Redwood Bureau: "Facility Containment Protocol: Relic Recovery – FLOOR_2"

Podcast: Redwood Bureau
Host(s): Eeriecast Network (Agent Conroy, voiced by Josh Tomar)
Episode Air Date: November 8, 2025

Episode Overview

This tense, atmospheric episode centers on a clandestine operation by the Redwood Bureau into "Floor 2," a sub-level of an anomalous research facility rife with supernatural objects. Agent Conroy, a former operative whistleblowing to the public, unveils the genuine dangers staff face as the Bureau prioritizes artifact recovery over personnel safety. The episode documents first-hand runner accounts, exposes organizational decision-making, and reveals the human and existential costs of reckless artifact containment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. “Deadlight” and the State of the Facility ([01:38])

• Agent Conroy references his recent absence due to a catastrophic event termed "Deadlight", describing it as "apocalyptic."
• Operations have shifted from large squads to solo agents—“Ashcroft runners”—with live monitoring, seeking to minimize “noise” in the environment, which seems to provoke dangerous anomalies.

"Things like this can't just be left to the Bureau. And make no mistake, this phenomenon has the potential to become apocalyptic."
— Agent Conroy [01:50]

2. Policy Shift: The Justification for Pausing at Floor 2 ([05:19])

• Field Commander Nathan Ashcroft sends a report justifying the operational "pause": Independent runners are yielding better results, with fewer deaths.
• Floor 2’s relics are highly reactive to disturbance; environmental stability is crucial.
• Rushing risks losing “irreplaceable data,” losing artifacts themselves, and escalating threats.

"We are not delaying. We are preserving. Floor 2 is a finite archive of artifacts. If we push past the floor before we stabilize and extract what we can, we'll spend three times the time and lives trying to clean up the noise we make on the way down."
— Commander Ashcroft [07:40]

3. Runner’s Descent: Lived Experience of Artifact Recovery ([08:02]–[23:19])

• An agent recounts their solo “cold walk,” carrying heavy duffels designed to contain lethal relics:
  • LP03—“Lucent Precipitate”: A cold, dangerous vial.
  • PH1—“Phonophage”: A sound-consuming drum, recovered in near-complete silence.
  • BXF “Reliquary”: A box only opens in response to lies; dangerous manipulations of reality and memory ensue.
• The environment mutates, distorts time and space, preys on the agent’s guilt (embodied as their deceased brother’s apparition).
• The runner’s survival depends on following detailed, counterintuitive logic—like not apologizing and speaking lies to bypass or neutralize an artifact’s effects.

"Some rules sound like jokes until you're the one standing in front of something that only opens for a lie."
— Agent Conroy [03:10]

"The tag's instructions screamed into my mind: Do not apologize."
— Runner [23:36]

4. Trauma & Exit: Fallout of Artifact Encounters ([36:45], [56:42])

• Returning from the mission, the runner is put through a brutal decontamination.
• He is left in medbay with only the traumatized company of other survivors; haunted, wary, still not free of the floor’s psychological influence.

5. The D23 Biologic: A Second Runner’s Gruesome Ordeal ([39:06]–[55:27])

• Another agent is sent to recover an “unknown anomalous object”—the “biological disposal D23.”
• The mission devolves into a grotesque ordeal inside a living, swallowing tunnel; the agent is trapped and force-fed organic remains by the anomaly itself.
• The runner emerges physically changed, with intense, single-minded hunger for “meat”—a human cost of misunderstood artifact interaction.

"My mouth started salivating even before I heard the muffled cry coming from somewhere down the hallway."
— Runner [59:44]

6. Reflection & Institutional Critique ([60:11])

• Agent Conroy warns that the Bureau’s operational efficiency is illusory; every artifact moved and contained fundamentally shifts site reality.
• The current pause is likely a stalling tactic—Ashcroft playing for time—while higher-ups remain eager for profitable assets, no matter the body count.
• Conroy urges those within the Bureau to recognize the expendability foisted upon them and resist orders when necessary.

"This isn't a cautionary footnote. It is the cost column catching up to the revenue line. And if you think that story ends with a successful detox and a form letter, you haven't been listening to these reports... If you're working this site, hear me: Command will trade your life for a data point and call it procedure."
— Agent Conroy [61:31]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Artifacts' Malice and Metaphysics

  "If you ever find yourself agreeing with inanimate objects, walk away immediately. If an object ever hums in your bones, warms a cool room, cools a warm room, reflects you a half second late, or makes you feel guilty for nothing… Do not touch, pocket, name, or bargain."
  — Agent Conroy [04:22]

• Instructions at the Anomalous Reliquary

  “BXF opening LOGIC state A falsehood. Reorient yourself. Do not apologize.”
  — Instruction card, runner’s mission [22:12]

• Runner hounded by Apparitions

  “Even though it was my brother, I knew it wasn't my brother...The apology clawed its way up my throat like a physical thing. I knew it wasn't real... ‘I was there for you,’ the words hurt coming out more than words can. He smiled. Not my brother."
  — Runner [24:09–24:45]

• After D23 Biologic Consumes the Runner

  "My jaw kept working after the word came out, a practiced motion with nothing in it... Place, I said, and hated hearing it and said it anyway. Mate, Agent, the voice said."
  — Runner, post-recovery [58:07]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Facility Status, Tone Setting – [01:38]–[04:52]
• Operations Justification by Commander Ashcroft – [05:19]–[08:02]
• Runner’s Floor 2 Journal / Artifact Retrieval – [08:02]–[36:45]
• Medbay and Psychological Fallout – [36:45]
• Second Anomaly (D23 Biologic) Recovery Mission – [39:06]–[55:27]
• Recovery, Aftermath, and Changed State – [56:42]–[59:44]
• Agent Conroy’s Final Reflection and Warning – [60:11]–[63:21]

Overall Tone and Atmosphere

The episode maintains a haunting, clinical tension throughout, layering grim humor with existential dread. The language is direct, procedural, bleakly sarcastic, and occasionally poetic in its description of horror—the lived experience of “containment” in Redwood Bureau is shown to be a mix of military grit, scientific awe, and raw human suffering. Agent Conroy’s closing monologue is both a condemnation and a desperate call for resistance.

For Listeners Who Missed the Episode:

This episode is a showcase of Redwood Bureau at its best: a blend of chilling "cosmic horror," psychological endurance, and commentary on bureaucratic indifference. It details the real experiences of agents—fractured by their encounters, haunted by their past, and twisted by anomalous contact—all while exposing the machinery of power and the futility of treating horrors like assets. Agent Conroy's warnings land heavily: in the Bureau's world, containment is control only until it isn't, and the cost is always paid in human lives.

If you value your sanity, double-check your door on the way out.