The Road to PARTIZAN 08: For the Queen

## Episode Description

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, COUNTER/Weight, will know well.

Now those two cultures join on this crucial mission to the heart of Divinity. From the Empire of Apostolos, the Apokine (our stand in for the game’s titular Queen) has gathered around them a cadre of trusted companions: Eudora (Andrew Lee Swan), their adopted sibling, Antigone Gennadiy (Janine Hawkins), their former caretaker and a current soldier in their military, and Orbit Shard (Sylvia Clare), their bodyguard and most trusted fighter. They are joined by Modus Maria (Austin Walker) a member of the mysterious “Branched,” a people who have transformed their bodies into something spectacular and free—only to have the threat of war force them to rebuild themselves as soldiers first and foremost.

In this moment, the future is unwritten. Can the Apokine finish their journey and secure freedom for their people? Or will Apostolos be conquered by the Principality, as so many other people and places have been?

**This week on the Road to PARTIZAN: For the Queen**

////PARTIZAN PALACE DATE ENTRY | 1418 P.M. 09 01 \\\\
. . .
///OPERATION: CHOOSE SECTION: MILITARY ACTION && GALACTIC POLITICS: DISPLAY TOP ARTICLE\\\
. . .
//APOSTOLOS STRIKES KESH, ESTABLISHES ‘FORT ICEBREAKER’ \\
. . .
/OPERATION: GENERATE BULLETED PRECIS\

* Hostilities begin on Partizan during fight between Kesh and Apostolos in the Verglaz Taiga
* Apostolosian forces led by elect of Motion, Hyacinth, who utilized wind and snow drift to disorient Kesh opposition and to misdirect their opposition long enough for Fort Icebreaker to come online.
* Brief description of Fort Icebreaker: “a mobile fortress,” “network of tunnels,” “treads and cannons”
* Neutral analysts from Orion and Columnar are quoted, citing the divine Motion’s ability to extend operation time of Apostolosian hollows as a key aspect of this victory, though secondary to Hyacinth’s strategy
* Melody Sefton East of the Church of Received Asterism calls for an end to hostilities.
* Additional context given re: current Kesh-Apostolosian hostilities across Divinity (see also: Princept (Dahlia), Princept (Cynosure Kesh)

## Plot

### Opening

You have served me well yet again, Grand Marshal. Yet I sense in you something shameful: pride, unearned. Even Stel Nideo’s ‘unbiased’ reports paint you as a hero in battle: “Hyacinth, elect of the divine Motion, routed the superior numbers of Kesh with a stunning ploy, securing the western reaches of the Verglaz Taiga.”
Is that what makes your heart swell such? To take credit for what was achieved by your comrades, whom I empower? When their exhausted foes retreated, I gave them the fuel to pursue. When their peers relented, I give them the certitude to continue. To fight for the value of violence itself.
Do not doubt that I prize your service. Together, we have shown the loathsome frauds of Kesh that they are not the wise lions they dream themselves as, but indolent house cats, who confuse millenia of comfort for command.
You are my vessel, and my voice. Our deal will remain intact so long as you help me drive a blade into the heart of the pretender. But do not ever forget my nature.

## Cast

* Eudora (Andrew Lee Swan)
* Antigone Gennadiy (Janine Hawkins)
* Orbit Shard (Sylvia Clare)
* Modus Maria (Austin Walker)

### Other Characters

* Apokine