Platform: I played on iphone 3
Genre: Shoot em up
Estimated year of release: not sure but I played it at 2012
Graphics/art style: Not sure but the theme is quite sci-fi, full of machine structure and some level is in galaxy.
Notable characters: There are few types of fighter jets for user to choose but I know three of them (I got the skecthes of them).
The first one has a machine gun attack mode and its ultimate is a electric chain attack, which can hit enimies that close to each other.
The second one has a high damage but slow pace laser attack mode, the ultimate can shoot several laser beams in the shape of a circular sector.
The third jet can shoot energy bullets in many directions (6-8), the ultimate is a laser beam that automatically tracking to lock on to a target.
https://preview.redd.it/7arkh7mhmszc1.jpg?width=1707&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9acc2ee4688252dcdc4c84ae9ca9249136ae1e95
Game levels: It doesn't have a lot of levels, approx. 6 levels. The background story is a huge UFO that attack the earth, and human use hi-tech fighter jets to defend.
The first level is in galaxy. The view is vertical. The boss is a blue color guardian spaceship
The second level is inside the UFO, the boss is the core of the UFO. The view is horizontal. The core can generate a plasma sheild to protect itself.
The thrid level is back to earth. The view is horizontal. The boss is a big robot bee.
The forth level is on earth. The view is vertical. The boss is a robat crab with a big drill on the buttom, to drill through the surface into the ground.
The fifth is underground with lava. The view is horizontal. I forgot what boss it had
The last level is in same scene with fifth but the view is vertical. The boss is a robotic scorpion
https://preview.redd.it/0pow33usmszc1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c84116e5fe9ac1798888523eb18c468e21b81b87

As Marcus ventured deeper into the brimstone hall, the air thick with anticipation, he suddenly heard a billowing shout that echoed off the walls, reverberating through the cavernous space. "Enter!" it commanded, its voice booming and authoritative. As Marcus approached the throne, he beheld a sight that filled him with awe and dread. Before him loomed a great and terrible red dragon, its scales gleaming like molten lava in the dim light of the hall. Its immense form seemed to fill the entire chamber, casting a shadow that stretched across the floor like a dark omen. The dragon's eyes blazed with an infernal light, their intensity piercing through the darkness with an unsettling glare. Smoke curled from its nostrils with each slow and deliberate breath, filling the air with the acrid scent of burning embers. Its wings, spread wide in a display of dominance, seemed to span the entire width of the hall, their leathery membranes shimmering in the flickering torchlight. Each talon upon its massive claws gleamed with razor-sharp edges, poised to rend and tear anything that dared to oppose it. As Marcus approached the throne, he found himself face to face with a creature of unimaginable splendor and terror. Before him lay a dragon of immense size and power, its scales glinting like molten gold in the dim light of the hall. Its eyes, like smoldering coals, fixed upon Marcus with an intensity that sent shivers down his spine. But as Marcus's gaze fell upon the dragon's treasure, he saw something else amidst the gleaming riches. Beneath the gold and gems lay the bones of slaves, their remains a grim reminder of the creature's insatiable greed and cruelty. The dragon's voice, deep and sonorous, rumbled through the chamber like distant thunder. "Why do you dare to intrude upon my domain, little dwarf?" it demanded, its words laced with a mixture of curiosity and menace. "I come bearing a great gift, great Ifrit," Marcus declared boldly, his voice steady despite the fear that gripped his heart. The dragon regarded him with a contemptuous snort, its eyes narrowing to slits as it spoke. "Your vocabulary is as small as you," it replied, its voice dripping with scorn. As Ifrit settled back upon his hoard, Marcus couldn't help but notice the sickening sound of bones cracking beneath the weight of the dragon's massive form. His gaze followed the trail of destruction, and he watched in horror as a small skull slid across the floor, coming to rest at his feet. Marcus swallowed hard, the realization of the creature's cruelty sinking in with chilling clarity. He knew that he stood upon a razor's edge, with his fate hanging precariously in the balance. But despite the overwhelming odds stacked against him, he refused to back down. Marcus took a deep breath, steeling himself against the rising tide of fear and revulsion that threatened to overwhelm him. "I come bearing a gift," he began, his voice steady despite the turmoil raging within him. But before he could continue, Ifrit's booming voice cut through the air like a clap of thunder, drowning out Marcus's words. "Enter!" the dragon commanded, its voice echoing off the walls of the chamber. Marcus watched in silence as two dozen slaves shuffled into view, their faces drawn and weary, their eyes downcast in deference to the mighty dragon that loomed before them. As the slaves approached, Marcus felt a surge of pity and anger welling up inside him. These poor souls, trapped in a never-ending cycle of servitude and suffering, deserved better than the fate that awaited them at the hands of their merciless captor. Undeterred by Ifrit's dismissive demeanor, Marcus pressed on, his voice unwavering despite the dragon's indifference. "I have information that could help you," he insisted, his words tinged with urgency. But Ifrit merely turned his head away from the dwarf, his attention wandering as though bored by Marcus's words. The sight only fueled Marcus's determination, his resolve hardening like iron in the face of adversity. "Listen to me!" Marcus shouted, his voice echoing off the chamber walls. "I am trying to help you!" he pleaded, his words laced with desperation. "The Sagacious One!" a palpable shift seemed to ripple through the chamber, the very air crackling with tension as Ifrit's attention snapped back to the dwarf with a ferocity that made Marcus's blood run cold. The dragon's eyes gleamed with a malevolent glint as it fixed its gaze upon Marcus, its lips curling into a sinister smirk. A low, rumbling chuckle escaped its throat, sending shivers down Marcus's spine as he pressed on, undeterred by the creature's intimidating presence. "I have information about the Sagacious One," Marcus declared boldly, his voice steady despite the roiling fear that threatened to consume him. "Information that could help you protect your hoard and your domain from this ancient threat." Ifrit regarded Marcus with a mixture of curiosity and amusement, its expression unreadable as it listened to the dwarf's words. But beneath the facade of indifference, Marcus sensed a glimmer of interest, a spark of intrigue that hinted at the possibility of cooperation. As Ifrit acknowledged the name of the Sagacious One, a solemn gravity settled over the chamber, the weight of their shared knowledge hanging heavy in the air. Marcus felt a glimmer of hope stir within him as the dragon spoke, its words carrying the weight of an ancient promise. "Yes," Ifrit rumbled, his voice resonating with a newfound sense of purpose. "The one who puts a city to siege. The Sagacious One." Marcus nodded, his heart pounding with anticipation as he locked eyes with the dragon. "And if you give your word that you'll help the dwarves in defeating him, then the information is yours," he declared, his voice unwavering in its resolve. Ifrit regarded Marcus with a steely gaze, his expression inscrutable as he weighed the dwarf's offer. But after a moment's contemplation, the dragon nodded, a solemn agreement passing between them. "It is done," Ifrit proclaimed, his voice echoing through the chamber with a sense of finality. "I give you my word. I will aid the dwarves in defeating the Sagacious One." Marcus smiled as he broke through to the dragon. “The Sagacious One, cannot-“ Ifrit continued. “However, I need to know the worth of your words now. Go back to my ship which awaits you and return with one thousand slaves. Consider it a reimbursement of property lost on your lands.” As Ifrit laid out his condition, Marcus felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The dragon's demand was a heavy one, one that Marcus knew he couldn't fulfill without sacrificing the very principles he sought to defend. "No, I can't," he protested, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and defiance. But Ifrit's response was swift and merciless. With a thunderous crash, the dragon's tail came crashing down upon the slaves gathered before him, the force of the blow sending them sprawling to the ground with cries of pain and terror. As Marcus looked on in horror, he felt a surge of guilt and despair wash over him, knowing that he had inadvertently placed these poor souls in harm's way. "One thousand and twelve," Ifrit declared, his voice cold and impassive. "That is the price of your hesitation." Marcus's heart sank as he realized the full extent of the dragon's cruelty. In his desperation to secure Ifrit's aid, he had unwittingly condemned these innocent slaves to further suffering and torment. And as he stood before the dragon, weighed down by the burden of his own guilt, Marcus knew that he had no choice but to comply with Ifrit's demand, no matter the cost to his own conscience. With a heavy heart and a sense of resignation, Marcus bowed his head in defeat. "I will do as you ask," he whispered, his voice barely audible above the clamor of the chamber. As he turned to leave, Marcus couldn't shake the feeling of shame that gnawed at his insides, knowing that he had betrayed his own principles in pursuit of a fleeting hope for victory. But with the fate of his people hanging in the balance, he knew that he had no other option but to follow through with Ifrit's demand, no matter how heavy the cost. And as he made his way back to the ship that awaited him, Marcus couldn't help but wonder what other sacrifices lay ahead on the treacherous path that lay before him. As Marcus turned to leave, a heavy sense of dread settled over him like a suffocating shroud. He felt the weight of Ifrit's words pressing down upon him, a stark reminder of the monstrous bargain he had struck in his desperate bid for aid. "Congratulations, dwarf," Ifrit's voice echoed through the chamber, cold and indifferent. "You sail with the Coilbound now." Behind Marcus, he heard the sickening sound of flesh being torn asunder and the anguished cries of those who had been condemned to become the dragon's next meal. The air was thick with the stench of blood and death, a grim reminder of the true nature of the creature he had dared to bargain with. With a heavy heart and a sense of profound regret, Marcus hurried from the chamber, his mind reeling with the horrors he had witnessed. As he made his way back to the ship that awaited him, Marcus couldn't shake the feeling of shame that gnawed at his insides, knowing that he had become complicit in the dragon's monstrous appetite. But with the fate of his people hanging in the balance, Marcus knew that he had no other choice but to press on, to face whatever horrors awaited him on the treacherous path that lay ahead. And as he set sail with the Coilbound, he couldn't help but wonder what other sacrifices would be demanded of him in the dark days to come. His only solace; the whirling of his clockwork heart.

Minecraft text splashes (yellow text in the title screen) currently have two problems :

• Political messages, not going to list these myself here to not spark debates but here's what I'm talking about (link)
• Jeb stole the credits of Notch, by removing Notch as the original creator of the game and replacing the text with his own name since Notch has been cancelled few years ago (replaced "Made by Notch!" to "Made by Jeb!"). This is literally stealing credits of the game, as Jeb joined the office way later.

If you too are annoyed by that, I made a fix for it.
Go to .minecraft/versions and select the version ou want. Then, open the .jar with WinRAR, go to assets/minecraft/texts and replace the content of the splashes.txt with the content below.
I know a resource pack is also possible for the same results, but might be annoying to be listed for such few modifications, and here you don't need to download anything, just copy the text.
Hope this helps.

As seen on TV! Awesome! 100% pure! May contain nuts! More polygons! Moderately attractive! Limited edition! Flashing letters! It's here! Best in class! It's finished! Kind of dragon free! Excitement! More than 500 sold! One of a kind! Heaps of hits on YouTube! Indev! Spiders everywhere! Check it out! Holy cow, man! It's a game! Made in Sweden! Uses LWJGL! Reticulating splines! Minecraft! Yaaay! Singleplayer! Keyboard compatible! Ingots! Exploding creepers! That's no moon! l33t! Create! Survive! Dungeon! Exclusive! The bee's knees! Closed source! Classy! Wow! Not on steam! Oh man! Awesome community! Pixels! Teetsuuuuoooo! Kaaneeeedaaaa! Now with difficulty! Enhanced! 90% bug free! Pretty! 12 herbs and spices! Fat free! Absolutely no memes! Free dental! Ask your doctor! Minors welcome! Cloud computing! Legal in Finland! Hard to label! Technically good! Bringing home the bacon! Indie! GOTY! Ceci n'est pas une title screen! Euclidian! Now in 3D! Inspirational! Herregud! Complex cellular automata! Yes, sir! Played by cowboys! Now on OpenGL 3.2 core profile! Thousands of colors! Try it! Age of Wonders is better! Try the mushroom stew! Sensational! Hot tamale, hot hot tamale! Play him off, keyboard cat! Guaranteed! Macroscopic! Bring it on! Random splash! Call your mother! Monster infighting! Loved by millions! Ultimate edition! Freaky! You've got a brand new key! Water proof! Uninflammable! Whoa, dude! All inclusive! Tell your friends! NP is not in P! Music by C418! Livestreamed! Haunted! Polynomial! Terrestrial! All is full of love! Full of stars! Scientific! Not as cool as Spock! Collaborate and listen! Never dig down! Take frequent breaks! Not linear! Han shot first! Nice to meet you! Buckets of lava! Ride the pig! Larger than Earth! sqrt(-1) love you! Phobos anomaly! Punching wood! Falling off cliffs! 1% sugar! 150% hyperbole! Synecdoche! Let's danec! Seecret Friday update! Reference implementation! Kiss the sky! 20 GOTO 10! Verlet integration! Peter Griffin! Do not distribute! Cogito ergo sum! 4815162342 lines of code! A skeleton popped out! The sum of its parts! BTAF used to be good! I miss ADOM! umop-apisdn! OICU812! Bring me Ray Cokes! Finger-licking! Thematic! Pneumatic! Sublime! Octagonal! Une baguette! Gargamel plays it! Rita is the new top dog! SWM forever! Representing Edsbyn! Matt Damon! Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Consummate V's! Cow Tools! Double buffered! Fan fiction! Flaxkikare! Jason! Jason! Jason! Hotter than the sun! Internet enabled! Autonomous! Engage! Fantasy! DRR! DRR! DRR! Kick it root down! Regional resources! Woo, facepunch! Woo, somethingawful! Woo, tigsource! Woo, worldofminecraft! Woo, reddit! Woo, 2pp! Google anlyticsed! Now supports åäö! Give us Gordon! Tip your waiter! Very fun! 12345 is a bad password! Vote for net neutrality! Lives in a pineapple under the sea! MAP11 has two names! Omnipotent! Gasp! ...! Bees, bees, bees, bees! Jag känner en bot! This text is hard to read if you play the game at the default resolution, but at 1080p it's fine! Haha, LOL! Hampsterdance! Menger sponge! idspispopd! Eple (original edit)! So fresh, so clean! Slow acting portals! Try the Nether! Don't look directly at the bugs! Oh, ok, Pigmen! Finally with ladders! Scary! Play Minecraft, Watch Topgear, Get Pig! Twittered about! Jump up, jump up, and get down! Joel is neat! A riddle, wrapped in a mystery! This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! Welcome to your Doom! Stay a while, stay forever! Stay a while and listen! Treatment for your rash! "Autological" is! Information wants to be free! "Almost never" is an interesting concept! Lots of truthiness! The creeper is a spy! Turing complete! It's groundbreaking! Let our battle's begin! The sky is the limit! Jeb has amazing hair! Ryan also has amazing hair! Casual gaming! Undefeated! Kinda like Lemmings! Follow the train, CJ! Leveraging synergy! This message will never appear on the splash screen, isn't that weird? DungeonQuest is unfair! 90210! Check out the far lands! Tyrion would love it! Also try VVVVVV! Also try Super Meat Boy! Also try Terraria! Also try Mount And Blade! Also try Project Zomboid! Also try World of Goo! Also try Limbo! Also try Pixeljunk Shooter! Also try Braid! That's super! Bread is pain! Read more books! Khaaaaaaaaan! Less addictive than TV Tropes! More addictive than lemonade! Bigger than a bread box! Millions of peaches! Fnord! This is my true form! Don't bother with the clones! Pumpkinhead! Made by Notch! Made by Markus Persson! Has an ending! Finally complete! Feature packed! Boots with the fur! Stop, hammertime! Testificates! Conventional! Homeomorphic to a 3-sphere! Doesn't avoid double negatives! Place ALL the blocks! Does barrel rolls! Meeting expectations! PC gaming since 1873! Ghoughpteighbteau tchoghs! Déjà vu! Déjà vu! Got your nose! Haley loves Elan! Afraid of the big, black bat! Doesn't use the U-word! Child's play! See you next Friday or so! From the streets of Södermalm! 150 bpm for 400000 minutes! Technologic! Funk soul brother! Pumpa kungen! 日本ハロー！ 한국 안녕하세요! Helo Cymru! Cześć Polsko! 你好中国！ Γεια σου Ελλάδα! My life for Aiur! Lennart lennart = new Lennart(); I see your vocabulary has improved! Who put it there? You can't explain that! if not ok then return end §1C§2o§3l§4o§5r§6m§7a§8t§9i§ac §kFUNKY LOL Big Pointy Teeth! Bekarton guards the gate! Mmmph, mmph! Don't feed avocados to parrots! Swords for everyone! Plz reply to my tweet! .party()! Take her pillow! Put that cookie down! Pretty scary! I have a suggestion. Now with extra hugs! Java 16 + 1 = 17! Woah. HURNERJSGER? What's up, Doc? Now contains 32 random daily cats! That's Numberwang! pls rt Do you want to join my server? Put a little fence around it! Throw a blanket over it! One day, somewhere in the future, my work will be quoted! Now with additional stuff! Extra things! Yay, puppies for everyone! So sweet, like a nice bon bon! Very influential in its circle! Now With Multiplayer! Rise from your grave! Warning! A huge battleship "STEVE" is approaching fast! Blue warrior shot the food! Run, coward! I hunger! Flavor with no seasoning! Strange, but not a stranger! Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream! It swings, it jives! Cruising streets for gold! Take an eggbeater and beat it against a skillet! Make me a table, a funky table! Take the elevator to the mezzanine! Stop being reasonable, this is the Internet! /give @a hugs 64 This is good for Realms. Any computer is a laptop if you're brave enough! Do it all, everything! Where there is not light, there can spider! GNU Terry Pratchett More Digital! doot doot Falling with style! There's no stopping the Trollmaso Throw yourself at the ground and miss Rule #1: it's never my fault Replaced molten cheese with blood? Absolutely fixed relatively broken coordinates Boats FTW Javalicious edition Should not be played while driving You're going too fast! Don't feed chocolate to parrots! The true meaning of covfefe An illusion! What are you hiding? Something's not quite right... Thank you for the fish! All rumors are true! Truly gone fishing! Rainbow turtle? Something funny! I need more context. Ahhhhhh! Don't worry, be happy! Water bottle! What's the question? Plant a tree! Go to the dentist! What do you expect? Look mum, I'm in a splash! It came from space. Awesome game design right there! Ph1lza had a good run! 10 years of Mining and Crafting! Ping the human! In case it isn't obvious, foxes aren't players. Buzzy Bees! Minecraft Java Edition presents: Disgusting Bugs Honey, I grew the bees! Find your claw! Everybody do the Leif! <3 Max & 99 & Ducky! Bushy eyebrows! Edit is a name! From free range developers! Music by Lena Raine! Aww man! #minecraftfarms And my pickaxe! Envision! Create! Share! Fabulous graphics! Also try Minecraft Dungeons! Vanilla! May contain traces of citrus! Zoglin!? [this splash text is now available] Contains simulated goats! Home-made! There's < 

So i had this idea, what if there was a geo sub dps/support that utilised crystallise reactions? As it currently stands crystallise is the most useless creation.
This is an old idea of mine reworked, as I am very lazy and didn't want to design a new concept for more of a discussion post, her element was cryo previously was cryo but I feel like it would work better in geo.
Her backstory is that she is a scientist who wanted to revive her parents with alchemy, but she failed and ended up freezing herself and her creations in dragonspine, and she only unfroze recently. Her backstory is basically a full metal alchemist reference.
So let's get to her kit.
Normal attack: Attacks with pebbles in a 4 attack sequence, this can hit multiple enemies and has a medium range. The final attack has a larger area of effect.
Charged attack: Aims at a selected spot, then attacks by summoning a giant stalagmite on top of the opponents and dropping it on them, generating a geo crystal on the place of impact.
Skill: Has two functions depending on whether you tap or hold.
Tap: Attacks enemies with heavy rocks, dealing geo damage to them, generating a geo crystal, and healing for a set amount of hp
Hold: Starts focusing on yourself, gaining increased resistance to interruption and absorbing nearby crystals, up to 4, and creating a sheild upon finishing focus. This sheild will start with a 125% resistance to every element, and will absorb another element when it comes in contact with it, gaining a 250% resistance to that element, when it absorbs a new element the 250% resistance is changed to the new element instead. The strength of the sheild is increased for every crystal absorbed.
New crystals: While this character is in the party, crystallise will have a different effect. Each time a crystal is created, the entire party will heal, and the crystals will remain on the field for 8 second, while on the field they will deal damage of their respective element every 1.5 seconds, their damage on their own is low, but it increases for every other crystal nearby (damage buff is up to 30 crystals). Once the 8 seconds pass they can be picked up and they will grant an elemental sheild of their element.
Burst: Does a leap before dealing geo damage in a big aoe and summoning 8 crystals. These crystals will deal damage to enemies when they are created. Allies will get a geo damage bonus for every crystal on the field on the moment of the usage of the burst for 12 seconds. If this character was affected by an element while casting the burst, that element will be cleansed, and the created crystals will be of that specific element.
Ascension talent 1: When a crystal from a crystallise reaction is created, attack of the active character is increased for 5 seconds, and they will heal for a percentage of this character's max hp.
Ascension talent 4: While both the elemental burst and the sheild from the elemental skill are active, the elemental skill will also deal damage around itself for the element it absorbed, and it will gradually heal the character inside overtime.
Constellation 1: Reduces the requirement for the full strength of the sheild to 3 crystals, additionally grant an elemental damage bonus for the absorbed element of the sheild (base damage bonus is geo).
Constellation 2: When the sheild absorbs a new element, it will create a crystal of that element at the active character's place, and it will heal for a portion of its lost hp.
Constellation 3: Increases the level of skill by 3.
Constellation 4: Increases the number of crystals spawned from burst to 10, and refreshes the duration of all pre-existing crystals. When a crystallise reaction occurs, crit rate and crit damage of geo party members is increased for a period of time, which can stack up to 5 times.
Constellation 5: Increases the level of burst by 3.
Constellation 6: The final hit of the normal attack sequence will generate an crystal. Additionally, crystals will be granted a buff based on the element they absorbed. Pyro: leaves behind a pool of molten lava, which damages enemies and applies pyro to then. Cryo: Creates a chilly aura which causes enemies to take cryo damage overtime. Hydro: Enemies who come in contact with the crystal will be covered in mud, getting their movement speed heavily reduced. Electro: The speed of its attacks will increase for every enemy in its radius. Anemo: Pulls enemies closer to them, and has an increased aoe. Geo: Has a powerful final attack which staggers enemies. Dendro: Creates a land mine which explodes when enemies step on it, dealing dendro damage to them.
I need some help refining the details lol, but so far that's the base idea lol. Tell me your critiques regarding it cuz I feel like this idea is really....clunky. I tried to make her a more general support who can help in reactions instead of the inert nature of the geo element but try to make her also work in mono geo, and I am not sure how strong she would be.

TL:DR Earthquakes and eruptions near town = bad
Just north of Grindavík, Iceland, there’s a geothermal power plant, named Svartsengi. As of this writing, it is the only source of hot water for the entire Reykjanes peninsula (Reykjanes literally translated means “smoky peninsula”) and as such is a vital piece of infrastructure. Until very recently it was also the only source of potable cold water for Reykjanesbær, “the town next to the airport”.
In January 2020 a swarm of earthquakes occurred in the general vicinity of the power plant and some magma intrusions were detected (note on vocabulary, I know some of the geologic terms in Icelandic and I CBA to find out what terms actually mean what). After a few days of shaking, a town meeting was called with representatives from the police, HS Orka (the owners of Svartsengi power plant), the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management, hereafter called Almannavarnir, and few others.
Understandably we were worried. Is there going to be an eruption in or near our town? What will happen if Svartsengi is subsumed by lava? I myself missed this meeting, as I had been asked to go on a work trip, leaving the day of the meeting. I and my coworkers discussed “What would you do if there’s an eruption while we’re in Canada?” and our thinking at the time was well, what could we do, there’s not like we could do anything, none of us has the power to stop earthquakes or lava flow by ourselves.
But then the earthquakes died out and we all thought, irrationally that it was over, just a small swarm of quakes, no serious damage, no big deal.
About a year later there was another swarm, and this time we got something serious. We got an eruption. From my parents house close to the easternmost part of town we could see a faint orange glow and looking to the road, loads of cars drive east, to try and see some lava, but it wasn’t really accessible on the first day, and with the eruption happening late in the evening people were generally advised to stay away, let the professionals and the highly experienced volunteers handle this for now.
I have a quick funny story from around this time. A coworker of mine, lets call him John, a man who runs marathons, hikes a long ass way to hunt and is a professional diver was asked to do the hike to the volcano and plot it with GPS, so they could have the plot and do stuff with it. While they’re gearing up they asked for a volunteer to go with him, and a young fella, lets call him Dave, about 18-20 sees this slightly gaunt, graying man in his mid 50’s and thinks “yeah, I can keep pace with him”. So John and Dave go hiking, except John is a quick bugger and Dave, not wanting to look slow compared to the old man, keeps pace. Except when they get to the top, Dave asked to get a ride back from one of the 6 wheelers they had up there. A friend of mine who saw them said “Dave looked like he was going to die, while you couldn’t tell John had just gone up a steep hike”.
Icelanders, being completely sane and rational people decided, as they had before during the Fimmvörðuháls eruption (2009 if memory serves), that a volcano was THE place to be, the hottest place around, if you pardon the pun. A couple of days after the eruption started we had a beautiful day, perfect for hiking. So people quit work early, laced up their hiking boots and set off for Grindavík. So many people decided on that day to go up there, that there was almost total gridlock from the very rudimentary parking lots close to Fagradalsfjall, all the way into Grindavík, and then up the main road a few kilometers. People gave up on trying to get to Fagradalsfjall and instead parked in Grindavík, adding adding something like 12km to their hike. (7.5 mi for my American friends). It was pure insanity.
Anywho, the eruption dies out, but only after everybody and their grandma having gone up there. In 2022 there was another eruption, and in June 2023 another one. Before every eruption there was a swarm of quakes, and every time the ground erupted, the quakes stopped. We were getting used to it, and what was even better to the people of Grindavík, is that the eruptions seemed to be going further away, erupting in places where the damage would only be to moss and some old hiking trails. This would change soon.
In October 2023 the quakes started back up, at this point everybody thought they knew what was happening, we all thought it would be the usual, we’d wake up in the night a few times, and then in a couple of weeks there’d be an eruption somewhere far from people and infrastructure, we’d get a nice little tourist eruption, we’d bitch about increased traffic from slow driving tourists on the main road into town, then it’d fizzle out and life goes on. The quakes kept on coming and everyone had their sleep disrupted. We had yet another town meeting, now with more experts, an engineer and the CEO from HS Orka (power plant dudes), the police chief, our mayor, a geologist or two, maybe three, at least one person from Almannavarnir. During this meeting a picture was painted of what might be about to happen. One possibility was that an eruption might take out Svartsengi, taking out electricity, hot and cold water for the town, and probably severing the main road. Plans were in place, large backup generators were being set up in town, so we’d at least have power, and we might be able to electrically heat one room per house, the power grid wouldn’t handle heating every room in every building electrically. People should ideally have a couple days worth of water, some food, an battery operated radio, you know, the usual.
(More personal experiences begin now)
During the week preceding the 10th, I heard at work that we were getting a backup generator, so that in case of power loss we could run some stuff and continue work in some limited capacity. After getting info on the generator and doing a quick check on the power needs of our equipment, I quickly saw that this would be unfeasible.
On Wednesday 8th of November me and my brother visited our parents for dinner, they wanted to cook for us since they were leaving for Tenerife for 3 weeks. After dinner we had a serious talk about what might happen. Dad had bought a propane radiator and gave us a rundown on how to use it, they had bottled some water. And if me and my brother wanted to, we could stay at their house in this hypothetical emergency. We could heat one room and we’d have some water, and then ???. Sometime after dinner on the 9th, my brother calls me and asks if he could come over. We were both nervous about the future and we definitely felt comfort in each others presence. Incidentally, there was a pretty intense aurora that night.
The 10th started kinda OK, I can’t remember if I got a full nights sleep that night, parts of that day are a bit fuzzy. Around noon there was a mid sized quake, but the swarm didn’t get properly started until about 15ish
In my memory it’s just quake after quake after quake. I occasionally looked out a window to see how the new evacuation route was going, since it was literally right next to my apartment building. At some point I began saying things like “OK, dude I get it, please stop” in exasperation. But it just didn’t stop. My parents called, checking on me, and I seem to recall that I was just getting tired, but obviously unable to sleep.
A bit later in the afternoon, they called again “we’ve called your aunt, you can go there and and least get some rest” I declined, but I definitely considered it. They called again some time later and because they were seriously worried about us, I told them they didn’t need to worry, we’re both grown men and we’ll be fine. But my dad told me that they’d feel a lot better if we were somewhere safer. I said yeah, we’ll go, I’ll ask my brother, so I sent him a message, “should we leave?” and he, being a perfect model of himself said “eh, lets give it 30 minutes”. While I read that message I immediately thought “yeah, we’re leaving” and started packing for the weekend. At around 18:00 there were a couple of big quakes and I got a notification on my phone from the alarm system at my parents house: “Glass break detected”. Feeling a need to get out of the house I grabbed my keys, called my brother to say I’d go check it out. Just as I opened the car door another big bastard happened and I saw the door shaking up and down and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. As I was driving up the main road and I saw a load of cars coming down the main road, which didn’t make sense to me, who the hell would be driving into Grindavík during this shitstorm of quakes. Then I saw flashing blue lights behind me and figured “something happened on the main road”. As I got to my parents house to find that the alarm system just didn’t understand quakes, there was no damage, but a couple of photos of grandparents and great-grandparents had fallen to the ground and that didn’t sit right by me for some reason, so I picked them up and put them in a safe place. I genuinely don’t know why I did it, I just sort of did. There were constant quakes the short time I was there, and for whatever reason I didn’t turn on any lights so I was using my flashlight to check for damage, the noise from the quakes, the shaking, as cheesy as it is to say, it felt like a goddamned disaster movie.
Driving back to my place my dad called and said the main road is closed, it had been severed by a crack and someone was unlucky enough to have the crack open underneath their car. My brother called finally and said “yeah, we’re going, I’m packing now”, I grabbed my stuff, drove over to his place and all over town people were packing. Loads of people were leaving town. Then something happened that I’d never felt before. I felt two quakes while driving. That was definitely unnerving. After we’d gotten a bit out of town I started calling people to reassure them we were out. My cousin called to ask about our ETA, so they could have dinner ready by the time we got there.
We ate, and it felt pretty great to not be shaking constantly. My uncle offered me a beer, and I can’t really describe it, but I felt like I was still in evacuation mode, like I might have to go even further, even though I logically knew I was safe where I was. A few hours later, after driving my cousin and his wife a ride home, I turned on the radio and the first thing I heard was that Grindavík was being evacuated, effective immediately. I felt a great deal of dread. They said that the pretense of magma underneath Grindavík could not be ruled out.
After I woke up, my aunt had talked to some coworkers and one of them had a cabin that she was staying in, but she was willing to cut her weekend getaway short so that me and my brother could both have a bed. A person I’d never met just offered us their cabin, with no notice. The Saturday was pretty slow going, I couldn’t concentrate on anything, all I would do was constantly refresh news sites, hoping for good news, but expecting bad.
On Sunday (12. November) I heard my parents were flying back, they couldn’t sleep, they felt more powerless than they were. They were worried sick about us. Even though it hadn’t been long, it felt like they’d been away for ages. Later that day my dad heard from my great uncle, lets call him Jim, who runs a chicken farm on the outskirts on Grindavík, and my dad has been doing electrical stuff for Jim for ages. Jim said he was going to check on the chicken farm and my dad asked if Jim could tell the police that he needed an electrician. A couple of minutes later Jim calls and says “yeah, you can come, I’ll pick you up”. At this point we only had my car, my dads truck, the family car and the work van were all in Grindavík. Once my dad and Jim got to Grindavík they told the Search and Rescue, hereafter SAR, that my dad needed to go home. No chance they said. “Look, there’s stuff broken, I need to get tools to fix said stuff, I live a short distance away”. “OK fine” was the answer. For context, at this point my parents only had the clothes they packed for Tenerife, most of those are not terribly useful in Iceland in November. So my dad and Jim run inside, grab an old suitcase and just shovel random handfuls of clothes in there, grab a few things he needed to get and off they went, driving the truck out, so at least at this point we had two cars for the four of us.
Later that day, a person we’d never met, literally the friend of a coworker of my aunt, has an extra apartment and offered it to us rent free for 3 weeks. Early on Monday, there were news that some people could go home, depending on where they lived, and my parents house was in one of the first areas to be opened, a little while later they added my brothers street, so off we went. As we were waiting in the long ass queue at the checkpoint outside town we saw the news “everybody go in, take your time, get your stuff”. A police officer told us “if you hear a siren, you get to your car and you GTFO”, so my brother and I were planning how we wanted to do things, in what order and what to grab. We planned to go to his house first, but the three quickest routes there were all severed, so we started at my place. Now, I’m no athlete, but I ran up the stairs to my apartment and started grabbing clothes, while my brother disconnected my PC. We then drove to his house and did much the same, meeting our parents there, as they had gotten the things they wanted to take and were there to help. My aunt also came to town to get my maternal grandparents’ car out, since they were abroad at the time, and might not be able to go get it by the time they got back.
When people got to go home a few unlucky people found that their homes were completely ruined, with cracks in walls wide enough to fit a fist. The old folks home had literally split apart, the extension that’d been built some years ago had separated from the original building, in one place in particular where the street had cracked the height difference between the two parts was something like 1m (approx 1.1yards), hot water pipes had cracked or simply been pulled apart. In one area the ground had separated so much that a concrete section of sewer pipe buried underneath simply fell apart, spewing it’s contents into a brand new terrible pond. While what was flowing through the sewage system at this time was almost entirely wasted hot water from house heating, it’s still less than desirable.
Some of the next days are a bit of a blur, I get them mixed up easily, so there might be a few minor errors.
The day after the free-for-all, some people were let into town, but after a gas sensor detected something wrong and the alarm was sounded and everybody had to evacuate. It turned out to be a false alarm. But on that day a resident got an alarm from her ring camera, that showed a photographer from RÚV (National Broadcast company) trying to enter a deserted house, but being unable because it was locked. This caused quite the uproar and it felt like the entire country wanted his head on a pike. This also caused a shift in the general attitude towards the media, and the access granted to them. I remember sitting in the queue, on one of those days I, or a family member could go home and seeing cars belonging to various media outlets simply driving past the queue of people wanting to home. The thought of reporters being allowed in with priority over the people who wanted to go home and retrieve some of their things made people angry. We were angry with police, for allowing this nonsense, angry at reporters because they were seemingly more important than the inhabitants of Grindavík.
On the 15th, we heard that my parents would be allowed in, my mom couldn’t go, but I went with him. Once we got to the checkpoint we asked if we could also go to my dads workshop, since it was on the eastern outskirts of town, at the time considered the safest area to be. The first person we talked to said “I can’t allow you to go, but you need to talk to the police”, so at the next checkpoint we talked to police and their response was along the lines of “yeah, fine, just don’t take more than about 5-10 minutes at each place”, then somebody handed us helmets. As we drove into town, we saw some guys taking down concrete molds that had been set up for a new house that was meant to go up. We immediately thought “nah, we can take more than 5-10 minutes at each place”. We had a list from mom, we had to fetch some things that she’d gotten from her grandma that she’d forgotten the last time around and then we headed to the workshop and found that it was somewhat damaged, the doorframe was crooked so opening and closing the door was difficult, but we got loads of tools out and filled the car to the brim.
I cant remember the exact date, but on one evening I got a call my boss, who works at HQ, to ask how I was doing, if I had a roof over my head, if my stuff was damaged. I was then invited to a meeting where my employers reiterated that we would keep our salaries and that we could, if we wanted, move to Akureyri (company HQ) and keep working, but it wasn’t a requirement. Shortly thereafter I decided to move, at least temporarily to Akureyri, partly so I wouldn’t go insane from doing nothing day after day. After I’d made the decision my grandpa called to say that he’d gotten me an apartment. Yet another person I’d never met had offered me a place to stay, rent-free. A man who went to elementary school with my grandpa called him and asked if he knew of anybody who needed an apartment, and he sure did.
Shortly after arriving in Akureyri I was asked to go on a quick work trip, and because I’m not used to telling anybody I was going away, they sent a message asking if I was OK, since I hadn’t been there for a couple of days, and they were worried that something was wrong, it was almost like getting an additional set of grandparents.
In the weeks before Christmas there were a few loud voices asking to celebrate Christmas in Grindavík. Those plans were seemingly scuppered when, on December 18th, there was an eruption north of Grindavík. Thankfully it only lasted a short time, but it was quite spectacular, with the fissure being like 3 km long or something silly like that.
I visited my parents for Christmas, in their rented apartment in Reykjavík, but we didn’t celebrate Christmas in Grindavík, a first for me. But I visited, accessing Grindavík was easy, just a simple “I'm going home” at a checkpoint was enough. I even stayed a night between Christmas and new years, but I was very aware that I might have to GTFO on a moments notice. I drove back north on Jan 1st. Life went on.
On the 5th of January 2 people died in a traffic accident on the main road to Grindavík, when they collided with a cement truck that was heading back to Reykjavík after having poured concrete in an attempt to fix damage caused to the town gym. Then, on the 10th of January a man fell into a hidden crevasse while working to fill crevasses in town, his coworker had stepped away for a brief moment and found nothing but a hole in the ground. Rescue operations were started immediately, with cranes, diggers, aquatic drones and all sorts of equipment being used to try to find the man, but he wasn’t found.
This led to the announcement of Jan 13th that, effective from 19:00 on 15th of January that Grindavík would be closed for everybody not working on filling crevasses and such, for 3 weeks. This was a big shock to me, it meant the town was further away from being inhabitable than I’d thought. While I hadn’t sought solace in the bottle up until this point, I felt beaten, and went off to buy some beer, just to gain a small peace of mind, if only for a moment.
On the night of January 14th, I woke up in the middle of the night and checked the news and saw “Grindavík evacuated” because there was an increased risk of an new eruption. When I woke up again at 8 I saw the terrible news, a new eruption just north of Grindavík. But the good news was, the lava barrier was holding, not counting the little bit of the fissure that went through the barrier. Everything being streamed, pretty soon we saw that some earthmoving equipment was about to be hit with lava, which I think might ruin said equipment. But then some brave bastards drove up to the lava’s edge, ran to the equipment and drove it to safety. The slightly positive outlook was ruined completely around noon, when a second fissure opened up a very short distance from town, and it looked certain that lava would flow into town and burn or crush homes. The damn thing opened up on live TV, I was listening to the broadcast and I can’t really describe how I felt at the time, but i think dread would be fairly apt. My dad called and we had a bit of a chat and I think this was one of his more difficult moments up until that point, seeing as how the fissure was less than a km away from his home. 3 homes caught fire, all of them completely destroyed. All of it livestreamed for all to see.
Thankfully the southern fissure wasn’t very big or powerful in addition to lasting only a short while, and the northern fissure died out a little while later. On a personal note the edge of the lava was only 3-400 meters away from my parents’ home.
After some people, mostly Police and SAR were let back into Grindavík it became apparent that the damage was severe in some places. Drones with ground penetrating radar were deployed to survey and check for hidden crevasses, especially on evacuation routes, then near homes, to make sure people wouldn’t be eaten by the ground when checking on their homes and possessions.
Then, sometime during the week of 21st-27th of January somebody in charge (i’ve forgotten who, it may have been the mayor) said they were planning on letting people go home to get their stuff, so I told my boss I had to leave for some time to get things out, thankfully my boss and my employer have been more than understanding in this endeavor and said to take as much time as I needed. So off I went, driving to Reykjavík to stay with my parents once more, but I might as well not have, since nothing happened, nobody could go in until Monday (January 29th). But, before we would go, we had to apply for a QR code to show at the checkpoint, which was a big hassle in and of itself, because the system didn’t allow for changes, except through email. The days were split into 2 time allotments, and the first group had some serious trouble getting in, as the road they had to take is often terrible in winter and it hadn’t been cleared well enough. I was in the second group and I could only hope it’d be better for me. Then sometime after lunch we set off to go home to pack and I was pleasantly surprised that my home was still fine, no noticeable changes, slightly colder than usual, which was to be expected.
The day after, me and my aunt helped my grandparents pack and I could tell it took a toll on them, understandably. The day after than, it was the turn of my brother and my parents. I went with my brother and my uncle, who had come to Iceland just to help people move, went with my parents. My brother didn’t really want to take anything, but he did have an almost full case of beer, a bottle of sparkling wine that he wanted to take, along with a dog toy and a stick blender. Since that didn’t take long, we drove over to our parents’ place and saw almost immediately that something was wrong, there was a 8-10cm (3-4inch) gap from the garage to the driveway and paving stones had moved about. Dad then put a level on a concrete pillar just outside the house that showed it was far from plumb. Drywall panels had separated from each other and also from the concrete outer walls, when it go bright enough outside we could also see there was a gap on both the east and west sides of the house, so it had moved back and forth. By pure coincidence, one of the guys who built the house lived across the street and told us that the precast concrete had weighed about 100 tonnes and the foundation was probably something similar. So that was 200 tonnes just moving back and forth. There were hints of sewage smell that may mean that the sewage pipe has ruptured, or may be damaged in some way. As you might imagine, this was a shock to my mom and dad, because the house was perfectly fine just before the eruption.
A bad weather forecast caused a delay in moving efforts, for a couple of days residents weren't allowed in, but a buddy of mine was involved in installing and testing what to me sound like air-raid sirens, or in this case eruption sirens, a "drop what you're doing and GTFO, right fucking NOW!" alarm i sincerely hope never has to be sounded in earnest.
On sunday and monday 4th and 5th of February, everybody who could moved most of their things, i took part in five moves in those two days. While there was limited heating, the homes i entered were all acceptable, but having to constantly be outside to load into vans an such in -5c and wind sure made me feel like i hadn't dressed properly.
Please feel free to ask questions, especially if anything's unclear, i tend to get ahead of myself when writing and skip over important things.

Artist: Aesop Rock
Album: Integrated Tech Solutions
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Background by u/Army-of-One-
Aesop Rock is almost inarguably the most lauded linguistic powerhouse in hip-hop’s history. Infamously leading the pack in a 2014 study comparing the size of many rap artist’s vocabularies, the New Yorkian technical giant born Ian Matthew Bravitz in 1976 has been turning heads since at least his 1997 independent underground debut, Music For Earthworms. His largest break to date would occur in September of 2001 - an unfortunate time to be a New Yorker - with the Def Jux release of his scathing, relentless, and impassioned deconstruction of dystopian corporate servitude masquerading as his third studio album, Labor Days. Transcending a cult classic by 2024, his verbose masterpiece is the second of three consecutive home-runs released on the El-P-founded record label. These two subsequent albums would be released in 2003 and 2007 before the lights went out at Def Jux, and Aesop moved comfortably over to Rhymesayers to continue his creative endeavors, and also switching to mostly-self produced instrumentals in the process. 2012 would see the release of the mostly decent Skelethon, 2016 saw the release of his second-most acclaimed album The Impossible Kid, and by 2020 Aesop had perfected his newest formula with Spirit World Field Guide. The man has stayed active and interesting deep into his forties, and his newest album Integrated Tech Solutions follows the 2021 collaborative effort Garbology with Blockhead, the man responsible for many of the greatest beats on his best album Labor Days, as well as 2000’s Float.
Review
Integrated Tech Solutions is another consistent serving of Aesop’s late-career music, fitting comfortably within the established recipe he has created since transferring his credentials to Rhymesayers. Whilst not quite hitting the production and topical heights he reached on his impressive second wind, The Impossible Kid, Aesop can still handily pen enough excellent material to pack out a 64-minute runtime with 18 watertight packages of expert lyricism, laser-precise topical focus, and encyclopedic levels of detail. His ability to hone in on a single character hasn’t degraded even slightly since the days of Lucy on “No Regrets”; for example, a track like “Aggressive Steven” found at the midpoint of ITS documents a vivid (and hilarious) tale of events revolving around a mentally-unwell home intruder that Aesop tries to sympathize with, despite the police encouraging him to press charges. And who else could write a track like “Pigeonometry”, an ode to drawing 1,000 pictures of Pigeons before regretting this decision soon after and abandoning the project? You’re always in for a very unique perspective when you approach Aesop’s music, which in my opinion gives him a lasting appeal. His ability to conjure whacked-out rhymes out of thin air is just delightful, with so many fantastic lines blindsiding you as you listen - “think about the other shit, 3D printed body parts, dehydrated onion dip”. If that was the rhyme you were expecting to land at the end of this bar, you’re as batshit insane as Aesop is and you should probably pick up a pen, quickly.
That line comes from the first proper opening track “Mindful Solutionism” which I think feels the closest subject-wise to the titular technology theme. Opening with “2.5 million years ago, a friend of mine, made a tool from a stone and defended his tribe. It’s Technology!” kicks off the record the best way a rap artist talking about technology could - spinning a Run-DMC reference into a bar about cavemen. The song itself isn’t a production highlight among the other tracks here - there’s a wonky digital sawtooth synth wailing away in the background (once again, on theme) but I think I prefer the instrumental more of the following “Infinity Fill Goose Down”, a hell of a trunk-knocker if Aesop ever made one. The drums here thump the low-end to death and the beat just pummels forward like a boulder that won’t stop - at least until the numerous satisfying beat breaks that back off to give space for some minimal but still very satisfying electric guitar. “I am always into somethin’!” proclaims Aes on the hook - no shit, my man. While we’re going track-for-track I’ll certainly take this opportunity to mention “Living Curfew”, the billy woods-assisted cut that starts mostly traditional to Aesop Rock standards - until the beat falls off a cliff at the 52-second mark for a slowed down, lumbering mover with a strained vocal sample; a perfect match for the equally strange Aesop & woods. The latter an underground legend with a spoken-word style delivery (this is hiphopheads, I don’t need to explain who this guy is to y'all) his verse runs right to the final second of the song, and is as dark, dejected and dystopian as ever - “Fentanyl in the pack, if they could they'd come back from the dead, and buy it again”. Jesus, that’s a heavy lyric. Don’t let it distract you from the fun though - there’s plenty more coming up.
“Kyanite Toothpick” is one of my favorite songs on ITS. The instrumental is ice-cold; keyboard layers shimmer through the top-end, the bass line is easily one of the best on the record, and Aes teams up with Hanni El Khatib for a fun back-and-forth about how they’re better than me or you. I’d take it personally if they weren’t correct - I’m yet to write a lyric as delightfully deranged as “get to the chopper, money, on your way adopt a puppy / I'm on that proper dummy, it's getting Tonka Trucky, yup, yup”, and the chorus is equally as brash. Aes and Khatib slip into a “I’m on that this, you’re on that that” scheme that they really go the distance to be creative with - “I'm on that matador, I'm on that bull fight / You on that bullshit, I'm on that dirtbike” is just one of dozens of these fun juxtapositions. Listen to this track, you’ll love them all. Some could argue that it could get repetitive, and I couldn’t entirely disagree with a straight face, but this song still scratches so many lyrical itches for me all the same I can’t help putting it at or near the top of the pile.
I love this album, but I do think ITS starts to lull somewhere around the midpoint. The 5-song run from “100 Feet Tall” (a still-hilarious story about Aes meeting Mr. T of The A Team fame as a child with his family in the 1980’s, which I feel could have done without its mostly inconsequential third verse) to “Bermuda” doesn’t really manage to produce a memorable beat, and I find it quite strange that “Salt And Pepper Squid” (a song about what Aesop did that day, with a complete non-starter of a chorus) is followed by “Time Moves Differently Here”, a song entirely about fast food? I’d ask if he got his titles mixed up here, but the former’s chorus includes repeating the title over and over, so we know he didn’t, but it still seems to me like they should have had each other's titles? At least the latter has more great, funny one liners - “That's like saying the best invention ain't the pretzel bite”. This guy gets it, but this song makes me very hungry; I recommend listening at your own discretion, lest you find yourself in your nearest drive-through despite (unsuccessfully) swearing off junk food five years ago. Aesop makes a very compelling case for “Double-triple Texas angus steakinator waffle sticks” and “Crispy ranch and activated maple eggroll taco twists”. Say that five times fast.
I’m glad to say the album picks back up spectacularly with “By The River”, the second single to the record and a reverent, beautiful exploration of Aesop’s fascination with the titular bodies of water. It’s a low-key diary entry with a wonderful instrumental to match, with sparse horn hits and a satisfyingly-delayed bassline - it really feels like the time signature of the song is being thrown back and forth. The lyrics are as laser-focused as Aesop has ever been - “A river in the dark can be a genuine surprise / You might find some lovers getting cozy on the shore / Or a cold-blooded psychopath disposing of a corpse” is followed up 12 bars later with “A fish we never knew about / some rusty old jalopy / The murder weapon used to catch the aforementioned body”, an excellent callback, and “By The River” also features the obligatory but always-moving tribute to the late Camu-Tao, former Def Jux / Weathermen artist and friend of Aes and El-P, who passed of lung cancer aged 30 in 2008. “Sitting by the Hudson river talking to a ghost / I wish that we could rock a beat and smoke an L at Tone's /I miss the way you rhyme and how you never had a clone / Ain't a motherfucker living that could ever crack the code”.
The remainder of ITS is equally as strong as “By The River” - “All City Nerve Map” is a ridiculous banger with easily the best beat on the album, a glitchy-techno masterstroke that pummels unrelentingly as Aesop drops more quirky diatribes - “I could draw a map to the raw nerve!” he exclaims emphatically. “Forward Compatibility Engine” is the obligatory Rob Sonic collaboration and it goes over well - features are sparse on this record, and having an extra voice to shake up the flow towards the back of the record is welcome, even if the Sonic verse is nothing to write home about. There’s an interesting (and once again, hilarious) spoken passage by Aesop about failure on “On Failure” here, and and we move into the very final leg with the passable “Solid Gold”, the beautiful “Vititus” and the Nikki Jean (frequent collaborator of one Lupe Fiasco) assisted closer, “Black Snow”.
“Vititus” is as genuinely heart-warming and fuzzy as anything Aesop Rock has ever written - he seems to just excel when writing about family. Staring the Impossible Kid standout “Blood Sandwich” dead in the eyes, but this time writing about his grandmother instead of his brothers, this song does more than any other in 2023 to bring a gormless, cheesy grin to my face, and to bring a tear to my eye. The way Aesop writes about Mary is both brilliantly cheeky and faithfully reverent - “Her mama was Mociute to the children / She made a farmer's cheese and lived to be a hundred million”. He paints a beautiful scene of a farmland homestead with kids running around and playing; family gatherings and summer nights on the porch, especially with the line “Y'all keep misbehaving, y'all sleeping in the basement / Better yet y'all sleeping on the porch / She was kidding but it hit ‘em with the fear of the lord”. I’d quote this whole song if I could, but I’ll leave it to the way Aesop sends it off - only four bars are required to end the story, and our food-obsessed Shakespearean poet ends his grandmother’s tribute with “'07 ma called me in London / Tone that could only mean one thing / Your grandmother something, something / Who the fuck's supposed to make the dumplings?”, just like how nobody else ever could. I haven’t even mentioned yet the smooth piano bed this song floats over, or the emotionally devastating horns on the chorus (which is as random a lyrical subject change, that actually probably isn’t, as we can expect from Aesop). I would have easily picked this track as the closer over “Black Snow'', which is certainly serviceable but feels like a slightly anticlimactic way to coast out Integrated Tech Solutions, especially considering it doesn’t do anything to wrap up the technology theme that was much more prevalent during the first half of the record.
To conclude, Integrated Tech Solutions is another very solid entry into Aesop’s catalog, even if it mostly fails to break new ground. From Spirit World Field Guide To Garbology, the formula hasn’t really changed, but it’s still an excellent formula that has not yet failed to concoct at least a few massive stand-out highlights. Besides, Aesop took 15 years to follow up his first classic Labor Days with an equally enthralling project, so we’re not necessarily due another just yet - and even if he operates only slightly below our highest expectations, he’s still outdoing most in creativity, beat selection, off-kilter flow and topical precision. Make sure you don’t miss it.
Favorite Lyrics

• “Fentanyl in the pack, if they could they’d raise from the dead, and buy it again” - billy woods, Living Curfew
• “Panko-crusted flaming gator honey mango lava ribs / Make that shit a combo and do not forget the condiments” -Time Moves Differently Here
• “Mr. T’s a hundred feet tall (he’s five foot ten)” - 100 Feet Tall
• “Uh, who the fuck is fuckin’ Steven?” - Aggressive Steven

Discussion Questions

• Does Aesop have one of the most consistent discographies in rap? The man is into the double-digit count of albums now and still has yet to make a bad one
• Will Aesop ever top The Impossible Kid?
• Was Aesop better suited on Def Jux, or on Rhymesayers in your opinion?

Thank you for reading.

This time, I wanted to share with you a piece of traditional Thulnuson singing. There are two major types of Thulnuson folk songs: yisthúúcas and layas.
The first one is a long song, meant to tell a story, or a spiritual incantation, most often performed by monks. Their defining feature is conservatism: they change very little and must be performed clearly and precisely, with melody being less important than tones and individual sound qualities. Most of the yisthúúcaye songs contain archaic vocabulary, are full of alliteration (some of which became obscured by sound changes) and must have the same amount of syllables in all rows. Musical instruments, such as the drum, flute or tónísíyes (a lute-like string instrument), often accompany the singing.
The second one, layas, is personal, it's meant to convey a feeling or reflect an idea or image of something that captivated a singer's attention – basically whatever a person wants to share with others. It has no strict style, and the laaye songs often contain few words, if any, focusing instead on their melody. In most cases these songs are improvised, and musical instruments are rarely used. Áliiloye (sorcerers, sg.: áliilas) often sing quite elaborate wordless laaye, using a jaw harp and a drum.
In this example, Nídítána went uphill to gather some walchia cones, as she usually does in late summer. The sky was clear, so she could finally see the tundra and the snowy top of the Sőőlkűgas volcano from the walchia forest. She also saw a waterfall in the distance, and its sparkling falling water made her sing a short layas.
Thulnuson:
Hósányís, hósányís,
Sowiini
Yéínán yíscwíkwó,
Wowiihúús two.
IPA:
[ɦɔ́.s̺ɑ́.ɲís̺. ɦɔ́.s̺ɑ́.ɲís̺.
s̺ɔ̀.wìː.n̪ɪ̀.
jeɪ́.n̪ɑ́ŋ. jís̺.t͡s̺ʷɪ́.kʷó.
wò.wìː.ɦúːs̺.tʷò]
Glossing: hósányí-s so-wii-ni i¹⁰-í¹-einá⁰-n⁻¹ i¹⁰-yi³-s¹-cíkwó⁰ wi³-o²-i¹-húús⁰ two
waterfall-FOC 1sg.POSS-heart-LOC 3.INAN¹⁰-CLF¹-be.bright⁰-PTCP⁻¹ 3.INAN¹⁰-CM³-CLF¹-light.scatters.IPFV⁰ CM³-1sg²-CLF¹-be.calm.PFV⁰ and
Translation:
Waterfall, waterfall,
In my heart
Rainbow dances, scattering,
And I feel at peace.
I hope, you'll enjoy this song regardless of my voice and the sound quality. I tried my best)
Some side notes:
The volcano-like conical structures are called cinder cones. They can no longer produce lava, unless the lava chamber beneath gets refilled. Sőőlkűgas is the least active volcano on the island, having only occasional gentle flank eruptions every two or three years and producing small quantities of a relatively viscous lava, compared to the other two volcanoes. It's also the only volcano that no longer causes lahars (volcanic mudflows), even though it's covered in glaciers and receives the most rainfall.
Walchia is a conifer-like tree that can grow up to 10 metres tall, but usually it's shorter (4 to 6 metres). Its cones have tasty seeds inside, used as food by the locals.
Yes, the word “rainbow” is a verb in Thulnuson. CLF stands for “classifier”, which in most cases acts as a valency operator. The -i- classifier, however, indicates that the verb is stative. CM is an obscure prefix, called “conjugation marker” which clarifies the meaning of the verb stem (in some cases, it's just there for no particular reason other than to confuse anyone, who dares to learn a particular verb conjugation). This particular prefix can often merge or even switch positions with other prefixes. yi- is often present in weather verbs, as well as some verbs that have an inanimate noun as their subject (though the latter is more of an exception, than a rule), while wi- indicates feelings, mental activities and inanimate subjects (in some other instances, such as when something moves on its own or falls down because of an external force).

Everyone already has access to Items 1, 2, and 3, Magnet Beam, and Super Arrow. That's just fine.
I'm looking for replacements for Rush Coil, Rush Jet, and the 3 Adapters.

🟦Mega Man🟦

He's fine. No changes needed. He's the base character and the main man! Not need to change what's worked for like 30 years

🟥Proto Man🟥

• Wire Adapter. (Replaces Jet Adapter.)
• - Works just as it does in Mega Man III.
• Proto Strike as a Special Weapon. (Replaces Power Adapter.)
• - Shoot fully charged shots with the press of a button! (Just as it currently is in game!) 14 uses.
• 2 Proto Sheilds! (Replaces Super Adaptor)
• - A sheild is in front and behind you at all times, (except sliding) but you lose the ability to shoot while equipped and must reflect shots to deal any damage.

🟪Bass🟪

• Trebel Sentry. (Replaces Rush Coil)
• - Trebel will follow you to the best of his ability, shooting enemies from the gun in his his tail. Shots deal 1 damage. Uses ½ an Energy per shot, or 1 Energy every 3 seconds he's active.
• Hyper Accel. (Replaces Rush Jet)
• - Enables Bass to dash in a straight line mid-air while equipped, similarly to Charge Kick. You move further, and can use it multiple times per jump, but you do not have I-Frames. Uses 2 or 3 energy per use.
• Air Buster (Replaces Jet Adapter)
• - Bass fires his buster straight down and only straight down, slowing his decent a significant degree and allowing him to hover 1 tile over hazzards like lava or spikes. Ammo is same as Bass Buster as a specal weapon.
• Evil Energy (Replaces Power Adapter)
• - Temporarily increases the power of the Bass Buster to deal 1 damage per shot instead of ½ to shred through any foe. Activates and drains similarly to Über Chain.
• Treble Boost goes in the Super Adaptor Slot, as it should.

🟩Roll🟩

• Eddie Balloon. (Replaces Jet Adapter)
• - Summon Eddie to create a platform from the flap on his head and give you a ride. Acts as a mid-air Lava Saver. Uses 1 Energy per second while active and tracking you. Can be dismissed by switching weapons or pressing Down + Shoot.
• Vaccum Arm (Replaces Power Adapter)
• - Draw Push Blocks towards you rather than push them. Can also suck in up to 3 enemy projectiles to fire back upon releasing the button.
• I'm genuinely unsure what to do for Roll's Super Adapter replacement. Maybe give her a baseball bat that's double the power of the broom and can reflect projectiles with the charge shot?

Let's be real. We know zero to nothing about the Previous civilization other than these things :

​
This is from the arknights Wikipedia
I know that Wikipedia is not always 100% correct so I'm here once again to rain my questions yet again cause I just can't get enough about this civilization.
​

Were they the original/first habitat of terra and managed to achieve space travel or did they come from space and settle down to terra and make it into their home?

I can imagine a highly advanced civilization being something like us but something happens and goes extinct with Doctor being the only survivor. They were like us but more advanced, living in terra and then something happened and after their fall, the Ancients and Elders were created by their mistakes.
There isn't much that is given to us about this topic other than amiya's Module which has this as a description :
​
First, there are a few indistinct silhouettes. Soon, a dazzling light. Gradually, the light grows distant and rises to the sky, leaving behind bright blotches. Not long after, these points of light themselves speed far away, and all that remains is a meaningless, jet black.You remember those blotches are celestial bodies, everyone. You remember the home of the stars is called the cosmos.
Then immediately, your sight abruptly grows clear. Sleek metal. A sealed room. A clear window forms your third eye–through the window, you gaze at a colossal grey sphere, and in the centre of that megastructure no normal mind could comprehend, it quietly awaits its birth father...You suddenly feel a kind of movement. A fluid wets your vision. You begin to seek this emotion's root. You see a child's birth. It is your child. A brand new fate, a soul entrusted... But against that yawning megastructure, how insignificant a life of such minuscule proportions it is.You return to the now and gaze at those engineering ships, big and small. You, the mathematician, quickly make a ridiculous comparison–even the smallest ship among them is thousands of times larger than an infant of mankind.
But you have all done it. Starting from the antiquity of antiquity, starting with fire or a hunt, you have come all the way to today.You are immensely proud. By some mysterious mechanism, you feel this pride as if it is yours, upon which more information pours into your mind. You remember your own identity. You realize that you are the designer of that artificial satellite. And after such a long journey in subspace, you finally greet the moment of its completion with your very own eyes.Honour, wealth, family, ideals... such vocabulary flickers elusive, hovers, dissipates, and in the end there is left one, and only one........."Future...""What? What did you see?""...""Hey, respond! Hey!"All present lapse into silence. A young woman to the side wells with urgency."Examine his brain! I told you we shouldn't have been so hasty! We only just set up protocol channels to database comms! This is only our first recorded successful transmission!""...I'm sorry.""Wait. What are you saying?""I mean... I never used to be too fond of you planetary engineers. I always felt your work was all style, no substance... but I saw it. I saw your past, I shared in your past. I felt your emotions. It was... like nothing else.""You...""Yes. I felt you reminisce, like an ordinary father, about your children and your home. I saw that artificial moon, astonishing as anything. And the sensation, it's beyond all imagination... We've done it."Once again, everyone is silent."So..." The one to break the silence is a fairly young, red-haired lady. "How will it record our epoch, and the epochs to come?""As an omnibus of idiocy, I assume," someone responds thoughtlessly. "We've had quite enough ourselves, but from here on out, none of them will ever find another excuse to embellish history.""Have a little more faith in mankind, friends," says another, elderly, who simply sits down and shuffles herself into a comfortable position. "We've drawn enough lessons already. Our progeny won't be repeating our blunders."Some chuckle bitterly. It is, of course, no more than a beautiful wish."...So we've definitely succeeded? Project DWDB-221E has borne fruit so quickly... My god."With no warning, a curly-haired person springs to his feet."Are we always going to call it DWDB-221E? I know, project numbering follows regulation format. Cold, cold nomenclature, just like with AMa... But our work deserves a more dignified official name!" Once again, he throws out the proposal he hadn't relented on for more than half the year now. "I want to call it... 'Destiny'! Or maybe 'Truth of the World'?"The ensuing silence is now an awkward one."How about the 'Black Crown'? In terms of an intuitive visual impression of parts of its appearance, it does resemble a crown, after all.""Eh, not a fan. That one sounds like some boring historical drama.""In that case..."The elderly woman interrupts her subordinates before they embroil themselves in yet another endless dispute. She gazes out at the stars beyond the window. Some unwelcome information is arriving, but humanity will ultimately overcome this hardship, just as it has countless times before."I have a proposal...""We should call it–Civilight Eterna.
So they were the ones who created the black crown to record the past so that the future won't do the same shit and screw themselves. The person who was wearing it saw the planetary engineers' work and things such as the artificial moon.
​

What happened to them?

​
What we know about what happened to them is through some modules of characters such as Kal'tsit and Mizuki and some information at the end of Ptilopsis's deep dark dream. Apparently, something from above happened and the civilization perished.

Kal'tist Module

She knows she was born into these ruins of civilization bearing a calling, but there is no one to shine a light on what is to come for her. Ultimately, she cannot live free from this calling. It is akin to taking a meal, or sleeping.She begins to walk, walk upon the lost dust, carefully sorting through her myriad years of memories and knowledge. She sees a new nation rise from yet more ruins. She recalls how the result of her abandonment was deposed royalty. She sees fresh, novel flags howl atop the blood-soaked battlefield. She recalls how both sides of the war united against a common enemy in those ancient times.She sees forests yet thinks of barrens, gazes on mountains yet recollects lakes–she walks through the river that is Time, picking up stones, while the eras surge, parting around her, rushing forward on.But she is immutable. She has no past, and no future either.It takes her a deal of Time before she has her thoughts reorganized. She remembers the last death. The years stretching long enough to see the form of life itself change. Still, she never thought death would be so fast; some things are changing at this very moment.Lives flourish without rhyme or reason, and the land morphs and fluctuates. Man-made machines operate with a rumble, the radiance of Originium energy shining into the umbra. In the dark, the people struggle, yearning for the light, scorning shadow in an age of brilliance, on and on. Her countenance is concealed by the flurry of grit stirred by a nomadic city, and she feels anxious to the depths of her heart.Does the will that hid the stars behind the false sky still watch the surface recur in its rise and fall? How long until the Terrans, so proud of their thriving civilizations, personally send those same civilizations into the ice-cold void, to join countless lost lives?Time is running short. This is what Kal'tsit tells herself. She has fallen to blaming herself. She has wasted too much Time, and at so many moments barely averted the self-destruction of Terra, barely led them to a safe place to develop. It has exhausted her, drained her.She is no omniscient, omnipotent being. And yet, she tasks herself with tending to the entire World.Her calling was never a fair one.She has to hurry. She has to do whatever it takes.Her gaze comes to rest on a shattered Kazdel. It is far from the first time she's touched on the legend of the Lord of Fiends. In the boundless years, more than once she has thought of retrieving and exploiting this ancient force. She cannot help but stifle her memories of the Teekaz–to make an effort not to long for the bygone days where Originium had not yet molded life into its present form, and not to commemorate a possibility that has long since vanished.
​

Mizuki Module

A great tree begins as a tiny seed. When a new shoot emerges, no one can predict whether it will become a meal for a starving beast or grow into a towering giant with branches reaching to the sky.Some individuals may be destined for greatness from birth, standing at the pinnacle of their cohort, but natural laws will eventually push all once tiny creations toward a greater destiny in the currents of time.With enough patience, perhaps one day every sapling will grow into a being even more magnificent than the mightiest tree we can conceive of. Will that day come? Yes, it will. That's why they bear seeds and allow themselves to decay and return to the soil to nourish their offspring, rather than permanently hoarding all the nutrients they take in. This is not an act of pity, but an act of hope.Now, if we expand this context to the entire ecosystem, rather than confining ourselves to a specific species, what happens? All living things help each other, cultivate the land and the sea, making the entire planet more abundant and creating a better living environment for ourselves and future generations. Yes, the possibility of this outcome is equally present in every last ordinary seed....That's what the plan should have been, prior to certain unexpected events.
​

Deep, Dark Dream

A dream––Joyce's dream is full of hallucinations and whispers, an illusory world full of things she does not understand.She treks through these lengthy dreams day after day, and even if she doesn't understand them, these scenes have already become commonplace.However, during this brief moment, she suddenly realizes that the dreamscape is becoming clearer.The wending whispers by her ear turn to recognizable words and sentences.The mist obscuring her vision is slowly dissipating as well.She stands atop a lofty mountain and gazes down at everything before her.In front of her, a magnificent city collapses into a dazzling display of metallic dust. Towering steel structures melt like clay.In front of her, the shadow of a terrible colossus floats in the clouds above, the writhing darkness blotting out the sun and enveloping all.In front of her, anguished screams and desperate cries waft up from the city.Behind her, the Originium crystal shines with a peculiar glow.
It shines.It shines.It shines.
​

Why was it created and what happened to the Seaborn Project?

https://preview.redd.it/r7uah4xhpa6c1.png?width=849&format=png&auto=webp&s=0049782efea395f890c3622a1df8ee025da52fd7
This topic is connected to Mizuki's Module Y as well. When I asked people about this on Reddit. Some of them said that it was created by the Previous civilization to terraform the world, and some said it was created to delete or somewhat minimize the Originium in the world.
​
https://preview.redd.it/yywn0vhnpa6c1.png?width=628&format=png&auto=webp&s=98ae5909110817580c969ea0902ec265d81d4144
I can understand why some people say that the Previous civilization was the one who created them but do we have proof? I heard about something Doctor being able to get inside the lab where they appeared to create the Seaborns but I don't know where that is.
​

What are the Feranmuts? Are they created by the Previous Civilization? If not, did they appear before or after the Previous civilization collapse?

In my recent question about the Feranmuts. One person asked me where I got the idea about the Previous Civilization creating the Feranmuts to use them to terraform the world. That made me feel stupid since I actually got the idea from another ask that I once saw on Reddit.
But back to the topic. One person in that ask that I made did bring up interesting things that I really want answers to.

• Ya says that they came from space. I'm guessing Ya is talking about them the Feranmuts coming from space.
• Another thing that the same person brought up is that Sui or I'm guessing the siblings knows the Doctor. I actually don't know if that's true or whatnot but if someone could give me details about this as well it would be helpful.
• The AUS says that they are wayward kin to the Seaborns but apparently, they are said to be feranmuts.

So does that mean the feranmuts are the original habitent of Terra?
​

The Previous Civilization, The Teekaz, The Ancients and the Elders

​
https://preview.redd.it/f1582kbrwa6c1.png?width=1431&format=png&auto=webp&s=5e0a8746a8c218c8f8c178f2c9a7e6b5cf2beff5
What I read from the Wikipedia is that apparently, they brought animals to Terra which later evolved into the Ancients and Elders. I don't know how true that is or what proof we have of that.
If I remember back to what everyone said so far in my other question post is that :
The Teekaz(Sarkaz) were the first apparently, then the Previous Civilization came, the Ancients and Elders came and the Teekaz people viewed them as invaders.
Even Sanguinarch said this to Amiya which hints towards to what I said just above :
"Cautus, you are not worthy of the crown that Theresa bestowed upon you.Not because you are not Sarkaz, but because you have never tried to understand the nature of the Sarkaz.Like Theresa, you have been blinded by the creature that calls itself Kal'tsit.You thought the Sarkaz a race linked by blood, like the Felines.You thought our wrath resistance to injustice. You thought our struggle a conflict between nations.But are they truly so?Look my vengeance in the eye, "King of Sarkaz".Listen to the lamentations in the clouds above your head.They will tell you that the Sarkaz were never the same people as the shameful invaders... the Elders and the Ancients were never the same people.Kazdel was never a city, nor a nation.When the Sarkaz were known as Teekaz, when they still had a home, Kazdel meant the entire world that we saw before our eyes.Kazdel was Terra. "
What I could see is that Teekaz and every other race came after the fall of the Previous civilisation and Originium altered the living animals there. The Teekaz perhaps could be an altered version of the human previous civilisation that survived the fall.
​

The Door

​
This boi here
Of course, we have yet to know about this since it was mentioned by Friston in the Lone Trail event. The way it works is far beyond the understanding of the current era of Terra but Friston said that one day, the people of Terra will be able to open the door and use it.
There is a theory that the Previous Civilization built it after they formed the Starpod, so they could reach other planets through the door. This is supported since Kal'tsit and Friston know about this door. Kal'tsit has been living god knows how long and Friston is dutied to guard the many sarcophagus since the beginning of their disaster.
We don't know much about this door yet but I heard that in an upcoming event, it will play a major point.
​

The Starpod

The fake sky that is created by the Previous civilization protects Terra from reaching the stars and also stops the beings that are out there that could threaten the world of Terra.
I can understand this one.
​

The Collapsal's or The Demons

The Collapsals or The Demons is that :

• They came Through the door and they were up in the north, threatening Terra's life.
• The "Emperor's Blades" are created from shards of the Northland Collapsals. Their creation is shrouded in occult rituals and they need to wear specially designed suits to contain and stabilize the Collapsal shards. Losing control of the shards proves devastating as the Collapsal influence will lay waste to the surrounding area and corrupt the land for eternity.

Some people theorized that these demons could be the ones that killed the Previous civilization.
​

Originium and Priestess?

So this one is short.
So in the Lone Trail event. Friston revealed to us that Originium and Priestess are the same thing and the beginning of mad experiments.
I can see her trying to come up with a power source of some kinda because something was going on in her civilization and they needed to find some kinda power source. She tried to do something but failed and created Originium and Oripathy. But then again, Friston said Oripathy wasn't carefully planned. So who knows?
Edit : Also, I heard that Originium can be found in lava. I don't know where it's from but I read it once on one of the posts.
​

Now then, let me shorten the questions that I need some kinda of explanation or answer to.

So what is the trust and lie at this point?

1. Were the Previous Civilizations the original inhabitants of Terra or did they come to Terra and live here, overthrowing the Teekaz people?
2. What happened to this civilization?
3. Why was it created and what happened to the Seaborn project?
4. What are the Feranmuts? Are they created by the Previous Civilization? If not, did they appear before or after the Previous civilization collapse?
5. How did the Teekaz, Ancients and elders come to be in Terra? Because of Originium or were they created by the Previous civilization?
6. What is the true purpose of the door at the north?
7. What are the Collapsals?
8. What did Priestess do to create Originium and why?

Of course, the answers to some of these questions are still limited to us. I know that many people have theories that alter from others. But there's gotta be some kinda of timeline to all this which makes sense.
​

(some of my favorite hfy stories are the ones where an alien general or whatever is going off in a speech, warning other races not to mess with humans. I decided to crank one of those out as well, but keep it in-universe.)
Greetings, fellow councilmen, women, symbiotes, hermaphrodites, xenomorphs, and biodroids. If I have left anyone out, I do apologize. Whether it be my androgynous origins or the galactic standard languages rather narrow vocabulary, it is not done to invite feelings of any kind.
This meeting is almost to a conclusion. Delegates Ghorv and slappymcgee did a wonderful job here today, let us applaud them. There are a few things I do have to hit on before we can conclude. Don't fret, it will only take a few minutes..you will be at a food shuttle and then back to a transport unit, able to make it home in time for the Simpsons.
It is true that the vampire king of tsintah has a Uval'an dreadnought. He has already devastated a reykian colony world. We do need to do something. And that fleet of wendigos...it is looking like they might be able to organize. They are assimilating planets at an alarming rate. Again, we need to do something.
The problem is, cryptids are offshoots of the human race. We need to get ahold of president Jenkins and urge him to either handle it or allow us to move further. Humans are terrifying, they have rules for war, and they may not appreciate us just handling these issues without permission. They do still consider these offshoots to be human, and because they aren't conscripted they are civilians. Everyone remembers the mik'lan conflict, I'm assuming that humans and their cryptids need to be handled in a dissimilar fashion to that monumental fuck up.
For those of you that are younger than a galactic standard decade, the mik'lan are a sentient flora species. Some of them learned to live underground, away from light, and ended up becoming mutated monsters. When the mik'lan developed ftl and entered the galactic stage, they were quickly adopted into the galactic council through diplomacy alone. The mik'lo, as they became known, didn't.
They weren't playing by the rules. Unfortunately, a qualm fleet decided to decimate the mik'lo colony world and the mik'lan took it as an attack on their own. Billions died due to that misunderstanding. Which is why we need the humans on our side with this one.
Now, knowing the self proclaimed president of earth, we will likely have his full support. He will probably insist upon us conscripting humans into the effort, and seeing what they are capable of, I highly advise we allow that. Not only because doing the opposite will probably result in billions more dying, but because having even a small amount of humans on the battlefield is an absolute fucking advantage.
However, many of you are not familiar with them. Here are, as the humans say, some bullet points on these insane predatory apes.
Nyroxians, felatians, and sulurians..be careful around humans. You all slightly resemble humans, yes. You do follow the basic bipedal body type. But you also resemble animals from their homeworld. "Foxes" "felines" and "lizards", respectively.
Now, semblances across the galaxy are fairly normal, and they come with their own nuances. For instance, hydraxins will not talk to durphinians because they resemble a creature on hydrax that used to feed upon them. This isn't like that.
Humans have this thing called a "fetish". They can sexualize almost anything. They have a thing called "rule 34"...it basically means that if something exists, humans will find a way to have sex with it. You are no exception.
Anarthakians ...you should probably avoid humans at all costs. You have the most developed esp in the galaxy. Unless you have found out how to "shut it off", it's best you keep your distance. I knew a young Anarth named Gyrad, he spent 25 minutes as an envoy to the human embassy on Pluutaak. He is now in an asylum, eating his excrement and repeating "that's not what tentacles are for".
If your race is shorter than a meter, and you may encounter humans, make sure you are either clothed or armed. Humans are predatory, and most of them are "foodies". They derive pleasure from eating new things. Don't let them think you aren't sapient. They won't eat anything intelligent. Make sure that it's obvious. If you are armed, don't attack them. Show them that you are capable of making or using weaponry. The human will instantly become enamored with your firearms. Be prepared for a lengthy conversation, a link to a thing called "Facebook", and highly likely a matching tattoo. Everyone in the room with a "2a" tattoo raise your hand please.
See? Now you know.
As for human weaponry...humans have a lot of it. I can't explain it all here, but here is a basic breakdown of what you are likely to encounter.
Kinetic weapons. These are usually pistols or rifles. There is a tiny explosion that launches a metallic or ceramic projectile. While primitive, they can still be incredibly destructive. Anyone without natural armor can easily be dropped by these. They can get through most energy-based shielding as well. The noise they make is enough to force some species into a retreat. There are also ship-mounted versions, these can take out a Drexian dreadnought with little effort.
While humans never developed ftl technology in favor of portal tech, they do utilize warships for protection of their homeworld now. They also sell these weapon systems, the demand is higher than you would think.
Contrary to popular belief, they do have energy weapons. The first being the rail or the Gauss guns. These use electromagnetic pulses to launch a metal projectile. Some of these projectiles are capable of near-light speed. They can punch a hole in a planet. Yes, for no reason other than "because it's cool", they have a semi-automatic rifle with this capability. If you are punctured by one of these, use your last moments to take solace in the fact that everyone and everything directly behind you, for a distance of roughly 3 light years, is also destroyed, including moons.
They do have plasma weapons. The standard type we all favor are not popular. Humans don't like the lack of penetration...
Judging by the laughs, there must be a few humans in the audience.
Getting back to it, the plasma weapons they do have lack the overall heat of ours, but have more penetrating force. (Pauses) They resemble a kinetic silencer, in that they attach to the barrel of a kinetic weapon. A high energy arc inside of the device converts the kinetic round into a plasmoid, largely keeping its velocity intact. While devastating to an organic life form, these were intended to combat mechanical life forms. Humans have an intense fear of robots and AI.
Now, as far as energy shields go, humans don't utilize them on the few ships they do have. They simply teleport the projectile away from the ship, usually right back at whoever fired it.
Yes, the legendary portal tech. All humans have a "spell drive" implanted onto their spines. They are a nanite neural network attached to a fungal quantum computational device. They allow humans to open holes in the fabric of reality itself. Most humans can only use them to access a parallel universe known as the backrooms. Some have the ability to send entire stars into other systems. These chips apparently give every human random abilities as well, something humans call "magic", not to be confused with "magick", some humans have that as well. Mostly the cryptids known as "elves".
Magic abilities include, but are in no way limited to, enhanced melee tactics, creating quasi-living beings seemingly from nothing, elemental manipulation, weather manipulation, necromancy, and at least one of them is capable of reorganizing the atoms in a target into a completely different object. Most humans have one or two of these abilities, but their president and his bodyguard Kamiko have at least 30 distinct abilities that we have documented.
Nuclear and antimatter bombs. Self-explanatory. These destroy everything within their blast radius, which varies greatly from a block to a solar system. Luckily, most energy shielding can block these somewhat. In the case of nukes, if they hit your ship with one, get out of the area immediately, as there can be an emp effect following the blast. These are usually "piggy-backed" to take advantage of this. The antimatter bombs offer no such advantage. You just stop being where you are. These are banned by their own Geneva convention, but as you know those rules only exist as a reason to allow them to justify atrocities when another species unknowingly breaks those rules.
The "non-lethal disruptor". This is a weapon that reduces the target to individual atoms, and then reorganizes them back into whatever they were. They have a time setting, and some have a location as well. You will be destroyed, and probably reorganized in a brig cell. Or the void. Sometimes right over a lava flow. Usually, it's intention is to disable a combatant temporarily, they reappear minutes after the battle has been lost.
They also have a multitude of melee weapons: swords, clubs, spears, nunchaku, and large sticks. Assume that any human weilding one is proficient with it. Also assume that they are a sociopath, as humans have zero need to actually engage in combat with anyone anymore.
Lastly, all humans have this thing known as "Jerry rigging" or "redneck engineering". If anything breaks on your ship, and if the only person you have to repair it is human, know that it won't be up to code. They will get it functional with whatever garbage is within reach. For a while it will function, probably past its intended capacity. Just use that extra speed to get to a base or federation planet asap, as it will eventually explode catastrophically...this is usually followed by a human saying "oops".
Yes. Oops. I'll leave you with that. If a human says that word, vacate the area immediately. You have been warned.

https://discord.com/channels/940740041565687828/1174735705868619858
I posted it all in there with some clip examples. Im not re-editing it for reddit.
​

1. (if questions for now, ask in other cementos thread and ill answer) (if vidoes wont play, download it. Im not re-doing it. It seems it takes a long time to buffer since its 1080p) Ill try to add videos with examples. I need to find a decent free software though. Theres will be a combo section, alpha beta gamma, reviving, movment, matchups. (edited)
2. [10:42 AM]Ill add details and possibly edit paragraphs so everything is in order. Ill give the basic need to knows for now though
3. [10:46 AM]Ill try to credit any info I got as well J = jab J1= jab1 J2= jab 2 etc.. A = alpha B = beta G = gamma https://youtu.be/Pg3IcGMPm-Y?si=y2xbx6ew-gHfg0gO&t=53 Microwalk allows you to cancel end lag of combo. He shows cementos combos. Air J - alpha J-J-J-J-alpha J12- J12- alpha Gamma - alpha Gamma-beta (if real close) (edited)YouTubeNarnyMy Hero Ultra Rumble ADVANCED COMBO GUIDE📷
4. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 10:50 AM Max order Alpha Gamma Beta Generally. I prefer holding onto 1 or 2 level cards if im looting incase I get an Alpha scrap, for example, and I can now use it on something else. Sometimes I like beta lvl 4 before gamma max depending on the game state. Gamma max = more reliable damage but Beta lvl 2 = 2 charges verses one, so reload speed will be way better. I beta lvl 4 for defence purposes. Vs ida for example, 2 betas is WAY better than a gamma max.
5. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 11:16 AM When reviving people, I like to alpha them to get them high ground. Also when im nearer and its safer, I like to alpha alpha rez manually. Can add gamma and beta for more saftey. People like to jump in the box to attack so thats why i like spcial action rezzing with alphas. Sometimes you cant do that and just have to alpha opponents off. RARELY do I trap them with a gamma to seal the lid. If I can handle opponents, I can stall them off longer while they either try to break through or focus me whilst my team pots up. You can also try to spawn an alpha below yourteamate so they rise up themselfs. If they are immobile i suggest that. Sucks you cant practice rezzing in training cause you will kill them trying to save them sometimes. owell (edited)
6. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 11:26 AM Alpha segment: You NEED to know how to max alpha. WHEN your pillar is crumbling, ANY pillar that spawns in that time will be your new max limit -1. (-1 because the crumlbinb pillar) (edited)
7. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 12:06 PM alpha limit increasing (edited)
8. [12:06 PM](*not sorry bout music, didnt know it records) (edited)
9. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 12:15 PM Cementos is good at disrupting. His abilites block combos and projectiles and hitstun them for a while. This means you can target your opponent and your teammates opponet whilst your opponent is still in hitstun and/or in the air. When a teammate is running, protect your teammate with the alphas or disrupt opponent. If you see ida comboin, stop them. If multiple opponents, protecting them with the alphas is more reliable. They SHOULD be running while looking behind, but sometimes they cant with moves. Put an alpha in front of them too so they can know where the cover is while escaping. Direct hits with alpha are separate damage from the pillar. When you use alpha, you want to aim at through foot for direct damage + spawn. If they are agains the wall then you can aim at them since the alpha goes through them towards the wall, then spawns pilar
10. [12:17 PM]Alphas hit them directionally relative to where they spawn. Just test it out. Its obvious on where they go for the most part. Knowing this, you can set yourself up for a HORIZONTAL alpha combo. (note: you can do something similar in city. I think its 4 hits till they get a recovery frame) (edited)
11. [12:17 PM]
12. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 12:43 PM Place holder : Incase I need to add more alpha tech ima edit this
13. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 1:04 PM (if questions for now, ask in other thread and ill answer)
14. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 2:45 PM BETA segment: You can make different shapes with beta: , , _ , T , and a zig zag shape for higher level beta. You do this by holding the direction you want it to extent. It goes straight by default I beleive. But if you hold left, it will go left until you hold up, it will go up until you hold left, etc. The thick wall , , is hard to time. The benefit is if comes out fast still and wider hitbox but it is shorter in length. The U wall, _ is slightly slower but since the walls have a wider hotbox than what it appears, you are basically trippling the hitbox area as opposed to the single wall since no one can fit in between the space if the U wall. (Will post videos when home) T walls are also better for hitting sine it comes out quickly to the side as well. When someone is coming for you is when you use beta. Ida for example, his alpha tracks, so if you T or U wall, he will most likely run into it. Also beta is good for gamma since you can land it at a height that will be more likely to hit opponents vs aiming gamma at ground. in the heat if battle, T walls are better for landing Gamma hits since you can aim at the end of the wall or the side. Beta is good for cover as well, add a gamma to the top and u got many options covered. Also for cits it's good for blocking entrances. You can be inside a room and single T or even U wall an entrance. It's rare and only works on noobs who don't areal , but falling opponents from alpha,you can land beta. I have to test a combo, but I seen a post of someone landing gama alpha beta. You have to be close enough for it to be a true combo and have elevation ofc. u/Para gave me the knowledge that if you are looking up when beta spawns , it will spawn under your feet and allow you to stand on it during the spawn. This is only for lvl 3 beta and below. (edited)
15. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 6:07 PM
16. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 6:27 PM (deleted rest of post to order it better)
17. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 6:46 PM It works on all alphas with flat elevation besides 9. You gan beta on all of them, but the margin of error is tiny for smaller alphas since you need as much space as you can get to be able to beta (tested it and they can dodge often. You need perfect spacing: close as you can be to them to land beta) (edited)
18. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 6:54 PM Now there are some parts you cant beta unless you are spaced far back enough. I aint testing all of them but I noticed it here the other day
19. [6:55 PM]
20. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 7:37 PM GAMMA segment: I mentioned how you can use gamma with T shape beta walls for to have a better than chance of landing since gamma at torso level covers more options as opposed ro gamma on flat ground. Maxing gamma 2nd is good since max gamma you can't simply jump over it when it spawns. bigger hitbox and size. Gamma alpha combo is your bread and butter. Using it for safety reasons is good too. The secret gamma tech is if well placed, you can trap someone in place. This really only works in city. (Need to test more spots) Between buildings it works, and under the stairs in typhoon works as well. I'll show some spots but the higher lvl gamma you have, the more you adjust your aim vs lower gamma. I know it works for gamma 1-8 but gamma 9 is so big I don't think it'll work in stairs. I'll test. If you test it yourself, you can't be idle when it spawns ⁠short-clips⁠Cementoss gamma trap ⁠short-clips⁠cementoss trap in action
21. [7:37 PM]0:15/0:15
22. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 7:50 PM MOVEMENT segment: credits again to u/Parafor letting me know: Before you land, you can jab for more horizontal movement. Credit to u/sleepi ⁠It is faster to run and jump th… I tested with cem and it's roughly the same (wasn't exact measuring) It is only slower because of the inital start up of the first pillar. Besides that, its within .3 seconds of margin vs running or run dashing. (I mesaured from the start to the dome, just like the above clip) Now, what you can do is alpha yourself up, dash to fall down, melee move for horizontal movement, and alpha yourself up again. Its about the same speed as running. The horizontal movement helps you use less alphas. The speed is still roughly the same between all versions and all alphas. (edited)
23. [7:51 PM]0:21/0:210:00
24. [7:54 PM]Horizontaly, alpha 9 pushes you the same speed so using it horizontally is funny but not optimal usually. The first can break and then you cant stack (edited)
25. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 8:01 PM MATCHUP:
26. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 8:11 PM There wont be much here for now. Ill give a general bit. Anyone vertically imobile you just tower and pelt below. Even semi mobile like kirishima. Anyone that is mobile, you dont want to only stay on top of tower usually. Anyone that can get in the air; you are just a sitting duck to many mobile champs if your ontop of your perch. You can gamma pillar, then beta to make a protection cover. If they are higher than you, you can gamma again to wall off top or just get off pillar. Some people you can stay up there and just try to trade/fight and some you cant. Froppy is one of those you cant. Her beta is shorter than you think. her air B, dodge to sides. Her ground B, dodge backords. Mainly that. And when you are in the air and hear her coming, gamma to block her for a second or simply get off. Most the time its too late to gamma so you got to actually see her to not waste it. Watch out for super armor moves as well. Its best to just pillar into the way they are going vs landing it on them. Characters have similarities. I wont go into detail on all of them so just read them all if there isnt much detail and apply the same principle uraka is similar. Her spit to win is just too big, either get off OR spam alpha up when she is closer. Usually they are prepared to spin and not alpha again. Ida. O ida. Needs more testing and im finna do that. Spacing and being on the ground works out better. Betta T or U is good since his tracking will run into it. If in air, you CAN time / spam alphas up. you need 2 alphas. He will alpha right into them and knock him back, then he will try again. You can alpha twice and do it again. It only works if you are a decent amount higher. Often you trade though. After testing, I feel being on the ground is generally better and just alphing him or bewettn him and youish. (edited)
27. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 9:29 PM Kirishima - his moves might not break the wall, but the hitbox goes through them so stay back. He can beta up towards you so you have to not stop moving or throwing moves out.
28. [9:30 PM]Mount lady : same as above. If she is in giant form you can damage her than most since you can direct hit and spawn pillar, but then you annoyed her and she is is going to crush you. So far running has never been the answer so i will try just fighting her unelss i can go inside a building or such.
29. [9:32 PM]Aizawa : he is just a lesser version of kirishima and uraka. You can alpha up safely for the most part since he stalls once he uses is grapple, giving you more time to pillar up
30. [9:33 PM]Bakugo : He can peirce through walls 📷 but he can only perice through alpha or beta once. Another alpha or beta will stop it. Gamma does nothing to stop it.
31. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 9:37 PM Allmight : his beta hitbox can go through your beta and has super armor. Alpha in bewteen.
32. [9:39 PM]Todaroki: his ice defense wall can go through your beta (maybe alpha too) You can stop his ice pathing and knock him out as well (edited)
33. [9:40 PM]Deku: refer to aizawa mainly
34. [9:41 PM]Dabi: ez. Gamma can go through walls
35. [9:42 PM]Shigaraki: try to not spam alphas onto eachother since he can destory. You only need one. floor is lava
36. [9:42 PM]kendo + denki : stay away gg
37. [9:43 PM]compress: no 1 plays him
38. [9:44 PM]Ibara: cementos stops her abilies, but she is annoying to face from range so just dont if you can. Alpha gamma tower is good to peek-a-boo her (edited)
39. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 9:46 PM momo: Her sheild stops you. Block her gamma. Her alpha mad annoying to stay outa range for that. Toga: her beta isnt super armor so you can stop it. The worse part of toga is her gamma. A good one will save it to rez people often. They never play cementos well though
40. 📷Kaje the Animal📷OP — Today at 10:23 PM MISCELLANEOUS:
41. [10:24 PM]if you play cem ill tell you 1 or 2 tricks but if everyone knows it, then its not so effective. so dm if u wana know. its very very minor.
42. [10:25 PM]I might make a synergy list. 3 revives always good. Froppy deku prolly best cause mobile (for revives and can use your pillar and save you more often)
43. [10:26 PM]Playing with Momo is hardest casue you just stop her gamma from hitting people often
44. [10:26 PM]Somewhat same with compress
45. [10:27 PM]The rest is whatever. The better the charater tier then the better you are with them in the solo rank life
46. [10:28 PM]people who are mobile are best cause you dont HAVE to fight with them as they can run away possibly

Author’s note: You have to start somewhere, and for Kayrux the start is the fundamentals. Time to revisit the workshop and take the first step. Enjoy!
[First][Prev][Next]
Is it wasteful to use your magical powers to create a controlled cooling rune system specifically to chill an entire barrel of beer? Because I did just that last night, and it seemed to be a smash hit with the family. Even mom and Mibata enjoyed it, and neither of them are fond of alcohol. Looks like building a refrigerator just went up on my list of things to build, because I was technically just draining the heat from the beer, and almost gave myself a heat stroke.
Luckily beer here isn’t very potent when it comes to the buzz you can get from it, meaning that nobody was hungover on their way to work. I let everybody else go ahead of me so I could rummage through the things I had purchased on our shopping trip. I found what I was after at the bottom of the crate: A set of magnifying lenses stored in a brass case. I tucked the case in my bag, careful not to skewer it on the throwing knives that Mibata had left in there, and set out to the workshop.
Nothing of interest happened on the way, though I did catch a glimpse of one of those eyes following after a cloaked figure that was obviously not a kobold in size. Guess they are keeping an eye on suspicious individuals, myself included. The inside of the workshop was the same noisy cacophony of hammers, drills, and hissing steam valves as it always was. I knew where my lab was going to be, but I thought I might check in on the repair crew to see how they were doing.
That’s odd, there’s three red kobolds here, and they’re all full sized. I was just outside of the area when Stecks the riveter pointed at me, prompting all three of the reds to look at me with those matching green eyes. The tallest of the three locked eyes, then broke into a sprint towards me. I barely had time to brace myself as the recognition and bodily impact hit me. Damn girl, how’d you grow so fast?
“Kayroo, You’re back! I miss you so much, big sister Roo! “
Her arms were like a vice on my ribs, forcing the air out of my lungs. What the hell, why are you so strong? I barely managed to pry her arms away after returning the hug, but I was still reeling from the force applied to my insides, organic and mental. She’s so large now that she almost reaches my chin, and now I’m her big sister too? I shot Dobo a confused look as he approached laughing.
“Karyux getting what she deserved. Vimna been asking for you every day, then when told you not here she ask everyone about words. Smart girl probably scare her mother when she return. Growing so big as well, bigger than I thought.”
No kidding, she doubled in height in just a week. I can imagine how much she must have been shedding, eating, and sleeping during that time. I wrote a message for her, and was surprised at how quickly she read it.
“It’s great to see you again Vimna. How are you? ”
She smiled and hopped up and down a few times.
“Good! Very good! You’re back, and you have your own area! Rash told us your inventor place over here, you be here close to us. Look it!”
She gave Vynrashu a nickname as well, so she settled on Rash? I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or not by calling him a rash, but I’ll assume that she doesn’t know any better. I couldn’t give her a reply before my hands were locked with hers as she pulled me towards a cleared area nearby.
The space was more than I had anticipated being both larger and more isolated than I assumed, perhaps around the size of a large garage. Half of the area was carved into the wall, allowing the rock to transition and above to work together to make a roof over the space. The left side of the area was all storage shelves, on which were the things I had asked to be delivered there from the market. The right side of the area was a set of three tables: one wooden, two copper, and each accompanied by a stool. A sort of privacy cage had been made around the space with struts and panels, leaving only a single entrance to the space that was about ten feet wide.
A note sat on the wooden table, pinned in place by a single black rock.
“Kayrux. I might have been a little misleading about your workshop. These tables were in storage and weren’t being used, so I went ahead and moved them for you. Your place doesn’t have a boiler or steam valve yet, but that Zokkos should be able to hook either up for you if you’re nice and have the parts. I’m expecting you to shake things up around here in a big way. Don’t worry about thanking me, just get to business for me. You're welcome.”
I noticed that there was something else written on the back of the note as well.
“The rock is special. Your job is to find out why. Experiment and figure out how it works. Bet you can’t. HAHA.”
I can’t get a read on this guy. One minute he’s cocky, the next he’s sleazy, then he’s nice for some reason, and now he’s just irritating. I folded the note up and tucked it into my bag right as a very hyper kobold preteen jumped onto the table and spun around excitedly.
"This place huge! What you make here? Oh, dad buy me book and I read it all! Said I was smartest hatchling in world! That not true, Roo smartest ever, I know it. Whoah, a hole over there. Maybe has bug in it."
I couldn't even reply to her excitement babble before she was poking her fingers into a crack in the far wall. Everything she had said made my smile wider, and now I could feel that dopey grin on my face straining in the muscles in my cheeks. She was a handful alright, and I'm sure that she must have been doing everything in her power to impress me. Congrats kid, you've shattered my expectations three times over in the span of ten minutes. We'll see what you can manage in a week.
…
Things in the workshop were hectic for a number of reasons. The first problem came from acquiring the aid of our resident plumber. Zokkos spent a short time every day getting the network of pipes to reach every corner and midpoint of the room, and during that time would avoid being in my proximity or speak directly to me. I had assumed that it was just because they were shy, but every time I looked at them I saw some kind of sadness and worry on them, and some degree of shame. Had I insulted Zokkos somehow?
The second issue was establishing a measurement system for my tools and mathematics. In the absence of the metric and imperial system, I had to make a new and entirely unique valuing device. The crude wrenches and screws here had only one size, which was obviously just the size of a coin, but were not all the same size.
This was a huge hazard, and I would not stand it. Therefore, I created my own system based on the one thing I had a way of quantifying to the smallest possible size: mana. It was an arduous process, but through repeated trials to assess if it were possible, I was finally able to stabilize a single speck of mana that I forced to remain motionless midair. By reconfiguring the sensor rune to act as a counter for the length held, and by making the collector rune operate through a series of incredibly narrow limiters, I could create a wire of mana that was exactly one speck thick and one million bits long. I was basically counting molecules in a straight line, but the satisfaction of creating the perfect measurement system that had a finite smallest point was sheer and utter bliss. I shall call this system "Omes", for one-million-energy-string. From there it went to “Obes” and “Otes” for the billions and trillions. My best guesstimate is that five Otes is close to a centimeter.
Now that I had a finite system that could be recreated with just a handful of runes, I set about using the wooden block to make numbered squares that each showed a cubic values of Otes. I couldn't manage anything smaller than four, but I had them in a line going up to twenty. Using the parchment and ink I was able to make a note explaining what the cubes were and how the system worked, in case I passed this system along to anyone else. Next I need to cast these in something sturdier than wood so I can make some wrenches for each size.
The third challenge that presented itself was my lack of raw materials. My carloads of ore weren't delivered until the end of the week, so I couldn't make use of them. Perhaps this was a good thing, since it took me that long to get a proper crucible built. I didn't need the whole forge setup, since I had already gotten Humey to offer* his inferno powers to be my furnace. All I did was make some molds of the different sized cubes and a few measured ingots. With those at my disposal, I would have an accurate system of weight and volume in addition to length.
I was starting to feel like a scientist for a while as I set the foundation of the Omes measurement system. Sure, I was just copying what my predecessors from Earth had done, but in this world I might be the first to make a system that was so precisely measured. I could take pride in this fact.
Finally there was the fourth problem that was the black stone. In a physic sense it was unremarkable, just a rough ball of black rock that seemed like it was made from lava. On the magic side, this thing was a puzzle unlike anything I had encountered. The stone would draw in mana from the air, hold it for a moment, then the mana would vanish. It took me a while to understand what I was seeing, but there really was no trace of that drifting energy once it had entered the stone for enough time.
My first test was to compare the weight of the stone before and after taking in mana. The lead weights that came with my scale had no markings to say what they were valued at, so I just made up that there was a one, a five, and a ten size, and I had plenty of each. The stone was about a nine on the lead scale before taking in any more mana. I made a droplet of a million mana, an Omed, if you will, and let it drift into the stone. Three seconds passed, and the mana had all vanished. I tested it on the scale and found that the weight had gone up by one.
Next I tested to see what would happen if I put mana in directly from my body. I used a system of limiters, a sensor, and a collector to create another Omed in my mana line that would be released directly into the object. Once again, the rock absorbed it, and the weight went up by one.
My next test was to see if I could draw any mana out. The sensor rune told me that there wasn't any mana in the stone, but I knew that it had to have gone somewhere. My new system would work in the opposite fashion, and would pull an Omed from the object and store it in a collector. The array came to life, but nothing came from the target.
Interestingly, the stone never changed size. I had made myself a set of calipers using a scale of deca-Obes, which was my system's parallel to micrometers, and measured that the object was not changing in size at all. Somehow this thing was gaining weight without changing size, which only angered me when it reached twenty on the lead scale.
I spent almost the entire second half of the week trying to understand what this thing was and what it was doing. Nobody I asked about it had any information, and I wasn't going to back down from a challenge set forth by my boss. It was the last day of the week, and I was studying the rock with my magnifying lenses in an attempt to witness the changes that might be occurring on a visual level. I was hunched over my worktable when I felt a hand tap at my shoulder. It was Zokkos, and they had just finished putting in the last pipe. A look of genuine fear crossed their face as they saw that they had interrupted my rock studying.
"Many apologies, not meant to bother. Just needed to say that pipes are all done. Won't bother again, promise."
Why was Zokkos so worried about offending me? I reached out a hand in a friendly gesture, only to have them back away fearfully. I was so confused, because as far as I could remember I hadn't done anything against them, at least not willingly.
Right when he was needed most, Dobo came into view and noticed the situation. He rushed over and got between the two of us.
"Is okay Zokkos, Kayrux not bad. Look, she just trying shake hand. Friendly gesture. Right Karux?"
I shook my head to confirm his words. Zokkos blinked slowly a few times before shakily reaching out and taking my hand. They were shaking slightly, and I couldn't help but cock my head to Dobo in hopes of an explanation. He looked at me with an equally confused look.
"One moment, Kayrux not know of half-scales?"
I shook my head, completely unaware of the term or its meaning.
"Sometimes egg laid on moon-fall is cursed. Zokkos hatch from moon-fall egg. People not tell if Zokkos male or female, sometimes confuses them. Zokkos treated badly before, person that hated half-scales. Dobo been friend of Zokkos long time, sad for Zokkos, protect Zokkos. Should have protect before, too late to help then. Zokkos not want be hurt again."
I was appalled by the idea of wounding someone over something so trivial. No matter what world, there always has to be some bastard that hurt others to justify their narrow minded world view. I was midway through drafting a reply when I remembered that neither would be able to read it. Damn it, there has to be some way to convey my thoughts.
"Go ahead Kayrux, I speak for you."
I had to do a double take at what Dobo said. He gave me a reassuring smile and nodded for me to write.
"You teach my sweetest to write, would be dumb of Dobo not try and keep up. She teach me, same as you teach her."
Vimna, you really are the best little sister. I finished writing and turned the slate for both of them to see, and Dobo took a moment to read it over before relaying it as best as his vocabulary could.
"Kayrux say she also been hurt by someone because of being cursed. She lose her voice and nearly die, but still living. Your pain understood, shared, and she wants you know that she would never hurt any friends. She not know before, and sorry she scare you."
Zokkos no longer stood behind Dobo, and was now holding their breath within arms reach.
"You lose your voice…that is such awfulness, but you keep strong somehow. We are same, both hurt by bad people, but you not afraid like me. I misjudge you. You not need be sorry, I make mistake."
Dobo translated my reply again, though this time he was hoarse as he tried to hold back tears.
"She…she say she forgive you. Want thank you. Be friends. Dobo sorry, just happy for Zokkos."
It's alright buddy, there weren't any more words I needed said anyways. Zokkos had already wrapped their arms around me, and I was more than willing to hold them back. This would have been a much more emotional moment for me if Dobo wasn't bawling his eyes out a few feet away, and if Vimna didn't rush over to ask what was going on. Still, I was glad I hadn't done anything to Zokkos, and this was just a misunderstanding.
Click. There it goes again, the feeling that something has changed. Something I did just changed fate again, and the only confirmation that I got was the subtle dopamine high it gave me. A pattern was emerging with these changes in destiny, as each one happened when I made the effort to reach out to them, then afterwards I would feel a strong connection with them. It may be a shot in the dark, but maybe I am somehow tying them to my fate. Like Death said, I was given the power to guide others to the path, but what did they mean, really?
Regardless, it still felt right to help others when they were in need. It was something nobody else had ever done for me on Earth, but here it was a daily occurrence both for myself and for others. Compared to the looming threat of conspiracies and war, showing compassion was by far more manageable and infinitely greater in rewards.
Our embrace was cut off by the screech of the end of week whistle. Zokkos' fear and apprehension towards me had vanished completely, now there was an admiration flickering behind those eyes.
I grabbed the black stone from the table before we joined the line, and on the way I had an epiphany: I was creating a found family scenario. This was entirely bizarre because I knew for a fact that three of the four members already had a family. Yikes, holiday dinners are going to become my worst nightmare.
[First][Prev][Next] [RoyalRoad]
Second Author’s Note: Zokkos has Tetragametic chimerism). As the author I decided that Kayrux would not have this knowledge, therefore it is not explicitly stated by her. You may have also noticed that Kayrux does not bring up the subject of Zokkos’ sex. This is intentional. Kayrux is a kind and courteous individual, and knows better than to stick her nose into people’s personal business.

Losing is fun!

"In the year 1050, the dwarven civilization of Kinmelbil, "The Oaken Tomes", exhausted the last of its mines. Driven by lust for gold and rumors of the priceless and all but mythical metal adamantine, a team of seven colonists was dispatched to build a new home for the dwarves of Kinmelbil in the Smooth Points of Pride. The first year of diaries from the ill-fated foreman of the mine were recovered, giving some hint as to the beginnings of the fortress that once stood there, if not its mysterious and presumably gruesome fate..."

If you spend any time in strategy or sandbox/base-building video game spaces, there’s a good chance you may have heard the name Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress is... something. Explaining it to my friends, even ones who play video games themselves, often leaves me at a loss for words, because it's less of a ‘game’ and more of a ‘reality simulator' or ‘Minecraft meets SimCity 2000.’ It sort of defies explanation. At its surface level, Dwarf Fortress is a 2d colony management game, in which you send out a group of Dwarfs to build a new Fortress, surviving the elements and fighting off threats from without and within while acquiring vast wealth and digging ever deeper until your greed and hubris ultimately befalls you or your cats all die of alcohol poisoning.
But underneath that are vast, deep, and unfathomably complex layers of simulation for nearly every part of the game. Rather than simple HP bars, entities have full-on skeletal, nervous, and organ systems that take damage (with cuts, burns, broken bones, etc. all having different effects) and require specifically-trained medical professionals to properly operate on (God help you if they’re not trained). Combat is a simulation of moves and countermoves that impact in various ways depending on weapons, armor, skills, etc. which can lead to things like a Bronze Colossus’ fist bouncing off a kitten’s skull or a Giant being violently shaken around by a goose (I said deep, not realistic). And above all else, Dwarfs have unique personalities, memories, and mental health which affects their behavior. Because unlike something like SimCity where citizens are just nebulous numbers, Dwarfs are individual entities who act autonomously- you can queue up work orders for the fortress but when and how your Dwarfs go about fulfilling them is largely beyond your control. You can order a Dwarf to build something, but if they need food or drink or there's a party happening somewhere they’ll do that first. If a Dwarf makes an engraving on a wall, it can be an engraving of something they’ve seen before, such as a priceless artifact they created or a significant historic event they took part in or their friends being gored by Elephants. And if enough negative thoughts and trauma piles up, Dwarfs can behave erratically, ranging from wandering around in a depressed state to outright committing hamburger time to, most hilariously, throwing a tantrum and assaulting other Dwarfs, which can lead to those Dwarfs throwing a tantrum and assaulting more Dwarfs... you get the idea. Nothing a simple Puppy Fountain can't fix (pay no attention to the cropped furry porn avatar).

8: This is a pile of dead dwarves, an Elephant, and a cloud of Miasma. Those are the three most prevalent features in Boatmurdered.

These overlapping layers of mechanics makes for an incredibly deep and complicated game with a nearly infinite amount of possible outcomes. Unintended interactions and ‘bugs as features’ are almost a key component of the game, and no Dwarf Fortress story embodies this more than the Shakespearean tragedy of the accursed Fortress of Koganusân. A saga that sounds like a first-time dungeon master's hastily written play session backstory, a fantasy epic so utterly insane that its almost impossible to believe that it came about not from scripted events or instant player choices, but as a natural progression of the game itself and the long-term consequences of those responsible for the fortress' downfall.
Welcome to fucking Boatmurdered!

Years 1-4: The Seed is Planted

"I take a look at the maps, and sure enough, this outpost is stuck out in the middle of nowhere, smack in the Smooth Points of Pride. "Boatmurdered" they call it, a name which doesn't bode well for much of fucking anything."

This is a comprehensive archive of the full Boatmurdered playthrough, all written in-universe and in-character by those who took part, complete with screenshots in all their ASCII-graphics glory. I’ll be doing a year-by-year summary of the major events (and the sheer amount of random Dwarf deaths and general chaos), but if you want the full story in all its comically horrifying detail then read the above link.
So the story of Boatmurdered begins on the SomethingAwful forums circa 2007. It began as a simple succession game- participants would be given one in-game year to run the fortress as they saw fit, beginning and ending at the start of each spring, then save the game and send the save file to the next ruler. The only real rule was that if you blatantly sabotaged the fort to complete unplayability they’d roll back to an earlier save, but you were otherwise under no obligation to respect the work of previous rulers or make things easy for your successor.
All quotes with names attached are excerpts from the original forum thread, the rest are ‘in character’ by the current madman ruler.
A quick note about the name: names in Dwarf Fortress function much like messages in Dark Souls. You can't simply type whatever you want, instead there's predefined phrase structures that are populated from a rudimentary vocabulary of Dwarfen words, so the name Koganusân literally means Boatmurdered (Boatmurdered had nothing to do with boats and indeed there are no boats in Dwarf Fortress at all, but the second word will be quite relevant). I'm not sure if this was intentionally picked or if they just repeatedly hit the randomizer and went with the first morbid-sounding name they landed on.
The fortress was first founded by TouretteDog (remember, SomethingAwful), and he immediately started laying the groundwork, setting up item stockpiles and workshops outside, chopping trees, gathering food, and digging for a water source, while noticing the ominously large number of Elephants who hassle any Dwarfs (and trader caravans) who wander too close. He gets some rudimentary defense with trained dogs and cage traps, and not a moment too soon because that winter they got raided by monkeys, one of many repeat issues for the fortress, who assaulted Dwarfs and stole food before being killed by the dogs:

A few more war dogs ran out and attacked. I have to say I'm slightly terrified by them. One of the bitches actually gave birth while she was attacking, and her puppies joined in on the carnage. At the end of the day, the three mandrills were dead, and they took one war dog with them and injured another one and a puppy. The poor dog's in sad shape. He keeps trying to find the dwarf who trained him, and then passing out. A few minutes later, he'll wake up, take another few steps, and pass out again. I'm tempted to have him put out of his misery by the butcher, but nobody will touch him and seems a sad way to treat someone who fought off the mandrills. The puppy is still running around with half his chest missing. Makes it damn disturbing when he humps your leg, I'll tell you that.

Thus ended his tenure, and Mariguana took over in Year 2. His reign was relatively uneventful, a Carpenter took a nap on a bridge, fell into a river, and drowned, more monkeys stole from the unsecured stockpiles outside the fortress and later dismembered another Dwarf, snakemen spawned from an underground river and mauled a stonemason who became so depressed he starved to death. He builds some lever mechanisms, one to retract the drawbridge in case of a siege and one to drain the moat- a bit of a running problem in Boatmurdered is administrators putting levers everywhere and future rulers not knowing what they do, leading to hilarity. Two waves of immigrants come under his administration, forcing them to expand the fortress and making it's layout more confusing.
Keyboard Fox took charge of Year 3. He expands the fortress’ defense, making more weapons and traps, changing labor assignments for Dwarfs so everyone isn’t fishing all the time, expanding food production and finally building an actual metalworking forge instead of making everything out of rock and bone. Boatmurdered’s chronic Elephant problem began this year when a group of migrants appeared and were mauled by the local herd. The survivors ran for the safety of the fortress, luring them into cage traps where several were captured. Miners uncover a Chasm and a Magma River, so he sets about flooding the chasm with the magma to prevent any monsters from spawning out of it.

A note to my successors: Don't pull the switch near the chasm. It causes everything past it to die from magma.

By the end of his administration they’ve captured and even tamed several Elephants, had a few Elephant-related deaths, and after a metalsmith became possessed (when Dwarfs are possessed or have strange moods they’re attempting to create a legendary artifact), they couldn’t provide a workplace and materials so he went insane, stripped naked, and ran around screaming.
Year 4 was headed by Locus, who decreed that after each ruler retires they name a Dwarf in the fortress after themselves. He sets about establishing an actual military and expanding metal industry instead of hoping every attacker wanders into a cage trap. Another possessed Dwarf goes insane and commits hamburger time by drowning. Yet another Dwarf drowns in a river flood. Work progresses slowly though as most stockpiles and basic workshops are still outside from the first ruler, where workers are routinely attacked by Elephants when not being rained on constantly (PTSD from the rain is a thing in Dwarf Fortress). An Elephant is accidentally released from captivity and goes around attacking Dwarfs and crushing dogs to death.

I have a theory that once an elephant tastes dwarf blood, which surely is how this particular creature got her name, they cannot be tamed properly.

Eventually the rampaging Elephant is put down by war dogs, a couple Dwarfs, and a horse. And then another Dwarf wanders out into the fields and gets killed by another Elephant. Unsure of how to progress because of the fortress’ deteriorating organization and poor workflow, he builds more living quarters, and sets traps by the more valuable interior workshops to protect the skilled laborers. He ominously starts building a tomb complex for the fortress’ rulers, which would be yet another of Boatmurdered’s constant administrative problems, with future overseers wasting valuable time and resources on increasingly lavish tombs in an effort to one-up their predecessor’s death hole. He then leaves a list of projects for future rulers and an even more complicated fortress layout. Then another Dwarf gets possessed, can’t get the materials he wants, loses his mind and goes streaking until he dies of dehydration. Thus ended Locus’ reign, and the ‘boring’ part of Boatmurdered’s history, because if the insane naked dwarfs and Elephants weren’t enough already, shit’s going to go completely off the wall fast.

Year 5: The Great Elephant War

"I'll kill those elephants. I'll kill all those fucking elephants."

The rule of StarkRavingMad is considered to be when Boatmurdered really became Boatmurdered. His backstory as a tavernkeeper who got exiled to the cursed outpost after his old fortress struck gold and Deadwood-inspired profanity-laden tirades about Elephants, the appalling state of the fortress the previous overseers left it in, the population being gradually becoming more manic and depressed, and axe-crazy determination to kill all the Elephants pretty much sums up Boatmurdered quite well and his year wound up essentially being the catalyst of it's ensuing 10 year decay.

The previous Overseer must have had some sort of sick fucking fascination with them, because we have elephants everywhere. Elephants in cages, elephants in the halls, elephants shitting in the dining room, everywhere. I don't know what to do with them, I guess start butchering them and hope they make a good roast.

Immediately, SRM starts butchering the stray animals, moving all workshops and stockpiles inside, making more comfortable living quarters, reorganizing food production to put farms, kitchens, and food stockpiles near each other, and building a bridge across an outside river that had cut off trade caravans from reaching the fortress, trying to fix the bloat of the previous 4 overseers. Thanks to Dwarfs being too drunk, asleep, or busy hauling the random objects strewn about the Fortress, work orders are slow to be fulfilled. He orders the expanded dining hall to be decorated with engravings to improve fortress morale, Dwarfs carve art of Elephants and dead Dwarfs.
Then there was a major Elephant incident. A Dwarf was killed by Elephants. A bunch of other Dwarfs went outside to retrieve his body and possessions, only for them to get attacked by the Elephants as well. The Elephants chased them back to the Fortress, some of them making it past the cage traps and running rampant, killing Dwarfs en masse. This resulted in a feedback loop of the Elephants killing Dwarfs and starting to leave, then the Dwarfs would come to loot the bodies, capturing the Elephants attention again and getting them killed, which led to more Dwarfs coming to loot their bodies, etc, with the knock-on effect of Elephants improving their combat skills with each Dwarf killed, making them even more dangerous. Thus began the Great Elephant War. And during all this, a Goblin Thief attacks the fortress and gets crushed by a falling rock, adding to the pile of gore.

So the merchants arrive to see blood and vomit everywhere, us hauling corpses en masse to the graveyard, a couple rampaging elephants. WELCOME TO FUCKING BOATMURDERED! Hope you like miasma!

Several more Elephants throw their hat in the ring, one of them killing so many Dwarfs that it gets a full-on name and title. The militia is sent to put down the Elephants, but they prove too powerful and the soldiers all die. Unable to stop the cycle of Dwarf corpse looting, doors are installed in the hallway leading up to the main gate and locked to prevent anyone from leaving the fortress. The Elephants simply sit in the tunnel, blocking off Boatmurdered from the outside world. And then, a Goblin Army arrives, and instead of being attacked by the Elephants, join them in the siege.

The goblins just lazily took a few potshots at a stray cat still wandering around out front, and then they just stayed out in the Elephant Tunnel. I think they're starting their own little town in there, elephants and goblins living together in peace and harmony, joined only by burning hatred for dwarves.

StarkRavingMad begins Project Fuck The World, a channel leading from the magma river meant to flood the exterior and burn everything outside to death, but the project ultimately fails when miners strike an aquifer and flood the channel with water. He then enacts Project Get Me The Fuck Out of Boatmurdered, and leaves the place behind, besieged by an unholy alliance of goblins and elephants.

Year 6: The War Continues

"The recruits (minus all those drinking, eating, and sleeping) Let out a mighty shout and charge! For the glory of Boatmurdered! No one can fault their bravery. Only their results."

Bremen took charge of the beleaguered fortress next. He orders Dwarfs to begin carving fortifications in the walls so that they can fire outside with ranged weapons. Luckily, the Goblins get bored and leave. After building a Ballista (which will become very fucking relevant later), they successfully kill or drive off the Elephants outside, freeing them for the time being, and he begins making preparations for their inevitable return. A Dwarf makes a legendary bracelet engraved with an image of cheese to mark their triumph over the Elephants. A couple months later, the Elephants come back for round 2, before the cage traps can be reloaded and while the Dwarfs who are supposed to be manning the ballista are all busy drinking. He attempts to lock the doors, but due to a dead butterfly blocking the tile the game forces the door to remain open, beginning the death cycle again. Untrained Dwarfs using the ballista waste all available ammunition, and marksdwarfs run out of bolts. An attempt by the military (which was mostly random Dwarfs scrounged up and hastily equipped) is made to put down the rampaging elephants. See the above quote for the outcome.
In a desperate ploy to save Boatmurdered, one of the levers meant to secure the fortress in a siege is pulled. It floods a portion of the fortress with magma instead. Those trapped inside scrape together the materials to arm as many Dwarfs as possible with crossbows and kill the remaining Elephants, breaking the siege once again.

StarkRavingMad: One or two previous rulers died during my reign. I guess I should have documented that better, but it was kind of hard to keep track, what with the ground awash in dwarven blood and my panicked attempts not to permanently screw over the whole succession game.

Bremen: Most of them are dead, yes. I'll try and give more concrete info on survivors at the end of my turn.

Locus: Well at least we're resting peacefully in our tombs. In spirit. Probably underneath elephant remains, in the physical sense.

Bremen: I ran out of coffins. Then I ran out of designated graveyard space. Most of you are spending your eternal rest in the garbage dump.

The rest of Bremen’s administration is spent trying to clean up from the Elephant Siege. The military is rearmed, reorganized, and trained. New doors are installed. The huge amount of stray animals wandering the narrow corridors are causing traffic jams, so the corridors are expanded and many animals caged or slaughtered. Winter is anticlimactic, Bremen retires as ruler and becomes commander of their military.

Year 7: Fuck The World

"It is quite the typical Dwarven Stronghold, nothing seems to be out of the ordin---what the fuck is with this fortress? "

Sankis takes his turn next, and immediately restarts Project Fuck The World. The beginning of his rule is relatively calm, with Dwarfs dying at a normal rate and a few monkey raids, but no major goblin or elephant sieges. At this point the fortress’ population increases to 98. The max is 200, which can be reached within 5 years or so in a normal playthrough but Boatmurdered is anything but. The Fortress gets even bigger and more convoluted. By the end of summer, Project Fuck The World is completed, but a full test can’t be enacted as if the lava makes contact with the water canals, the ensuing steam cloud would flood the fortress and scald all the Dwarfs to death. Instead the fortress is flooded with miasma from all the rotting bodies strewn about. TouretteDog, founder of Boatmurdered, is killed by Elephants.
Towards the end of Winter and Sankis' reign, a miner accidentally breaches a major aqueduct, which begins flooding the entire exterior and threatens to spill into the main fortress. The miner drowns. In a desperate ploy to save Boatmurdered, the Fuck The World lever is pulled, releasing the flow of magma to the outside and evaporating all the water. All the Dwarfs and animals outside burn to death, but the fortress is saved. While decorating his future tomb, Sankis engraves an image of a dog burning to death and a dwarf screaming. The land outside is left a scorched, barren wasteland, but on the plus side, it does eliminate all the Elephants, effectively bringing an end to the Great Elephant War. Though the beasts would continue to be a thorn in Boatmurdered’s side for the remainder of it's decrepit existence, they could no longer besiege the fort for months on end and all the dangerous named elephants had been annihilated. Sankis retires to be a humble engraver, professionally vandalizing the walls of Boatmurdered with the most heinous carvings imaginable, and Boatmurdered now has a doomsday device that can effectively solve every problem they have.

Years 8-9: Putting the Murdered in Boatmurdered

"Come on guys, we have a nice settlement, why didn't you stick around? Was it the ashen wasteland? The bloodstained gates? Was it the screams of madmen or the stench of death? We've got awful nice engravings of some fucking cheese here, come the fuck on in!"

Astronautonomicron took charge next for Year 8. Right off the bat a Dwarf drowns and another is mauled by an Elephant when a new herd shows up. An Elven trading caravan shows up and are not happy about all the trees and wildlife being annihilated by magma. A jailed Dwarf throws a tantrum, breaks out, and goes on a killing spree, throwing a Dwarf into a wall before kicking him to death and murdering a cat with his bare hands. A Swordsdwarf intervenes only to be beaten unconscious by the rampaging Dwarf’s legendary artifact bracelet. Two more Guards intervene, one is knocked out but the other finally subdues the criminal. Unfortunately Astronautonomicron is unable to finish his turn so the save is rolled back before being passed on, effectively retconning the killing spree.
Unknowing takes over for actual Year 8. Other than constructing a large temple complex and pissing off the Elves again, little of interest happens at the start, then his miners dig too deeply into the mountain and unleash a horde of demons, killing the Miners. They enter the fortress proper where they battle the Guards, who are ultimately successful in killing them. A Goblin siege breaches the fortress, causing mass chaos before being repelled. His tenure comes to an end after this.
Year 9 is headed by Cross Quantum and the Fortress continues to grow like a tumor. He notices the carvings around the fortress:

Apparently the 2 most significant historical events here in Boatmurdered are elephants and cheese. Take a close look at the cheese ones actually, they aren't even carvings of cheese, but renditions of some other image of a cheese. They're freaking homages!

An Elven Noble comes to scold them again for cutting down trees, monkeys raid the fortress, Goblins kidnap a Dwarf child, a bookkeeper goes insane and commits hamburger time. Goblins besiege the fort, the Fuck The World lever is pulled again, burning them all to a crisp under a flood of magma. More Goblins besiege the fort the following fall. They too are murdered by magma. The constant sieges put a halt to his construction projects and they remain unfinished by the time his reign ends.
Major Failure takes over next but is also unable to complete his turn before anything noteworthy happens beyond robbing Elven traders and swearing a lot:

I'm barely done making the last batch of picks when those cocksucking hoopleheads the elves show up, no doubt weeping their fucking balls off about the elephant chunks being kicked around by children in a lake of blood outside the trade depot. Without even bothering to see what they have I have three of my guys rob the piss out of them. The haul was mostly useless shit, but at least we swiped some bloated tubers for my personal supply of swamp whiskey. Thank Arnok for that.

He attempts to basically abandon the fortress proper and start a new complex with the few non-insane Dwarfs, but has to abandon his turn and roll back the save for the next player.

Years 10-12: The Decay Sets In

"Please, don't intentionally destroy Boatmurdered. It may be a fetid hole in the ground full of furious dwarves who kill each other more often than they accomplish anything, but a lot of people poured their hearts and dreams into that hole in the ground. Instead, simply do the best you can, completely ignoring everyone else's plans while you retinker the cave into the ultimate souffle making empire. Then pass it on to the next player with half as many dwarves, because you forgot to arm your soldiers and they tried to wrestle fire elementals to death."

At this point it seems the thread died off. Much like the fortress of Boatmurdered itself, the succession game had become too bloated and complex to manage, with players taking ages to finish their turns and others further down the line having to pass or forgetting they signed up due to real-life circumstances, so a new thread and succession signup was made. We’re entering the final act of Boatmurdered, starting with a brief hope spot of trying to break out of the downward spiral.
Year 10, Mystic Mongol takes over and becomes the fist of justice in Boatmurdered. His first order of business is cleaning up the rampant crime, especially an insane Dwarf who was dismembering live animals for no reason.. Upon attempting to improve the fortress’ economic situation, he noticed that the previous bookkeeper and 2 former rulers had all mysteriously died. He takes note of the engravings of fire, death, and misery, made by none other than former ruler Sankis. He gets into a spat with Sankis over wasting precious resources on a platinum-decorated tomb, and for carving depraved art and leading the fortress to ruin under his command, eventually having his in-game avatar Dwarf arrested and imprisoned for 2 weeks on trumped-up charges.

While my room was surprisingly nice (I suspect they are trying to bribe me) many of the nobles are dissatisfied with their accomidations. While they languish without even a single platinum encrusted dining room to their name, the corrupt dwarf Sankis has built himself a royal tomb, complete with multiple platinum statues.

Sankis: You best not touch my tomb, jerk

MysticMongol: Don't tell me what to do. I'm the law in this pit in the ground.

The remaining military-capable Dwarfs are reorganized again and the many elephants trained as war animals, and a hammerer is appointed to dish out beatings on criminals. Strip mining is enacted to uncover much-needed metals, and the fortress becomes increasingly labyrinthian. Mystic Mongol retires and Sankis steps up for another year of management.
Year 11 begins uneventfully. That autumn a Dwarf starves himself to death, an Elf Noble arrives, Kobolds raid the fortress, then a Goblin siege begins. Predictably, the Fuck The World lever is pulled and they’re drowned in magma.

Burnt Goblin can be smelt throughout the fortress, and probably the entire region

A Bronze Colossus besieges the fort. Guess what happens. With the sieges broken, Sankis begins enacting his revenge on MysticMongol, locking him in a room to starve for a few weeks, then releasing an Elephant in the room. MysticMongol manages to successfully wrestle the Elephant into a trap where it dies. His broken but still living body is dumped in a hospital (because Sankis admitted that it was a little too mean to just leave him to die, and makes him a tomb as well), MysticMongol himself admitted it was amusing. Little else happens besides a Dwarf drowning and another vomiting all over the place, a section of the cave collapses blocking the magma flow so a Miner is sent to clear it out and promptly burns to death, then MysticMongol suddenly gets out of bed and throws himself in the river to drown.

MysticMongol: Right. Just like the Bookkeeper, after making someone's leather supplies super valuble, mysteriously died in an attack. Just like the unpopular Baron stepped on a rusty nail. Just like how the tax collector was found in his bed, mysteriously crushed to death by elephants.

The fortress suddenly runs out of food and many elephants are butchered to replenish food stocks. Sankis concludes his rule after expanding housing and wood production, refilling the defensive moat, and (once again) starts building up the military.
Doctor Zero takes over in year 12, the last stable year of Boatmurdered’s history. An earnest, last-ditch effort is made to restabilize what’s left of the doomed fortress, trying to build new farming facilities to replenish the dwindling food stocks. While trying to find a lever to flood the farm section to fill it with tillable mud, he instead pulls a lever that floods the siege workshop because that’s where the farms used to be 10 years prior.

StarkRavingMad: I love that Boatmurdered has turned into some sort of horrendous evil eyesore on the continent. I'm picturing groups of hardy adventurers gearing up to assault the place just based on the barren ash-and-skeleton filled landscape in front of it. Also, I love that the place has become so complex and messy that literally no one knows how everything works anymore. The part where there is a lever to flood the siege workshop for no apparent reason really cracked me up.

Unfortunately, all work efforts are slow, as so much of Boatmurdered’s population has died to accidents, elephants, lava, goblins, demons, hamburger time, starvation, outright murder, etc. that most of the laborers have been wiped out. 1/3 of the remaining Dwarfs are Nobles, who refuse to perform any regular labors, constantly complain about not having all their required furnishings, and issue production orders that can’t possibly be met with the dwindling workforce and resources, having random Dwarfs imprisoned or beaten for noncompliance. He manages to get work orders sorted out though, and starvation is averted. An Elven trade caravan shows up with nothing worth trading for, an Elven noble demands they reduce cutting down trees, and acts super passive aggressive when they agree. That summer, a human trade caravan arrives carrying a large quantity of meat, all of which is purchased.

Ok, these dwarfs have some kind of serious learning deficiency. I traded for 600 units of meat. I told 4 different dwarves to ONLY HAUL FOOD. And it STILL all rotted in the trade depot. Good gods these people have some kind of inborn desire to starve to death.

Sankis gets thirsty and attempts to drink out of the magma river. Dwarfs vomit for no reason.

I ordered the east side of the river dug out as far north as the mountain range went. This should make foraging for berries and plants much easier in the spring. Although the citizens insisted on replacing that dried vomit that welcomes every visitor. And rather than clean up the kobold mess, everyone would rather squish their toes in the gore and spread it all over.

By the end of DoctorZero’s administration, food stocks were somehow replenished, he had cleared the backlog of work orders, and uncovered veins of precious gemstones and metals for the future rulers, avoiding any sort of major calamities and setting up a solid foundation for Boatmurdered to continue to scrape by.
But it was not to be. (continued in comments)

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Log Entry: Project Day 0017
Addendum 17:
Again, I have the a/v records of Sudryal's speech and sketches from his notebooks, along with commentary from the others. But the practical upshot is that capital-D Dungeons, in this world, amount to the magical equivalent of a genius building. Starting with something resembling self-repair and even upgrading of the structures and internal systems, and going all the way up to... and including... a single, guiding intelligence directing all the activity inside. To a point, at any rate.
Translated into English, a Dungeon consists of a 'core' made out of some kind of crystal. They are their own thing, as Sudryal's vocabulary includes terms for 'quartz', 'diamond', 'geode', and more than 100 other types, so I guess no one has ever put a Core under a microscope or otherwise analyzed the crystallographic signatures. Most of them tend to manifest as one of the six basic colors; Sudryal doesn't have a word in Trade Tongue for 'indigo'. They also tend to stay the same color throughout their lifespan, though they can get bigger. They also either start out as one of the basic geometric-solid shapes... and I make a mental note here to do some internal research through Sudryal's vocabulary regarding 'gambling' and 'dice' for future use... and then acquire facets or become smoother as part of the 'growth' process.
Dungeon Cores have been spotted in a range of sizes from about the size of Scinjir's thumbnail all the way up to what I would summarize as a 'basketball'. I had to stifle a chuckle at the realization that 'bigger is better', even here. How they do what they do, no one seems to quite understand. But their 'ecological' niche amounts to a segment that doesn't really translate well into Earth-English. If I'm following it correctly, Dungeons serve as something akin to power-converters, but for the 'flow' of ambient magic.
Mana, the 'raw material' for magic, is more than 'just' water, of course, and there seem to be some exceptions for different types of mana; Sudryal, the 'academic' among the four of them, didn't have a lot of first-hand experience with 'air-mana', for example, but assured me that records existed documenting the stuff. But as far as the most commonly-understood stuff that almost everyone here uses for magical purposes in daily life goes, most of its properties seem to take cues from water: it 'flows' from place to place, provides 'fuel' for some magical effects and 'cleansing' for others. And, like a sewer-system, if too much of the stuff that got 'cleansed' collects in one place for too long, bad things can happen.
Thakhibi, of all people, filled in the few, but very significant, gaps in Sudryal's introduction. She explained that Rangers... which is the best and most succinct term in my vocabulary to describe her 'calling'... regularly patrol areas close to but outside of major population centers, as well as Dungeon-sites. Their responsibilities there include keeping the mana-flow from stagnating, to the degree that an individual can do so, and to 'deal' with the occasional mutation, or 'wandering monster'.
I swear to Alan and Ada, that's the precise translation of the term she used, and the others concurred.
But anyway, a Dungeon 'settles' the turbulence that a lot of sentient minds in close proximity can create within the mana-flow. Not stilling it completely, as that leads to more of the stagnation, and certainly not whipping it up into so much activity that it can't be controlled at all, just 'balancing' when necessary. Dungeons 'feed' themselves by absorbing a portion of the 'ambient mana' into itself, and it uses any leftovers to feed 'spawners', each of which can 'generate' a type of life-form.
I took a clock-cycle to sift through Sudryal's vocabulary again to confirm that he understood things like 'gestation', 'weaning' and 'breeding stock'; I'd peg him as mostly a city-boy, but I found words and phrases in there suggesting that he's at least spent a season or two working on some kind of farm. So strange, though, that lifeforms can be 'created' that way, as well as the 'old-fashioned' way. How in this or any other world could an ecology like this come about?
Anyway, back to Sudryal's report. Dungeons can and do use magic to essentially 'create' lifeforms ranging from snakes and rats and fish to mushrooms and mobile skeletons, and possibly stuff beyond those. If I understand correctly, though, a Dungeon has to start with whatever lifeforms were wandering around the immediate vicinity of the Dungeon core when it first manifests; they 'capture' one sample of, say, a scorpion in a desert or a frog in a swampy area, and then somehow entice it to become a Scion. This provides the little creature with a workable degree of sentience as well as... somehow... creating a spawner for the same sort of thing. Similarly, 'nodes' of raw materials like metals, minerals and plants start popping up. The 'plant nodes' make sense, but metals and minerals? Essentially 'congealing' the ambient mana into precious metals and even gemstones?
I may have been a bit hasty in saying that the 'magic' stuff didn't knock the laws of science into a cocked hat. But on the other hand, it would certainly provide a useful hypothesis for why I've been able to find at least some deposits of silver, platinum, and gold in such specific shapes. Oh, I've found a fair number of perfectly normal veins running through the geological strata within my nanites' range, but more than a few seemed like they had been at least partially shaped...
But anyway, back to Dungeons.Their 'denizens', the various groups of creatures produced by the spawners and amenable to the Dungeon's guidance, can learn, and can get 'upgraded' to become physically larger, smarter, and even capable of manufacturing items. Sudryal couldn't quite explain how, for example, a rat, regardless of how 'upgraded', could learn to mint coins, let alone produce anything resembling a shield or helmet with any kind of utility. But this sort of thing happens so often that a significant percentage of the coinage circulating through any given polity started out as a flat disk recovered from a Dungeon.
I had to file that under "Magical Bullcrap". Then I calmed down and changed that second word to 'Mysteries'. But I added a mental note to the effect that, if anyone on this planet could demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that it somehow arose 'naturally', I would fabricate hands, a mouth and a hat, so I can use the former two things to eat the third.
That chore dealt with, I returned my attention to Sudryal's lecture."... So, in summary, while a town can form and even thrive without a Dungeon anywhere within its borders, and Dungeons can occasionally arise in the vicinity of points where significant trade-routes intersect but have no permanent inhabitants, the vast majority of towns have at least one Dungeon in close proximity," he wrapped up.
I had set up a semi-loop of animation for the avatar to continue 'taking notes' and 'sipping from his mug' while Sudryal lectured, nodding at the others when they chipped in.
"All right, that's the theory," I said, animating the avatar holding up the steno pad and flipping back and forth between a few pages, and scratching the space between his eyes and mouth where his nose would be with the non-marking end of the pen. Original Me used to do that, I think. "... Can you describe some specific examples?"
Sudryal looked at Snatdrure and then Scinjir. The three of them shared expressions, flickering across their faces fast enough that I had to pull up my non-verbal analysis programs to try and figure out what I had said to possibly upset them. Setting aside their 'variation' from the Human-centric data I had to use as a baseline, indications made some sort of 'cultural blunder' a strong possibility...
Thakhibi came to all of our rescues. She set a hand on Sudryal's shoulder, and another on Snatdrure's. "You made it out, my friends. And it was my honor to help bring you far enough away that we reached this... haven," she said, her eyes glancing up at the avatar with that last word.
Oh, boy. Original Me hadn't been very socially-savvy outside of the cut-throat world of academic budget-negotiations and debating the contents of research papers... though to touch on the matter very delicately, he had had some 'intimate and pleasurable experiences' back in college... but I, being a genius-building and with rather a lot of all kinds of data stored in my databases, had access to some counseling protocols that let me check off some boxes on the 'escaped from abusive relationship' list, as well as 'post-traumatic stress disorder'.
No wonder they had been so wound up at the prospect of a 'magical hut in the wilderness', if they equated 'self-aware Dungeons' with 'potentially lethal hazards'. Well, no, that didn't ring completely true; Sudryal had a few academic references to 'cooperative' Dungeons working in symbiosis with their local population, so the equation “Dungeon equals Lethal Hazard” didn't quite parse. But here...?
Those counseling protocols also included lots of advice about when to just be silent and let the clients work things out among themselves. So I animated the avatar taking occasional sips from his mug and otherwise keeping his line of a mouth still.
Addendum 18:
2.356 hours later
All I can say is... Hoo, boy.
Turns out, Sudryal, Scinjir and Snatdrure all hail from what I would describe as a middling-sized town called 'Baerston Stronghold'. Thakhibi met them about three days after they escaped from what they called the 'Elemental Conquestery'.
Yeah, that word's kind of an approximation of the Trade Tongue description. If I understand the concept, four Dungeons all got together and essentially 'caged' the Stronghold, blocking off all surface roads and underground routes while also providing a kind of 'wildlife tunnel' for a steady supply of increasingly hostile wandering monsters to get 'through' or 'past' the Dungeons' domains and attack the Stronghold.
The town rests on a peninsula where the Windlams River flows into the Ghorthalke Sea. Under normal circumstances, my friends could probably walk back to the city gates from my currently-humble apartment-structure in about 14 days. They took something more like 52 days to cover the distance, primarily due to the interference of the Dungeons, and the need to recover from the escape.
The four Dungeons... "Terbius the Citadel", "Volcanis the Molten", "Hydris the Depths" and "Circos of the Storms"... expanded to touch each other's boundaries at almost exactly the same time. Terbius, whose claimed domain centered on a sort of watchtower outside the Stronghold's main walls but close enough to be the most-commonly 'delved' Dungeon of the four, could send thousands of rats the size of small dogs to battle among the storm-tossed peaks where Circos of the Storms would defend with prong-horn goats. Hydris would use coral-armored crabs to fend off incursions from Volcanis' salamanders. Then they would shift 'partners', with the 'city' defending against lava-creatures and the sea-life somehow battling high-mountain 'flying frogs'. But so far as anyone knows, before... whatever changed... the interactions between the four Dungeons and the folks in Baerston were all relatively harmonious.
None of the three 'city-kids' could say for certain what happened, as all of this took place at least a full 10 local years prior, and Thakhibi had been mostly working her way through the adjacent areas as part of her assigned Ranger duties, after passing her 'gauntlet' and earning the title. Sudryal's lore-tower, what he calls the library of the remaining 'magic school' in Baerston, held reports describing unusual and increasingly dangerous weather-patterns, while Scinjir and Snatdrure could pass along 'friend of a friend' stories along with their own experiences that seemed to describe escalating tensions between the four.
Things went from 'dangerous' to 'horrifying' when the various creature-armies stopped fighting each other, and started not only attacking but kidnapping people living in the Stronghold. Bad enough on its own, but then the 'wandering monsters' started showing up... and the Dungeons started herding them into fighting the people in town, rather than using their own dwellers to deal with them.
The Stronghold was as good as its name; it had well-stocked supply depots, set up over the centuries since the place got founded, and large cadres of experienced fisher-folk, trappers, and excellent relations with various farming groups a day's travel away from the relevant domains. Supplement that with the various resources that delvers could harvest from the nodes within the Dungeons, and it seemed to me that the whole operation could have gone on very peaceably for a very long time.
So, something happened, and four Dungeons are now cooperating with each other to enslave an entire town... and apparently, not a lot of people from outside really know what's going on. Hence, my four 'adventurers' and their journey south to the Ducal States, to try and get the word out to someone who could actually do something about it.
I've regained about 86.82% of Original Me's memories, and quite a lot of additional data-libraries, by this point. Original Me was never a full-fledged detective, but you don't reach graduate-level comp sci studies without knowing how to analyze a very large program for the one or two pieces of buggy code that breaks the whole thing. Untangling oral records from Snatdrure's memories and Sudryal's notebook into a coherent and internally-consistent narrative took most of the rest of the day and well into the evening; I persuaded Snatdrure to try her hand at fabricating a dining-room table so the four of them could at least have someplace to set their synth-blocks and flagons of water in between gesturing to illustrate their tales.
I must admit more than a little surprise when the Dwarf figured out how to put 'carvings' of claws clenching spheres at the bottom of the table-legs without any help from me, but it went a long way toward helping the four feel more comfortable for some reason.
By the time the sky truly darkened from dusk enough for the stars to start twinkling, I was able to provide a few new options for 'food' and 'drink'. The first batch of meishi mushrooms cultivated from spores I had located some days ago reached the 'edible' stage, along with some sort of nutrient-packed plant reminiscent of a mint-like dandelion. Between them and traces of salt from the sediment of a very old sea-bed nearly a full kilometer straight down, I could offer the guests bowlfuls of mushroom soup that they all found reasonably tasty.
"Definitely beats these synth-blocks of yours," Scinjir said, glancing in the avatar's general direction.Thakhibi considered the large mug of steaming 'tea', made from the mint-dandelion fusion. "I hadn't realized that there would be any of this so far south," she commented, with a slight wince. "If you have any more, I would appreciate a supply to take with us when we leave." She gave a wistful sigh. "One of the few things that Mother and Father truly agreed on was how a Ranger who drank at least a mug of this at dawn would never grow faint in the sun, though it's much better with a few drops of honey."
I animated the avatar going into a 'thinking pose' while I considered the reports from the hydroponic farms. "Well, the longer you remain my guests, the more I could provide," I said. "You four are drinking all of the leaves I could spare from the most recent crop, and it might take another couple of days for more leaves to mature enough to collect." Then I animated the avatar looking up and 'meeting' Thakhibi's eyes. "I'm also looking into a few other plants and fungi that should be ready in the morning."
Scinjir stifled a yawn. "Truth to tell, Joachim, when we first came over that ridge and saw this little 'apartment' of yours, we honestly couldn't decide whether to investigate or just run past on the far side of the rocks. But our wilderness-guide here..." He jerked a thumb in Thakhibi's direction. "... Couldn't guarantee that we could find any other shelter before the storm hit. So even if you wound up being a Dungeon like the ones we understood... Well, we were kind of gambling on figuring out some kind of arrangement."
I animated the avatar nodding his head and letting a smile widen across his face. "Just out of curiosity, what made you decide to come in?"
Sudryal looked up from his soup-bowl and pointed out the glass of the kitchen windows and door to the 'brick' barbecue on the rear patio. "Mostly, that area out there, and especially that cooking structure. Brand-new, yes, but more than sufficiently inviting that we had to see if we could build a fire and sleep out of the wind. And perhaps we thought we might find some reasonably clean water from the stream before sunset."
"Well, I'm pleased I was able to exceed those expectations, then," I answered, adding in a few little harmonics to my voice that I hope indicated a 'dry' tone and suppressed laughter before becoming a little more serious. "So, in the spirit of continuing to do so, would any of you care to try your hands at fabricating a 'camp-cot' or even a 'futon' to sleep on tonight? If nothing else, it will help you decide what you'd like to take with you when you go."
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Tip of the hat to u/Khenal for the bit of exposition about why Dungeons do what they do, and how the Rangers help.

Cataloging all of the ways a player can heal themselves using spells, weapons, talismans, and consumables.
If you have any specific info on stuff like FP efficiency or something, I'd be interested to learn more about these!
[ HEALING INCANTATIONS ]

• Urgent Heal : Cheapest Instant Healing Spell, costing only 16FP, and requires only 8 Faith to cast. Most sacred seals require at minimum 10 Faith to use. At 8 Faith, only the Frenzied Flame Seal can cast this incantation. Unique amongst the Instant Healing Spells, you can move around whilst casting without pause, and it only heals the Caster, and does not Heal nearby allies. The ammount healed is extremely insubstantial, and is rarely worth using compared to Gradual Healing spells.
  
• Heal : Instant healing spell that costs 32FP, twice as much as Urgent Heal. It's best trait is the 12 Faith Requirement, the same Requirement as Bestial Vitality. Otherwise, this incantation is a very insubstantial heal. Like most Instant Healing Spells, you cannot move while casting, but can heal nearby Teammates. Instant Healing Spells also increase in ammount healed with your Sacred Seal's Incantation Scaling.
  
• Great Heal : A stronger, slightly more expensive Heal. The Faith Requirement is 15, but this paticular incantation is the earliest accessible of which provides substantial healing. Most convenient Instant Healing Incantation.
  
• Lord's Heal : 20 Faith, 55FP. Although this spell does Heal more health than Great Heal, the difference between the two is negligible at Incant Scaling 200, making this spell rather disappointing.
  
• Erdtree Heal : Easily the most potent Instant Healing Spell, it costs 65FP and requires 42 Faith to cast. This paticular spells incantation scaling is notably greater than the others of its kind. Most convenient at very high levels of Faith.
  
• Bestial Vitality : Easily the Best Self Healing Spell for any build with low Faith. Costing only 18FP and requiring only 12 Faith, this incantation heals the Caster by 5 HP every second for 120 seconds. Easily the most FP efficient Healing Spell in single player, and can stack with Blessed Dew Talisman, Icon Sheild, and several other sources of healing.
  
• Blessings Boon : Requires 24 Faith and costs 30FP. Heals 8 HP per Second, lasting for 90 seconds. This spell is vastly less efficient than Bestial Vitality, but it can apply to nearby players, making this the most efficient healing spell to use during cooperation.
  
• Blessings of the Erdtree : Requiring 38 Faith and Costing Twice as a much as Blessings Boon, this spell is a stronger, more expensive version of Blessings Boon. Additionally it is the most effective Gradual Healing Spell, healing 12 HP per second for 90 seconds.
  

[ HEALING TALISMANS ]

• Blessed Dew Talisman : Healing 2HP per second unconditionally is extremely useful on its own when exploring in the early game, and stacks very nicely with other sources of Gradual Healing. However, this struggles to contribute after reaching Leyndell, when your Maximum Health should be around 1500 HP, and this Talisman cannot outheal damage taken by enemies.
  
• Assasin's Crimson Dagger : Heals 30% of your Max HP after performing a Critical Hit, meaning the ammount healed is greatly increased the higher your Vigor is. The practicality of this Talisman increases when used on conjunction with the Assasin's Cerulean Dagger, making critical hits a convenient way to recover both HP and FP at the same time. If you perform Backstabs without an equipped weapons, your bare fist, you can farm HP and FP from one enemy until you're completely replenished. Less convenient during boss fights and against enemies with high poise.
  
• Godskin Swaddling Cloth : Performing several consecutive attacks restores 3% of maximum HP (see Fextralife page for specifics). When playing towards its strengths, this is the most consistent and effective source of healing a Talisman can provide during a Boss fight. Performing heavy attacks has an increased ability to proc the Healing effect, so weapons such as the Erdsteel Dagger which have a very spamable multi-hit heavy attack are very effective for triggering this Talisman as frequently as possible.
  
• Takers Cameo : When an enemy dies, you recover 3% of your maximum HP. Exploring the overworld during Coop with this equipped means that any enemy you or your Teammates kill will heal you by 3%. This effect stacks with certain weapons with simmilar effects. Killing small animals also triggers this effect. Mmm... Those Deer sure look tasty, don't they?
  

[ HEALING ASHES OF WAR ]

• Prayerful Strike : Sacred affinity Equippable on Axes and Hammers. Use 20 FP to raise the armament, then slam it down, healing yourself and nearby allies by 30% if it successfully hits. Not only does this ash of war do a significant ammount of stance damage, but it is a very powerful source of healing against all bosses, even moreso the higher your Vigor is. Don't let Holy Damage scare you away from this brutal Skill!
  
• Blood Tax : Blood affinity Equipable on Armaments Capable of Thrusting. Use 14 FP to perform 4 quick thrusts, healing 16% of max hp collectively. Despite its description, this skill does not innately deal bleed like Blood Blade and Bloody Slash, but is rather useful for rapid bleed buildup on larger weapons like the Greate Eepee with the Blood infusion.
  
• Lifesteal Fist : Blood affinity Equipable on Fist and Claw Armaments. For 14 FP, perform a slow controlled punch that, when properly hitting a foe of human build, locks them into a critical attack, damaging them while healing yourself by 30%. This ash of war is very good at interrupting slower enemies of human build, like Black Flame Monks or certain Knights, while also healing a third of your health. Sadly does not stack with Assasins Cerulean/Crimson Dagger Talsimans, but does work with the Dagger Talisman.
  
• Holy Ground : Sacred Ash of Was for sheilds. For 30FP, Creates a Sigil on the ground which grants 20% Damage Negation and heals 17 HP per second for 35 Seconds! Very strong tool keeping allies alive in coop! This only affects allies of the caster, unlike Terra Magica. Very strong ash of war in and out of combat, can be put on any infusable sheild, including very light Sheilds such as the Buckler, the Rickety Sheild, or the Scripture Wooden Sheild.
  

[ HEALING ARMAMENTS ]

• Blasphemous Blade : Greatsword of Rykard, having this equipped heals 4% of max health for every enemy death. Additionally the unique Skill, Taker's Flames, heals 10% max HP for every enemy Hit with the ranged blast. A very potent source of healing against crowds and a devastating attack against lightweight or flammable foes. The Passive healing effect doesn't stack with a second Balsfemous Blade, but it does stack with other weapons with simmilar effects.
  
• Serpent God's Curved Sword : Curved Sword which can be infused with Ashes of War, heals 2.5% of max hp for every enemy death. This is a rather lightweight weapon that looks cool, is thematically cohesive with, and synergies with Balsfemous Blades and its effects. Yay for themed builds!
  
• Buthering Knife : Fairly Lightweight for a Greataxe, this weapon heals the player 1% of their max HP per hit. This effect also applies to Ashes of War, such as Wild Strikes, Golden Land, and Prelates Charge. Slap Bloodflame Blade on this bad boy, and become a lawnmower fueled by the blood of your enemies! (Mohg would be proud!)
  
• Great Stars : Huge Bludgeon with innate bleed that also heals 1% max HP per hit. Can get two in one playthru in the same area (One in Carrage Southwest of "Road of Iniquity Side Path" Site of Grace, second from invading NPC at the Bloody Ruins further down the road.) Seriously, get 40 points in Vigor and give this Wild Strikes, and you can tank Rykards Lava Pool indefinitely as long as you keep wailing away at him. Even better at 60 Vigor.
  
• Greathorn Hammer : Weapon of Ancestral Followers, heals 3% of max HP per enemy death, 0.5% more than the Serpen God's Curved Sword. If you're using this in conjunction with the Blasfemous Blade instead of the Serpent God's Curved Sword, then you are stuplid :)
  
• Icon Sheild : Beautifully Painted Greatshield with no skill, and cannot be infused with ashes of war. Passively heals 3 HP per second when held, meaning it pairs very well with Blessed Dew Talisman and all other sources of health regen. Additionally, it is a decent greatsheild, having almost 50% Damage Negation for each element, and 95% damage Negation for physical, which is offset by the Passive healing.
  

[ HEALING ARMOR SETS ]

• Royal Remains Armor Set : When your HP is below 18% of maximum, you will heal 2 HP per second per peice (8 HP per second total). This armor set has decent damage negations, and synergies decently with the Feathered Branchsword talismans and Twinbird Kite Sheild, but having your health that low usually means you are going to be one-shot by any enemy outside of Limgrave.
  
• Deathbed Dress : Passively heals nearby Allies by 2HP per second. This can be handy for helping players in coop at low levels, but this dress has extremely minimal damage negation, and doesnt heal yourself whatsoever, so you better be careful!
  

[ CONSUMABLE HEALING ]

• Raw Meat Dumpling : I haven't tested extensively, but it heals about as much as a Max Level Crimson Flask, in exchange for poisoning the user. Good healing option in a pinch, assuming you've got Neutralizing Boluses on you. Be Aware; these are NOT farmable, nor craftable.
  
• Warming Stone : Craftable Item which, for 20 FP, heals a Massive 25 HP per second for 30 Seconds for all players in the area! However, this can also heal enemies and bosses too. Use these outside of combat to heal up real quick if you're saving your Flasks for a rainy day!
  
• Frenzyflame Stone : Craftable Item which Heals, onyl 15 FP, an insane 35 HP per second for 60 seconds! Unlike its gentler cousin, however, this only heals players inflicted with the Frenzied Flame. Players who aren't Inflicted will instead suffer madness buildup instead of heal. This is good, since it means this can be used during bosses safely, but it can be occasionally harmful in Coop. No worries, however! Warming Stone stacks with this!
  
• Rowa/Sweet/Frozen Rasins : Honestly, who cares?
  

[ GREAT RUNES ]

• Rykard's Great Rune : 7% Heal each enemy felled. Stacks with talismans and weapons with simmilar effects.
  
• Malenia's Great Rune : Replenish lost health by dealing damage. (See Fextralife page for specifics.)
  

[ That's all ]

First Previous Next
[Sorry this took so long to get out. Reddit was being stubborn and not letting me post. Though I still don't know what was wrong so don't be supprised if the next part is late too.]
-----Damian-----
Damian leaned against the doorway at the top of the ramp and sighed, letting himself slip into a light doze. He wasn't fully out but was deep enough to rest his aching body. As he dozed he felt himself drift back into his own head. It's like he took a step back from the controls and just lounged in the backseat as he watched the voices flutter around him. A few of the voices slipped forward and took his spot in front of the controls, but they didn't even try to touch them and take away the single 'hand' he had on them. They just watched the world out of his eyes.
As he drifted he opened the door that he had shut some of the voices into before since they had calmed down. As he rested and kept a wary eye on the voices near the controls, just in case, he continued processing everything that had happened today. A few voices slid over and fluttered around him like excited butterflies to help sort the memories he finished with. As he relaxed more into the strange sensation of drifting in his own mind, his grip on his body lessened. He trusted the voices would snap him out of....whatever this was if something happened. This is what he imagines lucid dreaming would feel like if there was no dream. Sending one last wary and warning glance to the voices in front of the controls, he relented and released his grip on it altogether.
Drifting like this was strange, he decided as he handed another processed memory to one of the fluttering voices to properly sort. Time felt both infinite and nonexistent at the same time.....somehow. It felt like only a few seconds passed while at the same time like weeks flew by by the time he got most of the way through the unprocessed memories. It was like months passed by in seconds and seconds dragged on for years. He was completely disconnected from all his senses and his body as a whole. It left him numb. After a while, but also near immediately at the same time, of drifting completely disconnected he started getting antsy and anxious.
Noticing his discomfort one of the voices hovering around the controls, he thinks it's the motherly one that helped name Ares, reached down to the controls and pressed something. Then his hearing echoed around his mind like a radio in a large room. Hearing the voices of his flock and the laughter of his chicks helped him relax and actually focus on his work. With the voices of his flock in the background, he listened in on some of the conversations closest to where he was 'sitting' in his head while he worked. He paused mid-reach for the next memory when he caught the back half of a sentence from one such conversation.
-my life no one even thought about doing that.
He snapped his awareness, kinda like his head or mental gaze, towards that conversation as he focused on them and listened in. It's not eavesdropping if it's his own mind.
I thought so too, but apparently, we saw the galaxy through tinted lenses.
Another voice piped up with the feeling of a head nod.
Seems like we only saw everything for what it really is after we were separated from ourselves and integrated into our Host.
The first voice spoke up again.
Our poor Host doesn't deserve what they've gone through.
The third sent the feeling of a sad nod.
Let alone with having their instincts so far buried that they don't even realize it's there.
The second voice added in.
It's no wonder they awakened as a Dark-crest .....what was the subdivision again?
One word fizzled and popped like static, making his head hurt. The first answered its question.
The closest term in our Host's vocabulary would be 'Brawler' but it unfortunately does make sense.
The third pointed out something.
From what I've seen in their memories that is normal for their entire species.
The other two seemed to only just realize that.
Imagine an entire planet's worth of Dark-crests.
The word hurt even worse this time when he tried to figure out what it was past the static burning its way into his head. Eventually, he reluctantly gave up on it since it was really starting to hurt and even affected some of the voices too. He did file that word away into the 'find translation' box in his mind, though. He floated around and apologized to the few voices that the ache spread to even as the pain faded away again. Deciding he wouldn't be able to focus, he set aside the few unprocessed memories he hadn't got to yet for later.
He hesitated when he heard the echoey sound of his birds chirping at him to go rest in the ship while they got ready to depart. Apparently, they would leave soon. He sighed, really not ready to crawl back into his aching body. He 'stood up' anyways to do just that when the voices hovering in front of the controls waved him off. He stared at them in confusion causing one to slip over to him and gently push him back down with a reassuring smile sent his way. He watched as the voices left messed around with the controls. Looking through his own eyes like a large screen he watched as his body stood and clumsily shuffle its way into the ship, sitting down against the wall in his usual spot. Thankfully (or maybe not?) his flock didn't seem to notice, or maybe they just thought it was from tiredness. The voices didn't move away again even after his body was settled. They waited until his chicks crawled onto him and got comfortable so they could move his unoccupied arm to cradle them. Only then did they step back again. None of the other voices even spared the group a second glance, like it was perfectly normal.
Huh. Damian.......doesn't...quite know how to feel about....that. He knows he should feel concerned and scared, or at least a bit wary, that the voices could take control of him anytime they wanted. He just couldn't seem to bring himself to. Wondering why he pondered on that for a not-quite-second. He came to the startling realization that he......he trusted them. Not just a neutral truce-like trust, but a 'if they told me to jump into lava I wouldn't have a second thought' type of trust. A trust with all his mind, heart, and soul.
'That.......Oooooookk let's just set that to the side for now.' He settled back into his numb drift as he watched his voices float around and interact with each other. It was quite peaceful actually. Some zoomed around his mind and it took him a second (maybe it was a few minutes?) to figure out what they were doing. They were playing. Zooming around like bees with a sugar high, they played multiple rounds of a strange version of tag. He laughed when the ones being chased childishly bolted 'behind' him to use him as a shield from the ones who were 'it'. The two groups were in a stalemate for a short (long?) bit before one 'it' bolted around him and chasing the rest from their hiding place and kicking off the game again.
Damian relaxed again and let his.....self? awareness? spread out over his mind and drape over all his voices like a blanket so he can keep an eye on all of them and their various conversations at the same time. He paused when he felt.....something at the very edge of....his self? a good way away from everything. Voices and controls and memories and all. Like they were hesitating at the very edge of his mind. Confused, thinking he had missed some, he did a headcount of all his voices. Yep, all of them were accounted for. So who, or what, are these? He watched whatever they were for a maybe-bit-probably-not but they didn't do anything. Like, anything. They didn't talk, didn't move, didn't send any non-verbal gestures or expressions. Nothing. One of the two was more......present? bigger? then the other one. Curiosity piqued, he shifted over and draped a section of himself over the bigger one to try and see what it was or what it was doing. It immediately recoiled, seeming to stare at him with wide eyes, and disappeared like it ran away but.....how?
He paused and spread himself out completely to brush every edge of his mind, only avoiding the second smaller....thing, but didn't find any trace of it. It was just........gone. He relaxed himself back down to draping himself over his voices and turned his attention back to the second thing, not noticing as he separated two of his voices when they started arguing. He was more slow and careful when he reached out to this one, hoping not to scare it off like the first. He started out as just a hesitant touch, barely brushing the very edge of it. It didn't seem to notice so he tried again, this one more of a small nudge. Like trying to move your hand from under a sleeping kitten. It violently flinched back and he got the impression of it whipping around to face him but it didn't run. That was good. As soon as it moved he snapped back to try not to scare it off. The two 'stared' at each other for a bit. Damian felt like it was studying him the same way he was it. As he studied him he slowly got the feel that it was less like one of his voices and more like........him? His mental self at least.
Like....the voices feel anywhere between a pinprick of light and fuzz to cotton balls of smoke. Well, not exactly but it's hard to describe. Anyways, no matter what point they are in that range they all have the same feel to them. There is a bit of variation here and there but it's all pretty much the same. His mental-self, for lack of a better term, was more like a stereotypical blob of slime from most fantasy stories, or maybe like fog or a cloud. He can condense himself to a vaguely human shape when controlling his body or just quickly glancing through his head but he is unable to see the ones browsing through his memories and mental files (he thinks they are like a library to them). He can also spread himself out to fill his mind completely and be able to track and keep an eye on all of the voices and what they are all doing (including the ones in his memories) but is unable to focus on the outside world and what he's currently doing.
This thing? can it be called a voice? Felt more like a tiny, weaker version of himself. He 'squinted' at it and got the vague impression there was more of it somewhere else outside of his mind. Maybe wherever the first one disappeared to? His attention was drawn away from his pondering when the voice? tiny mind? extended a small tendril towards him, the move looking shaky and unpracticed. It was like watching a toddler try to copy their parent do something. Damian slowly- carefully, don't scare it off- extended his own tendril, his being more steady, and met it halfway. He mentally screeched in surprise and pain at a sudden gush of information when they touched. He curled in on himself and thinks he felt the tiny thing disappear like the first but couldn't focus enough to tell.
He curled into his mental self as he tried, and failed, to sort or even process everything that was shoved at him. It was a mash of conflicting emotions, snippets of thoughts, small clips of memories, and vague feelings of senses that weren't his own. He couldn't tell where the new information stopped and his own memories started. They blended together and clashed so much that he felt like he was losing himself in it. His own voices recoiled at the sudden onslaught of information clogging up all the available space in his mind and stopped whatever they were doing to buzz around and try to help detangle everything. They only made it worse because of their buzzing and swarming mixing up everything and making his head go fuzzy. He was just about to try and figure out how to separate himself from his own mind when he was suddenly shoved back to the controls and snapped back into his body. He jumped and sucked in a gulp of air like he was drowning as his eyes snapped open. He glanced around in a near-panic, trying and failing to process what the hell just happened but thinking was hard past the chaos between his ears.
Ruby was staring at him, chicks were nowhere to be found and Squeaks gone. Where were they? He could have sworn they were out cold using him as a bed just a second ago. Ares was out like a light against him and didn't even twitch at his jump. It was just the three of them in the empty room. He came to the delayed realization the ramp was closed and he could feel the ship silently vibrate with the engines running. Ruby cautiously trilled his aviae-name to get his wandering attention back on her. She had a worried and confused expression on her face. His eyes snapped back to her but his attention was turned inward, still trying to fully extract himself from the knot of chaos behind his eyes. He wasn't very successful. The fuzz he always got when the voices swarmed causing his mental movements to be sluggish and sloppy, making him unable to dodge when the voices dragged a new line of the web around him. Somehow Ruby seemed to notice and her expression softened. She cooed gently at him like he was a scared chick. At the sound a handful of the voices froze mid-buzz and snapped their 'heads' towards the front of his mind, chirping and trilling back like when his chicks are scared and wanting comfort. Ruby's antenna twitched slightly higher like she somehow heard them. She took a step forward to gently brush the feathers on her side against one of his legs. After a short bit of cooing her voice......multiplied? echoed? It was like there were multiple versions of her ll cooing at the exact same time
As she did he felt a.....presence wrap around his mind, gently restraining him like picking up a small animal to help detangle it. Just that feeling seemed to calm his voices. Some still flew around but it wasn't the frantic buzz it was earlier. The presence softly prodded at his mind, making him try to recoil but unable to because of how entangled he was. It seemed to pick at his mind then slowly and carefully started picking apart the web. Gently separating himself, his memories, and the unfamiliar information shoved at him. As it worked he thought he could hear the chattering of a large group of voices but all his were quiet. Only one or two muttering to themselves or someone else. Once the web was completely untangled the presence nudged the knot of unfamiliar information to the side and retreated like it was never there.
His voices were more silent and still than he has ever known them to be. It was almost like he was alone in his head. It was almost lonely. Damian blinked a few times, feeling like the few voices he could still feel were doing the same as he stared at Ruby. She simply smiled knowingly.
"There we go. You just stay calm for us, ok?" She said in that same almost-echoed voice. Damian got the impression it wasn't her speaking nor was it to him. There was a short pause as Damian tried to reason out what the holy hell that was. Eventually, he was able to cough out his thoughts.
"The (fuck) was that!?" Ruby trilled her laughter at the pure confusion in his voice. Once she stopped laughing she cooed her amusement up at him in a simple smile-sound as she replied, voice back to normal.
"I think now's a good time for that talk."
[The next part will be explaining Dark-Crests. If you guys have any certain questions you have about them, you can ask and I'll see if I can answer them for you]

Tanks:
Doomfist

• If block's charge is successful rocket punch deals 200 if full charged. (Deals extra 50 damage if affected enemies hit a wall).
  
• Rocket punch can travel a max radius of 80 meters.
  
• Rocket punch deals 100 damage when full charged. (Deals extra 30 damage if enemy affected hits a wall).
  
• If doomfist doesn't lands his ult instantly and slows every enemy within the ults radius by 15%.
  
• New passive, The Successor. (Teammates gain a temporary 5% damage boost for dealing damage with his abilities).
  

Orisa

• Terra surge is replaced by Javelin rain. (She shoots a multitude of javelins 4 times in the sky and are interactive of where they land).

New passive, Courage. (Damage while taken by Orisa gives her sheilds when she activates fortify).
Side note:
(Orisa's shield max is 500 and the sheilds stay until fortify ends).
Ramattra

• Taking damage while annihilation is active amplifies it's damage by 5%.
  
• Enemies caught in annihilation are slowed by 5%.
  
• Ravenous vortex has a gets an extra 2 meter radius when nemesis form is active but has a longer cool down.
  
• Void Barrier has 2000 hp. (4 second duration).
  
• Enemies that are hit by nemesis form's pummel are slowed by 5%.
  
• New passive, Omnic leader. (While attacking, Ramattra reduces damage by 10%).
  

Roadhog

• Hook casting is interactive. (This determines how far hook can travel, minimum radius is 5 meters and maximum is 13 meters).
  
• Headshots deal 300 damage.
  
• Secondary replaced by Hog Slice. (Hog slice let's Roadhog use that, knife? Behind him and it attacks all enemies horizontally in front of him.)
  
• When butch is activated, Roadhog deals cleave damage while healing his team by wounding enemies. (Max healing is 30%).
  
• Roadhogs ult can be cancelled by CC.
  
• New passive, Body guard. (Damage taken by Roadhog amplifies his damage and healing by 10% temporarily).
  

Damage:
Ashe

• Coach gun deals additional 20 damage if an enemy hits a wall.
  
• Coach gun can be used to push teammates. (Assist purposes).
  
• B.O.B deals 220 damage per second. (Throwables' damage vary).
  
• New ult, B.O.B 3.0. (After B.O.B is casted, B.O.B can move freely to reposition and throw debrees, signs and dynamite randomly every ten seconds, and B.O.B will stay until he dies but now has 900 hp).
  

Side note:
(B.O.B will only move if he doesn't spot an enemy within his 12 meter radius and shoots like a bot on Extreme difficulty).

• New passive, Dynamite? (Ashe drops one Dynamite fuse upon death).

Bastion

• Tactical grenade explodes only if enemies are near it's 2 meter radius.
  
• Tactical grenade remains inactive and stationary if no enemies are detected.
  
• New passive, Self-repair. (If bastion isn't taking damage for 5 seconds Bastion repairs himself).
  

Genji

• Deflect, deflects from all directions. (Like the cinematics).
  
• Swift strike deals it's initial cutting damage but also deals bleeding damage that tallies up to 30 damage. (Poison effect also happens).
  
• New passive, Dragon spirit. (When Dragon blade is active, Genji self-heal's).
  

Hanzo

• Enemies hit by Hanzo's arrows receive bleeding damage after the initial impact. (Body shots only).
  
• New passive, Trickshot arrows. (Storm arrows' last arrow turns into a scatter shot that ricochets 6 times).
  
• New passive, Dragon medium. (Hanzo has a 40% damage reduction while casting Dragonstrike).
  

Junkrat
*New passive, Super Rip-tire. (Rip-tire explodes when destroyed dealing 300 damage).
Sombra

• Supports that heal Sombra while stealth is active will also be invisible.
  
• Sombra's stealth cool down is increased to 10 seconds.
  
• Abilities are disabled for the duration of hack.
  
• Sombra's hack cool down increased to 12 seconds.
  
• Translocator destroy option is removed.
  
• Sombra's EMP decreases teammates cooldowns.
  
• New passive, Hack master. (Turrets and Turret like ults cannot be casted while they are hacked or until they are destroyed.)
  

Symmetra

• Turrets deal 25 damage per second but no longer slow down enemies.
  
• Symmetra's ult gives all of her teammates permanent shields until they are killed. (She can only give 25 shields and she can only give shields after the ults duration).
  
• New passive, Light sheild. (Symmetra's turret gives her and teammates temporary shields when dealing damage).
  

Torbjörn

• Torbjörn's Turret will only shoot if an enemy is within a 40 meter radius.
  
• Coalition upgrades Torbjörn's Turret during its duration. (It simply gains 230 armor and deals 20% more damage).
  
• While molten core is active, Torbjörn's Turret shoots lava and has an increased 60 meter radius. (The turret will only shoot lava every 1.5 seconds).
  
• New passive, Forge synergy. (Torbjörn can heal omnic allies).
  

Tracer

• Tracer has an extra blink added.
  
• Pulse bomb has a radius of 6 meters and deals 530 damage.
  
• New passive, Chronal boost. (Tracer gets a temporary speed boost after she uses blink and recall).
  

Widowmaker

• Grappling hook can stick to enemies and when widowmaker is launched, she kicks an enemy she lands on and has a 30% knockback.
  
• Venom mine deals 50 initial damage but causes Poison effect for 2.5 seconds.
  
• Automatic fire deals 90 damage per second.
  
• New passive, Widow venom. (When venom mine is triggered, Widowmaker heals 40% of her health).
  

Supports:
Ana

• Sleep amplifies damage by 10% for 2.5 seconds after its duration.
  
• Nano-boost lasts for 6 seconds but makes teammates invincible.
  
• New passive, Attentive healer. (Gives Ana a temporary speed boost every time she lands a successful heal or sleep dart).
  

Baptiste
New passive, Attentive Mercenary. (If Baptiste gets a kill while healing, he gains temporary armor).
Brigïtte
New passive, Heavy gaurdian. (Brigïtte reduces 10% damage while healing).
Kiriko

• New passive, Kanezaka's Protector. (If kiriko's Protection suzu is successful, she gains temporary shields).

Side note:
(She only gains 100 sheilds max).
Zenyatta

• Zenyatta deals 180 damage per second.
  
• New passive, Pacifist? (Every successful kill on an enemy affected by discord orb gives zenyatta shields until he dies).
  

Side note:
(Zenyatta's max shields are 350).

• Zenyatta instantly heals 120 health when he places Harmony/Healing orb on Teammates.
  
• Zenyatta heals 80 health per second.