And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water. When the dead tree bears the fruit of empire, it will all be this. You can't shake it. You can't shake me. Or the burning sky, or the blood, or the ink, or the ash. But there is a part of us that lives forever, and chances taken are rewarded. Stretch your legs, use the space, and I will show you your shadow at evening rising to meet you. I will show you fear in a handful of dust and freedom in the shadow of man. Deep breaths.

RELEASE SCHEDULE UPDATE: My friends and lovers, the next episode of hit podcast Worlds Beyond Number, titled "The Battle of Twelvebrooks, Part 1" will come out on April 29th, and then the next episode two weeks after that, etc etc, until we finish Book 1. We're giving the whole release schedule a lil skooch up one week. Don't worry, we have a delightful replacement treat for you to shove in your head holes during the buffer week. Which head holes? Up to you, comrade. Choose wisely.

SECOND UTILITY PARAGRAPH: Look, you really gotta hear the Twelvebrooks interlude, if you wanna get the most out of the next few eps. It's available on our patreon right now! It's very good, I SWEAR.

Worlds Beyond Number is:

Brennan Lee Mulligan

Erika Ishii

Aabria Iyengar

Lou Wilson

and is produced, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse with exquisite design and editing help from Jared Olson

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Shannon and Amanda Freberg! Apologies to T.S. Eliot, sorry big dawg!

Transcript of this episode coming soon! You can find transcripts of all our episodes here, for free, on our Patreon.

Our album art is by the great Corey Brickley

Some additional ambient sound design comes from Michael Ghelfi Studios. You can get their sounds and music for your home games and VTT as well, which we enthusiastically recommend.