LFA Episode 1.4 Transcript - Welcome Back from Break!


 * music starts*

Will: If we don’t record this, no one will believe us.

Quinn: And if you don’t help us, we don’t know what will happen.

Will: The disappearances keep coming-

Quinn: And coming, and the forest keeps its secrets.

Will: So, as always, dear listeners:

Quinn: Grab some tea-

Will: And your conspiracy board.

Quinn: Because we are-

Both: Live From Averno.

* music finishes out satisfyingly*

Will: Well howdy folks, and welcome back from break!

Quinn: Ok, I really can't believe you just said, "howdy", uh, and two, shoutout to everyone who actually had a break this whole time? 'Cause let me tell you, I've been working on this THE WHOLE TIME and it has not been pretty.

Will: Hey!

Quinn: I know so much more about serial killers than I ever wanted to. I feel like YOU!

Will: They have fascinating minds!

Quinn: Ok sure, if you like spending your nights with the heebie-jeebies!

Will: The heebie-jeebies.

Quinn: Whatever. I lock my door now.

Will: *snort* So uh, um, where were we?

Quinn: I remember nothing before break. My brain has been wiped smooth, smooth brain!

Will: *speedy exhale of mirth* K, uh, let me check my notes. Ehhhhh, alright, so, where we left off, I can't read my handwriting... Oh! Uh, lots of people have gone missing.

Quinn: Yeah, and even though we can find stuff like newspaper clippings, obituaries, letters, stuff like that that reference these missing people... there are barely any place records.

Will: Ugh, I love the smell of corruption in the morning.

Quinn: So, over break I took the liberty of doing some calculations

Will: Nerd.

Quinn: And even with being severely underreported, the range of missing persons here is... Off the record. Badum chhhh.

Will: Quinn. Now is not the time for bad puns

Quinn: You never think there's a good time for bad puns.

Will: Well, that's because your puns literally make me nauseous and we're in a very small dorm room.

Quinn: You'd think that maybe you'd get used to it by now. I'm gonna keep trying! You never know. Anywho, uh, so where does that leave us?

Will: Oh! Um, before we get any further into our discussion, it is time for the school bulletin.

Quinn: So this is where all the weirdness and absurdity of A New School gets immortalized forever.

Will: The School Bulletin Board. The Board of the Department of Cults and Mysteries would like to remind the students of the Department of Creation and Destruction that their cottage is downwind of the DCD silo, and therefore receives most of the fallout of their experiments. Three headed frogs have been spotted, please be aware of toxic fumes.

Quinn: Tryouts for the Department of Dead Languages' Latin Dicathalon team begin this week, and uh, the rest of it's in Latin so we're just gonna have to guess what it says.

Will: Professor Gordone asks that students kindly stop feeding the vultures, as they are getting too large to comfortably perch on his shoulders.

Quinn: Reminder to DCD students that Tea Time is precisely at 5:30, so if you arrive late you cannot complain about there being no jasmine chamomile left.

Will: Student Lucy Axby recently broke the school record in the Averno Triathalon, setting town records in: Barefoot Sprinting, Tree Climbing, and the Flamethrower Relay. Congrats Lucy!

Quinn: The DCM would like to remind the Department of Unconfirmed Existence it'll be a lot harder to keep their identity unconfirmed if they keep leaving empty bottles of Mountain Dew in the shared tunnels.

Will: The staff meeting in the Rosenwood Gardens has been rescheduled for next week, as an explosion from the DCD has rendered the air toxic for the foreseeable future. We will be meeting in the DLH library.

Quinn: Corvis wishes to remind students that the secret societies are secret for a reason. We will be watching.

* music plays*

Quinn: So, as I was saying, where does that leave us?

Will: I mean... It means that this is so much bigger than just James Turner.

Quinn: I mean, it, it goes back hundreds of years.

Will: I just... I dunno where to go from here. It's been months since there were any leads in the Turner case, and the problem with all the rest of them is, well, we just don't know. We don't know who they were, or what happened, or anything.

Quinn: Well, Will...

Will: And, and even at the Archives, I mean we haven't found anything relevant in weeks except vague mentions of disappearances.

Quinn: Will?

Will: Yeah?

Quinn: ...Ok, so... I kinda need to tell you something.

Will: ...Mhm.

Quinn: I found something.

Will: Oh hell yes! Why didn't you tell me before the show, we could've talked about it together!

Quinn: I mean I found it a while ago.

Will: How long ago?

Quinn: Before we started looking for answers together? Before I even knew you, but, it doesn't make sense, like, I know there can't be a connection so it's not that relevant or at least, I thought there wasn't a connection? And I, I didn't want us to get distracted so I kept it to myself, and I know this is gonna sound crazy, like maybe, maybe it is crazy? I think it might matter now.

Will: What, what is it?

Quinn: The original Turners

Will: The ones who went missing?

Quinn: Yeah, they disappeared but... Um... They killed some people first.

Will: ...The fuck?

Quinn: So when the Turners founded the town, there were already people here. Two people, actually, a family. Aster and her daughter Iris. Um, the Turners decided they were witches, or devil worshippers, and, anthropologically speaking, I know that's not true... I dunno actually it's Averno so maybe it is true, I don't-I dunno. They're just people trying to live, I guess. And uh, the Turners tried to convert them, and when that didn't work... They killed them.

* music plays*

Will: Jesus Christ.

Quinn: Yeah. Apparently so.

Will: Wait, how, how do you know about this?

Quinn: I found these letters over the summer, and I, I showed them to some friends of mine?

Will: What letters, what friends?

Quinn: Well, I did have a life before you, you know. \

Will: Yeah, but, isn't it better now :)

Quinn: *small speedy exhale of mirth* Ok focus, this is important. So, I found these letters in the Archives, like, waaaaaaaaaaay deep, never to be found, back of the closet letters.

Will: Heh, nerd.

Quinn: Yeah, ok, I'm a nerd, but... The letters from Sarah, the Turners' daughter... She wrote to her cousin once a week until suddenly... They just stopped. And... I think you need to hear what they have to say.

* music plays*

Quinn (reading Sarah's letter): Dear Cousin May, things are so lovely and temperate here in the south. Father was right, it truly is God's land. I know that his visions are going to be correct—we will make a beautiful town here, a home like no other. I cannot wait for you to join us here, I've always dreamed of building a church, creating a testament to the fact that God has chosen us to honor His law, and His vision. There's a perfect hill here, overlooking the forest, and the fields, and the river. I can almost see it already. The white dome, the pews, the people coming to worship at the feet of our Lord. Father says that Averno needs us. There are women by the edge of the woods, a cottage where women and animals howl at the moon and do... Well, we won't speak of it here. Those witches don't know our God, they don't know our future. They may have infested this land with their witchcraft, maybe have... blemished this town with their horned god and moon blood, but, it is our duty to save them. They don't even know of Heaven yet, but... We will teach them. I'm so hopeful, so expectant of all that God will do in this place. Your cousin, Sarah.

Will: Quinn... How could you have kept this secret from me? Why? How long have we been working together, how long have we been friends?

Quinn: I, I know, I know, but... The thing is, well...

Will: I think... Like I think this might be the answer, Quinn, and it's been here all along and I just don't understand

Quinn: Ok well stop, just listen to me. Ok? I need you to listen. You know I came to Averno early, right? I mean, my job in the Archives started before school, so I came to town, and I was here alone until school started—stocking shelves at Al's Grocery?

Will: Yeah, you were here, and it was lonely, and it sucked, and then school started and you met me.

Quinn: That's... That's not true. I wasn't lonely, and I wasn't alone. For a little while, at least, I had friends. Real friends. Cam, and Dahlia, and Violet.

Will: Oh.

Quinn: And I showed them these letters.

Will: Oh.

Quinn: And at the end of the summer, they went missing too.

Will: Oh.

Quinn: Yeah.

Will: Shit, Quinn...

Quinn: I, I didn't know how to tell you.

Will: I, I'm sorry. I don't know, I mean, I'm here for whatever you need. Do you know what happened to them?

Quinn: I don't know. One day they were here, and, and, the next they were gone. All they wanted, more than anything, was to leave home. To be safe. To get away from their families, to start a new life together, a, a new family, and I was a part of it. Until one day... They were gone.

Will: Did the police ever find anything?

Quinn: The police didn't look. Everyone just thought they ran away.

Will: I mean how do you know they didn't?

Quinn: They wouldn't just leave, they didn't leave me.

Will: I dunno, I mean, stuff like that... A lot can happen really quickly, and maybe they didn't mean to leave you but-

Quinn: Trust me, just trust me, ok? This was different.

Will: Ok.

Quinn: They were different.

Will: I'm sorry. K, um, but also we're investigating missing people, a missing Turner, and then you tell me you have primary source material about what happened in the first one, this is serious! This could be it! A Turner killed someone and goes missing. Maybe this one did too! Maybe all the missing people are killers, and then like, I dunno, some cult like, kills them too, or-

Quinn: Will, stop. My friends didn't kill anyone.

Will: Oh. Right, sorry.

Quinn: Mostly I think right now I just... We need to solve whatever's going on here. It's not just one cold case, it's four.

Will: It's not four, it's hundreds going back to the very start of this town.

Quinn: So what do you do with a hundred cold cases?

Will: I mean I think the only thing to do is... Dig deeper on the town. The conspiracy board isn't just, I dunno, James Turner, or Dahlia, or Cam, or Violet. We have records that show people are going missing all the way back since the start of this town. The players aren't as small as one human being, it's so much bigger than that. So we look bigger! The school, the families, the stores... If this town is a puzzle, look at one piece at a time.

Quinn: It's the town, it's the forest, it's the school it's... It's Averno.

Will: So we start making lists. Places, people, events. We do research

Quinn: We find primary source materials

Will: Yes, we find primary source materials

Quinn: And then?

Will: We solve the puzzle

Quinn: We play the game

Will: Together.

* music plays*

Will: And now it's time for the Averno Township Newsletter! Homemade fur thermal underwear sets are on sale at Roadkill Cuts Butcher this week. Buy three, get seven free!

Quinn: The town has seen an alarming increase in deer breaking into public buildings. If you see something, say something.

Will: Dolores' Pie Shop is having a Valentine's Day special. If you're single, you can have a pie on the house for "not promoting mushy-gushy nonsense."

Quinn: She knows it's not Valentine's Day, right?

Will: It's-shh. Free pie. Free pie.

Quinn: This town would like to kindly request that whatever local prankster keeps stealing all the staplers from everyone's home, please stop immediately. It's leading to dangerously long wait times at the post office.

Will: Local officials would like to request that those responsible for the turf war between Skyline Diner and Dolores' Pie Shop please deescalate immediately. The police force has responded to no fewer than seven calls about "crumble top propaganda" appearing in people's homes with no discernable cause.

Quinn: The town would like to remember local woman Ruthie B., who passed on this week. May her memory be a blessing and may her light find the stars. And on that note, I guess our time is up.

* knocking noises*

Quinn: Just a minute Bitty!

Will: Bitty runs the show that airs after us. Ninety uninterrupted minutes of the jam band Fish.

Quinn: So like, one, one song?

Will: Maybe one and a half on a good day.

Quinn: *chuckle* But before you go, I just want to say thank you to all of our listeners out there and... We need your help too. We're gonna talk about our world, share some of the weirdness that's happening here, and maybe you can help us understand? You can see something that, that we don't? So tune in next week and we'll begin to investigate some more of the history of the strange place we call... Home.

Will: Also, please support us on Patreon so that we can afford off brand ramen for our research sessions! Uh, just search Averno on Patreon and sign up.

Quinn: Please. I need noodles.

Will: Noooodooos

Quinn: So thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you soon, but for now we've been

Both: Live from Averno.