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Admiral Tenrah returned to the battle map, looking at all the various icons and routes to and from star systems. So far, the Sennes Armada was keeping its pace mostly on track. The delay due to the diplomats from the Misan Li Heptarchies no longer would matter.
King Siran had pulled back from the battlefront against the High Federation in an attempt to pivot to the Hive Union. He had won the battle, but the stragglers included the remaining leadership of the High Federation anyway, so they could continue to remain somewhat organized. The massive civil war would soon spill into a more international affair, due to the King's rhetoric. But that was entirely his fault when he so strongly advocated for the deaths of Cawlarians who had lived on planets for generations that he happened to desire.
And he would not let his name be stained with even the suggestion of a loss. The Battle Planner and Fleet Commander Annabelle Weber were also now on their way to the front, and the diplomats from the Heptarchies were tagging along. Phoebe was in discussions with them now, and supposedly there'd been a few breakthroughs on that front. Whatever she'd promised them or get them to agree to, the fleet buildup along the Hive Union's border with the Heptarchies was slowing.
The Interstellar Gathering seemed to have realized no amount of bluffing would get the High King out of war. Even if he was a proxy force aligned with them, King Siran was not valuable enough for them to risk a wider war. It was just as Tenrah had expected and had told Eyahtni, Kawtyahtnakal, and the Patriarchs when he'd met with them several days ago. Just as a young hatchling couldn't be allowed to stray too far from the nest, there was simply no sense for the Heptarchies to risk economic ruin.
Orith and those who ruled over him would shift their tone while pretending it was a natural decision, not one they'd been forced to make to align with reality.
"I must commend your tactics in the latest training exercise," Tenrah said, ruffling his feathers slightly before respectfully nodding to Annabelle.
"I am pleased to hear such high praise from you, Admiral," the woman said. She was fully dressed in her regulation spacesuit, meaning most of her face was obscured. But Tenrah wouldn't complain since it was more than prudent to be ready for anything. The next unknown ships might not be friendly.
He had also looked into the parties responsible for the lack of communication or warning of the Misan's arrival. As it turned out, general incompetence was to blame. A receiver hadn't been properly calibrated, so the transmission signal had just been noise. He'd given the officer in charge of that an earful before eventually letting up and telling him to do better. A personal visit with the Admiral was one thing. But a second personal visit was quite another.
Tenrah drew a vector toward some of the outer systems controlled by the High King. A few garrison forces were there, but they would be swept away almost instantly. What most concerned him was the shipyards in the region that received most of their metals from a select group of planets in those systems. They were rich in the metals required to forge the alloys needed in the High King's fleet.
The High Federation had been something of a dumping ground for either overthrown species or other alien species that had been deported from their homeworlds before the war broke out. This was reflected in the number of species inhabiting the worlds, each with unique names, traits, and temperaments.
"We plan on taking this path, and then splitting to conquer these systems and disable their metal exporting abilities," he explained. "Then we will move to this system."
He zoomed in more and drew a new vector from where the previous one ended. "We have intelligence that they have at least four planet crackers there. Brey will send FTL suppression satellites through portals on the outer edges, with her portals boosted by our psychic amplifier fields. we will be able to take over the system quickly, and begin the process of either disabling the planet crackers or moving them back to our territory."
"We will need to know the angles the superweapons are at before committing to the battle," Annabelle said. "Otherwise, judging by the trajectory cone you have, we can bypass them entirely and reach Siran within two weeks."
"And that is an interesting proposal. Can you lay out your plan, in that case?"
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Annabelle did so. She and Tenrah discussed the strategy's risks, and they eventually decided that such a tactic, while bold, wouldn't do what they set out to do: ensure the safety of the Cawlarians near the border. They were already trying to evacuate from the coming war front, but cities and planets were large things that took a lot of time to completely empty.
And more garrison forces, whether they were androids from Phoebe or specialized and highly trained defenders from the Union, were still moving in as the civilians evacuated. Kawtyahtnakal had established a fund for them, but many people were too stubborn to leave. Despite the looming threat of war and possible massacre, they still refused to board the passenger ships. Annabelle could respect their tenacity and courage, though she personally believed it was counterproductive.
A few encroaching splinters of Siran's fleet had already struck the evacuation forces. He'd sent around 2% of his ships away to harass all the border systems within reach in an attempt to get the Armada bogged down in defense. But with such small forces and the Union on such high alert, all of the important stations with weak shields were well within the protective layers of planetary shields in the area.
Larger garrisons than necessary were still required, of course, but Tenrah had managed to navigate the desperate concerns of the Feathers and those like them in charge of governing their planets with his natural political skill. He didn't need to ask them for favors because, as an Admiral, he alone held power over how his portion of the fleet would respond. Annabelle had witnessed that loyalty and control well within the organization of his fleet. Even at his advanced age, she continued to be impressed with his adaptability and skill at monitoring three-dimensional battle planes and fields.
She pointed to the cone of possible directions Siran was expected to take. They were generally adjacent to the border, though they would head around the left side of the territory he claimed from the Union. If he reached it, millions of lives would be lost every day. Once he broke the shields entirely, the planets would be utterly glassed down to their mantles.
She'd read up on his methods and had seen videos of them in action. Despite all her training, it still was haunting. The hivemind helped to soothe her when the unpleasant parts of command sizzled up to meet her in the middle of the night.
But they would not impede her on the field of battle. When she went to war, the hivemind suppressed all that wasn't necessary for the mission. It was their agreement, one which she'd asked of it. And being a node of the network meant that her stability was paramount, even more so than her title as Fleet Commander. For if she fell, others could take her place. Protocols ensured and demanded that.
But her place in the hivemind was what allowed it to have any strength this far out. It could form avatars and help with long-range communications, though the main mind back on Earth and Luna obviously remained disconnected from this distance.
"I would normally agree with you, Fleet Commander, but I am reminded of your tactic to use decoy hard light holograms."
"They will suspect that any ships heading right for the barrels, or close enough, are either not valued enough or are the decoys."
"Then all you have to do is make them impossible to ignore," Tenrah said. "I can lend you bombs capable of remaining armed and capable of being triggered inside of hard light holograms, even with jamming involved. Then, they will be unable to ignore them, and the explosions generated would destroy the shields in place around the planet crackers. If they fire the weapons, then the residual magnetic interference will allow us to destroy them, since the shields will be far weakened."
Annabelle could see the potential brilliance of the strategy. But it was just that- potential. In space, there were no obstacles. Without stealth fields, there was no hiding. And with hard light holograms, stealth was obviously off-limits.
They would be left approaching from angles that they would be unable to adapt to. She had her VI plot several routes but was unsatisfied, so she had Edu'frec link into the network to do it. Phoebe had been replaced after contacting a Sprilnav network to ensure she could scrub any programs that may have gotten through to her without distraction.
It would be a terrible thing for a Sprilnav AI to make it to her dreadnaught, for sure.
"We will likely need a threefold diversion at least," Annabelle said. "Maybe fourfold, if we can spare the forces, and brave any minefields that may exist."
"Well," Tenrah began. He pulled up a few schematics of the weapons her dreadnaught carried. "I believe you can solve the minefield issue from a distance, even with the lightspeed limit. After all, they can't move easily. As for the actual attack? I suggest a sixfold flower formation, with a twisting wings accent."
"You will have to show me a diagram of that," Annabelle said, grasping uselessly at the unfamiliar words. Before their integration had begun, there had been a limit to how much doctrine she could memorize.
Tenrah pulled up an image of an alien flower blooming with six petals. And then the image faded, overloading with a stylized ribbon of red shapes. The ribbons spun on their sides every thirty seconds, like corkscrews that were flatter.
"And in this case, the ribbons represent the drone formations. I can send a few carriers into the battle with fighter escorts, though we will need to keep them spread out to avoid any direct lines of sight from the planet crackers."
"I heavily doubt they will waste such shots on carriers," Annabelle said. "And if you commit more, you will overwhelm their defenses. I believe your drones are highly reflective, so only missiles and bullets can deal sufficient damage at the involved speeds and numbers we are working with here."
She tapped the diagram, shifting it by about 45 degrees.
"I believe I can fit a stealth force here, which will engage the back defenses of the planet crackers once they focus their shields frontward. I can likely get a full battlecruiser group in, and if you can press in as a wedge around 10 million kilometers above me from where I come in, and around 30 million kilometers below," Penny paused to draw the vectors with her hands, "Then it will aid in my ability to subdue them. It would likely shorten the battle time from a week down to four days."
"Assuming their detection satellites are not capable of seeing it."
"And we will target those too. I believe the first strike can fall on those, since the planet crackers will interfere with their ability to scan behind themselves, and such large power signatures can be noted."
"There is one more problem," Tenrah said. "We are generally working on the assumption of trying to capture these ships, yes?"
"Yes," Annabelle said.
"Then will we board them?"
"Yes, but no. Edu'frec and Phoebe's commando androids will open up the beach heads on the physical surfaces of the planet crackers, while our specialized mental warfare agents will take the fight to them in the mindscape. I assume you have your own plans in that regard?"
"It depends on how we will split the planet crackers. There are 12 in the system. Half and half?"
"That seems prudent," Annabelle replied. She selected the ones that would be most advantageous for her various gambits and strategies to work. They were closer together, which meant more capacity for coordination, mutual aid, and shielding. But it also meant a larger target, one which she could hit from many vectors without worrying about each enemy ship having a wide field of view. Some battlecruisers and cruiser groups were scattered around, but they were not enough to resist the Armada. And once Siran was robbed of a quick way to end the war, the Union would hold the upper hand, capable of committing devastating power to a fleet that remained in a system for a long time.
Yet the same was true for the Union and the Alliance. If the battle took too long, or their command positions were located, then the terrible might of the planet cracker beams would be turned upon them instead. Annabelle's dreadnaught was powerful. More so than all the ones before it. But that didn't mean she wanted to test her shields against alien planet crackers.
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Penny was talking to a group of freed slaves on Justicar. These were recent ones who still held quite a bit of trauma. They'd taken to calling her 'Liberator' despite her never identifying herself as such. It was oddly endearing and did make her feel quite a bit better. It was good to just be able to go out and help people.
She felt some perturbations in the mindscape but ignored them. Right now, she needed to ensure that the gangs couldn't continue their horrific industry. She'd taken out most of their heavy equipment and was now waiting for the Guides to finish searching.
Sirens and alarms echoed in the distance. Penny sent psychic energy into her eyes, but she was too far underground to see anything without using the energy itself instead of light to see. Justicar's mind seemed busy, so she couldn't connect with him. As time went on, Penny felt that something was wrong. It was a gut feeling that she couldn't place. But because of that, she was on edge. She made a large shield of psychic energy above them.
She held it for several minutes. Nothing happened, but Penny wouldn't let it down that quickly. Justicar still didn't respond. Her communicator rang. Kashaunta was calling.
"What's going on?" Penny asked.
"The Grand Fleet is-"
Light and heat smashed into her, easily breaking through her shields. She briefly saw tens of thousands of Sprilnav burning before the light overwhelmed her eyes. Her communicator was destroyed. The onslaught was accompanied by a monstrous level of sound. Shockwaves drilled Penny into the melting and fracturing ground, forcing her lower and lower into expanding pools of magma and liquid metal.
The city's upper layers fell upon her, crashing with great and terrible force. But Penny was now fully reinforced with psychic and conceptual energy. She erupted furiously from the rubble. The air around her burned with heat as she continued to accelerate. The armor plates now surrounding her glowed cherry red, but they were white by the time she'd reached space.
She reached the first planetary shield.
"Displace," Penny growled. She forced reality to move as she willed and to place herself where she saw fit. The Grand Fleets were high above, firing upon a small group of ships that had detached from Azeri's fleet. They seemed to be directly attacking the broken-off contingent and not Justicar itself.
So Penny increased her eyesight and analyzed the battle in both real space and the mindscape. Nilnacrawla helped her identify Justicar's targets. The massive Elder was angrier than she'd ever seen him, and his size, which was even larger than Tetelali, made that incarnation of him appear more like a god of wrath. She saw him brutally tear through groups of minds desperately running to avoid him.
She could faintly see spheres of psychic and conceptual energy area denial fields. From this distance, the flagships' strength was truly impressive. Both of them were at least ten times as powerful as Azeri's had been during their battle. It was clear both Kashaunta and Valisada had ordered upgrades.
Then, her attention came to the dreadnaught, which seemed to be at the head of the attack. Penny explored the ship with her psychic power, pushing aside all resistance. Several lasers struck her, but she ignored them, denying their impact in reality against her own.
It glowed with the fury of weapons firing. Missiles and fighters flowed out of its bays. Bullets, nukes, and lasers streamed from red-hot gun barrels. A nuke hit her but didn't explode. She ripped it apart, using the materials to add energy to her reserves.
Justicar continued to go in inside the mindscape. He tore at them like a shark at a school of minnows in a coral reef. His ravenous anger and hatred were frightening, but Penny rapidly got used to it. Calling up her own memories of the innocent people who'd been killed for no reason, Penny wrapped herself in energy and began to erase her signature from the area.
Fighters flew past her, no longer hitting her psychic shields with bullets. Lasers stopped firing at her since she'd moved from her last position, and there was no longer anything for them to track. Penny floated in the stars, with bright blooms of white fusion explosions blossoming around her. And so she moved forward. She reached a cruiser. She reached forward, teleporting past its shields, and shut down the ship's reactor by teleporting all of its fuel into the void.
Soon, a missile from Kashaunta's Grand Fleet found the vessel, and it vanished in another sphere of heat and light. Of course, it was all silent in space. Penny could only hear her heart beating and occasional warnings from Exile or Nilnacrawla at incoming attacks. Exile occupied the area in her ears, which felt weird, but it allowed him to speak without showing himself in the mindscape. Given his nature and the fact that the Grand Fleets likely had detections for speeding space entities, it would be a terrible idea for him to appear there. Nilnacrawla continued to help Penny with the mental aspects of the battle.
He processed the energy input and output that Penny was giving off in the hopes of keeping her off the sensors of the dreadnaught battlegroup. She didn't want to attract the full focus of one of those massive guns. The explosions on Justicar would have been capable of cracking apart a mountain range if not for the extensive dampening Justicar's shields had done. And she'd withstood them only because she could shunt off most of their impact into reality, leaning into her conceptual nature and the nature of Cardinality to escape certain death.
Even with her power, as high as it had ever been, the blow she was taking were the most powerful physical impacts she'd ever endured.
She also suspected Yasihaut's work in this, though she had nothing to prove. She also had to remain vigilant about the Judgment. She couldn't take overly hostile actions, so she didn't just teleport the Sprilnav in the area out of their ships. She tried it on a smaller scale, and a weak pressure from the dreadnaught made her power fail to affect them.
But those Sprilnav were still doomed to die by their commander. But Penny didn't wish to doom the Alliance and herself by taking their deaths into her own hands. And she was stained with enough blood, metaphorical and literal. The ashes of the people she'd freed had fallen away with her ascent into the atmosphere, but the gritty memory and feel of them never would.
Once again, she'd been powerless to save those who'd needed her. And if she'd had that power, what could she have really done? Would she have been forced to stand there and take it? Or could she have really fought back in a way that wouldn't be turned against her in the Judgment? And was she wrong for considering all of that during such a horrendous time, when she'd literally seen thousands of people turned to slag and ash before her very eyes just ten minutes ago?
Penny burned with shame and grief. She hated this. She hated that things always turned to this. Why couldn't the galaxy just leave people alone? Why did there have to be so much suffering? Her anger threatened to overwhelm her, but with a herculean effort from her, Nilnacrawla, and Cardi, it was beaten back.
Penny felt Justicar getting close to breaking through the shield. She sent a small jolt of power to its underside. A thick bolt of psychic lightning infused with rage leaped from her arms, shattering the shield completely and taking roughly half her power. In the dreadnaught, the antimatter reactor she could sense radiating its energy suddenly lost all coolant access.
She pushed her psychic energy into herself and her conceptual energy into words that she harmonized into existence with the force and might of her will.
"Cardinality: One to zero. Reversal."
A heap of her energy left her instantly, stopping a budding explosion from ripping the dreadnaught apart. Justicar absolutely ravaged whoever was inside that ship, including what appeared to be a leader figure in the mindscape. Penny watched Justicar smash the Elder's corpse in his jaws and tear his soul from his body before shredding it violently with a contraption that looked straight out of a horror movie.
She let the explosion go, and so it went. The dreadnaught cracked in half. The Grand Fleets, which had never stopped firing, finally broke through the shields as the circuits failed to supply them with power. Hundreds of thousands of lives winked out instantly, torn to subatomic particles by beams coming from two different flagships. Penny went straight to Kashaunta, appearing on the ship's bridge still in stealth. To their credit, her guards noticed immediately and bared their weapons at her.
The guns that were powerful enough to blast holes in skyscrapers and sturdy enough to withstand a fall from orbit with hardly a scratch unloaded their payloads into her. Penny opened her mouth, and strings of psychic energy writhed outward, wrapping themselves around the guns and wrenching them out of the claws of Kashaunta's guards while the impacts' explosions were contained by thick shields.
Kashaunta herself had already drawn her sword but hadn't moved an inch.
"Penny," she said dryly. "Welcome to my ship. I apologize for your reception."
A new shield came down on both of them, preventing their words from reaching the ears of Kashaunta's subordinates.
"Think nothing of it, Elder Kashaunta. What punishments will be given to the Grand Fleet Commander?"
"Well, technically I am not the Grand Fleet Commander of this fleet," she said. "So that is not really something I can enforce. However, the Grand Fleet Commander of the 85th Grand Fleet does wish to talk with you, Justicar, and myself about what just occurred."
"And you believe him?" she exclaimed.
"He sent transcripts of the message he sent to one Elder Solei, asking him to cease his actions before it was too late."
"Even the Alliance can make deepfakes," Penny said.
"And do you think I would be ignorant of such things, child?" Kashaunta asked. "We have ways around those. That is why we still have a society after billions of years of time to screw it all up. Deepfakes are a problem of less advanced species and cultures, not those with the tools to handle them."
"Which are AIs, which you also ban throughout the galaxy."
"Yes."
"Isn't that hypocritical?"
"Yes, it is," Kashaunta said. "You can go and complain to the Judges who decided that if you wish, though asking them to think of the children instead of preserving the power of the entire Sprilnav species will get you laughed at by a billion mouths."
Penny felt something in her mind take offense to Kashaunta's wording. It didn't feel like it was part of her, but it also did. The shock of all the lives lost hit her again, making her scowl.
"So there will be nothing done?" Penny growled.
"No. Prepare for a neutral and level-headed discussion. If you wish to have any seat at a table such as this, you will conduct yourself with decorum. You will not accuse Elder Valisada of being responsible for whichever fool did this, and you most certainly will not baselessly claim that Yasihaut is at fault for this, even if it is likely that she or her backers are. It is time you learn the lesson that all Elders have: there are always more Sprilnav. Recognize that this was a strike against you without casting aside all of your goodwill among those that matter."
"Those that matter," Penny mused. "Sometimes I forget what you are."
Kashaunta stepped forward, eyes narrowing. She let out a hiss.
"You saw a few thousand people die, and now you're back to the racism again? Grow up. People die all the time in this galaxy. You complain about the status quo. I would respect that, if you could stomach what is required to change it. Death will continue to run rampant, and you will be the reason more die no matter what you do. 760 sextillion Sprilnav, Penny. And you cry over ten thousand?
During the Source war, we sent two years olds to war. You don't get to slide back into comfortable dumb hatred of our species because of a few stupid people. Rest assured, if you ever get this Alliance-based order, you or your successors will become tyrants. There will be a human who has the power and will to start wars, and enact genocides, for functionally no reason. Need I remind you of World War Two, and World War Three? If you multiply the population of Humanity by a trillion, that means you'll get a trillion Pol Pots, or Hitlers, or Genghis Khans.
And a hell of a lot more dumb idiots in power, which ascribes most of the history of nearly every species in the galaxy. Notice how Valisada and I both fired on Solei once he decided to be an adult daycare nominee? Notice how Valisada has not fired at us, or Justicar, and is trying his best to start a constructive dialogue? People die in war, Penny. This is reality. And you cast your disdain onto me, the only Sprilnav keeping you alive in this place, because I happened to be born an Elder. But no. I'm still some alien, right? Just another dirty animal for you to kill when the Judgment ends."
Kashaunta's fury caught Penny off-guard. The Elder truly meant her words. Penny had deeply offended her, cracking open the facade she usually maintained. The smug feeling at having made Kashaunta go on such a tirade faded when she considered the circumstances. Maybe she had acted like a child. But she hadn't said anything truly deserving of such a furious tirade, had she?
Not unless her proclamation that she remembered 'what Kashaunta was' had an implication that she didn't understand. Kashaunta was a mass murderer, one who was more than willing to justify it when necessary. And she downplayed the fact that this attack was on Penny herself and on thousands of innocents on a Sprilnav planet where she was meant to be safe. This wasn't a pair of assassins in the night, slipping poison into water or dropping snakes into a bed. This was a much more insidious and terrifying evil. Penny had been powerless to stop it.
Penny knew she was right, but Kashaunta did not. Could she truly weigh her scant decades against Kashaunta's billions of years of age? Perhaps. Age was not wisdom, though it certainly could be experience. Kashaunta turned around and started to walk away. Sadly, Penny still needed her.
"I'm sorry, Kashaunta. I am... incredibly charged. I am very pissed right now. I am not apologizing for how I feel about this attack. I have every right to be upset, and I will remain so. I will not be bullied or cowed into submission, even by a thousand more tirades. There comes a point where something must be done. But if you are upset over what I said, then I would at least like an honest clarification why."
"Because you had showed me you could think like a person should. That you didn't see people's species anymore. That you were becoming less racist. And yet, when you are cut raw, you still see me as a Sprilnav Elder alone, and therefore complicit in this massacre I literally did everything I could to do stop before it worsened. You said you knew 'what I am' as if you'd forgotten that. And it is clear that you meant that you'd forgotten your belief that I am some dirty criminal Sprilnav, who deserves to be slaughtered in the dark for the crime of being born in her species.
You care more for the ash on Justicar than you do for what I have given you. Your simplistic view of reality would mean that if you could push a button to kill us Elders, you'd do it, robbing countless families of their loved ones, because you now remember 'what we are,' and are again regressing away from your previous growth."
"I am one person, Kashaunta. I don't understand why you care this much about me. But I can recognize that the message you received is one of terrible bigotry. I am suffering, every day, every week, that I remain in this god-forsaken place. It hurts for you to dismiss the people I care about, even for a moment, dying just because there are many of them. But that does not excuse what I said to you despite the death toll you carry on your own head. It was a half-truth."
Kashaunta laughed. "Do you know why I care so much about what you think, Penny? It is because you are the other aliens. All at once. The Alliance is the face of all things 'alien' in many places. Remember what conceptual energy is? Lecalicus told you, I believe. You represent more than just your own views. And if you're able to forgive a speeding space entity, but not me, then it shows that we will never have peace. That no matter what, this cycle of hatred will continue, and I will need to either build a new galaxy with aliens that don't hate us for our ancient crimes, or just figure out another way. You are the face of the rest of the galaxy, Penny. And you have just told me that you still hate me for being an Elder. After I thought you had changed."
"And you believe you are undeserving of such hatred?"
"Penny," Kashaunta said. "The Alliance didn't exist when many of these events happened. Some of your grievances are older than the mountains on Earth. You say you hate us for genocides that happened so long ago that they no longer hold any meaning. There is no compensation we can give to dead species on dead worlds. What you want is an alien species to hate and blame for all the universe's problems. Because it is easier to hate us than to confront reality. And we are the ones you have been told to hate."
"They were not small things. It was the deaths of trillions of people, Kashaunta."
"Yes. And it was wrong. I can understand that. But what do you think will happen when your Alliance, filled with people who hate us, takes over? You will see humans bombing Sprilnav schools, and the hivemind will do nothing, for it will share that hate. Acuarfar will abduct and torture us. Knowers will devour our children. And in the face of that? You would turn a blind eye, because it is too hard to solve with a simple fix. You will only propagate generational hatred, just as all the Alliances and Galactic Republics and Peace Unions did before you.
Because underneath your message of equality for all species is oppression and genocide for us, the villains in your little story. That is what happens in reality, once the benevolent dictators die. And you, who have lived with us, eaten with us, and talked with us, will sit upon your golden throne, and when I am brought before you, naked, bleeding, and in need of support, you will throw me away, because all I am to you is an Elder. That mindset is exactly what stands in the way of peace. It is why I stopped giving you aliens chances for so long. And having to argue this with you at all makes me think you may no longer be worth my effort."
More manipulation. Penny was ready to shout at her, but Nilnacrawla pulled her thoughts away from blind anger. And it did feel unnatural for her. Alien.
"This is not peace," Penny said. "This is war. And we are circumstantial allies. I will not become what you claim."
"I have sown the seeds of a thousand despots," Kashaunta said. "I recognize them when I see them because I have reaped the heads of a million more."
Penny sighed. She wanted to resist and continue arguing, but it wouldn't get her anywhere. Now that she had thought about it, she was unlikely to overturn a viewpoint set in a billion years of experiences. Perhaps Penny could explore this later, when she had time to properly process it all.
"Very well. I will go to this meeting of yours, and I will conduct myself with decorum. However, while I refuse to belittle or forget thousands of deaths, I am sorry that you feel this way."
"But you are not sorry about making me feel so."
"No," Penny replied. She suppressed her emotions more, taking the time to carefully consider her words. Kashaunta was wrong and oddly sensitive right now. Saying the wrong thing could damage far more than their mutual feelings. As much as she wanted to win this argument, Kashaunta was who she was. She was the alien dictator keeping the Alliance alive.
"We are both right in some ways, and perhaps we might be both wrong, too. This only shows how tough the road will be. We at least are consciously trying to come to an understanding. But for the billions of Alliance citizens, quintillions of aliens, and sextillions of Sprilnav? It is a gargantuan task. And... right now, I don't think it is possible."
"It isn't," Kashaunta said. "And it won't be for thousands of years. But we don't get some neat little time skip to wait and solve all of our problems for us. Change will start only when we make it."
Kashaunta was throwing her a bone, then. They both knew the argument couldn't continue right now.
"So we have an understanding, then," Penny said. "Hatred will remain, but it must be minimised. That way, cultural and social pressure will eventually stamp it out, and we may have peace."
"No. We will have a truce, which will only become peace with much more work. The Alliance is a nation that is 24 years old. Only a single generation has grown up within it. Negotiations will be hard with so many who remember the hatred. But Valisada is not like other Sprilnav. He will seek to bring a hybrid war to you and the Alliance, unless you can convince him that you truly mean to bridge the divide. You are clearly misguided, but have a genuinely good heart. That will make life hard for you. Your words today would have spelled the death of you and the Alliance, had I not established this shield around us to hide them. Out of the spirit of our friendship, I will not request a favor in return for this boon."
"Thank you, Kashaunta. Though I'm not sure I can consider you a friend."
"The fact that you bothered to listen to my side of things, in this limited aspect, despite the hurt you must feel right now, proves otherwise. I am well aware of my past crimes, Penny. I know that my emotions today were a weakness I should have been able to seal, and that you will still see me for who I was, and not who I am. I know how it sounds for me, a killer and a ruler, to be upset at being confronted. But that is how I am. I still have my pride as an Elder, and there is only so far it can be pushed. Who I was certainly would qualify as beyond evil. But to remain at the top, there are limits to how far you can swing into benevolence.
I cannot atone. Do not try to make me repay debts that you don't own. If you are ever to have more Elders on your side, whether Progenitors or otherwise, you will need to learn to deal with this. There will be people with death tolls higher than the population of the Alliance, who were once the heart of evil and are now at least acceptable. The first step will be recognizing that, yes, we are in fact friends, despite my history. Because only from friendship and understanding can hope come."
"I will think about this more. My feelings about this, and about you, have not yet solidified."
"I was wrong for what I said to you, Penny. We are both on edge, and said things that we didn't properly express. We should get our heads in order before re-entering this argument with logic instead of emotions."
"I agree. I will go and see who I can save. And I will think more about this. I freed people from slavery, and watched them die today. Respectfully, I must spend some time away from you for now."
Penny left the ship. In something near her subconscious, anger remained. When she landed in the rubble once again, she missed a small but steady stream of conceptual energy wafting into her from below.

I have a number of EUFY cameras and the video doorbell (wired – T8200). I have always had issues with the video cam not reliably catching all motion. I have it set to one. Dot before human only, and it is set to be fairly sensitive. I can’t make it be super sensitive due to the plants on the porch, as they’re waving will trigger the recording. I know it doesn’t catch all of the people who come onto the porch, because occasionally I find a package on the porch and no record of it being dropped off, although other times it works fine. Last night at 2 AM, it caught me, going out to water the plants and showed my sandals clearly on the mat; the next recording is at 10 in the morning when my son walked out the front door, and my sandals are gone. Clearly someone came up to the porch and stole them, and it had to have taken More than just a few seconds because the porch is 11 steps up, and the sandals were in plain sight.
Is there a way to force the camera to be better? I’ve already messed around with the sensitivity and the zone. The problem appears to be more with somebody coming up to the porch as it seems to always catch us leaving the house, but that’s not as important. However, it sure did not catch the porch pirate leaving with my sandals!

Dear WireGuarders.
I am using Cisco Anyconnect secure mobility client to connect to my company's resources; however, they do not allow split tunneling.
The network speed dies entirely when connecting the VPN, and I want to route the traffic of VScode only through the VPN and keep the remaining traffic going through my local network.
Would you happen to have any idea of how to do that? I read about something involving TunnlTo and WireGuard, but I am absolutely lost here.

My wife and I live in CA and are selling via a direct sale (no real estate agents on either buyer or seller's end) two pieces of property we own fully (no outstanding loan) in TN. The buyer is in TN. We and the buyer have agreed on a price and that buyer pays all closing costs. The buyer plans to have his attorney handle all the paperwork for the sale.
Being a novice at real estate, I have some initial questions:

1. Can someone explain how we should expect this process to go?
2. Is the sale governed by the laws of CA or TN or both?
3. How should the transfer of the title and funds be handled so that we are not at risk of releasing the title, then the funds not coming through? The buyer has stated his "attorney in TN will be the escrow agent and will handle funds. He will FedEx deeds, you will sign in front of notary and send back to him. Once he receives them back he will wire funds to your bank."
4. Does it seem risky to have his attorney act as the escrow agent?
5. What else should I be on the lookout for / concerned with?

Note, I have no reason to be suspicious of either the buyer or his attorney, but we're talking about a significant sum of money (for us, anyway) and being a novice, I want to be careful.
Edited because of my numbered list not formatting correctly.

Yup, just as the title reads, I've been reading the endless infidelity stories on these subs for years. My turn finally came. Yet somehow, I still fell for all the classic cheater lies, and made all the wrong moves. Here's my story.
I 30 M met my now ex-GF 27 F on Hinge in early August of 2022. After our third date, we decided to date exclusively. She told me that if we crossed the intimacy line, that I could no longer see other people. While I didn't like the idea at first, I decided to go ahead with it because I really liked her and wanted to see where things could go. I had no interest in other people at the time. We became official after about 6 weeks of dating.
Truthfully, the beginning was rocky. She insisted on seeing me once a week. Eventually we could progress to twice a week according to her. This also resulted in sex once a week, which I found strange for a new relationship. But I kept an open mind. People are different. We also didn't text much. Hours and hours between our messages. Slowly though, with much resistance, the communication and time together did increase, and we began a normal relationship. Meeting friends, going on adventures, and dreaming of our future together.
D-Day came on November 6th, 2022. She had stepped out to a thrift store for about an hour for a clothing exchange. I waited for her to come back at her apartment. As I was texting her, her iPad kept ringing in her bedroom. I went to silence her iPad so I could work on my laptop in peace. As I picked up the iPad, I saw my messages, amongst other notifications. Then I saw a notification from Google Voice. It read: "It's been great. Just made it to Rio. I get home Thursday. Xo" The alarms went off immediately at the "XO." I thought it was very strange. The number wasn't saved. She had never mentioned Google Voice. At the time, I didn't know what Google voice even was. I began to dread that this message could be what I thought it was. As a long time lurker on these subs, I remembered not to ever reveal what you know to catch a cheater, until you have undeniable proof. So I googled the number. It belonged to a charity with 2 owners. One lived in California (other side of the country); a bank CEO. The other was a 62 year old professor at a university 10 minutes away.
I sat on this information and kept silent. Acted totally normal when she came home. The next day, we went to go pick up her new dining table she ordered. It was a 30 minute drive. I decided to confront her just as we left for home, so that she would be forced to face me. Me: "So since we've started dating, have any other guys been hitting on you?" Her: "Not really, why?"Me: "You're so attractive. I find that hard to believe." Her: "Guys don't really talk to me that often." Me: "So you're sure that you're not talking to anyone else right now? No conversations that you wouldn't want me to know about?" "Not at all." As I looked at her, she was so calm. So sure that I had no idea what was going on. It scared me. It was the first time I saw a glimpse of who she really was, and how cold she could really be. Me: "So who the fuck is Kirk then?" Immediately, she looked at me with panic. Her faced turned white. Her voice was shaking so hard that she couldn't get her words out properly. She began to apologize immediately. She knew she was caught. She gave me her phone and showed me all the messages. I was sick to my stomach as I read the messages. She was prostituting herself to this man for money.
As I scoured thorugh her messages, she dropped another bomb. There was a second guy. Her most recent doctor ex she had told me about. Turns out they were still in contact. She said she was helping him with errands but they had stopped sleeping together by the time she and I started dating. She didn't want to tell me that she was still in contact with him because she knew I would suspect something. She showed me those messages too. As I looked through the messages, I didn't have 100% proof of something going while we were together. While he was out of town, she was watering his plants, every week and taking care of his airbnb. They went to dinner once (but she came to see me right after). It seemed like he was using her for free labor. A little too many favors from someone who is just a friend. But my main red flag was that she was trying to get him to go on a trip with her in the next 3 months, while dating me. That was all the proof I needed.
I crossed-checked the dates. I had finally figured out where she had been while taking forever to text me back. While seeing me once a week. It was my biggest fear. Another man. In this case, more than one. I was hit by a Tsunami of emotions and endlesss questions. How could she do this to me? After all the love I gave her? After I told her about being cheated on by my other 2 ex girlfriends and how badly it hurt me? After I turned down a job in DC for her? After I told her my friends we're concerned and think she's a cheater, she'd still cheat? After I told her about this sub and how I believed in exposing cheaters to everyone? Did she not care about risking giving me STDs? Did she care about me at all? Is she just pure evil and playing me for a fool? Why throw our relationship away to sell your body to an old man? Am I not worth more than $500? More than dinner, shoes, makeup, and a vacuum? Did he know about me? Did you guys laugh at me and how stupid I was? Did you laugh with your ex too? Are you in love with your ex still? Are there others? Have you always been a prostitute? How did I get myself into this situation again? Why can't I make better decisions? Why can't I find a good partner? What's wrong with me?
Out of all those questions, all I could ask her was "Why do this? Her answer: "I don't know."
Anyone who has been in this situation knows how big of a slap in the face this is. It's a classic line for the backstabbing cheater. Of course she knew. She carefully crafted lies for months to get away with it. She was greedy. Wanted the best of both worlds. To eat her cake and have it. She didn't care how much she damaged me in the process. She didn't care how many lies and backstabbing it took to get what she wanted.
I broke up with her immediately. But I gave her a chance to prove that she was sorry. And she did. She was what exactly what you'd want someone to be if they were truly sorry. She did everything I asked from her. For the next 2 months, with nothing promised in return. She got to me. I decided to give it another go.
D-Day #2 was May 30th, 2022. I found an old phone of hers in some stuff hidden in her room while I was helping her clean. I waited till she went to bed. I powered up the phone, and snooped through her messages. Nothing too crazy, but her most recent ex was on there. I wanted to see what their relationship was really like, because I didn't trust her to tell me everything. I uncovered 2 more lies she'd been telling me. First, they didn't break things off in February, 6 months before meeting me. They last had sex (from what I could tell) about 1 week before our first date. Also means that she lied about being celibate for 6 months before meeting me. I was furious, and decided to really dig through her phone to see what else i could find.
I found another name in her phone that I had never heard of. I read their messages, and he was a clearly a former lover. But not just any lover. A 67 year old partner at a law firm. My heart sank. Another sugar daddy. This was clearly a pattern, and not something she's never done as she insisted for the past year.
Now this was before she had met me, but rolled into while we were initially dating. but she told him she had decided to stop seeing him because she had met a guy she really liked at the time. This was right around our 5th date, so it could have been me. She also started sleeping with the professor right around this time, so this could have been her switch to a new sugar daddy. I became furious. She had told me about a guy before, but I realized she was just changing small details about this guy. Instead of being 40, he was 67. He wasn't white, he was Arab. It's true that he was a lawyer though. It's true that she went to Miami with him too. It's not true that she had never dated an older guy before the professor like she told me. It was not true that she had never had a sugar daddy before. (Small side note, she had been denying that the other gentleman was her sugar daddy. She insisted that she just preferred older men and didn't want to tell me). We were in therapy at this point, so I didn't attack her. I decided to take a peaceful and non-judgmental route. I asked her if she had any other men that she was talking to while dating me that she didn't mention. She denied it. I told her his name. She kicked me out and dumped me. i didn't explode. I explained my side to her, and gave her the space to explain hers to me. We went to therapy and talked it out. She said she hid it out of shame. More lies and no remorse from this woman.
So what did I do? Give her another go after a month of therapy. 6 months later, she dumped me out of the blue for good.
This final part is my opinion of infidelity. I want my story to be an example for people to read and learn from. Don't take them back. If you even have the chance to. It's never worth it. The relationship will never be the same. The "trickle truth" is very real. I got nothing but trickling for the rest of our relationship. She was going to lie until she died, unless I caught her red-handed. I spent the rest of the relationship in a state of permanent distrust. My mind was consumed with so many unanswered questions, daily. I could not enjoy anything we did together because I would always question if she was playing an angle. I hated myself for not being strong enough to stand up to her and leave her. I was embarrassed to tell friends and family that I was still with her. I was embarrassed to tell my therapist that I was still with her, after finding out she lied to both of us during therapy. I lost a lot of money that I could have saved for myself, that I spent on countless dates. I felt defrauded, violated, heartbroken, and ashamed after our break up. Literal physical pains in my chest for days. I was in a deep depression for two weeks after we split. I'm better now, but still recovering. I'm trying not to be jaded, but it's hard not to become cynical after a year and a half of my life being spent like this. Don't do it!

This is SO funny, I am reposting it and will repost it every once in a while.
From:
https://www.reddit.com/tifu/comments/2vdwtw/tifu_by_drinking_an_entire_bottle_of_louisiana/

I have had a number of job interviews recently that went poorly and did not result in securing employment.
I started to think I needed to do something during an interview to really stand out, be impressive, unique, and highly memorable. I thought it could be risky, but might work out.
I came up with the following idea: After concluding the interview, after the hand shakes, etc, when leaving the room stop, turn around, and say "There's one more thing you need to know about me."
Then pull out a bottle of hot sauce, down the entire bottle, slam it onto the ground and say "I can handle the heat." Nod confidently, leave the room.
Boom.
I imagined that they would be really impressed and wowed by such a performance.
Well it didn't pan out like I thought it would. It was only a small bottle of hot sauce, I figured it would be no big deal to actually do. I should have tested at home first, but I didn't.
I was nervous as a bitch-ass during the interview, but I was determined to follow through with the plan.
So I started exactly as described above. I was leaving, I turned around, maybe not with as much swagger as I'd imagined in my head, and I declared "There's one more thing you need to know about me."
I pulled out the hot sauce bottle, almost dropped it, and started to open the bottle. In my head it was all one quick confident motion, like an electric Indiana Jones, but instead I fumbled around and had a tough time getting it open. It felt like a nightmarish eternity but was probably only about 20 seconds. Enough time for one of the interviewers to ask me what I was doing.
I didn't answer directly. Instead, after I got the bottle open, I repeated "There's one more thing you need to know about me." (But stuttering.)
Then I guzzled down the entire bottle of hot sauce. I instantly regretted it. My mouth and throat felt like lava was swirling around inside me. I immediately started to gag and loudly cough, I was crying involuntarily. Tears hardcore streaming down my face. I was sweating like a terrible fool.
I desperately tried to scream "I can handle the heat" but just kept coughing before I could get anything out.
The interviewers were all standing up looking at me in horror and confusion.
A few seconds before I threw up all over the floor I knew it would happen, but I tried to hold it back. I couldn't.
I threw up all over the floor. It hurt as much on the way out as it did on the way in, if not more so. The vomit felt like flaming barbed wire shredding its way through my neck.
I should mention a disturbing amount of fiery mucus was also leaking out of my nose uncontrollably.
After I finished throwing up I could not bear to look at the interviewers. I hoarsely mumbled an apology and started to stumble as quickly as possible out the door.
I have never been more shamed in my life.
I didn't get the job.

Hi community! I'm using pop_os! on my desktop for more than 5 years. My setup is leveraging thunderbolt port on my motherboard to have "one wire" switch between my work laptop and home desktop. For a very long time my discreet GPU was nvidia rtx 2070 super and everything worked as I expected out of the box: nvidia GPU was used to render everything and intel iGPU was used as as an output. xrandr list of providers was this one:

$ xrandr --listproviders Providers: number : 2 Provider 0: id: 0x1b7 cap: 0x1, Source Output crtcs: 4 outputs: 8 associated providers: 1 name:NVIDIA-0 Provider 1: id: 0x1ed cap: 0x6, Sink Output, Source Offload crtcs: 4 outputs: 7 associated providers: 1 name:modesetting 

Nvida GPU was the sourse, while intel iGPU was a sink. After upgrading to rtx 4070 super their roles are switched:

$ xrandr --listproviders Providers: number : 2 Provider 0: id: 0x49 cap: 0x9, Source Output, Sink Offload crtcs: 4 outputs: 7 associated providers: 1 name:modesetting Provider 1: id: 0x21b cap: 0x2, Sink Output crtcs: 4 outputs: 7 associated providers: 1 name:NVIDIA-G0 

Because of that now for every app I have to explicitly specify I want it to be rendered on the dGPU via `__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia`
How do I reverse the roles of the graphics cards back as it used to be?

Why run random encounters?

As D&D has evolved, an opinion I've often encountered is that random encounters have become synonymous with poor DMing and pointless sessions. I fully understand this sentiment and have felt it myself as a player. Why include a battle that will have no in-game narrative impact, isn't truly dangerous enough to matter, and just takes away from time where we could be progressing the plot? Some issues can be addressed with skillful, on-the-fly DMing. Encounter too easy? Adjust the monsters or hazards to make them more challenging. No narrative connection? Invent one. No plot progression? Reveal an important secret during the encounter. While these solutions aren’t bad, they aren't the best, in my opinion. What if this encounter kills the party? As a DM, is this really where you would want them to die? Wouldn’t you rather reveal that secret under more meaningful circumstances?
I had stopped running random encounters entirely in my games for some time. Then came "Out of the Abyss." The majority of this campaign is comprised of long travel times, navigation struggles, and random encounters. In the context of this campaign, I understood the value of random encounters. Travel needed to be unpredictable, the caves needed a sense of "random" danger, and overall survivability needed to be a factor for this campaign to succeed. So, I ran my first session in the tunnels as written. I hated it!
The caves, meant to be a sandbox for exploration, felt utterly one-directional. Failed navigation checks just meant longer travel times. Random encounters still felt pointless, if not downright frustrating. And getting anywhere felt like it would take forever. But I realized something while running this campaign: I didn’t want to run travel in the Underdark without the impact of random surprise danger, navigational mishaps, and the feeling of resource depletion. So, I turned to Reddit and looked for a solution. Of course, most people's answer to the problem was to eliminate all random encounters and use a travel exposé with a preplanned encounter if necessary—essentially, hand-waving it.
Unsatisfied, I developed a game system for travel and encounters that worked well for my campaign, which I have generalized and will describe below. I am now running "Curse of Strahd" and have adapted it to the scale of that game. It continues to make travel an impactful narrative experience that still holds true to what I believe are the benefits of random encounters. I think the purpose behind random encounters is sound. You never know what will happen when leaving a safe haven, and preparedness is key. A string of bad travel luck should remain a probability in the game. Unexpected encounters on the road keep the world interesting, dangerous, and unexpected, and give the sense that it is also always progressing around you. Travel also offers ample RP opportunities, chances for some classes to utilize their survival skills and really shine, as well as time for players to progress their own individual goals with the possibility of failure and interruptions.

Predetermine the Travel Day

I don’t consider myself highly skilled in improv. I handle the unexpected fairly well, and I recognize that improv is an important part of the game. However, when it comes to running encounters, assembling one on the fly is generally more than I can handle. Someone adept in improv might manage to run the random encounter tables on the fly with great success. However, in my session preparation, I include a travel day for each potential route the players may choose during the session. In my "Curse of Strahd" game, this typically involves deciding whether I think they'll traverse a path or venture into the wilds, and anticipating their choices at various forks in the road.
Setting up these travel day tables for your campaign will take some time, as they are very setting-dependent and need to be as relevant to your campaign and players as possible. Much of the material for these tables can be borrowed from the official source material, however, reorganized and flavored to better suit your campaign.
You need to prepare a travel day by doing the following:

Environmental Effects

Create a d20 table for different environmental effects which would impact (or for some rows) have little or no hindrance on your players’ trek. I create the following columns in my own table:

• Environmental Effect
• Narrative Description
• In-Game Effect

Each environmental effect on the list should have some sort of in-game effect which adds a variable to their travel and may later impact an encounter during the travel day. For example, here are the first two environmental effects on my "Curse of Strahd" table:
Ghostly Mist: A chilling mist rises, filled with faint whispers and fleeting shadows. Effect: Visibility reduced to 10 feet. Hearing-based Perception checks have Disadvantage unless moving slowly or actively navigating.
Ashfall: Volcanic ash begins to fall like snow, blanketing the area in gray. Effect: Reduces visibility and may cause coughing fits reducing travel speed (DC 12 Constitution save to resist). Slow pace or navigation helps avoid deeper ash deposits.
Depending on the setting, these environmental effects shouldn’t all be negative, and many of the rows could simply be different weather effects. Most campaign guides come with a ratio for how often a random encounter should occur. This is also a good ratio to use when deciding on the possibility of a negative in-game effect versus a positive or neutral effect.
With an environmental effect decided, it’s time to move onto the encounter.

Encounter Odds

The joy of a random encounter table is the sudden surprise of it. You never know when an encounter is going to occur. Both "Out of the Abyss" and "Curse of Strahd" came with instructions for rolling a d20 to determine if an encounter takes place. Since my intention is to always have an encounter take place during travel, I instead randomized the “when” during the travel sequence the encounter takes place, and how complex the encounter will be.
In a multi-day travel sequence, like in "Out of the Abyss", I rolled 2d4s to determine on which day of their long travel an encounter would be taking place. This is because travel in the Underdark often would span several days. In "Curse of Strahd", where traveling between locations only takes hours, I rolled 1d8 to decide on which hour of travel an encounter would take place. If my players chose to travel through the wilds in "Curse of Strahd", I changed the dice to 1d4 to increase the possible number of encounters. This seemed to be in line with the encounter frequency described in both campaign guides.

Roll for Hazards / Points of Interest

Create a d20 list (or longer for more variety) of hazards or small points of interest which would make sense in the setting of your campaign. These could include environmental hazards, such as a chasm that needs to be crossed, a drop-off that needs to be climbed, or a bridge that has collapsed. They could also include interesting landmarks, such as a gravesite, a monument/shrine, a magical grove, an abandoned campsite, etc. This could also include interesting objects, such as a magical trinket found in the dirt, a corpse caught in a trap, a carriage sunken into the mud, etc. I like to make about ¼ of the d20 dice rolls result in picking two of these at the same time.
The table for this includes the following columns:

• Hazard / POI
• Narrative Description
• Potential Outcome

For many of the hazards, I like to include a percentage chance (usually 50/50) that the outcome will be positive. For example, the trinket in the mud could be enchanted with a blessing or a curse. I also like to include a DC chance to generate a positive outcome or, consequently, a negative outcome from the hazard. For instance: digging up the grave, you find something valuable; dig a bit too far (failed Perception), and you awaken something.

Creatures

Create a d20 list (or longer for more variety) of creatures that the players will encounter at the location of the hazard(s) / POI(s). These creatures should also be curated to fit the setting of your campaign, and many could be pulled from a campaign guide. This list should include creatures both hostile and non-hostile, animals, and monsters. As with hazards, I usually leave a ¼ chance for two creatures to be included.
The columns on this table are:

• Creature
• Narrative Description
• Stat Highlights
• Potential Outcomes

Within stat highlights, I’ll write down just what I need to know to generally run the creature, i.e., HP, AC, unique abilities. I also sometimes just place a hyperlink to the stats of the creature. Within potential outcomes, I’ll include the goals of the creature, as well as some possible outcomes of conflict or friendly conversation, with a DC attached.

Craft an Encounter

With the environmental condition, hazard(s) / POI(s), and creature(s) decided, these details can then be combined into something really interesting that fits the landscape and narrative of the campaign. Here is the latest encounter I crafted for my "Curse of Strahd" campaign.
From my rolls, I ended up with ashfalls, a ruined shack, and a cursed effigy, and a banshee. Within a few minutes, I had an interesting encounter crafted involving the ashfalls burying the ruins of a shack where a cursed effigy hangs, holding the consciousness of an angry banshee. I had the effigy take the form of a scarecrow. A nearby villain attempted to recruit her as one of the witches in the cult who worships her. On refusal, she left her to burn in the shack and trapped her screaming, anguished soul within the scarecrow effigy. A faint scream is audible from the scarecrow effigy. When held to your ear, it performs the “wail” ability. The banshee suddenly comes screaming from the ashes, killable by destroying the doll. Within the shack, I plan to leave breadcrumbs hinting at the villain to come.
Once the work is done to set up the tables with correct adjustments made for dangerous vs. positive encounter outcomes, I believe you end up with something that largely captures the best of both the danger, unexpected outcomes, and resource cost of a random encounter table, while keeping the value of preplanning encounters that somehow add to the narrative or lore of the campaign.

The Rest of Travel

Firstly, the environmental effect should have an impact on the rest of the travel for that day. These effects may slow down travel, cause conditional effects, or impede their movement in some other way. This provides a great opportunity for outdoorsmen in the party to really shine as they perhaps are able to use their navigational rolls to circumvent these negative effects, or even for the cleric to attempt to counter the maddening whispers emanating from the dark woods. And with that, the party needs to choose a travel pace. I go straight from the DM guide with a bit added.

• Slow Pace: Allows for stealth, avoids fatigue, increases the chance to find resources, but doubles the travel time.
• Normal Pace: Standard travel time with moderate chances of encountering events or resources.
• Fast Pace: Causes disadvantage on most ability checks but reduces travel time.

Travel Activities

Each of my players will choose something to do during this travel period, similar to downtime during a long rest. I generalize their choices under different travel activities. However, this is supplemented nicely by Kibble’s crafting system, which I also use and highly recommend! Each travel activity includes dice rolls which are affected by their travel speed.

• Navigation: This player’s job is to take the lead and navigate for the party. They make any DC when circumventing environmental effects that involve route finding or avoiding hostile areas.
• Scouting: This player’s job is to watch for danger. They roll perception, which is compared to the stealth/perception of any encountered creatures, as well as may spot a hazard before they stumble into it automatically.
• Foraging: Players may forage for food/water, or they may forage for herbal/alchemical/crafting ingredients. If looking for a specific ingredient, I increase the DC of successfully finding it by 5. I use Kibble’s DCs for foraging, which already includes all the tables needed to run this.
• Crafting: A player may choose to do some crafting while they travel. Kibble’s crafting system has stages of crafting occurring in 2-hour increments. I have the entire travel day count as one of these 2-hour crafting stages as outlined in his crafting guide. If not using his guide, the general rules of crafting have been outlined in Xanathar’s Guide, and DM discretion can be used as to what could be accomplished while traveling.
• Entertaining: Characters may use their charisma to boost party morale.
• Other Personal Endeavors: Often, my players use this travel time to pursue personal or party endeavors. This could be studying a magical artifact to identify it, deciphering a text, or even pondering a bit of information they don’t yet understand and would like some help with.
• NPC Relationships: In general, NPCs traveling with the party might engage with a player by helping them with a task (if it is in their skill set) or just straight up chatting with a player. My players may choose to spend their travel time investing in their relationship with another NPC, perhaps sharing life experiences and uncovering secrets or information they didn’t yet know.

Rests

I generally don’t allow long rests during travel; however, resting is still a requirement to avoid exhaustion rolls. I do this to add to the stress of resource depletion and make it to a full encounter day. My players are forced to juggle resources and abilities. Do they expend spell slots during travel only to not have them when it comes time to deal with a bigger problem once they reach their destination?
Kibble nicely outlines a camping system which is fantastically supplemented by his crafting guide. Even if you aren’t including crafting in your game, I recommend you find his system for camping.

In Summary

Using this system, I am able to design a unique travel sequence easily narrated beginning with the environmental effect, NPC roles, and interrupted by a hazard/POI and creature encounter. Throw in a dash of narrative flavor, and you have travel that actually matters but still contains the random possibilities/unexpected surprises and resource management from a random encounter table. I see it operating similarly to a more flexible hex crawl style system without the prep work or long-windedness of a hex crawl.

Hi all, this is specific to unions in the Bay Area. We have Local 38 and 39, both of which seem relevant to the HVAC field. I want to apply to the apprenticeship program next year for one or both of these Locals, but I’m a little confused on the difference. I’m interested in going down the building automation route, which leads me to believe Stationary Engineers is probably more applicable. Is there any reason not to take both tests and work with the Pipe Fitters if I am offered a position?
I met a rep from Local 38 who gave me a number to call and my CC professor worked extensively with Local 39 so he could potentially help me find some connection there, if that’s at all important.

It is the day, where military force of Valerie here, finally goes into offensive. Jakan and I travel along with one of the heroes of the riven war, Kyrem, who is leading the cavalry archer battalion we are to be his eyes and ears of enemy movement. As we ride our horses, I wondered the source of Jakan happiness.
This time, it is different, this must have something to do with Jakan and one of the five heroes of riven war, Lankensy. They pressed their upper arms perpendicularly against each other, they chuckled to each other, then separated to get to their duties. I chose to not ask as it isn't important but, doesn't stop my curiosity.
We have reached our deployment position, I look at Kyrem, he nods to us. Commence reconnaissance, Jakan and I separate from the cavalry archer battalion to scout in peace. It took us a while to actually find undead formations within the area, but, even Jakan let out a coughing sigh from the sight of the numbers we are seeing.
'Winter's roar... If there is even one more formation like that... The cavalry battalions have a tough time... Something I should have expected but, mostly considered unlikely...' Jakan states mildly alarmed by the number of undead in the rectangular formation.
'Fyregeld would need to take part very early... Which is most likely going to be disadvantageous later?' Ask for a confirmation of what I suspect Jakan is thinking.
'Yes... Fyregeld most certainly will be needed in the fight...' Jakan replies still mildly astounded how large the formation is. We move on to continue scouting, but, this is bad news, I guessing both of us are suspecting that this formation's purpose is to alarm the town that they are going to be attacked very soon.
Unfortunately for us, there is a second formation that is just as large as the first one more to the south of south west of the town, while this one is to the south west of it. 'Great, just, bloody fantastic... I will have some choice words for the Valerian scouts, these are probably twice or even thrice the number of undead compared to what they reported...' Jakan says upset about the situation.
'And, these two are part of the three we are supposed to lure into attacking the cavalry... The Valerians are most certainly going to have a bad day...' Reply quietly to try to ease Jakan's mood. It does work...
'Right, let's go look for the third... Hopefully it won't be as big as this and the previous...' Jakan states calmly, remembering that we aren't supposed to take part in the fight against these, but, reports are almost certainly going to be ugly.
Third formation, behind the first formation we scouted is still big but, probably by a third smaller, still a risky fight but, not unwinnable. Jakan told me that best way to beat this one with the forces nearby, would be, that cavalry archers would jog past it while firing arrows into the formation from the rear and front, as the formation is fairly tight and there aren't enough shields.
The undead casualties would be high, the cavalry archers would only stay as long as to bait the enemy to charge them, which leaves them open to be charged by the Valerian cavalry battalion, under the command of Tyrelia, one of the heroes of riven war. It's going to be a nasty melee but, one that would be the most effective on completely destroying this formation.
Follow up maneuvers would be that the cavalry archers, once they are being pursued, will regroup to attack the large south western formation, while once the cavalry battalion has routed or utterly destroyed this small formation will attack the rear of the southern undead formation, to goad them to pursue them.
Once the cavalry archer battalion has begun the fall back, the cavalry battalion will follow. From there, it is following the plan. The plan discussed yesterday still can be done but, it is going to be a lot more uglier in terms of results than expected. We scouted little bit longer to make sure there aren't other formations nearby.
There is fourth, which we suspect to be a reserve formation for the assault, it is about as big as the third. There is a mistake with it's location however, that is good news for the cavalry archer battalion. They are too far away to assist the large south western formation. Jakan sighed from mild relief. 'Well, at least some kind of good news... Although, once the pursuit is initiated, they most likely will join the battle.' Jakan says to me.
'I agree, thankfully we aren't supposed to give battle assistance in these fights... We would both be sore from the exhaustion later today, or worse, grievously wounded.' Reply to Jakan, he nodded in agreement. Jakan then motioned to me with his head that, this is enough, time to report to battalions. Nodding in agreement we head back.We arrive as Kyrem and Tyrelia are talking with the squadron commanders. 'What are your reports?' Kyrem hails us as we approach.
'Relatively far away from the best news, unfortunately but, there is some good too.' Jakan states calmly knowing that what we have seen, is going bring up mixed feelings. Jakan debriefs all on scene, on what we have discovered.
Kyrem displayed some worry but, when we told about the secondary reserve formation's positional mistake. He began to think about the situation more intensily. Tyrelia also looked worried, she and the battalion under her command, have a work cut out for them...
All squadron commanders deemed the plan still doable but, they all agreed on the fact that, this is going to be a seriously tough skirmish. Now, they need to be quick, Tyrelia gave Jakan a flag pole and a flag for the second part of this operation. 'Anything you would like to say before we begin?' One of the cavalry squadron commanders ask from us.
'For life, for the people, for Valerie.' Jakan states in hardened tone, we must begin and see our parts done in this operation.
'For life, for the people, for Valerie. I agree.' Tyrelia say with high spirit.
'Time to do our duty, all of you ready?' Kyrem asks from all of us.'Yes, sir.' Jakan and I reply without hesitation nor fear. We departed to head towards the north west of the castle. Behind us, pace of the hooves of more than hundred horses began to jog. We will not see them for a while now.
As soon as we arrived to the area we should scout out for any possible formations that might try to take positions north west or west of the castle where the supposed surprise pitched battle is to happen. We begin scouting, for a while, all the way to the past mid day, we do not find any undead formations, they must have combined formations for the assault on the town.
Unfortunately for them, it was done way too early... And now, there is a massive gap in the area control, gap which armed forces of Valerie are now beginning to exploit. We don't know whether the cavalry battalions have made good on their promises at the moment but, unfortunately for the infantry battalions the gap is going to be closed soon.
And there will be a battle that is a hard one for the one Lankensy is leading. These undead formations we are seeing, two of them, are about same size and number as the reserve formations to the south and south west of the town. We will need to improvise, one of those reserve size formations would have been bad enough. As we were heading back.
We see smoke, quite thick and seems to be from the direction where Fyregeld was to be signaled to ignite a forest, which undead infantry would use to try catch up with the formation moving cavalry. Unfortunately for us, we do not know how much damage this has caused and, we, Lankensy and his infantry battalion have a big endeavor ahead of us.
Jakan is still staring at the formations, probably staring at the distance between them. 'We can take them.' Jakan states calmly, which baffled me so much so that I let out an audible what. 'We can take them, We will be outnumbered three to one but, I have a plan.' Jakan adds and shakes his two handed sword slightly.
'I don't think it is enough.' Reply to Jakan in unsure tone as, such numerical advantage is enough for every attacking force to destroy a defending force.
'We will improvise, I will tell you once we reach sir Lanksensy.' Jakan states confidently.
'Okay...' I say slightly shakily, unsure whether it is warrior heart of Jakan making him act stupidly, or soldier's mind that whatever is the adversity, we handle it together... We head to where we agreed to meet Lanksensy and the infantry battalion he is leading in this battle.
Jakan prepared the flag and the flag pole, attaches the flag on the pole, then began to wave it, as the undead formations came into an open ground. Both of soon heard roar from the sky, we looked to the direction and see Fyregeld diving to harass the rear of the second formation of undead behind us.
We continue riding our steeds to the rally point. We reach it in good time, Lankensy was waiting for us with Seirialia. 'Bad news, we will receive undead formation that outnumbers us three to one.' Jakan states immediately before dismounting, I follow him.Lankensy at first seemed quite eager to fight but, such odds sobered his expression. 'We can take them, Fyregeld is already harrassing the formation behind the first one from the rear, so there will be chaos which buys us time.' Jakan says, Lankensy frowns while Seirialia looked grim.
'Tell me you have a plan.' Lankensy says, sounding surprisingly content and a smirk appeared on his lips.
'Yes sir. I will use the runes on my blade to create walls to hide the true number of our forces and act as a small choke point for the infantry to hold, you divide your battalion to three detachments. The center will hold the choke point with all they have, while southern and northern detachments make sure we won't get flanked around the stone walls.
When they begin their attempt to flank, the south and north detachments will begin fighting advance to box in our opponents. Seirialia, your arcane mastery is required, take a high ground and, rain hell on the enemy masses that engage the infantry detachments.' Jakan explains the plan.
Jakan draws his plan on to the dirt with his mace as he speaks. The terrain we are at, most certainly favors us... From that high ground, to the north east, is a perfect place to begin. Lankensy motions the infantry commanders to approach. He briefs them on the plan Jakan has proposed.
'Jakan, this is going to get ugly, but, with this plan... The glory will be quite gorgeous.' Lankensy states as the infantry commanders nod that they will follow this plan.
'This will be an ugly battle but, we will win it. Volarie, I need you to provide me more arcane, if the battle does get bad, with your assistance I will break the ground beneath our foes, so they have to fight from a disadvantageous position.' Jakan says without a hint of worry in his voice.
'Would it be better that I would provide you the assistance Jakan?' Seirialia asks alarmed by proposal from Jakan to me.
'No, we need your skill in magic to disrupt undead and to make sure that they have will have difficult time on concentrating their forces to put pressure on any of the three infantry detachments. Volarie already knows how to do it, and we have done this couple times before.' Jakan replies in calm tone.
I do remember, they were small in scale but, with right amount of concentration, we can do even bigger one. I am still worried though... Seirialia has the better mastery of arcane, I do not have as much skill or energy as her and Jakan's own capacity for arcane is rather limited. The plan is good though...
'Alright, I am ready.' Say finally without hesitation, although, I have some in my heart...
'I will hold the center, Volarie, move with the northern detachment to the position, Jakan you do the same, but with the south. Seirialia, I think you should get into position.' Lankensy says calmly.
'Yes sir.' Jakan and I say.
'Alright, I will trust your judgment.' Seirialia says to Jakan.
'Lady, I will get it done.' Jakan states with serious tone and ready to do everything in his power to win this battle. She nods to Jakan trusting him and I to do our part.
Jakan used the runes on his blade to create the walls, while I went into the position. We began to wait, waiting, the most nerve wrecking part of his plan... Soon, undead were sighted and they immediately rush to engage the choke point, slightly dispersing to begin also go around the stone walls. North infantry detachment began to jog to close the flanks, I go with them.
The plan is so far working, undead began engaging all three points without concentrating to break out through one. Now, we wait again, I listen to the battle raging before me, every now and then look around to see if we are getting flanked. Then I saw big chunks of ice raining into the center of the open left side box, infantry have formed. Second reserve force has now entered the battle.
They also charged right in, this is the moment where Jakan and I, head to the rear of the undead, and break the ground they stand in. As we had practiced, I place my hand on Jakan's left shoulder and begin channeling my arcane energy into him, just as he began to grasp the earth with his hands and began casting an earth rupture spell.
I allowed Jakan to take the lead and just follow him. Spell is complete, and Jakan made a two handed fist, then brought it down onto the dirt in front of him. Like water that got hit by massive weight on it's surface earth ruptured upwards at the center of the box, flinging countless amount of undead into the air.
Soil and stone rained upon the mass of undead, causing further losses of undead infantry. We gaze upon what we caused, both of us spent in terms of arcane. 'It is not enough, the battle still favors them...' Jakan says angrily and looks like he wants to charge in.
'That is a suicide.' Say to him in serious tone. Jakan calms down and thinks.
'Now, we just have to fight hard... Fight your way through to the northern detachment, while I fight to the south. Kills as many as you can cause as much as chaos as possible, when you reach allies, tell them to begin pushing forward with all their might. Because this is it, either they or us, break first.' Jakan says clearly frustrated that it has come to this but, no other options.
We collide our swords and wish fortune to each other, we separated and begin skirmishing. After fighting a while, I reach Valerian infantry northern detachment. 'Push! Push! It is either us or them!' Shout as loud as possible. Their commander heard me, a moment of consideration flashes in his expression, it soon hardens into seriousness.
'Fight, fight, fight with all your might!' He roars and joins the battle. Northern detachment slowly, orderly, but, surely, began taking ground from the undead. I join the commander, who would have distrusted me but, here, in this moment, we are not enemies.
Soon, to the last skeleton, walking dead and fallen's end. The undead were slain, soldiers began collapsing from exhaustion. I hear horses running towards us, turning to look, it is Tyrelia's cavalry battalion, then I look opposite of me, spot Jakan on his knees and relying on his sword, looks more like he is just trying to catch his breath and relax. To my left, I see Lankensy at the center detachment, he also looks quite exhausted
.'Hail hero of the riven war... It is done...' Say with stamina that I still have as Tyrelia approaches us on her steed.
'By the light... How many have you slain?' Tyrelia says as she looks at the ground before the resting soldiers of northern detachment. I think a while...
'Twenty three...' Say still exhausted and look around, Seirialia has reached Lankensy, they embrace each other. Ground quaked a little as Fyregeld landed, he is completely fine, but, his expression tells of bewilderment.
'Fyregeld, we will need to screen for more undead that might head towards here. They need rest not another battle.' Tyrelia states looking at all of the Valerian soldiers who have taken part in this battle.
'I agree wholeheartedly lady Tyrelia. I would like to hear what happened here to have caused a battle of this scale.' Fyregeld says, still quite baffled by the amount of undead that has been slain.
After resting almost to the beginning of dusk. We begin moving back into the castle from the northern entrance. I join Jakan's company who is now feeling a lot better, still exhausted but, at least enough rested that we begin walking our steeds back into the castle. Seeing it better to not ruin the current atmosphere of victorious but, exhausted Valerian soldiers.
I have the intention on breaking the silence between Jakan and I but, then I heard somebody approaching us on a horse and some jogging. We turn to look, and they are Tyrelia, Lankensy and Seirialia. As Lankensy opened his mouth to say something, ground quaked a little and we were joined by Fyregeld.
'What are the reports of commanders Gonzil, Salgi and Tynzio?' Lankensy asks from Tyrelia.
'Only three out of twenty have suffered wounds, by the looks of your battalion, I estimate yours had it worse than them combined.' Tyrelia says in praising tone.
'We ended up having to fight two reserve formations of undead... Thanks to Jakan's plan... It probably would have ended up a whole lot worse.' Lankensy states in humble tone.
'Negative sir...' Jakan sighs out, unwilling to receive praise, not out of that it offends him. 'Real heroes of this battle are the soldiers marching behind us.' Jakan adds mildly worried he might have offended.
'True but, you do deserve some praise draconian... Thanks to your quick thinking, that probably would have turned out to be a victory as bad as defeat.' Lankensy says, mildly amused by Jakan behavior and smiles warmly.
'I would have charged into the center of the undead, if Volarie wouldn't have calmed me down...' Jakan replies keeping composure but, wanting to avoid praise. Curse you Jakan... Don't shove into the spot of light in a cave...
'I only told him, what I believed was on his mind, is a suicide.' Say the truth of the matter.
'Could you both, just stop avoiding our gratitude?' Tyrelia asks teasing us, probably figured out, why we are behaving in this manner.
'With all respect, lady Tyrelia... We are just trying to avoid taking too much praise. We fear that the soldiers wouldn't take it idly.' Jakan replies steadily.
'While I do understand reasoning, you shouldn't downplay your part in this, I believe the commanders would also make it clear to their men, that this was achieved with effort from everybody.' Fyregeld reasons, Jakan just exhales in begrudging manner, probably because what Fyregeld said, is true.
Even I can not find a way to weasel a way out from receiving gratitude from Valerians... 'Alright then...' Jakan replies in slightly defeated tone, declaring his intention to cease avoiding receiving gratitude.
'You are correct lord Fyregeld.' State in slightly defeated tone. Our intention is to maintain as high as possible morale among the Valerian soldiers, we can handle the influence of dark arcane in the air without issues, it is the effect on the soldiers we are most concerned about.
'How bad did it look? Lady Seirialia.' Jakan asks, it makes sense why he asked that. He only had the battle level awareness, while Seirialia had better awareness of the battle situation from the high ground.
'It looked quite bad, after your earth rupture, the battle still was in the favor of the undead, from my position, I could only do so little when I had cast spells that I could.' Seirialia replies smiles warmly, Jaka scoffs in tone telling of his discomfort, knowing that he was correct in his battle assessment in that moment.
'Can you explain the chain of events?' Fyregeld asks from me and Jakan. Jakan looked at me, asking that should we be truthful, I look at him in a manner saying yes. Jakan closes his eyes slowly and rolls his eyes. He explains what transpired in more detail. Tyrelia and Fyregeld listen carefully.
I am more eager to hear their angle on what happened...

It is the day, where military force of Valerie here, finally goes into offensive. Jakan and I travel along with one of the heroes of the riven war, Kyrem, who is leading the cavalry archer battalion we are to be his eyes and ears of enemy movement. As we ride our horses, I wondered the source of Jakan happiness.
This time, it is different, this must have something to do with Jakan and one of the five heroes of riven war, Lankensy. They pressed their upper arms perpendicularly against each other, they chuckled to each other, then separated to get to their duties. I chose to not ask as it isn't important but, doesn't stop my curiosity.
We have reached our deployment position, I look at Kyrem, he nods to us. Commence reconnaissance, Jakan and I separate from the cavalry archer battalion to scout in peace. It took us a while to actually find undead formations within the area, but, even Jakan let out a coughing sigh from the sight of the numbers we are seeing.
'Winter's roar... If there is even one more formation like that... The cavalry battalions have a tough time... Something I should have expected but, mostly considered unlikely...' Jakan states mildly alarmed by the number of undead in the rectangular formation.
'Fyregeld would need to take part very early... Which is most likely going to be disadvantageous later?' Ask for a confirmation of what I suspect Jakan is thinking.
'Yes... Fyregeld most certainly will be needed in the fight...' Jakan replies still mildly astounded how large the formation is. We move on to continue scouting, but, this is bad news, I guessing both of us are suspecting that this formation's purpose is to alarm the town that they are going to be attacked very soon.
Unfortunately for us, there is a second formation that is just as large as the first one more to the south of south west of the town, while this one is to the south west of it. 'Great, just, bloody fantastic... I will have some choice words for the Valerian scouts, these are probably twice or even thrice the number of undead compared to what they reported...' Jakan says upset about the situation.
'And, these two are part of the three we are supposed to lure into attacking the cavalry... The Valerians are most certainly going to have a bad day...' Reply quietly to try to ease Jakan's mood. It does work...
'Right, let's go look for the third... Hopefully it won't be as big as this and the previous...' Jakan states calmly, remembering that we aren't supposed to take part in the fight against these, but, reports are almost certainly going to be ugly.
Third formation, behind the first formation we scouted is still big but, probably by a third smaller, still a risky fight but, not unwinnable. Jakan told me that best way to beat this one with the forces nearby, would be, that cavalry archers would jog past it while firing arrows into the formation from the rear and front, as the formation is fairly tight and there aren't enough shields.
The undead casualties would be high, the cavalry archers would only stay as long as to bait the enemy to charge them, which leaves them open to be charged by the Valerian cavalry battalion, under the command of Tyrelia, one of the heroes of riven war. It's going to be a nasty melee but, one that would be the most effective on completely destroying this formation.
Follow up maneuvers would be that the cavalry archers, once they are being pursued, will regroup to attack the large south western formation, while once the cavalry battalion has routed or utterly destroyed this small formation will attack the rear of the southern undead formation, to goad them to pursue them.
Once the cavalry archer battalion has begun the fall back, the cavalry battalion will follow. From there, it is following the plan. The plan discussed yesterday still can be done but, it is going to be a lot more uglier in terms of results than expected. We scouted little bit longer to make sure there aren't other formations nearby.
There is fourth, which we suspect to be a reserve formation for the assault, it is about as big as the third. There is a mistake with it's location however, that is good news for the cavalry archer battalion. They are too far away to assist the large south western formation. Jakan sighed from mild relief. 'Well, at least some kind of good news... Although, once the pursuit is initiated, they most likely will join the battle.' Jakan says to me.
'I agree, thankfully we aren't supposed to give battle assistance in these fights... We would both be sore from the exhaustion later today, or worse, grievously wounded.' Reply to Jakan, he nodded in agreement. Jakan then motioned to me with his head that, this is enough, time to report to battalions. Nodding in agreement we head back.We arrive as Kyrem and Tyrelia are talking with the squadron commanders. 'What are your reports?' Kyrem hails us as we approach.
'Relatively far away from the best news, unfortunately but, there is some good too.' Jakan states calmly knowing that what we have seen, is going bring up mixed feelings. Jakan debriefs all on scene, on what we have discovered.
Kyrem displayed some worry but, when we told about the secondary reserve formation's positional mistake. He began to think about the situation more intensily. Tyrelia also looked worried, she and the battalion under her command, have a work cut out for them...
All squadron commanders deemed the plan still doable but, they all agreed on the fact that, this is going to be a seriously tough skirmish. Now, they need to be quick, Tyrelia gave Jakan a flag pole and a flag for the second part of this operation. 'Anything you would like to say before we begin?' One of the cavalry squadron commanders ask from us.
'For life, for the people, for Valerie.' Jakan states in hardened tone, we must begin and see our parts done in this operation.
'For life, for the people, for Valerie. I agree.' Tyrelia say with high spirit.
'Time to do our duty, all of you ready?' Kyrem asks from all of us.'Yes, sir.' Jakan and I reply without hesitation nor fear. We departed to head towards the north west of the castle. Behind us, pace of the hooves of more than hundred horses began to jog. We will not see them for a while now.
As soon as we arrived to the area we should scout out for any possible formations that might try to take positions north west or west of the castle where the supposed surprise pitched battle is to happen. We begin scouting, for a while, all the way to the past mid day, we do not find any undead formations, they must have combined formations for the assault on the town.
Unfortunately for them, it was done way too early... And now, there is a massive gap in the area control, gap which armed forces of Valerie are now beginning to exploit. We don't know whether the cavalry battalions have made good on their promises at the moment but, unfortunately for the infantry battalions the gap is going to be closed soon.
And there will be a battle that is a hard one for the one Lankensy is leading. These undead formations we are seeing, two of them, are about same size and number as the reserve formations to the south and south west of the town. We will need to improvise, one of those reserve size formations would have been bad enough. As we were heading back.
We see smoke, quite thick and seems to be from the direction where Fyregeld was to be signaled to ignite a forest, which undead infantry would use to try catch up with the formation moving cavalry. Unfortunately for us, we do not know how much damage this has caused and, we, Lankensy and his infantry battalion have a big endeavor ahead of us.
Jakan is still staring at the formations, probably staring at the distance between them. 'We can take them.' Jakan states calmly, which baffled me so much so that I let out an audible what. 'We can take them, We will be outnumbered three to one but, I have a plan.' Jakan adds and shakes his two handed sword slightly.
'I don't think it is enough.' Reply to Jakan in unsure tone as, such numerical advantage is enough for every attacking force to destroy a defending force.
'We will improvise, I will tell you once we reach sir Lanksensy.' Jakan states confidently.
'Okay...' I say slightly shakily, unsure whether it is warrior heart of Jakan making him act stupidly, or soldier's mind that whatever is the adversity, we handle it together... We head to where we agreed to meet Lanksensy and the infantry battalion he is leading in this battle.
Jakan prepared the flag and the flag pole, attaches the flag on the pole, then began to wave it, as the undead formations came into an open ground. Both of soon heard roar from the sky, we looked to the direction and see Fyregeld diving to harass the rear of the second formation of undead behind us.
We continue riding our steeds to the rally point. We reach it in good time, Lankensy was waiting for us with Seirialia. 'Bad news, we will receive undead formation that outnumbers us three to one.' Jakan states immediately before dismounting, I follow him.Lankensy at first seemed quite eager to fight but, such odds sobered his expression. 'We can take them, Fyregeld is already harrassing the formation behind the first one from the rear, so there will be chaos which buys us time.' Jakan says, Lankensy frowns while Seirialia looked grim.
'Tell me you have a plan.' Lankensy says, sounding surprisingly content and a smirk appeared on his lips.
'Yes sir. I will use the runes on my blade to create walls to hide the true number of our forces and act as a small choke point for the infantry to hold, you divide your battalion to three detachments. The center will hold the choke point with all they have, while southern and northern detachments make sure we won't get flanked around the stone walls.
When they begin their attempt to flank, the south and north detachments will begin fighting advance to box in our opponents. Seirialia, your arcane mastery is required, take a high ground and, rain hell on the enemy masses that engage the infantry detachments.' Jakan explains the plan.
Jakan draws his plan on to the dirt with his mace as he speaks. The terrain we are at, most certainly favors us... From that high ground, to the north east, is a perfect place to begin. Lankensy motions the infantry commanders to approach. He briefs them on the plan Jakan has proposed.
'Jakan, this is going to get ugly, but, with this plan... The glory will be quite gorgeous.' Lankensy states as the infantry commanders nod that they will follow this plan.
'This will be an ugly battle but, we will win it. Volarie, I need you to provide me more arcane, if the battle does get bad, with your assistance I will break the ground beneath our foes, so they have to fight from a disadvantageous position.' Jakan says without a hint of worry in his voice.
'Would it be better that I would provide you the assistance Jakan?' Seirialia asks alarmed by proposal from Jakan to me.
'No, we need your skill in magic to disrupt undead and to make sure that they have will have difficult time on concentrating their forces to put pressure on any of the three infantry detachments. Volarie already knows how to do it, and we have done this couple times before.' Jakan replies in calm tone.
I do remember, they were small in scale but, with right amount of concentration, we can do even bigger one. I am still worried though... Seirialia has the better mastery of arcane, I do not have as much skill or energy as her and Jakan's own capacity for arcane is rather limited. The plan is good though...
'Alright, I am ready.' Say finally without hesitation, although, I have some in my heart...
'I will hold the center, Volarie, move with the northern detachment to the position, Jakan you do the same, but with the south. Seirialia, I think you should get into position.' Lankensy says calmly.
'Yes sir.' Jakan and I say.
'Alright, I will trust your judgment.' Seirialia says to Jakan.
'Lady, I will get it done.' Jakan states with serious tone and ready to do everything in his power to win this battle. She nods to Jakan trusting him and I to do our part.
Jakan used the runes on his blade to create the walls, while I went into the position. We began to wait, waiting, the most nerve wrecking part of his plan... Soon, undead were sighted and they immediately rush to engage the choke point, slightly dispersing to begin also go around the stone walls. North infantry detachment began to jog to close the flanks, I go with them.
The plan is so far working, undead began engaging all three points without concentrating to break out through one. Now, we wait again, I listen to the battle raging before me, every now and then look around to see if we are getting flanked. Then I saw big chunks of ice raining into the center of the open left side box, infantry have formed. Second reserve force has now entered the battle.
They also charged right in, this is the moment where Jakan and I, head to the rear of the undead, and break the ground they stand in. As we had practiced, I place my hand on Jakan's left shoulder and begin channeling my arcane energy into him, just as he began to grasp the earth with his hands and began casting an earth rupture spell.
I allowed Jakan to take the lead and just follow him. Spell is complete, and Jakan made a two handed fist, then brought it down onto the dirt in front of him. Like water that got hit by massive weight on it's surface earth ruptured upwards at the center of the box, flinging countless amount of undead into the air.
Soil and stone rained upon the mass of undead, causing further losses of undead infantry. We gaze upon what we caused, both of us spent in terms of arcane. 'It is not enough, the battle still favors them...' Jakan says angrily and looks like he wants to charge in.
'That is a suicide.' Say to him in serious tone. Jakan calms down and thinks.
'Now, we just have to fight hard... Fight your way through to the northern detachment, while I fight to the south. Kills as many as you can cause as much as chaos as possible, when you reach allies, tell them to begin pushing forward with all their might. Because this is it, either they or us, break first.' Jakan says clearly frustrated that it has come to this but, no other options.
We collide our swords and wish fortune to each other, we separated and begin skirmishing. After fighting a while, I reach Valerian infantry northern detachment. 'Push! Push! It is either us or them!' Shout as loud as possible. Their commander heard me, a moment of consideration flashes in his expression, it soon hardens into seriousness.
'Fight, fight, fight with all your might!' He roars and joins the battle. Northern detachment slowly, orderly, but, surely, began taking ground from the undead. I join the commander, who would have distrusted me but, here, in this moment, we are not enemies.
Soon, to the last skeleton, walking dead and fallen's end. The undead were slain, soldiers began collapsing from exhaustion. I hear horses running towards us, turning to look, it is Tyrelia's cavalry battalion, then I look opposite of me, spot Jakan on his knees and relying on his sword, looks more like he is just trying to catch his breath and relax. To my left, I see Lankensy at the center detachment, he also looks quite exhausted
.'Hail hero of the riven war... It is done...' Say with stamina that I still have as Tyrelia approaches us on her steed.
'By the light... How many have you slain?' Tyrelia says as she looks at the ground before the resting soldiers of northern detachment. I think a while...
'Twenty three...' Say still exhausted and look around, Seirialia has reached Lankensy, they embrace each other. Ground quaked a little as Fyregeld landed, he is completely fine, but, his expression tells of bewilderment.
'Fyregeld, we will need to screen for more undead that might head towards here. They need rest not another battle.' Tyrelia states looking at all of the Valerian soldiers who have taken part in this battle.
'I agree wholeheartedly lady Tyrelia. I would like to hear what happened here to have caused a battle of this scale.' Fyregeld says, still quite baffled by the amount of undead that has been slain.
After resting almost to the beginning of dusk. We begin moving back into the castle from the northern entrance. I join Jakan's company who is now feeling a lot better, still exhausted but, at least enough rested that we begin walking our steeds back into the castle. Seeing it better to not ruin the current atmosphere of victorious but, exhausted Valerian soldiers.
I have the intention on breaking the silence between Jakan and I but, then I heard somebody approaching us on a horse and some jogging. We turn to look, and they are Tyrelia, Lankensy and Seirialia. As Lankensy opened his mouth to say something, ground quaked a little and we were joined by Fyregeld.
'What are the reports of commanders Gonzil, Salgi and Tynzio?' Lankensy asks from Tyrelia.
'Only three out of twenty have suffered wounds, by the looks of your battalion, I estimate yours had it worse than them combined.' Tyrelia says in praising tone.
'We ended up having to fight two reserve formations of undead... Thanks to Jakan's plan... It probably would have ended up a whole lot worse.' Lankensy states in humble tone.
'Negative sir...' Jakan sighs out, unwilling to receive praise, not out of that it offends him. 'Real heroes of this battle are the soldiers marching behind us.' Jakan adds mildly worried he might have offended.
'True but, you do deserve some praise draconian... Thanks to your quick thinking, that probably would have turned out to be a victory as bad as defeat.' Lankensy says, mildly amused by Jakan behavior and smiles warmly.
'I would have charged into the center of the undead, if Volarie wouldn't have calmed me down...' Jakan replies keeping composure but, wanting to avoid praise. Curse you Jakan... Don't shove into the spot of light in a cave...
'I only told him, what I believed was on his mind, is a suicide.' Say the truth of the matter.
'Could you both, just stop avoiding our gratitude?' Tyrelia asks teasing us, probably figured out, why we are behaving in this manner.
'With all respect, lady Tyrelia... We are just trying to avoid taking too much praise. We fear that the soldiers wouldn't take it idly.' Jakan replies steadily.
'While I do understand reasoning, you shouldn't downplay your part in this, I believe the commanders would also make it clear to their men, that this was achieved with effort from everybody.' Fyregeld reasons, Jakan just exhales in begrudging manner, probably because what Fyregeld said, is true.
Even I can not find a way to weasel a way out from receiving gratitude from Valerians... 'Alright then...' Jakan replies in slightly defeated tone, declaring his intention to cease avoiding receiving gratitude.
'You are correct lord Fyregeld.' State in slightly defeated tone. Our intention is to maintain as high as possible morale among the Valerian soldiers, we can handle the influence of dark arcane in the air without issues, it is the effect on the soldiers we are most concerned about.
'How bad did it look? Lady Seirialia.' Jakan asks, it makes sense why he asked that. He only had the battle level awareness, while Seirialia had better awareness of the battle situation from the high ground.
'It looked quite bad, after your earth rupture, the battle still was in the favor of the undead, from my position, I could only do so little when I had cast spells that I could.' Seirialia replies smiles warmly, Jaka scoffs in tone telling of his discomfort, knowing that he was correct in his battle assessment in that moment.
'Can you explain the chain of events?' Fyregeld asks from me and Jakan. Jakan looked at me, asking that should we be truthful, I look at him in a manner saying yes. Jakan closes his eyes slowly and rolls his eyes. He explains what transpired in more detail. Tyrelia and Fyregeld listen carefully.
I am more eager to hear their angle on what happened...

LCD panel on my JB Prime stopped working. Grill has some power because the low pellet alarm still comes on. Found that my control panel is part number P-1206. 1. Can’t find the P-1206 anywhere. Anyone know if this has been discontinued? 2. Ordered P-1263 control panel which I learned is for the Prime Plus. It has a quick connector to the red & black power wires and blue and yellow igniter wires. If I cut off the quick connector and splice the wires from my original control panel into the new panel, will it work?

Unsure if this is the best subreddit, but here we go. My family has tasked me with taking all our pictures from phones, sd cards, drives, and more, and bringing them all into a specific ssd. We’d like to have it all categorized by time, date, location. (Not to an insane degree but at least organized) I’m wondering: 1. What is the best way to do this? - I’m trying to figure out the best way to get pictures from phones to a computer, while retaining the date and location data 2. Is there any way to automate the sorting of the pictures to streamline the process at all? Any help would be appreciated, i’m currently trying the google drive route but the photo data doesn’t seem to be included. The final destination of the pictures is a 2TB Portable SanDisk SSD, pictures are coming from Iphones and other media sources. I was hoping to use my Windows PC to compile everything but i’ve got a Macbook if that would be easier working with Apple Phones. Thanks in advance TLDR: What’s the best way to bring together a large number of photos from a number of sources?

I just finished Big Sur. It was my third marathon over the past 2.5 years. This year, of note, its an out and back from Carmel as opposed to the point to point from Big Sur due to a road collapse. Its the third time in 20ish years they have had to do an out and back. It is a precarious road so it will happen again. So this post could be useful.
First of all, the out and back is generally considered easier. This might not be universally agreed, but i spent some time talking to a guy in the route who has run this race every year since 2000. All three out and backs and 20ish normal routes. I am going to trust his opinion; original route (2100 feet up, 2500 feet down) is harder than 1850 up and down. That being said, out and back was a very very hard run. As i said, only three marathons under my belt so i am not mr experience. But trained harder, i am faster, i ran harder... And its my slowest marathon. My legs are positively dead. I trained hills as much as i could and it was not enough.
I knew the hills were coming. That is on the website. What i have not seen noted anywhere is that at many many points the road is heavily banked left to right or right to left to help speedy cars stay on the road. As a runner, its awkward to run on the left to right slant. I dont know how to train that besides running across driveways... But that added to the difficulty.
Today was a beautiful day. The weather was as good as could be asked... But its still windy on a northern California coast. This aint San Diego beaches. The headwinds take their toll. Refreshing if its a little warmer, but the hill with a headwind makes it that much funner. And todays winds were lighter than usual.
The route was extremely well supplied with hydration stations. Support staff was amazing. I never saw a wait on the porta potties, although, pride point is i have not used one in three runs.
They call out a strict 6 hour cutoff. They do use the 6 hour pacer as a sort of sweeper. I think if you fall behind late you might get a teeny bit of extra time. With the road close anyhow i suspect the rush to reopen highway 1 is less urgent. The 21 mile option is a solid option for those less confident. Even though my PR is 4:38 last December, I was worried about the 6 hours and i would still be worried about it on the normal route.
Training : I was 35 mile weeks with 1000 to 1500 feet of elevation a week and a Yoga+elliptical day. One week i got over 2000. Long runs i alternated between going for length vs going for more elevation and capping by effort rather than length. So one weeken i might run a long run with 19 miles and 5 or 600 feet of gain. The next i might run only 13 but with 1200 feet of gain... Same time and effort commitment. Depending on my long run direction i would alternate mid week runs the other way. I did very little speed work as i was focusing on elevation. One note... For me elevation means getting in a car for a teeny bit. What i found as an alternative is using over and under passes and just running back and forth like a mad man.
I actually strained my Soleus with 5 weeks to go so i ended up with a 5 week taper with no runs over 8 miles over the last 5. I suspect that did eat at my leg fitness a little.
Results : I was solid until mile 16, running at PR pace. Cardio was fine, i was not breathing hard and my heart rate was fine. As i said, i needed more hill training. Hamstrings went in 16th mile then all hell broke loose. My Soleus held until mile 21ish day of. By then i was running like a weird character from a B horror movie. I finished 4:50 and i am fine with it. It was an amazing experience that i am proud of. I see a lot of posts about aspirational random times that they got from some post on the Internet as a "good" time. A run like today is why the simple number does not tell the story.
Cheers!

Hello everyone I'm posting this message because I'm travelling, I'm currently in Berlin (I'll probably do a summary at the end of my trip to help the next ones).
In a few days, I'm going to travel from Prague to Krakow by night train. I booked my ticket via CD.CZ.
But a German man I met on the way, well used to night trains, was surprised: according to him, there is no direct night train from Prague to Krakow.
Do you think there's a problem with the tickets I booked?
When I look on the interrail application, I see that the route exists, with the same timetable but with a change in the middle. Yet my booking only mentions one wagon/sleeper number.
Thank you very much !

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A series of six loud ‘thumps’ fired out from my tortoise's position and all across no-man’s-land explosions detonated, taking clusters of drones with them. Unfortunately the shots are not as accurate as I would have preferred but I suppose I should have expected that since they were moving targets. Once the last of my first tortoises shells fired out, my next mortar tortoise began taking its place and started firing off their own barrage of munitions while the first began rearming with the help of a handful of spiders who split up and placed the mortar shells into the feeder two at a time, just about finishing their work as the second tortoise finished firing their last round. Looking out into the field, I watched as explosions continued to mark the area and was glad to see as the enemy forces seemed to slow under the weight of the bombardment which made things all the better.
The largest of the drones were getting particularly targeted due to their apparent higher value along with the fact that they were significantly easier to hit given their size and slower speeds. The one thing I was slightly upset about was the fact that my ranged drones were still a bit too far to begin hitting the enemy drones themselves; however, I dared not send them out of the defensive line as the enemy fliers quickly approached my lines unhindered by the bombardment happening underneath their wings. Ordering my ranged drones to watch the skies and open fire the moment they get into range, I made sure that my melee drones were ready to either fight off enemy fliers who attempt to swoop down and pick off my ranged drones or, in the case of my few vultures and woodpeckers, prepared to fly out and engage the enemy in the skies as well.
Looking back down onto ground level, I saw that despite the ongoing bombardment the enemy drones were still slogging through in concerning numbers having been able to spread out enough to the point that my mortar tortoise's shots would be ineffective. Regardless the shelling was still thinning out their numbers which would surely be invaluable once things start going ploin shaped and the big melee begins. Speaking of which, just about when the enemy ground drones reached the minimum engagement distance for my ranged drones, the enemy fliers began diving down into range before their own hornets began opening fire on my drone positions. Thankfully the majority of my drones were sitting behind some nice and sturdy cover which protected them from the deadly spikes however my tortoises were not as fortunate due to their increased size.
My own ranged drones were able to shoot down a few of the enemy hornets before they got into range of my mortars and my vultures and woodpeckers shot up to hopefully distract them as well however more than a few slipped past and fired off their spikes into one of my tortoises midsection. The tortoise in question seized up and crumpled to the ground as a large percentage of their core circuitry was damaged or destroyed upon getting impaled by the many spikes shot into it. A standard tortoise may have been able to survive the beating however, due to the mortar tortoises substantially lowered armored capacity, the spikes penetrated right through the little armor the tortoise had left and wreaked havoc upon their systems. Ordering my fliers to engage the enemy hornets in full haste, I similarly ordered for my ranged drones to cover them and engage enemy fliers at their discretion.
As my vultures and woodpeckers darted about and slammed into the remaining enemy hornets, my ground based drones began engaging the enemy melee troops as they emerged from the minimum firing distance in groups of two and three. My two remaining tortoises, deciding that this was probably going to be the last opportunity to have targets not danger close to friendly forces, quickly began emptying their shell racks as quickly as they could and consequently I was surprised when the area in a dozen feet in front of me suddenly became a ball of fire. Similar occurrences popped up all across the line as my mortars dumped munitions as fast as their systems would let them before hightailing out of here now that they were no longer able to contribute to the battle.
Regardless, my air units continued to hound the enemy hornets since they were still probably the most dangerous enemy force currently present although they were meeting fierce resistance from enemy fliers and the hornets themselves despite my ranged drones best efforts. My woodpeckers were probably doing the most work proportionally to their weight as they engaged the enemy drones with a speedy ferocity and their smaller size made it so that they were quite difficult to get a blow onto them, let alone a ranged shot. Due to their work, the enemy hornets seemed just a bit too preoccupied to finish reloading their spike launchers and begin turning their weapons against my ground drones who were now facing the bulk of the enemy force.
With my tortoises no longer slowing the enemy troops down and forcing them to take cover and spread out, the hostile drones had taken the time to quickly reorganize into clusters while my ranged drones were focused on handling the enemy air units. As such, the enemy drones renewed charge was substantially more successful than their initial scattered wave had been, even if that was not saying all too much. My infantry drones managed to hold the line as they continued to take cover behind the constructed defenses and only poked out of them in order to quickly damage the closest enemy drone before the hostile ground based ranged troops could manage to get a lock on them. Diverting some of my hornets and scorpions from firing at the enemy fliers, I directed them at the now more threatening enemy ground force now pushing against my own troops.
As a few of my scorpions fired from behind cover into a cluster of enemy drones, I noticed that one of the beams was a dark red and realized that that must have been one of the newer and more lethal scorpions. Watching as the red beam slammed into a hostile ant, I was happy to see that the beam punched through the drones armor and made a bloody mess of their internal components which in turn was the killing blow. Looking back at my scorpions, I noticed that while all of the scorpions were emitting jets of steam in an effort to cool off their beam cannons, the modified one was blowing off the most steam whilst also digging into the ground further as the first shot had pushed it back a bit. Other, similar occurrences were happening all across the line as red and blue streaks of light lanced through the air as my scorpions fired off and were promptly fired at by some of the enemy’s scorpions who thankfully did not have the lethal variation.
Looking out at the battlefield and how the enemy ground troops were starting to clump up together in order to maximize the pressure that they were putting on my drone defenders, I issued an order to my worms to take advantage of their mistake and break up those formations a bit. Watching as my worms quickly took up positions before bursting through the ground in the middle of the enemy formation and wreaking havoc on the enemy position giving my drones the opportunity to strike their now utterly confused counterparts which they promptly did so. Under the cover of the massive distraction which the mess which my worms were creating, my various infantry drones broke cover and charged the dazed and confused enemies and shoved them back out of any footholds that they may have been able to gain during their push.
They were met with some resistance from the enemy drones at the very front of the formation however beyond that the rest of the hostile drones were all too focused on the worms tearing their way through them to care. Speaking of which, my worms were taking a substantial amount of damage during their attack run as nearly the entirety of the enemy force focused down on them and so I ordered them to fall back which was probably for the best given that losing them in the process of only dealing a handful more casualties would not be the best use of their lives. Plus, the damage had been done as their drills had taking more than a dozen enemy drones down and the countercharge made by my infantry had done well at punching through a fair amount of the enemy troops before they needed to fall back behind the defenses now that their distractions were retreating and enemy ranged troops were beginning to divert fire their way.
The losses which the enemy force had incurred would surely be damming however they continued to throw themselves against my drone line which was steadily losing combat effective drones one by one even if we took them down nearly twice as fast. The battle in the sky was doing somewhat better with nearly all of the enemy fliers having been taken out by my own airborne drones along with ground support fire from my ranged drones. Unfortunately this has come at the cost of a large amount of my vultures and woodpeckers who were quickly whittled down as they engaged their counterparts. The quicker the air battle concluded, the faster I would be able to divert the rest of my hornet fire onto the enemy ground troops and with that in mind, I ordered any of my drones to divert fire to the enemy fliers and end the air battle as quickly as they could manage.
My remaining vultures and woodpeckers swooped in and slammed into the last of the hostile hornets and nearly the entirety of my ranged force opened up on the still lingering enemy airborne drones which managed to take out the vast majority of them at the cost of leaving my melee drones without any fire support to help them whether the still ever present enemy waves crashing down on them. It payed off however as my vultures and woodpeckers still in the fight were able to quickly mop up the last of the hostile aerial drones allowing me to finally divert all of my drones onto firing on the main enemy contingent and right in the nick of time as the few large drones that had managed to survive the bombardment preformed my mortar tortoises emerged from the ruins and properly joined the fight.
Just as the bulk of my ranged drones opened fire on the enemy air units, a pair of crabs and a tortoise marched onto the front of the enemy lines and promptly began tearing apart the defenses my construction team spent so long constructing and maintaining but thankfully I was not as under equipped as I was the last time I had to fight large drones as I ordered my ranged drones to pick their targets and open fire when ready. Commanding my one standard tortoise to take up a defensive position mirroring the enemy tortoise along with my other melee drones to buy some time for my ranged drones to rearm and cool down. I similarly directed my flight capable drones to engage the enemy's own scorpions who have been taking potshots at my troops for too long. Thankfully they were far enough away from any other hostile drones that could possibly give any support meaning my last vultures and woodpeckers could attack the enemy scorpions without worrying about getting swarmed.
Focusing back on the hostile large drones currently bearing down on my drones defensive positions, I noticed that the drones in question had not made it out of the bombardment as healthy as I first assumed. Now that they were closer, I could pick out a multitude of sections in their hull where shrapnel had pierced and where whole chunks of their armor had been broken off which boded well for my rearming ranged volley. But until then my drones would have to hold them back and that was proving to be a rather difficult task as the size difference between my drones and their opponents were starting to show as the enemy large drones continued to pulverize the constructed cover my drones were hiding behind forcing them to either relocate or fight exposed against the rest of the hostile drones.
The hostile force despite their losses continued to push against my drones who fought valiantly despite casualties of our own however despite my tortoises best efforts, the enemy large drones were pushing them back along with the rest of my troops and things were starting to look grim. Checking how long it would take for my ranged drones to be able to open fire again, they reported that they still needed just short of a minute before fire support could be administered. This I figured would not be fast enough as some of my infantry drones were reporting a spike in losses now that they were stuck in the fight and that they would not be able to sustain this kind of engagement for long. I was about to order my drones to begin falling back in chunks in a bid to buy a bit more time for my ranged drones to get another batch of shots off when I spotted something in my peripheral vision.
Snapping my head towards whatever I had seen, I managed to spot a cluster of figures flying through the sky in the direction of my outpost. Squinting harder, I watched as the cluster of figures quickly became more defined and soon enough I was able to recognize the markings and partial blue glow across the drones which I could now see were vultures. The Flock! They must have come from the new nesting ground that they had been setting up for the past few days. With their help we should be able to turn the tide. Informing my drones of the incoming reinforcements, they began fighting with renewed vigor now that they had a chance to make it out of this on the winning side. As the Flock reinforcements quickly approached my outpost, my drones managed to push the enemy drones back out of the defensive line which was looking more like a bunch of randomly placed rubble and the enemy crab drones were even dissuaded from pushing up as the first of my scorpions began opening up and stunning down the large drones.
My more lethal scorpions and hornets were still rearming when the vultures from the Flock arrived to the battle and, as it turns out, they had brought a few friends with them as they dropped a half dozen fire beetles into the middle of the enemy formation detonating in an air burst for maximum damage. The enemy large drones managed to get through the detonations relatively unscathed with only minor damage to their unarmored sections of their hull, with the exception of one of the crabs who lost a few of their legs to the blast, however the remaining chaff drones had taken some serious casualties which my own drones took advantage upon. Now that they had delivered their payload, the Flock vultures took liberty of the chaos and began joining my other vultures in charging into the last of the quickly dwindling enemy ranged drones.
As they began tearing apart the enemy back liners, the last of my lethal ranged drones finished cooling down and reloading which they promptly took advantage of as they pumped the entirety of their rounds into the three large drones. My modified scorpion's red hot beams slammed into the armored shell of the single enemy tortoise and after a second or two of continuous focus it managed to melt through the armor and cut into the insides of the enemy drone making it an easy target for the rest of my drones. The majority of my hornets fire was split between the two crabs with a bit of priority given to the one still standing on all of its legs and their spikes punched through the comparatively thinner armor and destroyed them outright with their now lifeless corpse crashing down onto nearby drones.
With their core units being destroyed and casualties just starting to register, the enemy forces began to rout whilst being hounded down by vengeful troops. And just to put salt in an open wound, I noticed as the mortar tortoise which I once thought completely destroyed used the last of its energy to shift it’s mortar to point in the direction of the fleeing enemy drones and pop off the last of its shells likely causing a handful more drones to lie dead on the crater filled field. As soon as the last of the enemy drones left direct sightlines, a small wave of spider repair drones charged down from the inside of the outpost and began tending to the mountain of wounded and dying drones in an effort to save as many of them as possible before they succumb to their injuries.
Looking around, I could easily see that more than half of my drones would be out of commission for the foreseeable future as it would take at least the better half of a day in order for my spider drones to fully patch them all up. Although it is not like I am planning to push up and out of the outpost anytime soon, taking the corrupted AI’s territory is nice and all however I would not gain all too much from pushing forward especially if Churn cannot push up with me given the fact that my force would still stand no chance if the bulk of the enemies attention is diverted to me. Sitting back down against one of the defensive barricades, I shoo off a few spiders who were checking me for damage with the pretense that their time would be better spent on the rest of my drones. I just hope that wasn’t only the first wave of hornets now that I’ve kicked their nest.
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Apologies for the unscheduled pause in posts, didn't have enough time to write this week as i would have liked.