In or Out is the second episode of season 11, The Seven.
Recap[]
"Last we left off, the Seven were in the principal's office of the Aguefort Adventuring Academy speaking to none other than Arthur Aguefort himself who just delivered the news that their adventuring party was going to be broken up at the end of the year. What could that mean? The preceding episode we saw the various home lives and families of the various seven maidens, and we saw also a flashback to an earlier adventure in the Cavern of Kalvaxus deep in the Mountains of Chaos."
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Synopsis[]
The Seven are gathered in Aguefort’s office, all reeling from the news that their adventuring party is going to be dissolved at the end of the school year. Despite several of the maidens’ attempts to argue/beg for a different outcome, Aguefort insists that it’s out of his control: bureaucratic standards issued by the Ministry of Adventure will require the four senior students— Antiope, Penny, Katja, and Sam— to graduate at the end of the year, leaving Ostentatia, (Dan)Yelle, and Zelda to complete 11th and 12th grade without their beloved party members.
Sam is suspicious and confronts Aguefort for hiding something from them. He tries to dodge the accusation but Sam magically prevents him from fleeing the room and, impressed by her spellcasting reflexes, he acquiesces by projecting a chronomantic illusion that allows the group to talk in secret.
Aguefort takes the maidens into a hidden area of the library’s forbidden section. He accesses an arcane tome containing the school district bylaws and informs them of the option of passing a General Education Development, or GED: in order to keep their adventuring party together and graduate as a group, the Seven must complete a “Class A, B, or C-level quest” and obtain the consenting signature of the Superintendent of Schools, Tectonya Karkovnya. However, the Superintendent has been missing from Solace since her disappearance twelve years ago, and is moreover apparently “chaotic” and unpredictable (according to Aguefort).
Sam uses her Mirror of the Past to access a vision of Superintendent Tectonya. She is able to view a conversation between Tectonya and Aguefort about the nature of material reality versus illusion, before seeing a glimpse of the Superintendent traveling through the Mountains of Chaos toward the direction of a Dwarven warrior temple.
As Sam shares this vision with the group, Katja takes pictures of the bylaws book, noting that its pages are made of the same copper material as Tectonya’s skin. Danielle tries to press Aguefort for more information on the GED process but the principal still seems reluctant to openly discuss the topic with them, this time successfully fleeing through a portal upon cryptically declaring:
When you have friends, you have everything.”
Antiope admits to her friends that she had a heads-up about the meeting with Aguefort. She offers up her parent’s colleague, Charity Blythe, as potentially having some answers to their questions. The group initially resolves to stick together even as tensions quickly rise: Yelle and Zelda attempt to broker peace & understanding, while Sam and Ostentatia are outspokenly appalled at the possibility of their friends considering other options outside of the group. They both immediately text “I’m in”to their adventuring party group chat and pressure the rest of the Seven to do the same, but Zelda asks for time to think. Conflict comes to a head and Zelda and Sam storm off in opposite directions; Penny (invisibly) and Katja (visibly) follow Zelda while Yelle follows Sam. Ostentatia and Antiope stay behind.
In their respective conversations, the maidens comfort each other while addressing their feelings about confrontation, change, feeling abandoned, and the weight of making choices about their individual & collective futures. Ostentatia later apologizes to Zelda for her emotional reaction and the two share how they feel like being part of the Seven has made them all stronger as people. Penny tries to benignly angle for her friends’ blessing to leave the group, while attempting not to reveal the nature of her offer to become an apprentice in the Society of Shadows.
Antiope talks to her sister and asks for advice. Corsica is bluntly honest, telling Antiope that she has to make her own decisions but also empowering her to realize her own agency & authority.
Katja unsuccessfully tries to reach out to her dad with questions about the missing superintendent. After being sent to voicemail, she decides to snoop through his home office, ultimately finding some years-old correspondence from the Ministry of Adventuring asking if her father had any information on Superintendent Karkovnya’s whereabouts. She also spots a framed picture of her mother and is deeply upset, turning to Cinnamon for comfort.
Meanwhile, Penny turns to guidance counselor Jawbone for advice. He praises her ability to succeed in the structured arenas of adolescent life but underscores the fact that in the adult world, she won’t be able to achieve everything, and must soon make choices about the direction she wants her life to take:
You have the decide the right thing to do and there’s not gonna be an answer at the back of the book. - Counselor Jawbone
Danyelle goes to her “tree mom” Holly for words of wisdom. She only wants what is best for her friends but is also deeply insecure about feeling like she doesn’t truly belong to a group. Holly kindly points out that while Yelle always gives a voice to the voiceless, this may come at the expense of her ability to speak for herself. At some point, she too texts “I’m in” to the maidens group chat.
While still trying to avoid her dad after their fight in Episode 1, Ostentatia casts Commune with the City to search for any evidence of Tectonya Karkovnya. She attunes to Sam’s vision of the Dwarven temple in the Mountains of Chaos, recalling it as being the site of a highly dangerous (and often deadly) pilgrimage in worship of the Forge God. As Ostentatia prays to her Dwarven divinity, she asks for help to have her dad “feel like himself again”.
Sam returns to the now-empty Everpetal house. After debating whether to reach out to her friends, Sam instead decides to shut herself in Penelope’s old room, and attempts to force her Mirror of the Past to show her a vision of her former friend. The mirror shows her a brief glimpse of the two girls at the start of their friendship as middle schoolers; then, a horrifying visage of an eyeless and bloodied Penelope, dressed as an infernal prom queen, manifests in the mirror and begins to talk to Sam. The two sling insults back and forth but Sam quickly realizes it’s pointless, because “Penelope delights in pain”. Instead she chooses to tell Penelope that her parents are getting divorced, before immediately closing the mirror and severing their connection.
That night, an emotional Katja texts “I am in.” to the group chat, making her the fourth of Seven to make a choice. Zelda texts Penny & Antiope saying she loves them and knows they’ll both make the right decision, but that they should make their choices first. Antiope & Penny privately talk about their excitement, but Antiope expresses some resentment towards Sam for not letting her have that moment of excitement with the group. Penny expresses doubt in her usefulness to the group as the party’s rogue and shares (what she can) about her apprenticeship offer. Ultimately, the two decide to abstain from texting the group chat until they can “gather more information”.
The next morning, Antiope and her dad talk about the internship while working out. She, without telling him the full story, lets on that she’s considering the possibility of accepting, but her dad barely hesitates to call Charity Blythe and make plans for Antiope to head to Bastion City that same day for a meeting with the woman— before Ant has a chance to gather any info or clear anything up with the girls. She lets them know about her meeting with Charity and invites them all on a “fact-finding mission”. Meanwhile, Ostentatia announces to the group that she is embarking on a solo quest to find Tectonya and get her GED, saying that anyone is welcome to join her.
Having had their school schedules cleared in the name of completing their quest, the Seven (plus Cinnamon) all meet up in Bastion City at the Museum of Questing History. The girls realize that they are standing underneath a hanging display of Kalvaxus’ skeleton. A passing museum tour guide specifically points out the maidens themselves and notes their involvement in slaying the dragon. Sam interrogates the tour guide Morris about why the skeleton is on display; she goes to cast Lightning Bolt to destroy it but is immediately counterspelled by Charity Blythe. Antiope is embarrassed by Sam “making a scene” and by her other friend’s eavesdropping, but she does get some answers to her questions about the internship. Charity recognizes Katja and casually brings up her previous correspondence with her father, also mentioning of some sort of relationship between Karl Cleaver and Tectonya Karkovnya. The girls + Cinnamon attempt to surreptitiously cast Detect Thoughts on Charity to ascertain the nature of said relationship: all that is revealed is that when Tectonya disappeared, she took something with her. Sam sees in her Mirror of the Past that it appears to be a list of the different questing classification levels, from A to F. Simultaneously, Charity extends a formal internship offer to Antiope, who verbally accepts— but doesn’t let her friends know. Right before the episode ends, Antiope also sees a brief, foreboding flash of The Ending of Thing’s face in the crowds of the museum.
Locations[]
Featured Characters[]
The Seven Maidens[]
- Danielle Barkstock
- Ostentatia Wallace
- Katja Cleaver
- Penny Luckstone
- Sam Nightingale
- Antiope Jones
- Zelda Donovan
New[]
- Gilear Faeth
- Jawbone O'Shaughnessey
- Holly Tree
- Penelope Everpetal (†)
- Johnny Spells (†) (heard)
- Morris
- Charity Blythe
Returning[]
Mentioned[]
- Maugly Dimweather
- Tectonya Karkovnya (seen)
- Gorgug Thistlespring
- The Society of Shadows
- The Luckstone Children
- Kalvaxus (†)