I've spent several hours throughout the past week researching Gachas and nowhere did I find a single post or comment anywhere that accurately explains everything in the same place, so I'm going to do my best to explain things as best as I can so nobody else will have to research it much either. However, I don't think I know absolutely EVERYTHING about Gachas and might be incorrect on a few points but I'll edit this if anyone can point out where I'm wrong.
Taming: Gachas are tamed passively by dropping items down in front of them, I've heard that you can feed it anything but I haven't tested that myself. When you drop the items, the Gacha will walk towards it (unless it's sitting and it's close enough for it to pick it up) and pick it up, then eat it slowly. According to Dododex it tames better with structures/tools than normal materials. I may have done something wrong but i tried using greenhouse windows in stacks of 10 each (as recommended) to tame them with full effectiveness, but to no avail it always lost effectiveness and still took an incredibly long time to tame. Meanwhile, my brother tamed 4 or 5 just using stone in stacks of 20 with the same effectiveness (like 4%). So in other words, don't use this as a taming guide.
The level of the Gacha doesn't matter as much as it does for most creatures, the most important stat on them is crafting skill, which boosts the production of their crystals (drop rate and the quality of the crystals (normal, primitive, ramshackle, apprentice)). The only reason you might want a high level Gacha is to get a head start on crafting skill or high weight, so you can focus all it's levels into crafting skill and it's still able to hold a significant amount of items at once. From what I've heard, a good base stat of crafting skill on a newly tamed high level Gacha is around 130-135%, but anything beyond that is considered rare.
Crafting Skill: As I already said, it increases the frequency at which crystals drop from the Gacha, I don't know if this means that crystals grow more from eating, or if it means it'll eat the same amount, just more often than normal. All of my Gachas get 1.5% crafting skill per level up, so I'd assume that all tamed Gachas get that amount per level up.
I have seen many people recommend 160% crafting skill for Gachas that you want only the standard crystals that drop materials, and 260% for the leveled crystals (primitive, ramshackle, apprentice). I haven't seen anyone explain why so I can only speculate that beyond 160%, the chances of getting a higher level crystal than the standard ones is just too high to make an efficient material farm, as you would get leveled crystals too often. I have several at 160% and they work very well for materials.
Possible Drops: It would probably be easier to check the wiki for this, but I'll list them anyway. All Gachas get 6 different possible materials they can produce, and of those 6 are 3 common materials, 2 uncommon materials, and 1 rare/very rare materials. When wild they will drop a random one of those 6 resources, but when tamed you can choose whichever one of the 6 resources you want by choosing "Production" in the creature's radial menu (you can also set the production to random, newly tamed Gacha's are set to random by default).
Common Materials:

• Fiber
• Flint
• Fragmented Green Gem (equivalent of Green Gem)
• Corrupted Wood (equivalent of Fungal Wood, essentially equivalent to normal Wood with a few extra uses)
• Raw Salt
• Sand
• Stone
• Thatch

Uncommon Materials:

• Blue Crystalized Sap (equivalent of Blue Gem)
• Clay
• Congealed Gas Ball
• Crystal
• Oil
• Silica Pearls
• Silk

Rare Materials:

• Black Pearls
• Metal
• Obsidian
• Organic Polymer
• Red Crystalized Sap (equivalent of Red Gem)
• Sap
• Sulfur

Very Rare Materials:

• Element Dust

If you're looking to tame a Gacha and want to find one with the materials you want, I'd recommend getting very close to the crystal before you pick it up, and check it's level. If there are several Gachas in an area then it can be hard to find one with the right materials you want just by mindlessly picking up every crystal you find. If you check the level and then open the crystal one at a time, and then see the Gacha of that level nearby, it should be easier to find the one you're looking for. It's also important to pay attention to what materials a single Gacha can drop. The first time I tried to tame a Gacha, I thought I found one that dropped both Organic Polymer and Black Pearls. However, if you look at this list above, you can see that both of those are "Rare Materials" and a single Gacha can only have 1 Rare Material as a possible drop. Depending on the material, Gachas drop a different amount, but I'll get into that in another section.
Gachas can drop leveled crystals that can give a variety of different tools/armor as well as some structures. Leveled crystals only have 3 different rarities; Primitive, Ramshackle, Apprentice. So if you came here wondering how to get Ascendant Gacha Crystals, I'm sorry to inform you that as they may have existed years ago, they don't now. Leveled crystals are easily identified by white/green/blue particles floating upward from them. I am not typing out every item that can be dropped by leveled crystals so here is a link where you can check it yourself on the wiki: https://ark.fandom.com/wiki/Gacha_Crystal_(Extinction)?so=searchThe?so=searchThe)
Gacha crystals can drop almost all stone/metal/fabricated tools and weapons, including torches and canteens but not including harpoon launchers. They also drop chitin/flak/riot armor as well as heavy miner's helmets, and for structures they only drop a few different thing such as dinosaur gates/gateways of wood/stone/metal as well as wooden tree platforms (I do not believe behemoth gates are possible).As far as I have observed, Primitive crystals drop Primitive/Ramshackle equipment. Ramshackle crystals drop Ramshackle/Apprentice/Journeyman equipment. Apprentice crystals drop Journeyman/Mastercraft equipment, and I don't believe Ascendant is possible but maybe it is. There is a good chance that I'm somewhat incorrect about the information above, I tested it several times myself but accidentally deleted the note so I'm mostly relying on memory now.
Snow Owl Pellets: Gachas pick up items near them when wild and tamed, including feces and snow owl pellets. They eat feces as more of a last resort option but they eat snow owl pellets almost immediately after obtaining them, granting them a buff. The buff can be identified by yellow, green, blue and red particles swirling over the Gacha's back. Based on my own observation, the buff lasts until the Gacha produces a crystal, even if the Gacha has nothing to eat in it's inventory, meaning the buff will be "on hold" until it can eat. It's important to note that eating snow owl pellets does produce a crystal at all, like it would it if it ate a material like stone. This means if a Snow Owl is directly in front of a Gacha with the buff and nothing in it's inventory, every time the Snow Owl regurgitates a pellet, the Gacha will pick it up and hold it in it's inventory without eating it, allowing you to farm snow owl pellets while afk for later use. Now I will finally get into what the buff actually does.
The buff from the snow owl pellet forces the Gacha to eat until it produces a crystal (again, as long as it has something consumable in it's inventory), the crystal is also forced to produce the maximum amount of the material it can make, assuming the Gacha is in a good mood (I'll explain mood in the next section). I believe the snow owl pellet buff also makes the Gacha more likely to drop leveled crystals, but it didn't seem to impact my pursuit of materials so I wouldn't worry about it if you just want to farm something like metal for example.
Mood: Gachas have good and bad mood which affect their crystal production. The mood is mainly affected by the gender of other Gachas in the vicinity, but mood can also be lowered by taking damage. The mood is dependent on if there is another Gacha of the same gender withing a certain distance.
For example: If you have a male Gacha and female Gacha next to each other, they'll both be in a good mood. If you have 2 male Gachas next to each other, they'll both be in a bad mood. If you have 8 Gachas in a small area, 7 are female and 1 is male, the females will be in a bad mood and the male will be in a good mood. The mood is dependent on if there is another Gacha of the same gender withing a certain distance.
About the distance, I've seen people give several different numbers but it seems that the actual distance that same-gendered Gachas need to be apart is 14 foundations. Now I'll get into what mood actually does.
Bad mood is caused by being too close to another Gacha of the same gender, or taking damage. It causes the Gacha to not only produce crystals slower, but the yield of each crystal will be significantly less. I'm not sure how it affects leveled crystals but as bad mood as basically the counterpart of a snow owl pellet buff, I'd assume it lowers the drop rate of leveled crystals. They also refuse to pick up items, rending the snow owl pellet farming method I mentioned irrelevant. I don't believe they eat snow owl pellets while in a bad mood, and I'm also pretty sure that the bad mood cancels the buff until they're back in a good mood. I'm not sure how long bad mood lasts from taking damage, but after a Gacha is separated (at least 14 foundations) from all other Gachas of the same gender, it remains in a bad mood for a time unless an opposite-gendered Gacha is close to it. Bad mood is easily identified by purple/black particles on its back, similar to the snow owl pellet buff. It will also refuse to look at you if "Ally Looking" is enabled.
Good mood enables the Gacha to produce crystals normally without issues (as long as it has enough to eat) and utilize the snow owl pellet buff. It also will pick up any item near them. It is identified by no lights on its back, and if "Ally Looking" is enabled, it'll look at you.
Gacha Crystal Material Quantity: A Gacha Crystal will drop a different quantity of materials based on its mood and the snow owl pellet buff. This seems to pertain to the rarity of the material (common, uncommon, rare, very rare). I play on single player settings as I'm always playing alone or with my brother, so I don't know if the quantity is different than default for me.
I recently was out of Red Gems and Crystal, and although Crystal was easy enough to find, I couldn't find Red Gems anywhere except one location. So instead of searching around everywhere I decided to check what materials all my Gachas can produce and found that I have one for both Red Crystalized Sap and Crystal, as well as some other materials I was lacking such as Organic Polymer and Metal. So i threw down a male that produced Red Crystalized Sap and a female that produced Crystal and loaded them up with stuff to eat and all my saved snow owl pellets. I kept getting 30 Red Crystalized Sap with the buff and 60 Crystal, also with the buff. But once the buff ran out i was getting around 14-27 Red Crystalized Sap and double that of Crystal. If you refer to the list in the "Possible Drops" section, you can see that Red Crystalized Sap is Rare, whereas Crystal is Uncommon. I also farmed Organic Polymer and Metal with the Gachas and got 30 from each crystal with the snow owl pellet buff.
Upon further testing I have determined the maximum quantity of materials from a Gacha Crystal based on their rarity: (Keep in mind this is with single player settings, I don't know if Gacha Crystal yield is affected by this or other settings. Also keep in mind I don't actually have a Gacha that drops element dust, which is the only Very Rare Material.)
Common: x120 Uncommon: x60 Rare: x30 Very Rare (Element Dust): x15
I can't confirm this but it appears that a Gacha in a good mood without the snow owl pellet buff would produce between 35-100% of its maximum yield per crystal, and a Gacha in a bad mood would produce below 35%.
Breeding: Gachas do not drop eggs after mating and instead have a gestation timer like mammals do. Once the baby has been born, it will pick up items on the ground, allowing you to give it more food than it can hold which can prevent starvation much easier than you can for most creatures, however a Maewing would render this technique useless. I haven't tested this myself, nor was I able to find any information on it but I don't think they can eat everything an adult can, for food at least. They can eat meat and berries (this I can confirm), and I've seen people use rare mushrooms as they provide more food for the baby than meat or berries, but make sure rare mushrooms are the only item in their inventory, or else they might eat other items first.
You can check what a Gacha can produce ("Production" in the radial menu) even in the baby stage, allowing you to easily determine if raising it to an adult is even worthwhile. If not then you can just.... you know. The possible materials are unaffected by the parents and are entirely random.
Someone in the comments pointed out to me that baby Gachas smash feeding troughs so you should keep them away from them... I haven't seen this myself but better safe than sorry. They also said if you just set babies to wander then they never need food, hence the reason to fear for your trough as they might walk into it and smash it.
When imprinting the Gacha, it will not gain more Crafting Skill. The only way to increase this is through level ups or breeding Gachas with high Crafting Skill, I am unaware if Crafting Skill can be increased through mutations but I personally don't think it would be worth the effort even if it is possible.
What to Feed Gachas: This is undoubtedly my favorite thing about Gachas, as I'm the type of player who does not throw out ANYTHING no matter what game I'm playing, so having a good way to transmute junk that I'm unhealthily attached to into resources I need is amazing.
I have thrown everything from Rockwell Recipes to Slingshots in Gachas and they have not turned down a single thing. Sick of dropping stone tools and cloth armor every time you kill something? A Gacha will eat it. Tired of throwing out all your spoiled meat from feeding troughs? A Gacha will eat it. Have a full fault of hide and now you throw out every bit of it you get? A Gacha will eat it. Maybe you have too many Rex Bone Helmet Skins? Sadly a Gacha won't eat it... just kidding yes they will! These things will eat all your garbage you get after you take a newly raised creature out to kill Rexes for XP. All those skins you get every time you respawn, they'll eat those too. With a Gacha, everything has a purpose now, even those Smithy Blueprints you get from every Blue Supply Drop.
Below I'll list the things Gachas will eat in order (1 being most preferred and 10 being least preferred):

1. Stone (stacks of 20 until gone)
2. Structures, Ammo (stacks of 20 until gone), Armor, Weapons, Tools, Blueprints
3. Food items such as raw meat (not Raw Prime Meat/Raw Prime Fish Meat), Spoiled Meat, berries, seeds, cooked meat, crops, mushrooms, etc. (These will be eaten in stacks of 20 until there is no stack of 20 in the Gacha, even if there are 2 stacks of 17, they will be left untouched until later.)
4. Other materials such as Chitin, Hide, Thatch, Wood, Fiber, Oil (Oil produced by sea creatures is included), etc. (These will be eaten in stacks of 20 until there is no stack of 20 in the Gacha, even if there are 2 stacks of 17, they will be left untouched until later.)
5. The least wanted things such as incomplete stacks from tier 3 and 4, Rockwell Recipes, Skins, Feces, possibly more. At this point it will also eat Raw Prime Meat, as it considers it an incomplete stack since it can't eat it in groups of 20.

Keep in mind I have not tested every item, it would take a long time and probably be more trouble than it's worth. I would assume other minerals such as Crystal and Obsidian as well as Metal would be in tier 1 with Stone, but I haven't tested them nor do I want to, besides Stone would be undoubtedly easier. I have found that the easiest way to get stuff to feed Gachas is just to keep all the random junk you'd normally throw out, I already listed them but I'll list them again:

• Spoiled Meat
• Stim Berries
• Excess items of which you have a full vault
• Trophies if you don't care for them
• Tools/Weapons/Armor not worth grinding (such as stone tools, stone arrows, cloth armor, slingshots, etc.)
• Rockwell Recipes
• Inferior Blueprints (Blueprints that are worse than your best ones and you either throw out or leave in a row of bookshelves that are labeled "Trash") as well as blueprints for structures and normal items
• Skins (mostly Rex Bone Helmet Skins you get from alphas as well as Fireworks Flare Gun Skins from killing deep sea creatures)
• All that extra meat you get from every hunt, as well the berries you'll never use

Passive Collecting: If you set a Gacha to wander with "Resource Harvesting" enabled, they'll harvest trees and rocks and other things around them. If you don't feel like taming a Doedicurus or Castoroides, then these work quite well as a replacement, not to mention they'll gather both Wood and Stone at the same time. The downside is that they'll eat them, but they'll keep collecting resources at the same time so for the most part this shouldn't hinder it's resource collection.
Probably the best part of setting a Gacha to wander and collect resources on its own, is that you won't have to feed it anything yourself. It will collect resources, eat them, grow crystals, drop crystals. All you have to do is be in the area and pick them up. The problem with this is that Gacha Crystals are easily hidden under bushes, which can result in you missing a significant amount of the crystals produced. I've found that it's easier to do this at night as the crystals glow and stand out very well.
However, before setting a Gacha to wander, make sure to build a pen and have a few other dinos wandering around in it to lower the spawn rate of wild creatures. If the Gacha gets attacked by a Raptor or something, it'll be in a bad mood for a little while and it's crystal production will be extremely lowered for a time. With this in mind I would not recommend using Dino Leashes and instead building a wall out of something like Stone Dinosaur Gates. Fence foundations and walls work well but I've noticed that trees/rocks/bushes spawn closer to gates than walls, and in the long run it's probably a lot easier to place gates than fence foundations as they tend to randomly dislike being placed in a certain area. I'd also recommend having a Carno or something set to follow the wandering Gacha, as they do not do much damage nor do they have a lot of health compared to other creatures of its size.
What I Do: I just have a single Gacha set to produce Metal sitting off my deck but right next to it, with 2 Snow Owls leaning over the Gacha but standing on the deck. Everyday when I log off, I take everything out of the Gacha and put it into a Snow Owl so it won't eat it while I can't collect the crystals. So when I log on, I take it out of the Snow Owl and put it back in the Gacha, since the Snow Owls are leaning over the Gacha, they puke the snow owl pellets right in front of it so it just picks it up (it's in a good mood due to being the only Gacha around).
Then I go on my daily routine (gather kibble eggs and get a few cave drops nearby) and come back and there's a couple crystals on the ground giving me free Metal to put straight in the forge. I also filter the meat in the main feeding trough and the Hyaenodon next to it and give the Gacha about 1900 Spoiled Meat. Every time I go out on my Rock Drake or other tame, I dump all the stone tools and arrows and other garbage (my Chitin and Hide vaults are full constantly and now Stone, Thatch, Wood keep hitting the max every other day) into the Gacha as well, there's always stuff left at the end of the day because I get so much absolutely useless junk that the Gacha seems to believe is food. Occasionally on a slow day it might run out, so I just go to an oil drill or gas collector and grab everything and take it straight back to the Gacha. Every day I get at least 900 Metal in the forge (raw, not ingots).
Other Notes:

1. I've seen a lot of people say that mate boosted Gachas produce crystals more, this is not the case. The only good thing about keeping a male and female Gacha next to each other is it allows you to fit twice as many Gachas in an area without them having bad mood.
2. When a Gacha is set to produce Organic Polymer the best option is to not open the crystal, and instead put it inside a storage container and only open it once you need Polymer, due to the eventual spoilage of Organic Polymer.
3. Gachas will pick up Feces if a creature defecates close enough to them, but Feces is only eaten as a last resort option compared to most available items.
4. If you always have a folder in your inventory with your less used items like a Canteen and Sickle and probably same ammo, then it's best to be aware when you transfer all items straight into the Gacha. Sometimes the "Transfer All" button will take things out of your folder as well, resulting in you accidentally feeding the Gacha your own tools (I have lost over 5 Ascendant Sickles and well over 10 stacks of Shotgun Ammo to this). However this seems to usually only happen when you log on for the first time after opening the game. I should know better at this point but I literally just sacrificed 20 Shotgun Ammo today so I'm gonna start dumping everything out of my folder and into my private vault at the end of every day.
5. I don't think the item that Gachas eat impacts the crystal growth, except tools/weapons/armors/structures seem to equal a group of 20 items (i.e. one mouthful).
6. Since snow owl pellets spoil after 14 days (default settings), if you don't have anything in your Gacha for it to eat and you're just using it to collect pellets for later use, I'd recommend taking all of them and dumping them into a Dung Beetle at the end of every day. Dung Beetles increase the spoil time of all feces, including snow owl pellets. If you don't have a Dung Beetle, crop plots work as well, although it will be tedious to place down enough crop plots for a large amount of snow owl pellets as each one has an inventory of only 10 slots.
7. Before editing this post, I said you can only get Element Dust as a Production option through a wild-born Gacha, but people have informed me that this is not the case and you can in fact breed Gachas to get one that produces Element Dust. I'm saying this here in case I forgot to delete one of the times I said it.
8. If you go out for a long time while your Gacha is making crystals, just keep in mind that they only last 15 minutes (default rates).

Anyway that's all I can think of right now, yet I have the feeling I forgot to mention 47097894703 things. If there's anything anyone can confirm or point out, or anything that I should add then please let me know. I'd like for this Gacha essay to help a few people figure out what to do so they don't have to scour the internet for a week. If people actually care about this post then I'll make a detailed post about an optimal Gacha Crystal farm.

When I was a young kid(10), approximately 11 years ago, I was out in my backyard hanging out around the playset. I would always climb up to the roof of the wooden complex when I was playing.
One day, I climbed up there and I found a bunch of small colored cones on top of the monkey bars. At the time, I lived in Frederick, Maryland. I feel as if there could be many different things it could be, but I never was able to find out what it was (even at the time) by googling.
I reckon they look similar to the link attached: https://www.reddit.com/bugidentification/comments/1468vyn/tiny_cone_shaped_bugs_nl/
But they were colorful cones: red, yellow, blue,etc. I'm not sure what they build their cones out of but there was red, yellow, and blue plastic on the walls of a sandbox.
They also seemed to leave a line of residue wherever they went(like a snail/slug). Other than that, the OP of the other link described them quite accurately.
Circa 2014 Frederick Maryland

Living in the suburbs has always made me feel a little uneasy; The uncanny copy-pasting of houses, as if they arrive as a prefab on the back of a truck. Stuck down - Every house, a clone of those adjacent. When you live in a neighborhood like mine, you start to feel like the people living inside those houses are from the same factory, too. Reality is all too often tamed by an engineer's blueprint.
One morning, whilst sipping my coffee and taking in the silence, it occurred to me - Something that felt so particularly strange about the area. It was so simple, something so recognisable that I have to question why I never noticed it sooner. The emptiness that swallowed the space; The lack of shade; The answer hiding in plain sight, almost asking to be acknowledged.
There were no trees.
It's not uncommon for greenery to be sparse in areas like this - Everything is built so fast these days that there's no time for nature to get in the way. But you'll still see trees towering along the side of the road, blocking the hum of traffic driving by. You'll still find shrubbery, large or small, defining a border between homes. Flora, tucked between the man-made concrete, exists not because somebody has made it so, but because nature implored.
Where was that?
I glanced out the window, hoping to be proven wrong. Surely, I thought, surely there must be something, somewhere, having escaped my mind.
The lack of Earth stared back at me. Grey concrete; Wooden fences; White-painted houses, each the same blueprint. The pristine of each yard only looked so because it was fake; Grass made of plastic, made not in soil but in a factory. The sun shone down, but it felt wasted here, like a beautiful frame with no portrait inside.
Had it always been this way? Was there a time when the yards were full of natural shelter? Had the sunrise been accompanied by the sounds of birds singing? Could you catch a glimpse of squirrels, scattering up the bark, narrowly avoiding running straight into the bottom side of a birdhouse?
I heard the stairs creaking as my husband came downstairs, an hour later than myself, as usual.
"Good morning babe," I almost didn't reply, finding myself lost in curiosity.
"Honey," I spoke whilst still staring out the window, "where's the nearest tree?"
Silence, followed by a slight laughter. "The nearest tree?"
"Yes," I turned to face him, "there isn't a single tree on this street, and I can't even remember the last time I saw one without leaving town."
He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. He closed his lips together, pouting slightly as he thought. "I'm not sure, that's very strange," his concern turned to me, "Babe, are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
In a way, I had. The phantom remains of nature was present all around us - All the trees chopped down to make our fences being the most basic example. But I didn't want to seem insane, so I dropped it. "Yeah, just found it odd."
It plagued my mind all day. I can't place my finger on why it affected me so deeply. Perhaps it was the fact that it remained unspoken - Why had nobody else ever noticed? Or at the very least, never mentioned this oddity? Was I simply turning this into a larger issue than it actually was? My questions wanted answers, and I could see one of my neighbors, Edith, walking down the pavement.
Edith is a lovely lady. She's lived alone since her partner passed away - But that was before I ever lived here. She speaks a lot about Mike. I wish I could have met him; He sounds like a great man. She has no family to look after her, but despite her age, she gets on perfectly fine living alone. She's strong, and she's often inspired me to be stronger.
I opened the front door, acting as though I was just leaving the house and spotted her.
"Edith!" I smiled as I walked over to her.
"Oh, how lovely to see you, dear," her voice always warms me to hear.
Being alone most of the day, she always appreciates a long social interaction. We spoke for a while, catching up with one another. She said that she didn't want to waste the beautiful weather, and that Mike would always take advantage of it. She never exactly got any closure with him - His cause of death was never discovered. He was found in the bushes a few towns over, covered in his own blood, despite no visible wounds. I've never pried deeper; I only talk about it when she brings up the topic.
As things felt like they were wrapping up, I changed the subject.
"Edith, have you ever noticed," I felt nervous to mention it, but I wasn't sure why. "Have you ever noticed that there aren't any trees around?"
I gestured at the houses as I looked around, as if it were even possible to point directly at a lack of something. Glancing back at Edith, her head was tilted slightly as she stared back at me.
"Come again, dear? No trees? What do you mean?"
I felt a little silly, almost wondering if I had missed some, somehow blind to them. "There aren't any trees, are there?" I questioned even myself.
She stared at me, not responding. At first, I thought she was having the same realization as myself. But the silence grew longer; Uncomfortably long.
"There are no trees," I began to clarify my point again, anything to fill the empty air.
Her face seemed to drop. She looked directly into my eyes, as her iris' dilated. She held that eye contact for just a moment, before she frantically started to look around.
"Where? Where are the trees?" She mumbled between quick flicks of her head.
"Hey, Edith, look at me," I held her arm to support her as she stumbled.
I almost wish she hadn't looked at me again. The stillness in her eyes, as her lips trembled... It haunts me - Her skin had gone pale, and she began to buckle at the knees.
"Where did they go?" she cried, screaming now, "Where did they all go?" Her head tilted up slightly, as if trying to catch a glimpse of the towering trees that simply were not there - Only clear skies.
Other neighbors on the street started to peak out their windows or doors. Some rushed out to help her. One held her under the arms, slowly lowering her to the curb, allowing her to sit. Another knelt down beside her. "Edith, are you okay?" he asked her.
"Trees. No trees." These were the only words I could make out between incoherent messes.
The man looked at me. "What did you say to her?" A fit of anger in his voice - Why would he immediately blame me?
"I don't know," I couldn't find the words, "I spoke about how few trees there are, and she started panicking," I felt terrible. I didn't mean for this to happen - This onset of fear I had given her.
The two men stood her up, walking her to her house. I tried to follow, but one held his hand up to me, with the palm open. "I think you should leave."
I would have fought my case; I was concerned for her, and wanted to help. But I felt like I had little to stand on, given that I was the cause of her state. I returned home, and told my husband about what had just happened. He was just as puzzled as myself.
---
That night, I struggled to sleep. The only thoughts on my mind were about Edith, and still, the lack of trees. Given the silence outside, it was like a knife cutting cleanly through the air when the silence changed into something else.
Wind? No.
A mumbling? Maybe.
What was it?
I stood up and looked out the window. I couldn't see any source of the noise. Opening the window quietly, it was louder now. Still quiet, but loud enough that I could have a sense of its direction - Directly below.
Leaning out the window slightly, I could see them. A person, stood outside our front door, speaking. The volume was low enough to keep the voice ambiguous - Just a steady flow of mumbling sounds, with vague words that could just be made out. "Branch", and "Unseen". The same sentence, whatever it was, being repeated, like a broken record player.
I listened very carefully, urging myself to find the meaning.
Finally, I could make it out.
"The Unseen Branch blesses this place. The Unseen Branch blesses this place."
My husband woke up - I heard the sheets moving a little behind me. "What's that noise?" His words croaked through his tired, half-asleep state.
I glanced at him, opening my mouth to answer, before noticing the chanting had stopped. Looking back, I could see the figure running away. They seemed to disappear; Their inky black clothes made it easy to quickly lose them to the night.
---
In the morning, I found myself just staring out the window. The lack of sleep, haunting terror from Edith, and the oddity encountered in the night, all combined into a horrid sense of impending doom.
My husband tried to comfort me, but his explanations fell onto ears too curious to accept his solutions. "It was probably some idiot teen," "Edith is old, things like that happen sometimes," "I'm sure there are trees somewhere in town," - His intentions were good - He meant well. He just couldn't see the bigger picture. All of this had to fit together, I knew it. I couldn't see the bigger picture either, but I could see the jigsaw making it up. I just had to put it together.
Towards midday, I left the house, and made my way 2 doors down to Edith's home. I wanted to apologize for the previous day. The walk felt the longest it ever had - Every step, I felt like eyes were on me. The fear gripped tight at my chest. I was acutely aware of the unnatural environment, still. Somewhere that had once felt like home now felt like a fake augmentation of reality. I considered turning back, but I knew this would only consume me further. Perhaps I should've just gone home; Perhaps ignorance is bliss.
Approaching Edith's door, I stood for a moment, considering whether to knock. Even as I lifted a hand up, fist closed, I still paused. Eventually, after a deep breath, I tapped 3 times.
Then 3 more.
Then 3 more.
Each wave of knocks had a few minutes between - Yet no answer. Edith is always home at this time, having her lunch. I knew this wasn't right. Had I been in a better state of mind, I probably wouldn't have thought too much of it, but this was too much at once.
Testing my luck, I pulled the handle down. The door was unlocked.
With surprisingly less apprehension than the knocking had taken, I opened the door, and stepped inside.
"Edith?"
I called out as I walked down her short hallway. I had never actually been inside her home. Most of the walls were covered in photos; An entire life, all displayed upon these walls. In many of the younger photos, she's with a man - I assume this to be Mike.
Walking into her kitchen, I see her fridge door wide open. The light spills to the floor, as the gentle hum fills the room. On the counter lay an envelope, with my name written in pen.
I would never open somebody else's mail. But this was addressed to me - It's my own mail. I also thought that, perhaps, Edith may have written something that could help me find her.
The envelope wasn't sealed - I could see the paper poking out, with something printed onto it.
I carefully took it out, my eyes taking a few seconds to understand what I was looking at.
Edith, clearly recognisable, her clothes soaked in blood. She lay in a bush, thinly cramped between the foilage and prickly twigs. The leaves seemed to surround her, as though the bush itself hadn't been disturbed. Like putting an object into a box without ever opening it.
My heart rate picked up, almost beating through my chest. My trembling hands couldn't hold the paper steady. Feeling tears forming in my eyes, I wiped them away so that I could make out the sentence written underneath.
"Don't break the branch that feeds you."

Living in the suburbs has always made me feel a little uneasy; The uncanny copy-pasting of houses, as if they arrive as a prefab on the back of a truck. Stuck down - Every house, a clone of those adjacent. When you live in a neighborhood like mine, you start to feel like the people living inside those houses are from the same factory, too. Reality is all too often tamed by an engineer's blueprint.
One morning, whilst sipping my coffee and taking in the silence, it occurred to me - Something that felt so particularly strange about the area. It was so simple, something so recognisable that I have to question why I never noticed it sooner. The emptiness that swallowed the space; The lack of shade; The answer hiding in plain sight, almost asking to be acknowledged.
There were no trees.
It's not uncommon for greenery to be sparse in areas like this - Everything is built so fast these days that there's no time for nature to get in the way. But you'll still see trees towering along the side of the road, blocking the hum of traffic driving by. You'll still find shrubbery, large or small, defining a border between homes. Flora, tucked between the man-made concrete, exists not because somebody has made it so, but because nature implored.
Where was that?
I glanced out the window, hoping to be proven wrong. Surely, I thought, surely there must be something, somewhere, having escaped my mind.
The lack of Earth stared back at me. Grey concrete; Wooden fences; White-painted houses, each the same blueprint. The pristine of each yard only looked so because it was fake; Grass made of plastic, made not in soil but in a factory. The sun shone down, but it felt wasted here, like a beautiful frame with no portrait inside.
Had it always been this way? Was there a time when the yards were full of natural shelter? Had the sunrise been accompanied by the sounds of birds singing? Could you catch a glimpse of squirrels, scattering up the bark, narrowly avoiding running straight into the bottom side of a birdhouse?
I heard the stairs creaking as my husband came downstairs, an hour later than myself, as usual.
"Good morning babe," I almost didn't reply, finding myself lost in curiosity.
"Honey," I spoke whilst still staring out the window, "where's the nearest tree?"
Silence, followed by a slight laughter. "The nearest tree?"
"Yes," I turned to face him, "there isn't a single tree on this street, and I can't even remember the last time I saw one without leaving town."
He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. He closed his lips together, pouting slightly as he thought. "I'm not sure, that's very strange," his concern turned to me, "Babe, are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
In a way, I had. The phantom remains of nature was present all around us - All the trees chopped down to make our fences being the most basic example. But I didn't want to seem insane, so I dropped it. "Yeah, just found it odd."
It plagued my mind all day. I can't place my finger on why it affected me so deeply. Perhaps it was the fact that it remained unspoken - Why had nobody else ever noticed? Or at the very least, never mentioned this oddity? Was I simply turning this into a larger issue than it actually was? My questions wanted answers, and I could see one of my neighbors, Edith, walking down the pavement.
Edith is a lovely lady. She's lived alone since her partner passed away - But that was before I ever lived here. She speaks a lot about Mike. I wish I could have met him; He sounds like a great man. She has no family to look after her, but despite her age, she gets on perfectly fine living alone. She's strong, and she's often inspired me to be stronger.
I opened the front door, acting as though I was just leaving the house and spotted her.
"Edith!" I smiled as I walked over to her.
"Oh, how lovely to see you, dear," her voice always warms me to hear.
Being alone most of the day, she always appreciates a long social interaction. We spoke for a while, catching up with one another. She said that she didn't want to waste the beautiful weather, and that Mike would always take advantage of it. She never exactly got any closure with him - His cause of death was never discovered. He was found in the bushes a few towns over, covered in his own blood, despite no visible wounds. I've never pried deeper; I only talk about it when she brings up the topic.
As things felt like they were wrapping up, I changed the subject.
"Edith, have you ever noticed," I felt nervous to mention it, but I wasn't sure why. "Have you ever noticed that there aren't any trees around?"
I gestured at the houses as I looked around, as if it were even possible to point directly at a lack of something. Glancing back at Edith, her head was tilted slightly as she stared back at me.
"Come again, dear? No trees? What do you mean?"
I felt a little silly, almost wondering if I had missed some, somehow blind to them. "There aren't any trees, are there?" I questioned even myself.
She stared at me, not responding. At first, I thought she was having the same realization as myself. But the silence grew longer; Uncomfortably long.
"There are no trees," I began to clarify my point again, anything to fill the empty air.
Her face seemed to drop. She looked directly into my eyes, as her iris' dilated. She held that eye contact for just a moment, before she frantically started to look around.
"Where? Where are the trees?" She mumbled between quick flicks of her head.
"Hey, Edith, look at me," I held her arm to support her as she stumbled.
I almost wish she hadn't looked at me again. The stillness in her eyes, as her lips trembled... It haunts me - Her skin had gone pale, and she began to buckle at the knees.
"Where did they go?" she cried, screaming now, "Where did they all go?" Her head tilted up slightly, as if trying to catch a glimpse of the towering trees that simply were not there - Only clear skies.
Other neighbors on the street started to peak out their windows or doors. Some rushed out to help her. One held her under the arms, slowly lowering her to the curb, allowing her to sit. Another knelt down beside her. "Edith, are you okay?" he asked her.
"Trees. No trees." These were the only words I could make out between incoherent messes.
The man looked at me. "What did you say to her?" A fit of anger in his voice - Why would he immediately blame me?
"I don't know," I couldn't find the words, "I spoke about how few trees there are, and she started panicking," I felt terrible. I didn't mean for this to happen - This onset of fear I had given her.
The two men stood her up, walking her to her house. I tried to follow, but one held his hand up to me, with the palm open. "I think you should leave."
I would have fought my case; I was concerned for her, and wanted to help. But I felt like I had little to stand on, given that I was the cause of her state. I returned home, and told my husband about what had just happened. He was just as puzzled as myself.
---
That night, I struggled to sleep. The only thoughts on my mind were about Edith, and still, the lack of trees. Given the silence outside, it was like a knife cutting cleanly through the air when the silence changed into something else.
Wind? No.
A mumbling? Maybe.
What was it?
I stood up and looked out the window. I couldn't see any source of the noise. Opening the window quietly, it was louder now. Still quiet, but loud enough that I could have a sense of its direction - Directly below.
Leaning out the window slightly, I could see them. A person, stood outside our front door, speaking. The volume was low enough to keep the voice ambiguous - Just a steady flow of mumbling sounds, with vague words that could just be made out. "Branch", and "Unseen". The same sentence, whatever it was, being repeated, like a broken record player.
I listened very carefully, urging myself to find the meaning.
Finally, I could make it out.
"The Unseen Branch blesses this place. The Unseen Branch blesses this place."
My husband woke up - I heard the sheets moving a little behind me. "What's that noise?" His words croaked through his tired, half-asleep state.
I glanced at him, opening my mouth to answer, before noticing the chanting had stopped. Looking back, I could see the figure running away. They seemed to disappear; Their inky black clothes made it easy to quickly lose them to the night.
---
In the morning, I found myself just staring out the window. The lack of sleep, haunting terror from Edith, and the oddity encountered in the night, all combined into a horrid sense of impending doom.
My husband tried to comfort me, but his explanations fell onto ears too curious to accept his solutions. "It was probably some idiot teen," "Edith is old, things like that happen sometimes," "I'm sure there are trees somewhere in town," - His intentions were good - He meant well. He just couldn't see the bigger picture. All of this had to fit together, I knew it. I couldn't see the bigger picture either, but I could see the jigsaw making it up. I just had to put it together.
Towards midday, I left the house, and made my way 2 doors down to Edith's home. I wanted to apologize for the previous day. The walk felt the longest it ever had - Every step, I felt like eyes were on me. The fear gripped tight at my chest. I was acutely aware of the unnatural environment, still. Somewhere that had once felt like home now felt like a fake augmentation of reality. I considered turning back, but I knew this would only consume me further. Perhaps I should've just gone home; Perhaps ignorance is bliss.
Approaching Edith's door, I stood for a moment, considering whether to knock. Even as I lifted a hand up, fist closed, I still paused. Eventually, after a deep breath, I tapped 3 times.
Then 3 more.
Then 3 more.
Each wave of knocks had a few minutes between - Yet no answer. Edith is always home at this time, having her lunch. I knew this wasn't right. Had I been in a better state of mind, I probably wouldn't have thought too much of it, but this was too much at once.
Testing my luck, I pulled the handle down. The door was unlocked.
With surprisingly less apprehension than the knocking had taken, I opened the door, and stepped inside.
"Edith?"
I called out as I walked down her short hallway. I had never actually been inside her home. Most of the walls were covered in photos; An entire life, all displayed upon these walls. In many of the younger photos, she's with a man - I assume this to be Mike.
Walking into her kitchen, I see her fridge door wide open. The light spills to the floor, as the gentle hum fills the room. On the counter lay an envelope, with my name written in pen.
I would never open somebody else's mail. But this was addressed to me - It's my own mail. I also thought that, perhaps, Edith may have written something that could help me find her.
The envelope wasn't sealed - I could see the paper poking out, with something printed onto it.
I carefully took it out, my eyes taking a few seconds to understand what I was looking at.
Edith, clearly recognisable, her clothes soaked in blood. She lay in a bush, thinly cramped between the foilage and prickly twigs. The leaves seemed to surround her, as though the bush itself hadn't been disturbed. Like putting an object into a box without ever opening it.
My heart rate picked up, almost beating through my chest. My trembling hands couldn't hold the paper steady. Feeling tears forming in my eyes, I wiped them away so that I could make out the sentence written underneath.
"Don't break the branch that feeds you."

Living in the suburbs has always made me feel a little uneasy; The uncanny copy-pasting of houses, as if they arrive as a prefab on the back of a truck. Stuck down - Every house, a clone of those adjacent. When you live in a neighborhood like mine, you start to feel like the people living inside those houses are from the same factory, too. Reality is all too often tamed by an engineer's blueprint.
One morning, whilst sipping my coffee and taking in the silence, it occurred to me - Something that felt so particularly strange about the area. It was so simple, something so recognisable that I have to question why I never noticed it sooner. The emptiness that swallowed the space; The lack of shade; The answer hiding in plain sight, almost asking to be acknowledged.
There were no trees.
It's not uncommon for greenery to be sparse in areas like this - Everything is built so fast these days that there's no time for nature to get in the way. But you'll still see trees towering along the side of the road, blocking the hum of traffic driving by. You'll still find shrubbery, large or small, defining a border between homes. Flora, tucked between the man-made concrete, exists not because somebody has made it so, but because nature implored.
Where was that?
I glanced out the window, hoping to be proven wrong. Surely, I thought, surely there must be something, somewhere, having escaped my mind.
The lack of Earth stared back at me. Grey concrete; Wooden fences; White-painted houses, each the same blueprint. The pristine of each yard only looked so because it was fake; Grass made of plastic, made not in soil but in a factory. The sun shone down, but it felt wasted here, like a beautiful frame with no portrait inside.
Had it always been this way? Was there a time when the yards were full of natural shelter? Had the sunrise been accompanied by the sounds of birds singing? Could you catch a glimpse of squirrels, scattering up the bark, narrowly avoiding running straight into the bottom side of a birdhouse?
I heard the stairs creaking as my husband came downstairs, an hour later than myself, as usual.
"Good morning babe," I almost didn't reply, finding myself lost in curiosity.
"Honey," I spoke whilst still staring out the window, "where's the nearest tree?"
Silence, followed by a slight laughter. "The nearest tree?"
"Yes," I turned to face him, "there isn't a single tree on this street, and I can't even remember the last time I saw one without leaving town."
He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. He closed his lips together, pouting slightly as he thought. "I'm not sure, that's very strange," his concern turned to me, "Babe, are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
In a way, I had. The phantom remains of nature was present all around us - All the trees chopped down to make our fences being the most basic example. But I didn't want to seem insane, so I dropped it. "Yeah, just found it odd."
It plagued my mind all day. I can't place my finger on why it affected me so deeply. Perhaps it was the fact that it remained unspoken - Why had nobody else ever noticed? Or at the very least, never mentioned this oddity? Was I simply turning this into a larger issue than it actually was? My questions wanted answers, and I could see one of my neighbors, Edith, walking down the pavement.
Edith is a lovely lady. She's lived alone since her partner passed away - But that was before I ever lived here. She speaks a lot about Mike. I wish I could have met him; He sounds like a great man. She has no family to look after her, but despite her age, she gets on perfectly fine living alone. She's strong, and she's often inspired me to be stronger.
I opened the front door, acting as though I was just leaving the house and spotted her.
"Edith!" I smiled as I walked over to her.
"Oh, how lovely to see you, dear," her voice always warms me to hear.
Being alone most of the day, she always appreciates a long social interaction. We spoke for a while, catching up with one another. She said that she didn't want to waste the beautiful weather, and that Mike would always take advantage of it. She never exactly got any closure with him - His cause of death was never discovered. He was found in the bushes a few towns over, covered in his own blood, despite no visible wounds. I've never pried deeper; I only talk about it when she brings up the topic.
As things felt like they were wrapping up, I changed the subject.
"Edith, have you ever noticed," I felt nervous to mention it, but I wasn't sure why. "Have you ever noticed that there aren't any trees around?"
I gestured at the houses as I looked around, as if it were even possible to point directly at a lack of something. Glancing back at Edith, her head was tilted slightly as she stared back at me.
"Come again, dear? No trees? What do you mean?"
I felt a little silly, almost wondering if I had missed some, somehow blind to them. "There aren't any trees, are there?" I questioned even myself.
She stared at me, not responding. At first, I thought she was having the same realization as myself. But the silence grew longer; Uncomfortably long.
"There are no trees," I began to clarify my point again, anything to fill the empty air.
Her face seemed to drop. She looked directly into my eyes, as her iris' dilated. She held that eye contact for just a moment, before she frantically started to look around.
"Where? Where are the trees?" She mumbled between quick flicks of her head.
"Hey, Edith, look at me," I held her arm to support her as she stumbled.
I almost wish she hadn't looked at me again. The stillness in her eyes, as her lips trembled... It haunts me - Her skin had gone pale, and she began to buckle at the knees.
"Where did they go?" she cried, screaming now, "Where did they all go?" Her head tilted up slightly, as if trying to catch a glimpse of the towering trees that simply were not there - Only clear skies.
Other neighbors on the street started to peak out their windows or doors. Some rushed out to help her. One held her under the arms, slowly lowering her to the curb, allowing her to sit. Another knelt down beside her. "Edith, are you okay?" he asked her.
"Trees. No trees." These were the only words I could make out between incoherent messes.
The man looked at me. "What did you say to her?" A fit of anger in his voice - Why would he immediately blame me?
"I don't know," I couldn't find the words, "I spoke about how few trees there are, and she started panicking," I felt terrible. I didn't mean for this to happen - This onset of fear I had given her.
The two men stood her up, walking her to her house. I tried to follow, but one held his hand up to me, with the palm open. "I think you should leave."
I would have fought my case; I was concerned for her, and wanted to help. But I felt like I had little to stand on, given that I was the cause of her state. I returned home, and told my husband about what had just happened. He was just as puzzled as myself.
That night, I struggled to sleep. The only thoughts on my mind were about Edith, and still, the lack of trees. Given the silence outside, it was like a knife cutting cleanly through the air when the silence changed into something else.
Wind? No.
A mumbling? Maybe.
What was it?
I stood up and looked out the window. I couldn't see any source of the noise. Opening the window quietly, it was louder now. Still quiet, but loud enough that I could have a sense of its direction - Directly below.
Leaning out the window slightly, I could see them. A person, stood outside our front door, speaking. The volume was low enough to keep the voice ambiguous - Just a steady flow of mumbling sounds, with vague words that could just be made out. "Branch", and "Unseen". The same sentence, whatever it was, being repeated, like a broken record player.
I listened very carefully, urging myself to find the meaning.
Finally, I could make it out.
"The Unseen Branch blesses this place. The Unseen Branch blesses this place."
My husband woke up - I heard the sheets moving a little behind me. "What's that noise?" His words croaked through his tired, half-asleep state.
I glanced at him, opening my mouth to answer, before noticing the chanting had stopped. Looking back, I could see the figure running away. They seemed to disappear; Their inky black clothes made it easy to quickly lose them to the night.
In the morning, I found myself just staring out the window. The lack of sleep, haunting terror from Edith, and the oddity encountered in the night, all combined into a horrid sense of impending doom.
My husband tried to comfort me, but his explanations fell onto ears too curious to accept his solutions. "It was probably some idiot teen," "Edith is old, things like that happen sometimes," "I'm sure there are trees somewhere in town," - His intentions were good - He meant well. He just couldn't see the bigger picture. All of this had to fit together, I knew it. I couldn't see the bigger picture either, but I could see the jigsaw making it up. I just had to put it together.
Towards midday, I left the house, and made my way 2 doors down to Edith's home. I wanted to apologize for the previous day. The walk felt the longest it ever had - Every step, I felt like eyes were on me. The fear gripped tight at my chest. I was acutely aware of the unnatural environment, still. Somewhere that had once felt like home now felt like a fake augmentation of reality. I considered turning back, but I knew this would only consume me further. Perhaps I should've just gone home; Perhaps ignorance is bliss.
Approaching Edith's door, I stood for a moment, considering whether to knock. Even as I lifted a hand up, fist closed, I still paused. Eventually, after a deep breath, I tapped 3 times.
Then 3 more.
Then 3 more.
Each wave of knocks had a few minutes between - Yet no answer. Edith is always home at this time, having her lunch. I knew this wasn't right. Had I been in a better state of mind, I probably wouldn't have thought too much of it, but this was too much at once.
Testing my luck, I pulled the handle down. The door was unlocked.
With surprisingly less apprehension than the knocking had taken, I opened the door, and stepped inside.
"Edith?"
I called out as I walked down her short hallway. I had never actually been inside her home. Most of the walls were covered in photos; An entire life, all displayed upon these walls. In many of the younger photos, she's with a man - I assume this to be Mike.
Walking into her kitchen, I see her fridge door wide open. The light spills to the floor, as the gentle hum fills the room. On the counter lay an envelope, with my name written in pen.
I would never open somebody else's mail. But this was addressed to me - It's my own mail. I also thought that, perhaps, Edith may have written something that could help me find her.
The envelope wasn't sealed - I could see the paper poking out, with something printed onto it.
I carefully took it out, my eyes taking a few seconds to understand what I was looking at.
Edith, clearly recognisable, her clothes soaked in blood. She lay in a bush, thinly cramped between the foilage and prickly twigs. The leaves seemed to surround her, as though the bush itself hadn't been disturbed. Like putting an object into a box without ever opening it.
My heart rate picked up, almost beating through my chest. My trembling hands couldn't hold the paper steady. Feeling tears forming in my eyes, I wiped them away so that I could make out the sentence written underneath.
"Don't break the branch that feeds you."

We recently bought our first child a wooden playset, linked below
Wooden playset
If we can get 2-3 years outta this thing, we would be happy. I realize its prob not the best quality and you get what you pay for. But should we consider treating this wood with some sort finish to protect it from the sun/rain? For context, we live in Los Angeles, so relatively mild compared to the rest of the country. But temps can reach 100 in the summer and the occasional storms throughout the year

I woke up before dawn. The world was quiet—no birds were chirping, no carts rattling outside the manor, and no orphans running around. However, I couldn’t sleep. Not even Elincia's warm presence by my side and the allure of the heavy blankets were enough to keep my mind at ease.
I slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb Elincia’s sleep, and slowly walked to the desk, avoiding the floor’s loose boards. [Light Footed] made it easy. I sat down, grabbed a piece of paper, and wrote Wolf’s Birthday Present. A little further down, System Avatar’s Message. Then, New Skills.
The warning from the System Avatar hung over my head like a sword. I wondered if there was a correlation between the System giving me new Runeweaver Skills and the fact we were ‘behind schedule’. I crossed ‘System Avatar’ out. Unless he figured out how to contact me, my hands were tied. For all I knew, Corruption might be shrouding the world in darkness as I wrote, yet my most pressing concern was securing Wolf's birthday gift.
I wondered if Opoki, the merchant of enchanted items, was still in town. His catalog, however, wasn’t the most useful. Unless Wolf was a secret fan of floppy cutlery, Opoki had nothing left of interest.
Wolf always has been the orphan who needed me the least. I had gained his respect and trust over the months, but he was different from the rest of the orphans. The manor was only a temporary residence, a place of passage for him. His real family awaited him in the tribes, and Wolf was already strong enough to survive the Farlands. As much as it saddened me, Wolf would be abandoning us shortly.
A good present would be something he could take back to his home.
I wondered if a hunting knife would do the trick. Wolf was pragmatic, but a more meaningful present would be better. Even if he could visit occasionally, I would like him to have a memento of his days at the orphanage. A reminder of the people he met and the friends he made.
“Rob?” Elincia grumbled, sitting on the bed and rubbing her eyes.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” I replied.
Elincia’s eyes gleamed in the darkness of the room.
“It's not morning yet… the tournament!” she said, suddenly alert.
“That’s tomorrow. I’m just trying to come up with ideas for a birthday present for Wolf.”
Elincia yawned and laid down again with the blanket up her chin. “What about a bag of light stones? I’m sure orcs would benefit from illuminated interiors.”
“It’s a present for Wolf, not the tribes. Light stones—” I replied, but I stopped mid-sentence.
Stones. The word triggered a memory I haven’t paid much attention to. During our trip to the Farlands, the orcs had saved me from the Lich’s undead minions. To avoid engaging with the creatures up close, they used slings. A shiver of excitement ran down my spine. The tennis ball-sized stones had shredded through the flesh and bone of the undead like the discharge of a minigun.
I jumped to my feet and grabbed my journal from the nightstand.
“I assume we are not having a make-out session this morning?” Elincia raised an eyebrow.
“I will make it up to you, I swear,” I said, leaning on the bed and kissing her forehead.
A sling would be the perfect present for Wolf. It would help keep him safe and be a nice keepsake of the orphanage. I rubbed my hands together, thinking of something better than a sling. An enchanted sling.
I exited the bedroom and went down the deserted corridor toward Ginz’s door. I knocked, and a moment later, the craftsman appeared in the doorway, his yellow nightcap tilted to the side and his eyes barely open. He yawned and greeted me with a movement of the head.
Respecting sleeping schedules wasn’t part of our friendship.
“Do you know how to make a sling?” I shot at point-blank range.
“You bet I do. It’s one of the first recipes Craftsmen learn. Ask Elincia how many windows we smashed trying to hunt birds,” Ginz replied, rubbing his eyes.
We exchanged a knowing grin.
“I want to craft a sling for Wolf’s birthday. It has to be sturdy yet stylish, maybe with decorative branding on the stone pouch and nice needlework,” I explained. “Wolf might grow as much as Risha, so it has to be long enough for his arm. Also, it has to be silent. The sling acts like a whip when released, and we don’t want it to scare Wolf’s game.”
Ginz grabbed a small piece of paper and a charcoal pencil from his desk and wrote down the requirements.
“What enchantment do you have in mind?” Ginz asked.
“I’m not sure. I’m leaning towards a wind enchantment, but I have to figure things out,” I replied, lost in thought. If I could decode the runes on Firana’s cape, I might develop a boosting enchanting for the sling.
Then it hit me. I hadn’t mentioned enchantments to Ginz yet. He seemed to notice my expression because he raised an eyebrow mockingly.
“Dude, if you don’t want people to know you can enchant stuff, don’t go around leaving a multicolor trail of enchanted light pebbles,” Ginz scolded me like a teacher would with a rebellious student. “I have stolen like twenty of them, including the ones I used to craft Elincia’s earrings for the party.”
“Right…” I muttered.
I juggled so many things that I hadn’t noticed the missing pebbles.
Ginz put his hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t worry, brother, I won't say anything as long as you keep providing me with blueprints and crazy ideas,” he said with a wide grin. “I’m well on the way to reaching level forty. Maybe in a couple of years, I will turn into a Tinkerer or some crazy Prestige Class. You know the saying: don’t slay your swiftest skeeth for a sour steak.”
“Noted. You won’t betray me as long as I’m useful,” I sighed.
“People become friends for many reasons,” Ginz replied as he gathered clean clothes from the drawer. Then, he waved his hands and expelled me from the room. “I’ll have the sling ready before lunch, Boss.”
I returned to my bedroom before anybody could appear. Risha was as much of a chatterbox as Shu, and Astrid had developed a weird, servile attitude toward me. It wasn’t surprising, considering she had spent the first half of her life trying to please Mister Lowell and the second part obeying the System.
As I closed the door behind me, I heard water splashing. Elincia was bathing behind the wooden screen, and the room smelled like flowers. She hummed a happy tune.
“You know what is funny? You never try to peek while I’m changing or bathing,” Elincia greeted me.
“If you wanted me to peek, you wouldn’t use the screen,” I replied, sitting at the desk and organizing my notes.
“Maybe I’m using the screen to tease you,” Elincia said.
“And maybe I’m aware you are trying to tease me, so I’m teasing you by ignoring your teasing,” I replied. It wasn’t like Elincia’s nightgown left much to the imagination. “Also, I don’t want to spoil that mystery bath pic you like to flaunt so much,” I laughed.
I suspected Elincia used the screen because she was embarrassed.
“You are insufferable, you know that, right?” Elincia splashed on the other side of the screen.
I let out a tired laugh.
Twelve orphans with little sense of privacy and an overloaded schedule were more than enough to keep us busy day and night, but at least the worst part had passed. We had secured a good income source, saved the orphanage from famine, and gathered enough allies to protect us from direct attacks.
I wondered what had happened with Lyra Jorn. After watching my illusions at the feast, she seemed eager to start her internship at the orphanage. However, she hadn’t shown up yet. I made a mental note to have Corin send Lyra a message, and I focused back on Wolf’s birthday present.
Runeweaver’s Encyclopedia: The worst pen is better than the best memory. [Identify] Runeweaver’s Encyclopedia is a detailed compendium of the Runeweaver successfully identified runes. Further information will appear as the Runeweaver discovers new uses for known runes. The Encyclopedia is only visible to the Runeweaver but can be wholly or partially shared with other Runeweavers.
I didn’t know if the System suddenly decided to support me more or if [Consulting Detective] had actually improved [Identify] 's explanations. Still, that paragraph was more than I had been getting for the past half-year.
The explanation also gave clues about runeweaving. The “further information will appear as the Runeweaver discovers new uses for known runes” part led me to believe linear interaction wasn’t the only way of enchanting. I just hoped things wouldn’t get too crazy when adding more than two runes to the same enchantment.
Rune Debugger: No more unwanted explosions in the workplace! [Identify] Rune Debugger provides the Runeweaver with a testing interface to experiment and assess potential enchantments without engraving runes into an object. It provides a sufficiently realistic prediction of the enchantment the Runeweaver desires to perform, although the accuracy of the prediction greatly depends on the contents of the Runeweaver’s Encyclopedia.
I grinned. I had been dying to put [Rune Debugger] to the test, but with the tournament around the corner, I haven’t found an excuse to sit down to draw runes. My only complaint was that System Avatar did not give me these skills from the very beginning.
I opened the Runeweaver’s Encyclopedia, and a thick old book appeared. Unlike my illusions, I could touch the Encyclopedia. The cover was made of dark leather adorned with delicate blue crystal inlays all over the surface. None of my detection skills worked on it. [Identify] showed the book's name, while my mana vision only caught a blur of energy.
The Encyclopedia had six entries: fire, light, gradual, instantaneous, absorption, and recharge. I instantly noticed that the order wasn’t random. The first two were elemental runes that determined the enchantment's effect. The following two were control runes that determined how the effect would occur. The last two were source runes that determined the enchanted object's mana source.
I felt dumb for not realizing it before.
Even with a small sample, I had a general idea about how enchantments worked. Each runic circuit had at least three parts: the effect, the trigger, and the energy source. I suspected a fourth group of runes, one used to modify the effect or the trigger, existed.
I rummaged through my notes until I found the page with the runes from Firana’s enchanted cape. There were seven of them, but two matched the ones in the Encyclopedia: Absorption and Instantaneous. Being flash-grenaded by Loki had paid off. With those two runes out of the way, there were only five unknown runes.
I examined the circuit. The ‘effect rune’ had to be Wind, and the ‘power rune’ was Absorption, which left five runes to encode the ‘trigger’. I knew the central ‘trigger rune’ was Instantaneous, so the other four had to work as modifications to create the effect of control. I closed my eyes and envisioned the cape around Firana’s shoulders the day I bought it. The cape seemed to respond to Firana’s movements while ignoring the passersby.
Unlike Opoki’s enchanted shoelaces, which came to life with anyone’s command, the enchanted cape recognized its user. I smiled. This was getting good.
Each time Firana struck a pose, the cape followed her movement, which meant it also recognized her movement and its direction. I scratched my incipient beard, deep in thought. Fire, Light, Recharge, and Absorption were straightforward runes. However, there was a massive jump in complexity between producing light or fire and recognizing the user's precise movements among a crowd of people. The cape also seemed to recognize the user’s movements as the trigger to activate the Instantaneous-Wind effect.
What were runes in reality?
In hindsight, I had been disingenuous. The cape's effect seemed too complex to be reduced to seven runes. I wondered if the System Avatar was hiding something from me. I knew very little about the runes' true nature, but those questions would have to wait until the end of the tournament.
I focused back on my notes. There were thousands of ways of sorting seven runes, but it was safe to assume only one result on the enchanted cape. If that was the case, it was also safe to assume there were rules about the order of the runes. I examined the light stone in the corner of the table. Light-Gradual-Recharge. My heart raced. The runes in the warm blanket followed a similar order. Fire-Gradual-Absorption.
Effect, trigger, power source.
Eureka.
Elincia emerged from behind the wooden screen, dressed in her usual beige Renaissance-esque dress, and put a hand over my shoulder. I couldn’t help but move my eyes toward her. She was as beautiful as ever.
“It’s Wolf’s birthday today. Don’t get too entranced in that,” she said, kissing the top of my head.
“I’m trying to enchant something for him,” I replied. I couldn’t hide the excitement in my voice. “Firana has her fluttering cape, and Ilya her Cooldown Bow. It seems fair he also gets an enchanted item.”
Elincia smiled and messed up my hair.
“Why are you so adorable?” She whispered. “I’ll go prepare breakfast then. I’ll pass the word you are not to be disturbed,” she added, kissing me again before skipping to the doorway.
I was left stunned. I hadn’t been called adorable by anyone other than my grandma since I was thirteen. I didn’t expect to get a compliment out of nowhere.
Wolf might not be the orphan who required more monitoring, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t constantly looking out for him. Unlike Ilya, who had a massive issue with her identity, or Firana, who had a problematic family, Wolf’s troubles were more subtle. He used to feel like a foreigner at the orphanage; he missed home, but that was a thing of the past.
I sighed. Even if the orphanage was a home for him, Wolf was to return to his home among the orcs. I couldn’t decide for him and didn't want to put my thumb on the scale either. Wolf had to determine his future path for himself. That was the only reason I hadn’t pushed him to get a class, even if I needed to contact the System Avatar.
I wouldn’t turn the orphans into tools like Holst or the Marquis.
The only thing I could do for Wolf now was support his decision.
I focused back on my notes. Even if I wasn’t physically there for him, the enchanted sling might help Wolf. I needed to figure out how the runes worked.
The light stones and the warm blanket had the same rune order: effect, trigger, and energy source. If my suppositions were correct, Wind was the first rune in Firana’s fluttering cape, and absorption was the last, so I assumed I was well on track. I smiled. That dramatically reduced the number of possible combinations from a few thousand to a bit more than a hundred.
This was where [Rune Debugger] came to play. Enchanting hundreds of runes would drain my mana pool before I could even reach ten percent of the total combinations. And that was without considering the danger of creating an unstable combination.
I took a deep breath and used the skill. A blue, translucent box appeared before me—the same color as the System prompts but tridimensional. There were no markings. At first glance, it looked like a simple illusion, like the ones I made with raw mana before I got the [Minor Illusion] skill.
I made a mental note to remember that, per [Identify]’s description, [Rune Debugger] wasn’t completely reliable.
I closed my eyes and carved the runes of a light stone inside the blue box—light, gradual, and recharge. The box flickered and turned green. I smiled. After a moment, the runes inside the box disappeared.
“What about using Gradual only,” I muttered.
I carved the sole rune. Gradual alone shouldn’t be a successful enchantment because it lacked an effect rune. Just as I expected, the box turned yellow.
“Green for successful enchantment and yellow for unsuccessful. Gotcha,” I said.
I looked at the scar on the palm of my left hand. During the fight against the Assassin and the Flame Mage, I had overwritten the runes of the light stone, resulting in its violent shattering. That was a good reason to avoid blindly testing runes. If enchanting could produce something as powerful as the Aias Sword, an accident with runes could be equally dangerous.
“Let’s see what happens if I mess with the runes,” I muttered.
I wrote the runes of a light stone and then overwrote the Instantaneous rune over the Gradual rune. A moment passed, and the box turned a bright red.
“Just like the traffic lights, perfect,” I grinned, silently thanking the System Avatar. Even if we were ‘behind schedule’, [Rune Encyclopedia] and [Rune Debugger] would significantly speed up the process of learning runes.
An idea started crystallizing in my brain: considering the characteristics of Firana's cape, a wind-powered sling that boosted the projectile speed seemed possible. Sure, a fireball-throwing sling was way cooler, but I didn’t want Wolf setting the entire Farlands on fire, and I didn't know how to make the sling enchant a projectile.
Could an enchantment enchant other objects? Probably not. Enchanting seemed to be reserved for Enchanters and Runeweavers.
I got back to work. My idea was simple: match the unknown ‘trigger runes’ with Wind, Instantaneous, and Recharge to see how the enchantment works. I summoned [Rune Debugger] and wrote down the runes. The box turned green.
I grinned and imprinted the runes on a small pebble, trying to use as little mana as possible. The enchantment was successful, just as predicted in the Rune Debugger. Then, I poured a bit of mana into the Wind Stone, and suddenly, air started gently flowing from the rock’s surface. I branded the pebble a ‘control pebble’ and put it aside.
New rune learned! A new entry has appeared in the Rune Encyclopedia: Wind. Total number of entries: 7.
I smiled, pleased with the big, stylized seven floating before my eyes. Now that I had a benchmark against which to compare my new attempts, I summoned the Rune Debugger area and added the first unknown rune to the Wind-Instantaneous-Recharge circuit between Instantaneous and Recharge.
The box turned yellow. I checked my notes, wondering if the order of runes mattered. I wrote the rune in second position this time, between Wind and Instantaneous. The box turned green. Strange but not unexpected. It may be safe to assume the unknown rune worked as an activation condition, so it had to be written before Instantaneous.
As [Rune Debugger] said it was safe, I grabbed a second pebble. Maybe the System was messing with my neuroreceptors, but the idea of getting more runes had me on the edge of my seat. I carved the new four-rune circuit into a pebble. Four runes required much more mana than a three-rune enchantment.
I ignored the cold shiver of my mana leaving my body and activated it. The wind blew from the stone's surface, and that was it—no notable change. I tried again, but both enchantments were the same for all practical purposes.
“That’s strange,” I muttered as I reviewed my notes.
The cape recognizes its user. The cape recognizes movement. The cape recognizes direction. The cape recognizes the user’s intent to activate the effect.
For the cape to flutter, the user's movement and the direction of the enchantment’s spell seemed to work together. Under that assumption, Movement and Direction runes were dead code without the other. It would be impossible to know if the new rune was one of those.
I wondered how to test if the new rune served to recognize the pebble’s user. The solution was simple: I needed a helper.
I jumped to my feet and approached the door with the wind pebble in my hand. As soon as I crossed the doorway, I almost had a heart attack. Next to the door, a fully equipped Zealot stood perfectly still. The eerie presence startled me.
“Good morning, Robert Clarke,” Astrid greeted me. Her androgynous voice came muffled under the golden mask.
“What are you doing?!” I asked as I tried to calm down my heart rate.
“I’m performing my quest. I’m making sure Robert Clarke stays safe,” Astrid replied with her best anonymous Zealot voice.
I sighed.
“Is it necessary to wear your Zealot uniform, though?”
Her stern persona cracked as one of her ears flicked.
“Maybe?”
I rubbed my temples, wondering how I was going to get a religious fanatic to adapt to civilian life. Out of all my problems, this would wait a while before I could address it. At least Astrid knew about my hidden class. She was the perfect helper.
I looked around. We were alone in the corridor.
“Astrid, listen. This is an enchanted stone. It uses mana to produce a small wind current. Try to feed it mana while it's in my hand,” I said, raising the pebble to eye level.
“Yes, sir.”
Astrid raised her hand with the palm forward. Mana flew through her body, but the stone rejected it. She pushed a bit more, but the result was the same. The pebble remained undisturbed.
“That’s enough,” I smiled.
The experiment was a success. The pebble recognized me as its user.
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Update: ☺️
Yup, you guys got it! I Googled Suncoast and it's exactly the place I was thinking of. I remember seeing some DVDs/CDs just didn't know the name of the store. I liked how they had red colored lights for their name. It was a vibe, despite me just being a kid and not getting anything lol.
Also, I appreciate the correction that it was gelato instead of ice cream on the upper corner of the back section of the mall. All I knew was how tasty of a frozen treat it was. *Still like to find out the name of it, but awesome you guys know what I was talking about. 🌸 million thank you's 🌸
Since we're here, I'll throw a few more stores/shops. On the bottom level of the mall, where Gymboree (kids clothing store) is right now, was a coffee/pastry shop? Maybe? The hot chocolate there was bomb. Right next to it, on the left was maybe a smaller shop of Yankee Candle, it was low-key a fire hazard because they lit so.many.candles. A very fragrant and dark-lit store. Last one (maybe for now) was next to KB Toys on the right where they recently removed Hollister, was a craft/jigsaw puzzle store that I played with the wooden Thomas the Tank Engine playset.
If you can't tell already, I'm very into the nostalgia and unlocking memories from childhood. 🤍

If there were any other stores you guys liked or funny instances you guys had at the Mall in Columbia, let me know! Love to hear it 🤗

Okay, I've tried researching old directories of the Mall in Columbia to remember the few stores and shops that I enjoyed as a kid but can't find them anywhere. There were places like Borders books, KB toys, Limited too, Libby Lu, Dry Ice, and F.Y.E, but there's some stores I can't remember the name but I remember where it was located inside the mall.
One in particular that I want to remember the name was a store that was sitting between the Borders bookstore on the lower level of the mall and just before you would hit the old Gamestop (now a Tutti Frutti). It was an in-between of a music CD store like F.Y.E but also gives a bit of a hot topic vibe but didn't really sell clothes.
One other place that I really want to know is an ice cream shop that was located on the upper level, right by Hecht's (now Macy's). It was maybe an Italian ice cream place? I loved their vanilla ice cream, it was a small ice cream shop but again it was on the same section of the mall where Nordstrom still sits to this day.
It's a long shot to really figure this out or if anyone knows what I'm talking about but it's just something that's I've been itching to know lol. I'm 26 now and these shops that I remember was probably the time when I was like 6-10 yrs. so there's only so much I remember.
If by chance I'm not crazy and maybe someone does remember what I'm talking about then it be awesome to hear if there's anything anyone remembers of the way The Mall in Columbia used to be. Maybe someone who remembers how the mall looked back in early 2000's. TIA.

Afternoon all :-)

• compact umbrella (looks nice, but I already have a few from Vine)
• wooden Swedish pancake playset for kids
• a set of 4 lovely looking stoneware pasta bowls (I thought they would red error, but taken, yes!)

Anyone lucky enough to actually get the Celebrations that are sticking around and teasing us in AFA??

Hayo Zookeepers!
It's time to slow things down and relax as we discover the familiar and friendly animals included in the new Planet Zoo: Barnyard Animal Pack which is out now! Grab the pack on Steam and don't forget to update your game to enjoy our free Update 1.17.
Barnyard and 1.17 Launch Trailer
Let's meet the 7 friendly animals that make up this incredible pack: the curious and confident Sussex chicken, this chicken loves to investigate and is very self-assured, the Highland cattle with its heavy, rich coat, iconic horns and friendly nature, the playful and energetic Alpine Goat, the gentle Alpaca who loves to hum, the sociable American Standard Donkey, the Hill Radnor sheep with its dense fleece and the docile Tamworth Pig. Bring the rustic feel of the countryside to life by introducing these incredible species to your zoos.
Planet Zoo Barnyard Animal Pack - highland cattle bond As well as the animals, you can ensure that your zoo looks the part with over 60 new scenery pieces to really recreate that rustic feel. Keepers will be able to place straw bales, rustic planters, weather vanes and wind pumps, alongside picket fences, wooden wheels and much more besides.
Planet Zoo Barnyard Animal Pack - New scenery and guests Planet Zoo: Barnyard Animal Pack also features a brand new scenario, set on a once-neglected farm in the rolling New Zealand countryside. This scenario features a welcome return from Tiffany Summers who needs your help to turn a rundown old farm into a thriving animal sanctuary after her Father bought it on a whim when he misheard her saying that she needed some new coats and NOT new goats!
FREE UPDATE 1.17 We're also rolling out a free update alongside the Barnyard Animal Pack! The main feature of the free update is a brand new Animal Encounter habitat, where guests can enjoy a close-up experience with certain animals, including species from the base game and other DLC packs. Once the habitat reaches certain criteria, they will be able to interact and maybe even take a selfie with some of their favourite animals if they are in the mood, including the Quokka, Llama and the Ring-Tailed Lemur!
Planet Zoo - Updated 1.17 animal experience In addition to this, you can also expect a hand washing station and even more rustic scenery pieces, foliage and blueprints alongside quality of life additions and bug fixes. Check out the full Update Notes for more information about various bug fixes, improvements, and changes in Update 1.17.
The Planet Zoo: Barnyard Animal Pack is now available to purchase for £7.99 ($9.99, 9.99€) on Steam! Please remember that you'll only be able to enjoy the Planet Zoo: Barnyard Animal Pack if you already own the base game of Planet Zoo for PC.
Follow along on our social media channels to learn more about the Planet Zoo: Barnyard Animal Pack. You can find us on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok!

Snow-mobiles:

• Adds a new vehicle.
  
• Adds a new battery.
  

The Snow-mobile is the right option for winter time. Kind of difficult to get up a mountain with a golf cart or a unicycle. Well the Snow-mobile does this in a breeze.
It spawns around the snow camps in the mountains. It is powered by Snow-mobile battery. An item found anywhere on the map. It is Snow-mobile version of the Golf Cart Battery.
Meal Sharing:

• Adds the ability to share your meals with your fellow npcs.
  
• Adds the wooden bowl.
  

The implementation of the cooking system was great! But what fun is it when you can't even put it in a bowl and share with your fellow mates?
You are able to fill bowls with food. If an npc is in a hungry state they will come and sit down at the nearest chair and eat. They are also able to cook their own meals if you give them a pot. They will go out and collect water and all the ingredients for the meal. The npcs can alo share their meal with other npcs.
Befriending:

• Adds the ability to befrend cannibals.

Cannibals are just humans that have gone insane. Why not try to befriend them? With enough patience you can have a cannibal friend.
It takes 5 days until the cannibal eventually starts trusting you. To get them to trust you, you have to do things like: Not attack them and let them observe you. Not get too close. Eventually you can leave them gifts at their camp or build them something. Then eventually you can go to their camp with them there and be able to give them stuff without them attacking you and the trust keeps on building.
Eventually the cannibals will help you defend yourself from other camps and in return you help them or give them things. Tha means you have created an alliance with them. To tell them apart from untrusted cannibals, a green icon appears over their head. Of course if you betray them then the alliance breaks and you can no longer befriend those cannibals.
You can also give medicine to cannibals that are sick or hurt. Also if Virginia has a gun she will not attack cannibals until you give her a signal to. This could be activated by a hotkey like "j" or something.
Kelvin Defense:

• Adds the ability to give a weapon to Kelvin.

I mean come on! I know hes brain damaged, deaf and mute but he can still think and see. Atleast give him a weapon and the ability for him to defend himself.
Its three stages in trust. First you can give him weapons like a knife, wooden bow, slingshot and then when he knows how to use them you can start giving him weapons like: the fireaxe, crossbow, compact bow, katana. Then you can finally start giving him dangerous weapons like: the taser, revolver and rifle.
Also the same thing with Virginia, Kelvin will not shoot at cannibals near you until you give him a signal.
Pet Raccoons:

• Adds the ability to get a pet raccon!
  
• Adds a wooden water bowl.
  
• Adds a wooden food bowl.
  
• Adds a collar.
  
• Adds a new pet icon on the gps tracker.
  

Raccoons can make for great pets! They are cute and fluffy! We all just want to pet them and cuddle with them!
You can place the water and food bowl on the ground for the raccoon. This is of course a trust process. You first need to put the bowls outside where you can't see them. Eventually you slowly gain their trust by looking at them, getting closer to them and eventually petting them. You can then pet them when you look at them. You can also add a collar that it crafted from rope and a gps tracker.
More fish:

• Adds Bass.
  
• Adds Red Snappers.
  
• Adds Trout.
  
• Adds Salmon.
  
• Adds Cod.
  
• Adds Pike.
  
• Adds Rainbow Trout.
  
• Adds Fish Bucket.
  

Maybe its time to liven the game up a bit. And lets introduce some more fish to the game!
Adds different meat for all fish and bucket to carry all the meat. This bucket is placed down where you catch fish and then the fish that you pick up, you will need to put them in the bucket. (Mostly because of inventory space.) Different kind of fish fills you up differently.
There will also be new cooking recipes with these fish.
Of course these fish are in their respective habitat for example:
Pikes are in quiet small to large lakes in vegetated and clean water.
Cods are in the ocean.
Salmon are in flowing rocky rivers.
The season also has an effect of what fish you can catch during that season.
Fishing:

• Adds Wooden Fishing Rod.
  
• Adds Compact Fishing Rod.
  
• Adds Fishing lines with Hooks.
  
• Adds Worms & other Bugs you can use as Bait.
  

Some fish are too smart or too fast to just stay still when you are in the water hacking away at them. Actually most fish would actually aready be gone once your foot is in the water. A fishing rod would be a good choice.
Different baits are used for different fish. You may needworms for smaller fish like trouts and bigger bait like raw meat to catch pikes.
A fishing line has a risk to break. That means you would hae to go into your inventory and combine your fishing rod with a fishing line. Then combine that with bait in our inventory.
This adds a whole new way of getting food. And its fun! Atleast if you lik the thrill of fishing.
You also have the ability to release the fish or just put it in your bucket.
Security Cameras & TV:

• Adds Security Cameras.
  
• Adds a TV.
  

Ever needed to keep a view of your home to make sure no critter or creature tries to get in or destroy it? Introducing: Security Cameras!
With these you are able to set them up in trees, on your walls or on your roof. These cameras are then connected with two cables. One of the cables going to an electricity source (Solar panels) and the other going to a TV. On the TV you are able to view the cameras and also switch between cameras.
The TV is only connected with one cable that goes to solar panels.
Both of these are crafted.
Generator:

• Adds a generator.

Its nice to have electricity but once nighttime hits, our solar panels die on us until the morning. Well a generator can fix that!
The generator works the same as solar panels. It produces energy via wind. But it is also possible to connect a cable from the generator to solar panels. The solar panels send electricity to the generator. The generator then stres this electricity and is able to store up to 10000 Watts.
The generator is a blueprint found in one of the caves.
The TV and Cameras can use the generator to be powered at night. You can also create a switch that can switch the power to use from solar panels at daytime and generator at nighttime.
Rifle Scopes:

• Adds different scopes for The Rifle.
  
• Adds a supressor for the Rifle.
  

I gotta say. The rifle was my favorite addition into the game. It's a thing I have wanted for a while in the game. But the scope on it kinda sucks. And its very loud.
Different scopes you can switch out for on the rifle like: 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x.
Also a supressor for the rifle if you want to be sneaky.
The scopes are found in the bunkers woth each bunker holding a different scope.
The supressor is found in a military camp.
Hammock:

• Adds a hammock.

Ever wanted to feel relaxed. Well... Hammock.
This is kind of a small addition. It just adds a hammock that is more comfortable giving you more energy.
It is crafted.
Saltbins:

• Adds a Saltbin.

Yes, we have a drying rack for raw meat but what about cooked meat?
Saltbins are used to store cooked meat so you are able to eat it later or use it as cooking.
Saltbins are crafted.
Advanced Cannibal Camps:

• Adds better Cannibal Camps.

Their camps are so easy to destroy. Its not fair.
Now they can build stronger camps using logs. It is harder to knock down and they have more advanced things.
Like a watchtower where cannibals are on duty to spot for animals or humans.
Also the cannibals can now shoot with a wooden bow. They can build walls around their camps making it hader to get in. They can create their own traps.
Small Changes:
Theres now different kind of meat depending on the animal. Theres turtle meat, raccoon meat and so on.
New outfits for Kelvin and Virginia. They can also have preferred outfits depending on the weather or season.
Maybe a craftable thing for Kelvin to hear again. Though I am not sure if his eardrum broke or he is deaf with no fix.
Ability to put deer hide on a single bed just to make it look more comfy.
Main Priority:
The Story.
My gosh I am dissapointed. This story is a garbage bag compared to the gameplay and graphics. The devspent way to much tme on the graphics and barely any on the story. In m opinion. They should have delayed V1.0. The 1.0 update needed more updates to the story. Virginia needs more voice lines.
Its like someone just went to a junkyard. Picked up a whole bunch of stuff from a random pile and used that as their school project. The story is just a bunch of random bs that doesnt make any sense. The forest had much better story than SOTF.
Yes it does follow the same concept of that cube but its still confusing af. How did Eric survive? How did we survive that big gint glob monster? Who tf is the man that looks like a wish version of Elon Msuk wearing tinfoil? How does Virginia fit in to all of this. How did Kelvin lose the ability to speak?
Its all so confusing and doesnt make any sense. Yes these ideas I have suggested are all gameplay related but my main priority is the story. I would much rather they complete the story without a bunch of random bs before I get fishing rods and raccon pets.
I got this game back when it was in alpha. When it just released. I am a beta tester of the game and throughout the updates the story has been the thing that has changed the least.
Please let me know if you like the ideas or dont like them but please try not to be negative. Instead tell me what I can change. I would also like to hear your ideas for a future post I do!

Selling these 4 Kickstarter games of which most are new and many just have the outside plastic being removed. All 4 have never been played.
1 - MOONRAKERS Titan Edition - brand new and sealed:
This game is still brand new and sealed and in the original shipping box. It was $317 plus tax & shipping (so $375) for everything below. Looking to sell it for $275 and will split the shipping charge to your location.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ivstudios/moonrakers-titan/description
The Titan Box + Base Game The Kickstarter Exclusive gold foil Titan Big Box with Binding Ties, Overload, Nomad, and the base game. Everything will be pre-packaged in the Titan Box—individual boxes are not included in this pledge. Includes the Kickstarter Exclusive Holo Upgrade Pack and everything below: Kickstarter Exclusive Gold Foil Titan Box Binding Ties Expansion Content Overload Expansion Content Nomad Expansion Content Moonrakers Platinum Edition (no box) Game Trayz Custom Insert Moonrakers Holo Upgrade Pack $179 + Moonrakers: Shard Micro-Expansion $12 + Moonrakers: Negotiation Board $18 + Moonrakers: Metal Component Bundle $59 + Extra Hazard Dice $5 + Extra Metal Coins $10 + Base Game Sleeves $12 + New Content Sleeve Bundle $22
2 - UNSETTLED - new but main box and planet 1 was opened. Never played:
This game is opened but never played - the base box and all its components are all in their trays and organized. The base planet was opened as well but never played. The extra planets and all the bonus items from my pledge below are still sealed and unopened. It was $145 plus tax & shipping (so $180) for everything below. Looking to sell it for $125 and will split the shipping charge to your location.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/orangenebula/unsettled-board-game-all-new-content/description
CONSTELLATION (with sleeves) Included: Base Game Framework Planet Box: 001_Wenora Planet Box: 002_Grakkis Community Survival Task Pack Blue Rift Bonus Item Purple Rift Bonus Item Planet Sleeve Pack $100.00 Add-ons Module: Scientific Specializations Included: Module: Scientific Specializations $15.00 Module: Scientific Fascinations Included: Module: Scientific Fascinations $10.00
Planet Box: 004_Yendrall
$20
3 - BLUEPRINTS OF MAD KING LUDWIG - outside plastic was opened but main card packs and drawing sheets are still in plastic. Never played:
This game is opened but never played. It was $70 plus tax & shipping (so $97) for everything below. Looking to sell it for $60 and will split the shipping charge to your location.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tedalspach/blueprints-of-mad-king-ludwig-a-flip-and-sketch-strategy-game/description
Pledge for this special Kickstarter version for the ultimate experience and extended replayability! Contents include everything in Retail Edition plus the following: + Upgraded box with interior printing + Additional 50 sheet sketch pad + Additional 50 sheet score pad + 4 additional sets of colored pencils + Upgraded Castle pencil sharpener + GameTrayz™ organizer + Neoprene play mat + All Campaign Sketch Goals
4 - FIRE TOWER plus expansion - outside plastic was removed but cards inside are still sealed. Never played:
The outside plastic was removed but the cards inside are still sealed and the game was never played. It was $78 plus tax & shipping (so $105) for everything below. Looking to sell it for $65 and will split the shipping charge to your location
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runawayparade/fire-tower-rising-flames-expansion-reprint/description
DELUXE COMBO+MINI EXPANSIONS Included: Fire Tower 2nd Edition w/ all original SGs Rising Flames Expansion: DELUXE Wooden Buckets Mini Expansion Megahawk Mini Expansion

Hello, I am very new to the game and find myself stuck. When first laying out your town in the story it ask you to build a sawmill and a small warehouse. I built the sawmill fine but I have no wooden planks. So when I go to build the small warehouse it is just a blueprint. My sawmill is producing wooden planks and I can see there are 10 there right now. But they aren’t carrying over to my inventory. I presume this is because the workers at the sawmill don’t have a warehouse to take the planks to. But I can’t build the warehouse without the planks. What do I do? Please help…..

My son’s imaginary friend had legs that bent the wrong way, like the crooked legs of a bird. He said every time his imaginary friend walked, the bones would poke out through the skin- yet he was able to move at inhumanly fast speeds, like a character in a video that has been played on fast-forward. My son had named this creepy friend “Mr. Grim.”
Needless to say, I found his new imaginary friend to be a trifle upsetting. When I told my wife about it, she said that it wasn’t just upsetting, but “absolutely fucking disturbing in every way imaginable.”
“Why do his bones poke out through his skin?” she asked me. “That seems like fairly inappropriate imagery for a five-year-old.”
“Maybe it is some subconscious projection for some accident victim he saw on TV,” I said thoughtfully. She rolled her eyes at this.
“I don’t think they show dead car crash victims with their bones sticking out of their skin on Nickelodeon,” she said sarcastically. But we let it go, and continued on with our lives as normal. Johnny continued to talk about Mr. Grim and the adventures they went on, and we just kind of got used to it. After all, children have vivid imaginations, and I wasn’t the type to read into things too much. As a parent, I knew sometimes you just had to go with the flow and let them develop on their own.
That was before pets started to go missing in our neighborhood. The entire street became covered in “Missing” posters for local cats and dogs. None of their bodies were ever found. I didn’t know what to think about it, so I just didn’t. I just continued to go to work, spend time with my wife and enjoy life as much as I could. I would take Johnny out on weekend outings to amusement parks or nature trails. But one time when we were hiking together, he said something rather disturbing to me.
“Mr. Grim says he knows what happens to the kitties and puppies,” he told me. I looked down at him sharply.
“Johnny, that’s not funny,” I said. “There are some sick people out there, people who kill little animals for no reason. There are people out there who kill kids for no reason. That’s why your mom and I always tell you to avoid strangers and never get in a car with anyone besides your family. And you shouldn’t joke about the missing puppies and kitties.”
“But dad,” he said plaintively, “I wasn’t joking. Mr. Grim said he took the puppies and kitties with him to his playground. He said that I can come with him one day, too. He says that no one hurts puppies or kitties there, or little kids. He said we all live forever with him, and that he never lets us go, because he loves us all too much and wants to be with us forever.” I looked down at his small, serious face, waves of dread rising inside my stomach.
“Johnny, Mr. Grim isn’t real,” I said. “He is just an imaginary friend. That means he comes from your own mind, just like your dreams. They might feel real, but they’re all inside of you.” He just shook his head at this, like he couldn’t believe how slow his old dad was.
“You’ll see soon, daddy,” he said. “Mr. Grim is as real as you and me. Maybe even realer, because he says he has been here a long, long time. He says he remembers the roads before there were any cars on them, back when they were all dirt. He says he remembers when horsies and donkeys were the only way around. He told me about it. It’s pretty weird to think about, daddy, how old he is. I didn’t know people could live that long.”
“Johnny, if Mr. Grim was a real person and what you said was true, he would have to be over 130 years old. No one has ever lived that long. It isn’t possible. Don’t get carried away with this Mr. Grim stuff, because not everyone will understand like your mom and I do. Some people might think it’s… a little weird.” That was the end of the conversation, and we continued hiking in silence. I was deep in thought, wondering about all the strange things my son said.
The next day, kids started disappearing. It started with the Crabtree boy the next street over. From what I heard, he was playing in the backyard, in his sandbox. His mother looked out the window every minute or so while she did the dishes. Then she looked up and he was gone, his toys still in the same position, his little blue baseball cap upside down on the spot where he had been sitting. Mrs. Crabtree sprinted out, looking around frantically and screaming his name, but he was just gone. No sign of any strangers in the neighborhood, no suspicious cars, no random leads caught by stoplight cameras or doorbell cameras so ubiquitous in our little suburban neighborhood. There weren't even any footprints in the sandbox, neither the boy’s nor anyone else’s, except for the tracks that led to the middle of the sandbox where he had been sitting and playing. It was as if he had been raptured up into Heaven in the space of sixty seconds.
The police searched for weeks for that little boy, even using helicopters to search the endless woods that started at the north edge of town. Volunteers from around our county joined in, combing every square inch of woods within miles, diving into local lakes and checking abandoned buildings and sewers near the child’s house. There was not a sign of him anywhere. It was as if he had just vanished in the flash of an eye. After weeks of no news, the attention paid to it slowly started to die down. People forgot about the grieving parents and the missing child, like they always do in these kinds of situations.
I was extremely busy at work, doing research into quantum entanglement and quantum computers at our state university. My wife had left to go spend time with her father, who had dementia and cancer and very suddenly took a turn for the worse, so I ended up having to take Johnny to work. I didn’t really mind, as he was a good boy who listened and very rarely got in trouble. The “Mr. Grim” thing was the only weird part of his young personality, but other than that, he was a fast learner, respectful, and acted in many ways like a child much older than himself.
We entered the quantum research laboratory, his little hand holding mine tightly as he stared around with wide, blue eyes. It smelled like cleaning chemicals and burning metal throughout the entire chamber, emanating even out into the hallways of the university building. My son wrinkled his tiny nose, making a comically cute face as he did so. I handed him a pair of safety glasses, putting one on myself, before he started up with his usual, child-like questioning.
“Daddy, why does it smell like that?” he asked me. I shrugged.
“It’s a lot of machines that consume huge amounts of power,” I explained simply to him. “This single building can consume as much power as hundreds of houses like ours. Some of this stuff-” I indicated with a wave of my hand, showing the gleaming circular vats, the massive metal tubes, the dozens of computer monitors, the tables with entire arrays of green lasers focused on tiny chips, “-is so cutting edge that we haven’t found a way to make it use less electricity yet. It can entangle physical particles or make computers that can do certain processes millions of times faster than conventional computers.” Most young children would not be able to comprehend the depth of statements like that, but Johnny was not a usual kid. His mind worked incredibly fast, and his vocabulary seemed much more developed than a normal five-year-olds’.
“OK,” Johnny said simply, letting go of my hand so I could go hang up our coats and put a little plastic bag of food in the fridge. It was late, past dinner time on a Friday, and so the entire lab was already deserted. I was one of the few physicists who did much of his work at night, when all the equipment was open and I had the entire building to myself. On nights like this, I could play classical music on its highest volume and just be myself. I started playing an MP3 of Shostakovich on one of the many monitors around the lab, then began to move around and switch all the equipment on. My son sat in the corner, using colored pencils to draw while I worked.
Tonight I was using AI to try to increase quantum entanglement from just a few particles to a small diamond. Having turned all the cameras and monitoring equipment on, I activated the processor and watched all the lasers move in unison on the nearby laboratory table, now pointing at the diamond I had set in the middle of the setup. Johnny looked up as the computers all grew louder. I motioned for him to come close, to show him the most interesting part of the entire experiment. A humming, vibrating noise began to spread throughout the floor as the argon lasers became too bright to look at. I put an arm around Johnny, reassuring him.
Suddenly, something began to go terribly wrong. The humming vibrations, which had been wave-like and measured, now began to come in chaotic pulsing waves, knocking equipment off the tables. The argon lasers began to falter and move out of position, burning holes in the tables and walls. An enormous crash of rending metal and glass came from behind me, and I quickly jumped on Johnny, tackling him to the floor and protecting him with my own body until it would all be over.
As another computer station fell over, sending shards of glass flying that sliced into my left arm, leaving large droplets of blood on the floor next to us, the power finally went out, and we were submerged in blackness. All I could hear now was Johnny’s heavy breathing mixing with my own. Then, suddenly, I heard the skittering footsteps of something large coming from my right.
“Is it over?” Johnny asked in a trembling voice.
“I think so, kiddo,” I said reassuringly, getting off of him and slowly standing up in the pitch dark. I fumbled in my pockets for my cell phone, turning on the flashlight app and shining it around.
At first, I saw only destruction- smashed monitors, smoking computers, massive holes everywhere. I thought to myself how lucky we were that the whole place hadn’t gone up in flames. As I kept turning, though, I saw something far more horrific.
A small boy stood in the corner with black, stringy hair. His skin looked drained of blood, white as a vampire’s, and blood constantly bubbled out of his mouth, sliding down his chin in red streaks. He wore the ragged remains of what might have been a plaid shirt and jean shorts, but they were so bloody and torn that it was impossible to tell. His bare legs were bent the wrong way, and he started to walk towards me slowly like a bird, his knees bending backwards. The bone stuck out through his shins, calves and thighs, and as he walked, a nauseating cracking sound echoed around the room, like bone loudly crushing and breaking against other pieces of itself.
“Hiya there,” he said in a deep, gurgling speech. “My name, as you surely know, is Mr. Grim. I am a friend of your son’s, and I hope soon, a friend of yours.” I stood there, speechless, shining my light on this abomination. He bowed slightly and waved his thin, bony arm around the room. “Sorry for the destruction, but I had to take any means to materialize, and the massive amounts of energy in this room was able to give me the physical form I needed. I couldn’t keep on as some minor… poltergeist!” He laughed at this, spraying tiny droplets of blood on the floor in front of him as he did so. I didn’t see the humor in it.
“Look,” I said, putting my hands up, as if I were dealing with a rabid dog, “I’m sorry for any misunderstanding, but you need to go back to where you came from. This is not OK. My son and I cannot have a…. a….” What was he, exactly? A monster? A demon? Mr. Grim waved away my objections with a flick of his hand.
“That is not up to you, Jack,” he said congenially. “You cannot send me back, and if you try to stop me, I will kill your son in front of you, and then I will kill you too.” My son’s little hand tightened on me. I felt him trembling behind me.
“Daddy, I’m scared,” he whispered to me in a low voice. “I want to go home.”
“I know, Johnny,” I said quietly. “I do too.” But what could I do? I had no gun, and I wasn’t sure if this thing could even be killed anyway.
At that moment, the backup generators kicked on, and the laboratory was filled with the glow of red emergency lights.
“Alright,” I said, reaching a decision. “My son and I are leaving. Do not follow us.” I had decided to call 911 and let the professionals deal with this. Maybe they could call in the National Guard, I thought with a small smile. They could fill this thing full of enough full-auto weapons fire to leave him looking like Swiss cheese.
“Ah,” Mr. Grim said congenially, “I am sorry, but I need your son.” He smiled at me, an eerie ear-to-ear grin that showed all of his bloody teeth and the countless sores on his blackened gums. “I used a lot of energy materializing, and I need food. I will let you live, however, Jack.” His smile widened, as if he were offering me some kind of present. “Just leave the boy, get in your car and drive home, and you can live a full life.” As he spoke, I got an idea. We were much closer to the door than Mr. Grim.
I quickly dropped my phone in my pocket, picked up a large computer and hurled it at Mr. Grim’s broken legs. I heard a demonic cry of pain, his voice sounding like dozens of voices crying at once in a disharmonious shriek. Ignoring it, I picked up Johnny and ran outside the lab.
The door had a number pad on it. I pressed the top button and began rotating the thumb turn away from the hinges, locking the thick wooden door just as something heavy crashed into it on the other side. The knob turned furiously, but it wouldn’t budge without the correct numerical code.
“OK, that should buy us some time,” I said quietly, grabbing Johnny’s hand and running out through the blood-red emergency lights. The laboratory began erupting in a cacophony of breaking equipment as I called 911, informing them of an intruder and telling them the man was likely armed and dangerous. Then I got Johnny to my car and we sped out of there, my adrenaline still high, my heart beating hard in my chest.
The police ended up finding the laboratory destroyed but empty. As the days went on, I wondered if the entire thing was some sort of shared delusion. But then kids started disappearing from our town and the surrounding towns at an alarming rate. I bought a gun for protection, and my neighbors and I began to do a local neighborhood watch.
One time while I was out patrolling in the middle of the night, I saw that thing again- Mr. Grim. I could tell it was him instantly from the way he walked, the crunching of shattered bones and the superhuman speed as he disappeared into the backyard of a nearby house. I followed him quietly, checking that the safety on my gun was off.
I saw a child exiting the backdoor of his house as Mr. Grim crept in the bushes. The child looked hypnotized, his eyes totally blank. Mr. Grim waved his hands and clicked his tongue, and a small spark of light in the middle of the backyard expanded to show a massive, brightly-colored playground. Even though it was night here, on the playground it was daytime, and I saw countless kids in it. Some of them were hung in nooses by their necks from the monkeybars, others were buried alive up to their heads in the sandbox. He had even crucified a few on the wooden beams of the playset, nailing their hands and feet together as rivulets of blood dripped into the sandbox below. They all had their mouths opened in a shared and silent scream as the hypnotized child walked quietly towards the vision.
“No, stop!” I said, raising my gun to point it directly at Mr. Grim’s head. He snarled like a rabid dog at me, beginning to run at me with a superhuman speed, his bent legs snapping and popping, and I fired. His head exploded in a shower of black, rotted flesh and maggots, the smell of decomposing meat filling the air. Behind him, the vision slowly closed back into a pinprick of light, then went out entirely.
I called the police, telling them the truth, keeping an eye on the strange, demonic body of Mr. Grim as I did so. It wasn’t the police that ended up showing up, but some secretive federal agency that quickly took possession of the body and swore me to secrecy, giving me a check for $100,000 in exchange for signing an NDA that stated I would never tell anyone about the supernatural events that had occurred in the last few weeks. I gladly took the check and signed the document.
After all, who would believe me?

My son’s imaginary friend had legs that bent the wrong way, like the crooked legs of a bird. He said every time his imaginary friend walked, the bones would poke out through the skin- yet he was able to move at inhumanly fast speeds, like a character in a video that has been played on fast-forward. My son had named this creepy friend “Mr. Grim.”
Needless to say, I found his new imaginary friend to be a trifle upsetting. When I told my wife about it, she said that it wasn’t just upsetting, but “absolutely fucking disturbing in every way imaginable.”
“Why do his bones poke out through his skin?” she asked me. “That seems like fairly inappropriate imagery for a five-year-old.”
“Maybe it is some subconscious projection for some accident victim he saw on TV,” I said thoughtfully. She rolled her eyes at this.
“I don’t think they show dead car crash victims with their bones sticking out of their skin on Nickelodeon,” she said sarcastically. But we let it go, and continued on with our lives as normal. Johnny continued to talk about Mr. Grim and the adventures they went on, and we just kind of got used to it. After all, children have vivid imaginations, and I wasn’t the type to read into things too much. As a parent, I knew sometimes you just had to go with the flow and let them develop on their own.
That was before pets started to go missing in our neighborhood. The entire street became covered in “Missing” posters for local cats and dogs. None of their bodies were ever found. I didn’t know what to think about it, so I just didn’t. I just continued to go to work, spend time with my wife and enjoy life as much as I could. I would take Johnny out on weekend outings to amusement parks or nature trails. But one time when we were hiking together, he said something rather disturbing to me.
“Mr. Grim says he knows what happens to the kitties and puppies,” he told me. I looked down at him sharply.
“Johnny, that’s not funny,” I said. “There are some sick people out there, people who kill little animals for no reason. There are people out there who kill kids for no reason. That’s why your mom and I always tell you to avoid strangers and never get in a car with anyone besides your family. And you shouldn’t joke about the missing puppies and kitties.”
“But dad,” he said plaintively, “I wasn’t joking. Mr. Grim said he took the puppies and kitties with him to his playground. He said that I can come with him one day, too. He says that no one hurts puppies or kitties there, or little kids. He said we all live forever with him, and that he never lets us go, because he loves us all too much and wants to be with us forever.” I looked down at his small, serious face, waves of dread rising inside my stomach.
“Johnny, Mr. Grim isn’t real,” I said. “He is just an imaginary friend. That means he comes from your own mind, just like your dreams. They might feel real, but they’re all inside of you.” He just shook his head at this, like he couldn’t believe how slow his old dad was.
“You’ll see soon, daddy,” he said. “Mr. Grim is as real as you and me. Maybe even realer, because he says he has been here a long, long time. He says he remembers the roads before there were any cars on them, back when they were all dirt. He says he remembers when horsies and donkeys were the only way around. He told me about it. It’s pretty weird to think about, daddy, how old he is. I didn’t know people could live that long.”
“Johnny, if Mr. Grim was a real person and what you said was true, he would have to be over 130 years old. No one has ever lived that long. It isn’t possible. Don’t get carried away with this Mr. Grim stuff, because not everyone will understand like your mom and I do. Some people might think it’s… a little weird.” That was the end of the conversation, and we continued hiking in silence. I was deep in thought, wondering about all the strange things my son said.
The next day, kids started disappearing. It started with the Crabtree boy the next street over. From what I heard, he was playing in the backyard, in his sandbox. His mother looked out the window every minute or so while she did the dishes. Then she looked up and he was gone, his toys still in the same position, his little blue baseball cap upside down on the spot where he had been sitting. Mrs. Crabtree sprinted out, looking around frantically and screaming his name, but he was just gone. No sign of any strangers in the neighborhood, no suspicious cars, no random leads caught by stoplight cameras or doorbell cameras so ubiquitous in our little suburban neighborhood. There weren't even any footprints in the sandbox, neither the boy’s nor anyone else’s, except for the tracks that led to the middle of the sandbox where he had been sitting and playing. It was as if he had been raptured up into Heaven in the space of sixty seconds.
The police searched for weeks for that little boy, even using helicopters to search the endless woods that started at the north edge of town. Volunteers from around our county joined in, combing every square inch of woods within miles, diving into local lakes and checking abandoned buildings and sewers near the child’s house. There was not a sign of him anywhere. It was as if he had just vanished in the flash of an eye. After weeks of no news, the attention paid to it slowly started to die down. People forgot about the grieving parents and the missing child, like they always do in these kinds of situations.
I was extremely busy at work, doing research into quantum entanglement and quantum computers at our state university. My wife had left to go spend time with her father, who had dementia and cancer and very suddenly took a turn for the worse, so I ended up having to take Johnny to work. I didn’t really mind, as he was a good boy who listened and very rarely got in trouble. The “Mr. Grim” thing was the only weird part of his young personality, but other than that, he was a fast learner, respectful, and acted in many ways like a child much older than himself.
We entered the quantum research laboratory, his little hand holding mine tightly as he stared around with wide, blue eyes. It smelled like cleaning chemicals and burning metal throughout the entire chamber, emanating even out into the hallways of the university building. My son wrinkled his tiny nose, making a comically cute face as he did so. I handed him a pair of safety glasses, putting one on myself, before he started up with his usual, child-like questioning.
“Daddy, why does it smell like that?” he asked me. I shrugged.
“It’s a lot of machines that consume huge amounts of power,” I explained simply to him. “This single building can consume as much power as hundreds of houses like ours. Some of this stuff-” I indicated with a wave of my hand, showing the gleaming circular vats, the massive metal tubes, the dozens of computer monitors, the tables with entire arrays of green lasers focused on tiny chips, “-is so cutting edge that we haven’t found a way to make it use less electricity yet. It can entangle physical particles or make computers that can do certain processes millions of times faster than conventional computers.” Most young children would not be able to comprehend the depth of statements like that, but Johnny was not a usual kid. His mind worked incredibly fast, and his vocabulary seemed much more developed than a normal five-year-olds’.
“OK,” Johnny said simply, letting go of my hand so I could go hang up our coats and put a little plastic bag of food in the fridge. It was late, past dinner time on a Friday, and so the entire lab was already deserted. I was one of the few physicists who did much of his work at night, when all the equipment was open and I had the entire building to myself. On nights like this, I could play classical music on its highest volume and just be myself. I started playing an MP3 of Shostakovich on one of the many monitors around the lab, then began to move around and switch all the equipment on. My son sat in the corner, using colored pencils to draw while I worked.
Tonight I was using AI to try to increase quantum entanglement from just a few particles to a small diamond. Having turned all the cameras and monitoring equipment on, I activated the processor and watched all the lasers move in unison on the nearby laboratory table, now pointing at the diamond I had set in the middle of the setup. Johnny looked up as the computers all grew louder. I motioned for him to come close, to show him the most interesting part of the entire experiment. A humming, vibrating noise began to spread throughout the floor as the argon lasers became too bright to look at. I put an arm around Johnny, reassuring him.
Suddenly, something began to go terribly wrong. The humming vibrations, which had been wave-like and measured, now began to come in chaotic pulsing waves, knocking equipment off the tables. The argon lasers began to falter and move out of position, burning holes in the tables and walls. An enormous crash of rending metal and glass came from behind me, and I quickly jumped on Johnny, tackling him to the floor and protecting him with my own body until it would all be over.
As another computer station fell over, sending shards of glass flying that sliced into my left arm, leaving large droplets of blood on the floor next to us, the power finally went out, and we were submerged in blackness. All I could hear now was Johnny’s heavy breathing mixing with my own. Then, suddenly, I heard the skittering footsteps of something large coming from my right.
“Is it over?” Johnny asked in a trembling voice.
“I think so, kiddo,” I said reassuringly, getting off of him and slowly standing up in the pitch dark. I fumbled in my pockets for my cell phone, turning on the flashlight app and shining it around.
At first, I saw only destruction- smashed monitors, smoking computers, massive holes everywhere. I thought to myself how lucky we were that the whole place hadn’t gone up in flames. As I kept turning, though, I saw something far more horrific.
A small boy stood in the corner with black, stringy hair. His skin looked drained of blood, white as a vampire’s, and blood constantly bubbled out of his mouth, sliding down his chin in red streaks. He wore the ragged remains of what might have been a plaid shirt and jean shorts, but they were so bloody and torn that it was impossible to tell. His bare legs were bent the wrong way, and he started to walk towards me slowly like a bird, his knees bending backwards. The bone stuck out through his shins, calves and thighs, and as he walked, a nauseating cracking sound echoed around the room, like bone loudly crushing and breaking against other pieces of itself.
“Hiya there,” he said in a deep, gurgling speech. “My name, as you surely know, is Mr. Grim. I am a friend of your son’s, and I hope soon, a friend of yours.” I stood there, speechless, shining my light on this abomination. He bowed slightly and waved his thin, bony arm around the room. “Sorry for the destruction, but I had to take any means to materialize, and the massive amounts of energy in this room was able to give me the physical form I needed. I couldn’t keep on as some minor… poltergeist!” He laughed at this, spraying tiny droplets of blood on the floor in front of him as he did so. I didn’t see the humor in it.
“Look,” I said, putting my hands up, as if I were dealing with a rabid dog, “I’m sorry for any misunderstanding, but you need to go back to where you came from. This is not OK. My son and I cannot have a…. a….” What was he, exactly? A monster? A demon? Mr. Grim waved away my objections with a flick of his hand.
“That is not up to you, Jack,” he said congenially. “You cannot send me back, and if you try to stop me, I will kill your son in front of you, and then I will kill you too.” My son’s little hand tightened on me. I felt him trembling behind me.
“Daddy, I’m scared,” he whispered to me in a low voice. “I want to go home.”
“I know, Johnny,” I said quietly. “I do too.” But what could I do? I had no gun, and I wasn’t sure if this thing could even be killed anyway.
At that moment, the backup generators kicked on, and the laboratory was filled with the glow of red emergency lights.
“Alright,” I said, reaching a decision. “My son and I are leaving. Do not follow us.” I had decided to call 911 and let the professionals deal with this. Maybe they could call in the National Guard, I thought with a small smile. They could fill this thing full of enough full-auto weapons fire to leave him looking like Swiss cheese.
“Ah,” Mr. Grim said congenially, “I am sorry, but I need your son.” He smiled at me, an eerie ear-to-ear grin that showed all of his bloody teeth and the countless sores on his blackened gums. “I used a lot of energy materializing, and I need food. I will let you live, however, Jack.” His smile widened, as if he were offering me some kind of present. “Just leave the boy, get in your car and drive home, and you can live a full life.” As he spoke, I got an idea. We were much closer to the door than Mr. Grim.
I quickly dropped my phone in my pocket, picked up a large computer and hurled it at Mr. Grim’s broken legs. I heard a demonic cry of pain, his voice sounding like dozens of voices crying at once in a disharmonious shriek. Ignoring it, I picked up Johnny and ran outside the lab.
The door had a number pad on it. I pressed the top button and began rotating the thumb turn away from the hinges, locking the thick wooden door just as something heavy crashed into it on the other side. The knob turned furiously, but it wouldn’t budge without the correct numerical code.
“OK, that should buy us some time,” I said quietly, grabbing Johnny’s hand and running out through the blood-red emergency lights. The laboratory began erupting in a cacophony of breaking equipment as I called 911, informing them of an intruder and telling them the man was likely armed and dangerous. Then I got Johnny to my car and we sped out of there, my adrenaline still high, my heart beating hard in my chest.
The police ended up finding the laboratory destroyed but empty. As the days went on, I wondered if the entire thing was some sort of shared delusion. But then kids started disappearing from our town and the surrounding towns at an alarming rate. I bought a gun for protection, and my neighbors and I began to do a local neighborhood watch.
One time while I was out patrolling in the middle of the night, I saw that thing again- Mr. Grim. I could tell it was him instantly from the way he walked, the crunching of shattered bones and the superhuman speed as he disappeared into the backyard of a nearby house. I followed him quietly, checking that the safety on my gun was off.
I saw a child exiting the backdoor of his house as Mr. Grim crept in the bushes. The child looked hypnotized, his eyes totally blank. Mr. Grim waved his hands and clicked his tongue, and a small spark of light in the middle of the backyard expanded to show a massive, brightly-colored playground. Even though it was night here, on the playground it was daytime, and I saw countless kids in it. Some of them were hung in nooses by their necks from the monkeybars, others were buried alive up to their heads in the sandbox. He had even crucified a few on the wooden beams of the playset, nailing their hands and feet together as rivulets of blood dripped into the sandbox below. They all had their mouths opened in a shared and silent scream as the hypnotized child walked quietly towards the vision.
“No, stop!” I said, raising my gun to point it directly at Mr. Grim’s head. He snarled like a rabid dog at me, beginning to run at me with a superhuman speed, his bent legs snapping and popping, and I fired. His head exploded in a shower of black, rotted flesh and maggots, the smell of decomposing meat filling the air. Behind him, the vision slowly closed back into a pinprick of light, then went out entirely.
I called the police, telling them the truth, keeping an eye on the strange, demonic body of Mr. Grim as I did so. It wasn’t the police that ended up showing up, but some secretive federal agency that quickly took possession of the body and swore me to secrecy, giving me a check for $100,000 in exchange for signing an NDA that stated I would never tell anyone about the supernatural events that had occurred in the last few weeks. I gladly took the check and signed the document.
After all, who would believe me?