Web Video / Dimension 20: Cloudward, Ho!

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Cloudward, Ho! is the twenty-sixth season of Dimension 20.

Nineteen years ago, in the world of Gath, Professor Comfrey MacLeod invented Friodynamic Lift, a method of air travel wherein air is cooled around a balloon to produce lift. The first airship she built was the Zephyr, which she used to travel the world. Backed financially by the Gotch family and accompanied by four of her most trusted companions— Marya Junková, Montgomery LaMontgommery, Vanellope Chapman, and Daisuke Bucklesby— the Wind Rider Society explored Gath, seeking adventures, solving mysteries, and helping those in need...

...but this is not that story.

In the present day of 1382, the Gotch family is destitute due to funding Comfrey's expeditions, which were rarely financially viable; the professor herself hasn't been seen in years, having vanished on an attempt to find Zood, the fabled twenty-eighth lost continent of Gath. Maxwell, their youngest son, is dispatched to repossess the MacLeod farm... but discovers that the deed to the farm contains a cipher on it for a radio frequency. Upon presenting this to Comfrey's granddaughter, Olethra, they discover a cryptic, looping message left by Professor MacLeod, declaring that Zood is real, and that she's in danger. Now, Maxwell and Olethra have to reunite Comfrey's old crew, but find they're being pursued by a villain from the nation of Eisengeist— Lord Kensington Cosgrove Mordecestershire, who wants to claim the Zephyr for himself in order to settle the Gotch family's debts.

The Crew of the Zephyr consists of:

• Brennan Lee Mulligan as the Dungeon Master
• Ally Beardsley as Olethra MacLeod
• Brian Murphy as Maxwell Gotch
• Emily Axford as Marya Junková
• Lou Wilson as Montgomery LaMontgommery
• Siobhan Thompson as Vanellope Chapman
• Zac Oyama as Daisuke Bucklesby

Cloudward, Ho! contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc: In Episode 13, with the crew of the Zephyr emerging victorious, killing Lord Mordecestershire and stopping Tazgw'agwa from breaching into Zood, the Big Bad of the series has seemingly been defeated... only for Brennan to fully introduce the Queen of Zern as the Greater-Scope Villain in the next episode.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: With the exception of the first and final episodes of the season, all of the episodes have alliterative titles.
• Adventure-Friendly World: Both Gath and Zood are this. Gath is a world in its industrial revolution, with airships aplenty, but most everything in Gath has been discovered, leaving little wonder left. Zood is full of lost temples, ancient Magi Tech, and even has ways to facilitate communication between those who normally wouldn't be able to talk to one another in the form of crystals that can act as a Universal Translator.
• Aerith and Bob: Relatively normal names like Daisuke, Maxwell, and Montgomery exist alongside Longspot Gotch, Lord Kensington Mordecestershire^note Pronounced "Murder-sure" and Oroborous Codswallop.
• Artistic License – Linguistics: The Zoodian translator in episode 4, relies on the common pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", which while containing every letter in English/Gathian, would not be enough to base a full comprehensive translation between two languages on its own, Applied Phlebotinum aside.
• Artistic License – Biology: In Episode 7 the light of the sun kills off the Myconimus Magnemensa mushrooms. Mushrooms are simply reproductive fruiting bodies used by mycelium to release spores much like flowers for plants develop into fruits. Mushrooms seen at the surface do not make up the actual majority of fungal biomass and die off on their own fairly quickly. Comparatively fungi can regenerate quite readily from the mycelial network that often lies further underground. While fungi dont always like light this is in many ways the same as any other organism being vulnerable to radiation. Exposure to the mushrooms would not kill the larger expanse of the mycelium.
• Assassin Outclassin': When we meet him after the timeskip, Daisuke interrupts an attempt on Olethra's life. This hasn't been the first time he's done this, as he also prevented an attempt to kill her on a rollercoaster.
• Bittersweet Ending: Zood and Zern are both saved, but the Prime Disruption being resolved means that things will be materially worse for a bit in Zood as the two worlds return to equilibrium, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a return to how it is supposed to be. And all of this came at the cost of Comfrey's life, and with her gone, the Wind Riders have broken up once and for all, though still willing to have their own adventures.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: As part of the swinging culture of Bellenuit, their airships and military vessels appear to be made of/lined with black velvet. This has the added benefit of making security effectively cloaked in the perpetually night-like scenery set up in the underground city, allowing for intervention without being noticed ahead of time.
• Body Horror: Played for Laughs. The Eisengeistian brutes employed by Lord Mordecestershire are so heavily mutated by the Queen's Smog that their hair grows inward, resulting in hairy mouths and arteries. Evidently, they use a combination of mouthwash and shampoo which keeps their mouth hair silky smooth.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • This is one of the only seasons to have mismatched character levels; Olethra is only Level 2, meaning she lacks her Rogue subclass, but everyone else is Level 6. This appears to be deliberate so that Olethra has an incentive to pilot the MechLeod in a fight.
  • The character sheets for those who do have subclasses also don't list what subclasses they have— given most of the players are using homebrew or other unofficial material (Maxwell is a "Pugilist" and Daisuke appears to be a Gunslinger Fighter) this is a tad troublesome for fans who want to document the class features they possess.
  • Similarly, Emily is known for her love of multiclassing (Playing a Bard/Warlock/Paladin mix in Fantasy High, a Monk/Warlock in Unsleeping City, a Rogue/Fighter in Crown of Candy, a Barbarian/Druid in Neverafter, and the Jack of All Stats Sentinel in Starstruck Odyssey), and here she has arguably the most straightforward build, a straight 6 levels of artificer with an official subclass in a game where everyone else has homebrew classes or subclasses, or unique quirks like a mecha.
  • This is seemingly the first time Siobhan has played a fully martial character in an Intrepid Heroes season the form of Van Chapman, a fighter. Even Ruby Rocks form A Crown of Candy was an Arcane Trickster rogue, considered a quarter-caster by the standards of 5e. Subverted when it's revealed that Van is a fighter/warlock multiclass, and practically the Token Wizard of the group considering her connections to the extraplanar being Tazgw'agwa.
  • This is also the only season where all of the characters seem to be human both aesthetically and mechanically— every other season ranged the gamut from having technically no humans (such as in A Crown of Candy) to having the party all be human, but mechanically be a different race (such as in The Unsleeping City, where Pete Conlan is mechanically a Kalashtar). It's also the first season to not have any type of full Wisdom-based caster in the party to start with (while Timothy Goose from Neverafter was a bard, he was a Wisdom-based caster as opposed to Charisma).
  • Siobhan has clarified in an interview that for the first time the Intrepid Heroes will not be levelling up their characters— rather, every time they would take a level, they take a feat instead, mimicking the "Epic Level 6" homebrew from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. However, Olethra is Level 3 in the third episode, meaning this is the case for the original Zephyr crew, plus Maxwell, but not her — at least, presumably until she hits level 6 as well, mimicking how Olethra is becoming more experienced on this journey as she goes through various situations with the experienced (and in Maxwell's case, classically-trained) party.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: The Zephyr is set to be repossessed, and is said to be an 'old hunk of junk' that Professor MacLeod hadn't flown in years by the time she disappeared. Maxwell steals it in order to contact Olethra. Somewhat Deconstructed as the ship is clearly outdated and outmatched compared to modern vessels, and against the Straka, it is reduced to splinters in seconds. Comparatively, the more modern Zephyr Mark II is able to face down the Straka in a straight fight and come out without too much damage.
• Broken Pedestal: Haunch's letter in the Ectic Research station serves to do this for Olethra and most of the Wind Riders towards Comfrey, as it makes clear how reckless and careless she's being towards the pursuit of adventure at the expense of everyone's well-being.
• Call-Back: Upon Siobhan cracking the Zoodian alphabet, Brennan laments "This is worse than the Latin", alluding to when Siobhan was able to partially and off-handedly translate the phrase from The Aeneid in The Unsleeping City: Chapter II.
• Chekhov's Skill: Standing. Yes, really. Wealwell's study of posture at Biffmore allows him to effortlessly save both Maxwell and Marya from the bizarre location they find below Comfrey's base at the South Pole by remaining stable while the base shakes around them, and allows Maxwell to grab the artifact from the bottom of the shaft by using his brother as an anchor.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The Legio Rex, a legion of Tressian soldiers in dinosaur bodies, suffer from this problem; dinosaur bodies are great for fighting and killing, but lousy for doing anything that requires a human body or hands.
• Cypher Language: While at Comfrey's research station at the South Pole, the crew discovers a message written in a Zoodian language unlike any they would know in the rest of Gath. Unfortunately above the table, it's just a substitution cipher for English, allowing Siobhan to solve it by the episode's end, much to Brennan's chagrin.
• Deadly Rotary Fan: Maxwell uses one of the ship's propeller fans to messily dispatch some of the bankers at Fehujar, to the horror of everyone else involved.
  Maxwell: You're meat.
• Death World: Zern is described as this, a hot, desolate mechanical wasteland where nothing can thrive, contrasting with the endless natural beauty and bounty of Zood.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: The goal of the battle in "A Fraught Forge in Zern" is the crew having to construct a Giant Scrap Robot out of parts in a Zernian scrapyard, digging the parts out with cranes and piecing them together on the fly. With sufficiently high rolls, the crew can pick and choose what attachments they add, from shields and buzzsaws to machine guns and lube sprayers. There was even an option for it to steal and equip the weapons of the enemy Naughtomata onto itself, though it's not made use of in the episode.
• A Dog Named "Cat": Marya's rat companion is named Kočka, which is Czech for "cat."
• Down in the Dumps: Scrapsylvania is this with Überwald accents and linguistics.
• Eerie Arctic Research Station: Comfrey's research station at the south pole was abandoned so suddenly, the pilots didn't bother untying their planes, and a record playing holiday music was still broadcasting through the station. It might have something to do with the artifact buried beneath the ice...
• Epic Ship-on-Ship Action: With airships and planes a ubiquitous force on Gath, battles can involve the ships like the Zephyr just as much as person-to-person combat. Ships can fire on each other and suffer "mishaps" if they take too much damage.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Gotch family, except for Maxwell, are largely Upper Class Twits who scoff at their ancestor's love for adventure, sneer at the youngest son for his rowdy behavior and are concerned with getting back into the black as fast as possible... but upon learning that Comfrey's grandson has transitioned into a granddaughter, Longspot corrects himself immediately and offhandedly congratulates Olethra.
• Evil Is Burning Hot: Zern, where the Greater-Scope Villain of the series resides, is reached through the Califactory Biangle, a counterpart to Zood's Effulgent Biangle. Every instance of Zernian energy describes it as scalding hot and having a hostile feeling.
• Expy: The Eisengeistians may be inspired by the Helghast from Killzone: they're bald, pallid Gas Mask Mooks who are physically dependent on the smoggy, toxic atmosphere of their Evil Empire, which has a militaristic, distinctly German aesthetic. Lord Mordesctershire's character art, in particular, strongly resembles Autarch Scolar Visari.
• Fantastic Drug: In addition to uppers and downers, the members of the MacLeod clan that are in Pilby have designed something called a 'sideways' that seems to cause people who take it to be able to disbelieve reality itself; a member of the Gotch retinue that takes it is able to lift Olethra's mech over their head to load it onto Maxwell's car, after declaring that the weight doesn't seem real. Brennan admitted on the following episode of Adventuring Party that he interpreted it as a psychedelic.
• Fantastic Fallout: The Queen's Smog over Eisengeist is a type of pollutant which makes those who are exposed to it for long enough unable to breathe normal air. It's a result of using Widow's Breath, a chemical which replaced the systems behind Friodynamic Lift sometime the last nineteen years. Among its symptoms seems to be the fact that Eisengeist Brutes have hair growing on the inside of their bodies.
• Fantastic Slur: "Rowdy" is something between this and a Class-Based Insult, seeming to mean someone "who is excessively rough or uncultured" or a Lower-Class Lout. Becomes an Appropriated Appellation for Maxwell.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Pilby combines elements of the American old west with some parts of early settlers of the Australian outback— Daisuke is a gunslinger from the former, while the MacLeod family seems to be based on independent survivalists in the outback such as the outlaw Ned Kelly.
  • Scrapsylvania is linguistically and culturally Eastern European, but is noted to be an artificial landmass created by the detritus of past wars that's picked through by the inhabitants.
  • Upland seems to be based on the Scottish Highlands.
  • Bellenuit has elements of New Orleans and The Roaring '20s in a subterranean civilization.
  • From what little we've seen of Eisengeist, they seem to combine elements of Imperial Germany with Victorian England— references to "The Queen's Smog" recall London's smoggy periods throughout history, and Mordecestershire's name is British as hell, but his style of dress and the name "Eisengeist" (literally meaning "Iron Ghost") are both Germanic. Furthermore, the flying machines the Eisengeistians use are called "Wasps", and a model of plane used by Germany during World War II was the Messerschmitt Me 410 Hornisse— or in English, the "Hornet".
• First-Episode Twist: Episode 1 of the 20-episode season makes it seem like a large chunk of the series would be devoted to just finding and reaching Zood, but the crew of the Zephyr make it there by just Episode 3, and the rest of the season is devoted to exploring its weird environment.
• Flashback: The first episode opens on one in the form of a newsreel that serves to introduce all of our characters.
• Floating Continent: Zood has these, as seen in the Dome projections at the end of Episode 3.
• Four Cardinal Directions: Wherever Zood is, it has four whose workings are alien to the main cast; Nox and Nef are equivalent to east and west roughly, but Vim and Vex are somehow 'absolute' like the North and South Poles, but are somehow not fixed. It is later revealed in ep 8 that Zood is effectively a coil forming a helix structure with another coiled celestial body called Zern. Vim and Vex are absolutes referring to how close the surface of either body is, Vex being the points in which the braids are closest to the point in which the two celestial bodies make up the horizon akin to the view of a ringworld while Vim is where they are distant enough that one may not see the other celestial body. As the double helix forms a circle, Nox and Nef are effectively "clockwise" and "anticlockwise" respectively.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Upon arrival in Zood, the party finds out about a type of mushroom called the Myconimus Magnamensa whose spores can cause creatures to swap minds; they learn of this from an academic trapped in the body of a baboon, and then later learn that the entire lost Legio Rex of Tressia had their bodies swapped with those of dinosaurs, and are looking for both more Magnamensa mushrooms and new bodies to swap into.
• Heroic Sacrifice: At the climax of the season, Marya manages to save Ludmilla by diving into the past through the Calefactory Biangle to retrieve her uncorrupted mind and restore it into her body being reconstituted in the present, though the burning aura in the Biangle takes the last of her hit points and she is stuck in the Biangle. However, Olethra refuses to accept this and dives into the Biangle after her to try and retrieve her, and eventually succeeds.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The battle against the Eyeless Hand in "Eyeless Crisis at Katur" was intended to be this, according to Brennan's comments in the corresponding Adventuring Party. The intent was for the party to be forced into fleeing and recovering from defeat for the plot to advance. Thanks to some very good choices and rolls, the party is able to avert this.
  • Played straight two episodes later, with the Straka absolutely eviscerating the 'Zephyr' and scuttling it, and dealing enough damage that they didn't stand a chance even if the crew had been fighting back to the death.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: While bemoaning his daughter potentially leaving their home, Hutch MacLeod says that it's not like his mother's ship the Zephyr flies overhead every night. Cue the Zephyr flying overhead.
• Infallible Babble: Zigzagged; in the 19 years between the prologue and the start of the campaign, a lot of rumors have been flying around about the Famed in Story Wind Rider Society, and while some might be true, a lot might not be. Each player has some rumors about the other characters that were mixed in with fake rumors, with some Played for Drama (like the MechLeod having a remote-controlled mechanism to kill its pilot, the 7th Gotch son (Maxwell) being cursed, or Vanellope secretly being in cahoots with the Confederated Imperial Republic), and others Played for Laughs (like Pappy getting "lost at sky" for six months, his skinny frame hanging onto a floating sail and snatching seagulls out of the air to eat).
• Ironic Name: The Giant Scrap Robot that the crew has to cobble together from scrapyard junk mid-battle is named on the sheets as the "VGDWP Mech", which stands for "Very Good, Definitely Well-Planned Mech". It's later christened, in an In-Joke to a nickname given to Maxwell, "Mr. Big-Britches".
• Later-Installment Weirdness: In-universe, the characters mention that they find the later novels of Montgomery LaMontgommery (Lou's character) not as good as his earlier works. Keep in mind, Montgomery had not been introduced yet and was unable to defend himself.
• Living Dinosaurs: Common in the jungles on Zood. Some herbivores have been put to work in the cities as beasts of burden, but a legion of Tressian soldiers got their minds swapped with velociraptors in the distant past, and their descendants are trying to get back into bodies with opposable thumbs.
• Lost in Transmission: Professor MacLeod's looping transmission to Olethra's mech is glitchy and has unintelligible words, but it has enough context to urge Olethra and Maxwell into action.
• Lost Roman Legion: Many centuries ago in Gath, a legion of the Tressian Empire (a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to the Roman Empire) disappeared without a trace into the Effulgent Biangle, and when the Wind Riders reach Zood, they find that they had been transported into that world, and had their minds switched into the bodies of velociraptors and now call themselves the Legio Rex.
• Lost World: Zood, the lost 28th continent of Gath. Whatever it is, wherever it is, it can only be reached through a beam of blinding light known as the 'Effulgent Biangle', and Montgomery determines it doesn't have a magnetic north. Comfrey's transmission is full of terms that neither Olethra or Maxwell have any context for, on top of that. Upon seeing Tabira City in Episode 4, it's revealed that dinosaurs are still extant on Zood, further leaning into this trope.
• Low Fantasy: If the first episode is anything to go by, Montgomery's Speaks Fluent Animal ability is something rather unusual, and even then, he's a homebrewed subclass of Ranger called the Wayfarer that's meant to be non-magical. Artificers like Marya are meant to craft Magitech, but her items and spells are reflavored as mundane, if advanced, technology. Even Maxwell is specifically a Pugilist, which is a third-party class with a Charles Atlas Superpower flavor for unarmed strikes as opposed to the more mystical Bare-Fisted Monk. Things get a lot more magical when they get to Zood, although it is generally given a sci-fi flavour.
• Mad Scientist: "Deranged Science" is a recognized practice in this world, and Lord Mordecestershire is the Minister of it in Eisengeist.
• Meanwhile Scene: Episode 14 has some Five-Second Foreshadowing at the end. As the crew are having dinner with Comfrey and she's explaining what happened to Marya's apprentice Ludmila, Marya, who declined to join the dinner, has just shown Ludmila's picture to Torse, leading him to be possessed by the Queen of Zern and attacking their ship.
• Medicinal Cuisine: Bert's cooking (first introduced in the form of mayonnaise) gives temporary HP.
• Mini-Mecha:
  • Olethra MacLeod has a 12-foot-tall mech suit called "The MechLeod" given to her by her grandmother. It's been sitting in her yard for years, but it has dials and a radio that provide the first clue of the adventure. It activates in Episode 2 when she tries to hide in it, and she finds she can pilot the mech, and it apparently gives her a whole different class and subclass while piloting.
  • Captain Junker's pet rat, Kočka, has an appropriately-sized mech suit of his own, acting as her Steel Defender.
• Mobile City: Tabira City is a settlement that walks around a desert in Zood on long stilt-like legs.
• Mood Whiplash: Discussed when Maxwell kills a Fehujar banker by slowly shoving his whole body headfirst into a airship propeller, as Brennan points out how a jarring a death this gruesome is for the whimsical steampunk adventure season.
  Brennan: Every part of the world and tone of this setting wants the camera to move away from this moment.
• Noodle Incident: "Pilby '71" is used as a codephrase by Montgomery during the fight on the Zephyr in Episode 2 to direct his companions; Maxwell and Olethra don't get the reference, but his old compatriots in the Wind Rider society all do and react accordingly.
• Oh, Crap!: Comfrey has this reaction when she hears that there's a picture of Ludmila in Zood, because as Marya is currently finding out elsewhere, when a Zernian robot like Torse sees a picture of their Queen, she can instantly possess them wherever they are.
• Off-the-Shelf FX: The tentacles of Tazgw'agwa are represented by two-foot-long tentacle dildoes. The cast is unable to take them seriously with the suction cups on the bottom and obviously flared base.
• Organic Technology: The Zoodian city of Oda is covered in plants that can grow into all sorts of technological devices, from boats to lampposts. The crew use this technology to grow a full-blown submarine they can use to dive under the ocean.
• Painting the Medium: A rare Actual Play example, during non-combat episodes the table has a giant screen monitor hidden under a protective tabletop, referred to as the Window Of Wonder. A dedicated team of two sketch artists is in the back during these episodes, quick-drawing important incidentals like animal and plant life as well as clues and objects, so the players have examples and visual reference.
  • Every time they arrive in a major location, the dome walls turn into a giant panoramic picture to immerse the players in the action. When it is a spot where they have time to split up and look around like a major city or Zern, they are handed physical copies of the picture and a magnifying glass so they can choose details to investigate Where's Wally? style. In the final battle, the dome projection image is animated.
  • The table and DM Screen are both filled with easter eggs and little details like codes, hidden compartments, and detachable props, all of which are important in-game to solve puzzles. Serves as Paranoia Fuel as some players (Murph) are constantly afraid Brennan will induce consequences if they mess with the set too much.
• Phlebotinum-Induced Steampunk:
  • It was Professor MacLeod's invention of Friodynamic Lift (cooling the air outside of a balloon, so that the now hotter and lighter air inside the balloon will generate lift) that made the age of airships and wind riders possible.
  • Widow's Breath is apparently a new fuel that is mined from the earth (causing potential environmental repercussions) that has revolutionized the airship industry and is considered a more efficient fuel. The soldiers of Eisengeist even use it as some kind of Super Serum, though its overuse has saturated some areas with its smoke, called the Queen's Smog, and has caused some denizens of Eisengeist to be totally reliant on breathing it and can no longer breathe normal air, forcing them to wear diving suits if they go anywhere else.
• Point of No Return: Zoodians repeatedly claim that return to Gath is impossible, making the question of how the Professor and Lord Mordecestershire manage it a major plot point. As it turns out, Lord Mordecestershire entered the Biangle in the future but ended up in Zood's past, far back in time enough that the party doesn't recognize him due to his age.
• Primal Scene: In Episode 18, Olethra walks in on her grandma Comfrey and her ex-husband Daisuke reigniting their Old Flame and smoking pot in the aftermath.
• Putting the Band Back Together: The first episode of the season, "On High We Go", all revolves around Olethra and Maxwell reassembling the old crew of Professor Comfrey's Wind Rider Society in order to find the last place where she had vanished to.
• Researching the Monster: This became a game mechanic with Montgomery LaMontgommery, Lou Wilson's character for the season. Already a naturalist, he gains an ability called "Theoretical Biology" which allows him to Retcon traits onto various creatures Monty encounters if he succeeds on a roll. For instance, Monty theorizes that the 'Nut Pugs', pistachio-like canines first encountered in the city of Odara, are a hive mind, and succeeding on a roll proves that correct. He later theorizes that the Straka, which serves as The Dragon of the season, is susceptible to radiant damage and healing, due to being a manifestation of decay and pollution.
• Save the Villain: Once Marya realizes that her apprentice Ludmilla had been thrown into the past and become the Queen of Zern, although she is pragmatically resolved to do what's necessary, a part of her is always looking for a way to change the past and save her. She finally manages it by diving through the Calefactory Biangle into the past, retrieve Ludmilla's uncorrupted mind and heart, and bring it back into the present to put it back into her reconstituted body
• Scout-Out: LaMontgommery, a ranger, founded the "Cog Scouts", which seem to be all-inclusive as opposed to unisex.
• Shout-Out: The subtitle on the profile card for Little One, the baby T-Rex, says "Gotta love him."
• Sky Pirate: Van Chapman's bar caters to these when we first meet her.
• Stealth Pun: In the jungle surrounding Ramansu, the party briefly encounters a giraffe that has been given the Zood Switcheroo with a leopard. The Ancient Greeks simply called giraffes "Camel leopards" due to their shape combined with their spotty coloration.
• Steampunk: Gath is a world full of airships, adventure, guns and clockwork technology. Brennan says as much in the opening minutes of the first episode:
  "We're doing Steampunk!"
• Suspect Is Hatless: A mysterious evil group is called The Eyeless Hand — which (as discussed in the corresponding Adventuring Party) is just a regular hand. Slightly played for laughs in that its cultists spout similar phrases, "The eye that cannot see, the nose that cannot hear" and are horrified when the crew tells them that that's just normal.
• Temporal Paradox: The existence of the Queen of Zern seems to be a Stable Time Loop: when Straka attacked Marya's ship, her protege Ludmila got thrown through a Calefactory Biangle into Zern's distant past, and used her mechanical knowledge she learned from Marya to help the Corrodi Primarchs and industrialize the land, eventually constructing Straka and becoming the Queen of Zern. This led to a war between Zern and Zood, which Comfrey and the Zephyr 2.0 helped to stop by using Tazgw'agwa to form a psychic barrier between the worlds, but the cutoff built up pressure and eventually started creating Biangles in Gath that led to Zood and Zern, one of which brought the Straka into the past to attack Marya's ship.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Haunch's letter to Comfrey.
    "Comfrey, I've come to suspect the only reason Mont's not here is that he saw what we were too stubborn, naive, or drunk to see: you've absolutely lost it. In all the times we've come here, you've never once stopped to think if all your heroics are actually helping anybody and not just digging the hole you started deeper. Whatever research you thought left in Katur is probably nothing more than dust by now, and even if it isn't, you playing fast and loose with our benevolent bankers has tipped us off to the Eyeless Hand, and you know what happens if they find the temple before us."
    "So I've had it, I won't play a part in it anymore. I'll stay in Tabira for as long as I can until I find a ship headed for somewhere the Hand will never find me. Onion, Sylvio, and all the rest; if they've got any sense, they'll come too, you had your reasons for leaving them behind. Maybe more of the old crew would've helped put a stop to this. I can't help but think Van could have done it, but you put a stop to that, didn't you? If I ever crawl out of this whiskey bottle, I hope I find you with some more common sense. But something tells me you'll try to fix this on your own just so you'd never have to look Marya in the eye and tell her what really happened."
  • When the crew finally run into the Zephyr 2.0 and meet Comfrey, Monty starts yelling at her about how reckless she's been and demanding to know what the deal is right now.
    "You didn't pull nine rounds, because he was THERE, and he almost SUCCEEDED. If not for this man, and this lady, and everyone on this Zephyr! YOU WATCH YOUR FUCKING MOUTH, COMFREY! There's a lot more at stake, it seems, than whatever your message seemed to communicate. So why don't you FUCKING TELL US WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON! I'M SICK OF THIS SHIT!"
• Timey-Wimey Ball:
  • Following their encounter with Goldbeard, it becomes clear that time in Zood and time in Gath work differently. Goldbeard claims to have passed through the Biangle maybe twenty years ago, but his fight with Daisuke was decades before that, and Episode 12 has the party encounter a pair of knights from Gath's medieval period... who arrived there only a few weeks ago from their perspective. People who enter Zood in Gath's future can end up flung back in time, as is evidenced by Mordecestershire having been in Zood so long that Monty doesn't recognize him at first due to his age being so different.
  • In Episode 14, Zood is explicitly described as having "enfrumpled time", with the crew of the Zephyr 2 likening it to a ball of paper in a trash can. The Biangles are capable of moving in a straight line through this time, and despite Biangle travel supposedly being a one-way affair, Comfrey and the rest of the Zephyr 2 crew have figured out a way to travel between Zood and Gath somewhat freely; however, while time moves linearly in Gath, they have no control over when or where they end up in Zood.
• Title Drop: The title comes from a declaration Comfrey would make before she set off on adventures.
• Truth in Television: Moose can swim to a surprising depth (to the extent that they occasionally get killed by orcas), but it's not widely-known, justifying the surprise the newscaster has at the opening of the first episode.
• Universal Translator: Once they arrive in a Zoodian city, they are introduced to a device that renders them able to understand the local language with just a few words of Gathian.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 8, "Mysteries and The Metal Man". First, we have a Hidden Disdain Reveal for Comfrey towards Monty, as she always thought he was a poseur who just tagged along to write novels. Then, it turns out that Van Chapman might actually be cursed, drawn seaward for an unknown reason. The Eyeless Hand is trying to bring back a nameless god and perhaps most shockingly, we discover why the directions in Zood are so bizarre: Zood is wrapped around another world called Zern in a double helix pattern, and Zern is a Death World inhabited by clockwork beings who are ruled over by a tyrannical queen.
  • Episode 14, "Mounting Mysteries at Mount Charuk" has many big reveals: Longspot may have poisoned his own father, the group finally run into the new Zephyr and meet Comfrey, whereupon she and Monty get into a shouting match about how reckless she's been, it's revealed travel from Gath to Zood and Zern through the Biangles involve Time Travel to different points in Zood/Zern's timeline, and that Marya's lost protege Ludmila had been thrown into Zern's past and used her future technological knowledge to become it's conquering Queen in the present... at the same time that Torse sees Marya's picture of Ludmila and gets possessed.
  • Episode 15, "Run-in With The Ruinous Queen", completely changes the dynamic of the show With Marya flying the 'Zephyr' into Calefactory Biangle, bringing the party to Zern. Immediately upon arriving, the Straka utterly destroys the 'Zephyr', stranding the Wind Riders in hostile territory with no way out and no safe place to hide.
• What the Hell, Hero?: A few of the Wind Riders have harsh words for Maxwell when, making a judgement call that the dinosaur-bodies Tressian Legion they're talking to might not be related to any obvious enemy groups, just outright asks them about Comfrey MacLeod and her whereabouts.