One hour after receiving word about the negotiations, Cats Cradle, part-time mercenary and loyal envoy of the concrete town particulars found herself catching her breath in the strangest place.

She stood horizontally against the horizon, miles above Gift Three, attached by Magloch Boots to the Advent Society Tech Main, a massive

orbital elevator connecting their burgeoning groundside headquarters with their research and development

station above.

For the last 15 minutes, she'd been counting the lightning strikes of the storm below,

ears straining involuntarily in hopes of hearing thunder,

and trying to make sense of what the proposed deal would mean for her and for the entire choir system.

She breathed deeply like city tourist on mountain pop.

Despite the lack of oxygen, it was easier for her respirator here than below or anywhere else on the nine idols. People had misunderstood the mechanism that the

citizens of concrete town war. Most folks thought that the hegemony's experimental

cement had made it hard for the particulars to breathe the gaseous form of the mirage, but that was backwards.

The reason they could breathe near their concrete homes was that the material was fused with mirage stuff. The problem with the planets wasn't the trace amount of

strange particles in the air. It was the oxygen. Cradle took hold of a momentum grip nearby and pushed herself upwards, falling further away from Gift 3 and towards the nearest Transpost station.

By the time she'd arrived, she'd counted another five strikes in the massive permanent storm that swam across Gift Three's fields of bubbling cueglass.

She found herself remembering a lesson taught to her by a grade school teacher many sleep

attachments long dead.

Though we think of lightning striking the ground, her teacher told her, it actually moves in two directions.

First, countless branching leader sparks, reaching downwards, cutting through invisible channels

in search of vulnerability, but it is when they find their match below,

when negative meets positive, that the snake of blue-white plasma we call lightning really happens.

You need both, she told herself. You need both. Welcome to Friends at the Table, and actual Play Podcast focused on Critical World Building,, Smart Characterization, and Fun Interaction between Good Friends. Today we are continuing our game of Scum and Villaini by Strash Asimovik and John Lebuth Little, a hack of Blades in the Dark by John Harper. My goals as GM are to convey the world,

the fictional world honestly, to bring the Twilight Mirage to life and to play to find out

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