Ep. 7: The Clockwork City, Part 3

Listen to the episode

*"Hi yes, we're complete strangers, and we'd like to ask you about the man recently jailed for treaon? No reason in particular." Listen as our heroes:

INTERROGATE a small child!

BEFRIEND an undeterred adventurer!

IMPERSONATE royalty from far-off lands!*

## Synopsis

*Read the transcript here.*

Upon realizing that Mako has been jailed by the Queen of Charmonde for treason, our heroes decide to meet with the queen. They learn from a small child named Barry that Queen Armalu accepts gifts, and they decide to give her M.I.S.H.A.'s rock that looks like a face. However, once they get in line, they're confronted by Barry's father "Hairy" Jerry, who angrily explains that the end of the line is actually the middle of the line, and the end is someplace else. In an attempt to impress Jerry, Xoc introduces himself as "Xoc, Wizard of the East" and claims that he brings important tiding. Jerry gives up his place in line, commenting that he was going to ask Queen Armalu for medicine to heal his daughter, who was bitten by a glass spider that hitched a ride on a broken hound fleeing Rhubarb. Our heroes, realizing that only Mako can help Jerry's daughter, promise to help Jerry if he helps them get an audience with Queen Armalu. Jerry gives our heroes a family heirloom ruby, which they place in M.A.R.S.H.A.L.'s box alongside the rock with a face.

While waiting in line, our heroes meet Jesse, an oddity hunter for Queen Armalu who's a big fan of Hopper. After asking Hopper where "Miss Lorraine" is (to which Hopper grows expressionless), Jesse asks Hopper the following question:

*"So, my group of oddity hunters, about 2 years ago when we started, we gave the Queen 12 oddities, so that was 2 years ago and then we all went off to get our own oddities. And since then, she’s demanded a gift of oddities that’s twice as large as the total number of oddities she’s received from us. So, she got 12 the first year, and then the second year she got twice as many as that, and now I have to give her twice the total amount, um, and I think I got enough, but I don’t know if I have enough, and I was just hoping that an ace accountant like you could help me out!"*

Jesse realizes that they're one oddity short (71/72) and asks our heroes for an extra oddity. They consider giving Jesse Elee's dead rat, the hat pin Elee stabbed the Apocrita spider with, M.I.S.H.A.'s Scarf, and Jerry's ruby. M.I.S.H.A. searches the Datasphere for information on what gifts Queen Armalu likes, learning that she doesn't actually check the gifts at all. Because of this, they give Jesse M.A.R.S.H.A.L.'s box, explaining that it was " a container for our machine intelligence." Thankful, Jesse leads the party to the front of the line where Joe, a reptilian shapeshifter disguised as Jesse, was holding their place.

Once in the palace, our heroes are greeted by Vera Layeni, the queen's second-in-command. Vera takes our heroes into a purification room, where she tells our heroes to dump their weapons into a trash chute, promising that the weapons will be returned at the end of the visit. After Elee convinces Vera to let her keep her chair, our heroes (reluctantly) comply, and Vera activates the purification room, explaining that all guests of Queen Armalu need to first be sprayed with a mist that "[disinfects and identifies] any sort of threatening bacteria."

Upon contact with the mist, Xoc is shown a vision of a floating kingdom of rotund stone automatons, although his vision is blurry at the periphery. A automaton with prismatic markings runs past Xoc and starts talking to it, but Xoc can only make out the words "Was found. Not safe. Must use." An siren goes off, and hundreds of glass spiders fall on Xoc as he awakens in the purification room, where he's been covered with a Nickelodeon-style disinfectant goo.

Now "clean," our heroes meet with Queen Armalu, who believes M.I.S.H.A. is royalty, because M.I.S.H.A. had molded their Castor Clay into a fancy poet's cap. She asks M.I.S.H.A. what they need, and M.I.S.H.A. explains that Xoc is sick and needs help. This infuriates Queen Armalu, who blames Xoc for his illness and compares him to Mako, who she accuses of plotting to assassinate her. The queen gives our heroes a room under the promise that they won't mention Mako again and that Vera will keep an eye on them.

Once away from the queen, Vera insists that Mako is innocent and tells our heroes that there's "something I really think you need to see."

## Trivia

* When listing Hopper's previous adventures, Jesse name-drops locations from Numenera's pre-gen adventures.
* Kyle's pre-written solution for Jesse's math question was definitely wrong, although we don't know what it originally was.
* Joe alludes to getting drinks later with Jesse. That's because Jesse, Everett, and Soe were originally meant to be in their young 20s, before being retconned into being teens.
* Xoc's vision was going to be longer and cover the majority of the Apocrita's past with Prylima, but Kyle felt like a single vision was more impactful.