having a well-balanced team helps you because it means that you have access to all of these different powers.

  LAVANYA Exactly.

  ASTRO But it's by no means required for you to have one of every single type. I think that's a really nice feature of the game, which is that you can have whatever team composition you want. If you have one take down and three unstoppable, that will still help you a lot.

  LAVANYA Exactly. I will clarify: if you have four drone users, you may have a little bit more of a rough time, but you just have to take it steady and slow. And also have a designated victim who has to collect your drones back.

  ASTRO Now the minor powers get a little bit more complicated. There are six of them right now. They are Locksmith, Atlas, Improved Stamina, Lucky Loot, Medic and Nutritionist. Most of these will give you an extra item. Locksmith, Medic and Nutritionist will all give you various items at the beginning of the game to help you out, which are, respectively, a lock pick, a bandage, and a energy bar.

  ASTRO So if you happen to be the type to use those items a lot. Those are definitely minor powers to look into. Atlas allows you to run while carrying bodies. This won't impact the noise made from carrying bodies, but it will allow you to move quicker while you're carrying them.

  LAVANYA There isn't much practical use for carrying bodies unless you want to be a sociopath and dump them off the cliffs or something. That's not advisable. Don't kill your grandma.

  ASTRO Bodies can be discovered and if you happen to be in a tight spot and you need to hide a body, Atlas is a great power to help you book it.

  ASTRO Improved Stamina gives you 10 percent more stamina than what you start with. Again, super useful if you want to run a little bit, but maybe you aren't into the idea of the whole Unstoppable power. Improved Stamina can get you a little further. The description for Improved Stamina also says it can be used to rush skills as well as movement. They mentioned lock picking and hacking like in the Prankcaller power. I don't know how true that is. I've tried rushing lock picking and I think it speeds up a little bit, but this is not necessarily true.

  LAVANYA The truth of the Deck is whatever you believe will become true. If you just believe that you're lock picking a little bit faster, I'm sure it's 100 percent working as the devs intend.

  ASTRO And the last minor power we'll cover is Lucky Loot. Lucky Loot will sometimes grant you a second copy of whatever item you pick up. Extremely useful in all cases. Honestly, Lucky Loot players are an asset to every team.

  LAVANYA They really are. Lucky Loot can sometimes be the absolute difference between acing a level, and crashing and burning after a Stalker throws a foam grenade in your face. You will semi-frequently end up with doubled lock picks, doubled flash bangs, and everything else. And even with the ability to buy flash bangs and tranqs and bandages and candy bars with the little fireworks machines now, that can make a ton of difference. As far as I know, you do not get Lucky Loot when you purchase goods, though, you're just out of luck there.

 [Music cue: Stalker switch]

ASTRO So, as mentioned in the prologue, the core premise of the game deals with this idea of gathering evidence of what's happening in your town and hoping to eventually take it out of the town. And in the game, you do this quite a lot.

  ASTRO There are some missions that will require you to record things. There are also things called bonus evidence which are scattered around the map. When you go into your pause menu, you can see how many pieces of bonus evidence you have in any specific game. It can be anywhere from three pieces to possibly 14 pieces and maybe more. As your map expands, you have the opportunity to find more bonus evidence, but it will also be scattered further. You'll have to travel more to find it. And each piece of bonus evidence that you get will give you more XP, and it will also unlock journal entries for you to read in the boxcar.

  ASTRO These pieces of bonus evidence can be various things. You will know them, because they will prompt you to record them by having a little bit of TV static and a slight green haze on them. They can be posters. They can be suitcases. They can be -

  LAVANYA They can be creepy duffel bags full of mail. Depending on the mission, sometimes the bonus evidence will be things like pages from confidential files that you can kind of, but not quite, read. Or else they'll be bloodied up furniture, or blood stains on the ground that you have to clean up. It really just depends on what type of game you're in at that point!

  ASTRO Yes. So if you happen to see that TV static effect - if you happen to see that green haze - take out your phone record whatever it is. Ultimately it can only help you.

[Music cue: Stalker switch]

  ASTRO As if we couldn't have more things to do in our games - in addition to the main missions, the bonus evidence, just listening to the different enemy voice lines to get lore - there is another objective that you can complete throughout many missions, which we might call a fragment quest.

  ASTRO There is a Daimon of this game called Thee-I-Dare, and Thee-I-Dare was fragmented. He was shattered. And because of that shattering event, various parts of his name are scattered around the map. They appear as small bits of fog against a wall, or in a specific area, and you can collect them by turning on your flashlight, aiming it at the spot, and closing your eyes.

  ASTRO This does make you more visible, so it's not something you should do in a risky situation, but collecting these named fragments allows you to choose how to use them. You can return them to Thee-I-Dare, or you could turn them over to Speak-As-One to be burned. There are no in-game mechanics for this. However, when you interact with those Daimons, you can choose what you'd like to do.

  LAVANYA Personally, I was going to do this fragment section, but someone banned me from it - [laughter] - on account of the fact I keep burning mine! But if you want to burn them, the way you do that is you light up a Light of Rebellion, one of the reward items you can get from the chest, and you just send off a prayer. And you're like, hey, Speak as One, I want you to know - here's some fragments for burning!

  ASTRO Fragments will appear once in a while. And if you spy a fragment in one place but you can't retrieve it at that time, your next fragment will always appear in that place until you collect it.

 [Music cue: Stalker switch]

LAVANYA So as your resident Speak-as-One stan, I'm going to cover the next game mode, which is possibly the most important game mode that you will ever play. Fuck the main missions, because this is what we're placed on this Earth for.

  LAVANYA So, Stalker Mode was introduced in Update 5, which was phrased ENTER THE STALKER. Basically, in order to access the Stalker mode, you'll need to gain one Dossier, and then enter into the Stalker van, and select a mission to stalk.

  LAVANYA The stalker is the player antagonist of the game. Basically your mission is not to make the team of children wipe, but to increase the spookiness of their playing experience, by not getting caught, filming them, and attracting enemies to them. You're trying to make the game harder and you're trying to freak them out. It's a lot of fun. The responses and reactions you can get from the player characters is always fucking amazing. So you'll be playing one versus two at the very minimum, because in order for a Stalker to arrive in a game, it has to have two players at the very least. Often you'll end up in a fourstack, so it'll be you versus four players.

  LAVANYA Again your goal in this game mode is not to wipe the player characters. You will almost never be able to wipe the player characters. But! It is to just make it more difficult for them. And usually if people see a stalker is in the game, they will derail everything and become dedicated to hunting you down like a fucking dog. So it's a lot of fun for everyone involved! Like a really sadistic game of tag!

  ASTRO It should be noted that when you begin the stalker mode, there is explanation text on the screen that starts with you will be caught. This stalker adds atmosphere, adds danger, but they are not the protagonist of the Blackout Club. The club kids for which the game is named are the protagonists of the game.

  LAVANYA And It's important to note that that if you wipe the kids, you will get your dossier back, the only way that you can get points is keeping them alive to farm them for interactions with the lucids or for proof of their crimes. You get points and you reach the top with the Stalker leadership board, which can reward you either a jacket or a shirt, through recording and interacting with the kids. The goal is not, which can never be stated enough, to wipe them wipe the entire party. The mode is ultimately about encouraging interaction.

  ASTRO Maybe the real winning was the friends we made along the way.

LAVANYA Yes. Maybe the real winning is the friends we made along the way. And the real purpose of the stalker mode is learning the beauty of the enemys to bff-les for life. Don't hunt down your stalker like a dog and tie them up to sacrifice In-Her-Teeth. Bring them home for hot cocoa and a blanket.

[Music cue: Stalker Switch]

ASTRO So if you are a player from the Blackout Club, you may have listened to this episode and thought to yourself - I already know all of this! What is this podcast of use to me? The reason we’re making this episode is to catch everyone up to the same point. From here on out, we'll be moving on and talking about new things, we’ll be talking about things more in depth, that you may not have thought about before. Or maybe you did!

LAVANYA Exactly. And it's always important to note - we're starting off these first few podcasts with an introductory to the game series and everything in it, partially because so many players in game have no fucking idea what's going on. They don't know how the Lucids are alerted, they don't necessarily know what the storyline is, they don't understand [Enhanced] Horror Mode.

ASTRO The learning curve of the Blackout Club is very steep, and that isn't a bad part of the game..

LAVANYA But it can be very frustrating!

ASTRO It can be very frustrating, but ultimately, it requires you to rely on your friends, which is the core of the game, and you learn together. This podcast is a small way to help that learning curve, and to help individual players learn the language and the playstyle of the game, so they can become better, and pass on more information.

LAVANYA And this podcast is also about ensuring that we can become not only your friends, but your best friends. Your truest, closest friends. WE SPEAK AS ONE.

ASTRO Oh my god. I can't believe you used me for advertising!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CREDITS:

The Blackout Club is made by Question Games. Our fact-checker is Be11amy. Our transcript is by Lavanya. Audio editing is by me, Astro. Xaviul is a henway.

[deadskepticfiles]

QUESTIONER: [illegible]

My sweet, wonderful boy. You assume that you can't already do anything you want to. These boundaries are self-imposed. But I can show you how to break them. All you have to do.. is keep praying.

[deadskepticfiles]

[3/22/19] Voice Encounter: SPEAK-AS-ONE

ORIGINAL PRAYER SENT TO SAO TO DELIBERATELY ANTAGONIZE THEM: So is it true what THEE-I-DARE says about how you're actually totally working with him? Because, honestly, I totally saw it coming.

SAO, joining a match: You think we serve the Adversary?

B: All you voices are sketchy!

SAO: You're wrong.

B: Prove me wrong!

[The Shape is set on them.]

B: Is it proving me wrong that the Shape is after me now?

SAO: Repent.

B: I don't repent for anything! All I'm seeing is you guys asking for a whole lot out of us, and not giving much back!

SAO: We ask nothing. We will have you.

B: Yeah, I got that. The fact that a lot of this is extremely nonconsensual - you just mindjack people at your will.

B: An adversary to me is anything that's taking away the free will of people! From my perspective, there's more than one of you!

SAO: Will is a disease.

B: That sounds like something an adversary would say.

SAO: You know nothing of him.

B: [Angry monologue about free will I don't entirely remember.] Frankly, from our perspective, that's the worst of it! LET US SCREW OURSELVES OVER IF WE'RE GOING TO DO THAT. There's no need to - do the worst of it to save us! Do you think it's a coincidence that the worst of human crimes involve taking away the consent of other people!?

SAO: You are divided. We will save you.

B: Who are you even? You sound like Speak as One to me.

SAO: What is consent when all is one?

SAO: You're wrong. Life, self, all a dream.

B: You think that life is a dream? Like, when I'm awake, you think I'm dreaming? Or are you just trying to convince me?

SAO: You have been led astray.

B: By who?

SAO: The Adversary you boast of.

B: When I refer to an adversary, I refer to Speak-As-One! And I thought with your espousing of everyone being one, that was you. And if that's not you, who's the Adversary?

SAO: Wrong.

B: Then who are you? What flavor of awful voice are you?

SAO: Speak-As-One.

B: Then who is the Adversary? Because from my perspective, you're the worst of the lot.

SAO: A cracked lens is a flawed view.

B: Of course our lens is fractured! We're meant for individuality, we're not supposed to be one whole unanimous... thing! We're not that kind of a species!

SAO: How sad. You believe it.

B: I do! Illuminate me on how I'm wrong.

SAO: You will join the song.

B: And now we're back to consent being an illusion! What if I don't join the song?

SAO: It's a matter of time, little one.

M, aside: Oh, you get the little one, and I get the fucking hypocrite?

B, aside: I STAND BY MY BELIEFS, MAR.

B: I will enjoy drawing this out as long as possible. Let's see if I can make this as frustrating for you as you're making it for me.

[SAO gets quiet, Bel gets shaped.]

SAO: WELCOME.