Content warnings for this episode include: Violence, Animal cruelty or animal death (Shank as usual), Magical Ableism?, Death + Injury, Blood, Religious Violence, Character Death, Emotional Manipulation, Body horror
Intro - Miracle Born
When you were born, it was as a miracle. You entered a world that was grieving and in need of hope; the landscape charred by war and fallen empires, the masses lost their beliefs in all the rubble. You raised your hands to heaven, praying for an opportunity to help, to be their savior, and the Lord smiled upon you and reached down to wipe the tears from your eyes. The rains of his judgement had fallen, but you did not abandon the world in need. Even as a child, you were always sickly; he tested your resolve with plague and famine, but your faith never wavered. You dreamt of a beautiful world, heaven on earth, when the years of tribulation would end and his kingdom would return, and all would be light and fair on God’s green earth. You walked in ruin and spent the night listening to strange preachers, and laughed in the dark safety of your bed when you could not muster the strength to leave it. Your world was a nightmare, and yet, you know one day all will wake.
You sank, in the sea, in the night, when the forces of evil conspired to sink your vessel. But as you rise upon the shore of a godless country, to a place named for the same saint that you are, you know that you are unchanged by the water as you have always been. It is God’s gift, his one consolation; as long as your faith remains strong, the darkness will never find root in your blood. Never in you will it twist your flesh or whisper Hello From The Hallowoods.
Theme.
Right now, I hover in the root-grown rafters of a warehouse in the Root District of Scout City. Below me are ruins, of boxes and barrels and crates and canisters and people and pigs. And yet, the ruin that comes to this place has only just begun. The theme of tonight’s episode is Vengeances.
Story 1 - Deputy Down
“Spread out. He does not leave this building,” Cole called. His baton was extended, as though the extra few feet of silver and lesser metals would be able to deter the pig-man if he was really trying to hurt someone. No, that would fall to Ignatius or Oswin—or Heather, if she were here, but she had been scouting elsewhere that night and they hadn’t been able to get in touch before they were tipped off to a loud crashing within the Roots District. That was the infuriating thing; he was a deputy probably because his father had been appointed to Sheriff and it had fallen naturally, while each of the others had earned it for their strengths. Ignatius nodded, and took the rows of shattered crates and stored goods to the left; Oswin drifted to the right.
Just for a moment, when he walked in, he had seen him—the pig man that refused to die, face blotched and bloody, eye holes empty, grinning in the dark down that first alley. And then he had stepped into the dark, vanished from sight. There was the sound of crackling flame as a small fire blazed in the middle of the room, and he could hear the baying and howling of a hound, increasingly distant, snarling.
Well, that left Cole one direction, and it was forward. He made his way slowly through the carnage, studied the wreckage. Surely the pig man hadn’t just been destroying cargo. He looked up; there was a blast of flame from the back of the warehouse, a high-pitched chuckle from Oswin, the way that they laughed when their life was in danger, and a sound of rending wood. They’d caught up to him. Cole began to dash down the alley, through the smoldering embers of the fire, and stepped on a hand. He slid to a stop again, despite the sound of a confrontation raging. Part of him didn’t want to look down, to see which face the killers that haunted Scout City had taken from him next.
“Ow,” said Heather, looking up. Her face was smeared with ash and blood, and it trailed from her lips and down her throat and police jacket. Cole knelt down beside her, ignored Ignatius’ rash jets of flame from the back of the lane.
“Heather?” said Cole, and shook his head. “Christ. What happened? I thought you were Lower Trunk tonight. You’re going to be alright…”
He brushed aside a wooden board from over her body, and the way that her ribcage was concave said she maybe was not going to be alright at all.
“I guess I had a hunch,” Heather said, and grabbed his arm. “Cole, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I have something I need to tell you. About the Quartet.”
“The Quartet?” said Cole; he took her hand, and then let go of it; god he wasn’t sure what to do. “Were they here? Are they connected to Shank after all?”
“Cole, the Quartet aren’t who Scout City says they are,” Heather said, and heaved up blood again. “You know me. You know I only want to save this city.”
“Heather, you’re not making any…” Cole began, but her hand moved, revealed an object tucked against her side, beneath the rubble. A mask made from the steel banding and stretched white face of a drum. His eyes flicked up, caught a black robe folded and buried further in a ball in the rubble.
“Oh,” he said. “God.”
“You get it,” she smiled, blood in her teeth. “They’re going to need help, Cole, without me. Everything we’ve been doing… it’s to protect this place from monsters. I know that’s what you want too.”
“What are you asking me for,” Cole breathed. She stared into his eyes; hers were dark cores of energy in her freckled face.
“Just go here, and hear us out,” Heather said, and pressed a shred of old parchment close to his chest. Cole took it, and nodded, and tucked it into his coat’s front pocket without looking at it.
“What do you want?” he said. “I don’t know if I can move you. I can go for help…”
“Just let my mom know I died trying to save this city,” she said. “That’s all. I really did.”
“She’ll know,” Cole said, and held her hand tightly in both of his. “Everyone in Scout City will know.”
He rose, and called, “Ignatius! Oswin! Deputy down!” and there was a rush of flame and pestilence that followed, a blur of sensations and images—the pig man’s silhouette, wreathed in flame, disappearing through the warehouse back through the wall of Scout City and into the Stumps; bright lights being shone, medics from the Scout City infirmary rushing in, pulling Heather from the rubble; he was careful to make sure that both robe and mask were long gone in the fires. Whatever Heather had done, it wasn’t worth tarnishing her memory in the eyes of the city. He kept pace with her stretcher all the way up to the infirmary; he made sure that he reached Mrs. McGowan first, before any of the medics could rush to break the news to her. Heather was dead on arrival, and he sat beside the city’s old medic, and she wept into his shoulder until Russell and the others arrived to take that responsibility from him. He barely exchanged two words with his father, arriving all too late to make a difference, and things did not slow down for him until he found himself walking alone down the lamplit street back to the deputy’s office, to sleep at his desk. And he stopped, beneath a brightly buzzing light, and at last went to inspect the piece of paper she had given him. It simply said:
Talk with the fifth string
In the old chapel
She will tell you everything
And on the back, a set of scrawled coordinates. God, Cole thought, and looked up to the light. There was a world where he took this to his father and the deputies made their investigation—by then the Quartet would have already abandoned the place, he was sure. What would he do if he was a good detective, he thought? What would he do if he was Clementine? And he took the parchment in his fist and returned it to the pocket, and began to walk into the dark. She’d say, he was certain, that if you wanted to crack the case, first you had to get inside of it.
Interlude 1 - Various Vengeances
A man who once said, why sell for a dollar when we could sell for two. A man who once said, the work that I do is ensuring that this factory runs and that is more valuable than all the rest. Dozens of men and women who told you in their speeches that they would fight for change, and when they were appointed, no change came. The corporations that shattered your earth and spilled poison in your waters and paid the right people to be allowed to fill your sky with smoke. The ones who let it happen over and over and over again across your decades. The ones who told you that working hard would build you wealth, the ones who were laid to waste when the black rains swept over the world and wealth mattered nothing when the sky was opened up to swallow you whole.
If you wished to get vengeance on any of these people for the part that they played in your world’s ending, you cannot, as they are already dead. All that are left of them now are the consequences.
There is a company which saw the end coming and chose to peddle a distraction instead of a solution. For them I hold a certain loathing. But be careful in moving against them, dreamer, for if the Botulus Corporation dies, so do millions who are kept alive only by their dreaming boxes. Is it worth disturbing one who does not want to wake?
We go now to one who only blames god, and himself.
Story 2 - Small World
Buck Silver shuddered in the large coat that had been thrown over his shoulders upon arriving in L'abbaye du Saint-Loris. It had been hours since their arrival, and yet the chill he had gotten from sailing across the Atlantic waves on Mort had not left the cores of his bones. Marco, Brooklyn, Hope, and the countesses had stayed at the lodgings that they had been offered—a series of humble guest rooms with straw mattresses, but Dashiell had set immediately on his business and Buck felt that, exhausted as he was, accompanying him was crucial. So he staggered along beside Dashiell’s square shoulder, keeping pace with their guide, the gatekeeper who had let them in. Guillaume was a weary-looking fellow himself, with leather-brown skin and a nest of frizzy black curls beneath a sloped green beret, and eyes that stared through you rather than at you. Guillaume limped ahead of them by a few steps.
“My daughter,” Dashiell said. “You’re sure it was her.”
“I only know her name was Belladonna,” said Guillaume. “She was the last American to come asking for a place to stay here. Several have done that; stayed here a few days after arriving on the shore. Six months ago, something like this.”
“The Countess wasn’t lying, then,” Dashiell muttered. “And you’re sure this person will know where she’s gone.”
“I know she talked much more with him than she did with me,” said Guillaume, and he came to stop outside a wooden door set into the abbey’s deep grey stone. “You can ask him yourself.”
“Before you go,” said Buck, and glanced out through a small window in the stone hall, to a statue that stood in the gardens outside, with arms spread protectively over the vegetable bushes. “The saint you venerate here reminds me of a rather recent acquaintance. What does this figure represent?”
Guillaume looked out across the grounds, following Buck’s gaze, and then shivered, and then shrugged.
“I am the wrong guy to ask,” he said. “It’s just old statues, man.”
“I see,” Buck smiled, and gave a slight bow. “I shall be sure to inquire with someone who is more dedicated to the history of this place.”
“I do not know all your words,” said Guillaume, and then grew cold. “They will tell you the history of this place tomorrow, and the way we do things around here. There is one rule I say more important; do not go in the old chapel.”
“I am obliged to ask why,” said Buck, eyebrows perking up.
“Bad floor,” said Guillame, and then pushed between Buck and Dashiell, making his way back down the hall they’d come from. “No good if you fall in.”
“You do use long words,” muttered Dashiell.
“I would,” said Buck. “I learned ‘em late, and I’ve got use of them to catch up on. Shall we see whether this person knows something about your daughter’s whereabouts? I’d hoped for a moment when she was mentioned that she’d still be here.”
“You and me both,” said Dashiell, and knocked on the door with a heavy fist.
“Come in,” said the voice on the other side, and Buck exchanged a last glance with Dashiell before they entered.
In contrast to the rather bare decorations that the abbey’s halls and guest quarters had, the room before them was lined high with bookshelves on each wall, and a marbled glass window let in warped rays of the morning sun. A map of the world, hand-illustrated, with the borders adjusted for the rising of the sea level—the most complete Buck had ever seen. The decoration of the room lay in contrast to its occupant, who was wearing muddy waders and a weathered blue rain jacket; an embroidered patch of a cloud sat on one shoulder. The stranger looked up to Buck, and was not entirely a stranger; Buck swore he knew the face, although it was difficult to place. A mess of curled hair that had the slightest oil-slick tinge of blue in its black, dark eyes that were jovial and curious, a thick stubble interrupted by a couple of scars.
“Apologies for the disturbance,” said Buck, cutting off Dashiell before he could get down to business. “We’ve just arrived here at the abbey. I am Detective Buck Silver, and this is my associate Detective Spade. We came on account of…”
That was all that Buck managed before the stranger had risen from his desk, tromped across the floorboards in his muddy attire, and wrapped Buck in a bear hug that, although Buck was taller than the stranger, managed to lift him off the floor.
“Buck,” he said, and Buck recognized him then, although it had been long indeed. “Detective? What?”
Buck noted Dashiell’s hand move away from his revolver, now that he was sure that Buck was not being attacked.
“You know this person, I take it,” he said.
“Dashiell, this fine young person is a former student of a most erudite institution, and capable of some extraordinary things,” said Buck. “Olivier, Dashiell Spade. Dashiell Spade, Olivier Song.”
Marketing - Oswald's Dream
Lady Ethel Mallory:
Oswald Biggs Botulus likes to push the narrative that he was the brilliant inventor and founder of the Botulus Corporation, from its roots in a small Iowa garage. This is because the homegrown inventor who sets out to change the world is a time-tested brand that sets up billionaires for public sympathy very nicely. But do you want to know the truth about Oswald’s success? He was never alone.
He was the youngest person ever to own a supercomputer, through generous gifts. And the technology that he dreamed of took other real talent to build. Without Anderson Faust there are trinkets and half-working inventions, but there is no Dreaming Box and there is no Prime Dream. Without me, there would have been no way for Oswald to get around his own ego to sell this product to the masses. So when the question arises of, how does the Botulus Corporation proceed without its beloved founder? It has from the beginning. He has never been necessary for it. And when my campaign is complete, and I sit in that chair in Box Atlas, we will stop worrying about Oswald’s big dream and start worrying about yours.
Story 2, Continued - Small World
I hate that computer.
We return now to Buck Silver.
“I would love to know how you ended up here,” said Buck. “And how you travelled here from the arctic. Valerie will be thrilled to hear you survived.”
“Survived,” said Olivier, and a frown crossed his weathered face. “I take it the others didn’t, then.”
“Well, not entirely,” said Buck, brows furrowed. “Riot, Percy, Diggory, Cindy, Jonah, I have never heard a trace of since. It was rumored a man of Hector’s description was briefly staying at the old Duckworth place but I could not precisely verify that. However, Mort has surfaced in a surprising fashion. I should warn you, he is the size of a… well, I don’t even know how big he is exactly. But he is out in the ocean. We have not had much time to talk about what happened, I only discovered his existence yesterday.”
“I would like to know everything that you know about my daughter,” interrupted Dashiell. “Is she alright? What’s she planning? Where did she go?”
“How about I explain a little about what’s happened here and hopefully that will answer both of your questions,” said Olivier, holding his dirt-stained palms up. “Mr. Spade, this may not make a lot of sense to you, but I was part of an expedition led by someone named Cindy Lockhart…”
“Cindy? That Cindy?” said Dashiell, the burning coals of his eyes a little wider for a moment. “She was my co-conspirator in the Stonemaids. I handled operations inside the Prime Dream, she handled them outside. She left on a mission to try and fix one of our world’s bigger environmental problems.”
“Oh good. Yeah, I was on that mission,” said Olivier.
“Small world,” said Dashiell.
“Indubitably,” said Buck.
“Big words,” said Olivier, before continuing. “Yes. The mission did not go well. At least the parts that I was there for. Buck, you probably remember me as having… these powers. To talk to the weather. Get it to do things. I asked it for too much, I think, or… something. I’m not sure. I pulled off a bigger storm than I ever have before. Like, froze the ocean for miles, level of winter. I couldn’t control it. It nearly killed me. I was rescued by my mom.”
“I cannot recall you talking about her,” said Buck.
“I didn’t know I had one alive,” said Olivier. “But apparently she and dad put me in Downing Hill because they thought I would help save the world. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. But they’re working on a project, and like Downing Hill, it’s about how to fight the Black Rains, how to restore society, how to save us. Big important stuff that I… just wasn’t going to be a useful part of. They made that pretty clear. And the reason it’s relevant, Mr. Spade, is that when Belladonna came to stay here, she was looking for them. My parents, and a lot of people like them who do their studying on board the Daedalus. She stayed for three weeks, and then she left to find them.”
“I do not know much about your daughter, Mr. Spade,” said Buck. “This is a fascinating trajectory for her.”
“We had a falling out,” said Dashiell, looking down. “Back in the Prime Dream. I wanted her to have the freedom to live in the real world, and she didn’t want me to work with the Stonemaids. Said she could fight for her own future, her way. And I figured I’d have the chance to talk with her, when we were both released, but. Our paths never crossed. I’ve caught wind that she’s done some influential things. Looking for a future for us, humans, on her own terms. So this doesn’t surprise me. All I need is for you to tell me where this Daedalus is now.”
“Well, here’s the thing,” said Olivier, and raised a finger towards the ceiling. “The Daedalus is in the sky. It’s an airship. Only one like it in the world. And I have no idea where it’s gone.”
Interlude 2 - On Board
Nikignik
Ah, hello. I was hoping to catch you before it began.
Xyzikxyz
Nikignik? Nikignik! Well first of all it’s lovely to see you. How are you? No, wait. I’ll guess…
begins to use her secret-discovering powers
Nikignik
It’s probably best that you don’t. I am well. A bit shaken, perhaps. Everything has happened so quickly.
Xyzikxyz
It seems that way! I’m surprised; I wouldn’t have pegged you for a ‘Council of Heavens’ type of god.
Nikignik
On account of my abandoning my post at the gates?
Xyzikxyz
Sure. And also the Marolmar thing.
Nikignik
Ah. The Marolmar thing.
Xyzikxyz
But now there’s a completely different Marolmar thing, it sounds like. I have got to hear the story on this one. It must have been very difficult for you.
Nikignik
Thank you. It certainly was…
Xyzikxyz
For instance the regeneration factor on him alone. I would have thought you’d need more firepower than you or I have ever had to even leave a mark. I didn’t think you had it in you.
Nikignik
…Ah. Yes. I surprised myself.
Xyzikxyz
It didn’t go well between you when you found him, I take it. Was he still the same?
Nikignik
He is… always different. And always the same. But yes, there was no future with him. I do not think there ever was.
Xyzikxyz
Scary how close he got, right?
Nikignik
To who-to what?
Xyzikxyz
Spreading that green-fire creation of his cross planetary. We still haven’t figured out how to get rid of it on that one planet he was on…
Nikignik
Earth.
Xyzikxyz
Let alone the others. The quarantine is there for a reason. Could have been disastrous for just about everything that we’ve got in the works.
Nikignik
I am curious what you all have been working on. Are you still doing your experiments?
Xyzikxyz
Oh it’s excellent news Nik. I got council approval! Now I can work on things like soul-cloning and quantum cats and empty star theory all day and it’s with the council’s full support. You and I have a lot to catch up on—I’m so glad to finally have you on board here.
Nikignik
Likewise; I am pleased to have at least one friend in this circle of titans.
Xyzikxyz
Oh right—how long has it been since you were around? Because things have changed a lot for the Council. The culture is very collaborative, very solution-focused. I think you’ll like it. Lots to discuss with the recent drama.
Nikignik
The murder, yes.
Xyzikxyz
I always knew you’d do something productive one day.
Nikignik
Your confidence in me is astounding.
Xyzikxyz
I’d love to know more but it’s time for the assembly. Come with me.
Nikignik
Right. Any advice for what to expect?
Xyzikxyz
Just try not to get overwhelmed. It can be a lot when you first start out. After all, there’s a whole universe to look after.
Nikignik
Right. I’ll be there in a moment…
Vengeances. There is to each a choice as to what they will cultivate in the soil of their heart. And, regardless of bloom or bramble, what to plant again when the early frost kills what grows there first. For you, dreamer, I know what…
Oh, they really are beginning.
Until you are fulfilled, dreamer. Until you are happy. Until you live in the world and wake to the sun and do not dream of anything except for the beautiful day that is about to begin, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting retributorially for your return to the Hallowoods.
The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'Fifth String' and is available on the Hello From The Hallowoods Patreon. Consider joining for access to all the show's bonus stories, behind-the-scenes and more! Until next time, dreamers, remember to slow down and ask yourself - am I on this quest because I truly believe that killing the count who murdered my father will provide the closure I need, or am I on this quest because the Sword of Vengeance is whispering things to me while I stare into the bloodred ruby on its hilt?
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