#marielda spoilers

[transfemmbeatrice]

an unnecessarily precise breakdown of major character deaths in Friends at the Table! I would love to hear if I missed any or if people have different opinions about edge cases.

list and explanation below (spoilers, of course, for all seasons):

Ali

Hella died twice--once in Autumn when she came back after making a deal with Tristero, and once in Spring when Samot delayed her death with local reconfiguration and eventually she moved into a pala-din body. Castille started dead, a ghost in a robot body from the jump.

Art

Cass and Sovereign Immunity both died at the end of their respective seasons.

Dre

Oh, Dre. Well. First, Kobus died in the Counterweight finale, which I am counting because they did not have a PC besides them. Then Valence, the first mid-season permadeath that didn't happen in a cutscene, and finally, Chine. Throndir died and came back a vampire; Figure started out undead.

Jack

I'm counting Clem as a permadeath because as far as Jack knew she DID die and regardless it DID end her life as a player character. Fourteen Fifteen gets two; one permadeath for the ending of Twilight Mirage, and one temporary death to cover the many times they perished throughout the season. I don't think they should all count separately because they all happened with the knowledge that they would be temporary, which the others did not. Of course, you could make the argument that Fourteen started off dead...

Janine

Janine has been with the show the least amount of time so she's had fewer opportunities and I'm worried this means she's due.

Keith

Branched Man..... never forget......... I chose not to include the other Makos because they weren't really player characters?

Sylvi

Here to give Dre a run for their money, we've got Jillian Red's death at the end of Counterweight (included for the same reasons as Kobus, above). Ephrim died and came back via Samothes II. Virtue of course started off with the You're Dead playbook, and Hazard is sort of debatable but I've decided that even in Sangfielle, not having a head makes you at least mostly undead.

[podcastingpineapple]

3 episodes: Counter/Weight Finale (A Splintered Branch, A Ringing Bell) Partizan finale (Operation Shackled Sun)

4 episodes: Twilight Mirage finale (Futura Free)

6 episodes: Spring in Hieron finale (The Second Spring), Sangfielle finale (Six Travellers)

10(?) episodes: Palisade finale (A Palette of Colors)

Nobody does it like them ♡

[clover-punk]

Minor spoilers for Friends at the Table's new mini arc on the Patreon: Eyes of A Killer.

I can't believe the table friends joked about doing Marielda again in their Slow Knife game... and then didnt even realize they re-invented Marielda by way of Lava-Punk Volca-nobles...

[archipithecus]

Friends at the Table is a podcast focused on critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, fun interaction between good friends, and asking "what if X was Y? what if W could do Z?"

anyways here's a non-comprehensive selection of some times FatT asked good hypotheticals

(spoilers for Autumn in Heiron, Marielda, Winter in Heiron, COUNTER/Weight, Twilight Mirage, Sangfielle, and some Bluff City i think) (i know Spring, Partizan, and Palisade must also have good "what if X was Y?" but i'm still catching up) (this got way long so i'm putting it behind a readmore) (shoutout to Search at the Table at https://curiosity.cat-girl.gay/ for letting me do this) (also to Transcripts at the Table for writing this all down in the first place)

KEITH: What if I was a snow...hawk… ART: What if you're like, a Dr. Seuss animal? KEITH: Yeah! What if I was a star-bellied sneetch?

KEITH: (laughing) What if the bird was a can opener!

AUSTIN (as Zaktrak): It's like, what if a, what if a factory or train or a windmill could read a book?

AUSTIN (CONT.): And then he, he looks up, he actually has like a very… his build is kind of like, angular and… not thin in terms of like, weak? But he has a sort of… androgynous character about him, in terms of his like, what you would think of as like his body structure. And… very beautiful blue eyes. He’s sort of like, what if David Bowie was super black.

AUSTIN: And that's kind of like, the picture you get of her, is like, What if Fero was like, 30% less hyperactive? Still way more hyperactive than everybody else in-- the world? (laughter) but like, just a little more in tune, with the world.

AUSTIN: What if fire was matte?

ART: What if a—what if a 90s after school special needed some graffiti

AUSTIN: Yeah. He asks you, um... watching what unfolds, and there's, there's, it's--and this is the fuckin' nerdiest thing I'm ever gonna say; it's like what if A-ha's Take On Me was an AMV? Was an anime music video?

AUSTIN: Ali’s character, how did she describe her character, “what if Han Solo used to be Beyonce?”

AUSTIN: It’s like, what if the American government was just another American company?

AUSTIN: It’s like what if holograms did gifs, basically?

ART: You how like Han Solo’s always talking to the Millenium Falcon, but what if the Millenium Falcon-- AUSTIN: Could talk back? ART: Had a chance of, yeah, of deciding he was angry.

SYLVIA: For example. Like just p - yeah, what if they have psychic assassins there. Oh! What if this planet’s an alien? What if this planet is a psychic assassin? Which is a great sentence I just said.

AUSTIN: Yeah, I should note that this is also like "What if the Super Bowl was attended by high fashion models?", right?

AUSTIN: We don’t get a lot of elderly non-binary people. And so Saint Auger is like, what if someone you knew from Portland was 82?

AUSTIN: It’s almost like, what if a crown could be a dunce cap?

AUSTIN: It's like- what if there was a really enterprising twelve year old, who like, [laughs] made a physiology- uh, person- a physiology like, model, but with dirt and rocks and sticks. Also there's no face, the face is also just one of this solid black rock plates.

AUSTIN: And again, there’s just light streaming in through—I think this room is mostly, like, does not have a huge window, but it does have little eyelet windows at the top of the, towards the ceiling, that run horizontally along the room, and just like, bright—it’s almost like, what if colour could be shadow? Do you know what I mean? Like, what if instead of it being that a shadow crosses your face, it is this prismatic glow that moves across the group of you as this thing crawls around this space station.

AUSTIN: It’s like white and blue, there are stars, it- you know, I think that the- it’s, it looks like the way you might imagine like, what if the UN had spaceships?

AUSTIN: What if you mixed your- your selfhood, with the notion of wings. Or the notion of flight. Not just flying. That’s where we’re going.

AUSTIN: This giant battleship that’s like ‘what if a millipede instead of legs had guns and what if it was all around it’?

AUSTIN: This thing is like the size of like a major city. This thing is like, what if Manhattan was a battleship. And instead of buildings it had guns. Except now they’re made of weird black glass.

AUSTIN: The first time he showed up I described him as what if Canderous Ordo decided to have a robot body one day? And slowly began to replace it.

AUSTIN: There’s a little— Yes, it’s like what if a cow— what if Christian Slater was playing a cowboy from New Jersey, and also was Canderous Ordo. And also he eats through his hands.

AUSTIN: There is just this like… I think it’s just metal unfolding across space. Like, at some point Volition just kind of spat out a, a, almost, it looks like a cloud of ink but instead of ink, it’s metal. And it’s just unfolding indefinitely in space like a huge— like what if Akira, what if at the end of Akira when Tetsuo turns into a weird flesh monster? It was that but various types of metal, just like bubbling all over the place throughout space, and I don’t know how you deal with that! But suddenly in the middle of the Mirage there is just this, this ink splatter, this, this gaseous, you know, spread of metal.

AUSTIN: And it’s like — again, it’s like a pistol — it’s like what if a pistol was also like a curved sword, like almost like a scimitar or something?

JANINE: What if we do a live show, but the only live show we ever do is at Bakucon?

ART: Um, let me tell you, this is a nice coat, you guys. Um, I think it’s sort of like what if… What if a leather duster jacket was like an ephemeral idea.

AUSTIN: It’s like … I think the way I described it was, what if there was a Companion Cube that could have its corners pulled apart and in the middle is a weird glowing sphere?

AUSTIN: He has this dope, like, “What if the Millenium Falcon was a deep V?” Instead of just that little bit at the top, it goes really deep down. Or like, “What if Pacman was really long?” You know what I mean?

AUSTIN: Okay. You find him like, rolled under the bottom of his, uhh, or like on a, it’s not rolled under, he’s on like a little, like cart that has a pneumatic lift, or it’s like, it’s like a, it’s like a robot that walks around. It has like- it’s like a Boston Dynamics- like what if a Boston Dynamics, like four-legged robot was also a thing you laid on top of? Like one of those carts that goes underneath a car, to repair it. You know what I’m talking about?

AUSTIN (as Morning’s Observation): [exhales thoughtfully] Like what if milk was a solid.

AUSTIN: But it still has that ribbony-quality? [chuckles] It still has the sound of fabric rubbing on fabric? But is definitely amplified a great deal, probably? And also, we know it’s sharp, so there’s probably some… sharpness to it? You know… there’s probably, like… what if a ribbon could be a sword you pull out of a sheath?

AUSTIN: And also, Saint Sommer is a big lion man. Saint Sommer is, like… Skein. And is a big… a big… like, a big lion man. Not like Lion-o from Thundercats. Like… what if Scar could… had a big human body? Was, like… What if Scar was cut?

KEITH: And it sort of like, snap! Like, that, it's like… when we were talking about what the sound it makes, I was picturing… what if folding a blanket sounded like sheet metal?

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know I think it’s like, I think this is very much like, what if the Venom symbiote was made of thread, right?

AUSTIN: So maybe it's like a- like imagine, what if a mop could just mop by itself.

AUSTIN: I won’t talk more about that stuff, but you already saw the big picture of “what if Connecticut was a space ocean,” so, you have at least some context there.

AUSTIN: It’s huge. It’s the size of a continent, right? It’s “What if South America was a big circle?” It’s “What if Europe and Eurasia was a big circle?”, constantly cast on this planet. And, you know, from space it kind of looks—not flat necessarily, right, because it’s a curved planet, it’s a sphere, or spherical, but, you know, it’s flat.

AUSTIN: It’s like what if Texas stood up.

AUSTIN (as Morning’s Observation): “What if cars brought things to you instead of bringing you to things?”

AUSTIN: It’s just like a very bright, colorful—like, what if Steven Universe did the Sailors of the Ark? What if that team did it? It’s very good.

AUSTIN: It’s like what if it’s a can opener that does that. Like a living can opener like. Grrrngaaah! I’m going fucking open holes in things! Grrngaah!

AUSTIN: Imagine that they're almost- in my mind they're like what if a martini shaker was a piston.

AUSTIN: It's like what if you could package a sunset, y'know? Into like a cube

AUSTIN: I can't believe we started this recording by looking at pies [KEITH and DRE laugh] that make me hurt and ended with ‘what if all foods could be jelly juice?’.

AUSTIN: I saw a big buffalo picture and I was like what if that was a person, that looks cool.

ART: But what if some of these skeletons are like, sick of this shit?

AUSTIN: I think I pitched this show as like: what if Ghost in the Shell but-but magic and witches instead of cyborgs and stuff?

JACK: So, out come this nascent organization who we’re calling Shapeknights. Who are -- I think the easiest way to say it is “cowboys for trains?” They are, like -- what if instead of the cowboy riding alongside the train on his horse, he was corralling the train? Or he was trying to understand the train, or was trying to --

ALI: I think Marn, herself is a little bit more like—like what if a capybara was a siamese cat?

KEITH: Yeah. So, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie, but if not, if you don't know what I'm talking about with the goggles, at least look at that. ‘Cause it's a good image. It's sort of like, what if you had a jeweler's loupe that had a jeweler's loupe that had a jeweler's loupe?

ART: It’s like, what if the antagonist won the Mummy movie right, this is what happens-

KEITH: What if instead of one, big, beautiful hat I have two small, beautiful hats?

KEITH: Like what if they made headphones just for being cool at a party?

KEITH: What if you make pizza by opening the box? That it was an empty box until you opened it.

AUSTIN: What if insects were made of teeth?

JACK: She’s the fuckin’ person of the train. She’s like what if a train could output a person.

KEITH: What if the train was a nice train?

ART: What if a Madame Tussauds came to life?

AUSTIN: What if fire could be a ghost?

AUSTIN: Looking through this here, sounds like what you wrote here was “What if a dolphin was like a velociraptor?”

AUSTIN: They’re hitched. Yeah, they've been hitched. Three of them have been hitched. And I said horse, but I want you to imagine is what if…what if a shrimp were a horse?

JACK: You sort of just like rise up the slope. It's a bit like what if a train was an escalator.

AUSTIN: What if Beyonce was Poison Ivy?

AUSTIN: All my cards on the table, Millennium Black is like what if Blade stopped being a vampire hunter and started being a casino owner.

AUSTIN: He's sort of like what if Alex Jones wasn't terrible

[katenepveu]

Feel free to take issue with my choices, of course! And sorry for the Bluff City and Fall of Magic erasure, but I couldn't not do "the weak point of a mech," and then it seemed only fair to put the other Road in.

(I did, however, try to make this spoiler free, FYI.)

[saltqueer]

Papyrus for the ask game! :)

papyrus ⇢ if you put your ‘on repeat’ playlist on shuffle, what’s the first song that comes up? what do you like about it / associate it with?

ok this is a bit silly bc i just have mp3s and basically listen to one (1) persons music bc its the only stuff i have with metadata on it and everything else is in an unsorted mega-album that i dare not enter. so! i picked their stuff that i think i listen to most frequently and got On The Approach by Jack de Quidt on PALISADE: Friends At The Table Soundtrack, Season Eight. Its a song from the first episode of the season that Friends at the Table is putting out rn, and im really adoring all their music for it. It has this incredible vibey electric guitar and synth that switches pretty seamlessly in and out of more crunchy rhythmic parts, sometimes i listen to it with my eyes closed and it makes me feel like im floating and then quickly brings me back to earth, which is very fun.

in the show it backs the introduction of a new kind of magic for this season, a sort of horrible depiction of how the big evil empire uses magic. the GM lists a lot of different ways the empires magic feels and the music responds to them, which is very cool.

I know I've just talked a lot about how this music ties in to the show, because of course, but even if you don't know the show i suggest checking them out here! that's their whole bandcamp page, the link higher up is to the song itself. there's only two songs across their whole discography that have lyrics in them, so no spoilers or needing of context. and they cover a lot of different musical styles, so even if you try the palisade soundtrack out and it doesn't click with you, their other stuff is different enough that it could! Sangfielle has this sort of fucked up violin, clarinet, and ooOOooo vocals sound, PARTIZAN is a lot of screaming synths and sirens, live at the table has a bunch of different stuff, Something & Nothing, Inside & Outside, and Autumn in Hieron are all sort of soft piano fantasy, with a goal of minimalism that doesn't always quite happen. Twilight Mirage is dance pop, Bluff City is jazzy, Marielda is clarinets (is that a genre? it is now), and The Long Way Around is minimalist scifi piano.

I know this isn't really the question, but on Inside & Outside there's a track called Hadrian & His Son where you can hear the piano pedals being pressed and for whatever reason that really gets to me every time

[humanmorph]

gathering info spoilers again (april)

I literally haven't listen to the whole thing yet I just skipped to the last few minutes to see if there were clues. I love clues

& okay if Janine as a word that's been in her head for the next season gives "insufferable" (& it sounds like it's referencing her character? ) that cannot be Sangfielle at least not regularstyle. Maybe a Marielda-type in-between....? Or it's really just a new setting (which would be kind of crazy to me). With actual dragons or dragon-adjacent things or maybe just something fulfilling the role of dragons

Also I've been turning around in my head what IF it is Realis ever since egg-tats brought it up in the replies & they decided to release it main feed... but I just now remembered Dre alluding to taking ideas they had for their character for "the next thing" for Levi instead which just doesn't match up timewise since they're already done with recording their part of Realis.

I'm enjoying clues and hints : ) I was expecting the summer of Sangfielle & if we get that in whatever shape or form I'll still be happy but I'm very intrigued by mystery rn.

gathering info. spoilers

ART: At this point we have to say something because this certainly implies [the next season]'s not what people expect it to be.

HUH?

I thought about this last Gathering Information episode because Ali & Jack so conspicuously didn't say anything about the next season (not like 'the Sangfielle sequel' or something) but was like haha no way. But like. Huh?

Also hearing a bit about Realis 👍 there's 2 groups/games and one's already finished. I'm guessing it'll start coming out when it's all done... Exciting

[scarletstatic]

Miscellaneous Friends at the Table sketches I don't think I ever posted! In order:

I always meant to do a Kobus, Vicuna, Jamil, Paisley and Ibex character design set to go with the others I did! Maybe one day I'll go back and finish them.

A close up of Kobus because they were the most finished.

Next is Tea helping Natalya fix her robot arm.

Hella and Adaire practicing swordfighting and holding hands!

Claret Holiday and Lilith R'ion of the Golden Lance.

Then last, two pics of Jacqui and Aria at the dance and writing songs together.

[boo-cool-robot]

[ALT]

the fundamental difference between ephrim and hadrian

[mosswolf]

look absolutely NOTHING will top the hitchcock twins reveal the build up the delivery it's fucking perfect it was the moment when i went from oh this podcast is fun to oh this podcast is GOOD

[wanderingandfound]

I know he's named Maelgwyn because he was created in a game of The Quiet Year and wasn't thought up as one of the Samtheon, but like, this child, this spark, ingenuity alive having a name, an identity so distinct from his family, it sounds so different than even Severea and Galenica, and what happens to him?

He becomes Samothes.

[dissecthebird]

death omens that you know are true…..like obviously there’s the the way black sails functions as the history from which the story of treasure island was written, but that really specific quality you get out of hadestown or marielda where you know the character’s going to die, the writer knows you know, and the only thing that remains to be seen is exactly how and when…..

[redzephyr]

“next week on friends at the table: the funeral of samothes” AHHGHGGHGGGH

[clemkesh]

art: “the reason cass can be in all these places at once is because he’s actually quadruplets”

jack: *quietly taking notes*

[vlasdygoth]

"I get so lost, all the time, just trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing with these abilities you've given me, and I just... Why me?" (Winter in Hieron 19: Make The Spring Last Forever)

[ID: Page 1: A monochromatic black, white, and yellow comic of the opening scene of Winter in Hieron 19. Panel 1 is Ephrim as a child, backlit by the sun, holding fire in his palm. Panel 2 is Ephrim on a horse, riding over the heat and the dark. Panel 3 is a pale hand lit by the fire it holds. Panel 4 is Ephrim sitting on an altar, which is lit from above by a circular window. Panel 5 is Maelgwyn backlit by a sun symbol, wearing a white mask. Panel 6 is a dark hand holding the Blade in the Dark. Panel 7 is Samothes, bent over, lit from behind. The text reads “There was a sense of possibility in you. I saw you there, a child, taken from place to place. Chaos. Fear. Darkness. I sensed an origin similar to mine.”

Page 2: Panel 1, to the left is Samothes, leaning back against his anvil with his arms crossed. He is looking at Ephrim, who has his hands clasped in front of him. Panel 2 is Ephrim looking up at Samothes, a straight on view of his face. He is a young man with pale skin and dyed hair, which is short and wavy. He has dark eyes. Panel 3 is Samothes looking down at Ephrim. He is lit from behind, and he is a man with dark skin, and curly black hair. Panel 4 is a top-down view of Samothes’ hands holding one of Ephrim’s. A golden ring is emblazoned on Ephrim’s upturned palm. The text reads “Perhaps that is less dogmatic an answer than you wished. There was no prophecy here. There was no divine guidance. There was only opportunity.”

Page 3: One panel that takes up the whole page. Ephrim stands in front of Samothes, and they are lit by a large yellow circle that may be a sun or a window behind them. THey are standing on a disc hovering over tendrils of dark shadow that creep up the sides of the panel. Ephrim’s arrow wounds have torn through his cloak, and light shines through them. The text, in the circle above their heads, reads “But that is what is behind all ingenuity.” /end ID.]

[whypolar]

Fero failing a transform roll causing whatever he tried to transform into to phase out of existence across the entire world is the funniest worldbuilding thing in hieron thus far, and this is already the universe that gave us a god providing food for his people by raining boulders full of fish onto their city