#The Chimeric Cadent

[wereshrew-admirer]

make your choice, Figure!

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Sexiest Podcast Character — Monster Bracket — Round 2

Propaganda

The Chimeric Cadent (Friends at the Table: PALISADE)

What if you didn't trust me so you chained yourself to me forever to keep me in check and then you were worried I would outlive you so you and your huge robot wife decided to give up the release of death and merge with me to become one undying desiccated monstrous bat-bug being and then we lived out our fucked up bug marriage for thousands of years? And our merged self was bigger than most gods and also we were all girls?

SEEKING A 3RD 🦄 for our codependent bugmarriage 🪲💍 we saw you from across the bar and loved your ice powers ❄️☃️ and how you told your ex it couldn't be allowed to die 🐛☠️ (we killed ur ex btw 💔). i hear ur a fan of syncretism wanna get real syncretic 🔀 and turn our body inside out into a sacred moon? 😏🌚🌝😍

The fusion of a prophet, a priestess, and a machine god. the guardian of the only death Divines can ever know. A creepy giant bat freak

The Divine Motion (Friends at the Table: PARTIZAN):

#DIVINE MOTION SWEEP #she's THE girlboss!!! forward motion no matter what baby!!! #machine god of something that you could interpret as progress (its not progress. its MOTION) #the WIRES the MACHINERY #its not deus ex machina. the deus IS the machina and she's here to fuck your shit up #i love motion i hate motion i want to crawl inside her (mech) #its about being Chosen by her and then wordked to death for a hundred years and afterwards she just drops you no biggie #cause this isnt about YOU its about keeping on moving

[bronanlynch]

palisade really is a show abt messy situationships and the many consequences thereof huh. like between the extended brnine love triangle/polycule (now with clem back in the mix due to her ~history w gucci), cori's extremely normal and uncomplicated feelings abt elle evensong, everything that the chimeric cadent has got going on,

[laddo-d]

My favorite moment in the PALISADE finale is when Janine halts the action to clarify the extremely critical point that even though they’re a gross frankenstein bug monster the Chimeric Cadent is still beautiful in like a bloodborne way. Very important

[ahcoffeebeans2]

spoilers for palisade

sketch I'm probably not gonna finish

the chimeric cadent #signetsweep

[egg-tats]

re: @fourteenfishteen

#was there a bit where the branched had to face stellar combustors? i thought the stakes were that like#the branched were fighting a defensive war until recently when they decided to start taking systems of their own#(and we worry that the branched are. through fighting an empire. coming to resemble it in shape)#ANYWAYS i love u branched man.

I don't know if Austin ever explicitly said the golden branch was ringed with stellar combustors, but it's safe to assume it was just because of what they were, and what the branched were. remember that the Golden Branch star system has Apostolos and Kesh, and the branched are the people who were already there.

the stels know that if the Branched starts pushing out past the Golden Branch principality citizens will start to want to become Branched. likewise, some of the Branched came from kesh, so they know what a Stellar Combustor is for.

thinking about how phrygian was out here, being a soldier instead of a scientist, in order to stop the war on his home

thinking about how the war raged for millenia because while the branched are extremely powerful, the principality was endless.

thinking about how the branched could never make any gains on the principality, because to take one star system would be to risk the murder of 24 entire star systems.

thinking about how that's not true anymore

[synthetic-ultramarine]

Hey remember Pleroma's thesis you guys remember pleroma's thesis. Go relisten to twilight mirage episode 56: the vault of anticipation pt. 2 and think about integrity in the context of pleroma's thesis. And also empyrean/imperium. And motion. and also fealty, and the chimeric cadent, and also delegates generally. And also chantilly scathe and the grand comorant limited. and what happened at bell metal station.

[swallowtailed]

palisade 51 / finalisade pt. 6

this episode was so fun?? good vibes, good jokes, i had a great time

everyone chiming in with what they’re doing during clem’s attack felt like a bit of blue channel crew vibes again. cori wrote fic about leap…… also every time janine makes something spookier it is so good. petition for janine to hold spookier forever

clem and gur: the mirroring of their first death scene worked really well here. highlights their shared history as abandoned followers of perennial—they’re still caught in a time loop, but they’re alone inside it.

you know whose body probably also fell into the sea? figure

extremely funny future visions in this episode. clem seeing herself get unceremoniously murked by everyone in mbreak, brnine imagining running away with gucci cause she’s being mean to them… it’s truly the perfect kind of mechanic to put on divine cycle characters. and it’s messyyyyyyyyyyy

i was a little disappointed that future got taken down because i was so enjoying having it around causing problems. so imagine my excitement when JESSET STOLE IT. a revolutionary who sees that they’re compromising and wants to do better… and decided to put the imperial war machine inside his heart to achieve that… and now he has the divine future, which can show him his dreams and spur him on, or torment him with visions of failure… and gur is there… god i can’t wait. this is so exciting

ooh is this jesset’s entrance as black centurion. or for the initialism, what are other relevant adjectives that start with j… hmm. joyless centurion

also jesset is such an interesting foil to levi. veteran vs new recruit, mbreak vs mirage, both up-and-coming leaders, both driven to take action because they know they can be doing more & better

thisbe scene…. i love her. she’s under the chimera’s wing…

pleased that nideo has been driven back from the moon. that was a “take something that isn’t yours” from like the stellar combustor era

really interesting to have the chimeric cadent come in. there’s something there about thisbe asking the tomb & guardian of divines to help her communicate with wakeful. (falling asleep/waking up, respectively.) palisade as a season has been insistent on the necessity of living with & in & alongside death. the divines in the garden of fidelity were tortured in the dark for centuries and still lived on… the chimeric cadent understands intimately what death means to both divines and mortals (being composed of both, and very long-lived, and a tomb)… i mean, the chimeric cadent sort of gets it, right? maybe the most out of anyone? and anyway they get [gestures at the aforementioned themes of palisade]. 

god i am so hoping that partial palisade comes back onscreen before the end of the season. maybe he and wakeful can figure something out. wakeful planet palisade... i am thinking about it

anyway speaking of wakeful that levi scene was so fun. delightful to meet so many faces, especially limitless welkin. love that all it takes is someone going “hey people can just help, look, i’ll go first” and levi convinces wakeful to help rebuild palisade. reminds me of cori telling perennial that she’s gonna win this time.

really exploding the social roles of divines in this finale and i am so glad that we got here

parti mentioned!!!!! the best radio host on palisade!!!!!!!!!!!! unfortunately loose lips do sink ships but hey what can you do

[janitor-figure-a]

pspspsps ppl who like cool monsters come listen to friends at the table

trascript under the cut

Janine: One! What is being overlooked or obscured here?

Austin: You dial something in right in your vision. Again, partly it's just like, make it more sensitive, make it more sensitive there's not enough light here. You see, hanging from the top of this cave, upside down a humanoid figure.

Dre: hm!

Austin: like a bat asleep, it wings around it. And its wings, under its wings you can see the lumps or its arms or maybe just the lumps of its body, that feel misshapen. It's withered and seems. Withered, wrinkled and in parts maybe skinless.and i say skinless bc this doesn't read like a robot to you. This reads like something biological. It has long scraggly hair that has faded in colour. It is, it has splotches on its skin, it's angular in ways that are grotesque, you know elbows sticking out a little too much, fingernails long like claws, dirty. And it is nevertheless somehow authoritative. Maybe even regal in its corruption. Its eyes are open.

Janine: gross!ugh

Sylvia: Is it looking at us?

Austin: It is looking at you. It is sizing you up. It would like to know if you have been hurting —  If you are part of the invading force that the other beings here have been fighting against. It doesn't think much of you. It thinks it could kill you pretty easily.

Janine: uuuuummmmmmm

Austin:  And again I think you just get this through killing intent. Like,

Janine: yeah

Sylvia: (laughs)

Austin: you know what it is to be sized up by something large and dangerous.

Janine: Where can I find the powerful stuff? The power..

Austin: oh you're lookin at it buddy

Austin: emanating with power. Power of different types. Um uh there's a moment where [laughs] i think midnight matinee pukes

Janine: owh..

Austin: and she's like [ouuwh] sorry I lost, I lost my footing. And you realise this is the source of gravity in this whole palace.

Janine & Dre: oh

Austin: This thing is this place. You're not literally inside of the big bat monster, right? But there’s something recursive and strange happening here. You may as well be inside the big bat monster.

[sparrowhawksshadow]

Palisade 24.

So, I have to admit my initial reaction to the Chimeric Cadent reveal was one of horror and pity. [Signet] is one of my favorite characters in the show and to have her and the Waking Cadent end up here -- a husk ruling a boneyard, watching their worst nightmare for the galaxy come true for thousands of years -- it makes what happened to Cassander look merciful. At least Cassander didn't live to see it. Real "look through crosshairs" type GMing, you know?

On the other hand, Janine says in the Twilight Mirage postmortem that one of her biggest regrets with [Signet] was not playing up the body horror of the character concept enough -- I think she even mentions reliquaries and incorruptible saints as some of the aesthetic inspirations. We have to consider that not only did Janine agree to her old PC showing up as one third of the Dark Souls 3 boss of a holy sepulcher on a cursed moon, she may have specifically requested it.

[fourteenfifteen]

top 5 fave palisade scenes as of now:

SWING THE HAMMER ‼️‼️‼️

the og movie night scene w cori trying to pick something everyone will like

connadine’s big monologue in the first faction game ep

phrygian protecting brnine and routine by turning into the furthest reaches of space 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

brnine and thisbe at the bar during their dust hallucination

bonus number 6: figure pleading their case to the chimeric cadent. explodes

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Preliminaries: Friends at the Table PARTIZAN and PALISADE

Ver'million "Milli" Blue received four nominations and therefore is automatically qualified.

Propaganda

Clementine Kesh:

you all claim you love evil women who do war crimes. it's time to put your money where your mouth is. she's a gaslight gatekeep girlboss (derogatory) who has fucked up god-flowers growing out of her eyes and she's my wife. #votekesh

Kalvin Brnine:

As long as they're not talking, they're the hottest character in the game

Perennial:

An cryptic Divine living at the edge of the supermassive black hole. You can also find her dispersed through the Galaxy in form of a wave, which tends to shut down electronics (except her girlfriend). Fickle, behaves tidally. Demands effort from her followers. What has come once will come again.

The Chimeric Cadent:

SEEKING A 3RD 🦄 for our codependent bugmarriage 🪲💍 we saw you from across the bar and loved your ice powers ❄️☃️ and how you told your ex it couldn't be allowed to die 🐛☠️ (we killed ur ex btw 💔). i hear ur a fan of syncretism wanna get real syncretic 🔀 and turn our body inside out into a sacred moon? 😏🌚🌝😍

The fusion of a prophet, a priestess, and a machine god. the guardian of the only death Divines can ever know. A creepy giant bat freak

Thisbe:

She has a fundamentally different conception of identity than most people. She simultaneously takes no shit and has self-confidence issues. She loves plants and takes care of people like she would a plant. She's BIG and METAL and KIND. She makes my heart flutter. ILU thisbe.

[grandmagbignaturals]

Still thinking about her (the chimeric cadent) (signet)

[bodyfrmabalcony]

palisade 25 spoilers /

yelled out loud at the gur sevraq reveal. on some level i was pulling for the playbook that got more of the chimeric cadent on screen, bc im fascinated by them (SIGNET....*) but perennial was a close second fave pitch, and once the gur sevraq reveal dropped it was like. yes. of course. this is perfect. no other choice

*also the confirmation in the episode description that the divine making up the cadent is belgard. like i assumed but having it confirmed. im a shriveled up bug on the ground. ALL THESE YEARS LATER....

[virginia-werewolf]

LOVE that the chimeric cadent's pronouns are they/them (plural)

[inalienable-wright]

psd 24 spoilers

they don’t say it outright in the show, but given that the Chimeric Cadent is Fvtarg, gur Jnxvat Pnqrag, naq (Orytneq? Vaqrcraqrapr?) i feel totally validated in my original instinct that the moon is totally meant to invoke Seance. it’s a big octagonal(ish) tomb for divines! that’s Seance babey!