Our 200th episode! The Venice chapter concludes amidst stinking miasmas, rumors of plague, and...comical slapstick?
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Featuring:
Jen
Jade
Des
Dave S.
And...Edie the Dog
Congratulations on hitting the big 200! Listening to this one made me realize that I evidently haven't been paying enough attention, because once they started breaking out the body parts, I was all, "Woah, where'd they get all those?"
ReplyDeleteUsually the body parts seem to come at the end of the episode, after the climactic resolution. They're like boss killing loot.
DeleteI had noticed the arm and torso, but I actually hadn't realised Dave had found the leg until he worked it into not falling down the stairs any more. Even though this was basically the whole reason they were in the tower, I was busy thinking about the figure in the mist and only tuned in when everything went disastrously wrong.
I think we need some sort of Zelda-like sound effect whenever they get a body part.
I am legit curious about what you're doing while listening to these actual plays...
ReplyDeleteLeg - it... Eeeeeh? Get it? Because of the leg.
DeleteWow, so funny. I slay myself.
Unconvincingly masking my laughter at work into an awkward cough usually.
DeleteThat pun makes me want to very slowly throw you down a flight of stairs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhay0VKmtPA
DeleteI assume that this is at least semi directed at my above comment. Typically, I play some kind of game while listening, often either Crusader Kings or some manner of war game. I tend to kind of drift back and forth a bit.
DeleteThank god Jade was there to actually read what the letter was saying. I was squirming in my seat when everyone was just going off on their weird misinterpretations of the text. It's right there! Pick it up and check! :D
ReplyDeleteThat said, the whole premise for this part was weird. "That clockwork thing needs repairing, I guess I'll dig up that leg that's buried under the old church for centuries." What? How?
There's some extra backstory for why the elder Gremanci dug up the leg, but it didn't come up in play. It made sense at the time I read it, but I've honestly forgotten it at this point... :P
DeleteI'll take your word for it.
DeleteAgain, since I said such critical things about the use of fezzes earlier, I thought this was doing a good job with the setting.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I particularly liked was the use of the First World War. In most countries that aren't Italy, the memory of the war is pretty much exclusively about the western and eastern fronts - the Italian experience of the war is essentially absent from what we think of when the war comes up. But the Alpine warfare that Italians went through was brutal and traumatic, and it was a really important factor in the postwar rise of fascism.
One thing that the story doesn't get across is how bizarre and scary Venice is if you get any distance into it. It's a warren of alleys, often covered, linking up in random ways (and cut off by canals, of course). Incredibly difficult to navigate: it's not possible to number streets in any coherent way, so instead they number buildings by district. It'd be fabulous survival horror territory.
Also, you redeemed yourself this week for last week's "pizza and pasta" bit. I bristled quite a lot at that :)
The Italian front is terrifying even by WWI standards, and I too am glad it got some exposure. The Blackshirts in this scenario are all Alpini veterans, something that we didn't get a chance to really get into.
DeleteLikewise, the scenario does note Venice's terrifying labyrinthine interior (along with the hilarious tidbit that asking a Venetian for directions will always elicit the response of "straight ahead"), but the group kept traveling around with Venetians who knew their way, so I wasn't able to hit them with it. I quite agree that this would be a fantastic location for a survival horror "killer on the loose" scenario!
This week's session will be a flashback, but when we return to the main narrative I'll be sure to have read up on the regional cuisine of Trieste, which I'm sure has a lot of Austrian and Balkan influences. Can't wait!
There are certainly those influences in the cuisine there nowadays (I've been to Trieste fairly recently), and I can't imagine that they were weaker in the interwar period. I can't remember when exactly this is set, but any chance that the characters will run into Italo Svevo when they're there? (Too late for James Joyce, unfortunately.)
DeleteBut the time when it would be great to set something in Trieste would be the '60s. It was right next to the Iron Curtain. There's a whole James Bond atmosphere about it.
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