When the kettle whistles and the tea is ready, it's time for the DesiQuest after-show—and what a show it is! Omar Najam and I, Sandeep Parikh, are all cozied up inside the teapot, steaming with excitement. After every episode of DesiQuest is launched, we'll release another episode of the Tea Kettle with me and Omar and a very special guest, or guest from either behind or in front of the camera.
As we cracked open the doors after Episode 5, it was nothing short of a party where Erika Ishii and Noxweiler Berf, the creative forces behind our show's beloved Nuri and its exquisitely crafted miniatures, joined us at the mic. Their stories of meticulous brushstrokes and imaginative design had us riveted, offering a rare peek into the artistry that fuels DesiQuest. Between hearty laughs, we teased the relaunch of the ABCD podcast, a melting pot of culture and comedy that promises to tickle your funny bone and tug at your heartstrings.
Then, we wandered down the cobblestone paths of nostalgia to the halls of Fonco (Studios), a place stitched with the threads of our past. It was here, among the echoes of weddings and the clinking of glasses from celebrations past, that we found our way back to the warm embrace of familiarity. For those who've ever yearned to revisit the haunts of their memories, this chapter is a heartfelt homage. And for the insatiably curious, our Patreon is brimming with more anecdotes and secrets and the rest of this conversation continues, just a click and a pledge away.
When the kettle whistles and the tea is ready, it's time for the DesiQuest after-show—and what a show it is! Omar Najam and I, Sandeep Parikh, are all cozied up inside the teapot, steaming with excitement. After every episode of DesiQuest is launched, we'll release another episode of the Tea Kettle with me and Omar and a very special guest, or guest from either behind or in front of the camera.
As we cracked open the doors after Episode 5, it was nothing short of a party where Erika Ishii and Noxweiler Berf, the creative forces behind our show's beloved Nuri and its exquisitely crafted miniatures, joined us at the mic. Their stories of meticulous brushstrokes and imaginative design had us riveted, offering a rare peek into the artistry that fuels DesiQuest. Between hearty laughs, we teased the relaunch of the ABCD podcast, a melting pot of culture and comedy that promises to tickle your funny bone and tug at your heartstrings.
Then, we wandered down the cobblestone paths of nostalgia to the halls of Fonco (Studios), a place stitched with the threads of our past. It was here, among the echoes of weddings and the clinking of glasses from celebrations past, that we found our way back to the warm embrace of familiarity. For those who've ever yearned to revisit the haunts of their memories, this chapter is a heartfelt homage. And for the insatiably curious, our Patreon is brimming with more anecdotes and secrets and the rest of this conversation continues, just a click and a pledge away.
Hello and welcome to The Tea Kettle, the DesiQuest after show podcast, exclusive to our patreon backers. We love you all. Thank you so much. You make all this stuff happen. This entire endeavor cannot be possible without you guys, so thank you so much. I'm your host and Sandeep Parikh, executive producer and cast member who plays Ash, and we got my co-pilot here. None other than oh, I need to come up with a good. I forget to come up with a good adjective.
Sandeep Parikh:
So many yeah, there's so many the large and in charge, the unfathomable thank you, Omar Najam, who plays Murkha, thank you, thank you Omar the unknowable unknowable and large and in charge and unfathomable all those things.
Sandeep Parikh:
After every episode of DesiQuest is launched, we release another episode of this The Tea Kettle with me and Omar and some very special guests from from the show behind in front of the cameras, and this week, ho ho, we have Erika Ishii hello, erika everyone. Erika plays Nuri (Ghafoor) and we're so happy to have you. And then, of course, we got Nox Berf, who was our minis painter and, like, essentially, minis production designer, whats your official title?
Noxweiler Berf:
I don't know that there's a title for what I do, but yeah, I definitely built a lot of models for you and built some sets and we did the mini man mini man.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yes, mini man, large and in charge, mini man I guess we could go with a with miniature designer.
Noxweiler Berf:
I at this point just roll with it.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah now that's it before we dive in, that is unfathomable. Before we dive into our dissection of episode five, we're gonna ask you to do that thing where you drop us the likes and the comments. So go ahead. That's, that's my call to action now. I'm supposed to do that now and I did it, and if you haven't already, maybe go over DesiQ uest. com and jump on to our mailing list and you get a special discount for all of our sweet, sweet merch. And we have.
Sandeep Parikh:
We've had a handful of sponsors that truly took a big chance on us to make this show possible, and so in each of these we want to shout one of them out, and today the honor is going to go to Lethal Shadows, and these guys make premium minis. They donated, I think, all of the like enemy and many, many of the NPC minis. So a lot of the spiders that you saw in this episode the goblin riding spider and stuff came from lethal shadows. So thank you, thank you to them for lending us their beautiful art. I mean, these are truly magnificent minis. I don't know, nox, you want to just kind of talk about them for a minute, like your experience painting them and yeah, I can.
Noxweiler Berf:
So lethal shadows is a really bespoke miniature company where they have a wide variety of prefabricated miniatures that you can produce yourself or you can purchase and the the quality is pretty outstanding. We used these exclusively for all of the enemy models, like Sandeep had said. But you know the the intricacy of every single one of those models leaves a lot for any kind of modeler or hobbyist that's looking for something else to paint. All of these are competition level models and if you're not familiar with them, I highly suggest you go check them out. You can find them at lethal shadows dot com can you elaborate on competition level?
Erika Ishii:
okay, I was already like.
Sandeep Parikh:
I'm like, oh, I'm so bad at this.
Erika Ishii:
My eyeballs look weird. Everything it's okay, it's not a contest. And now I'm hearing there is a contest there is a contest.
Noxweiler Berf:
Yeah, yeah, they were lying to you. I will say it's not a contest. You're always competing against yourself. Erika, that's how I look at it okay whenever I'm competing against myself to try to do better than you.
Omar Najam:
Last model yeah, and folks, really quick. Before we hop into the main part of our episode, I just want to say, if you like our banter, that beautiful little chittering that you hear between Sandeep and me, you can check out the ABCD podcast that's San deep and I host over on Effin funny. We chat about all things being American born, chatty crafts folk that's what that last C stands for maybe? Desis and we also talk about stuff that's in the news that we're confused about, which is most of the news.
Omar Najam:
We talk about some cultural identity stuff that is confusing to us, which is most of the cultural stuff, and we play a ridiculous game which honestly takes up a good half hour because we just do bits on top of the game and then finally we wrap it up with the Desi of the week. You can find over 30 episodes of the show over on the EffinF unny YouTube channel or wherever podcasts can be found.
Sandeep Parikh:
So if you want to stay bundled up for the winter and be entertained, hey, we got you covered we got you covered, yeah, and so we put a pause on that show while we make this show for now, but we'll be back in action very soon, I think the next time we might even have a date for you. We don't yet, but without further ado, the tea kettle is whistling, so let's spill some chai about episode 105 transition.
Sandeep Parikh:
Wow, oh, thank you, Han ZImmer pretty good, what do you think Erika, Nox? Why don't you just rate our intro real quick, on a scale of one, to. Whatever yeah.
Erika Ishii:
I get, I give it a, I give it a pun out of ten.
Sandeep Parikh:
Highly impressive, yeah, highly impressive Type of those are a type of marks that my parents will be proud of.
Omar Najam:
Okay, I'm highly impressive as long as there's nothing higher than that, they'll be. Highly impressive words.
Noxweiler Berf:
I didn't say that but yeah, yeah.
Sandeep Parikh:
Thank you, thank you. Well, we're gonna jump in, erika, I want to jump in with you. Just, you know something We asked Most of the guests just coming in as a guest on this show, give us your impression, or or your take on, like you know what. When you first got asked to do this, what were you thinking? Why did you? Why on earth Did you say yes to us? We were so lucky to have you. Why did you say yes to us?
Erika Ishii:
Oh, I just realized why would you? Say, oh my gosh, I have a whole giant document of notes about my, about my character. But, yeah, when I got asked, it's I. I think I've gotten a chance to be at a table with everybody except for Sand eep, you and Omar.
Sandeep Parikh:
I think so yeah, played.
Erika Ishii:
Yeah, cuz you know Rekha. Either and Anjali and yeah, no, no, we hadn't, like Omar and I, actually go way back to college.
Omar Najam:
Yeah.
Erika Ishii:
Yeah, yeah. So I at the time I was dating a friend of Omar's that also in the film program Mm-hmm and I would go drive up or or take the train up to UC Santa Barbara almost every weekend and Hang out, and through that ended up being parts of lots of little film Student projects. There was the I love Ellison film festival where it was like they, they changed buildings, they just changed buildings. But they say good-bye farewell to the old one.
Sandeep Parikh:
Ellison.
Erika Ishii:
Happy memories. They're like no, it's the building still there, it's just we're moving. The film department is moving buildings, I'm like yeah okay, so we were part of. I think it was like a Scooby-Doo esque, yeah, and you know it was just like a lot of late night Crunching on film projects and papers and like being in the edit bay. I remember I spent a night there one time Like, just you know, I had been hanging out, was waiting for things to render and then Fell asleep in the chair. Wake up in the morning.
Sandeep Parikh:
So yeah.
Erika Ishii:
Omar and I come from that background together Ended up re-meeting years later.
Noxweiler Berf:
I mean cool.
Erika Ishii:
Yeah, omar did the vloggering the vloggers for Geek and sundry, and I worked on the twitch channel. Mm-hmm and sort of this is our, but this is our first time getting to roll together, so yeah, this is this episode's been what so like 12 years in the making, 12 plus yeah, yeah, yeah really destiny.
Sandeep Parikh:
Had you know other things in mind when you were trying to stay away from Omar? It's just like you couldn't do it, did you?
Erika Ishii:
did you play D&D back then at all?
Sandeep Parikh:
No, no, not at all oh man.
Erika Ishii:
Yeah, I was playing with my group back at UCLA. I was I was attending UCLA at the time and, like I was in the transfer dorms and somebody saw I had a Dice necklace.
Noxweiler Berf:
Uh-huh.
Erika Ishii:
It was like it's just a d20 in a little cage or something, and they were like oh, do you play D&D? I was like yeah, and he's like, oh, I DM. And that person ended up being Amy Dallen's brother's roommate.
Omar Najam:
No.
Erika Ishii:
I don't know what it is, but I swear to God if you come through.
Sandeep Parikh:
LA Play D&D. At any point in your life you play with Amy Dallen's brother's roommate. At some point, yeah, at some point you play with him At some point.
Erika Ishii:
Like you all know it all, it all comes together.
Sandeep Parikh:
I think that was unavoidable, that was actually technically Ash's and Murkha's relationship, right yeah.
Erika Ishii:
But back to your question about being asked in. Yeah, I've gotten to play with Anjali and Rekha and Jasmine before, and so it was.
Sandeep Parikh:
You know this Omar guy? And, yeah, I know this Omar guy and you and I fun fact Sandeep we we'd met.
Erika Ishii:
I interviewed you On my Geek and Sundry twitch show when I was doing my video game show and you had the FMV game on One of those platforms.
Sandeep Parikh:
I know those platforms that definitely didn't make it. It was Eko. This is the life we lead, the digital life, digital life.
Erika Ishii:
Yep um. And Nox I've known for a couple of years too through sort of cosplay Improv nerd, You're just very much in this scene. So basically you got a bunch of you're like oh I know all these people, I'll come play with them and then, plus after that, I showed up and turned out everybody on crew was all the people that I've worked with Over years at Dimension 20 or LA by night or you know, whatever.
Erika Ishii:
So it just felt like and it was at Fonco. It was at Fonco which I had helped all of them move in there back in the day. What before? They had all the dividers up and had rooms. It used to be like a big open warehouse. I had friends get married there. I had like I used to sort of like I was sort of interning. I remember one day like trawling craigslist to see if there were any mannequins that I could buy for the, for the space, so like coming in it felt like home.
Sandeep Parikh:
Hey, so sorry to interrupt, but the rest of this episode is for our patreon subscribers only. So if you'd like to hear the rest of this juicy conversation, let me tell you it gets juicy. There's another 15 minutes 50 5 0 of this conversation over at patreon. com/ Desi quest. Thank you so much for supporting the show.
