Friends at the Table

After their initial gambit found success, the members of SBBR have put Columnar's too-curious 301st Appraisal Unit off balance. Now, they seek to finish the deal--but to do so in such a way that will not draw more attention and ire towards the Sable Court, who has hired them. And if they can succeed, they may yet find that while the Great Stels of the Principality pay well, covens hidden in the wo...

Before Cymbidium died, he asked the labor machine Thisbe, whose deerlike design drew from the form of his own people's, for a favor: Deliver a final message to Mourningbride, initiate of the occult group the Sable Court and former Elect. On hearing about this goal, Thisbe's squad members Broun and Valence encourage her to pursue it, and travel with her deep into Columnar territory to meet with the...

After a successful mission retrieving key remnants of the Divine Past and the body of the Elect Cymbidium, the Rapid Evening has returned to Cruciat, Kesh's capital on Partizan. While the city mourns the loss of an Elect, the crew's members are busy resupplying, repairing their vehicles, and pursuing their own ends. While Clementine Kesh deals with the emotional aftershock of her first command, So...

The events in Obelle were disastrous for many, yet for the Society of Banners and Bright Returns, the nighttime raid on the seaside town went down in the book as a win. Now, they return to their home in the heavily stratified metropolis of Oxbridge in the heart of Stel Orion territory. After getting paid and tending to an unforeseen entanglement, the crew spends some time following leads, satiatin...

Northwest of the seaside town of Obelle, there is a crater. Inside of that crater are the remains of the Divine Past, and those who wish to claim them: On one side, there are the members of the nascent special operations group the Rapid Evening. On the other, GLORY, a special Apostolosian unit which seeks to resurrect the culture's greatest heroes as supersoldiers. But as everyone on the holy moon...

The destruction of a Divine, the killing of an Elect, and war on a new front: Any one of these could shift the balance of power on a moon like Partizan. So when all three occurred in Obelle, the great Stels began to analyze, strategize, and maneuver immediately. Squadrons were re-deployed, diplomats recalled, artists commissioned, and clergy and commentariat both called to weigh in.  But for Stel...

To the west of the small town of Obelle, the Oxblood Clan attempts to secure the landing zone for an inbound VIP. The plan is simple: Recover them and escape east across the sea. To aid them in that task, the Society of Banners and Bright Returns have been sent to take out the nearby Apostolosian militia's sensors, fuel reserves, and weapon platforms. So far, it's been light work for the team, wit...

It started with as basic a job as they come: The Society of Banners and Bright Returns (SBBR), a rookie outfit based in Oxbridge, was tapped for a contract as a support unit in a rescue op. There was a little town called Obelle on the border between the Apostolosian Barranca and the Prophet's Path, where damn near the only free folks in the Principality made their home. Some sort of VIP was making...

It is the year 1423 of the Perfect Millennium, and the galaxy has been conquered by the Divine Principality. At the center of this empire, the only place where its five Great Stels meet, there is a moon beating where a heart should be. The moon of Partizan. Abetted by immortal, machinic gods called Divines, and the legions of Hallowed mechs which extend their terrible reach, the Principality spent...

Welcome to the final episode of the Road to PARTIZAN. This week, Dre, Jack, and Austin talk through and discuss through the entirely timeline of events, reflecting the events of the past 10 weeks of play and as outlined during the Microscope games from the past two weeks. For your convenience, we've added the Microscope timeline below to help you follow along. There are even a few new events added...

Welcome to the final part of the final game (but not the final episode) of the Road to PARTIZAN. Building on the foundation of everything that has come before, this week Andi, Austin, Dre, and Keith fill in more important gaps in the history of the Divine Principality. A fourth and fifth Stel rise. Ploys, plots, and backstabbings abound. A centuries-long war begins in earnest. And final, a fractur...

Finally, the Road to PARTIZAN enters its final lap. Over the next two weeks, we'll be zooming the camera out to look at the 5,000+ years that have taken us from the end of the Twilight Mirage to the very moment PARTIZAN begins, and to do that we'll turn to Ben Robbins' excellent Microscope , a game which we used in part during COUNTER/Weight's "faction turns."  In this first part, we'll look direc...

The Road to PARTIZAN continues, and it does so with Alex Roberts' and Evil Hat Productions' For the Queen , a card based storytelling game about the retinue of a leader on a critical journey through difficult territory.  Today's game takes place about 500 years before the events of Partizan, at a moment where the Principality marches against two of the only remaining galactic powers not yet under...

The world of Grona is said to hold the key to ending the war between the ever-expanding Divine Principality and its rivals, the recently allied Orion Combine and the Divine Collaborate. But whatever secrets are held on its surface are locked behind a gate, a gate patrolled by the Divine Courage, defended by orbital cannons, and barricaded behind the constant gunfire and flame of a raging battle. S...

On today's entry of the Road to PARTIZAN, we pick up with the characters we made in Dusk to Midnight and zoom in to the climax of the Divine Clash by playing Beam Saber by Austin Ramsay .    Months ago, the OriCom Logistics Division staged a strategic coup against the Divine Principality by successfully escorting Courageous to a rendezvous point where they opened a gate for OriCom's ally in the wa...

Welcome back to the Road to PARTIZAN. Today, we're moving into a new trio of episodes that explore an era of history that would come to be called The Divine Clash. For over a century, the ever-growing Divine Principality would throw its might against the allied forces of the Orion Combine and the Divine Collaborate, the distant successor states of two major nations featured in our COUNTER/Weight s...

The crew of the Constellation-class Carrier Hellebore has breached the earliest defenses of the station which orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Having dispatched the mercenary Barter and his crew of ConCons, pilots Cerise, Teasel, and Gold repair and rearm. Above them, Captain of the Ivory Prince (and secret leader of the rebel group known as Horizon) Briar Brightline watches over them.....

Join us in our second game on the Road to PARTIZAN, where we are playing Armour Astir: Advent by Briar Sovereign , a fantastic PbtA mech game that is equal parts Escaflowne and Mobile Suit Gundam.  Today's episode starts with about 20 minutes of setup explaining the game and introducing the characters. If you want to skip all of that, then read the next couple of paragraphs and jump ahead to 22:45...

For millennia, three rules guided the Hypha as they traveled across the galaxy. First: Follow the light of the strand through the stars, stopping only on worlds marked by its color—and even then, only temporarily. Second: Never leave behind the bodies of our dead. And third: Protect at all costs the mystery of the Chorus Bond, that which connects us to each other, to the Strand, and perhaps to som...

Welcome to the Road to PARTIZAN, an interlude connecting Twilight Mirage to PARTIZAN, our next full season (where we'll be playing Beam Saber by Austin Ramsay) which will begin later this year! On that note, please know that though there is one spoiler for the way a couple of Twilight Mirage factions end up, there are no spoilers about major Twilight Mirage characters or their arcs anywhere throug...

Hey everyone! Austin here. If you've already listened to the entire Spring in Hieron Post-Mortem or follow us closely via social media or our Patreon feed, then you have probably heard about a bunch of exciting Friends at the Table related things recently! But in case that  doesn't  describe you, I wanted to make sure that you were able to get thsoe updates too! So, enjoy this brief update on merc...

Thank you for joining us to say goodbye to Hieron.... From beginning...     ...to end!!   It's been quite a journey and we had a great time capping it off by answering some of your questions! We had such a wonderful outpouring of support and love the past week and it really means the most to us! We love doing this and we love that people enjoy listening to it. Over the next weeks, the friends behi...

...took a new name: the Frost Shepherd. It was in trying to understand this act, its causes, and its consequences, that I first thought this second volume might be necessary.  Even as it happened, I sensed a moment of diversion, of what an old mentor would have called a potential "rupture" in history. In the old Hieron, when such a thing was still possible, I studied and practiced as a semiotician...

...understandably caused us to doubt not only our relationship with them (albeit too late), but also with ourselves and our faculties.  The world was large, larger not only than what we'd known before but larger than anything it had been before. And it was large in new ways. In the old Hieron, a big place was wide or it was tall. But we'd learned that this place was deep . We'd regularly find new...

…unexpected means of conveyance, but at that time, what ought have been reasonably expected at all? Perhaps such flippancy isn't well placed. Now, with the benefit of distance and context, it's simple to recognize the many ways that the Rhizome should have shaken loose our assumptions along with all that old Hieronic dirt. But by all retrospective accounts--including this historian's own limited r...