Episode description[edit | edit source]
This episode carries content warnings for vomiting, mass death/genocide, mind control, manipulation, body horror, forced body modification, and extreme heat.
They arrive in the long rings of the Stellar Combustor to no greeting, and this they are thankful for. The path to their objective is known, but what lies on it (and what they'll find at its end) are not. As they travel the length of the arc, spanning half the circumference of the sun, they wonder: How are their friends, now traveling through lunar shadow, far across the solar system? How are their comrades? Might they find freedom in the dark as we search for it in the searing light?
Futures tricked by the past / Spectre, how he laughs[Note 1]
Dossier[edit | edit source]
People[edit | edit source]
Stargrave Elcessor (she/her): Leader of the Bilateral Interecession’s occupation of Palisade, assigned personally by Cynosure Whitestar-Kesh. As a Stargrave, she has been granted the means and “right” to detonate the star at the center of Palisade’s star system if she determines that those here are an existential threat to the Principality. Connadine (he/him): Commander of the BIS on Palisade. An expert in psychological operations and folklore. As a composer, his opus is the Adagio, a plan to get everyone on Palisade operating in ways not only predictable, but scripted. As a conductor, his orchestra now turns towards the second movement. Routine Rennari (he/him): Half-Apostolsian, scion of a minor Kesh noble house, and the Blue Channel's heavy. Mustard Red (she/her): A cyborg who once served as a member of Brink Proxy, with a speciality in surveillance. Joined the Cause during the Devotees expansion onto Palisade. Midnite Matinee (she/her): Leporine scout and member of the Blue Channel. She and her trusty Pack-model light AutoHollow Popcorn used to run a repo company, but now are tentatively committed to the Cause and Millennium Break. Places[edit | edit source]
Chimera’s Lantern: The second moon of Palisade, shaped oddly like a wasp’s nest or paper lantern. New arrivals to the world find its occasional glow unnatural and frightening. Thisbe and the Figure found evidence that it could be tied to driving the bulk of ancient Divine Principality forces off of Palisade. Home to the Chimeric Cadent (they/them, it/its), along with the warded corpses of a number of Divines, including Sagacity, Dissent, Felicity, Barricade, and Bounty—its newest resident. Objects[edit | edit source]
Gambeson: The Gambeson is only about 10 meters tall (less than half an Altar), but it is nevertheless a terrifying scourge of the battlefield. Modeled after an iron maiden, except with it's tortorous doors attached to its back serving as wings. Its head features a metalworked face, twisted into extreme and offputting smile. Its skeletal frame serves not only as body, but cage: pilots are criminal conscripts forced to pay off their “debt” to Kesh by the Divine Plight, earning their freedom through combat achievements. Paramerion: Cori’s new Altar, as designed by her brother Formido. Constantly twitching and rippling underneath the regal embellishments of its filigreed armor. Massive metallic wings stay folded on its back, a smaller pair cover its eyes like a visor and the sickles jut out from its forearms when stowed. A halo shaped like a crown rotates above its skull-like head. The Stellar Combustor: A weapon of immense destruction, capable of destroying countless star systems if deployed without a firebreak. Has been used in some form or another since the time of the earliest Divines. In current form they take the form of a twirling, 3-ringed space station that rotates around a system’s sun. BAC Secateurs: Designed and built on Chimera's Lantern by the Blessed Armory of Consecration, an Altar who holds itself in the form of a tortured saint, with sharp, crystaline “holy expressions” emerging from its body, like wounds in reverse. As it pulls these from its body, its form glows like heated glass, then reverberates back into place. Divines[edit | edit source]
The Divine, Arbitrage (it/its): The amoral machine turned de facto treasurer keeps the Frontier Syndicate a step ahead in all matters of commerce. Sole minter of “glint,” a newly popular currency on Palisade. The Divine Plight (she/her): Plight is a 40 meter tall, humanoid Divine cast in black metal armor, and wearing the of a judge or inquisitor. She conscripts the guilty into her army as Gambeson pilots, compelling their loyalty with terrible, Divine feelings of guilt. Hemlock, whose interest is fundamentally in punishment and not justice, was born heir to a mid-tier Kesh House, but jumped at the chance to become an Elect. The Divine Consecration: Though humanoid in shape, like most Nideo Divines, its chest is a vacuous cavity that serves a living forge. This open wound burns brightly, and Consecration can reach inside of it to produce a range of objects, or a sort of Divine molten metal which rapidly hardens as it is shaped by the Divine. But this is only half of its fearsome nature. Guided by the hand of its elect, a Sovereign Immunity devoutly committed to his role as armorer, Consecration also operates as Nideo's chief weaponsmith, Altar designer, and forge. The Divine Souciance: When the burgeoning Divine Principality left Palisade behind, the Divine Souciance carried doubts about the project. So bloody was the Embarkation, so strenuous the objection of those who opposed the Glass Duchy’s rule, that Souciance—ever committed to careful consideration and compassionate concern—never found their place in the Empire, however grand the vision Nideo had presented before his death was. But, devoted to steady study, Souciance played their part for generations. It was not until the Divine Clash that they came to their decision: They could not be part of an empire so vast, so terrible, so cruel. And so they sought out a place where they could do what Divines no longer could. They sought out a grave. Mysteries[edit | edit source]
The Iconoclasts: Something beyond the human, desperate to eradicate subjectivity itself. After their messenger, the Usher of Truth, was delivered to The Witch in Glass, they have found themselves serving a new master. Perennial (she/her): The Principality's so-called 'adversary,' who lives at the center of the galaxy and whose chaotic whims spread through her "Perennial Wave," an ever-present nanoparticle that has recently bonded with Kalmeria.
Contents[edit | edit source]
Plot[edit | edit source]
A-Plot: Chimera's Lantern[edit | edit source]
Thisbe, Figure, Cori, and Midnite cross the lake in the Garden of Souciance and head through a tunnel on its far side, eventually coming to a massive staircase that leads downwards. Thisbe enhances her sensors and sees, at the top of the cave, an immense, grotesque, winged humanoid figure hanging upside-down like a bat. This is the Chimeric Cadent, and it is the source of power in Chimera's Lantern. It is an amalgamation of what was once three separate beings: the Waking Cadent, the Divine Belgard, and the Excerpt ⸢Signet⸣.
Figure tentatively descends the stairs. When they reach the bottom, the Chimeric Cadent swoops down and lands on, then shackles itself to, its throne. It assumes that Figure seeks power and asks why it should not simply kill them, and Figure replies that they only seek enough power to remove their own shackles; they seek to set right the wrong they did in wielding power over others, both before and after their death. In making this case, Figure outgrows their "I've lived two lies; I'd happily die for the truth" hook.
The Chimeric Cadent remains skeptical, especially because they detect the scent of the Iconoclasts on Figure. The Witch in Glass, back on Palisade, then reaches out for Figure, tugging their "leash" and trying to call them back to her. Figure begs the Chimeric Cadent not to let the Witch take them again, and then, as the Witch pulls harder, attacks the Chimeric Cadent out of sheer desperation. The Chimeric Cadent takes pity and offers Figure a choice. It can:
- Break the chain between Figure and the Witch, including Perennial, completely, leaving Figure with no magic, no way to heal any damage they take from that moment forward;
- Break the link between Figure and the Witch but maintain the connection with Perennial, so that Figure will have a direct relationship with Perennial going forward;
- Transform Figure into its (the Chimeric Cadent's) Revenant, in which case Figure would embrace death in the same way that the Divines on Chimera's Lantern do; or
- Conscript Figure as its servant, entrusting Figure with power to defend the weak and seek justice for the fallen according to the Chimeric Cadent's values and ideals.
We fade to black with Figure not having yet made his choice.
B-Plot: Stellar Combustor[edit | edit source]
Still feverish and in danger from the sun's heat, Brnine, Phrygian, and Routine try to find a way to cool themselves. Brnine hacks into the Combustor's database and maps the movements of the station, identifying the coolest areas from minute to minute to create a schedule that they and their crew can follow to remain at (relatively) safe temperatures.
The team heads to the nearest tram, but while their invisibility radio prevents them from being seen, the tram is too busy for the riding it to not bump into the party and detect their presence. To solve this problem, Brnine locates a sign that says "Wet Floor/Wet Seat" and Phrygian puts it near a set of seats on the tram so that nobody will want to go near them.
The three of them successfully make it to the next sector of the station and off the tram. As they look around, trying to get an idea of where they need to go in order to deactivate the Stellar Combustor, they jostle the invisibility radio a bit too hard, breaking it.
Cast[edit | edit source]
- Austin Walker (GM)
- Ali Acampora (Kalvin Brnine)
- Andrew Lee Swan (Figure)
- Janine Hawkins (Thisbe)
- Sylvia Bullet (Coriolis Sunset)
- Keith J. Carberry (Phrygian)
Other Characters[edit | edit source]
Gallery[edit | edit source]
The Chimeric Cadent and the Devil's Two Front Teeth by Si F. Sweetman
