DIRECTOR: Oh, god.
THEODOROS: Ahh!
EZEKIEL: How do you jump from sothing like that twice in a row?
SETH: Don't be an asshole, Ezekiel.
PLAYWRIGHT: It's fine! It's just a little presentational interruption. Scenario continuity is intact! It just needs a mont to stabilize!
DIRECTOR: I warned you this would happen. Did I not say that, in exact words? That we couldn't interfere without collapsing the entire production?
PLAYWRIGHT: Don't be lodramatic! It's still good, it just--- It just needs a mont!
KAMRUSEPA: I don't understand. That's never happened to twice in a row before. Sothing must be actively interfering with my ability to cast properly. Ran, can you cast the Anomaly-Divining Arcana again?
RAN: Sure, I guess.
EZEKIEL: Maybe you're just getting sloppy, Rhunbardi.
KAMRUSEPA: Oh, breaking your silence? Soone is getting sloppy, alright. But I'm not sure it's .
PLAYWRIGHT: We haven't broken any of the rules! The noise from Kamrusepa's Index is an outside-context random factor! It occurring with enough severity to make the data unusable twice in a row is a completely possible event that falls within the realm of scenario diversification!
DIRECTOR: It's a one in twenty-six billion, five hundred and ninety-seven million, seven hundred and thirty-one thousand, nine hundred and two chance. It was more likely she would spontaneously combust.
PLAYWRIGHT: We did that, didn't we?! On that one scenario where they spent half of it in the greenhouse and Ezekiel found out what happened to his family and killed everyone--
PTOLEMA: Hey, do you guys feel sothing weird?
UTSUSHIKO: Weird in what sense...?
PTOLEMA: Dunno. Like soone walked over my grave, I guess.
PLAYWRIGHT: Oh fuck. Shit shitshitshitshit---
DIRECTOR: Just so we are completely clear! If it breaks, I'm reporting this as your doing!
PLAYWRIGHT: MY doing?! It's your fault this happened in the first place! I'm just doing damage control! Triage! Please don't dwell on it, please don't dwell on it--
PTOLEMA: Did you feel it too, Su?
UTSUSHIKO: Uh, I don't know. I an, I feel a little peculiar, but I think that's just the atmosphere of this place getting to .
RAN: I can't see any incantations that would be making it harder for you to cast, but it's hard to tell. This place is overloaded with transmundane anomalies I don't even recognize. If I'd added a bit more range to my Divination earlier, this place would have looked like a gas fire on a dark night from the other bioenclosures.
KAMRUSEPA: What sort of anomalies?
RAN: Not sothing from straightforward use of the Power, that's for sure. The math is hard to even understand, but practically everything in here is made up of so kind of abnormal matter that's breaking all the normal rules of energy conservation. And in the building up ahead, there's this... I don't even know how to describe it. It's like the sort of incantations you see used to create demi-planes, but fluctuating like crazy. The whole thing is fucked.
KAMRUSEPA: So could that be interfering with my casting, even if it's not deliberate?
RAN: I don't know. Maybe.
UTSUSHIKO: It wasn't sothing that ca up very often, but there were things that caused abnormal physical phenona other than the Power, if only by technicality. Alongside unanticipated indirect effects from incantations - often the result of backlash - you also saw them crop up from anything related to the Tower of Asphodel and the tools of the Ironworkers, as well as in areas where the planes were bridged frequently. They could still be detected, of course, but their implications were harder to make sense of. In this instance, though, I was starting to expect an entirely different explanation. It's like when I've frozen things with the Entropy-Denying Arcana. Like there's so buffer holding everything absolutely together.
PLAYWRIGHT: Okay. Okay. I think they're moving on from the subject. Thank god. Thank god. Shit. Fuck.
DIRECTOR: We should not count our chickens before they hatch, I should think.
PLAYWRIGHT: You're right. What if she tries to do it again? Just two might not be enough to have her write it off as a lost cause.
DIRECTOR: I'm not doing it again. Not even if you order . It would be better for them to just confirm it and botch the scenario paraters, I don't care.
PLAYWRIGHT: Are you off your fucking head?! This is the last one!
DIRECTOR: So you keep reminding . But better to have a house flooded than burned to the ground. Besides, let's not pretend this hasn't been compromised to a degree from the start. We knew we wouldn't be able to reset Balthazar, or fix the problem with the resistant zone. We could only create a rough simulacrum of the circumstances of the early attempts.
PLAYWRIGHT: We weren't supposed to make it perfect! Just representative and cathartic! All this is going to be representative of is our own failures!
LINOS: I keep telling you, it's dangerous here. The experints that were conducted warped the surrounding environnt in ways that we still don't completely understand. There's no telling what could happen if we linger.
THEODOROS: Er, sorry, dad... But you told us that your experints with the child happened and were abandoned a hundred years ago, didn't you? But a minute ago you said that this place was only abandoned quite recently. That doesn't, er, quite make sense...
PTOLEMA: Ooh, good catch.
LINOS: T-Theo, that's-- Look, we'd mostly phased it out long before then other than for a few specialized purposes, and more importantly, back then we were still actively monitoring the area for any changes. There's no telling what's happened in the last twenty years.
KAMRUSEPA: I'd say that it's obvious you're not telling us sothing, sir, but that would be rather like diving headfirst into a convention furnace while saying I'm worried I might get a little warm.
SETH: I dunno. Like, I'm not saying Theo's dad isn't being kinda full of shit, but we can't really afford any risks at this point. We're pretty damn thin on the ground here. But on the other hand, if the culprit's been here, we might be able to find hints about the asshole's real identity.
LINOS: If anything, the lesson we ought to have learned by this point is to play it safe and stick to the strategy! Again, if we can just ride this out--
SETH: Crap, soone's coming out!
KAMRUSEPA: Get your guns! Guns are faster than a bloody scepter.
PLAYWRIGHT: Oh, hell! Is she supposed to be here?!
DIRECTOR: Yes. She's supposed to be here. That's part of the scenario. That you can't rember basic details, even at a ti like this...
PLAYWRIGHT: Wh-- Don't look at , you glorified kitchen stove! Play your part! We're not here!
DIRECTOR: Hold on. I think it's starting to stabilize.
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