Undertow Update #1 - Refresh

The podcast formerly known as Eidolon Playtest is now Drawn from the Undertow!Welcome to Undertow Update, your monthly newsletter describing what awaits you in the next month of Drawn from the Undertow. This month, we've got a lot!Threadspinner is now ready for a full playtest, and we're going to do it in not one, not two, but three long-form campaigns that will serve as the backbone of this podcast for the next year and a half:Threadspinner FLAMEPlayers: Iris, Maxie, TyberiusGM: LukeEditor: IrisThreadspinner SPARKPlayers: Crystal, Morgan, ZoeGM: LukeEditor: LukeThreadspinner GLOWPlayers: Lexi, Mike, MollyGM: LukeEditor: MikeMay is going to be a transitional month between Eidolon and Threadspinner, where we will look back on the latest round of Eidolon miniseries while rolling out details about Threadspinner Playtest, which will officially debut on May 25th! The full schedule is below:Monday, May 4: Eidolon ISLAND/FLASHBACK/ADULT GM Postmortem with Crystal and MaxieWednesday, May 6: We will reveal the cover art, opening music, and premise of Threadspinner FLAME!Monday, May 11: Eidolon ROMANCE/+MACHINE GM Postmortem with Crystal, Iris, and ZoeWednesday, May 13: We will reveal the cover art, opening music, and premise of Threadspinner SPARK!Monday, May 18: Eidolon TOOL/PROTO GM Postmortem with Crystal, Luke, and MikeWednesday, May 20: We will reveal the cover art, opening music, and premise of Threadspinner GLOW!Monday, May 25: Threadspinner FLAME Session #0Monday, June 1: Threadspinner SPARK Session #0Monday, June 8: Threadspinner GLOW Session #0Welcome to the podcast, Morgan!Morgan is joining as a permanent cast member of Drawn from the Undertow! Everyone loved her performance in Eidolon ADULT, and we're lucky to have her as part of Threadspinner SPARK!Why rename the podcast?We're not playing EIDOLON in the near future, so "Eidolon Playtest" isn't really accurate. But we're also not done with EIDOLON forever, and more RPGs will come in the future, so "Threadspinner Playtest" would only be temporarily accurate. Instead of changing the name over and over, we're using a permanent name that is inclusive of EIDOLON, Threadspinner, and everything else that we do: Drawn from the Undertow.Why three campaigns?In the past, we split our 9 non-GM players into groups of 4 and 5. We noticed that the 5-player groups consistently struggled to keep up the pace and give each character equal spotlight. For the recent round of Eidolon miniseries, we experimented with 3-player groups and found that they reliably avoided the frictions of larger groups. In addition, 3-player groups are easier both to schedule and to edit.With 3 players in each campaign, FLAME, SPARK, and GLOW will be smoother and more consistent productions than our previous long-form series. We're also using these three campaigns to showcase the thematic diversity that Threadspinner can offer. We hope that each one has a different style and dynamic!

Mike sits down with Molly and Crystal to talk about their all-time favorite band and the inspiration behind Eidolon TOOL, the seminal prog-metal band Tool! The Long Song Pervert has logged on and they will not be logging off!Listen to the playlist here!Edited by IrisThis episode is possible thanks to all $3 and up Patreon subscribers! If you're listening to the 5-minute preview of this episode, then you can listen to the full episode by subscribing today!

This month, we work on filling in some gaps that we left out of Draft 1 of Threadspinner, since making it ready for Session 0 was more important than getting every single aspect of it finished. Specifically, we further build on what it takes to develop an Artifact, and work up elevator pitches for the 22 types of Devils that players can encounter when they allow their Malaise to climb too high.

WiFi X turns against its friends, no longer certain of what it believes in, its faith in the path of the hero lost. As the revolutionaries battle on the ground floor, the Machine's most loyal servant waits patiently for the winner to meet her on the 50th floor, for the Machine's Inventors to bare witness to the final battle.🎶 Do not say this is how it has to be 🎶CREDITS:Molly Rhinebeck as Cascade IncursionIris Christianson as Tacit DragoonCrystal Zaslavchik as WiFi XLuke Varner as The GMEdited by Iris ChristiansonMusic by Max KnightleyCover Art by Tavish BuchananContent Warnings: Authoritarian oppression, dismemberment, body horror, dissociation, gaslighting.Buy our book!Support us on Patreon!Join the Discord!

Cast deep into the bowels of The Machine, our heroes race to climb back to the ground floor before they're incinerated, taunted all the while by Tacit's long-lost wife, who has joined The Machine for reasons unknown.🎶 If there's a way out of this somebody tell me nowI know it's all gonna end but I swear I don't know howYou keep outrunning your past 'til it hunts you down 🎶CREDITS:Molly Rhinebeck as Cascade IncursionIris Christianson as Tacit DragoonCrystal Zaslavchik as WiFi XLuke Varner as The GMEdited by Luke VarnerMusic by Max KnightleyCover Art by Tavish BuchananContent Warnings: Authoritarian oppression, dismemberment, body horrors, spiders.Buy our book!Support us on Patreon!Join the Discord!

The City's villain taunts the heroes as they retreat to the wasteland beyond The Machine's domain. 🎶 You can try and deny but your heart knows the soundYou can hear them calling out 🎶CREDITS:Molly Rhinebeck as Cascade IncursionIris Christianson as Tacit DragoonCrystal Zaslavchik as WiFi XLuke Varner as The GMEdited by Iris ChristiansonMusic by Max KnightleyCover Art by Tavish BuchananContent Warnings: Authoritarian oppression, references to suicide, burn injury.Buy our book!Support us on Patreon!Join the Discord!

Three heroes stand in the rain-soaked junkyard on the outskirts of The City. They have reforged themselves into cybernetic beings of pure vengeance, ready to confront The Machine that has enslaved humanity.🎶 There is a flame that I've been fanningThere is a fire waiting to catch 🎶CREDITS:Molly Rhinebeck as Cascade IncursionIris Christianson as Tacit DragoonCrystal Zaslavchik as WiFi XLuke Varner as The GMEdited by Luke VarnerMusic by Max KnightleyCover Art by Tavish BuchananContent Warnings: Authoritarian oppression, gun violence, body horror, dog attacks, child death, mass murder.Buy our book!Support us on Patreon!Join the Discord!

Ace Wizards Arroai the Pragmatic and Nerevin'e Livolias meet The Tower's prior tenant, who reveals numerous construction complications that were not previously disclosed!CREDITS:Max Knightley as Arroai the PragmaticIris Christianson as Nerevin'e LivoliasTyberius Wilson as Xalatan the TriumphantMusic by Max KnightleyEdited by Max Knightley and Crystal ZaslavchikCONTENT WARNING: This episode contains chewing and mouth noises, storm noises, and fireworks noises.This episode is possible thanks to all $10 and up Patreon subscribers! If you're listening to the 5-minute preview of this episode, then you can listen to the full episode by subscribing today!

Eidolon PROTO is the final Eidolon miniseries before we begin our transition to playtesting Threadspinner!Episode Count: 5Crystal as WiFi XMolly as Cascade IncursionIris as Tacit DragoonLuke as The GMThere’s nobody left who remembers a time before The Machine. At least, nobody down here. Up in the tower they say the Inventors, the men that built The Machine, they’re still alive after all these years, dining out on our misery, laughing and feasting and toasting to the despair that reigns down below. The year is 2XX6. In the last century, or maybe the one before, Man learned how to channel lightning into metal to create light, then learned how to channel lightning into stone to create thought. That was the beginning. Every step in human history from that day forward was a step toward the construction of The Machine, though no one knew it yet. Bombs were detonated, bullets fired, minerals extracted, oceans drained. And now, today, we reap the fruits of our ancestors.If the world has survived beyond the City, we’ll never know it; it’s surrounded on all sides by endless wasteland, the ground too cracked and dry to support any life at all, the City’s supplies stretched too thin to support an expedition to find out if it really does go on forever. The City stands as the last bastion of civilization, the last bastion of humanity, the last bastion of life on earth. A garden, mercilessly tended and culled by The Machine, a perfect system of steel and sorrow, a computer brain half again as big as the city that controls every moment of our lives; when we wake, when we sleep, when we work, when we die. The Machine’s control is absolute, enforced by autonomous drones that patrol every corner.This is not a world that can be bent to your will, to anyone’s will but The Machine’s; The World has been removed from the Fate Deck.There is no joy here, no cause for celebration; The Sun has been removed from the Fate Deck.This is not a world where you can achieve the impossible; The Magician has been removed from the Fate Deck.You can never hope to triumph through force over a being as powerful as The Machine; Strength has been removed from the Fate Deck.No, this is a world where Hope Rides Alone, where the only reason anyone has to go on living is the faintest spark, the secret prayer that maybe some day someone, anyone, will rise up, will find a way out of this hell, will bleed and sweat and cry and reveal a new path for the rest of us. The Star is still in the Fate Deck, though its light burns dim.Who would dare stand against The Machine? Does courage even exist in this immiserated age? Even if someone were foolish enough to try, where would they find the raw calories to resist on the starvation diets enforced by The Machine’s brutal government? Who could possibly stand against this? You, of course.It started ten years ago. The Machine is powerful and it sees so much, but its eyes cannot be everywhere. You formed a resistance group, nearly twenty strong now, headquartered out of an old decommissioned sewer tunnel. The work is slow, the cracks in The Machine’s armor so thin that hardly anything can slip through them. There is a junkyard on the outskirts of the city, a vast expanse of discarded mechanical debris, old models of robot enforcers, obsolete components of The Machine that it has discarded without a care. The scrap heap goes on for miles, and in The Machine’s perfect efficiency it has determined that it need not surveil every inch of the space, so long as its walls are high and its guards well-armed.It never counted on you finding a back way in. For two years straight your team dug through the cracked and dusty earth, tunneling from the sewer system to the ground beneath the junkyard. It was grueling, backbreaking work, and smuggling the dirt out to the surface was a near impossible operation on its own. And it was only once the tunnel was completed that you could begin your true work. In the dead of night you scour the junkyard, salvaging anything you can find. By definition, everything here is older, frailer, and weaker than the firepower you intend to use it against. But for all its power, you have one thing The Machine does not: rage.A lifetime of suffering has honed you, forged you, molded you into being of pure vengeance, every cell of your body screaming to tear The Machine apart piece by piece, to drag its black-hearted Inventors through the streets of the city until the asphalt strips their bones bare. The plans were finalized eight years ago, and for eight years you’ve toiled in the dark, soldering components directly to your flesh, wiring weaponry to your heart, replacing your humanity part by part with diesel-fueled, chrome-finished violence, vicious neon screaming for retribution, data sockets bloodthirsty for justice. You are no longer Man, but you are not Machine either. You are something new. A symbol. A symbol that humanity can rally behind. A symbol they can channel their anger through. A symbol for the death of this world and the birth of the next. An avatar of the age itself: an Eidolon.Black stormclouds pulled the sun away hours before nightfall, giving you more time to work. Torrents of rain hammer at the tarp hanging over your work area, the ground trembling with bursts of thunder as you complete the final touches on your new forms, ready, willing, and prepared to fight. Who are you?

In the final round of the demolition derby, our heroes must fight to the death against each other for the chance to make their wish reality!🎶 Praise all the ways we fantasize your endingOnly pray that on the day you see Him coming 🎶CREDITS:Tyberius Wilson as Felicia FuraffinityMolly Rhinebeck as Devlin DripdryCrystal Zaslavchik as DeimiaMike Painter as The GMMusic by Max KnightleyEdited by Crystal ZaslavchikContent Warnings: Desecration of corpses, body horror, choking, and death of an infant.Buy our book!Support us on Patreon!Join the Discord!