Episode description[edit | edit source]
Eager to refill their coffers, Kal’Mera Broun has brought SBBR to meet Kesh noble (and HORIZON commander) Gucci Garantine, who offers the group a daring opportunity to both make some money and get access--however temporary--to some Stel Nideo state secrets along the way.
The target is a secure Palace facility in the canyon city of Orzen, where raw footage is given final review before being shipped off-world for permanent archival. But with Apostolos’ Barranca Loop on lockdown, its harder than ever to get things off of Partizan, which means that more material than ever is available in the facility.
Plus, with each Stel reinforcing their borders ahead of what feels like inevitable war, this city deep in the Pique Ridge has been left without its usual guards. Where once the noble hallows of Imperium’s Plume guarded the people of Orzen (and the Palace staging facility hidden beneath the town), defense has now been contracted to a group of Oxblood Clan mercenaries. Oxblood clan mercenaries with motives and loyalties all their own...
This week on PARTIZAN: Deception in the Canyon City
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SBBR’s Objectives: Primary - Escort Gucci Garantine into the Palace facility and safely secure her extraction. Secondary - Maintain ruse for length of mission.
Rules of Engagement: Do no harm to the Residential district and minimal harm to the Theater (commercial) district. Damage to the Cathedral, Statuary, Quartz district, or Palace Staging interior is acceptable.
Contents[edit | edit source]
Opening[edit | edit source]
“
Before they were Stel Nideo, progenitors of Asterism put little in as high esteem as poetry. So sublime was verse that they made it the cornerstone of their faith, filling their doctrine with metaphor and metre, and even naming the greatest defenders of this prelapsarian twilight after its most eloquent expressions. But by the fifteenth century of the Perfect Millenium, Stel Nideo had developed a more functional relationship with the poem. To rhyme was to draw attention. To deploy imagery was to influence. And to build a canon of texts was to make a vault, inside of which civilisation would be protected, forever.
Which is why it should come as no surprise that Nideo's most complicated locks are built around poetic cyphers and literary charades. Accessing the Stel's innermost secrets requires more than just knowing a code phrase or being able to quote the great works. It means inhabiting the aesthetic logic of empire. Few know this as well as Jesset City, rising star of the Oxblood Clan, who'd spent years studying a literature which wielded a sort of disinterested cruelty towards people like him. The poems of the great masters would not simply call him wounded or disabled but unfinished or broken. All so that he could take on jobs for the sorts of people who loved their own words so much that they'd turned them into keys.
Well. He had his cypher certification now, didn't he? And the technical know-how, combat experience and raw nerve necessary to put them to use. And so, when a simple job protecting the Partizan Palace came across the Oxblood Clan's desk, he saw an opportunity drenched in irony. They'd taught him how to open the doors that he might repair them. Instead, he decided, he'd blow them the fuck open.”
Plot[edit | edit source]
Gucci Garantine leads SBBR into her briefing room. She wants to infiltrate the Palace facility in Orzen to obtain information on the night of Past's crash. She'll use Perspective Bleeding on a recording of Jesset City's mind to share his expertise on Nidean ciphers and get past security. Valence will be with her. Oxblood, contracted to protect the Palace facility, will stage a fight during the infiltration alongside Thisbe and Broun. Jesset admits to Gucci that he was there during the crash of Past after a telepathic conversation with Valence. Valence soon admits the same, and their part in the Whitestar false flag, to Gucci, who reprimands them.
In the early morning the infiltration team descend, but are overheard by guards below, who have to be knocked out. Thisbe wrecks a statue of Aram Nideo outside and Jesset engages with her, starting the staged battle. Broun sets off flashbangs and the Orzen civilian militia begins to form up.
An Oxblood guard lets the infiltration party into the facility. Valence blocks the cameras and downs a final guard with a door while ahead of them, Gucci’s Perspective Bleeding machine starts to malfunction. Broun uses glue weapons to avoid direct damage to the militia fighters; Thisbe destroys an old Oxblood mech.
Down below, alarms are going off, Gucci (highly blended with the Jesset recording) realizes the security code to the editing suite has changed, and Valence adds their mind to the gestalt to help them solve the code.
New Beliefs[edit | edit source]
- Valence
- Thisbe is simple and straightforward.
- Thisbe
- Valence’s priorities are beyond my understanding.
- Broun
- Thisbe wants offworld too, and I want to know what she’d spend to do it.