PALISADE 16: Upon Our Grace Pt. 3

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Episode description

This episode carries content warnings for civilian harm and death, torture, conscription, and kidnapping.

With the list of Bilateral Intelligence Service spies secure and the immediate threat from Fabreal Knight Tenn Alpenglow resolved, the crew of the Blue Channel discusses what to do next. Should they prioritize capturing the BIS agents they’ve identified, and if so, how would they go about that? Should they turn the list over to the Cause’s leadership, deferring the decision to others and winning some points in the process? For each potential option, there seems to be a flaw. And as they debate, the clock keeps ticking…

This week on PALISADE: Upon Our Grace Pt. 3

Another turning point / Another point in time[Note 1]

Dossier

Organizations

Violet Cove: The Dim Liturgy claim to have seen the Divine Devotion's arrival coming in their sacred text: A battered and corrupted backup of Crystal Palace's final predictions for the future. Now the two cults work together to oust the Bilats... and perhaps to do more intriguing things, as well.
The Devotees: A church from the Twilight Mirage that is committed to the worship of the divine Devotion, which they sometimes refer to as Fervor. Common practices include the regular checking of one’s pulse and multi-day group picnic outings.

People

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.
Saint Decario Dicario (he/him): Devoted Devotee warmonger and one-time lover of the Twilight Mirage rockstar Teleos Triton Tanager.
Sea Crepuscule (he/him): Master of the Concave Wing of the Dim Liturgy’s primary monastery, where he leads the search for specific details and predictions from the Glass Archive’s remnants. Additionally, the most highly placed member of the Paint Shop (and thus, most important shield for the BIS spies) inside of Dim Liturgy.
Marlon Styx a.k.a. Em (he/him): Undercover BIS agent assigned to infiltrate Violet Cove. Has become enamored with the Dim Liturgy’s holy text.
Tea Time (she/her): Assistant to the assistant of Dicario St. Dicario. BIS Spy.
Queue 1224 (he/him): A non-Columnar synthetic monk who helps with preparing parts of the Thing Itself for movement to Convex or Concave. BIS Spy.
Zedd Z. Izzard (he/him): Lovable dirtbag chef. Works in main hall's mess hall. Knows everyone’s favorite drink and most people's favorite meal. Satisfactory pilot. BIS Spy.
Bea Earlyday (she/her): Young Chariot pilot assigned to the defense of the Isle of the Broken Key. Under Griesel Sunset's command. BIS Spy.
Kay (they/them): Cashier of the monastery treasury. BIS Spy.
Tenn Alpenglow (he/him): Bodyguard of Kenneth Marian Colver and Knight of the Fabreal Duchy. Resents his assignation to guard the cowardly Viceroy, but takes seriously his sworn oath to serve under the Duchy's new masters.
Kenneth Marian Colver (he/him): Former member of the Curtain, now Kesh’s Viceroy on the world. Reports up to the Stargrave. Bread concerns have been replaced with violence concerns.
Midnite Matinee (she/her): Leporine scout and member of the Blue Channel. She and her trusty Pack-model light AutoHollow Popcorn (she/her) used to run a repo company, but now are tentatively committed to the Cause and Millennium Break.
Routine Rennari (he/him): Half-Apostolsian, scion of a minor Kesh noble house, and the Blue Channel's heavy.
Hunting "Hunt" Tomorrow (he/him): Concretist specialist in communications and technology, assigned to the Blue Channel during its integration into the Cause.
Saffron Septet (she/her):  A doctor from the Twilight Mirage who lives as a digital consciousness, spread across a number of bodily forms including a heavy Torch Unit, a small motorcycle, and a unique and specially-crafted surgeon body.

Places

Isle of the Broken Key: Home of the Dim Liturgy since its obscure creation thousands of years ago. Now serves as base for the entire Violet Cove unit of the Cause, including the Devotees and (most recently) additional support teams from the Twilight Mirage.
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.

Objects

The Kestral White: Flagship of Palisade's Viceroy, Kenneth Marrian Colver. Hovers like a hawk on a thermal updraft, searching for its prey.
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.
Gorget: When visible, the Gorget is a bright and fashionable machine, its long features clad in golden armor, yet hidden playfully covered by a chic red hunting cape. When walking, it’s posture is buoyed by a fashionable walking cane. But at a whim, the Altar’s pilot may extend the length of the cape, surrounding the entire body with a layer of magical camouflage, cloaking it from both sensors and plain sight. And at that moment, its cane twists and folds, revealing itself to be a perfectly honed rifle.

Divines

Asepsis (it/its): The final living remnants of a Divine who pursues its particular vision of purity at the cost of everything else. Kept, studied, and utilized by Captain Kalvin Brnine.
The Reflecting Pool, f.k.a the Divine Past, f.k.a. Crystal Palace (it/its): In the era before the founding of the Divine Principality, Crystal Palace served as the supreme oracle engine of the Rapid Evening and the Principality of Kesh. At the end of that era, it lost its ability to predict the future, but continued as a vast archive of the past, and became canonized as the Divine Past (which now serves as the Reflecting Pool, center of the Witch in Glass’ kingdom). The final record of its predictions into the future are stored on Palisade, under protection (and study) of the Dim Liturgy and Violet Cove.

Contents

Plot

The Whole Team

Emergency medical treatments are underway and residents are upset about their festival being ruined. The crew of the Blue Channel regroups and the Figure brings everyone up to speed on Kenneth Marian Colver/Iconoclasts situation.

While the crew debates what to do with Marlon Styx and spies.txt, the Kestral White reappears and deploys six Gambeson units. Tenn Alpenglow broadcasts another message: Kenneth Marian Colver has ordered the eradication of the settlement. He then attacks in his Plackart and the area resumes flooding.

Thisbe and the Figure head for the camp in the east populated by Twill people and folks from the Twilight Mirage. Cori and Phrygian go west to help the Devotees fight back. Brnine takes the helm of the Blue Channel and has Asepsis track the spies. In addition to Marlon Styx, Asepsis identifies six spies in the region: Sea Crepuscule (who has disappeared), Zedd Z. Izzard, Tea Time, Queue 1224, Kay, and Bea Earlyday.

East Side: Thisbe and Figure

Thisbe shoots at the Gambesons attacking the Twill camp and knocks the leader out of the sky. Figure tears the wings off the grounded mech and then makes a broadcast telling Colver that he won't leave the Broken Key alive. During the broadcast, they look down at the Gambeson's pilot and recognize something of themself in this prisoner who is being forced to fight.

Thisbe shoots her grappling hook at one of the remaining airborne Gambesons, climbs onto it, and zaps it with her Sparking Touch. The electrical energy ignites the Gambeson's fuel tank, turning it into a fireball that falls out of the sky with Thisbe on it. Figure finishes disabling the mech that they tore the wings off of, and then they open the cockpit to free the pilot and tell them to flee. The pilot's attempt to flee triggers a mechanism that blows up the fuel tank, and they die in Figure's arms.

West Side: Cori and Phrygian

Phrygian tries to get through to the pilot of a Gambeson: "If I free you, will you stop fighting?" Moments later, they hear a mechanical, fox-like laugh from somewhere and they're shot by a sniper. Cori charges another of the Gambesons and has the other Devotee units lay enough covering fire to temporarily ground them.

After Asepsis locates the the sniper who shot at Phrygian - a cloaked Gorget piloted by Kensley Marlowe Colver - Phrygian turns invisible and attacks. Cori tries to capture Kay, who is trying to swim to safety across the flooded battleground, but she can't get a good grip: Kay escapes, and as they do, Cori is stabbed in the back by Bea Earlyday, who has been fighting alongside her in a Chariot. The attack breaks the halos that permit Cori to channel Devotion's magic to pilot her mech, severing her connection.

Blue Channel: Brnine and the Crew

Routine shoots at the Plackart with the Blue Channel's mounted sniper rifle, breaking open its stonework armour to expose the wire musculature beneath. Asepsis loses track of Zedd Z. Izzard, but picks up on an incoming mech from the Violet Cove base to the south.

Cast

Other Characters

Notes

  1. ↑ Lyrics from the song All Under The Sky by Cathedral Bells
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