Birds of Prey

## Background

### Episode description

> The crew from the ship Myriad continue to explore the planet Quire. Grand Magnificent (Arthur Martinez-Tebbel) explains the strange experience that he had in the canyon, but Echo Reverie (Sylvia Clare) is less interested in chasing shadows than in leading them towards their destination: A church\* on the north side of the plateau. Gig Kep-hart (Keith J. Carberry) meets a new friend, and in the face of danger, Even Gardner (Andrew Lee Swan) offers his expert guidance.
>
>

> **This week on Friends at the Table: TKTKTK**
>
>

> *The Remaining Records of Curiosity // Reference Code: R-Qu75-35-RC1228*
>
>

> *Remnant Church #1228*
>
>

> *A pneumatic hum. A tower, hollow. A bell, cracked, laying on the ground. Thick wooden slats bolted together to act as doors. Above, a sunk relief of a globe, not inscribed by any known means.*
>
>

### Cold open

You ever think about time, Primary? About how fast things can change?
The Divine Fleet started nearly 30,000 years ago, can you imagine? 30,000 years, *real* years, not like where we're from. All those lives, back to back to back, connected by a taut string of continuity. From the first who studied under Kamala Cadence, to those who walk the seraphic shores of Séance today, all of them, countless beings who never breathed the same air but who each equally belongs to the same thing, to that fleet.
And then, less than a millennia ago, a handful of those people left, and today their descendants—Quire hangs right in the middle of the Twilight Mirage, but most of the people on the planet, they don't even know what a Divine is. Not really. But does that mean that they aren't part of that continuity? A few hundred years, and then that line is just… snapped?
I don't know, Primary. It's just—you think you know where you're from. You know who raised you. You remember your teachers. I can't forget my first deployment. But there's a larger story. We're all connected to things we don't know, that we could never know. But in my mind, those things count too. Whether we want them to or not.

## Plot summary

Grand Magnificent is terrified by the living shadows he has seen and runs back to the mag-lev. The crew is all back at camp. They discuss their respective discoveries from their exploration and Gig’s eye.

They decide to take the path Gig found over the plateau to the get to the location where they can set up the uplink. The crew radios back to Myriad and Al to let them know what they saw and then they go to bed.

The next day they embark on the path over the Plateau. As they walk, Grand Magnificent gives an elevator pitch for a werewolf robot television show. Every few hours, the crew hears what sounds like a bird of prey shrieking from the center of the Plateau they’re edging around, but are unable to see the source. Echo climbs up the Plateau and sees three or four metal flying things glinting in the sky and a blue-orange-yellow light coming from them—like a jet of flame. They are doing passes up and down the plateau scouting for something coming from the east. There is also a group of two-dozen fully-armed people with a big truck and military-style equipment. The group is headed north and  are likely to cross the path that the crew is taking. Echo returns and reports what he saw.

Echo decides to scout ahead to make sure there is cover to hide behind further along the path in case they encounter the other group. They travel the rest of the day. Towards sunset they see the light in the west that Gig saw, a maintained road going west to east, and a dirt path from the main road northward leading to a long building with a tower and a smaller building next to it.

During the night, the militaristic group of people continues to send up their metallic birds (known as glint-wings) to monitor the area. They decide to go to the buildings they saw—which Gig believes is the church he heard about—under the cover of night. Gig sends his eye up into the sky to make sure they are not being spotted. The glint-wings came close to catching them, but the darkness keeps them from being discovered.

As the crew approaches the church, they hear a sort of Motown song playing from inside. Gig takes the lead and walks through the big wooden doors of the church. He notices inscriptions in a language he doesn’t understand and that the music is coming from a radio. He sees that there is an open garage door in the back of the church, a giant dune buggy suspended by a pneumatic system and a 7-foot tall, 3-foot wide otter-man wearing overalls working on the buggy. Even though he’s already inside, Gig knocks on the door a couple times to get his attention and the otter-man greets him, but then grows suspicious of his allegiances. Gig shows him his ID card to convince him he is from the Twilight Mirage and not a bad actor. Gig starts to sing along to the Motown song in order to gain the otter-man’s trust who now identifies himself as Surge. He tells them that this his partner and her mom’s place. He says that they will have to get his partner Janie’s permission to set up the node. They are led over to the smaller house where they meet Janie and her mother (who are both human). This place appears to be a tattoo parlor that Janie operates.

Surge takes them into the other room and the crew tells him about where they come from and why they’re here. Surge does not know about the shadow-people or the abandoned city, but tells them that the militaristic group with glint-wings are known as the Mandati who are scrappers and raiders. He says that they are known as the “Savage Mandate” by the Crown. He explains that the Crown is a kingdom of artists to the west (where Janie and her mom are from), the Mandati basically run the southern half of the continent, and that way down south the Rogue Wave—a group led by five-hundred captains devoted to a notion of co-independence, and to the East (where Surge is from) the Skein who are a bunch of people “figuring out who they are one biological organism at the time”.

Surge assures the crew that the Mandati will not come after them as long as they stay at the church and tattoo parlor. Janie comes in and admires Grand Magnificence’s tattoos. Surge goes to the kitchen to cook them food. Janie tells them they shouldn’t call the Mandati “The Savage Mandate”—which seems to be a term the Crown uses to denigrate them. She abruptly leaves the room and grabs her cloak, saying the Doyenne—“the crown herself”—is coming back from the garden and will be here soon. An explosion is heard from outside.

## Cast

* Austin Walker (GM)
* Keith J Carberry (Gig Kep-hart)
* Sylvia Clare (Echo Reverie)
* Art Martinez-Tebbel (Grand Magnificent)
* Andrew Lee Swan (Even Gardner)

## External links

* Episode page