"The Very First Episode" is a Live at the Table episode originally recorded during a livestream on March 31, 2017, several months before the launch of the Friends at the Table Patreon and Live at the Table as a series (thus, their first-ever live one-shot).
Although the stream video is not archived, the audio was later posted to Patreon with added music by Jack de Quidt. The Patreon post is free to all listeners.
Episode description[edit | edit source]
HI FOLKS!
Today I bring you a very special episode of Live at the Table!
A long long time ago (before we had a Patreon!!), I did a fundraising livestream for some dental work I needed to get done! Austin, Keith and Art were kind enough to join me at the end of my 12 hour stream and we... decided to record an episode of Friends at the Table, for some reason? It was GREAT and we had FUN and now YOU can listen to us play Lasers and Feelings!
Enjoy!!!
Plot[edit | edit source]
Prior to the beginning of the episode, Captain Darcy has been struck down by the mysterious psychic entity known as Something Else. The crew place him in stasis but continue to operate their ship, The Raptor, as they had previously.
While on shore leave on The Big A (The Big Asteroid), Chip, Blush and Astley have a run-in with Spring Ginger, Captain Darcy’s old rival. He makes a vague remark to Zorgon, which the three find odd as they have recently defeated Zorgon and have been systematically wiping out his remaining forces.
They gather the ship’s crew and depart, heading towards the last known location of Flection, one of the last remaining Zorgonites. As they are going through the quantum tunnels Chip senses a force beginning to throw their ship around. He runs a scan, and notices that Flection’s base is sending out a force wave which is affecting the ship and directs the pilot to push through. Orange Promise, the pilot, is too anxious to follow the order, causing the ship to be hit by the wave again, affecting the ship’s cloaking device.
In the engineering bay, the flickering screens cause Blush to hit the wrong button, affecting the artificial gravity on the ship. People begin panicking, drawing Astley out of his office to see what is causing the commotion. Astley floats over and buckles himself into the captain’s chair, winking at Orange and directing them to continue forward. Orange, buoyed by the order, rights the ship, allowing them to land (although much of the crew are injured due to the broken gravity).
Astley and his assistant, Burton Shayde, assess the injuries. Burton is concerned about the severity of the injuries, but Astley convinces him back up. Burton is so convinced, he assures Astley he can do it all single-handedly. Astley assesses that the best way to save all the injured crew members would be to land the ship and use the medical facilities on Flection’s space station as Zorgon’s medical facilities are known to be advanced.
In order to get to the space station undetected, Blush proposes that she hack the space station’s shields and then land the ship as quickly as possible. Orange is anxious about it, but agrees to try
Chip notices that the waves from the space station have been sending information to their ship and flags this with the others, just as the download from the space station completes. Looking at the downloaded file, Blush sees that it is a badly translated file “like someone dumped a dictionary” which has been file protected to hide meta information about it’s origin. Tracking it, she sees that it is connected to the Something Else affecting Captain Darcy by uploading the information into Captain Darcy. She also tracks the source of the data to the space station.
Astley notes lights coming from Captain Darcy’s medbay. As he attempts to treat Darcy, the information downloaded seems to spread to others in the medbay who are hooked into other pods. To stop the download spreading, he freezes Darcy and the other injured crew members to quarantine them.
Ships begin to take off from the space station, their fuel threads keeping them connected to the station. Blush and Orange are able to land the ship safely, although the space station is aware of the ship’s presence.
Burton pulls all the injured crewmembers out, ready to transport them to the space station’s medbay. He is worried that there may be enemy doctors in the station medbay, and so Chip, Blush, and Astley go to check it out. They discover a slime alien doctor, Sp’r’ee, in the station’s medbay, attending to the injured people already there.
Astley approaches Sp’r’ee, tapping them on the shoulder. They are startled to see him, noting his black uniform (with the understanding that he is with the hit squad). Astley flirts with Sp’r’ee (via Blush’s translation), telling them they will bring Sp’r’ee with them and stressing the amount of injured crew members in order to convince them to let him bring the injured crew members inside. Sp’r’ee is absolutely convinced, and also tells Astley that they love him.
Astley and Burton begin to bring the injured crew members inside. Astley thanks Blush, saying that he couldn’t have done it without her.
When they open the door to return to the ship, Flection appears with an armed squad of his own. He goads the crew and says that Blush should join him as the Consortium will never respect their species, going on to express his distress and anger as discovering (via the connection between the space station and their ship) that Zorgon has been defeated and will now never get to destroy The Big A and rule the galaxy.
Flection’s guards attempt to fire on the Raptor crew. Before they can do so, Chip notices the lights and puts together that the upload to their ship was an attempt to upload a mental backup of Zorgon into Captain Darcy. With Captain Darcy disconnected, Zorgon has now taken over the Raptor. Zorgon announces his presence over the ship’s loudspeaker.
Zorgon shoots at them with the ship’s laser. The laser almost hits Astley, but he is pushed out of the way by Sp’r’ee. Blush hacks the ship to fight back against Zorgon, moving the laser so that it doesn’t hit Sp’r’ee. Zorgon, undeterred, announces his plans to take over the galaxy via their ship.
Astley and Blush rush the ship to try to get on board before take off, opening the door with Astley’s scalpel. Chip heads for the windshield, diving through it and finding a holographic version of Zorgon sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge. To stop Zorgon’s escape, Chip destroys the ship’s navigational computer, thrust, piloting station, and the holographic array of Zorgon. Orange slams the thrust forward, sending the Raptor out into space where it will destroy itself in the quantum tunnel.
The crew is, however, trapped on the space station until another ship arrives, but they are comforted by the knowledge that they have defeated the evil Zorgon once and for all.