Hey y’all, welcome back to Dimension 20 where I picked a hell of a season to get back into the game. It seems we can’t go a single episode without something wild happening and this episode is no exception as we fully lean into the meta aspect of this premise in earnest for the first time.
Our heroes are pulled through the door Scher opened for them into a weird new realm (represented by a brand new map) that seems to be made of books and pages, much like the IRL set for the show. Brennan says that Muffet and Itsy Bitsy (along with Crow who we’ll get to in a sec) are with them but they’re not mentioned for the rest of the episode.
Scher and Tim recognize each other and Scher says that the guardian, once returned to them, was able to help get them out of the cave and to this realm. The bigger question on everyone’s mind is what the hell is up with Pinnochio’s mom. Pinocchio doesn’t really have an answer as the reveal was shocking to him too, and he’s really bummed that his mom is a nightmare abomination.
He also realizes that the crow that his mom uses to spy on him and can go invisible is gone. Troubling.
Sinbad the daring sailor introduces himself to the crew and, for no earthly reason, Puss lies and says he’s a sailor too, forcing Pinnochio to go along with the side lie and his ship is called The PInocchio and that he’s made from wood of the ship.
Puss asks where they are and Scher is at a loss but, luckily, Aesop shows up. He comes through the same door they came through from a field with animals. Three accompany him–a lion, a mouse, and a mule.
The lion and the mouse are from the classic tale called, well, The Lion and the Mouse. The Mule seems like it should be from The Ass and the Mule but on a Nat 20 check, Puss realizes the Mule is avoiding his gaze. It’s not just a random mule. It’s Alphonse (the second son’s mule from the fairy fight)!
Puss immediately is like, “Hey buddy, what the fuck???” But Alphonse gets him to play cool until they can get some time to talk alone.
Anyway, Aesop says they are now in a place that is beyond their stories and, in some ways, realer than their stories. He discovered this place some time ago. While they’re here, they don't have to eat or drink and some of the denizens of the place might be helpful.
The group immediately realizes that it seems like Aesop’s land has been spared the ravages that they’ve had (and Scher has too) and Aesop says his realm–the land of Birds and Bees–is more resilient than theirs. They were able to repel the time of Shadow somehow. Maybe partially because their stories are so simple and less susceptible to corruption.
(Btw, at this point, enough time has passed that the Crow is beyond finding, and when Pinnochio does a last check, he just sees an oily feather. Bad!)
In the space where they are, there are different landings which are associated with different realms. They ask Aesop if their realm is the worst and he doesn’t want to have to deliver bad news, but it is by a wide margin. It’s so bad that it’s bleeding into other realms–like the painting of Elody Scher said she saw in her realm.
At this point, Alphonse and Puss peel away (with an excuse that they’re “scouting ahead”) so they can talk privately. They go through double doors to a library and Puss realizes that this is a room with stories from his realm. He spots the Frog Prince right away.
When Puss once again asks Alphonse what the hell he’s doing here, the mule says that during the right he just started running and didn’t stop. He ended up in a weird forest where he felt a shadow fall over from far away him and something like light spilling from a crack in a door (hmm, stepmom vibes). He panicked and kept running and somehow ended up in the land of Birds and Bees. It was nice there. No Times of Shadow and it seemed like good things happen to good people and bad things happened to bad people. He planned to just chill there until Puss showed up and recognized him. And he doesn’t want to be involved in all this new nonsense. Things are BAD. Aesop told him that the Never After is absorbing other realms. The Lullabye Lands for instance. It wasn't a part of the Never After before.
On a 22 Investigation, Puss sees a key on a table that seems to be to the room, and yoinks it. He also sees a copy of Cinderella and yoinks that as well. When the pair hear footsteps, Puss hides and Alphonse speeds away. The footsteps turn out to be two librarians (Key and Legend, though Puss doesn’t know that) and they seem concerned that the door is open and that the key is missing. They’re like, “Guess we have to use the master key again” and they lock the door. With Puss inside.
Back with the rest of the group, the pair of librarians crosses paths with them as well. They’re some of the helpful denizens Aesop mentioned and invite the group to the Tower of Tales with them (and mention that their fellow librarians Glossary and Index will also be helpful). Interestingly, the librarians refer to the PCs as characters and then people, pointing to the weird meta existence they lead, half in one world, half in another.
When the PCs get to the tower, they see that the place where they are is a citadel amidst an endless Aurora Borealis. From the Aurora, they can hear people talking and are told that what they’re looking at is the Auroratory (which Emily immediately realizes is a pun on Aurora+Oratory, much to Brenna’s delighted shock). These are stories that are being told orally.
Red hears the voice of her grandma telling her story and jumps into the sky to get closer. Luckily (miraculously) that works, and she’s able to swim into the sky. Key and Legend assure the group that it’s perfectly safe. They say that the Auroratory is much older than the citadel but the oral stories can come and go while stories bound by ink stay.
They take the remainder of the group within the Tower of Tales (they were on the ramparts before) and they see stairs leading up to a door with a symbol of an inkwell and quill. Tim asks about it and is told (with suspicious nervousness and intensity) that that’s the Cannonade which is the source of the ink and locked for the protection of EVERYONE. Tim and Scher try to surreptitiously break away to check it out but as soon as they take one step up the stairs, their books start to glow and Tim hears faint fiddle music.
Key hurriedly stops them but then on a 1 and 3 to Ger’s 15, are distracted by his demonstration of sword forms, giving Scher a chance to cast Invisibility Circle on herself and Tim so they can snoop.
Meanwhile, Puss is still locked in the library with their stories. He opens up Cinderella’s book and skips to the end where he finds that not only are the pages blank, but the last pages are ripped out. At the front there are words that start with “Once Upon a Time” but they end shortly after, when Cindy’s dad dies.
Brennan tells Puss to roll initiative suddenly as Crow suddenly appears and attacks, going for the book at the stepmother’s instruction. The crow has golden doors in its eyes, and Puss can hear the stepmother whispering commands but this is a cat v bird fight. Puss easily stabs out the crow’s eyes and it poofs dead in green smoke and turns to black parchment. As this happens, Puss wonders if the pages ripped from the book stayed here or disappeared into nothingness. Then, he unlocks the door and runs. Brennan asks if he does anything else. He says no. Let’s put a pin in this.
Back with Red, things are all nice and peaceful in the Auroratory. She’s hearing countless versions of her story and she realizes that it’s not her grandma speaking but many people’s grandmas. The version she’s hearing is the version you’re probably familiar with. The one where the woodsman shows up and saves everyone and kills the wolf. Red likes this story a lot better and just kinda tries to sink into it.
Wisdom Save–5.
She’s suddenly filled with a deep sense of shame as she sinks and she sees these red streaks coming off of her body. Immediately, she thinks she’s corrupting the nice version of her story and, as she thinks that, she hears someone start telling her story, ending with the wolf eating her, the end. Red doesn’t even mind that story. In that story, she’s a sweet little victim that people would love and pity. Not a monster.
Brennan gives her a chance in this moment to try and seek help from within or from without. Red doesn’t feel good about what’s within her so she yells for help. “Timothy!”
So we cut back to Tim and Scher (the group is so split up. What happened to straying together? lol). As they get closer and closer to the door, their books glow brighter and brighter. When Tim opens the door, he realizes it’s their ink that’s glowing. He wants to check out the keyhole to see if anyone goes into this locked room and rolls the obligatory once per season Na1 20 that reduces Brennan to zero HP.
On a Nat 20, Tim sees that there are scratches in the keyhole–people do come in and out of here. There’s also a little glitter–maybe fairy dust? But that’s not the most important thing. He can actually look into the keyhole and what he sees is a vast shrine with a pedestal at the center. And on it is a big glass inkwell with ink spiraling out of it. Brennan gives Tim the option to look deeper into the ink and it’s Ally so of COURSE Tim looks deeper into the ink.
WIsdom and Charisma save–just what you want to hear on a Nat 20.
Tim makes the Cha save but not the Wis one.
As he stares into the ink, he thinks about the process when he writes. How easily the rhymes flow from his pen. How they feel so right and perfect right away. How amazing and incredible it is to feel like he’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing. The ink fills his vision. He can’t even see the keyhole anymore.
But then, he realizes that he feels a bit flat. And that he’s trembling. And he feels this deep and thundering emptiness, like his whole existence is frivolous. He feels like people are watching him. REAL people, unlike him. Which is terrifying because they are powerful–more so that he can imagine–and they can do whatever they want to him. THEY’RE real and he? Well, he’s nothing more than ink on paper.
“Tim!” Scher cries, snapping him out of his dark reverie.
She’s horrified because he’s literally turned to just ink and parchment. She casts Dispel Magic on him and on another miraculous Nat 20 is able to bring him back. She touches him and turns briefly partially to paper herself, but says that she doesn’t care what is going on, they’re both just real enough. They both turn back to normal in time for Tim to hear Red calling out for him.
Everyone else has rolled up to the Auroratory at Red’s cry and Puss jumps in to save her–rowing Pinnochio’s body like a boat. They grab the very shaken Red but Brennan makes them do Wis saves as well. Puss fails his and starts to hear versions of his story. But before he starts sinking, he hears a voice say, “Once upon a time, there was a wolf.” A beautiful wolf made of light shows up and pushes him to safety before burning to death violently.
(Note: Both Puss and Pinnochio had the same red trails coming off them as Red.)
When they all meet back up with the larger party–all back together finally–Pinnochio admits to Sinbad that he’s not actually made from a ship and Puss isn’t a sailor, revealing that Ger’s new sword Veritas is actually a sentient, singing sword. And he just loves singing about how good it is to tell the truth–instantly earning the ire of both Pinnochio and Red who has finally met an authority figure she doesn’t like.
I also want to point out that the moment the sword things, Siobhan does a little Snow White-esque trill back at it which is so funny.
Anyway, Roz is much more delighted with the sword than the others. When she holds it, there’s this weird static ripple and a part of the library vanished (something the librarians say happens a lot–”cutbacks” they call them) and she tries to pass the sword to someone else, but when she gets the strong sense that her true prince is supposed to have the sword, she scoops it back up and is fully back on the True Love train. (Of course, she has this revelation on a Nat 1 so…you know…)
Back on land, Red says that her story in the Auroratory is correct and she needs to see her story book so she can change it. The librarians say it’s not good for characters to see their stories and they’re being sorta weird and cagey about the request. At the same time, Scher is talking to Aesop about what happened and he seems conflicted in a Lawful Good sort of way (since they were disobeying when they split off).
Key and Legend start explaining that the corruption started in the Never After and has been affecting most strongly the realms nearest to it. Story realms go through phrases. Key nervously says the phrase, “Ink is permanent…Asterisk,” and Tim clocks a sense of dread and epiness in them like what he felt before at the inkwell. He tells them that they’re real like Scher said to him and, before anyone can parse that, Aesop comes over and snitches them out. Or rather, he says honesty is the best policy and kinda makes Tim admit what they did and what he experienced.
Key and Legend say he shouldn’t have gone up there but gives the group info anyway. There’s a lot of debate about where they–the characters–come from. From the ink or the Auroratory or what, but the ink versions? They come from Them. The people that Tim saw in the ink. The ones they don’t dare name if they don’t have to. In fact, Brennan, in character, writes down what they’re called so they don’t have to say it: The Authors.
The librarians are kinda freaked so they move the group away from the Cannonade before they keep talking. They jump back to Tim’s statement about being real. Yes, they’re real but some things are realer. It’s kind of hard to comprehend without losing your sense of self.
The Authors made The Lines Between. They’re incredible and incredibly powerful and, most importantly, they do not care (well, there’s different school of thought about that but they don’t get into that). Tim wonders if bad things happen to good people just because it makes a good story and the librarians say this is what they should talk to Glossary about.
Sidenote: This is kinda tripping me up because like, Tim tells stories, right? Maybe the ones in his book are just him channeling other stories but some of what he does is legitimately tell stories (unless we’re going to learn that that’s not possible–but I doubt it because these guys lie all the time and lies are storytelling of a sort lol. They have the capacity to make things up is my point). Anyway, when Tim makes up a story from his brain, is he not doing the same thing? Does he not write what will make the best story, even if it means the characters go through hardship? Is it like Authors and characters all the way down? Do you see what I’m saying? Can they really be angry at the Authors when they’re doing the same thing?
Also, is this season gonna end with the PCs fighting their real life players???
But I digress.
The librarians continue explaining. The power of the ink can be accessed by proxy which is what magic is in their worlds. Ways to move the story in the direction that the Cannonade wants. Some beings in their world have this access naturally (like fairies and witches I assume).
While ink is permanent, there have apparently been some revisions over the years, though there’s no record (idk how they know that with no record–maybe word of mouth?) Legend once again says that the realms always go through good and bad times but the Gander (repping bad times) has been ascendant for too long and they don’t know why. And the bad vibes are leaking. The rip caused by the cutback earlier glimmers.
Oh, and one more thing. Key thinks there’s something loose in the library. On a Nat 20, Tim thinks that the vibes are that of the movie Alien–trapped in a location with a Thing that’s waiting to pick people off.
The group agrees to split up to help make sure there’s nothing bad lurking but, before they do, a few quick exchanges:
Pinnochio admits that he’s not on his “Twice Upon a Time” (Index’s turn of phrase) like everyone else. That his Stepmom ripped away the Pinnochio from this story and dropped him in. Tim recognizes what he describes as similar to what happened to him when he was turned to paper.
They decide they’ll find Glossary to speak to after this.
Red asks Aesop about if he knows any wolf stories and he tells the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf in such an aggro way that Tim is like bruh, chill.
With that, they split off, our heroes going alone without Key or Legend who are occupied by the others. They go back to the library where Puss was and remember when I told you to put a pin in him not doing anything before he left?
Yeah, the door is open. He didn’t lock it.
I’m sure that won’t be a problem. (I’m lying.)
Puss gives Ger the Frog Prince book and he also pulls out the Cindy book. Pinochio recognizes the picture of a man on the cover as the man in the picture he stole and gave back to his mom. And now that he thinks about it, the picture seems like it was ripped out of this very book.
There’s a click.
They turn.
The door behind them has turned to the Stepmother’s door. She’s here. She’s angry. And she’s getting bigger.
Roll for initiative baby! Can’t wait to see what horrific battle figurine Rick Perry is gonna curse us with next ep! See you then!
