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 directly at the moon world of Partizan, where a religious prophet makes a dramatic claim, performs apparen...
Nov 30, 2019•2 hr 14 min
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 heel of the Divine Principality, each an echo of a past culture that fans of our second season, C...
Nov 22, 2019•2 hr 28 min
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. Somehow, a squad comprised of superstar mechathlete Memphis Longhand, the brothers David and Smack Ta...
Nov 15, 2019•2 hr 34 min
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 war, the Divine Collaborate, so that they could join OriCom’s fleet with their own. In the time since, th...
Nov 08, 2019•1 hr 31 min
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 season. Next week and the week following, we’ll see the climax of the Divine Clash via Austin Ramsay’...
Nov 01, 2019•2 hr 41 min
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.. But they are not alone. Beyond the next gate, something strange has made the station its roost. And ...
Oct 26, 2019•1 hr 59 min
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 . Our game of Armour Astir takes place in a time of fables and magic, around 500-1000 years after ou...
Oct 19, 2019•2 hr 12 min
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 something even greater than that. But now, these rules—and the way of life they protect—have come under...
Oct 11, 2019•1 hr 18 min
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 throughout these episodes. The Road to Season 6 started with a desire to try out new game systems before w...
Oct 03, 2019•2 hr 49 min
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 merch, music, and the updcoming season. (ALSO: While I forgot to mention it in this update, you can actual...
Sep 27, 2019•17 min
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 behind Friends at the Table are going to take a short break before starting our sixth season: PARTIZAN, a stor...
Sep 19, 2019•4 hr 2 min
...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 of the New Archives. Because the Rhizome stretches as it does, and because we were so removed from t...
Sep 11, 2019•2 hr 46 min
...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 creatures and cultures in the branches we already knew well. How could we trust that we had not misse...
Sep 06, 2019•1 hr 56 min
…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 recollection--no single question dominated our collective anxiety as much as this one: What can we ex...
Aug 30, 2019•2 hr 21 min
..alone would drive many settlements to resign themselves to his vassalage, as the Duke’s medicinal stores separated him from many of the other warlords in that first year, when the pollen was so severe not only due to its density but to our own body’s sluggish adaptation to it. But the University’s leadership was not keen to submit to anyone, least of all a monarch who wouldn’t even show his own face on the frontlines; whatever their differences, Corsica Neue and Lord Ephrim had in common a com...
Aug 23, 2019•3 hr 14 min
...good a start as could be imagined, given the circumstances. But there was a confounding question still, which seemed to rent space in everyone’s mind: Yes, the university had survived, but where was it? This was not a philosophical question. It was a simple matter of fact, a concrete concern. “Used to be three weeks, with cart, from Twinbrook,” said one resident of the University, who operated a food cart both before and after the Second Spring. “Sure, [I] haven’t made that trip in eight or n...
Aug 16, 2019•1 hr 47 min
…was standing there in the midst of utter chaos, I found strength in words uttered by the immortal warrior Red Jack (who you will become well acquainted with as you read on) only days before he led an assault on the being called the Advocate. “Heroism,” he said, “is not such a unique thing.” He was right. The heroes that day were not only those who faced down men worshipped as gods—or those that despised them. The heroes were the many whose names were not already known, who rallied their neighbo...
Aug 09, 2019•1 hr 58 min
Hiya everyone!! Instead of an episode this week, we have a few announcements, which you can either enjoy in audio form or text form or BOTH! -We're at Gen Con this week! We're doing a live show on Saturday, 6 PM!!! Tickets are still available!! W hoo ps ? You can get them here: https://www.gencon.com/events/151345 -We're having a fan meet up Friday, 1:30 at Hudnut Commons!! -Shut Up and Shut Down released our BFF video from SHUX 2019!! The link is https://youtu.be/5mnsV3NtRWg -There's a Twilight...
Jul 31, 2019•16 min
Across the long lawns below the central tower of the Last University, the grass defies itself. In the mind, a field is a million individual blades blending into one. But when Stars of the steppe arrive, they make mental category into physical reality, each blade blending with the next until the trembling, green pasture becomes blinding, fixed tract. But even this transformation, which spreads across the whole of one of the continent’s densest settlements, is minute against what occurs above. A d...
Jul 27, 2019•1 hr 24 min
Of all the resources unique to the City of First Light, the Ordennan Impetus was most taken by the ancient city’s network of trains. The once-island nation was already familiar with the value of heavy logistics, and though the steam-powered trains of this new island were on tracks, it was not as if their own ships did not have to contend with the more organic rails of weather, wind, and current. As important, they knew first hand how disruptive it would be for a culture to lose control of its tr...
Jul 19, 2019•2 hr 16 min
As the shell-sky ruptures under impossible heat and pressure, the citizens of the Last University face grim prospects. Beings of empty light tread over the familiar until it is unsafe, recasting the world around them in macro and micro, both. And above, a lord looms. Do they have any hope? Does anyone fight for them, still? Yes. This week on Spring in Hieron: Terrible and Necessary After too many years of loneliness and solitude, I believe even now that I was blessed by accord with two who moved...
Jul 12, 2019•1 hr 39 min
The bounty was plastered from the boulevards of Malle’s Fist to the canals of Kanton, on the broken archways of the old imperial road and the mural boards of the old eastern sea wall: TO WHOMEVER SLAYS THE BEAST, SO CALLED THE ADVOCATE, IN LOYALTY TO ORDENNA AND ALL MANKIND, A REWARD DUE, EARNED, AND PAID BY THE HONORABLE IMPETOR OF ALL HIERON, FELA MALLE: 100,000 IN COIN OR THE ARMORY AND ESTATE OF A BLOODED PEER. And so, floating down the Archivist’s River towards the smogging skies of Malle’s...
Jul 05, 2019•2 hr 17 min
Victorious after their journey to the Mark of the Erasure, the leading members of the Last University find time to celebrate. But they know too well the danger of inaction, so while four of the group begin a journey south, to Malle’s Fist, the rest take the time to investigate the troubles that remain at home. Chief of all: The continued pressure put on the settlement by Alyosha’s Spring. But while Ephrim, Fero, and Lem may find some of the answers they seek, it is not long before they face a ne...
Jun 28, 2019•1 hr 42 min
Weeks ago, the Advocate took flight its cradle hidden in the hills and trees. Its path north took it across places already devoured by the Heat and the Dark: Rosemerrow’s once Long Sands, the devastated woods between Old Man’s Chin and Twinbrook, across the ancient imperial highway south of Velas, and into the unmappable, frozen wastes of Auniq, deep within the Mark of Erasure. Where does a being unwilling to create go to roost? To a nest already made. The heart of the mark. Atop the fallen towe...
Jun 14, 2019•1 hr 46 min
It is an old road that travels between the Last University, through the settlement of Baron’s Gate, and into what is now called the Mark of the Erasure was built--many times, across many lamina--to bring direction and pace to the roving party of Samot, bringing him between the First University and his father’s home at the Hewed Peak. But in time, with his father retired to convalesce in a more humble home in the woods, the God of Books and Wine carved away the Peak, drawing the finest stone not ...
Jun 07, 2019•1 hr 40 min
The morning after the second sun broke open, the campus of the the Last University is quiet. But this is not hard-won exhalation. It is a gasp for breath in the middle of a marathon run. Because before the members of the University’s ad hoc council can fully settle back into daily life, they are sprung back into action by an impulse as nervous as it is noble. There will be time to rest--and surely they need it. But in this moment, the world burns. And they refuse to let the fire simply light the...
May 31, 2019•2 hr 26 min
Above the waves of the Alcyonic Sea, the second sun has not yet hatched. But below its blood red light, a plan has begun to. But what sort of plan is it? Is it a former paladin’s plan to protect his family? Is it the plan of a druid and a lord to stop a threat that has grown too large, too dangerous, to let continue? Or is it something grimmer: the latest, vengeful volley in the decade long arc of enmity between one who was once a wizard and one who was once a ranger? This week on Spring in Hier...
May 24, 2019•1 hr 25 min
Under crimson light, a plan moves into effect, a counter motion with speed so great that it matches the age of the plot it seeks to derail: the consumption of light, the birth of a dragon apocalyptic, the early days of Summer’s lethal heat. Against this: Adaire Ducarte, Hella Varal, and the still dreaming Lem King. This week on Spring in Hieron: Deeper Than Flesh It is common aphorism that no EFFECT comes without matching COST. This is, of course, absolute tripe. What would the point of our SCIE...
May 18, 2019•1 hr 23 min
Hello everyone!!! In lieu of an episode this week, we have some announcements instead! The next episode of Spring in Hieron should release tomorrow, latest Saturday!! If you're interested in preordering/ordering our Fangamer merchandise you can find it at www.fangamer.com/collections/friends-at-the-table We're also going to Gen Con and tickets are on sale THIS SUNDAY AT NOON EASTERN TIME!!! You can find information about Gen Con and get a badge for the show at https://www.gencon.com/ You can loo...
May 16, 2019•6 min
In the city of Coraline, on the isles of Alcyon, the morning sun is welcomed with the ringing of bells. But not today. Instead--for some reason--there is only the sound of waves against rocks, of late-night partygoers babbling through street and alley, of quiet conspiracy and whispered arrangement. And instead, the day is marked with the ominous light of a second sun. But however halting the heat may be for some, the travelers from the Last University push on: Fero, into the fields where he stud...
May 10, 2019•1 hr 32 min
