USA By: David K?

C4C Game List	Code
🎁 Free Gifts	229514788
🎩 Hat Trick	229115516

Please tell me-

1. Temu Game you used my code on.
2. Temu Game your code is on.
3. Your username inside Temu.

Click Map	-
Available	✅
Unavailable	❌
Unlimited	♾️

Click Availability	-
🐠 Fish Land	✅
🌾 Farm Land	✅
🎩 Hat Trick	✅
🎁 Free Gifts	✅
🌴 Temu Tree	♾️?
🍵 Free Coffee	♾️?
🍀Lucky Flip	❌

Easter Eggs	Ineligible C4C	Note
🎩 Trick	234806837	5/20
🎩 Trick	229115516	0/5
🎁 Gifts	229514788	blank
🎁 Gifts	233463494	blank
🎁 Gifts	blank	blank

Game Name	Non-C4C Code	Information
📦 Daily	dailybox777	Daily Gift Box
🐠 Land	204281763	Friends
🌾 Land	203390830	Friends
🌴 Tree	temutree0326228	Plant real trees
🍵 Coffee	cof0996693	Free coffee
🍀Flip	N/A	N/A

Notes:

1. For Hat Trick and Free Gifts you can do both eligible and ineligible clicks to help get either of us easter eggs. But please let me know which ones you gave it to and give me your codes.
2. For new users, you can only do one click a day per game. One click a week per game of someone you've already given a click to. I will check records to make sure you have given one. Hat Trick is also known as Freebies.

Reddit Post Explaining Clicks Search for: TemuThings - "Code Exchanging (Clicks)"

USA By: David K?

C4C Game List	Code
🎁 Free Gifts	229514788
🎩 Hat Trick	229115516

Please tell me-

1. Temu Game you used my code on.
2. Temu Game your code is on.
3. Your username inside Temu.

Click Map	-
Available	✅
Unavailable	❌
Unlimited	♾️

Click Availability	-
🐠 Fish Land	✅
🌾 Farm Land	✅
🎩 Hat Trick	✅
🎁 Free Gifts	✅
🌴 Temu Tree	♾️?
🍵 Free Coffee	♾️?
🍀Lucky Flip	❌

Easter Eggs	Ineligible C4C	Note
🎩 Trick	234806837	5/20
🎩 Trick	229115516	0/5
🎁 Gifts	229514788	blank
🎁 Gifts	233463494	blank
🎁 Gifts	blank	blank

Game Name	Non-C4C Code	Information
📦 Daily	dailybox777	Daily Gift Box
🐠 Land	204281763	Friends
🌾 Land	203390830	Friends
🌴 Tree	temutree0326228	Plant real trees
🍵 Coffee	cof0996693	Free coffee
🍀Flip	N/A	N/A

Notes:

1. For Hat Trick and Free Gifts you can do both eligible and ineligible clicks to help get either of us easter eggs. But please let me know which ones you gave it to and give me your codes.
2. For new users, you can only do one click a day per game. One click a week per game of someone you've already given a click to. I will check records to make sure you have given one. Hat Trick is also known as Freebies.

Reddit Post Explaining Clicks Search for: TemuThings - "Code Exchanging (Clicks)"

I'm not going through all the intricate details of how to arrive at these numbers (if you want some details, ask in a comment, and I'll try to provide... there's just a lot for the 6 different fuel types).
Let me summarize up here...

• Biomass - you're collecting this for free while clearing space for your factory, so just get yourself a set up to dump it off in to burn for power
• Ignium Rubble Ore - the most efficient energy source in the game (97% efficient)
• Portable fuel - way less efficient than ignium rubble (88.2%), but an alternative option if you have no ignium nearby
• Refined ignium ore - strictly worse than ignium rubble and should never be considered
• Coked ignium - strictly worse than refined ignium ore and should never be considered
• Ignium fuel rods - horrendously terrible to the point that a mistake has clearly been made, should never be considered.

Again, if you want some details on how to arrive at these conclusions, I can provide.
The quick summary is... refined ignium has the same MJ input and output, so you're just losing the power that the crusher cost. Coked ignium is the same story, same MJ input and output, so you're losing the power of the machines to make it. Ignium fuel rods take what is effectively 200MJ worth of olumite and 40MJ worth of ignium to produce 100MJ of fuel... so even if we don't account for the energy cost of any of the machines needed to make the fuel rods (and I'm only counting filling the fuel rods, not producing the canisters), we can never be any better than 40% efficiency compared to just making portable fuel or burning the raw ignium rubble directly. This is entirely silly.
So what I'd like to do here is assume biomass and ignium rubble ore are correct at 5MJ and 10MJ... and recommend some new MJ numbers for all the other items to rebalance power generation and make things a bit more interesting. The assumption here is that more refined products should be more efficient. Factorio and Satisfactory both work this way with energy production. As it stands with the game, other than moving to solar power, I have no reason to adjust my power set ups... but I should want to go revisit them to increase their efficiency... but as it stands... I can't. Once I have ignium rubble powering boilers, I have the most efficient power production (save for unlimited free solar energy).
For refined ignium ore, I have to have 1-2 crushers per miner. The crushers consume 75kw, compared to the miners, which consume 200kw. I additionally need an extra pair of loaders per crusher, so it's really 85kw per miner, if we assume each miner is producing 40 ore per minute. If we assume miners producing 60/m, I need 2 crushers for every 3 miners. This math means that it effectively takes 28-38% more energy to produce refined ignium ore compared to just regular ignium ore. Refined ignium ore would need to be worth 12.8-13.8 MJ each just to break even. If it's actually worth 15 MJ each, I can now produce it safely knowing this is a more efficient improvement over raw ignium rubble.
For 150kw, an advanced smelter will turn 16 refined ignium ore into 40 coked ignium per minute. If we go back to our 3 miners, 2 crushers set up, we're producing 80 refined ignium per minute in that set up. In order to fully coke that out, we need 5 advanced smelters... so we put in 80 refined ignium and get out 200 coked ignium per minute, at the cost of 750kw. Or... we put in (with my new suggested number) 1200MJ+750kw... we need to get out at least 1950MJ. Welp... we're getting 200 coked ignium... if they were just worth 10MJ each, we'd be right at 2000MJ. Maybe we could say it should be even better than this... but I think this is probably acceptable.
Portable fuel. Now this one is tricky... but if all the recipes are kept the same, what we actually need to look at is just... let's make it at least as efficient as the raw ignium ore? I can justify using portable fuel a bit better if it's at least as efficient as raw ignium ore... if only because it scales better. It's more complex... but 1 pumpjack fuels a lot more generators than 1 ignium miner.
In order to reach that efficiency, portable fuel needs to be at more like 40-45MJ, rather than 15MJ.
Now... the only thing left here is the ignium fuel rods. If we assume ignium rubble being 10MJ is correct, and then we adjust portable fuel up to 40MJ, the ingredients for ignium fuel rod are already worth >570MJ. But ignium fuel rods also have a significantly more complex set up and they're the only fuel source that requires you handle extracting spent canisters from the boilers... which adds even further to the complexity... and leaves you in a situation where it's quite easy for your whole power to go down despite having enough fuel simply because you have to many spent canisters in your system.
Ignium fuel rods need to be worth no less than 600MJ... but really, anywhere from 800MJ to 1GJ seems perfectly fine to me.
So... final numbers I recommend...

• Biomass - 5 MJ (stays the same, assumed baseline)
• Ignium rubble - 10 MJ (stays the same, assumed baseline)
• Refined ignium ore - 15 MJ (increased from 10)
• Coked ignium - 10 MJ (increased from 4) (12 or 15 is also acceptable... I mean... it's likely the last fuel type anyone gets to in the existing tree...)
• Portable fuel - 40 MJ (at this rate, a single pumpjack is enough through put to power 27, almost 28 generators... but efficiency-wise, meaning how much power is required to produce the fuel relative to how much power the fuel creates, this puts olumite very similar to ignium)
• Ignium fuel rods - minimum 600 MJ (but realistically due to the complexities, 800MJ - 1GJ seems more appropriate)

Without these adjustments, other than going to solar, there's no reason to move off of ignium rubble.
With these adjustments, there's a lot of interesting power options... including things like ignium fuel rods probably being an interesting choice compared to solar, despite not being unlimited/infinite like solar.

I wanted to add my own interesting experience here for anyone on Ubuntu 22.04 running Bookstack v24.02.3 and Nginx.
The latest Bookstack v24.05 requires PHP 8.1 or higher. FYI, stock 22.04 has PHP v8.1.x, so you should be OK.
I thought - why not upgrade the Ubuntu distribution to 24.04 (latest at time of this writing) in order to get PHP 8.3 and hedge against future releases? I've been able to do Ubuntu in-place upgrades for the last one or two releases without issue. We are on hypervisors so snapshotting and attempting upgrades has very little risk.
My initial installation of Ubuntu basically stock wizard-click - not much attention to partitioning because everything is running on a SAN / virtual machine. So the /boot partition was the abysmally small 450MB or so default, and the rest of everything is on an LVM2 partition which can be easily managed in various ways.
As it turns out, you have to first upgrade to 23.x and then to 24.04 beacuse the normal release cadence doesn't get exposed until August 2024 when they release 24.04.1. The upgrade stopped short because there wasn't enough room on the /boot partition to support this process. Running apt autoremove didn't come anywhere close to solving the problem.
And thus began my hours long trail of tears attempting to expand the /boot drive. Never did I imagine how difficult this would be to do, and I sorely wish I had paid more attention to partitioning it properly in the first place, or (despite 'best practices') putting the /boot in the LVM parition.
Let's just say you'll need Kubuntu mountable .iso, and a carefully curated series of steps to do it properly. Here are my steps in general; you still need to know what you're doing, this is not a point click manual. Try at your own risk, this is just a hope it could save people time.

Assumptions

• You're on a virtual machine. If not, this is still possible, but it won't be an exact recipe.
• Ensure you have a backup.
• We're going to move the default Ubuntu installation "/boot" partition to another, larger "/boot" partition. It will remain outside of and not participating in an LVM.
• This assumes you're on a simplistic "/dev/sda" kind of configuration. If not, pay special attention to what you're editing in order to match your setup.
• You have sudo privileges.
• If you encounter an error, stop and revert or get help.

How to

This was performed on 22.04.x LTS.
Before starting, know the boot partition format (ext2, ext4, etc.) and its size. It should hopefully be easily recognizable by its very small size. You can get this by simply Do: "df -h"

• Download the latest Kubuntu release.
• Mount the Kubuntu .iso to your VM.
• Add 5GB of unallocated space to the exsting VM disk using VMWare, Nutanix, hypervisor of choice.
• Power on VM.
• Choose "Try Kubuntu" at boot prompt
• Choose "Try Kubuntu" when presented to get live boot, close welcome screen
• Start / Run "KDE Partition Manager" (no root password when prompted just continue)
• Ensure entire disk is selected on the left hand side
• You'll see a small (probably ext2) partition. Just ensure you're choosing the boot partition. Right-click "COPY".
• Choose the unallocated partition and right-click "PASTE".
  • A new screen will appear.
  • Expand the bar to the right by click-dragging it to be the maximum. This can be frustrating because the ability to drag is like a pixel wide. Just ensure it consumes the entire bar.
  • Click OK.
• At the bottom in pending operations it will state something like, "Copy parition /dev/sda1 (XXXmb) to unallocated space starting at (something) on /dev/sda and grow it to 5.00 GiB"
• Click "Apply"
• You will now have a new partition "/dev/sda3" or the like, depending on your original installation.
• Right-click the original boot partition and click "Properties".
• Uncheck the "boot" flag. Click "OK".
• Click "Apply"
• Right-click the new partition and click "Properties".
• Check the "boot" flag. Click "OK".
• Click "Apply"
• Right-click the new partition and click "Edit Mount Point". In the Path, type, "/boot" and click OK. It should spout something about overwriting "/etc/fstab", which it claims to do but doesn't... probably because it's a live CD. Click "Save Changes".
• Right-click the new parition and click "Properties".
• Screenshot the new UUID. We can get it again easily later for copy/paste.
• Close the partition manager and reboot to your normal Ubuntu installation.

It's going to use the old partition to boot, because we haven't updated the rest yet in the live system. Once the system is back up, do the following:

• Do: "df -h" you should see "/boot" still on the old partition with very little room. This is normal.
• Do: "sudo blkid"
• This should show you the UUID of the new partition as something like /dev/sda3 or the like. Copy it.
• Do "sudo nano /etc/fstab". Consider making a backup before you edit, just in case.
  • Copy the old /boot entry to another line, then comment out the old one.
  • Replace the new line UUID with the new UUID. Save changes.
• Reboot, log in.
• Now we want to tell Grub about our new boot partition.
  • Do: "sudo grub-install /dev/sda".
  • Do: "sudo update-grub".
• Reboot, log in.
• Do: "df -h". You should see your new partition (mine was /dev/sda3) as the "/boot" partition with lots of free space! If not, stop here and read up or revert.
• We're going to remove the old partition:
  • Do "sudo parted"
  • Do "print all". This will show you the partitions - get the number of the old boot partition you want to remove.
  • Do "rm 1" (or whatever number your original boot partition was).
  • Do "print all" and ensure the partition is gone.
  • Do "quit" to quit.
• Reboot and ensure all is well.

You will have a partition left that you can't do anything about, or at least that I'm aware of. Considering it's probably 500MB, it's not a worry to me. If you look at it in Kubuntu, it is unallocated space.

I bought the game at release for $80 off of Ubisoft connect, and besides the cosmetics and 2 extra quests there has been 0 content for “special edition” buyers. I’ve been an adamant supporter of this game especially against the SoT trolls, but mods banned my first post regarding refunds💀, so I’ll be more to the point. It’s really frustrating knowing I spent $80 on a game that would be the exact same if I bought the $60 version. Then to top it off later released cosmetics and stuff costed more money rather than free for special edition. I just hateeee lies and it seems like they are never going to give “special edition” buyers content again. I like this game and see the potential I really really do (Ubisoft player since 2007), but it’s really hard to swallow my pride when being blatantly ripped off like this. If I owned a game and it got bad feedback I’d be breaking my back to get public opinion back on your side, and it seems like they’re going the complete opposite way adding just paid cosmetics.
PS: Don’t remove this mods as I am not a troll and this was not “low-effort” these are valid complaints that call out management for tiptoeing the line of being actual scammers. In no way shape or form is this a shot towards developers, being a developer myself Ik the effort it takes and how corporate politics can be involved.

Things tend to get heated around here, certain topics are heavily contested. I don't know about the rest of you, but as a bloody newbie all of that can be disheartening sometimes. It's not all bad, of course, there are a lot of interesting and helpful conversations going on in here, but it gets really scary sometimes.
Today I found these gems while reading Linji, so I decided to share them together with a few remarks. Please feel free to criticize or add your own!
From The Recorded Sayings of Linji, translated by J. C. Cleary:

“Good people of the Path, do not grasp what I say. Why? Be­cause verbal explanations have no basis: they are temporary sketches on the void, like images formed of colored clouds.

This short excerpt alone is already remarkable. Note that Linji does not tell us to disregard his words (which would be a paradoxical) but urges us to not grasp them. Grasping, clinging, attaching - futile attempts to hold on to something that is temporary.

Good people, there is no buddha that can be attained. Even the three vehicles, the five categories of beings, the round and the sudden manifestations of the teachings, [and all Buddhist for­mulations] are all just medicines to deal with the diseases of a cer­tain period.

The comparison to medicine further illustrates the conditional nature of verbal teachings. For instance, no skillful physician would prescribe laxatives for every ailment just because they helped in cases of constipation.

There is no real doctrine at all. If there are [doctrinal teachings], they are open announcements that show some semblance of [real truth], public verbal demonstrations. Arranged for effect, they explain as they do for the time being.

Again, there is no real, i.e. permanent and unchanging, doctrine. However, that doesn't mean those demonstrations have no worth.

“Good people, there are some misguided monks who attach their efforts to what is in these teachings, trying to find a worldtranscending truth, but they are making a mistake. If people seek Buddha, they lose Buddha; if they seek the Path, they lose the Path; if they seek the patriarchs, they lose the patriarchs.

I did that, just recently, maybe some of you did that, too. Isn't it liberating to let go of all that?

“Worthy people, make no mistake about it. For now I don’t care if you understand the sutras and the sastras, I don’t care if you are a prince or a high official, I don’t care if your eloquence is like a waterfall, I don’t care if you are intelligent and knowledge­able. All I require of you is correct understanding.

Have you ever felt like you're "not good enough" for Zen? Not "spiritually sharp", just run-of-the-mill? I certainly did, so reading that Linji doesn't care about all of that is powerful, encouraging.

Good people, even if you can interpret a hundred sutras and sastras, you are not as good as a simple monk without concerns. You may inter­pret them, but it is only to put down other people—you have the victory-and-loss mentality of the asura. You are ignorant of self and others, and are increasing your hellish karma.

Is it that simple? No more elbow mentality, no more heated discussions about who got it right?

“Better to have no concerns, to stop and rest. When hunger comes, eat. When sleep comes, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at us, but the wise know.

Yes, it's that simple. Let's chill and enjoy the little time we have left together.

Probably life has no meaning. We humans are arrogant: we think the entire universe was created just for us, but this view is increasingly anachronistic. Especially since the hypothesis of the existence of alien life is not so remote. But even putting aside the idea of alien life, there are many other forms of life on Earth different from human life. Essentially, we humans have come out on top in the race of evolution, thanks to a series of conditions and coincidences. Imagine in a parallel universe pigs ruling the world, with their own culture, philosophy, science, and religion. It sounds strange, right? But we might also seem ridiculous in the eyes of a more evolved society. They might laugh at our philosophers, our scientific theories, and our religions. So, perhaps the knowledge we have today isn't so truthful after all. Maybe it's relative to the viewpoint we have at this moment. But then, what should we do, given that we're insignificant compared to everything else? In my opinion, we should make the most of our life experience. There's no absolute truth, so we're free to see things as we want. Even if we tend to see the world negatively, I think it makes more sense to view things positively. It's more useful to ourselves. And maybe our scientific and intellectual progress will lead us to a conclusion. And even if it doesn't lead us anywhere, in the meantime, you will have lived your life positively. I want to conclude with an example: if friends take you to a party you don't want to attend, does it make more sense to spend the evening sad and angry or to try to have fun? This shows that even things that may seem stupid and illogical can be useful if they make you enjoy life more. We don't know what's truly true and we probably never will, so no judgment towards anything is justified.

Once, I was trapped in a cycle of scarcity and financial instability. Growing up, my family struggled to make ends meet, and I internalized a mindset of scarcity, believing that money was always fleeting and that financial success was out of reach for me. As I entered adulthood, this poverty mindset manifested in my spending habits and financial decisions.
I found myself living paycheck to paycheck, constantly stressed about money, and unable to break free from the cycle of debt. I lacked discipline in managing my finances, often succumbing to impulse purchases and instant gratification, further exacerbating my financial struggles.
However, my journey towards financial freedom began when I reached a turning point, a moment of clarity that sparked a deep desire for change. I realized that my current path was unsustainable and that I needed to confront my limiting beliefs about money head-on.
I embarked on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth, determined to overcome my poverty mindset and cultivate discipline in managing my finances. I immersed myself in books, podcasts, and resources on personal finance, seeking knowledge and guidance to transform my relationship with money.
With each new insight gained, I began to challenge my deeply ingrained beliefs about scarcity and abundance. I shifted my focus from what I lacked to what I could create, embracing a mindset of abundance and possibility.
To build discipline, I implemented practical strategies to manage my spending and savings. I created a detailed budget, tracked my expenses diligently, and automated my savings to ensure consistent progress towards my financial goals. I learned to differentiate between needs and wants, practicing mindfulness in my spending habits and prioritizing long-term financial stability over short-term indulgence.
Over time, as I continued to apply these principles and habits consistently, I witnessed a remarkable transformation in my financial life. I gradually paid off my debts, built an emergency fund, and started investing for the future. With each milestone achieved, my confidence grew, and my sense of empowerment deepened.
Today, I stand as a testimony to the power of resilience, determination, and personal growth. I have overcome the grip of poverty mindset and lack of discipline, paving my own path towards financial freedom and abundance. My journey is a testament to the fact that no matter where you start, with dedication and perseverance, you have the power to rewrite your financial story and create the life you desire.

My Story, below covers account activation after winning and a nvidia fix and I implore everyone to write there problem below as one hot thread with drama make change happpen quicker than anything. so we raise mass awareness to the issue and Developers are either forced to fix it or Day 1 Launch Game Tanks.

Won in Twitch Drops, wasting an hour of my life, had all accounts hooked up before clicked my drop, brought to a page telling me to watch another hour, and on main page no beta download. To those twitch streamers that got views n money for promoting this. Fix this or
Day 1 will be mass-cheats Day 1. Their own on site policy reads
"The Non-Steam Key, like the Steam keys, serves as a voucher for beta
access eligibility. Please note that keys obtained from Twitch Drops
cannot be activated by the user. Once you obtain a Steam or Non-Steam
key from the Twitch Drops event, your linked Level Infinite Pass account
will be activated automatically within one business day. No further
action is required on your part; simply be patient and wait for us to
grant your beta access."

https://www.arenabreakoutinfinite.com/en/news.html?content_id=a7778003af2dda4315aa9ecacf50acbd8c24

Someone who is not me can easily recode an older version of Unreal 4, and why the hell yous wrapped your mobile port into Unreal 4 instead of 5? Faking the amount of accounts to be in the beta. Day 1 and the playerbase is gonna be rageful rants about people 360 spinning, headshotting and pre-aiming through walls.
Diplomacy for the keys is over as of now, waited 24 hours exactly - but if that fails the public can decide. Also your banned new cards etc is because its a mobile port still in its base-code, ported to Unreal 4 which will already have conflicts with newer graphics cards past its era, but they probably expect Nvidia to retrofit their little high advertised but poorly executed marketed F2P title.
FIXING FPS DROPS, STUTTERING ETC THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE UNLESS NVIDIA RETRO PATCH A GAME THATS FREE 2 PLAY UNLIKELY, ESPECIALLY ONE THATS ARCHITECTURE IS BASED IN MOBILE SOFTWARE AND THEN A WRAPPER IS USED TO RUN IT THROUGH UNREAL 4 - a cheap way of porting. My only clue for using Unreal 4 is maybe theyd have to pay royalties to Unreal 5. But combine the OG mobile architecture + UE some new cards will conflict with old tech, below is my solution:
It's this or by their own site I've screenshots for all this - they lied, community needs to stand together on this cause its bullpoop 🔥
Nvidia Fixs & Mouse Poll Rate:
Stuttering Fix for Nvidia cards
Win + R
Paste the following: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion\DXCache
Delete everything in the folder or sort by date and only delete the ones after the game was installed & ake your polling rate on your mouse 1000hz
It's still gonna be janky on the newer cards running on an old UE4 engine. Its cause they ported a mobile game which clearly is still fundmentally running mobile graphic software, and got retrofitted with Unreal 4 (NOT 5 FOR NO REASON AS A WRAPPER ON THE GAME WOULD OF SOLVED IT FOR EVERYONE)
So the newer cards dont run well with a combination of mobile port into Unreal 4. They need nvidia to be bothered to patch the new cards to word with UE40.

Everyone post your own description of events and raise awareness, this is bullsh!t Larry!

RAISE AWARENESS = GET FAIRNESS, VOTE FOR PRESIDENT NEGAN lmao.

Hey all!
Today's battle report is a 1000pt. Simple Battle, featuring a terrain piece that is pretty unique! Once again, my opponent is the dastardly daisucce. Per his request, the center of the map is dominated by a massive boring drill. The center control point is in the middle of it, with two arms (in green) that rotate 90 degrees clockwise after each Round. The center point is on elevated High Ground indestructible terrain; the arms are not invulnerable, however. Surrounding this is a massive black hole made by the drill; any units that fall in are considered destroyed by the massive bore.
Principality of Zeon
I used a refined version of the strategy I employed in my first Roll20 Game; headed up by my Gouf Flight Type Ace and an Ace Gaw, both of which had Grand Strategist/Strategic Captain. Using the Captain's Order to increase movement speed, Dynamic Entrance, and a ton of Focus Actions, my goal is to break through the enemy lines as fast as possible to swarm daisucce 's higher priority units and secure the victory. To support this, I have a flight of Dopp Fighters, who can use elevated terrain easily due to their flight speed, trying to ping in chip damage and force activations with their relatively long range Aircraft Missiles.

• x1 Gouf Flight Type Ace Commander
  • Grand Strategist
  • Unyielding
  • Dynamic Entrance
  • Awe-Inspiring Arrival
• x2 Dom
  • Machine Gun
  • Dynamic Entrance
  • Ambusher
• x3 Zaku II
  • Dynamic Entrance
  • TL Missile Pods
• x6 Dopp Fighter
• x1 Ace Gaw Carrier
  • Strategic Captain

Earth Federation Forces
daisucce and I brainstormed a strategy before this that might be to his liking. He has a particular affinity for Gundam Unit 4's Mega Bazooka Launcher, and wanted an army that could field two of them while having fodder take the heat. Using some input, this is what he came up with. He's going to use Pilot Traits with heavy Momentum generation, then further fuel his Momentum with a swarm of cannon fodder, using Rallying Leader to generate fuel for his death rays.

• x2 Gundam Unit 04 Ace
  • Immortal
  • Driven
  • One of these is the Commander with Rallying Leader
• x6 GM Early Type
  • x2 Machine Gun
  • x4 Beam Spray Gun
• x8 Fly Manta

Round 1
I launch all of my units, except the Gouf Flight Type from the Gaw Carrier; the Carrier and Gouf give a pair of Focus Actions to my Doms and Zakus, then declare the Captain's Order to Take The Fight To Them!, increasing Movement Speed by +5" and Melee Block +1 for all my units. Seizing initiative, my Gouf Flight Ace zooms to the center control point, nearly knocks out a GM with its High Ground TA, then moves back to capture the point. It vainly returns fire. I move a Dopp in and fire off missiles; I'm trying to force daisucce to not immediately fire off his G04 Launchers, while also not giving him Momentum from killing his stuff. He responds by killing the Dopp, I move in and knock out the GM Early that killed it with a Zaku II TL Missile Pod attack with two Focus Actions.
He moves a GM Early onto the boring drill arm to attack my Gouf, but Awe Inspiring Arrival, a Shield, and Guard prevent any hits from connecting. My Doms move in, their enhanced speed letting them easily tear apart the offending GM with High Ground by popping their Focus Actions and laying into it with Machine Guns. Meanwhile, the G04's move onto the building they're behind, gain High Ground (equal level with the Gouf Flight Type) and try and fail to shoot it with Beam Rifles thanks to Unyielding.
Soon after, the Fly Mantas and Dopps engage, Ace Combat music obviously blaring in the background. My Dopps have a Movement Speed advantage thanks to the Captain's Order, with some also using the nearby terrain to gain TA and thus some free hits. The remainder of the Round involves some position jockeying, and my Gaw moving into position to provide close support, its movement speed doubled thanks to Full Throttle and the Captain's Order!
Round 2
Both players have started this Round with 10 Momentum due to how the last one went. Tension is in the air, and the Drill Arms move 90 degrees.
daisucce wins the die roll, and proceeds to dump bombs on my Dom. Rude! Being within its Sensors Range, the 10 Attack, 100 Damage Small Bombing Run is actually pretty good from a 10 Point Unit. My Dom moves back slightly, lights up the Fly Manta with a Machine Gun, then Melees a different one to death.
This is where things go wrong.
Using Tear Through The Ranks, daisucce has his Commander G04 activate, fire off the Mega Bazooka Launcher with High Ground TA against one group of my forces, fire off again and hit my Gaw and, then fire off a Beam Rifle at my Gouf Flight Type.. I lose all of my Zakus, most of my Dopps, and 1/3rd of my Gaw's HP. Amazingly, the drill arm survived all of this, and my Commander didn't take any hits (but had to use Unyielding.) He responds by bum-rushing the other, using High Speed Attack TA to try to kick the other G04 off the platform so it would lose LoS from activating its own death beam. This doesn't go so well, so I move my Gouf between the two, hoping that keeping them locked in Engagement Range with an Unyielding Commander would lock him down well enough. I manage to survive two bouts of Melee Clash with his G04 using Tear Through The Ranks, but he gains 4 Momentum from his Pilot Traits! Despite my best efforts, I lose one of my Doms to more Bombing Runs and High Ground Beam Spray Rifle Hits just inside of Target Lock... the situation has become completely hopeless, with a huge Momentum disparity, so I concede the game at the end of Round 2.
Conclusion
I'll be the first to say it; I played this completely wrong. My forces should have been more spread out, probably into three groups, and I should have placed down terrain more favorable for stacking up behind. If I could play this one again, I'd have tried using a different formation. This team is great, but I think it might have been a bad matchup; if I used Skilled Pilots, I could have tried to ignore his meatshield walls and focused on the Gundams.
Oh well! You learn more from losing than winning. daisucce has come a long way!

I'm in my last semester and am aiming to turbo charge my interview prep across leetcode, system design, and behavioral interviews.
I'm considering starting an Interview Prep club for those in OMSCS who are gunning for FAANG roles in SWE and adjacent roles (MLE & DE).
With that said, I'm not convinced this is worth it to the community over the long term. Of those who are interested, what are your thoughts on the questions below?:

• what would make something like this particularly valuable?
• is it even worth having a Zoom meeting for one of these? or just a shared chat (Slack or oher) to share resources & commiserate?
• I'm part of some other communities which have sub-groups around this (one example being Taro). Other than this being free, what do you see the benefits of an OMSCS affiliated group being?

If you’d told me that the visitation with my son, an event that happened only every other weekend, would be extended indefinitely, I would’ve jumped with joy. In the end, I wish the circumstances under which they unfolded had never happened.
The clouds were sightless in the clear sky the day Jasmine dropped off my boy, a perfect day to play a little catch in the yard or go fishing at the nearby stock pond. Cyrus bounced out of the car and ran joyously toward me, unaware that his old man was a perpetual fuck up that had broken up the family in the first place. Oh well.
It was a happy day, the birds sang their old nostalgic tunes of a lost Summer in my own childhood. It was warm, not too warm, and the neighborhood was buzzing with excitement as the Spring showers had come to a close. It was as close as it could get to perfect.
The evening light danced against the tree tops, turning a violet hue as dusk began to settle in. Burnt orange water reflected the dying sun as it continued sinking away to nothing. We grabbed our tackle box, the giant beige one my uncle gifted me before he was stolen by cancer, and filled it with the empty, crumpled up bits of plastic that once held bologna sandwiches. As I said, it was a perfect day, very reminiscent of my own childhood.
We’d thrown the fat bluegill back that we had caught, I hadn’t felt like messing with cleaning and cooking them. Instead, dinner would likely be mac n’ cheese with some cut up hot dogs, a staple in my household whether or not Cyrus was visiting. Hopefully I hadn’t run through Oscar Meyer supply.
Home never felt so lonely, the walls never seemed so barren of old family pictures when Cyrus wasn’t around. Sometimes, he only added to the pain. I would never tell him that, though.
Even with the faucet turned all the way up, the water dribbled out and made boiling pasta a very patient game. Cyrus was babbling about some game he was playing on my phone. ‘He’s just a kid’, I thought, and pretended to be interested in whatever the hell he was talking about.
The sun had vanished and the moon was especially bright that night, having slid nearly halfway to its crescendo before dinner was finally done. Cyrus had stolen my phone to the living room, staring at the bright characters absentmindedly as a nondescript Netflix show played in the background.
“Here, buddy, sorry about the wait”, I sat the bowl of neon yellow stuff in front of him, the pink scramble of hotdog jutting out made me feel… a little ashamed? I plopped down next to him and flipped through the various titles on Netflix, most of which I had already seen a couple of times. Cyrus tossed the phone aside and picked at the mess of ‘food’ in the bowl. I can’t remember if he took a bite or not.
“Dad!”, I jumped, reeling from the doze I had fallen in. If Jasmine was here, it would’ve been such a perfect day, such a perfect day. Instead, this is where it all fell apart.
He massaged furiously at his temples, his knees pulled tight against his heaving chest.
“What’s the matter, are you okay?”, I jumped from the couch and got on one knee, putting my hands around his shoulders. I watched helplessly as Cyrus twisted and contorted his body, trying to run away from whatever pain was in his head.
Suddenly he fell still.
I studied him for a while, nearly on the verge of tears as his body had become totally limp. Then, a noise. At first it was quiet, then it grew and grew until it filled the room with totality. It’s hard to describe that noise, almost like a wind turbine if you were up close to it.
From behind the couch, just above my sons head, it peeked at me. Its thick, black fingers ended at sharp, nailess points. Just as I met its eyes, it slithered behind the couch and that’s when Cyrus awoke in a screaming fit.
I jumped awake again, Cyrus sitting next to me as pale as a sheet. His eyes were bulging, glued to the blank TV ahead.
I couldn’t help but check behind the couch, to make sure it wasn’t still there. Then, to my son who was still staring at the nothing on the television. His mouth was hanging open, just enough to allow the continuous stream of drool to fall out.
I ran to the kitchen to grab a paper towel and cleaned the odd amount of drool from his chin. There wasn’t a thermometer in the house but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that he was burning up. A fever, I thought.
I carried the boy to his bedroom, feeling as though I was being watched the entire way, and tucked him into bed. A doctors visit would soon be on the horizon. I returned to the couch in the living room, careful to keep my gaze fixed on the TV and nothing else. Truthfully, I was too afraid to look in the shadowy corners.
That night was filled with nightmares.
The next day I rang Jasmine, letting her know that Cy was sick and needed to go to the doctor. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been an issue, but Jas was immunocompromised (she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer a few months before we divorced) and my son would be staying with me for the foreseeable future. I couldn’t complain, I didn’t get to see him nearly enough as it was.
That day was very much the opposite of the previous, the sky was gloomy and spits of rain fell consistently from dawn to nightfall.
The doctor had said that Cyrus had a particularly severe ear infection, but nothing that some antibiotics couldn’t fix. He sent us home with a tube of the stuff, my wallet noticeably lighter.
“Apply some of this twice a day, once in the morning and once before bedtime”, the older gentleman had said. He squeezed my shoulder and smiled, though there seemed to be something else behind his wary eyes.
He stopped me again as I turned to leave.
“Sir…”, he started, though he seemed to study his words carefully, “your son kept mentioning something he called the flumes”.
I shrugged, the only time I had heard the word was in reference to a ravine on the edge of town where we’d all smoke pot in high school. Nothing struck me as odd about it at the time.
“They come from the flumes, those noises, those noises, he kept saying”, the doctor pushed closer, his eyes growing wild. I stepped backward, tugging at Cy’s hand as we left the building wordlessly.
Aside from my busy mind, the car ride home was utterly silent. I could hear my boys heavy, labored breaths all the way from the backseat. ‘Inner ear infection, my ass’, I thought.
After laying Cyrus back down for bed, I fixed him a bowl of instant chicken and noodles and decided to give Jasmine a call. The phone rang endlessly before the robotic voice indicated that the caller wasn’t available. I tried once more but gave up after it rang a few more times. Probably sleeping.
I returned to the couch, deciding to rewatch Nightmare on Elm Street for the fourth or fifth time.
After a while, I decided to put on cable, growing tired of the listless titles on Netflix. I was never too interested in the local news, but today seemed as good as any to catch up on the towns happenings. The Grantfield Gators girls softball team had advanced to sectionals and one of the townsfolk were celebrating their 100th birthday.
A ‘Breaking News’ graphic slid below the frazzled newslady on the television. Wherever she was, it sure looked familiar.
‘Wild dog shits on mayors front yard’, I laughed at my own stupid joke and surely turned as white as Cyrus had the previous night as the lady on the TV continued.
“A local woman was found tied to a tree and disemboweled at the scene. Police are saying various symbols were branded all over the womans body, and the material used to bind her to the Elm tree was ‘of unusual property’”, she continued on for a while but I hadn’t noticed, the air had fallen heavy and that familiar warbling had filled the room again.
Heavy footsteps slammed up the staircase at an otherworldly pace. Up the staircase and towards my sons room.
I ran, I swear I ran as fast as I could but I knew… I knew.
When I got to his room, he was gone, the curtains blowing aimlessly in the wind as the window had been slammed open so hard that the glass had shattered in the panes. The bowl of chicken and noodles sat on the bedside table, untouched.
I tried calling Jasmine again and again and again. Still, no answer.
I wanted to write this, to whoever may be reading, so that you know where to look if I don’t return. I know where my son is, I know where Jasmine is.
The flumes took them, or whatever might be lurking in it.

Jerry and George are talking in the diner and the topic of the Columbia protests comes up. Jerry goes on a diatribe about how college are the most important years of someone's life and who should overhear him but the President of Columbia, who invites Jerry to give the year's commencement address not realizing that Jerry was being sarcastic the whole time.
Jerry, with George's help, scrambles to write a commencement speech, but no matter what they come up with, it sounds like Jerry is being sarcastic when he doesn't mean to be. Recognizing this is a problem, George advises Jerry to write the most boring, banal, boilerplate speech he can think of, and to make it brief. Jerry settles on "Education is really important, and all of you are really important too."
Finally, the big day comes. As the university president is delivering a long-winded introduction for Jerry, George is sitting at the very back of the crowd when a young college grad begins coming on to him. She makes it clear she has "a thing" for short, stocky bald men with glasses, and proposes that she and George head to the President's office, but a stone's throw away, which she knows will be unoccupied at this time, but there's a catch: she only has as much time with George as Jerry's commencement address will last, because after that she is the first student to cross the stage and receive her diploma.
Flustered, George does the one thing he can think of: as soon as Jerry walks up to the podium, he lets out a massive "BOOOOO! Free Palestine!" and walks out with the young woman in tow, only to be followed by several dozen more students.
The President of Columbia storms off the stage in a huff, thinking the graduation ceremony has been ruined. Jerry asks him where he is going: "Back to my office! I'm going to revoke the diplomas of everyone of those spoiled children who think they can use this college as their own personal play-thing for their sick, hedonistic desires."
Cut to George and the young graduate getting hot and heavy in the President's office; the President walks in, sees what's happening, and asks George "What do you think you're doing?"
"Freeing Palestine?"---freeze frame ending.

Hey all, at least once a day there seems to be a post in this subreddit complaining about the quality of matches or teammates. In those posts there seems to be a split on whether or not there is a problem or player behavior is justified. I'm going to leave most of my opinions at the end of this post, but from my point of view it's obvious that there is a problem that is clearly illustrated by how often players choose to forfeit, but most players are unwilling or even mentally blocking themselves from the idea that they might be part of the problem. I had already taken up note taking in video games as I played Dark Souls for the first time, so I decided to continue this when I came back to Rocket League and record stats and tallies by hand of instances when my teammates vote to forfeit.
​
For context, all of these matches were in the 3v3 competitive playlist from the Diamond 1 to Diamond 2 range. I wanted to come up with a system that made it easy to record quickly during games, so I kept tallies of the basic stats in the first table, and in terms of forfeiting I recorded the time of the first vote, the score, and notes (things I wanted to keep track of but ultimately didn't deserve their own tallies). Right off the bat we can see that it only took 311 matches for me to reach 100 instances of forfeiture, this means almost one third of my games are going to include a teammate forfeiting. Out of those 100 times where a teammate voted to forfeit, 34 times also included the teammate idling or hard throwing. That means almost 1 out of every 9 matches I played was ruined solely by someone on my team not playing the game as intended. It's also extremely important to note that I only recorded instances of this happening on my team. I'm making the assumption that all of this happens at a slightly higher rate on the other team because I personally don't vote to forfeit or throw my matches.
​
Here are the results of what I recorded:
​

Games played	Wins	Losses	Vote to ff?	idle or hard throw?	OTW (includes W)	OTL (includes L)
311	153	158	100	34	31	27

​

	Time left at first vote	Score	Notes
1	0:07	2-1
2	0:37	3-1	toxic in text
3	0:42	3-2
4	3:30	3-0	immediate throw after ff vote
5	2:23	3-0
6	0:07	4-0
7	1:25	up 2-0	conceded immediately after, still won
8	0:35	2-1
9	0:47	4-1
10	1:42	2-2	led whole game then lost
11	2:51	4-1	toxic in text
12	1:26	4-1
13	1:28	3-0
14	3:20	3-0	mid-play vote, teammate threw
15	2:58	2-0
16	2:00	3-0
17	3:17	4-0	teammate quit at 2-0 with 4:00 remaining, ff accepted
18	2:23	2-0
19	0:14	4-2
20	0:15	3-1
21	3:22	3-0	player left the match
22	1:30	4-0
23	3:30	4-1	almost came back
24	3:22	3-0
25	1:07	5-1	teammate left match
26	1:50	3-0
27	1:20	3-0	teammate left immediately after ff vote
28	0:45	3-1
29	2:34	4-3
30	1:55	1-0	mid-play
31	0:36	3-1
32	0:23	5-1
33	2:27	3-0
34	1:26	4-0
35	3:26	1-1	was leading, teammate quit immediately after ff vote
36	2:02	2-2	OT win, teammate voted mid-play
37	1:37	2-1	voted as the enemy team ball rolled into goal to be 3-1
38	0:45	3-1
39	1:08	2-0	mid-play, teammate later left match
40	2:55	3-1
41	2:41	4-0
42	0:52	2-2	mid-play, other team eventually won, teammate left early
43	0:24	5-1
44	0:44	3-3	ff vote @ them tying, we won
45	1:52	up 4-1	ff when other team first scored, we won, this is the only ff vote i feel bad about including here
46	0:09	3-1
47	1:04	3-0	immediate throw after ff vote
48	0:54	3-1
49	0:03	5-3	mid-play
50	0:15	3-1
51	0:07	2-4
52	0:15	0-1	mid play, idle after vote
53	1:49	3-1	was told to kms by probably the only player that got banned during this experiment
54	0:21	3-1
55	2:47	2-1	all downhill after one bad goal
56	0:50	5-1	idle after vote, still got one goal back
57	1:02	4-0	made it 2-4, one guy seemed IRL distracted during portions of the match
58	0:02	5-1	teammate idled and quit after opponent scored a quick goal in 5 seconds. remaining teammate and I played the 2v3
59	0:32	2-4
60	0:06	4-2	mid-play vote, then we conceded, game took longer to end because of the goal and replays than if we'd just played it out
61	0:06	3-1
62	2:20	3-0	teammate threw then left at 4-0
63	2:40	3-0	team played worse after ff vote, 7-1 final
64	3:15	4-0	teammate threw
65	0:15	2-1
66	3:22	3-0
67	2:51	2-0	teammate quit at 2:23 3-0
68	0:06	2-4
69	0:55	4-0
70	2:40	2-0	mid-play, both teammates quit at 2:05 3-0
71	0:01	3-3	mid-play, won in OT
72	2:03	4-0	idle before and after ff vote
73	1:06	3-5
74	2:00	3-3	won in OT
75	1:42	3-0
76	2:25	3-1	first 2 goals because teammate was idle
77	1:26	3-0
78	2:58	1-0
79	2:46	1-0	mid-play, we won 4-2
80	1:52	5-0
81	2:24	4-0	teammate left after we scored to make game 4-1
82	1:24	2-0
83	0:06	3-1
84	0:44	2-4
85	0:35	3-1
86	2:50	0-0	mid-play, we won 4-1
87	1:07	3-2	we won 4-3 in OT
88	0:11	2-0
89	0:32	3-1
90	1:12	3-0	teammate quit at 4-0 0:47
91	0:15	1-0
92	0:36	2-0
93	0:53	3-1
94	1:46	3-0
95	3:18	3-1
96	0:17	3-1
97	2:29	3-0	idle and quit after 4-0
98	2:23	4-4	losing 3-0 at 4:15, ff vote at tying goal, one teammate goading the other to ff in chat, we won 5-4
99	0:49	2-2	won in OT
100	1:38	3-0

​
As an information dump, here are some of the statistics I found interesting with these instances of forfeiting.
​

• The median time when forfeits were first voted on was 1:25.5 left on the clock. 34 times there were 2 or more minutes left, and 10 times there were 3 or more minutes left
• 60 votes occurred with a 2 goal or less deficit, an additional 15 votes occurred at a 3 goal deficit
• 18 votes occurred with 15 seconds or less on the clock. 4 times the deficit was 1 goal, 11 times the deficit was 2, and one vote occurred in a tie game
• 19 votes occurred with between 30 seconds and 1 minute on the clock, 16 of those votes were a 2 goal or less deficit
• 27 votes occurred with between 1 and 2 minutes left on the clock, 11 times the deficit was 2 or less, 11 more times the deficit was exactly 3
• 44 votes occurred while my team was getting shut out
• 10 matches with votes were won, but this includes the only "joke" ff, 2 games where we were leading and 7 when we were tied. In other words, every game where I was losing at the moment and a teammate voted to ff was lost
• 10 votes happened as the other team tied the game, we lost 3 (see above)

​
I'm pretty terrible when it comes to Excel/Google Sheets, but if anyone wants to mess around with this data set to find any other cool stats I'd be very interested.
​
My Thoughts
​
My original purpose when I started to keep track of my games was to try and prove that most games when my teammates vote to forfeit are still winnable, but I no longer feel that is the case, although for different reasons than I expected. Now, I feel like a lot of matches are lost the moment my teammate voted to forfeit either because of the idling/hard throwing, or because of what I perceive as passive throwing by my teammates. I never recorded "passive throwing" because there isn't a reliable way to do so, but a lot of the time it feels like certain players are mentally out of the game once they've hit that vote to forfeit button. Those players make a habit out of forfeiting, which causes them to lose the ability to see a path to victory in matches that are winnable (example: 4-1 with 1:30 on the clock), and this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where a large portion of the player population just doesn't see the value in playing matches where they are more likely to lose than win.
​
I don't expect most people to have the self-awareness to realize the self fulfilling prophecy they've created, which is why I believe something has to be done to restrict or remove players ability to forfeit in competitive and tournament playlists. Personally, I never plan on forfeiting and I don't want to know when my teammates have voted for it. Why isn't there an option for me to disable the "vote to forfeit" text on my HUD just like people do with quick chat? Additionally, I think one good idea would be to only allow players the ability to initiate a vote a certain number of times per day, and disable the option entirely in tournaments. I didn't record my tournament games on paper, but several times my team would win 3-4 games, go down by 2 goals in the next game, and then one of my teammates votes to ff and checks out of the game. It's ridiculous that this kind of thing happens so regularly in game modes that are advertised as "competitive". I don't want to pretend like I know the perfect solution, I just think in the game's current state it is far too easy for players to give up, and barriers need to be put in place to keep games competitive, therefore something has to change.
​
I know a lot of people will believe players will act this way even if forfeiting wasn't an option, but I think the option of an easy way out affects mentally weak players' gameplay in matches where they are losing. I played Overwatch for many years, a game where matches are much longer and forfeiting is not an option. That game can be toxic as hell, but I've never seen the amount of throwing or giving up in Overwatch that I do in Rocket League. Even when Blizzard was having problems with people leaving quickplay matches after one lost fight, I rarely saw people stop trying in competitive matches just because they got their ass kicked in round 1. In Overwatch, there was a sense of commitment once you got into a competitive match that straight up doesn't exist in Rocket League. I believe the fact that forfeiting has never been an option in Overwatch and always an option in Rocket League has contributed to how willing players are to give up in these respective games. To me, there really isn't ever a good reason to forfeit in RL, but there are still instances that are more ridiculous than others. 22 times my team voted to forfeit with under 30 seconds on the clock, and 18 of those times the deficit was 2 goals or less. Why wouldn't you play out 30 seconds or less just to see if you can get 2 goals? The worst that can happen is it takes you less than 30 seconds to get into a new game, in the best case you might be able to get a goal at the kickoff and then a 0 second goal to go to OT. Yet so many players in this community would rather deny themselves an opportunity for something amazing just because it isn't likely to happen, even when the time cost is absolutely minimal.
​
I hope that this post inspires some discussion and helps players realize how detrimental habitual forfeiting is in modes that want to call themselves "competitive". I also want to tell the players who want to play out every game that you don't owe anyone on either team a forfeit if you don't want to. I know a lot of people feel pressured when someone tells them to forfeit or when they see 2 teammates vote for it, but any reason you want to play out a game is valid, even if you're getting destroyed 10-0 and just want to get one goal. 5 minutes + replays is not an unreasonable time commitment and if anyone tries to pressure you into forfeiting, they aren't worth considering. I hope this can change in the future, because I want to be put on teams that want to try and overcome a 3 goal deficit, and I want to play against teams the make me fight to hold a 3 goal lead. Instead we have a community that is hyper focused on trying to determine when a match isn't worth effort anymore, and competitive playlists and tournaments have suffered because of it. This makes me sad because Rocket League is so simple and elegant that I consider it to be one of the best multiplayer games ever made, but this community-created problem is big enough where it makes me want to play other games.
​
TL;DR Habitual forfeiting is a major problem in Rocket League, and I hope we can actually have an honest conversation about it

Hey everyone! I wanted to post this question in a sailing/ship sub of some sort but it is unbelievably hard to find one that isn't based on either modern boating or has a heavy focus on the existence of pirates. That being said, I'm taking my chances that someone here might know a thing or two about medieval era ships.
I'm planning a seafaring campaign and I'm starting my party out on a ship (galleon or larger) that's transferring them to some Alcatraz equivalent. They will shipwreck for [reasons] and end up marooned on an (allegedly) uninhabited island. My plan for them to leave (provided they don't come up with their own sensible ideas) is to have some of the surviving crew scrapping the transport ship to make a keelboat of some sort. Definitely not good, but a better starting ship and much more seaworthy than a raft or a makeshift canoe, haha.
Is it even possible to do something like that without a shipyard? Or at all? I admittedly am not well-versed on how keels work, I just know that if they are broken, your ship's likely done for. I legitimately have no idea if you can just salvage a segment of a keel and slap it on a new, smaller sailing ship. If it is possible, how much time would that take, roughly? I imagine it might take a month for a smallish crew to do something like that even if they have the proper tools and some minor magic at their disposal. I of course say I don't want my level one PCs fighting some hardened sailors/guards strong enough to magic a ship together in one go if they fail or decide against stealth, haha. That, and magic is slowly dying in my world so casters are a bit on the rare side.
I know this is a really silly ask but I do like some minor realism in my games when possible. If anyone has any better ideas/potential alternatives for getting off the island that wouldn't be super farfetched, I'd also love to hear them!
PS: If anyone has a source of free maps with some islands/general sea locales, I'd love if they shared them!

Out of all the times I have played this game I never really used the cooking station but when I realized cooked Rad stag meat gives you 25 carry weight bonus and you can make your own adhesive at the cooking station. One batch is 5 adhesive that alone made me start looking into recipes and thankful i decided to give it a try it has made this game so much easier it honestly goes to show you can play this game a hundred times and unless you truly pay attention to the details you'll miss something every time.

Wise (formerly TransferWise) is a digital bank app that has been around for many years now. It started by providing cheap international bank transfers at great exchange rates.
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This is a long 'get it off my chest'. Met A online while they were engaged to and living with Z. A and I hit it off very hard, very fast. The romance was intense, and A would sometimes say things that rubbed me the wrong way: “I want to be with you at the end of the universe” and the like -- things that seemed very “mono-minded”. Z had had a secondary partner for a year at this point, while A had not kept one since they asked Z to open the relationship. A and I met up once IRL during this time. I did not meet Z, nor did I ask to. I said eventually that I may be falling too hard to handle being secondary.
Also… I’ve been around poly enough to be able to tell A’s engagement was failing, and told them so. A insisted that while their love for Z was not intense or sexual anymore, they were still in love and planned to get married. I was not trying to replace Z, but simply saw it as a matter of fact that they were ‘over’, and trying to use poly to fill the cracks or branch off, which A denied. A was desperate to keep me around and said they wanted me to be “co-primary”, which felt ridiculous given the engagement.
Eventually, I left due to the distance making it impossible to get my needs met in the way I wanted with this person, and I was too emotionally invested to find a primary partner if I was seeing them (I generally consider myself more “poly-saturated at one partner” than mono).
Three months later, I get a 15-minute VM: I was right, they were no longer engaged, and they still held a torch for me. A told Z about their unhappiness, and despite attempts to rekindle, it was over. A+Z were now ‘queer platonic’, a phrase I admit I’d only heard a couple of times. I assumed that this was a relationship like mine with my ex — we live together, care for our home together, are best friends, and are part of each other’s families, but we are not ‘together’ and cannot ‘break up’. I was a bit skeptical (my ex and I needed a couple of years at minimum, with lots of discussions, breaks in contact, time living apart, etc. to get to that healthy point), and I felt that A needed to be single: they’d had two nearly back-to-back LTRs (both failed engagements) since their teens, and I didn’t feel that jumping into things with me was the best idea. Being stupid and still in love, of course, I waited barely any time before jumping back. I tried whenever I could to get A to do more for themselves, as they seemed so focused on me. Looking back I would say with certainty they have codependency issues, and I felt like I could “fix” it somehow.
We spent the next few months talking, planning a long-term future together, where they’d move and our general timelines. I asked that, due to our distance and the complications of our history, I’d like us to start off monogamously for a mutually-agreed on period of time. They readily accepted, and I planned to ask them to be my primary this summer.
1st flag: A and Z were still partnered online. When asked, A said “I don’t use the (gay) apps much [not true] and don’t care what my profile says [questionable, given my perception of them]”. I let it pass for months, nothing changed, and then was firm that (1) I knew that they were not being honest, and needed to tell me what wasn’t being shared, and (2) It was important to me that they were publicly single before we coupled. To (1), they admitted that Z had asked A that they not make their breakup public yet. Z had had recent personal problems, and A felt bad pushing the issue, especially after initiating the breakup. To (2), A said they would revisit the question with Z soon. I felt hurt, and they were worried we had escalated too quickly, so we took a month break.
Towards the end of this break, A finally talked with Z, saying they wanted to pursue me. This did not go over well, but A was insistent. I was glad, but days later I still had some discomfort based on things A said, and, taking a wild guess, I asked — “Hey, is Z insisting you keep him as a partner, so he’s your platonic/nesting partner and I’m the ‘romantic’ one?”. A admitted this was true, and that, while they wanted a clear breakup, their life was too enmeshed with Z to risk his reaction. They even worried Z would kick them out of his house and take back his car if they did not stay partnered. They also said I “should have said something sooner” to pre-empt this situation, which seemed… nuts, especially since we talked about mono/being single. I said I would not participate in this arrangement. They said I was making ultimatums, but I felt that ‘surprise poly’ was an exception. I felt completely betrayed by all this. I asked A if this situation would end once they found a way to move out, and they said they ‘didn’t know’. They could not stand hurting him further (this was the refrain over and over) or risking what they had. I ended things then, because:

1. I no longer knew how to trust A after seeing this pattern multiple times
2. They had gone back on our agreement that they be single and we start off mono — without communicating to me beforehand or after, only telling me because I guessed.
3. The poly situation I was being asked to come into exists primarily out of fear of loss.
4. I felt, selfishly, like whatever A+Z had was always going to be chosen above what A might have with me, or that Z and I would be forced to be ‘enemies’ for A’s resources given the bad blood.

I’m feeling very adrift and frustrated right now. I’m a pretty independent person, and pride myself on being honest and upfront now, because that skill took me a LONG time to learn. A is slightly older than me, and I just don’t understand why they couldn’t be clear with me or Z. I’m feeling insecure because I haven’t had a partnership as long as A+Z, and part of me thinks I’m being immature and trying to rush their decoupling… but also, A is the one that reached back out, and I’m not trying to set their life on fire. I just think everyone will move on in a more healthy way with honesty. I worry that I should have been more open to the poly situation, but I also know that I’m free to set my own boundaries — also, I didn’t walk in knowing that A+Z were now basically NPs. I think I was given the runaround. Ugh.

Genocide looked to the sky. He thought of his mentor. The one who had saved him. He remembered his childhood. How powerless he was. He remembered the anger. He never wanted to hurt anybody. He thought of all the times he showed compassion. How much they hurt him for it. He saw the world before him, a graveyard. Humans. People that were supposed to be made in the image of some divine creator. They were but maggots feasting upon his remains. They ate away at his very being until nothing human remained. His thoughts were no longer his own. He had no joys in life that mattered. He hated humanity more than he could love anything about himself. He remember his first killing spree. Being gunned down by police. Left for dead. He remembered a hooded figure moving towards him. Getting closer the more he neared his death. He saw its pale face. Its impossibly black eyes. It was a man. This figure in question appeared to be of Japanese nationality with long, straight, loose hair. It emanated extreme malice. It offered him a choice. A purpose. Power. He thought the figure a reaper but it identified itself as Amakusa Masataka. Masataka guided him on how to kill and gave him specific locations to kill people in. In a sense, he became a hitman for quotas of people. He inquired what Masataka was. The presence of evil, his ability to appear and disappear at will, how he could control what people could see him and what people couldn't. While vague, years of killing for this being offered some insight. Amakusa Masataka belonged to a group of people not of this world. His people had been corrupted by a dark force long ago and had aligned themselves with the warlord who had subjugated their version of Japan. Their dark high priest assisted the warlord along with two others. These four rulers in turn served a larger order. The four were tasked with bringing about the end of the current world as an act of retribution for some fallen deity. Masataka's people acted as covert operatives for this empire. They were feared across the land and were collectively referred to as "Shinigami". An agent of the coming apocalypse, a servant of evil possessed by the will of those gods of death, Genocide would walk the earth.
Genocide stepped toward the station. A police cruiser rammed into him. He pulled out a knife and stabbed the hood of the car. The inhuman force of the knife created sparks which burst the engine into flames. The car crashed into a streetlight and exploded. A second cruiser neared the scene. No way a man could have done this. Yet still, out of the fires Genocide strode forth. It set upon the second vehicle, shooting out it's tires while jumping 9 feet into the air. The car tries to reverse but crashes into a wall. Genocide lands on the hood and kicks through the front window. Glass shatters under its boot, blinding the two officers inside. Genocide shoots one of the officers with a shotgun, killing him. The second officer in the passenger seat readies his pistol and takes aim. Only two shots fired, both directed at Genocide's head. It casually cocks its neck to avoid them. Then it grabs the officer's arm, breaking it. Genocide uses its free hand to grab the officer's head and bangs it into the dashboard no less than 5 times. The skull is shattered on the final impact. Genocide jumps off the car and continues on his mission.
Detective Evans speaks through a megaphone," This is your first and final warning. Stand down or we will use any and all means at our disposal to put you down." Genocide dropped its shotgun and raised its hands. A group of five SWAT team members rushed out the station, surrounding Genocide with riot shields. An officer accompanies them, edging behind the figure to apply handcuffs. Suddenly, Genocide springs to life , grabbing the officer behind him. He flips the officer over his head, slamming him into the pavement at his feet. Then Genocide stomps his head causing it to burst. Genocide drops a flash bomb from his coat sleeve, blinding the SWAT team as he draws his knife. He drives it into one SWAT member, the knife puncturing the shield and piercing his chest. Genocide kicks the corpse away withdrawing his knife. He goes to another, this time using the end of his boot toe in a rising kick to disarm their shield. He grabs them by the throat and drives the knife slowly into their eye socket. Another is tackled to the ground and beaten to death despite still being under the shield. Another is picked up and thrown into the fires still burning from the first auto incident. In no time, Genocide stood before an indistinguishable mass of gore, blood streaking across his black leather outfit. He laughed" So this is all you can give me. I'm not entertained." Officers took aim from the station windows, and snipers did so from other rooftops. Genocide laughed maniacally as he was rained down upon from all sides by a hailstorm of bullets. His body convulsed, but he did not fall. Moments more and he was on his knees. Still though, their efforts were futile. Gracia looked out and saw a black mist coalescing around the man in black. His blood. Blood erupted from his body only to transform into this dark mist that reentered his wounds. Genocide screamed. No. It was just an elevated pitch in his laughter. Optimism failed everyone yet again. Gracia saw Genocide holding something in his right hand. She could only make out a beeping red light. Genocide pushed the button triggering the carefully concealed explosives he laid in preparation for this event. C4 explosives went off in all the places he saw fit. The sniping posts he couldn't reach. The assault of lead lightened. Then Genocide drew an RPG from...somewhere. He collected himself and fired at the station's entrance. The explosion shook the station. From inside, the lights began to flicker. Communications were down on all fronts. Had he modified the rocket with some type of EMP? Not good. Amisdst the confusion Genocide entered using smoke bombs to mask his presence. Moving like a shadow, he killed everyone in the lobby silently with his knife. He made his way to the holding cells. Still they chanted. Still they praised. Still they raved for the arrival of genocide. Genocide shot the lock opening the cell. Jim Jimenez walked out and bowed before his master. Genocide smiled. He couldn't have imagined how proficient he had gotten with possession. Well, not quite possession. He had known of the Shinigami's ability to share their thoughts and emotions with humans. Shinigami like his mentor were ancient. They had so many years of memories, such strong a hatred for life that they overwhelmed the personality of the victim. The victim sees themselves as one of them. Shinigami can't force the will of the victim, so they find those who are already similar to them in some way. Genocide found the collective universal distrust of police to be a prime sentiment to capitalize on. He armed the inmates, infecting them with samples of his own dark essence.One particular inmate caught Genocide's eye. He knew the man's work. An arsonist. The one whom he recalls was responsible for blowing up his first car way back in high school. Rather than a standard firearm, Genocide gave the man a random assortment of grenades containing a special surprise. Genocide showed them visions of anarchy, of sending a message to a society that used and disregarded them. While this was also true of how he felt, years of living in darkness had changed him. He needed no purpose. No end goal. No justification. He just wanted to watch the world burn.
Genocide's small army broke off to engage several different wings of the station. Genocide went to the security room. He found Wayne, his informant, playing some FPS on one of the monitors. Wayne took of his headphones and asked," You kill everyone yet?" Genocide responded," No. You should get going before that happens. Your life becomes fair game if I run out of pigs to cook." Wayne clapped his hands, "Aight, GC my man, say less." He packed his things and left. Genocide drew a twin pair of handguns and laid waste to the station. He followed a group that took cover in the men's restroom. Kicking open multiple stalls he was surprised to find...nothing. Where had they gone? He turned around and saw his mentor, Masataka, smiling at him. It looked like him. Long, dark hair, black clothing, and soulless, empty eyes. But it wasn't. It was Genocide's own reflection in the mirror. Genocide smiled. He didn't notice the changes at first. They must have happened gradually. Subconsciously. From the final stall, an officer sprung into action, rushing Genocide, hitting him point blank with a shockgun round. Genocide felt the tingling sensation electrifying his body and grew numb. In spite of the pain, he took a single step. Then, another. He came within striking range of the officer and snatched the shockgun. Two more officers erupted from another stall, battering him with baton strikes. Genocide felt nothing. He clutched the shockgun in his hand like a bat and went to work pulverizing his attackers. An officer kicked in the bathroom door, a woman holding a pistol. She fired multiple times to no effect. Genocide stood covered in blood. He even let her reload. Twice. He wanted to see her despair. Her hopelessness. He walked towards her, shrugging off bullets as they pierced his body. His wounds healed nigh instantly due to the dark essence he had been imbued with. He held her face with both hands, lifting her body off the ground. As she screamed, he used her head to shatter the restroom mirror, running down the full length of it while smashing her into it at several points. He dropped the remains of what he held, washed his hands with soap, dried them, then exited the restroom.
The inmates that rallied for the cause of genocide attacked the station. Fortunately, they were nowhere near Genocide in terms of power and only carried one type of firearm each. They shared his healing ability but could be killed quite easily. Gracia encountered a sniper on the end or a west wing hallway. Other officers waited behind corners unable to get close. Gracia noticed the faulty lighting. In this hallway, the lights flickered in intervals of 3 seconds. Finding a pattern and timing her movements, she rushed the sniper at the exact moment the lights went out. Running the length of the hall, Gracia zigzagged, dodging the sniper inmate's bullets. She jumped on a wall, ran 3 feet on it, then kicked off it, pouncing on the assailant. She fired five shots into him, making sure to hit the brain and the heart. Two severe injuries that were impossible for Shinigami essence to heal simultaneously. Elsewhere, Evans took on another escaped inmate. A vehicular arsonist named Carson. Carson had a bag filled with an assortment of different grenades and was happily giving them out like candy on Halloween. "A flash bang here, a bit of tear gas there. Oh. Wait! Was that an ice grenade? Did the explosion freeze your leg to the floor? Whoops. Maybe a fire grenade will melt that for you. Hold on let me get one fore you," Carson rambled gleefully. Evans looked at the carnage before him. Officers burning. Officers partially frozen in blocks of ice. He took a breath and aimed his wristgun. He steadied his right forearm. Carson readied to throw a random grenade. Evans shot it the moment it left Carson's hand. The grenade exploded directly in front of Carson. Both Evans and Carson looked at each other in shock. Confetti. A party grenade? Carson quickly fumbled for another but was tackled and restrained by several officers. Meanwhile in the South wing, Lary had some colleagues set a trap for another shotgun toting inmate. He had them bait the inmate and flee. Giving chase he turned a corner and ran straight into Lary's fist. The inmate recovered and motioned to shoot Lary. "Let's tango. " Lary gave the code word. Nearby officers activated a device. A signal jammer of sorts. The inmate shoved the barrel of his gun into Lary's gut and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The special signal jammer in question was designed for firearms. It was a last resort as it left officers just as defenseless. Lary was having fun. He boxed the inmate in hand to hand combat. Despite the inmate's enhanced strength, Lary's technique pulled through. Lary ducked under one of the inmate's wide punches and did some type of rising uppercut where he jumped off the ground while spinning. One of the other officers whispered" The rising dragon." Lary smiled giving a thumbs up" Yeah, it was a rising dragon uppercut. Saw it in one O my kid's vidya games. Thought I'd try it out while I'm jacked on adrenaline".
Jim Jimenez looked long and hard at himself in the mirror. He was in the women's restroom. Some brainless woman had broken the men's restroom mirror with her face. For the first time in a long while Jim could think clearly. He was becoming sane. At the least he was no longer a raving lunatic. The life essence of the dark gods had healed the wounds to both his body and his mind. He saw his face, his scraggly dirty beard. He found a razor and shaved. He trimmed his beard somewhat. He liked it. He washed his hair. It fell down his face like silk, no longer greasy. His bloodshot eyes once burning with crazed intensity had cooled. He blinked. Just for a second, he saw the man known as Genocide. The man that attacked him. The one that killed him and gave him new life. The drug dealers. The police. They were all the same in his eyes now. They were all to blame for the world being what it is. Jim wanted to hate them. He wanted to take revenge, but he felt nothing. It didn't matter. He knew he was wronged, could logically justify acting against them, but he just didn't care anymore. About anything. He was finally free. Sensing his presence was no longer needed here, Jim vanished into the night. He needed to find someone who had had the answers he needed. Himself. Who had he been? Who was he now? Who could he become? Where was he going? So many questions to ponder indefinitely. So much time left in the rest of his life.
Genocide ran down the station's halls raining hailstorms of bullets upon its occupants. He had a handgun in each hand as well as a wristgun on each wrist. This effectively gave him 4 separate firearms that he could use simultaneously. Lary regrouped with Gracia, Evans, and a handful of others. They radioed all surviving officers near Genocide to flee to the roof. This plan had been set in motion days before the assault and had been kept hidden from most of the force. The plan involved scheduling flights for several helicopters to arrive at some point after Genocide arrived. There would be no way for him to prepare for them and pre-scheduling their arrival ensured they arrived regardless of if they were called or not. Lary and the others set about preparing the second jamming device. Genocide stood among a hallway of bodies. He saw one man clinging to life trying to crawl away. He decided on trying that other thing he saw his master do. He grabbed the dying man and pinned him to the wall. Slowly he drove a knife into his chest. As the man's life slipped away, something else entered his body. Genocide channeled a small amount of his essence into the vessel. He had steadily done this with other casualties around the station whose bodies were somewhat salvageable. He dropped the body he was holding and looked upon the others. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his eyed were black, both sclera and iris. The scene before him changed. Genocide had a vision. He saw a dead gray wasteland littered with bodies. These people however weren't cops and wore traditional Japanese attire. In his hand wasn't a gun or knife but a short sickle akin to a farming tool. He heard a dark voice call out to him. Slowly, the corpses around him began to rise, now mere puppets bound eternally to their master's whim. The bodies sold to the reaper who had claimed their lives. Genocide's vision ended. His eyes had returned normal. Around him, dead cops began to rise. His dark essence had entered their bodies and reanimated them. He sent his dead army to attack the officers fleeing to the roof of the station. These zombies swarmed the stairwell giving chase to the few survivors. There were five of them. They had two flights of stairs to climb and a horde of their former colleagues close behind them. One officer tripped and was set upon by the horde. The zombies didn't bite them but held them firmly in place. The other four officers stared down wondering what to do. They could hear Genocide chuckling. They could hear humming. They could feel the temperature rising. Their colleague and the two zombies holding him were hit by an enormous green fireball. Genocide had fired a Magnum Opus and had charged the bullet to level 3. The Magnum Opus was simply a magnum that shot fireballs, with bullets that could be charged by holding down the trigger. It had three levels of charges. Level 1 was a small reddish ball of plasma. Level 2 was slightly larger and yellow. Level 3 was the maximum charge and resulted in a large slow moving green blast of energy. The officer was ignited and Genocide watched gleefully as the force of the blast sent him flying through a wall. The four officers continued up firing occasionally to slow down the zombies. Soon they made it to a door leading to the roof. Before one officer could reach it, he was sniped by Genocide, a bullet to the head killing him instantly. The remaining three made it out. They regrouped with the others already there, 12 in total, including Lary, Evans, and Gracia. This would be their final stand. They just had to hold out until Genocide made it up there. They just had to keep Genocide occupied until the helicopters arrived. Genocide slowly ascended the stairs behind his horde. On the roof, the remaining survivors faced off against waves of the undead. Evans recognized the attackers. These zombies were being controlled by nanomachines. He heard the stories of several weapons encountered by soldiers on the battlefield. These creatures were called Metaldeads as they were reanimated via machines. They had been officially banned by most of the worlds' governments for being unethical. However, this did not stop the technology from being spread still between shady organizations, terrorists, etc. Evans wondered how Genocide got this form of nanotechnology. Evans long speculated that the dark essence used by most of the killers they encountered was a a form of nanotech however it was different from anything else he had seen or heard about. The dark essence seemed to be an amalgamation of other types of nanotech. Evans had to save his inquiries for later. He reloaded his wristgun and took aim at the approaching group of Metaldeads. Gracia steadied her handgun and shot two Metaldeads in the head. From the single door countless arms seemed to spill forth from the darkness. The other officers took turns firing in intervals. this allowed them to create a steady stream of fire where no more that three guns needed to be reloaded at once. The horde seemed to thin out over time as if they were making progress. In actuality, the Metaldeads were just making room for Genocide to enter. Genocide exploded in a sprint from the door. Everyone fired upon the killer. Genocide had now chosen a wrist mounted mini flamethrower to use as his weapon. He stormed past the oncoming bullets taking some damage, but refused to slow down. He unleashed a stream of fire that caught five of the officers in one fell swoop. Gracia fired five rounds into Genocide's face. He stumbled back. Lary took the chance to fire several mine gun bullets at Genocide's feet. The mines quickly detected his movement and exploded. In seconds, Genocide was on his back.
Staring at the night sky Genocide saw the moon. He reached for it. He called for the darkness to give him more power. His wounds began healing. In the sky he could hear the whirl of propellers. There were six helicopters in total. The first two had evacuated the survivors while the others stayed to engage Genocide. Genocide got up and unstrapped the sniper rifle from his back. He stood before the searchlights as a black silhouette, cornered but unwilling to back down. Lary stared down at him smiling. "Okay!" He shouted, "Let's Tango!" Upon this declaration the second jamming device was activated. Now, isolated on the roof, Genocide's guns couldn't be fired and the helicopters were out of range of the device. Now Genocide stood like a sitting duck. A helicopter fired a rocket. Genocide side stepped and grabbed it. He turned his body redirecting the rocket to hit another helicopter. As it exploded Genocide drew his knife and threw it at another helicopter. Behind the knife was such force that it shattered the helicopter window's glass, embedding itself in the pilot. This helicopter too went down where it exploded. "Holy clucknuggets!Did you see that!?" Lary said dumbfounded. Evans looked out the helicopter door he was in jaw open in shock. "There's no way." He collected himself quickly and radioed the remaining two helicopters to keep moving and to use their machineguns as much as possible. The helicopters reigned down upon Genocide tearing apart his body. Shreds of leather and darkened blood sprayed across the pavement of the roof. Gracia watched as Genocide's body was destroyed repeatedly as it tried to heal. Surely he had to stop at some point. After 10 minutes the helicopters had exhausted their cache of ammunition and soldiers opted to fire their own rifles and occasionally throw grenades. After about six minutes, they too had run out of bullets. Genocide stood unfazed. He had long since healed himself and now appeared intangible with gunfire seeming to pass through his body. His coat once ripped , now appeared whole though on closer inspection seemed to writhe. Gracia looked in horror as she remembered the tales her adopted father had told her. Tales he had in turn heard from his predecessors. Every so often officers had reported encounters with ghost like beings cloaked in a cloud of living dark mist. The beings were rumored to be responsible for the deaths of multiple people ranging from scientists, veterans, mafia, politicians, etc. They were seen near such crime scenes and even more shockingly appeared around several sites where suicides were committed. These beings were reportedly impervious to bullets and filled anyone who got near with an impending sense of dread. If Genocide was connected to them or somehow turning into one , there was little chance they would be able to defeat him. Gracia's fears were confirmed when she saw that Genocide's leather coat had been destroyed and he had replaced it with the dark mist coalescing from his own spilled blood. The dark mist, swirling, grew larger and several tendrils sprouted out from it. Gracia could briefly make out a figure standing next to Genocide. A hooded figure cloaked in the same black substance. The figure stared up at her with soulless, blackened eyes which seemed to beckon her to jump from the aircraft she was standing in. Compelling her to give in to the death that plagued the earth. Genocide kneeled to his master. The Shinigami, Masataka stared down at his disciple. "You have done a great service to us. Even now the sealed god stirs in its slumber. Its...Awakening will soon be upon us. It calls out for war. It begs for famine. It longs to continue its conquest. We are the death it so desires. The death that is necessary for this civilization to grow. Use the power that I have bestowed upon you. Finish the mission as you see fit." The Shinigami vanished and Genocide stood.Genocide stared at his hands. He remembered the first killing spree. He was on a bus. It stopped. A woman got on the bus and walked to the back smiling as she passed him. Something about her eyes unnerved him. They were so bright but something dark reflected inside them. He ignored the thought and put in his headphones. In minutes he had dozed off. He jumped awake. He looked around and froze in panic. All around him, everyone had been hacked to pieces. He saw the driver, actively being stabbed by a masked assailant. The mask, painted white with black eyeholes, stared back at him. It raised a finger over where its lips would be. Even under the expressionless visage, he could feel that same smile. He ran home that morning. He went to his room to find it destroyed. His posters, his computer, his tv, everything, had been ruined. He turned around and saw a man at the end of the hallway holding a sledge hammer. "The hell you been, boy?", his stepdad sneered. The man dropped his hammer and walked closer, veins pulsing with rage. He tried to explain how his car had caught fire forcing him to walk 4 miles to the nearest bus stop, but the man's fist was faster than his words. "Boy!Answer me when I talk to you!!" the man says as he backhands the taste out of the would be Genocide's mouth. He took that beating for several minutes before being left to stare at his ransacked room. He hated how his stepdad went out of his way to destroy the things he loved. Soon, another set of footsteps could be heard. It was his mother standing behind his locked door. She didn't knock, or say anything. She just stood there, doing nothing as always. He never knew if she came to talk to him or apologize. All he knew was that she could never bring herself to speak to or even acknowledge him. Maybe out of guilt or perhaps shame. A year or two later after he had had enough he ran away from home. Living out on the streets alone, without friends, or family, he would embark on countless killing sprees. These killings weren't of his own volition however. He was coerced by some corrupt officers from The Unit. They made him kill on their behalf. Sometimes they were protesters, sometimes they were drug dealers, other times, petty criminals they couldn't be bothered to process. It was routine for him to be used to kill entire houses of drug riddled addicts. During one such venture he entered a drug den, killing the dealer as instructed. He took out several junkies before turning to leave. A woman who survived her injuries clung to his heel begging him to stop. Looking down he aimed the handgun he was carrying at her head of long disheveled brown hair and fired. Feeling nothing, he kicked her body aside like trash when it hit him. Her face. This woman had been his mother. What was she doing in a place like this? He felt a shock of emotion. He wondered if she had always been like this, or had she changed after he left. He never made amends, but decided to stop killing from then on. The unit did not like that. Once it became apparent that he was no longer of use to them they started a manhunt to apprehend him with lethal force. They found him. They killed him. But he survived.
He remembered the girl on the bus. He remembered her eyes. Those of a sadistic killer. Still there was something else inside them. Something faint but deeper. So. Much. Sadness. Just like him. He felt the hatred begin to spread. His purpose, he decided, was to make all humans rot in the hell they created for him.
These people, he thought to himself, these living diseases, all needed to die. Their struggles, their problems, they spread like cancer to others. The only cure for humanity's sin, its collective wrongdoings, was genocide.
Around him, dark tendrils continued to form and expand, spinning in a vortex. Genocide pulled out two pistols. He squeezed the triggers to no effect. "As I see fit, huh? Hehe." He squeezed both guns in his hands, breaking them into pieces. He concentrated. In his hands, two more guns materialized now completely black due to being forged from the dark essence. Forged by his will. Immune to the jamming device that shut down conventional firearms. He raised his arms at each remaining helicopter and opened fire. Countless tendrils whipped out and slashed at his targets joining the dark essence bullets. It was chaos. Dark tendrils and bullets tore through every direction as Genocide spun and swirled around in 360 degrees firing randomly with purpose. A tendril pierced Gracia's right arm, another, her abdomen. She was however, fortunate, as the other passengers of her helicopter were dismembered. She barely had time to jump from the vehicle before it crashed. She fell 2 yards onto solid concrete. She felt immense pain as her right shoulder shattered on impact. She looked up to see Genocide's blade like appendages ripping through the other escape helicopters. She rolled onto her back and tried to steady herself. Within seconds her body began to repair itself. The nanocells inside her had saved her life but were now depleted. She would need another supplement lest she receive another fatal injury. The standard nanocells she and the others had were much less potent than those of the killers they faced. In truth, they had only minimal strength boosts being able to lift 5-8 more pounds than before and healing being limited to one or two fatal injuries so long as death didn't occur instantly. Gracia blacked out. She awoke the next morning in a hospital. There the doctors refilled her nanocells. She learned that the station had been left in ruins. Genocide had detonated some type of minature nuke following his rampage. He always blew up the stations as if to send a message. Gracia looked out the window thinking about why she became a cop. Twice her family had been murdered by them. Her biological family had been killed in an on record drug raid committed by a group of corrupt officers called The Unit. She had been adopted by another officer that arrived at the scene who found her as a child hiding in a closed. Sadly, he too was killed for trying to expose the activities of The Unit. Gracia joined the force to avenge both losses and bring justice to the killers that disguised themselves as normal people. Law enforcement was neither good, nor bad. It depended upon the people that made it up. In the dying corrupt world Gracia lived in, she vowed to be a beacon of light. Evans laid in a bed adjacent to Lary. "That damn Genocide's somethin else in' he?Like the stories you told us were understatements. That man could legit not die at this point in the story. Like he has friggin plot armor or somthin.'' Evans cut him off" I get it. We all got our asses handed to us. But did you see that ..thing that appeared next to him. Right before he created that black vortex that wiped us out. That must have something to do with his power. Maybe there's a still a way to stop him."Lary chimed in," That fella looked like he was on the way to a black metal concert wit all the black facepaint he was wearin' Creeped me out to be honest." As the survivors mulled over their predicament, the cycle of evil continued to spread elsewhere.
Budley flips through the pages of a magazine. He checks his watch. He looks around the gas station and doesn't see any customers. Seizing the opportunity, he puts in his headphones and begins playing an imaginary guitar as he jams to a progressive deathcore album. Oblivious to the screams coming from outside, the store clerk moves on to thumping two candy bars on the counter to simulate drums. Budley sees that his shift has ended and begins locking up the store. He sweeps the aisles and jumps as a shadow appears behind him. He turns and sees a well groomed bearded man dressed in a black hoodie, black shirt, and black and gray camo pants. The man holds out his hand and smiles. Budley rings up the pack of nicotine substitute gum. "Tryin to kick the habit huh?" Budley asks. The man replies, "Somethin like that. Gotta get my priorities back in check. Focus on the things that really matter. That damn KonCreep's a hell of a band aren't they?" He nods to the playlist on Budley's phone. "Yeah, they're killer. just got into them a month back." Budley answers. "You know, I'm something of a musician myself. Maybe you'll hear of me on the news someday." Jim Jimenez says as he sees himself out. He walks to the back of the building and passes an ominous form of graffiti. A woman lays unmoving and above her, written on concrete in red is a message that simply says "Genocide Reigns".