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Two items — a crystal ball, and a green leather-bound notebook — sat benignly and idly atop of the black-robed professor’s desk.
The camera lingered on them, giving them what most may see as an undeserved moment in the spotlight.
But to those that knew, to the parties invested in this controversy, this little pause and dramatic zoom-in was accompanied by a hair-raising excitement… along with an untempered nervousness for what was to come.
It definitely caused the investigative duo on the other side of the screen some pause for thought; prompting them to stand intently, pondering both the orb and the notebook.
Ilunor, as far as I could tell, was entranced by the green notebook in particular. Though it wasn’t a trance born out of any positive emotion, but instead, one of abject horror.
“Recommended Reading Materials for the Studious Student.” Sorecar announced with a steady breath, prompting Ilunor to visibly flinch in his seat, as the man reached a finger over to point at the hand-scrawled title of the leather-bound notebook. That finger soon found itself carefully manipulating its pages, opening the cover first, before turning over the internal dust-cover to reveal letters and symbols written in High Nexian, but arranged in a manner the EVI simply could not translate.
“Error: Unable to Translate. Cause: Unrecognized and/or unintelligible organization of local script-forms.”
Yet despite this, it seemed as if both Sorecar and the Apprentice were able to draw something from its otherwise senseless pages. As despite being written haphazardly, with letters and pictograms arranged in no meaningful order, they were able to still draw meaning where the EVI couldn’t.
“Within these pages lie materials for the studious student. Materials are to be found within The Library, and are to be retrieved with great haste. May you make swift work of their contents, and may those after you find only ash in your wake. Seek, unlearn, and remove from the grip of the eternal entity, that which was once a gift but is now a curse. Seek, unlearn, and remove; with the fires of your passion, oh studious student.” Sorecar read aloud, managing to read something verbatim from the nonsensical pages of the book.
Ilunor’s eyes were practically glazed over at this point, as he began bringing his cape over across his chest, tucking his legs towards his chin in the process.
“This is it.” The apprentice announced with a half-cracked smile. “Please, keep going. I’m certain your skills of appraisal far exceed my own, Professor.”
Sorecar obliged by flipping the page, turning over to two pages of complete gibberish, once again watermarked by the EVI’s error message; but proving no challenge at all for the ever-inquisitive professor.
“Section One, A Tainted Reality: A Wretched Collection of Historical Affidavits During the Reconciliation and Reformation of Otherwise Lost Realities.” Sorecar paused, before turning towards the apprentice. “It lists an entire section’s worth of books, in titles held within spatial positions with reference to their potentialities within the ever-evolving library.”
Thacea’s features visibly flinched at that revelation, but similar to the apprentice in the footage, she refused to comment. At least not for now. Her eyes however betrayed a look of mild distress, which subsided somewhat as the apprentice urged the armorer to continue.
Which he did, as he flipped from page to page across the relatively small notebook, only pausing to read in between what he interpreted to be different sections and ‘chapters’.
“Section Two. The Unspoken War and the Treacherous Alliance.”
“Section Three. All surviving works from Alaroy Rital.”
The apprentice cocked her head, as if trying to recall some familiarity in that name. “Alaroy Rital.” She repeated. “I don’t recall hearing of such a name before.”
“Well his full name, as far as I recall, and vastly aided by the book is as follows: Alaroy Rital, Lord-Mayor of the Township of the Two Rivers, Slayer of the Dragon of the Grey Canyon, Repeller of the Tainted Blight of the Orsin, Liberator of the Aether, and Grand Master of the Elusian Guild Hall of Adventurers.” Sorecar responded succinctly, prompting the apprentice to once more clench her eyes shut in deep thought, before finally letting out a sigh of defeat.
“The name is both familiar yet foreign at the same time.” She finally admitted.
“As far as I recall, and mind you, my memory of those years are far from perfect… the man was a local hero of sorts. Though his record was besmirched by some controversy or another.” Sorecar offered, prompting the apprentice to finally shrug, giving up on this particular subject matter entirely.
“There are more sections, yes?”
“Correct.”
“Then let’s move on.”
Sorecar nodded promptly at that, flipping the pages over until he hit the next section.
“Section Four. A Sordid Account of the Most Bizarre of Newrealmer Arrivals: A Death By Harmonization and the Ensuing Investigation.”
That immediately got my attention, causing me to jolt forwards, prompting the armor to quickly follow as it automatically switched from the currently active in-armor-postural-readjustment mode, and back into its active configuration.
“Section Five. The Unfortunate Procedures Against Unruly Realms and the Instances in Which Such Procedures Were Incurred.”
The armorer paused after that, not necessarily due to its contents, but as if puzzled by what lay ahead in the next few final pages. In fact, he flipped back and forth between the pages soon after that, treading and retreading what were effectively the last five pages of the book. “There is an appendix which includes titles not covered by these sections, however it will take some time to read through them.”
“That’s enough for now, professor.” The apprentice offered, prompting the man to quickly pull back, closing the notebook with an unsatisfying thump. “We have our glowing wand.” The apprentice surmised. “The oeuvre of works which are no doubt the subject of this grand controversy. Now all we need to find is the contract which ties everything together.”
“I’m assuming you haven’t forgotten about our second item of interest?” Sorecar gestured towards the crystal ball.
“Of course not, professor. However, the fact we’ve found that book implies that we must be close to its dependent article.” The apprentice responded with a renewed sense of urgency, as she began using that same ornate magnifying glass in an attempt to further pick apart each and every nook and cranny of Mal’tory’s desk.
Part of me wanted to make some joke about how this was every unpaid intern’s dream, to be rummaging through your boss’ stuff.
But that part of me was completely buried underneath the confusion and dread that came with the revelations from within that little green book.
I… honestly didn’t know what I was expecting, but I felt like I’d been suckerpunched, with the wind being knocked right out of me from the implications of exactly what had been selectively purged from the library.
It was a struggle to process it all, which more or less made me dull out the more eccentric aspects of the apprentice’s investigation; as she unlocked drawer after drawer, pulling out pile after pile of magical nicknacks and more documents than what was possible from that finite amount of space.
Sorecar was clearly of the same opinion as the rest of us right now however, as he continued obsessing over the book, his hands once more trailing over to inspect its cryptic pages. The man seemed transfixed on the second and third sections in particular, though his featureless visor made it difficult to really pin down what his reactions were.
Yet throughout all of this, it was clear the reactions on the homefront were much, much more animated, as Ilunor was just about ready to pass out from the stress, and Thacea seemed about ready to burst at the seams if her featureless facade was of any indication.
“That was the book.” Ilunor finally chimed out, just as the narration through the recording had died down during the more tepid phase of the apprentice’s investigation. “I know it.”
“I thought your memories when it came to the whole Mal’tory book burning situation was lost, Ilunor?” Thalmin countered.
“It was. I mean, it still is. But I remember parts of that room. I vaguely recall the emergence of a book that I was forced to…” The Vunerian trailed off, as if struggling to piece together words.
“... to sign?” Thalmin offered in a surprisingly helpful tone which stood at odds with how he earlier regarded the Vunerian.
“No. No you imbecil-” The Vunerian paused, realizing his misstep as he backtracked from what would’ve otherwise been an expected response. “That wasn’t a book of binding. It’s not comparable to the yearbook, if that was where your assumptions were leading to, Prince Thalmin.” Ilunor clarified, gripping the armrests of his seat tight between his fingers.
It was about this point in time that I expected Thacea to chime in, to elaborate on the nature of the book with her encyclopedic knowledge on seemingly every aspect of the magical world.
But she didn’t.
Instead, her eyes remained practically glued to the screen, as I realized that whatever had been revealed thus far had hit much, much harder than I could’ve imagined.
Ilunor, as if taking note of this silence, elected to fill in for Thacea. “The book… is an adjacent artifact. It is, as the apprentice has noted, an eclectic oeuvre of works, a list if you will, to be bound to and referenced by a contract and a spell of binding. The book itself isn’t the binding agent, moreso the reference material by which the contract is hinged upon.”
“So what’s with the illegible text? Are they ciphers or some magical equivalent of it?” I gestured once more at the bird’s eye view offered by the drone, and the pages of indecipherable text currently beneath Sorecar’s hands.
“Those are anchor runes, earthrelamer.” Ilunor answered with a frustrated sigh. “It is frustrating to see them for what they are not. Frankly, it’s as if your sight-seers and memory-shards were designed to mimic the world as it is seen through the eyes of a particularly weak-fielded commoner.” The Vunerian went off, venting his frustrations through a rant before finally calming down. “But I digress. Those runes are referred to as anchors for a reason. For tethered to them are akin to pages of text to be openly read and deciphered within the manastreams. Granted, this form of writing is not common; moreso used for the purposes of contracts and other such magical binds.”
“And on the topic of contracts. I’m assuming that the contract… your contract, is what the Apprentice is currently rummaging for?” I gestured towards the screen once more, at the apprentice who was now buried ankle-deep in piles upon piles of books, documents, and an assortment of scrolls that criss-crossed across the room’s mahogany and carpeted floors.
“Unless she’s a complete nitwit, then I’d imagine so, yes.” Ilunor responded with his signature cattiness. “In any case, the fact she’s even trying proves that she’s barely above a fool anyways.” The Vunerian shrugged. “And before you ask, earthrealmer, let me preempt your question. The contract, at least on the professor’s end, has more than likely suffered the same fate as my own. Namely, its existence is more than certain to be dubious at best. What the apprentice will surely find will be nothing more than ash at the bottom of that bottomless drawer. Which… given its sheer size and scale, and the potential inhabitants within its limitless confines, will more than likely result in even ash being difficult if not impossible to find.”
There was… more than one point I wanted to raise with Ilunor’s statements. However, before I could address any of them, the elf in question finally spoke up once more; now surrounded by an entire archive’s worth of documents and nicknacks.
“Nothing.” Larial spoke with a sullen breath, taking a moment to steady herself as she made a point of not sitting on Mal’tory’s chair. “At least nothing that’s relevant to our case.” She continued, resting her palms flat against the green suede of the desk.
“Were you really expecting anything different, Apprentice?” Sorecar countered, having since moved from pondering the pages of the book to now pondering the depths of the crystal ball.
“I’d assumed the damage to the man hadn’t been so severe.” Larial admitted, alluding to something else that drew all of our collective attention. “When I first saw him in the healing ward… he looked… intact. You couldn’t even tell there was anything wrong with him.”
“And yet they called you of all people, to aid in the ritual.” The armorer surmised, with a tone of voice that now more resembled that of a fully fledged Academy Professor. His happy go lucky persona had subsided completely, at least for now, as he addressed Larial in a manner more akin to what I’d expected of the Dean. “You have been around the Academy for long enough to understand that calling upon the aid of apprentices is unprecedented. Which means that despite how things may seem on the surface, that lurking beneath the seemingly calm waters, is a hydrostorm of epic proportions.”
“This entire situation is unprecedented, professor.” Larial countered meekly. “But you are correct. It… must have been desperate if they required the aid of apprentices. I just… cannot fathom the fact that the professors must have…” The apprentice trailed off, her face scrunching up and breaking eye contact with the armorer as if too skittish to broach the next point.
Sorecar didn’t reply, nor did he complete her sentence for her, simply allowing her to recuperate and reorganize her thoughts herself.
“... brought the man back from the brink.” She managed out, offering what was in effect a euphemism that didn’t seem to sit right with the armorer, if his immediate head cock was of any indication.
“That is the only way you can explain the complete loss of a contract.” Sorecar reasoned. “You were hoping to find it, despite knowing well that it, amongst the rest of his contracts, have more than likely gone up in flames.” It was around that point that he walked around behind the desk, and reached down into the drawer the apprentice had been searching in. His arm sank impossibly deep, deeper than what should have been physically possible inside of that small and limited space. After a few moments, the man finally brought his hand back up, holding within it what appeared to be fine specks of ash that he allowed to filter back down into the dark depths of the seemingly bottomless drawer. “And there you have it — ash. Most of it has no doubt already been consumed by the bottom-feeders. However, what remains is enough to account for what is perhaps more contracts than most would form in their lives.”
The man stood back up soon after, before once more taking his place at the front of the desk.
“Well, I believe that answers our prior speculations on Auris Ping’s potential relations, contractual or otherwise, with Professor Mal’tory.” Thalmin growled out, punctuating the moment of silence within the footage; which soon continued with a resonant sigh from the apprentice.
“I guess, in a way, I was trying to find the contract not so much because of my assigned task, but because I wanted to perhaps prove to myself that the situation wasn’t as dire as my intuition leads me to believe. The loss of all these contracts can only mean one thing.” Larial paused, once more trying to find the strength inside of her to face whatever facts were self-evident in this case. “The man was lost.” She finally managed out through a shaky breath. “His soul must have departed from his mortal coil. And yet…”
“... and yet he remains.” Sorecar surmised.
“They must have re-tethered it before I arrived that night.” The apprentice shot back. “But I felt nothing different when they asked me to aid in the mana-channeling processes. This whole situation is just…” She sighed, prompting Sorecar to cock his head.
“Unprecedented?”
“Yes.” The apprentice once more admitted, sinking her face into her hands and taking a moment to process it all, more or less falling into the same camp all of us were currently in. “Moreover, it brings up a very disturbing question.”
“Which is?”
“If his soul was truly untethered, even for a split second… how exactly were they able to retether it? Or more specifically, through what means are they using to permanently retether his soul to his mortal coil?”
This question seemed to cause some level of concern from Sorecar, as his answer soon demonstrated. “There are… ways of doing so that aren’t exclusive to being spellbound to armor.” The man offered under a dour breath. “Especially if the body is… fresh, in a manner of speaking. Though it requires the use of-” He stopped, halting himself from going down what was clearly a darkening path. “I apologize for prompting this rather… dark and dreary subject matter, Apprentice.” Sorecar offered, as that empathetic, kinder side of him returned without much prompting.
“It’s quite alright. It… it needed to be said, if we are to complete this investigation with any degree of professionalism.” The apprentice concluded with a small smile. “Whatever the case may be, it is clear that we are unable to procure the contract through which the perpetrator of the library’s burning was bound. We have, however, undeniable proof of Professor Mal’tory’s involvement with the scandal.” She pointed at the green notebook. “And of course, a potential interloper who may or may not have been a part of this conspiracy; thereby expanding this from a mere Academy matter, to one which could implicate others beyond its walls.” She pointed at the crystal ball. “Have you discovered anything from your observations thus far, Professor?” The apprentice inquired, prompting the man to nod, as he knelt down to eye-level, pondering the orb from desk-height.
“The inherent limitations of the Echovale make it so that it’s near impossible to transcribe anything following the cessation of a communique.” Sorecar began. “Though of course, you knew this, and hoped that because I am perhaps one of the greatest armorers to have ever lived, that I would be able to aid in this impossible endeavor, hmm?” The armorer’s tone of voice had more or less resumed that flighty, happy-go-lucky one I knew him for.
The apprentice, hearing this, could only smile awkwardly in response. “I wouldn’t have put it that… bluntly, professor. But I do indeed have faith in your ability to make the impossible, well… probable, at the least.”
“Hmph! Well, I couldn’t pin a face or a name, but I was able to pin a definite location if that helps.” The man offered.
“Any stray piece of information will help tremendously, professor.”
“The Crownlands.” He answered without a hint of hesitation, prompting the Apprentice to raise both of her brows up high.
“That’s as far as I am able to draw from the residual echoes within the vale.” He tapped at the ball, generating a series of satisfying clinks in the process.
“So the man wasn’t acting alone. Or rather, perhaps he was consulting someone.” The apprentice pondered. “Then again, that final communique could very well be with Lord Lartia—” The apprentice paused, before placing both palms softly across her throat. “—may his soul rest in peaceful slumber.” Following another moment of silence, the apprentice’s hands soon shifted towards the ball. “In any case, if it isn’t Lord Lartia, then who could it possibly be? Maybe we should…” The apprentice suddenly stopped; as if realizing the dangers of diving any deeper into this growing conspiracy. “No.” She quickly corrected herself. “Whatever the case may be, this is probably now completely out of my purview. I was assigned to collect any evidence I deemed to be relevant to recent happenings, and I believe this should suffice.”
“Whatever you believe is best, apprentice.” Sorecar acquiesced, prompting the apprentice to slowly, but surely, pack the archive’s worth of documents, books, and scrolls all back into the drawer using nothing but telekinetic spells.
This left just the crystal ball, and the little green book, both of which the apprentice promptly pocketed into a small pouch, before placing it somewhere beneath her cloak.
“Though on that note…” Sorecar began, pointing towards the apprentice’s cloak. “If I may ask, how do you plan on divvying up these finite pieces of evidence?”
This caught the apprentice off-guard, as her mouth opened, but no response came through.
“Moreover, are you even obligated to hand in this evidence? Or are you only expected to write a report to all parties involved?” Sorecar continued, pressing the matter further, causing the apprentice to stop mid-stride. “Because if primary evidence isn’t explicitly required, might I offer my services as a master forger?” The man spoke with a hint of mischievousness, the duality of the word perhaps translating equally well despite the language barrier.
“I may need to contact my superiors to ask if a… copy will be satisfactory to their needs. I believe not, but… we shall see. In any case, I am due to submit the evidence along with my report no later than the end of next week. As such, this should give me ample time to organize my findings, which is especially convenient given the roster of duties I am expected to cover over the next few days.” The apprentice took a moment to pinch the bridge of her nose, halting her rambles as she steadied herself with a sigh. “But I digress, I believe I will take you up on that offer, Professor Pliska.”
“It would be my pleasure to welcome you into my domain, apprentice.”
The rest of the footage consisted of small talk between the pair, with nothing in particular standing out as the topics being addressed soon turned from high-stakes espionage, and back into faculty banter.
Yet despite that, none of us broke the silence that now dominated the boring trip back. Not even as the footage came to a complete stop, and there was nothing more left to play.
I leaned back against the armor, eliciting a series of creaks from the couch below me, echoing across the high-ceilinged room and disrupting the tentative peace that came with this ominous silence.
“This explains… a lot.” Thalmin offered, finally breaking the silence with a tentative tone of voice. “It explains your contract, and its abrupt cessation.” He continued, turning towards Ilunor. “It explains Mal’tory, or at least, his current lack of public appearances. And it reveals to us exactly what he was trying to hide from you, Emma.” The lupinor eventually turned towards me. “And I think the sections of the library, selectively pruned, are self-explanatory as well.”
“Section four, and section five, at least.” I replied shortly thereafter. “I have no idea who or what Alaroy Rital has to hide in section three, and don’t even get me started on section two, let alone section one.” It was at that point that I turned towards Thacea, who let out a sharp exhale upon me bringing up section one.
“The removal of all information relevant to… and I quote — Tainted Realities — speaks volumes to the inherent fears of the Nexus. Though I know not what specifically they may fear from your discovery of its deep and now-lost lore.” Thacea offered through a pensive gaze. “There are many rumors, legends that come with the phrase Tainted Reality. Though most are mythical; epics of long lost eras that dwell between the blurry line that exists between history and legend. Perhaps the records within the library were pieces of irrefutable evidence that would’ve shed light on this nebulous subject matter. But even so… that begs the question… why? Why would they hide what is effectively a non-issue when it comes to your discovery of its lore? Taint, and more specifically, the concept of a Tainted Reality, is something that is inconsequential in the contemporary world. Its history, even if it proves to be true, is neither a disruptive political element, nor a practical tool for war, that could be used in countering the Nexus.” The avinor’s explanations were clear, concise, and yet they belied something personal that she clearly wasn’t broaching.
And I wasn’t about to dig either, not when this topic very clearly hit close to home for her.
“This leaves the second subject matter then.” I offered, giving the avinor an off-ramp towards a potentially more palatable topic.
“The Unspoken War and the Treacherous Alliance?”
“Correct.” I nodded.
“That… I have no knowledge of.” The avinor admitted, prompting me to turn to both the lupinor and the Vunerian for answers.
“Don’t look at me, earthrealmer, I’m the one who lost all memories on the subject, remember?” Ilunor countered.
“I’m afraid I’m as in the dark as you are on this one, Emma.” Thalmin replied with a loud huff, leaving me with perhaps more questions than answers at this point.
“Right then.” I nodded. “Well, regardless, as disquieting, confusing, and disturbing as these revelations have been, they are exactly that — revelations.” I took a moment to stand up, resting both hands on my hips, as if adopting Ilunor’s more theatrical approach to things. “We started today off with no intel on Mal’tory, with no idea how we were going to complete The Library’s Seekership questline, and no knowledge on exactly where we stood in this game. We’re ending today off with a firm grasp on exactly what we need to do, what exactly was scorched in the library, and a tentative understanding on Mal’tory’s fate. I’d say that’s an incredible step forward, even if the answers we now have are leading to even more questions.”
“Reality is often filled with disturbing truths, but only when we acknowledge them, can we act to change them.” Thacea offered.
“Here here!” Thalmin reaffirmed through a firm stomp, standing up tall and ready.
“While certain revelations come as disappointments… namely the survival of Professor Mal’tory… it is indeed somewhat satisfying to hear that the man is at the very least suffering for his actions.” The little thing spoke maliciously, as he too stood up. This prompted a look of worry to form amidst all three of us, but instead of reacting accordingly, he instead displayed an expression of confusion. “What? The man was a monster! He actively antagonized not only me, but this entire group! Surely you also feel at least some sense of satisfaction at the consequences of his actions catching up to him!”
“The delight in an enemy’s defeat, best comes from the resistance of the blade against his body. Not from the suffering incurred from happenstance.” Thalmin countered, whilst Thacea and I refused to entertain that line of thought, as I quickly placed a palm across my forehead, bonking it once again in the process.
“Right, well, here’s the game plan. We now have a clear target to complete our first objective — the notebook. We grab that, hand it in to the library, and presto, we accomplish the Seekership questline. Now comes the difficult part… how exactly do we do that?” I turned to the group, as offers and suggestions finally came flying in.
“Take advantage of your life debt?” Ilunor offered.
“I wouldn’t take advantage of that card just yet, Ilunor. Not if we have other options.” Thacea countered.
“What if we steal it?” Thalmin proposed.
“Thievery isn’t a diplomatic approach, Thalmin.” Thacea shot back with a glare.
“Well, Emma here was able to grapple her way, through manaless means, across the outside of the castle towards the apprentice whilst she was in the medical wing. I’m sure we can pull something else off in a similar capacity!” The lupinor countered.
“No, Thalmin. As much as I would like to try, I believe it might be best if we try a more diplomatic approach.” I offered, prompting the three to cock their heads.
“We could just ask, right?”
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(Author’s Note: And there we have it! The first step towards the completion of the Library's questline! We've found exactly what we were looking for, the list of books that were ordered to be put to the dragon flame by Mal'tory. With that being said however, a new series of questions arises... exactly why were these books targeted in particular? Moreover, what exactly was lost as a result? These questions and more will continue to linger in the back the gangs' minds as we push forward! Especially as we now find ourselves in the midst of another conundrum, exactly how are we going to get the book to the library! Regardless, this is still a massive step forward, and one that will surely bring Emma and Ilunor closer towards addressing the first phase of their intertwined fates with the library! I hope you guys enjoy! :D The next Two Chapters are already up on Patreon if you guys are interested in getting early access to future chapters!)
[If you guys want to help support me and these stories, here's my ko-fi ! And my Patreon for early chapter releases (Chapter 84 and Chapter 85 of this story is already out on there!)]

Hey all, for the last couple of weeks my cars warning lights have been coming on and off with no apparent reason.
Two weeks ago my brake, traction control, and ABS light all flashed on at the same time and she beeped at me. The brakes were behaving normally though. When I restarted my car leaving work they were off. I took her to autozone to ask them to read the diagnostic scanner and it came up with nothing. ABS light came on and went off a couple more times that week.
Yesterday I was driving and battery saver mode turned on and my AC and radio were shut off. I got to my appointment and when I came out the car started fine, with no warnings. Along the way home it came on again. The battery is barely 6 months old, I got it in January when -20 temps killed my last one.
It’s been really hot lately, it was 93-95 when the battery light came on.
Additionally, the car only has 85,000 miles on it, and I got the transmission fluid and oil changed out about a month ago along with a break fluid top off and a new cabin filter.

The tearsheet of Waste Management which i compiled can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15qwGjsW6yMPTPIl9e_FwdQ-bV4WNVquXW5ZS3Ilwolw/edit?usp=sharing
Please note, i removed all formulas.

I am sharing something which i wrote for myself recently.
Please note, the description and operations are lifted verbatim from their website.

Waste Management $WM.
"Description: Waste Management, Inc. is the leading provider of comprehensive waste and environmental services in North America. Headquartered in Houston, the company’s network of operations includes 431 collection operations, 381 transfer stations, 286 active landfill disposal sites, 17 waste-to-energy plants, 119 recycling plants and 90 beneficial-use landfill gas projects.
These assets enable Waste Management to offer a full range of environmental services to 22 million residential, industrial, municipal and commercial customers."

Their operations:

COLLECTION. Waste Management provides solid waste collection services to millions of customers across North America, ranging in size from the single residential subscription to large national customers requiring comprehensive, one-source waste programs to serve hundreds of locations. With 25,000 collection and transfer vehicles, the company has the largest trucking fleet in the waste industry. The company uses advanced technology and disciplined programs to bring improved efficiency to the process of solid waste collection.
TRANSFER. With most of the waste collected by Waste Management going to its own landfills, a supporting network of transfer stations provides an important link for efficient disposal. Waste Management has 381 strategically located transfer stations to consolidate, compact and load waste from collection vehicles into long-haul trailers, barge containers and rail cars for transport to landfills.
DISPOSAL. Waste Management operates the largest network of landfills in its industry, with 286 active sites managing the disposal of more than 120 million tons of waste per year. The company operates its sites according to standards of safety and environmental compliance that go beyond regulatory requirements. Waste Management is focused on solutions that impact the future of solid waste management, including bioreactor technology, which accelerates the decomposition of organic waste through the managed introduction of air and liquids into the waste mass. Currently, the company is conducting research at 10 landfills to confirm the environmental benefits of bioreactor technology as an alternative method for managing landfill waste.
RECYCLING. As the largest recycler of municipal solid waste in North America, Waste Management handles more than eight million tons of recyclable materials each year, largely through its 119 recycling facilities. Through the resources of Recycle America Alliance, a majority-owned subsidiary, WM provides costefficient, environmentally sound recycling programs for municipalities, businesses and households across the U.S. and Canada.
LANDFILL GAS PROJECTS. For many years, Waste Management has worked with businesses, industries and public utilities across North America to develop beneficial-use projects from landfill gas. This gas is a reliable, renewable energy source that is produced naturally as waste decomposes in landfills. When collected, it can be used directly as medium Btu gas for industrial use or sold to gas-to-energy plants to fuel engine or turbine-driven generators that produce electricity. WM currently supplies landfill gas to 90 beneficial-use projects nationwide. The company’s 57 gas-to-electricity projects provide more than 260 megawatts of energy, enough to power 230,000 homes. The 33 projects that sell landfill gas as fuel to industrial users replace more than 2.6 million barrels of oil each year.
WASTE-TO-ENERGY. Waste Management’s Wheelabrator Technologies subsidiary pioneered the use of municipal solid waste for fuel in the generation of electrical power in the U.S. more than 25 years ago. Since then, the company has processed more than 117 million tons of municipal solid waste into energy, saving more than 180 million barrels of oil while generating nearly 64 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. Its 17 waste-to-energy plants have the capacity to process more than 24,200 tons of waste per day into electrical or steam energy. Together the plants generate an aggregate 690 megawatts of electric energy, enough to power 600,000 homes
FROM WM website

A. SWOT

1. Strength
1.1 Strong Competitive Advantage
1.1.1 Regulations on Landfill licence.
WM and RSG and WCN control 80% of the landfill in north america. WM owns 5 out of the biggest 10 landfill in the US. Landfills are not easy to get approved for construction, mainly due to residential communities generally being averse to having them near their homes. This provides a significant "moat" against future competition in the landfill space. Many of Waste Management's collection competitors are forced to pay the company to use its landfills due to the lack of other options and the difficulty in constructing new landfills.
1.1.2 Scale of Vertical integration
The vertical integration model, where the company owns and operates its own landfills, transfer stations, and material recovery facilities (MRFs), Renewable natural gas extraction allows management to pull significantly more levers to drive results than smaller competitors. Margins are higher, and absorbing the large costs associated with the maintenance of all that infrastructure is dispersed across a much larger operation.
ETC
1.1 Shareholder-friendly Management
Growing dividend, and this has attracted quite a following among dividend investors The company is also increasingly buying back stock. In 1Q24, the company spent $250 million on buybacks, slightly less than the $300 million it spent on dividends. This dividend is protected by a low 40% payout ratio and comes with a history of 20 consecutive annual dividend hikes and a five-year CAGR of 8.4%.
The CEO James C. Fish, owns ~172 thousand shares worth over $28 million. His 2022 compensation was $14.8 million, of which $8 million was in stock awards and $1.7 million in stock options. Mr. Fish has a tenure of 7.3 years. The CFO (Devina A. Rankin) also had over 50% of her compensation package rewarded in stock, and as of 2022, she owned 65.5k shares and 14k options, together worth over $13 million.
In the last five years, the share price has compounded at 13.91% a year excluding dividends ( Jun 10th 2019 closing price was 104.57, june 7th 2024 closing price is 200.55).
1.2 Management takes a long term view of then business, and has made acquisitions where it made sense.
In 2020, WM acquired Advanced Disposal Services (ADS), a leader in in recycling and landfill gas-to-energy.
In 2022, the company started to implement RNG (renewal natural gas) extraction from waste and by 2026 to have a 400m run rate ebitda from RNG.
In 2024 June, WM announced that they are seeking to buy Stericyle for $7.2 billion. Stericycle is a leader in medical waste disposal.
1.3 The business is recession resistant but it is not immune.
WM will be impacted in a recession as 70% of collections revenue come from their commercial and industrial customers. A slow down in the economy general means a slow down in economic activities and trash. This is especially true for housing starts, a slow down in construction sector will temporarily impact the business. It is resistant because the business is a recurring one, and most of the commercial agreements are signed for 3 to 5 years.
The company was not immuned from short-term headwinds caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company resorted to flexible contract for commercial accounts during the crisis, and that smaller businesses got offered free service in the near term. However the dip lasted until April and the company’s SP ended 2020 higher than it started.
In the 2022 decline of the general stock market, the share price dipped only 5.4% for the whole year from $166 to $157.
1.4 Strong financials
In the last ten years, the company has had only 1 and 2 years where revenue and EPS werelower than the previous year. Their stated debt to ebitda ratio is 2.5 to 3.
Their ROE and ROIC metrics have grown in the past five years, although it is still in the low teens, it is considered the best of class in this business.

1. Weaknesses

2.1. Exposure to recycled prices.
WM was quite exposed to recycled prices in 2018, chinese recycled goods were dumped onto the US market and caused price volatility. WM then changed the pricing model to reduce its exposure by generating more revenue from the collection of recycling. So instead of an 0.20 EPS impact due to a 40% volatility, the impact is now just $0.06-0.08.
2.2 This is a high Capex business.
The CAPEX was supposed to go down after spending the elevated sum to build the RNG plants and reaping a 500m Ebitda run rate from this business by 2026. But with the acquisition of Stericycle, it looks like the company is heading into the Medical Waste business in a big way. And I don’t think capex as a % of revenue is going to drop too far from its current 10%.
3. Opportunities
(See Below for Catalysts and Drivers)
4. Threats & Risks
The evolving nature of the business. For a boring utility-like nature of this business, it is quite dynamic.
The American waste management market is supposed to increase 5% CAGR from 2022 to 2027 or 5.6% CAGR between 2022 and 2030 depending on the research report. However, this doesn't mean that the solid waste volume will grow at 5% CAGR, the CEO made a remark recently:
“If you were to ask me what business do I want to be in right now, I want to be in a medical business of some kind because it's only getting bigger. And our business, by the way, solid waste, if I think about volume over the next decade is going to grow at probably 1% to 2%.” June 7th, The Stifel 2024 Cross Sector Insight Conference
I think the company has to constantly think about growth and the company has to execute flawlessly.
The latest news is that WM is seeking to divest in the RNG business, a business that was touted in 2022 as a strategic direction for the firm and a long term driver for growth. (I wont comment much about this development as it is just an exploration by the company, i suspect it has to do with trying to keep the debt to ebitda ratios between 2.5 - 3, the CFO has alluded that the acquisition of Stericycle might put them on a negative watch by S&P or Moody’s, so i think this is due diligence process)
https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/waste-manager-wm-explores-3-billion-sale-renewable-natural-gas-unit-sources-say-2024-05-16/

B. Catalysts for unlocking value

B.1. Continued Industry consolidation
In the last 5 years, WM acquired about 90 companies. Last week, they announced their latest and largest acquisition, Stericycle. Stericycle is the largest provider of medical waste disposal and data destruction (primarily paper shredding) services in the United States. I think a lot of investors really dislike this deal and the WM’s SP was sold down when it was first announced. This is because the to-be acquired company has very meh metrics, like being GAAP unprofitable in 5 out of the last 10 years (They were FCF positive in all ten years though).
To quote WM’s CEO on the deal:
“So a lot of opportunity there. And then I look at the growth trajectory over a 10-year period. And the medical services business, and this is not us saying, this, this is a third-party saying this, is projected to grow at somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% to 6%. That's the volume side of medical services.
Not a surprise to anybody in the room. The U.S. average American has aged 10 years in the last 40. We're getting older, and the replacement rate is like 1.7% or 1.7% right now. So we're not replacing, we're getting older. If you were to ask me what business do I want to be in right now, I want to be in a medical business of some kind because it's only getting bigger. And our business, by the way, solid waste, if I think about volume over the next decade is going to grow at probably 1% to 2%.”
B.2 Renewable Natural Gas from garbage dumps
To quote this 2022 WSJ article: WM is spending $825 to build 17 new plants to convert methane from garbage dumps into biomethane. “ The company also intends to sell the gas to utilities, industrial firms, and organizations seeking to enhance their environmental credentials.” The company hopes these investments to result in $500 million of run-rate EBITDA per year totaling 21 million MMBtu per year by 2026.

C. Valuation

An interesting topic always. I scoured the SA archives, out of the 86 articles written on WM (last article in 2019 to current June 7 2024), there were 47 articles that said that WM was too expensive to buy and investors would not beat the market if they bought WM at such high earnings multiple, 29 articles gave WM a buy rating and 10 articles were neutral.
Can you imagine, the naysayers, the fence-sitters who for 5 years said “NO” and then watched the share-price battle covid, lockdown, war in ukraine, inflation, the great crash of 2022, and fear of recession in 2023 and then almost doubled by 2024 and beating the S&P 500 in the process, with an annualised 13.91% returns vs the 13.12% CAGR for the S&P 500.
If i were to use SA as an reverse indicator, then i should be bearish because most of articles in 2024 turned positive even though the share-price is at an all time high, and Q1 results were okay although revenue was little light. Many of the Dividend growth-focused SA authors switched from negative to positive towards WM in 2024.
If I were to look at valuation from my own calculations (please refer to the tearsheet):
My blended calculation puts the fair value around 151 to 164 against the current price of $200
If i were to use the analysts estimates, and then work backwards to to match the current price, this implied growth rates works out to around 12%, which is at the edge of what they used to achieve in the past. In my opinion, this 12% growth rate is a bit optimistic and the company must execute it flawlessly. For my blended calculator, i used 9% as a more realistic long term growth-rate.
** I forgot to add this:

• Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are large investors in WM.
  
• Bill is also an investor in WM largest competitor RSG.
  

Background:
Someone just gave me a free Dometic Duo-Therm rooftop AC unit. I've bench-tested it and it blows cold, so I'm thinking seriously about installing it on my 2006 Thor Citation Supreme 9'6". The camper is prewired for roof AC, but the manufacturer is long gone, and I'm not quite sure how (or whether!) to proceed. I'd love some advice from folks with more experience building and modifying campers before I proceed.
Update 1: Re-uploaded images in a new public gallery. Super curious about the downvotes though, I did my best to make this post create discussion that will be useful to future readers. If you're a downvoter, would you mind letting me know why?
Update 2: Probed with a straightened paperclip, and found aluminum framing fore and aft of my hole, and I suspect I found the power cable hidden 1" deep in the styro as well.
My Questions:

1. (Solved, I think.) This AC unit is big. My roof construction is laminated Dicor vinyl, thin plywood, polystyrene, and thin plywood (image #2). The marketing brochure says there's T6061 aluminum framing in there, [edit:] and it feels like it's in there 1/4" fore and aft of the hole. Is this roof going to be strong enough to take a 94 lb roof unit?
   
2. (Solved, I think.) The prewire isn't actually visible in the vent cutout, although someone helpfully wrote "AC WIRE" on the styrofoam. The wire enters the roof panels just aft of the WC bulkhead, in the cabinet behind the white speaker (image #3). Any advice on how to get my cable the rest of the way to the vent cut-out? Should I chase the cable with a coat hanger or something like that? [Edit:] Probed and suspect that the cable is just hidden 1" back in the foam.
   
3. The installation guide calls for a 14-1/4" cut-out, but what I currently have is 13-1/2". It looks like it might fit without modification. Do I need to widen the hole?
   
4. My existing vent looks very well sealed (see image #6), and I think I'll have to do a good job of removing the sealant to allow the AC gasket to seal. Any suggestions on what this sealant likely is, and how to safely remove it from my Dicor roof membrane?
   
5. Any other gotchas or concerns that I'm probably not thinking about here?
   

Reference images:

1. Wide-angle interior photo facing forward right
2. Vent cut-out and roof cross-section, facing right
3. Cable enters roof panel inside cabinet
4. AC sticker
5. AC spec sheet
6. Roof vent sealant
7. Full album, all reference images
8. Installation guide PDF

Hey everyone, I've been fixing up my grandpa's old sw2 so he can sell it but I've run into an issue with a p0327 knock sensor low voltage code that's honestly kicking my butt and I'm out of ideas. So far I've changed the fuel pump and filter and got it running again, had issues with starting cold so I replaced the CTS and connector with ac Delco parts and it starts easier now but not perfect, replace the belt tensioner after the old one came apart, changed fluids and filters, cleaned the plugs, checked the o2 sensors and they look like they've been replaced within the last couple years. But this p0327, tested the knock sensor with my volt meter on ac and it wouldn't exceed 2.4 volts so I replaced it, went away for about 50 miles and came back, ohmed the 496 circuit and found a short so I ran a jumper from j3c10 to the knock sensor connector , have continuity but that damn code keeps coming back. My code reader isn't able to get deep enough into the computer to read knock counts so I'm at a loss. Only other things I can think of would be a wiring gremlin or a fault in the pcm because it's not sending 5 volts with key on, engine off or running. Sorry for the long winded post, I appreciate any feedback

I’ve been cross shopping and test driving a significant amount of cars over the past 2 months.
I have settled mainly between a 2019-2021 Honda Civic SI, and a 2017+ Toyota Corolla hatchback with a manual. I drive 75 miles each way, each day, 90% of it being 70ish highway cruising. I never have more than one adult and one child passenger, most of the time being one or the other.
Both seem relatively economical. Reliability leans towards the Corolla but that’s not to say the civic 1.5t is particularly problematic, main issue being oil dilution in low mile usage(clearly a problem I won’t have). Does anyone have experience in putting high miles on these models?
I cannot do EV as I do not have any form of at home or at work charging. As for the many suggestions I’m sure to get of comfort or avoiding manual, that’s not something that particularly bothers me. For reference I have been making this commute for over 4 years in a Jeep Renegade with a 6spd manual and a 1.4l engine. I am used to being busy. I want something that I can enjoy on the weekends and these have been the two most engaging to drive. I did also enjoy the new generation GTI I drove, as well as an Acura ILX.

This is going to be a long thread with thousands of words so unless you're truly interested in what multipathing is, how it works, how it's countered, and how it could be implemented in warthunder, you won't read it all, so i tried to TLDR the best i can at the bottom. The format uses Gemini AI to save my time as well as highlight key points in a Question -> Answer format. The questions are asked in ways that would be observable in game, while also providing realism to the multipath effect. My summarized implementation thoughts will also be TLDR at the bottom.
In radar systems, multipathing refers to the phenomenon where radar signals travel along multiple paths before reaching the target and reflecting back to the radar receiver. This can cause issues like:

• False targets: Reflected signals from objects like buildings or terrain can appear as additional targets on the radar display.
  
• Signal distortion: The combined reflected signals can weaken or distort the original signal, making it difficult to accurately determine the target's range, speed, or position.
  

How do missiles reduce the effect of multipathing on low flying targets?
Missiles themselves don't directly reduce the effect of multipathing on low-flying targets. Multipathing is an issue with the radar guiding the missile, not the missile itself. (Semantically this is right, but missiles that don't have their own radar will have their own countermeasures to multipathing which is discussed later. But on an ARH, the radar is the cause of the problem not the missile, so that along with most BVR missiles having their own radar, is likely why its phrased this way. More on that below)
Here's how radar systems can mitigate multipathing effects on low-flying targets:

• Advanced filtering techniques: Radars can employ signal processing algorithms to distinguish between the true target reflection and unwanted clutter from the ground or other objects.
  
• Pulse-Doppler radar: This type of radar transmits pulses and analyzes the returning signal's Doppler shift to differentiate between stationary clutter (like ground) and moving targets (like aircraft).
  
• Low-lobe antennas: These antennas minimize the radar signal transmitted close to the ground, reducing ground clutter reflections.
  

These techniques help radar systems provide a clearer picture to missiles, enabling them to better track low-flying targets despite multipathing challenges.
Does data link help as well?
Yes, data links can indirectly help reduce the effects of multipathing on low-flying targets for missiles in a couple of ways:

1. Sharing Target Information: Data links allow radar systems on other platforms (aircraft, ground stations) to share target data with the launching platform. This can provide a more complete picture of the target's location and movement, potentially reducing reliance on a single radar potentially affected by multipathing.
   
2. Improved Filtering: Data links can transmit processed radar data, which has already undergone some filtering to remove clutter. This can reduce the workload on the missile's own radar receiver, making it less susceptible to multipathing interference.
   

Older semi active radar missiles didn't have internal radar like more modern active radar missiles, and relied on the radar of the aircraft to guide the missiles. These aircraft usually were not equipped with data link, pulse doppler, or other semi-advanced mitigation techniques for multipathing. Were improvements made to the missiles seeker in order to mitigate multipathing?
You're right, older semi-active radar missiles faced greater challenges with multipathing due to limitations in both the missiles themselves and the launch platforms. Here's how they addressed multipathing to some extent:

• Filtering Techniques: While not as sophisticated as modern filtering, some early semi-active radar seekers incorporated basic filtering methods to differentiate the strongest target return from clutter.
  
• Seeker Design: Some seeker designs prioritized receiving reflected signals from specific target areas, like the top of an aircraft, which might be less susceptible to ground clutter.
  
• Launch Tactics: Launch tactics could involve maneuvers to minimize the missile's flight path over clutter-heavy areas, reducing multipathing effects.
  

Overall, mitigating multipathing in older missiles relied more on filtering within the seeker itself and launch tactics compared to the advanced techniques used in modern systems. These limitations are why semi-active radar missiles often performed better against high-flying targets with less ground clutter interference.
What were some various seeker or filtering types?
Here are some specific seeker and filtering techniques used in older semi-active radar missiles to mitigate multipathing, though they weren't as effective as modern methods:

• Track Gate Filters:** These filters focused on signals within a predicted range and velocity window, rejecting signals outside that area likely caused by multipathing.
  
• Spectral Filtering:** By analyzing the frequency content of the reflected signal, these filters could distinguish between the target's signature and ground clutter based on their spectral characteristics.
  
• Lobing Techniques:** Some seeker antenna designs employed multiple lobes with varying antenna patterns to null out reflections from specific directions (like the ground) while optimizing reception from the target's direction.
  

How do variations like the inverse monopulse seeker relate to this?
Inverse monopulse seekers represent a significant improvement in mitigating multipathing for semi-active radar missiles compared to older designs. Here's how they work:

• Traditional Trackers:** Conventional semi-active seekers compared the strength of the received signal in its entirety. Multipathing could create a stronger overall return signal even if it wasn't directly from the target.

*Inverse Monopulse: This design incorporates two or more antennas within the seeker. It compares the signal strength between these antennas to determine the target's direction rather than relying solely on overall signal strength.
*Multipathing Impact: Even with multipathing, the target's true location will cause a slight directional difference in the signal received by the seeker's antennas. Inverse monopulse can detect this disparity and focus on the target's true direction, effectively filtering out much of the multipathing clutter.
This directional comparison offers a significant advantage over relying on absolute signal strength, making inverse monopulse seekers much more effective in low-altitude environments where multipathing is prevalent.
Is multipathing a significant factor for active radar missiles?
Multipathing has a lesser impact on active radar missiles compared to semi-active radar missiles. Here's why:
-Active missiles have their own radar transmitters and receivers, making them less reliant on reflected signals from the launch platform's radar, which can be susceptible to multipathing.
-They can employ more sophisticated filtering techniques within the missile itself to distinguish the target's signature from clutter caused by multipath reflections.
However, multipathing can still affect active radar missiles to some extent, particularly at low altitudes where ground clutter is more prominent.
What environmental factors can lead to a higher multipath signature?
Several environmental factors can contribute to a higher multipath signature for radar systems:

• Terrain: Rough terrain with mountains, buildings, or other obstacles can create multiple reflection paths for the radar signal, increasing multipathing.
  
• Vegetation: Dense forests or vegetation can absorb and scatter radar signals, leading to more complex reflections and potential multipathing issues.
  
• Weather: Humidity, rain, or snow can refract radar signals, bending them and creating additional propagation paths that contribute to multipathing.
  
• Low Altitude: When a radar operates close to the ground, the signal is more likely to reflect off the ground and surrounding objects, creating more opportunities for multipathing.What environmental factors can lead to a lower multipath signiature?Here's what minimizes multipathing for radar systems:
  
• Flat, Open Terrain: Smooth, unobstructed areas with minimal clutter like buildings or mountains provide a clear path for the radar signal, reducing reflections that cause multipathing.
  
• Sparse Vegetation: Environments with low vegetation density allow the radar signal to travel with fewer obstacles, minimizing signal scattering and potential multipathing.
  
• Dry Weather Conditions: Clear skies with low humidity minimize signal refraction by atmospheric elements, leading to a more direct path and less multipathing.
  
• Higher Altitude: Operating at a higher altitude increases the distance between the radar and ground clutter, reducing the likelihood of ground-reflected signals interfering with the target signal.
  

Does the angular relation between the two aircraft have an effect on the multipath signature?
Yes, the angular relationship between the launching aircraft, the target aircraft, and any reflective objects that cause multipathing can affect the signal received by the radar. Here's why:

• Signal Strength: Depending on the angle, the target aircraft might reflect a stronger or weaker signal back to the radar. This can be crucial for distinguishing the target from background clutter if the multipath signal is significant.
  
• Doppler Shift: The relative angle between the aircraft also affects the Doppler shift of the reflected signal. Missiles and radars use this shift to differentiate moving targets from stationary clutter. In multipath scenarios, a favorable angle can help isolate the target's true Doppler signature.
  
• Signal Cancellation: In some cases, the relative positions can lead to partial or complete cancellation of the target signal by the multipath reflections. This can make it difficult to detect or track the target.
  

What angles would be more difficult to distinguish from a multipath signal?
Angles where the target aircraft and reflective objects are close in line with the radar will be more difficult to distinguish from a multipath signal. This is because:

• Similar Signal Path: When the target and reflector are aligned, the reflected signals from both might travel similar paths to the radar, making it challenging to differentiate based on signal arrival time.
  
• Doppler Shift Similarity: If the target and reflector are moving in similar directions relative to the radar, their Doppler shifts might be comparable, further complicating discrimination between the true target and multipath.
  
• Signal Cancellation: In some cases, the aligned position can lead to destructive interference, where the target's signal and the multipath reflection partially or completely cancel each other out, significantly weakening the target signal received by the radar.
  

Define "target" and "reflector"In the context of radar systems:

• Target: The object of interest that the radar is trying to detect and track. This could be an aircraft, ship, vehicle, or any object the radar needs to locate.
  
• Reflector: Any object in the environment that reflects the radar signal back to the radar receiver. This can include terrain, buildings, trees, or even weather phenomena like rain or snow. Ideally, reflectors are not the objects of interest and can create clutter that makes it difficult to detect the actual target.
  

Would a target flying low and perpendicular to the aircraft be more difficult to detect through multipathing than a target traveling low and directly at the aircraft?
Yes, a target flying low and perpendicular to the launching aircraft could be more difficult to detect through multipathing compared to a target flying directly at the aircraft at low altitude. Here's why:

• Signal Path: When the target is perpendicular, the reflected signal from the target travels a longer path compared to a direct approach. This can make it weaker and potentially more susceptible to cancellation by reflections from closer objects like terrain.
  
• Doppler Shift: The perpendicular target's relative motion creates a less pronounced Doppler shift compared to a head-on approach. This can make it harder to distinguish the target's signature from ground clutter, which might have a similar Doppler shift in this scenario.
  
• Multipath Reinforcements: Depending on the specific geometry, perpendicular flight paths might create multiple reflection points that reinforce each other, further obscuring the true target signal.What are some other multipath reinforcements?Multipath reinforcements occur when multiple reflections of the radar signal combine in a way that strengthens each other, making it even more challenging to detect the true target signal. Here are some additional examples beyond perpendicular flight paths:
  
• Corner Reflectors: Objects with sharp angles or dihedral shapes, like buildings with square corners, can create strong multipath reflections due to efficient signal bouncing between the various surfaces.
  
• Curved Surfaces: Curved objects like domes or spheres can focus radar signals, creating intensified reflections in specific directions that can overwhelm the target signal.
  
• Multiple Reflectors: In cluttered environments with numerous objects like trees in a forest, reflections can bounce back and forth between them, creating a complex web of reinforced multipath signals.
  

Would a target flying low and at the aircraft be harder to detect than a target flying low and directly away from the aircraft? (Test question, intentionally wrong)
No, a target flying low and directly at the aircraft wouldn't necessarily be harder to detect through multipathing compared to a target flying low and directly away. Here's why:

• Similar Multipath Effects: Both scenarios involve low-altitude flight, which means both are susceptible to ground clutter reflections causing multipathing.
  
• Doppler Shift Advantage: In a head-on approach, the target's relative velocity is maximized, leading to a more pronounced Doppler shift. This can actually benefit detection by making the target easier to distinguish from stationary clutter on the ground.
  

However, there are other factors to consider beyond multipathing that might influence target detectability:
-Radar Cross-Section (RCS): An aircraft's RCS depends on its size, shape, and material composition. In some cases, an aircraft's frontal RCS might be larger than its rear RCS, making it more detectable head-on.
-Radar Look Angle: The specific direction the radar antenna is pointed can affect signal strength. If the radar isn't perfectly aligned with either target, detection might be slightly less efficient.
Overall, while multipathing is a concern in both scenarios, a direct head-on approach might offer some advantages for target detection due to the Doppler effect. Other factors like RCS and radar look angle can also play a role.
So to summarize the past few points, aircraft relation plays a significant role in the efficiency of multipathing. Perpendicular and directly-away positions for the target aircraft can lead to stronger multipath signatures compared to a direct head-on approach.
This is because of the factors you mentioned: weaker target signal strength, less distinguishable Doppler shift, and potential for reinforced multipath reflections in certain geometries. In addition to multipathing, chaff is often used to enhance the reflection of radar waves.
Does this also effect pulse doppler radar types?
Yes, chaff can affect pulse doppler (PD) radars to a certain extent, but PD radars are generally more resistant to chaff compared to traditional radars. Here's why:

• Doppler Shift Filtering: PD radars rely on the Doppler shift principle to differentiate between moving targets (like aircraft) and stationary clutter (like chaff). Chaff typically falls through the air at a slow, relatively constant speed, creating a minimal Doppler shift. PD radars can filter out signals with minimal Doppler shifts, reducing the impact of chaff.
  
• Clutter Rejection Techniques: Many PD radars incorporate clutter rejection algorithms that can distinguish between the complex Doppler signature of a target aircraft and the simpler signature of chaff.
  

However, chaff effectiveness can depend on various factors:

• Radar Design: The specific design and processing techniques of a PD radar can influence its susceptibility to chaff.
  
• Deployment Techniques: The way chaff is deployed (quantity, altitude) can affect its effectiveness in overwhelming the radar's filtering capabilities.
  
• Target Range: At close range, the velocity difference between a target and chaff might be smaller, making it more challenging for PD radars to discriminate between them entirely.
  

Overall, pulse doppler radars offer a significant advantage over traditional radars in mitigating the effects of chaff due to their Doppler shift filtering and clutter rejection techniques. However, chaff can still be a factor in certain situations.
Can chaff also increase the multipathing effect due to how it reflects radar waves?
Yes, chaff can indirectly worsen multipathing effects for radar systems. Here's why:

• Multiple Reflectors: Chaff creates additional reflective objects in the environment. These extra reflectors can cause radar signals to bounce around more, creating more opportunities for multipathing.
  
• Complex Signal Reflections: Unlike a clean target return, chaff reflects radar waves in various directions due to its irregular shapes and materials. This can lead to more scattered reflections that contribute to a more complex multipath environment.
  

While chaff itself isn't the direct cause of multipathing (which is caused by signal bouncing off objects in the environment), its presence significantly increases the number and complexity of reflections, making it harder for radars to distinguish the true target signal from the clutter caused by multipathing.
Would that also increase the effectiveness of chaff against a pulse doppler radar, since the chaff itself has a relatively low doppler shift?
The effect isn't as straightforward. Here's why adding to the complexity of multipathing with chaff might not necessarily increase its effectiveness against pulse doppler radars:

• PD Filters Focus: Pulse doppler filters primarily target stationary clutter based on minimal Doppler shift. While chaff introduces more reflections, PD radars are designed to handle complex clutter environments.
  
• Doppler Differentiation: Even with increased multipathing, the actual target aircraft will still have its own distinct Doppler signature due to its movement. PD radars can potentially isolate this signature from the chaff clutter.
  

However, there can be some indirect effects:

• Processing Load: The increased complexity from multipath due to chaff can overload PD radar processing in some situations, making it temporarily harder to isolate the target signal.
  
• Reduced Signal-to-Noise Ratio: More chaff reflections can contribute to a higher noise level, reducing the overall signal-to-noise ratio of the target return. This can make it slightly more difficult to detect the target.
  

Overall, while chaff can add to the challenge for PD radars by worsening multipathing, their core functionality of filtering based on Doppler shift makes them generally more resilient to chaff compared to traditional radars.
So basically, chaffing while minimizing the targets doppler shift by flying perpendicular to the aircraft would be ideal, and it would potentially have a more pronounced effect down low?
There are some nuances to consider:

• Perpendicular Approach: While a perpendicular approach can minimize the target's relative velocity and Doppler shift, it might not be the most practical flight path during combat maneuvers.
  
• Doppler Shift Not Eliminated: Even perpendicular motion won't entirely eliminate the target's Doppler shift. Some shift will still be present due to the aircraft's own internal movements and the non-zero closing velocity between the two aircraft.
  
• Low-Altitude Advantage: Chaff is generally more effective at lower altitudes where ground clutter can further complicate the radar picture for the opponent.
  
• Combined Tactics: The ideal strategy might involve a combination of tactics like deploying chaff, executing maneuvers to reduce Doppler signature, and potentially using terrain masking to reduce radar exposure.
  

Remember, chaff effectiveness is situational and depends on various factors. While the perpendicular approach can reduce Doppler shift and potentially aid chaff in confusing the radar, it's one element of a broader electronic countermeasures strategy.
TLDR
Given the above information, we can summarize that a more realistic implementation of multipathing would generate a significant advance in tactical approach in the game. The multipathing effect could be refined on a per map basis, and similar to the front line mechanic, it could be worse in certain areas. For example, depending on plane aspect you may be able to multipath easier. If you're flying over a city, mountains, etc the radar signal would be more likely to have an unstable return than over water, or plains. In addition, an aircraft flying high should have an ability to mitigate multipathing, reducing it further due to the radar waves being too weak by the time they reach the aircraft for the radar to prioritize it, while low flying aircraft would be recieving more multipathing due to their own sidelobe energy being detected as noise. Also, modes like TWS would be more susceptible due to them having to use more power to sustain and monitor each track. The perpendicular approach, or notching, would also increase the multipath effect as well as other modifiers such as chaff, being in a "multipath zone" such as a city, mountains or other rough terrain, as well as the altitude of each aircraft and their position. Multipathing could have a base effect, and depending on these factors, modifiers could be placed in addition to raise the value of the multipathing in a dynamic way. This would eliminate gripen invulnerability, and other OP flight models. Airfields could be spawn protection 100% multipath, OR [hear me out] it follows the same logic as the rest of the map with addition of new airbase defense systems with a larger range and attack pattern that can engage enemy fighters as well as the missiles they shoot. A dedicated type for each role could even be added to make simulator a more immersive environment and add a new "final boss" for my fellow 'virtual weasels' to play with. The multipathing base could also be reduced incrementally, so early SARH with monopulse seekers are slightly worse than ARH but better than late SARH, which is still better than the Early first generations of SARH. This allows realism, the inclusion of MP as a valid tactic, solves OP modeling rushes, Airfield camping, and forces the players to evolve based on the situation, map, and number of enemies to exploit and explore the entirety of the map. Currently corners and sides going fairly unflown due to SARH being ineffective outside of 10km and having to be nose hot, causing a large number to lock someone on launch and proceed to overfly the entire map just to fight a mig who was in a fight by his spawn to get that one missile off, because of multipathing. 128 kilometers is small enough, but right now the player base in its current meta state probably uses less than 80 km² due to the fundamentals at work, so it feels even more cramped. There's loads more but I will leave the rest up to your speculation. Here's hoping for change

High Sodium Intake Linked to Greater Risk for Eczema

Doug Brunk
In a study of adults, an increase of 1 g in estimated 24-hour urinary sodium excretion was associated with an 11% higher odds of an atopic dermatitis (AD) diagnosis, a 16% higher odds of having active AD, and an 11% higher odds of increased severity of AD.
Those are key findings from a cross-sectional analysis of data from the United Kingdom.
"Excessive dietary sodium, common in fast food, may be associated with AD," corresponding author Katrina Abuabara, MD, MA, MSCE, and colleagues wrote in the study, which was published online on June 5, 2024, in JAMA Dermatology. They referred to recent research using sodium MRI, which showed that "the majority of the body's exchangeable sodium is stored in the skin and that skin sodium is associated with autoimmune and chronic inflammatory conditions, including AD." And in another study published in 2019, lesional skin sodium was 30-fold greater in patients with AD than in healthy controls.
To investigate whether there is an association between higher levels of sodium consumption and AD prevalence, activity, and severity at the population level, Abuabara, of the program for clinical research in the Department of Dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco, and coauthors drew from the UK Biobank, a population-based cohort of more than 500,000 individuals aged 37-73 years at the time of recruitment by the National Health Service. The primary exposure was 24-hour urinary sodium excretion, which was calculated by using the INTERSALT equation, a sex-specific estimation that incorporates body mass index; age; and urine concentrations of potassium, sodium, and creatinine. The primary study outcome was AD or active AD based on diagnostic and prescription codes from linked electronic medical records. The researchers used multivariable logistic regression models adjusted for age, sex, race and ethnicity, Townsend deprivation index, and education to measure the association.
Of the 215,832 Biobank participants included in the analysis, 54% were female, their mean age was 57 years, 95% were White, their mean estimated 24-hour urine sodium excretion was 3.01 g/d, and 10,839 (5%) had a diagnosis of AD. The researchers observed that on multivariable logistic regression, a 1-g increase in estimated 24-hour urine sodium excretion was associated with increased odds of AD (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.11; 95% CI, 1.07-1.14), increased odds of active AD (AOR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.05-1.28), and increased odds of increasing severity of AD (AOR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.07-1.15).

Validating Results With US Data

To validate the findings, the researchers evaluated a cohort of 13,014 participants from the US-based National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), using pooled data from the 1999-2000, 2001-2002, and 2003-2004 samples. Of the 13,014 participants, 796 reported current AD, and 1493 reported AD in the past year. The mean dietary sodium intake of overall NHANES participants estimated with 24-hour dietary recall questionnaires was 3.45 g, with a mean of 3.47 g for those with current AD and a mean of 3.44 g for those without AD.
The researchers observed that a 1-g/d higher dietary sodium intake was associated with a higher risk for current AD (AOR, 1.22; 95%CI, 1.01-1.47) and a somewhat higher risk for AD in the past year (AOR, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.97-1.35).
"Future work should examine whether variation of sodium intake over time might trigger AD flares and whether it helps to explain heterogeneity in response to new immunomodulatory treatments for AD," the authors wrote. "Reduced sodium intake was recommended as a treatment for AD more than a century ago, but there have yet to be studies examining the association of dietary sodium reduction with skin sodium concentration or AD severity," they added. Noting that sodium reduction "has been shown to be a cost-effective intervention for hypertension and other cardiovascular disease outcomes," they said that their data "support experimental studies of this approach in AD."
They acknowledged certain limitations of the study, including the fact that a single spot urine sample was used in the UK Biobank cohort, "which only captures dietary intake of the last 24 hours and is not the best measure of usual or long-term intake of sodium." They also noted that the findings may not be generalizable to other populations and that AD was based on self-report in the NHANES validation cohort.
Adam Friedman, MD, professor and chair of dermatology at George Washington University, Washington, DC, who was asked to comment on the results, said the study by Abuabara and colleagues "gives us another reason to avoid salt, showing that 1 g/d of higher salt intake increases the risk of AD in an adult population and more severe AD."
He added that, "Now, can you say that reducing salt intake will have a therapeutic effect or clinically relevant impact? No. [That is] certainly worth exploring but at a minimum, gives some more credibility to keeping it bland."
The study was supported by a grant from the Medical Student in Aging Research Program, the National Institute on Aging, and the National Eczema Association. Abuabara reported receiving research funding for her institution from Pfizer and Cosmetique Internacional/La Roche-Posay and consulting fees from Target RWE, Sanofi, Nektar, and Amgen. No other disclosures were reported. Friedman had no relevant disclosures.
High Sodium Intake Linked to Greater Risk for EczemaDoug Brunk
In a study of adults, an increase of 1 g in estimated 24-hour urinary sodium excretion was associated with an 11% higher odds of an atopic dermatitis (AD) diagnosis, a 16% higher odds of having active AD, and an 11% higher odds of increased severity of AD.
Those are key findings from a cross-sectional analysis of data from the United Kingdom.
"Excessive dietary sodium, common in fast food, may be associated with AD," corresponding author Katrina Abuabara, MD, MA, MSCE, and colleagues wrote in the study, which was published online on June 5, 2024, in JAMA Dermatology. They referred to recent research using sodium MRI, which showed that "the majority of the body's exchangeable sodium is stored in the skin and that skin sodium is associated with autoimmune and chronic inflammatory conditions, including AD." And in another study published in 2019, lesional skin sodium was 30-fold greater in patients with AD than in healthy controls.
To investigate whether there is an association between higher levels of sodium consumption and AD prevalence, activity, and severity at the population level, Abuabara, of the program for clinical research in the Department of Dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco, and coauthors drew from the UK Biobank, a population-based cohort of more than 500,000 individuals aged 37-73 years at the time of recruitment by the National Health Service. The primary exposure was 24-hour urinary sodium excretion, which was calculated by using the INTERSALT equation, a sex-specific estimation that incorporates body mass index; age; and urine concentrations of potassium, sodium, and creatinine. The primary study outcome was AD or active AD based on diagnostic and prescription codes from linked electronic medical records. The researchers used multivariable logistic regression models adjusted for age, sex, race and ethnicity, Townsend deprivation index, and education to measure the association.
Of the 215,832 Biobank participants included in the analysis, 54% were female, their mean age was 57 years, 95% were White, their mean estimated 24-hour urine sodium excretion was 3.01 g/d, and 10,839 (5%) had a diagnosis of AD. The researchers observed that on multivariable logistic regression, a 1-g increase in estimated 24-hour urine sodium excretion was associated with increased odds of AD (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.11; 95% CI, 1.07-1.14), increased odds of active AD (AOR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.05-1.28), and increased odds of increasing severity of AD (AOR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.07-1.15).
Validating Results With US Data
To validate the findings, the researchers evaluated a cohort of 13,014 participants from the US-based National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), using pooled data from the 1999-2000, 2001-2002, and 2003-2004 samples. Of the 13,014 participants, 796 reported current AD, and 1493 reported AD in the past year. The mean dietary sodium intake of overall NHANES participants estimated with 24-hour dietary recall questionnaires was 3.45 g, with a mean of 3.47 g for those with current AD and a mean of 3.44 g for those without AD.
The researchers observed that a 1-g/d higher dietary sodium intake was associated with a higher risk for current AD (AOR, 1.22; 95%CI, 1.01-1.47) and a somewhat higher risk for AD in the past year (AOR, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.97-1.35).
"Future work should examine whether variation of sodium intake over time might trigger AD flares and whether it helps to explain heterogeneity in response to new immunomodulatory treatments for AD," the authors wrote. "Reduced sodium intake was recommended as a treatment for AD more than a century ago, but there have yet to be studies examining the association of dietary sodium reduction with skin sodium concentration or AD severity," they added. Noting that sodium reduction "has been shown to be a cost-effective intervention for hypertension and other cardiovascular disease outcomes," they said that their data "support experimental studies of this approach in AD."
They acknowledged certain limitations of the study, including the fact that a single spot urine sample was used in the UK Biobank cohort, "which only captures dietary intake of the last 24 hours and is not the best measure of usual or long-term intake of sodium." They also noted that the findings may not be generalizable to other populations and that AD was based on self-report in the NHANES validation cohort.
Adam Friedman, MD, professor and chair of dermatology at George Washington University, Washington, DC, who was asked to comment on the results, said the study by Abuabara and colleagues "gives us another reason to avoid salt, showing that 1 g/d of higher salt intake increases the risk of AD in an adult population and more severe AD."
He added that, "Now, can you say that reducing salt intake will have a therapeutic effect or clinically relevant impact? No. [That is] certainly worth exploring but at a minimum, gives some more credibility to keeping it bland."
The study was supported by a grant from the Medical Student in Aging Research Program, the National Institute on Aging, and the National Eczema Association. Abuabara reported receiving research funding for her institution from Pfizer and Cosmetique Internacional/La Roche-Posay and consulting fees from Target RWE, Sanofi, Nektar, and Amgen. No other disclosures were reported. Friedman had no relevant disclosures.

Summer 2024 Update - Pre-formatted details and info related to my own experience & techniques - this serves me as a quick compendium for pre-formatted replies of mine that are very frequent. Individual categories are also included as comments for easier filtering and copy-pasting of formatted text.

🎒 TRAVEL LOADOUT - PACKED

This is my typical indefinite loadout for 3 seasons -

• 4+1^✧ 🩲 Boxer Briefs
• 4+1^✧ 🧦 Pairs of Socks
• 4+2^✧ 👕 Top Garments - (1-2 long sleeve, rest short sleeves)
• 1+1^✧ 👖 Trousers - (1 convertible, 1 long trousers)
• 1 💤 Sleepwea🧗🏻‍♂️ Activewear set (shorts, tank top)
• 1^✧ 👟 Pair of shoes (trail running shoes)

^{✧ - Refers to a worn set, not packed}
On top of that I evidently have my toiletry kit, sleep kit, electronics, laundry & misc kit, travel filmmaking gear, and medikit (I am T1D) - my entire loadout fits in an 18L backpack
 

🚶🏻‍♂️ TRAVEL LOADOUT - EDC

As a T1D, I also have to carry specific items. Those critical and less-critical items are stored in a Waist Pouch that is not considered a ''bag'' by airlines, and it is sleek enough to allow me to carry it while seated on planes. It usually contains:

• Insulin Pens with 2-days worth on injection supplies
• Glucose Reader with relevant supplies (testing strips, lancets, lancing device)
• Emergency Glucose Gel (for hypoglycemic events, but only when there are no other sources of carbs available)
• Disinfectant wipes and cleaning wipes
• Tote bag (packable, packs very small)
• Nail Clipper (this one is not used for nail clipping but as a quick, small cutting tool)
• Electronics microkit (SIM Card tool, USB-C to 3.5 mm adapter, USB-C to Micro USB adapter, Micro USB to USB-C adapter)
• Bluetooth Earbuds (noise cancelling)
• Permanent twin-tip Sharpie (one tip is thick as a marker the other is ultra fine as a pen)
• Pills Tube (Paracetamol, Ibuprofen, Acetylsalicylic Acid tabs)
• Lip balm

 

🎦 TRAVEL FILMMAKING GEAR

While I do own a mirrorless camera and production kit, I rarely use it for travel, unless needed for a commercial shoot or specific projects. That said, I now always travel with a smaller Travel Filmmaking Kit which is basically the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 Creator Combo Kit stored in a Travel Organizer and a few extra accessories -
DJI OSMO POCKET 3 CREATOR COMBO KIT (stored in the travel organizer)

• DJI Osmo Pocket 3 Camera w/ 512 GB micro SD card
• DJI Camera Shell w/ wide angle lens stored within
• DJI Battery Handle
• DJI Mini tripod
• DJI 1/4'' adapter
• DJI Mic 2 TX w/ magnet clip & windscreen
• DJI High Speed USB-C to C cable
• 2 × 512 GB micro SD cards in their SD card adapter & case

OTHER ACCESSORIES (stored or attached in/on the backpack or daypack)

• FREEWELL 8-pack ''All Day'' lens kit
• KAIESS Travel tripod/Selfie Stick combo with Remote
• AUKEY Basix Mini 10 000 mAh quick charge power bank
• PEAK DESIGN Capture Camera Clip paired with the
• PEAK DESIGN POV KIT

 

💊 MEDICAL SUPPLIES

I'm T1D (Type 1 Diabetic) so I need to carry a bunch of critical medical supplies unless I want to die a slow painful death. Most supplies and spares are stored in a Medikit and the daily items I need to use are stored in a waist pouch I always carry as EDC.
Here are my medical supplies for a 21-day trip:
💼 STORED IN THE MEDIKIT
T1D SUPPLIES

• 2 × Continuous Glucose Monitor - FreeStyle Libre 2 - (Spares - a sensor lasts 14 days and I already have an activated one in my arm)
• 5 × Extra pen vials (3 × Bolus, 2 × Basal)
• 4 × Energy Gels
• 100 × Injection Needles (21-days worth + redundancies)

GENERIC SUPPLIES

• 20 × Disinfecting Wipes
• 20 × Cleaning Wipes
• 12 × Self-adhesive bandages of various types and sizes
• 21 × Vitamin D tabs - 2,500 UI
• 3 × Acetylsalicylic Acid tabs - Aspirin
• 5 × Ibuprofen tabs - Advil
• 7 × Paracetamol tabs - Tylenol
• (The over-the-counter pills are stored in a pill tube and often carried in my EDC)

🚶🏻‍♂️ CARRIED AS EDC IN MY WAISTPOUCH

• Bolus Insulin Pen (in Pen Case)
• Basal Insulin Pen (in Pen Case)
• 8 × Injection Needles (in Pen Case)
• 6 × Disinfectant Wipes
• 4 × Cleaning Wipes
• Glucose Reader (in Reader Case)
• Lancing Device (in Reader Case)
• 6 × Lancets (in Reader Case)
• 50 × Glucose Testing Strips (in Reader Case)
• 10 × Ketone Testing Strips (in Reader Case)
• 4 × Energy Gels (used as emergency glucose when no other carbs are available)

 

💉 INSULIN MANAGEMENT

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
T1D here - I've travelled for many many years now and never had to refrigerate my insulins.
Note that insulin starts the denaturing process above ~27°C - it is a slow process and isn't instantaneous. Of course the higher the temp the faster the process, but if you can keep your vials in a cool, dry place out of sun exposure, it can last many weeks-to-a-few-months.
In fact, at or above 27°C, it'll take weeks before there is a noticeable change in potency (see details below)
⚠️ On the opposite end, Freezing insulin will almost immediately denature it
 
I've travelled to pretty hot and humid countries and never had issues

• I usually travel 14-32 days at a time, during Spring or Summer
• I'm on MDI and have 2 pens in my EDC (Bolus insulin, Basal insulin)
• I use a CGM (FreeStyle Libre 2)
• I have an extensive medikit with other supplies and 5-7 spare vials/prefilled pens

 
PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS
But if high temperatures are an issue and/or you want absolute peace of mind (though with more complex logistics), here are some accessories that can keep your medication cool:

• NOMAD Portable Cooler for Medication - works with ice packs and insulation, not powered
• Travel Medicine Refrigerator - 8 hour battery, AC adapter, car adapter
• FRIO Cooling Wallets - uses evaporative cooling so make sure relative humidity is below 90% or it won't work. Also requires some water

 
※ SOURCES & SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE

In studies with no clinically relevant loss of insulin activity for human short-acting insulin (SAI), intermediate-acting insulin (IAI) and mixed insulin (MI) temperatures ranged between 28.9 °C and 37 °C for up to four months.
Two studies reported up to 18% loss of insulin activity after one week to 28 days at 37 °C.

• Source - Thermal stability and storage of human insulin

 

a recent study showed that potency of human and analogue insulin remained unchanged at oscillating temperatures of 25–37°C for 28 days and 12 weeks.

• Source - Insulin thermostability in a real-world setting

 
In short, insulin can retain appropriate potency up to 4 months in high temperatures (28-37°C/82.4°F-99°F) before it slowly starts losing potency over time.
 

❄️ COLD CLIMATE - LAYERING

For colder climates I have a pretty lightweight and packable layering system (Base layer, Mid layers, Outer layer) but I never had to bring it/use it while travelling as I typically travel in Spring or Summer and I am easily hot - my layering system is as follow:

• L1 - 💦 Moisture Management - Long-sleeved merino undershirt with thumbholes - PARADOX Drirelease Merino Blend
• L2 - ♨️ Insulation - Some super warm fleece with thumbholes - KALENJI Warm+ Men's Running Zipped Hoodie Fleece
• L3 - 🔥 Insulation B (if needed) - Packable ultra light down jacket with hood - UNIQLO Ultra Light Down Parka
• L4 - ☔ Weatherproofness - Rain & wind jacket with hood to protect from the elements - LABO MONO Urban Jacket
• L5 - 🧤 Accessories - Hat, gloves, scarf/buff, warm socks - Buff, Forclaz, Chaos, Darn Tough

 
^{⚠️ Do note that although I have this system, I get hot very easily so I rarely use it in full - I spent the previous winters in Canada by only using the rain jacket, hat and gloves - if I can stop convection, I can remain comfortably warm! Through freezing days and even blizzards, it has been sufficient for me.}
 

🧼 HAND WASHING GUIDE

While I sometimes wash my clothes as I shower, I always travel with a small laundry kit that includes:

• Scrubba Wash Bag - any regular drybag can do the same
• Travel Clothesline - packs really small and is 5 meters long
• All-in-one Detergent - stored in my toiletry kit as it is multi-purpose

 
This is my hand washing process when using a sink or the Scrubba (any drybag can work as a scrubba)

1. Thoroughly wash the kitchen sink/dry bag
2. Throw dirty laundry in the empty sink/dry bag - the clothes are pulled inside out.
3. Fill sink or drybag with lukewarm to warm water - depending on washing recommendations
4. Add a tiny amount of laundry detergent as the sink/drybag fills with lukewarm water
5. Move things around a bit, shaking the clothing articles, gently rubbing against each other - gotta be gentle, as hard and extensive rubbing can lead to pilling and damaged clothes
6. Let your clothes soak for 2-40 minutes depending on dirtiness, amount, clothing size/thickness/type (see table below)
7. Shake, spin, agitate, gently rub clothing for 3-5 minutes
8. Empty the sink/dry bag
9. Rinse a few times by filling sink/dry bag with clean, cold water, shaking clothes, emptying again. Repeat until the rinsing water is clear and free of gunk, debris, fogginess

 
I clean (or thoroughly rinse) my hands before and after any time I put them in and out of the soapy/dirty water
 
As to how I do not make my hand skin get effed up, not sure how to answer, between that and the over-washing of hands and extensive use of disinfectants due to work, I feel my hands developed some resistance ahahaha (I'm a pretty athletic dude with soft and silky smooth hands. I blame nutrition, genetics, stress-free and active lifestyle, consistent sleeping schedule. Yeah I only blame those.)
 

Mini chart of my own soak times

ITEM TYPE	SOAK DURATION in minutes
Socks 🧦	🕐 2-5
Underwear 🩲	🕐 2-5
T-Shirts 👕	🕐 2-10
Long Sleeved 👔	🕒 5-15
Shorts 🩳	🕓 5-15
Longs (Ha! Regular Pants) 👖	🕔 5-20
Hoodies or other Bulkier items 🧥	🕘 10-40

 
💡 Dish soap is the best solution against oil-based stains
💡 Shampoo is ''safer'' and more gentle for Merino and other wool-based fabrics
 

♨️ DRYING GUIDE

⚠️ Do not wring your clothes

Wringing clothes can and will distort, stretch and damage fibers, textiles & materials, greatly reducing durability.
Instead, ''squeeze,'' ''squash'' and ''compress'' them to squeeze water out.
 
If you have access to a towel, this is a popular trick to quicken drying while travelling:
 
THE TOWEL METHOD

1. Spread a clean and dry towel flat
2. Lay your clothing on top, open and flat
3. Roll the towel+item of clothing into a tight burrito
4. Step/Sit on the roll a few seconds (30-60 seconds) - this will transfer a large volume of water from your wet clothes to the towel
5. Unroll everything
6. Hang the piece of clothing to dry - aim for well ventilated areas where the most of the clothing is exposed.

 
💡 For heavier items, flip them over after a few hours so the inner area is also exposed for drying
💡 For clothes with pockets, pull those pockets inside out
💡 If your hostel/hotel/accommodation has hangers and curtains, hang those hangers on them curtain poles. During the day, the heat of the sun can expedite drying, and if you can open the windows, you'll get better airflow at anytime.
 

🔗 FREQUENT ITEMS & QUICK OVERVIEW

BACKPACKS

GREGORY BORDER 18 Backpack

• 18L
• Dimensions: 47 cm x 28.7 cm x 16 cm / 18.5'' x 11.3'' x 6.3''
• Weight: 771 grams / 1.7 lbs
• Great weather resistance
• Laptop sleeve (15'')
• Water bottle pocket
• Sternum Strap
• Very comfortable with excellent padding
• Trolley sleeve
• Top pocket lined with soft fabric for sunglasses
• Front pocket with another zipped inner pocket
• Inner organization for business papers, 3 pen holders, key leash, large mesh pocket
• Top and Side handles
• Pig Snout/Lash tab
• 4 accessory loops
• 90-120$CAD
• Warranty: Lifetime

 
Quechua Escape NH500 23L Rolltop

• 23L-27L (expandable storage thanks to rolltop)
• Dimensions: 46 cm x 28 cm x 22 cm / 18.1'' x 11'' x 8.6''
• Weight: 830 grams / 1.8 lbs
• Great weather resistance
• Laptop sleeve (15'')
• 2 Water bottle pockets
• Sternum Strap
• Very comfortable with excellent padding
• Trolley sleeve
• Front pocket
• Hidden back pocket
• 9 other inner pockets and inner organization
• Cable passthrough
• Shoulder strap pocket that can accommodate large cellphones
• Pig Snout/Lash tab
• 60$CAD
• Warranty: 10 year

 
Quechua MH500 Hiking Backpack 30L

• 30L
• Dimensions: 55 cm x 30 cm x 23 cm / 21.6'' x 12'' x 9'' - (this is with the brain pocket not saturated)
• Weight: 1200 grams / 2.6 lbs
• Integrated rain cover
• Laptop sleeve (15'') - (doubles as a water bladder compartment)
• 2 Water bottle pockets - (accessible as you wear the backpack)
• Sternum Strap
• Waist straps
• Extremely comfortable, the best backpack I've ever owned thanks to superb weight distribution
• Suspended backpanel for maximal airflow
• 6 pockets including 2 belt pockets
• Compression straps
• Pole straps
• Also has a large J-shape opening on the front to access main compartment
• 90$CAD
• Warranty: 10 year
• The bag itself has a minimal height of 55 cm (21.6'') when the brain pocket is not saturated due to its rigid back frame, making this bag carry-on approved for most airlines

 

PACKING CUBES

Knack Bags Compression Cube - Medium

• Dimensions (Compressed): 30 x 14 cm x 7.62 cm / 12'' x 5.5'' x 3''
• Weight: 82 g / 2.9 ounces
• Carry handle
• See-through breathable Mesh
• Compresses by up to 67%
• Very durable nylon
• Warranty: Limited Lifetime
• 25$USD

 
Knack Bags Compression Cube - Large

• Dimensions (Compressed): 30 x 20.32 cm x 7.62 cm / 12'' x 8'' x 3''
• Weight: 99 g / 3.5 ounces
• Carry handle
• See-through breathable Mesh
• Compresses by up to 60%
• Very durable nylon
• Warranty: Limited Lifetime
• 30$USD

Excerpted from my book Royal Bloodline Wetiko & The Great Remembering: Chapter 12: The Bloodline Take Down of America: Part I
The Rothschilds had already funded both sides of numerous European conflicts, from the Crimean War to the Napoleonic Wars to World War I. Now, with oil to burn, Germany spiraled into hyperinflation. And with the US needing the new industry coming out of the Goldman Sachs-engineered Great Depression, the Crown would light the fuse for their most ambitious military conflict yet – World War II.
In Japan, the royal Yamato bloodline had been Emperors for centuries, much to the chagrin of the average Japanese citizen. The royal shoguns were becoming increasingly unpopular and Japan’s Communist Party was burgeoning in membership. Something had to be done to stave off a revolution.
The Crown began to groom Isoroku Yamamoto. Born Isoroku Takano, his father was a samurai from the Nagaoka feudal domain, which was ruled by the Makino clan. Samurai were hereditary nobility who protected the daimyo fiefdoms of the royal Nephilim bloodlines in Japan. Takano was adopted by the Yamamoto family in 1916 and quickly rose through the ranks of the Japanese Naval establishment.
From 1919-1921 he attended Harvard University, which along with Yale, would now serve the same role as Oxford and Cambridge in manufacturing loyal Crown Agents to run the United States Corporation. In 1924, he visited the US Naval War College. In 1930, now a rear admiral, he attended the London Naval Conference. Five years later, he turned up at the Second London Naval Conference.
Though these conferences were touted as olive branches to disarmament, just the opposite was happening in both Japan and the US where the Crown was building up its armament industry. In 1940, Yamamoto became an Admiral. And one year later, as commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, he was planning the infamous December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Before this false flag event, the US public was strongly against entering WWII to help the Crown. But US President and 33rd Degree Mason, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, eventually performed his Masonic duty to the Crown and acceded to British Prime Minister and 33rd Degree Mason Winston Churchill’s calls for help. Roosevelt ignored warnings that the Japanese fleet was headed for Hawaii, while quietly moving the most expensive military equipment out of Pearl Harbor ahead of the strikes.
Yamamoto had served his royal bloodline benefactors well. The terms demanded by General Douglas MacArthur in the peace agreement following WWII included leaving the royal Yamato family in place as official heads of state in Japan and banning the Japanese Communist Party. The bloodline-controlled daimyo would be re-branded as zaibatsu, six giant interlocking corporations that would lead the world through the electronics and digital-driven Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions. Mitsubishi was organized from the Dan family daimyo, while Mitsui came from its namesake Mitsui family. The other four are Sumitomo, Daichikangin, Yasuda, and Nomura. These six companies own nearly every Japanese multinational corporation to this day.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the Crown was grooming two other wetiko warriors in their quest for another world war. The House of Savoy, a royal dynasty founded in 1003, had unified Italy and ruled as monarchs through a succession of kings until King Umberto II finally stepped down in 1946, ending Italy’s “official” rule by monarchy.
In 1922, House of Savoy King Victor Emmanuel III appointed self-proclaimed fascist Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy. Victor was also the King of Ethiopia and Albania for a time and the Savoy bloodline had also ruled Spain. In Italy, the Savoys stood by as Mussolini’s squadristi, or Black Shirts, brutally attacked domestic enemies and built their National Fascist Party. Remember, it was the old Venetian bloodline bankers who had come up with the concept of fascism.
A year earlier in 1921, the newly-founded Royal Institute of International Affairs hatched the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. Initially headed by military intelligence officer Major John Rawlings, Tavistock would become a false flag and social engineering incubator creating pretexts worldwide that required United States Corporation military intervention on behalf of the City of London’s financial interests.
Isoroku Yamamoto and Benito Mussolini were two such walking, breathing pretexts. But before Tavistock was even officially founded the Crown invited a third such person for a visit – Adolf Hitler.
From February until November of 1912, Hitler attended the British Military Psych-ops School in both Devon and Ireland. This later became the Tavistock Institute. It is the psychological warfare arm of the Crown and is involved in everything from Hollywood to gang stalking. Shortly after its inception, the Tavistock began promoting the neo-Malthusian philosophies of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud of the Frankfurt School.
By 1922, Queen Victoria’s son Prince Charles Edward had met Adolf Hitler. In 1933, the prince became a member of the Nazi Party. He would soon become its leader. Several other royal family members supported Hitler and his Nazi Party, including Royal Dutch Shell insider, Prince Bernhard of the Dutch House of Orange-Nassau.
That same year, Prince Charles Edward became President of the German Red Cross, another Crown tentacle that funds its global spy operations by stealing the blood of “donors” and selling it to hospitals for hundreds of dollars per pint. Red Cross is simply the English language version of Rosicrucians, whose main job it is to guard the secret that the royal bloodline is not human. Red Cross refers to the crossing of blood between the Anunnaki and humankind. The reason Jesus had to die on a bloody red cross is because they wanted this revolutionary to suffer a slow tortuous crucifixion to symbolize the grafting of bloodlines, also referred to by those in the know as Zionism.
ROYAL BLOODLINE WETIKO & THE GREAT REMEMBERING
In his seventh book, Dean Henderson tracks the royal Anunnaki bloodline from Sumeria through Babylon, Egypt, and Rome to their current power base in the City of London and deconstructs their methodology to keep humans enslaved and isolated during this relatively brief period of human history. Drawing upon ancient Lakota culture to remind us who we are, Henderson sees a great remembering unfolding which makes this royal bloodline very nervous.

Special thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for his awesome universe! Second part to my first time writing a fic, critique until your heart is content.
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First
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Memory Transcription Subject: Katamiri, Fissan chief exterminator, Spirefin Bay.
Date [Standardized Human Time]: November 2, 2139.
“You know you don’t have to be an asshole all the time.” I responded as I heard Narn approaching from behind me, attempting to quicken his step to the front entrance as if Isaac wouldn’t notice if he were just fast enough.
“Narn!” Began Isaac. “My favorite exter-“
“Shut it, you mange ridden ape! I’ve got urgent business to attend to and it doesn’t involve entertaining your sadism and sass.”
“What you got goin’ on that’s more important than this?” Said Isaac, gesturing to his own form. “Got some elderly couples to hose down in all this heat?” He continued, pointing to Narn’s brightly colored plastic water gun.
After the incident with Kavithi and the foam our former chief made it mandatory that Narn never be allowed near a real flamethrower, as his eternal punishment, Kavithi issued him a “state of the art” toy water gun. Narn was to even clean and maintain it, and when it came time for weapons inspection Narn would dress with the rest of us and present it and the chief would check with the same thoroughness as he did our gear.
“Pretty colors too,” Isaac continued, “that pink sure is frightening.”
“It’s not the pink you should be worried about, it’s the orange, the color of blood and sacrifice,” said Narn while violently shaking his water gun before him, “You’re laughing now but you’ll be weeping the day I’m allowed to get a real flamethrower!”
“That’s cute buddy! You go ‘an get ‘em!” Isaac said while motioning a swinging gesture with his fist, “Though I do hope it’s soon, Dayside city already finalized the paper work on an outright ban of flamethrowers. Other offices are considering following their lead.” He added with a sadistic grin.
Narn’s face fell sheepish with a hint of existential dread, “Narn says he has important business to attend to,” I interjected with the utmost authority of my voice. “You are not a member of this guild so you’ve no business harassing my employees when they’re on duty. Be on your way Narn.”
Without a second glance Narn jutted his way past Isaac and through the front doors. I thanked the stars neither tried to get any last words in. Now it was just me and the man of my guild’s nightmares. I now realized that I never had a proper, sit down, face to face with him, I hope I was prepared as I now understood that I had no idea what to expect.
“You know you should probably get a better quality water gun, with the way that thing rattles and leaks about, when he’s doing that cute little flustered walk,” Isaac said. “you’d hear him from a mile away and he leaves a trail. Then again, why don’t you get him a real flamethrower? Couldn’t be because the SC slashed the guild’s funding again could it?” He said through his smile.
Keep your composure Katamiri, loosing your temper is the stuff this predator feeds off of.
What would Kavithi do in this situation? I asked myself as the image of a middle aged Krakotl, prancing about and squawking profanity, going on a long tirade about “predator filth”, asserted itself in my mind.
Never mind.
Some around the office initially claimed Isaac must have killed and ate our old exterminator chief to dispose of any evidence, but Isaac wasn’t that sort of man neither were humans that sort of predator. Vulgar and the embodiment of lacking tact, he was strange and hard to get along with but he wasn’t violent.
I let in a deep inhale while massaging my temples, finding myself at the climax of a situation that had been building up for over a cycle. Ever since his arrival strange things had begun to happen in and around the town, especially near the office.
It began, not long after the incident with Kavithi, when an anomalous caller phoned in a predator attack, Code Indigo, at a cross roads just off of an abandoned farm on the outskirts, this called for the deployment of all on duty exterminators in Spirefin. Kavithi was on a business related trip to Tonalu thus I led the charge! Suited and loaded up we took to the roads only then to discover that the emergency alert system aboard all of our Rapid Response Trucks (RRTs) were broadcasting an ancient Earth jingle known as “Turkey in the Straw”. Puzzled, I instructed all in our convoy to resort to declaring our presence over our loud speakers, informing nearby civilians to make way.
Due to Spirefin’s infamously unique geographic location, dusk had set and we were guided by our headlamps. We arrived at the abandoned farm where we were met with an odd sight. At the crossroads was a primitive construction, a scarecrow, though in hindsight, an effigy, made of local dried grass, fitted with an exterminator suit. Narn, being eager to please, lept from his truck to dismantle the object. I sent the others to search the abandoned farmhouse and surrounding woodlands. As Narn began tugging at the scarecrow, rather violently, it exploded in a cloud of pink dust and glitter. Narn flailed about in the dirt road, crying for help, as a ‘predator was attacking him’, it wasn’t until I came to his side that he came to his senses. The others, searching the perimeter, turned up dirty, bruised, and a good bit terrified as after scavenging the forests and decrepit farmhouse for nearly an [hour], they turned up a number of strange carvings, runes, and small totems, made from local tree bark, wood, and grasses. One such carving had human script carved into the back of it scribing the words; ‘Scuzzlebutt was here’.
Accepting defeat, after realizing it was all a prank, we loaded ourselves back into our RRTs and headed to the office as I called our police chief to look into the matter. Once back at the office things did not get better.
Opening the doors we were greeted with [0.5 feet] of standing water. Every tap in the office had been opened and the drains plugged. Our basement was completely submerged. And yet again we found more odd tiny runes and totems littered around the office. Likely meant to scare us with some form of supernatural mysticism, then again they may have just been the perpetrators calling card.
We could never find the culprit as all of our security monitors had suddenly gone missing from their mounts. We looked through the security feed only to find that all recordings of the day had been replaced with episodes from an ancient Earth children’s cartoon depicting a creature called a “wabbit” and his parlous, yet humorous, encounters with a human hunter named Elmer.
Odd, I thought at the time. It seems the ancient humans were depicting this wabbit as the protagonist of the tale and the human hunter as both the villain and comedic relief. Humans were much more complicated of a species than the Federation initially gave them credit for. I wasn’t sure if I was more mystified or curious that a predatory species would depict a human hunter and his prey in this manner.
This would not be the last time we encountered this culprit. Some would claim that it was of the supernatural order but most knew better, and we had a good idea of who it was, but with new anti-profiling laws passed by the SC we would need hard and undeniable evidence, thus whenever an incident would occur we would refer to it as ‘Scuzzlebutt’s’ doing.
As I was distracted, reminiscing on one of my more chaotic shifts, I passed a glance at the window behind Issac to see a frustrated Narn entering one of our, rather beat up looking, RRTs, parked along the sidewalk.
“Say Kat, what happened to Narn’s truck? Lookin’ a little rough.” He said, turning around, to watch the same spectacle as I, as a very bitter Narn tried to close the driver side door, only to find that it refused to latch shut.
“An, unknown assailant, coated our driveway in vegetable oil a few [days] ago,” I said through clenched teeth. I let out an exagerated sigh and approached the window, standing beside him as we both observed the commotion, “caused a lot of damage to our fleet, you wouldn’t know anything of that would you?”
“No ma’am,” he said with a chuckle, “Sure wouldn’t!”
“I certainly hope not. Feaden is looking into it as it is a very serious criminal offense! He seems to think that it’s the same perpetrator who flooded our office a while ago.” I stated with bitterness.
“Ah Scuzzlebutt at it again! I hope that sheriff finds ‘em. They sound like a real scumbag!” Said Isaac with his unwavering smile.
“And a danger to public safety might I add!”, I stated sourly as the commotion from outside continued to catch both of our attention as we watched a livid Narn repeatedly slamming his door in vein to latch it shut while screaming incoherently.
While the damage to our fleet was moderately severe I don’t recall this door malfunctioning. Why was the door not closing?
Isaac then let out another light chuckle and it dawned on me.
Oh, of course…
“Well I’m sure you guys got the budget to at least fix that door.” He said cheerfully.
We didn’t.
The SC did cut our funding after all, and exterminators across Skalga were turning in their silver suits left and right. There was a certain, unforeseen, response to this. A vacuum was left in a world dwindling of forsaken exterminators.
Initially starting out as an enterprise backed by the local magistrate, known as the Epidemic Prevention and Wildlife Purification Department of the Tonalu Valley Authority, often short handed to “The Authority”, was created. A name that was supposed to sound appealing in the minds of SC politicians, lawyers, and big decision makers, however most everyone knew them by a different name, a name they still refused to publicly deny.
The Immolators.
Created mere [months] after a massive controversy took place in Tonalu city, which led to the disbandment of the entire city’s exterminator office and brought in countless investigators from across SC space.
I can still see the news reels, and the unsettling B-roll footage.
Regardless, they were making a name for themselves across Skalga and beyond. Earning the favor of many of the rich upper-class, politicians, bankers, and a small handful of other Magistrates across our planet and colonies. Former exterminators flocked to them. Though they were a controversial group, earning the ire of many peoples longing to be a part of this human led alliance and of those who wished to distance themselves from the federation, still, they were gaining a small, yet loyal, fellowship.
We stood in silent contemplation for a moment as we watched Narn exit the cab and lept into the trucks bed, tossing out a random assortment of items across the pavement.
I don’t know that I can do this anymore, is this what utter defeat looks like? Is surviving the exterminators a lost cause? I ask myself looking at our young recruit reduced to nothing more than a muddled mess scavenging for scraps of supplies we probably didn’t have.
We used to be so much more.
The Federation betrayed us, the SC ignores us, the humans are draining us dry, and the people barely acknowledge us anymore! Worst of all being that I couldn’t just indict the man beside me based on crimes of suspicion due to one of the earlier reforms of ‘anti-profiling laws.’
“Why do you do this?” I asked with a defeated breath, deciding to give up our game, I turned to face Isaac. “I’m not doing this dance with you anymore, I know it was you. It always has been you. Many in the SC are on the path to shutting the guild down entirely, it’s everything I’ve ever worked for my entire life and I have you adding insult to injury. Have we not changed enough? I like to think that I have been very much fair to you humans since you arrived here. You can at least agree that I’ve been much more so than Kavithi!” I spat, finally loosing my temper. “I wish no ill will against your people and I hope you Humans prosper with the rest of us in this new galaxy but I just wished that you would leave us alone.”
“Not sure what you’re on about Kat”.
“That’s it? That’s all? You want to continue this song and dance?” I said with pleading desperation. “The time we had a stink bomb tripwired at our front door? The time that all of our radios got jammed with…” I struggled to remember. “‘Serbian’ war music? The multiple times that someone of our office has had their guild account hacked? Should I even mention the number of my exterminators who have had their Bleet and MyHeard account’s hacked and flooded with anti-exterminator propaganda?”
“Not a clue about that, it could be anyone considering you guys ain’t popular with the public like you used to be.” He finished with a smirk.
“Oh really? Not a single brahking clue?”
Isaac paused for a long while, as if in deep contemplation. A long moment passed as we idly watched Narn continue to litter the pavement. He let out a long sigh.
“Why are you still here Kat?” He said with a somber tone. “You’re a good person, most of you, that are left, are good people, why still hang on to this?” He said without looking at me. “You all know it’s a sham, since the guilds founding. Be something better, the exterminators are no longer needed. They never were needed.”
I felt a sudden fury flutter in my chest. Not Needed?! Of course I was still here, we all, or what was left of us, we’re still here! We were needed! “We are necessary! People need us, that won’t change it will never change! We have been the protector of prey peoples for countless centuries! We have upheld the peace and stability with dignity and glory and honor and respect since our peoples first ventured forth into the black abyss of the unknown and Found Ourselves At The Precipice of A Predator Infested Galax—“ I found myself searching for breath that I didn’t know I needed.
Oh stars,
I let myself go, I thought that out loud didn’t I?
I glanced in his direction, searching for that sinister snarl. But it wasn’t there, instead it was the stone face of a man who had been bombarded with a monologuing tirade and didn’t know what to do with himself.
Yeah, you thought all of that out loud.
Now he finally has me right where he wants me.
I brush my now frizzled mane from my eyes and shut them as I exhale. I accept my fate and await his barrage of insults and lecture of human pseudo sciences like ‘ecology’.
Is this really how it all comes to an end? Being the guardians of peaceful loving preyfolk everywhere for centuries only to be undone within a few solar cycles by these creatures?!
“Relax Kat, I didn’t come here to insult you.” He said. “Well, not initially anyway.” He lightly chuckled.
What?!
“I found you at last my pretties!” Announced Narn, dancing with delight, as he found a pair of bungee cords.
“We’ve embraced change even knowing that it will harm us all in the long run. You’ll never know what it’s like to be prey.” I said sadly as I noticed his smile suddenly fade. “All of those methods you use on Earth may work for you humans because you’re-erm…”
“Predators?” Replied Isaac, though oddly I didn’t find any malice in his voice.
“Yes,” I said flatly. “I— do try to police my speech, I want you to know. I understand the connotation that that word carries to your kind.”
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate that.” Came Isaac. “Must be a struggle to wash all of that Federation brain washing off ya.”
It wasn’t all brain washing! Some of it was necessary to protect us! I calmed myself down before I replied. “Yes. As I was saying it may work for you humans, this idea of ‘preserving ecosystems’, but I know time will show that it doesn’t work when applied on a prey planet, filled with prey folk.”
“Hmm.” Was his only reply, was he actually contemplating what I was saying? Did I actually crack through a bit of his exterior?
I stiffened my posture with new found pride realizing that the man of the guild’s nightmares was actually listening to me. “Yes I’m sure in time you’ll realize that there is a lot more to us exterminators than just setting fire to feral predators.” I stated proudly.
I was always careful to use the word feral before ‘predator’ in the hopes that the humans I interacted with didn’t make the mistake of thinking I was including them when I talked about the monsters who lurked in Skalgas wood and dark side. I understood the difference between sapient, though sometimes troubling, humans and a feral beast of the field that needed to be vanquished. I wanted humans to be comfortable in my presence, in a way I was a saleswoman and I was determined to sell the idea of the exterminators to the humans so they could see our worth.
I needed their cooperation if I were to save the guild. I needed it now! I was not going to wait until feral beasts were wondering our cities, devouring our children and elderly. I was not going to wait for the predator taint to take hold of entire herds, I was not going to wait for the humans to realize their mistake!
“We orchestrate charity events for the needy,” I continued. “teach school children how to react to and combat predators, how to identify when a predator has been near.” I puffed out my chest and held my hand to it. “We install predator defense systems into the homes of the elderly. We rehabilitate wild prey animals back into health, we provide perimeter defenses to farmers, and instal trail cameras to monitor heard migrations!” I finished with my head held high!
“That’s all well and good Kat, maybe I’ll humor you another day, but I didn’t come here to have a long back and forth either.” He said, sounding disappointed.
I found myself puzzled, was he not up for a debate with me? Clearly it must be that now he understood that I was a lot more intelligent than he thought, he must have thought he could beat me in a game of wits, challenging our ideals, now he’s on the back paw looking for a way out! That must be it! Pride swelled in my chest at my own genius before I began. “Then why, in all of the stars of the galaxy, are you here?” I said with authority.
“Ahh! Eureka!” Shouted Narn as he finished wrapping the bungee cables around the door and rear window frame.
“Came lookin’ for Grith!” His tone suddenly taking on a cheerier mood. “Shelby’s been whisperin’ in her ear and that Skalgan’s adventurous! It’s about her shift’s end an’ she’s been itchin’ to learn how to swim. Wants to be the first Skalgan to take a dip in the bay and see a Spirefin for ‘er self!”
Ah, Grithilyn. Just a young ‘local yokel’, as Kavithi would call her but I always saw something more in her than most, always eager to put everyone around her in a good mood and her constant happiness was infectious, though her overbearing curiosity was hard to tame. When the SC made the demand that all exterminator offices have a ‘forensics’ division our little intern was the only one who volunteered in ours and thus became the division’s lead, not that she knew more than anyone else. She’d spend countless hours with her exchange partner watching human ‘crime dramas’ under the guise of “taking classes.”
“Well you’re waisting both of our times,” I huffed. “She’s at the bi-annual Spirefin festival running our recruitment booth, looks promising,” I said with a smug expression, “guild numbers have gone up two percent since last season.”
“Two percent ain’t nothing when the season prior saw ya drop eleven percent”. He said with a wide grin.
I loath this man.
We both turn when we hear a series of loud and incoherent bleats coming from outside. Narn had launched himself headfirst through the driver side window of the truck, his legs were sticking out of the window and kicking in every conceivable direction.
I had no idea a Venlil had such a wide vocal range, nor did I know a Venlil held that much air in their lungs.
To my horror the truck lurched forward and began rolling, for all of about [10 feet] until it collided with a road marker.
I raced through the front entrance to ensure Narn was okay. It wasn’t a hard impact but regardless I wasn’t about to let my employee embarrass himself any further, in addition, it was my duty to ensure that everyone under my command knew that they were cared for.
I opened the passenger door to see Narn, slowly skidding face down on the floor boards.
“Isaac!!” he yowled as I noticed the man was now standing beside me.
“Buddy!” Replied Isaac, “Why didn’t ya use the passenger door?”
“Is this yours?!” he yelled while fidgeting his arm from under his belly and lifting his face. In his grasp was a time keeping device with a band running through it. Definitely a human artifact. It featured a cartoon mouse with the direction of its hands indicating the time. Isaac’s. I turned to see Isaac, and Narn had the same idea, looking at his bare wrist.
Anti-profiling laws had been one of the earliest reforms pushed by the humans looking for acceptance in a galaxy that was very unaccepting. It was also laid out for those of other species looking to reverse ‘the cure’. The SC claimed that far too many resources and man hours were being diverted, from local law enforcement, to instances of ‘humans just doing human things’. Unfortunately this is what Isaac used as his personal play thing. With no hard evidence ever being found at any of the odd instances we encountered, and no eye witnesses, we had no hard proof that he was responsible. He’d only say snide remarks about the incidences when pressed. We could do nothing but pray and beg that he’d mind his own business.
Not anymore.
I put on my best “shit eating grin”, as he would say, and turned to him, as me and Narn’s laughter slowly rose from a chortle to a thunder. Isaac sheepishly rubbed the bare spot on his arm.
“Got you now you sneaky prick!” Screamed Narn through his fit of laughter.
“Hmm, Narn, my dear employee,” I said as he gave an ear flick of acknowledgement. “Why would Isaacs’s watch be in one of our guild’s vehicles? Did anyone invite him in it lately?”
“No ma’am!”
“Did anyone authorize him to be in one of our company vehicles?”
“Nnnnope!”
I turn to Isaac to see that his sheepish expression was now replaced with one of sullen disdain.
“Do you think this watch is from the same culprit who doused our driveway in vegetable oil?”
Narn took in a surprisingly long inhale. “Considering we’ve been under similar antics in the past and it only began after an Isaac Riffson started residing in this town and now that we have a personal possession of this Isaac Riffson at the scene of a crime, a personal possession, that we have him wearing in plenty of social media posts, I’d say it’s highly likely that we can at least criminalize him for trespassing on guild property, though considering that this trucks door was working a claw prior and the watch was discovered very shortly after it’s malfunction, I conclude that this Isaac Riffson was also tampering with guild property with the intent of sabotage.”
I was shocked at Narn’s sudden, long winded, professionalism, as if he’d been waiting for this moment for quite a while.
Had he been reading Skalgan law just for an instance like this?
“And with Skalga’s law of reasonable suspicion, this is enough grounds to at least incriminate”.
Yeah, he’s been researching Skalgan law.
“I’d say this is the same culprit who broke the door frame and laced our driveway with vegetable oil.” He continued. “The same culprit who goes by the alias of ‘Scuzzlebutt’, the same culprit whom Feaden has been searching for for [months], the same culprit who once placed a flaming paper bag of feces on my doorstep, the same culprit who once replaced my shampoo With Hair Remover!!”
Oh yes, how could I have forgotten about that…
Narn turned to a very grumpy looking Isaac. “As you would say; get fucked ape boy! We finally got you!”
“Isaac, do you know anything of this?” I asked. “Don’t make me call Feaden, I will call Feaden!”
Isaac let out a growling exhale, his sullen expression never fading.
I’ve got you right where I want you!
This was it, I could finally rid myself of this menace! I could finally free my local guild of this nightmare! Finally we have undeniable evidence! A simple call to chief of police Feaden and have him locked behind bars, or better, deported back to Earth!
Or…
I could be throwing away the chance of a lifetime. The man had a very unique set of skills, skills of which I doubted any of my employees had. Skills that I needed on my team. Skills that the exterminators needed. Stalking around for over a solar cycle without ever being caught, without ever being seen, leaving behind no trace, no evidence, and no witnesses while reigning chaos and mayhem!
What could be done if he actually applied himself?
I need him!
“Isaac, sweetie!” I said turning to see Narn taking selfies with the watch as an agitated Isaac tried to pry it back. “How about you join Narn in resupplying Grithilyn’s booth?”
“WHAT?!” They both shouted in unison.
Oh yes, you are going to make an excellent exterminator.
I grabbed Isaac by his shirt collar and with all of my strength I dragged him to the side of the truck and shoved his back to it. “I’ve shown you the exterminators good side now show me your good side!” I said through my teeth. “Everyone else in this town seems to get along with you, except us, now show me why!”
Maybe I could make him see!
Isaac let out a huff of defeat. “Could I at least call my boss and tell ‘em I ain’t showing up for work today?”
I smiled in the human way as I jingled his watch in front of my gaze. “Dearest, I am your new boss!”
—————————————————————————
—————————————————————————
Memory Transcription Subject: Isaac Riffson, exterminator new hire, Spirefin Bay.
[Time accelerated] - 10 minutes.
“I lost all interest in talking to Kat when she called herself prey,” I said. “as long as she thought that way I’d never get through to her.”
“But we are prey.” Narn replied while munching absently on his Earth made granola bar.
“I know you think that way but I thought better of Kat. I thought she was starting to see things our way.”
“You’re a predator and I’m prey, it quite literally is that simple.” Stated Narn in a matter-of-fact kind of way while balancing the steering wheel in one paw while the other opened another granola bar.
“Yeah, I know that, I just want people to stop thinkin’ like that.” I responded. “As long as people hold on to those old Federation ideologies there’ll never be any sort of progress made.”
I sat there, stewing in silence for a moment before I began again. “I mean before we met you lot we never really thought o’ ourselves as predators.”
“What? Really?!” Said Narn with a high amount of surprise in his voice. “How?!” He spat crumbs from his muzzle.
“What? You think we walked around all like; hello fellow predator,” I said in a tone of mockery. “fine predator day we’re having here aren’t we? Under this wonderful predator sun and this fine predatory weather. Can’t wait to go to my predator home and tend to my predator garden and eat dinner with my predator wife-“
Narn let out a light chuckle, “alright, I get it!”
I let out a deeply needed sigh, “Before we met you all, we were people, not predators, feels like we got demoted.”
I let silence permeate in the air. I was hoping Narn was using this quiet time as contemplation but knowing him he was probably just sulking. Or just really enjoying that granola bar. What was it that Kat said, show your good side?
After an awkward minute or two of silence had passed I decided that I was going to show that good side. “Hey Narn!!” I said a lot louder than was necessary.
“Gahh!” Was his sudden reply.
“Calm down, I was just guna suggest some music.”
“I don’t wanna listen to your—“
But I wasn’t going to allow him enough time to retort. “I like me some ole southern gothic too!”
“What? No! That’s not what I—“
But my holopad had already been connected to his truck’s music player since before his shift began. I had bypassed the volume control and the on/off authority as originally I was going to remotely force him to listen to the wondrous and sloppy sounds of Skuggels mating on his drive today but that wouldn’t do now that I was in here.
The music began.
Narn began saying something more but I turned the volume up until he realized that any further protesting would only be in vein.
Well fuck me sideways and call me Sally, I’m an exterminator now, how did that even happen, it was all so fast. I thought to myself as I took in the views of the rural town along our route.
Can’t really be mad at ole Kat for this one, I sort of had it coming, but of all the ways… blackmail?!
I look to my left to see that Narn was a bit more acceptive of the music than I thought he would be.
Guess this means I got to start being nice to you now too.

Happy Saturday! - One more of the brand new, latest and greatest modded VSF "no-dates" available for anyone who might have missed out on the last one I posed. This is the latest version with the upgraded VS3230 movement which has NO GHOST DATE and a 70+ hour power reserve!
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In addition to the modifications spec’d out below, all of my watches receive the following quality control:
1.) Line up the dial at 12 o'clock to the engraved Rolex coronet on the rehaut (best as possible) 2.) Thin crystal gasket (because it can be too tall) this allows the crystal to sit lower and bezel to rotate more freely on certain watches 3.) Reinstall/rotate crystal to line up the cyclops to the date window and LEC 4.) Grease all gaskets using Bergeon 7055 5.) Adjust bracelet to desired length and tighten all screws/clasp 6.) Remove any burrs from the stem to ensure tight/smooth operation 7.) Visually inspect movements, remove any foreign debris/dust and apply Möbius 9010 oil as needed 8.) Ultrasonically clean and lubricate entire bracelet and clasp mechanism to eliminate any squeaking
-VSF 124060 w/ VS3230 Movement -"Deep" Crystal -Polished Rehaut -Individual Bezel Scallop Polishing & Re-brush -Genuine Hytrel Ring (better bezel fit/action) -Edge Softening of Case/Bracelet/Clasp -Waterproof'd to 5ATM -Regulated Movement
ALBUM
Price = $OLD + shipping (USPS: Priority $13/Express $30/Canada $40) I ship the same day and am based in Boston.
I take all of my photos using an iPhone 15 Pro. I don’t use any filters, or effects and try to get various angles and lighting to most accurately depict the beauty of the watch. Many, many, many satisfied clients and references available.
———
Pricing is firm. I accept ZELLE, WISE or BANK WIRE ONLY. If you tell me that you’re “taking it”, I will hold it for you for 15 MINUTES before it goes to the next in line.
I have sold a lot of watches prior on and have an extensive post history on .
Standard disclaimer: I will pack the watch very securely with lots of bubble wrap. Once the package leaves my possession, I will no longer be held responsible for anything that might happen during the shipping and handling process. I also will not take the watch back if you decide you don’t like it, or that your significant other is angry at you (yes, this has happened before). I will however always do my best to ensure that you’re happy with your purchase.

Roleplaying games are a fantastic way to tell a story with friends, and Pathfinder is no different! Something that certainly attracted me to the system (way back in the pages of Dungeon magazine, pre-Pathfinder) was Adventure Paths and the immense amount of pre-written content out there for GMs. However, there’s still plenty of room for you and your group to tell the story that fits you best. One of the best resources you have for writing adventures is the GM Core book - especially Chapter 2: Building The Game, which begins on page 63. I’ll be referring to these rules and suggestions (and others) often throughout the post, but think of this as a more focused resource than the Core book.
I’ve been approached by GMs looking to write adventures in the past and I often hear the same thing: “Okay, the group starts out as small town villagers, but then they will go on to defeat one of the risen demigods of death!” Which is to say, I hear about massive, epic stories, but no real plans on how to get there. What I’d like to do with this little exercise is look at how we write an adventure in service to a story, not just one or the other. We’ll approach our games from both a mechanical and storytelling perspective and work to make something like a guide to adventure writing. Hopefully, we can explore a variety of adventure archetypes together, from dungeon crawls to diplomatic missions to planar escapades.
Why Should I Write Adventures? I wouldn’t think of it as “writing an adventure” so much as it is “approaching GMing from a new angle.” If you’re someone (like me) who mostly runs pre-written adventures, you may not see the advantages of peeling back the curtain on both the storytelling and mechanical aspects of the game. And that’s okay! But sometimes those games go off book and it’s a helpful skill to have in your back pocket. It also lets a GM craft more personal encounters for their group to tie them more strongly to the story. It’s also just a fun solo exercise that can be entertaining for GMs with time on their hands.
What A Story Needs - Structure There are numerous ways to tell a story and one could dedicate their life working on perfecting what it means to write a story. Something, of course, to keep in mind is that story writing provides one singular perspective and outcome to how the tale unfolds while an adventure allows for numerous (if not limitless) ways for the story to develop. That said, for this first adventure, let’s keep things simple. We’ll focus mostly on the mechanics of adventure design and just make sure that we have a few storytelling elements before we begin. When I say elements, I mean:

1. Inciting Incident (Adventure Hook): What happens to drag the PCs into the adventure? Seeing a poster in town promising gold for the defeat of some goblins may motivate a group to action, but it’s hardly dynamic. The tower at the edge of town collapses, spurring the group on to investigate. Or perhaps a child is thrust into the care of the PCs with only the name of a close family member to go off of. What about fire that springs up at night suddenly calling out the names of the PCs? These all are interesting ways to involve the PCs directly into the adventure and tease them into the story rather than them existing as outside entities who have no connection to the story.
2. Adversary: An adversary has many meanings and can range from things such as other people, to forces of nature, to one’s own inner struggles. Once more, keeping it simple, let’s keep our adversaries as external, physical opponents; opponents that we can dispatch through encounters. While adventures certainly don’t need combat encounters to succeed, it’s a good place to start in a combat-focused game like Pathfinder 2e.
3. Goal(s): And one of the most important elements that an adventure should have is a goal - the thing that keeps the PCs moving forward on the right track and should, presumably, tie somewhat into resolving the resolving incident and will put them up against the adversary (who may have their own goals in opposition to the party).

Now these are not all you need to write an adventure (and sometimes you can do without them!), but it’s a good place to practice adventure writing. You can quickly come up with some adventures by filling in the blanks. Signposts like these can easily become the seed for a fully-fleshed out adventure and it gives you easily identifiable markers to cleave to when putting together a story.
Adventure Flow - The Five Scene Adventure So while you may have some narrative idea of the direction you’d like the adventure to go, we have to start thinking about how that story comes together at the table. Just as there are countless ways to tell a story, there are numerous ways to construct an adventure. I’d like to take a look at one that you may see crop up in adventures from time to time and is quite easy to execute. If you play a lot of Pathfinder Society, this sort of format should feel a bit familiar. I’ll refer to it as the “Five Scene Adventure”

1. Inciting Incident - The story has to start somewhere, and just like with narrative structure, having a strong opening that establishes the goals of the adventure is key.
2. Investigation - Instead of having the group charge headlong at the goal, they should get a chance to engage with the story and uncover more of what’s going on. This could be through roleplay, encounters, or skill checks, but they should serve to further the players’ understanding of the adventure.
3. Overcoming Challenges - From here, the PCs are armed with some knowledge of what they’re doing and most now overcome challenges on their way to accomplishing their goal. This is often done through a series of encounters, but can actually be handled in many different ways so long as the PCs are challenged.
4. Climax - The major turning point in the adventure where the PCs come face to face with their adversary and accomplish their goal. This is typically the scene where everything comes to a head and is the greatest challenge that the group has faced up until this point.
5. Resolution - An oft-forgotten part of the adventure, but the portion where the PCs return home as heroes and see the fruits of their labor in accomplishing their goal. This is a scene for the heroes to collect their rewards and unwind from a trying adventure.

So now we have a simple flow for how we want our adventure to go. Our group will encounter a problem, learn more about it, work to overcome what lies in their way, solve the problem, and then reap the rewards. On its face, this is a very simple concept, but breaking it down into easy to manage chunks makes adventure writing so much easier.
Now this is specifically setting out to create a low-level adventure, so let’s take a look at how to make those sorts of adventures really play well at the table!
Low-Level Things To Keep In Mind - Tips What follows is a list of tips of things to keep in mind when writing for low-levels. An adventure doesn’t need to cater to every single one of these points, but they’re good guidelines when designing.

• The encounter building guidelines work great across all levels of play in Pathfinder 2e, but I’ll make a small caveat here - if you want to explore more difficult Severe encounters, you should look towards using a larger amount of weaker enemies than a single strong enemy at lower levels. To illustrate, a Severe encounter for a group of level 1 PCs could be a single level 4 opponent. Let’s use an owlbear as an example: with 21 AC, your players will likely only be hitting it around 35% of the time while it’s going to be critting your group about 35% of the time and with damage (7 to 16 on a hit, 14 to 32 on a crit) that’s likely going to be dropping them in one blow. That same Severe encounter budget can instead give us a fight with two ghasts (which, I still don’t love for 1st level parties, but it beats an owlbear), or a healthy trio of mephits. At low-levels, characters don’t have a large breadth of options to help them survive and mitigate damage as well as impact an enemy’s stats. So for low-levels, aim to keep difficult combats against a large quantity of weaker foes as opposed to a singular powerful foe.
• Magic is not ubiquitous. Depending on your group, this could be a real selling point for low-level adventures. Problems are solved through skill checks and investigation and the opposing forces don’t often use magic to foil senses (no invisibility used to escape, no teleportation, no flight, no illusions). It also means that simple problems that get handwaved at higher levels (such as crossing a river, navigating through a forest, or getting food in the wilderness) can become interesting challenges for the PCs to overcome.
• Weaknesses and resistances are felt the most at low-levels. This can give players a real sense of agency over the game when they correctly identify an opponent’s weaknesses and come prepared to exploit it. Likewise, giving PCs enemies with resistances out of nowhere is a bit of an unfair move. If the group was unaware of a ghost lurking in the mine and had no way to discover it, they would feel a little cheated in being unable to overcome its resistances.
• Healing is not assured at the very lowest of levels. Even groups with dedicated healers may fumble that Treat Wounds check or lack the spell slots available to keep everyone topped up. Low-level games should provide groups with opportunities to rest and recover and aren’t served well by throwing encounter after encounter into the PCs.
• Low-level games are some of the best times to play around with non-magical light sources or the lack thereof. A dark room is suddenly much more dangerous when the human fighter has to put away his greatsword to carry a torch because the wizard didn’t prepare light.

Rough Draft - Ideas When writing anything, it’s important that you get all of your ideas out somewhere so you know what direction you’re going in before you start. The first thing you should do before writing an adventure is know the group that you’re writing for (what level, what they’re doing in the story, what the goal of the adventure will be, and the group’s playstyle, to name a few things). When we write our adventure, I’ll be sure to put a few things up top, such as the level the game is intended for, an additional rulesets, how much XP is budgeted for the adventure, and the like.
So let’s start simple. Let’s make an adventure for level 1 characters. Our goal as adventure writers is to provide a fairly straightforward low-level adventure for PCs to get a handle on adventuring. Let’s look at our narrative elements: Inciting incident, adversaries, and goals. I always find it easiest with smaller games to take an adversary and work backwards, as they often provide plenty of good roleplaying opportunities. Let’s take a look at some potential adversaries. This is a list of level -1 to level 1 creatures and gives us a nice range of opponents to consider.
After some searching, I settled on doing something with Tooth Fairies, as there’s a lot of fun stuff to work with. They’re tricky little fey with strange motivations who, like many fey, have a weakness to cold iron. There’s plenty to work with! Perhaps our inciting incident involves an attack by a swarm of tooth fairies who have been pushed to the limit and are attempting to exact revenge for a slight the PCs don’t quite understand yet. Looking through the list of potential adversaries, I see that a number of animals could also fit in nicely. Something to keep in the back pocket. Now we just need a goal - typically one in opposition to the adversary: the tooth fairies. What if the fey creatures stole away something that the PCs want to return. I propose something that could be a bit fun while maintaining the darkness of the fey: a dog. Let’s take a look at what we have narratively so far.

• Inciting Incident: The PCs are attacked by a swarm of tooth fairies while they are at a friend’s home/roadside tavern/storefront. The tooth fairies escape with a dog that potentially has a connection to the PCs
• Adversaries: Tooth fairies, fey creatures, animals
• Goal: Retrieve the dog safely from the tooth fairies.

With our narrative ideas laid out, we can start looking at what we want to do mechanically with our adventure. It’s important to ensure that these scenes actually allow your players to interact with the story. Remember that you’re creating this as an adventure to be played, not read. Let’s try out the “Five Scene Adventure” and rough out some ideas before we fill them in fully.

• Inciting Incident: I’d like to keep this adventure somewhat general while still setting it in a place a bit farther from civilization. It’s also interesting to me if it’s something that you can use to bridge two adventures or start a new campaign! So, while it may be a bit cliche, the PCs are at a roadside inn that is suddenly attacked by a swarm of fey creatures! (To me, cliches get a bit of a pass in low-level games as it sort of builds on something familiar that everyone can easily get into the headspace of).
• Investigation: The PCs discover that the inn’s dog has gone missing! The fey are suspected. During the course of this investigation, the PCs can learn about where the fey are known to be, some of their weaknesses, and perhaps even a cold iron weapon to help deal with weaknesses.
• Overcoming Challenges: We have the trip to the fey home - not sure if we want to do anything here as we want this area to seem relatively safe. The fey could live somewhere interesting, like an abandoned farmhouse, tunnels beneath a tree, or a thicket of unruly briars. From here we could plan out some encounters. We don’t need to think about the exact mechanics of things right now, just general ideas. We don’t have to use all of these, but it gives us a good idea of where we’d like to go with our encounters
  
  • An encounter with wildlife to get the party warmed up
  • An encounter with a Hazard and some sort of guard as a means of protecting the fey base
  • A larger encounter against many fey
  • A plant based encounter (either Hazard or creature)
  • A fey puzzle - perhaps involving teeth?
• Climax: We should have the PCs come face-to-face with a group of tooth fairies, the truly most malicious of this fey group. This could be an encounter with numerous tooth fairy and maybe one elite version, or perhaps a Hazard to keep this interesting. Our dog should be here - maybe locked away (poorly) so that there are alternate ways to approach this encounter (such as simply sneaking in and freeing the dog).
  
• Resolution: The return to the inn should be a triumph, with a reward coming to the PCs for what they’ve done - even small rewards like a free meal and night at the inn and perhaps an item that is special to the owner. This is also a great time to have the group really feel like heroes and perhaps plant the seeds for future adventures.
  

Alright, we have a good outline of an adventure, so now we just need to fill in the details!
The Adventure - The Mechanics Now we get into the actual mechanics of the adventure. You can have all of these ideas ready to go before the game begins, but if you just start throwing out your ideas without any planning, things can get messy real quick! Before I go too much further, I want to put a very important clause here for everyone:
We are not professional game designers and are not getting paid for our work. Don’t pour blood, sweat, and tears into a project and burn out. We’re writing adventures for our friends to play in. Do not let perfect become the enemy of good. An adventure scrawled on the back of a napkin plays just as well as one printed in a Paizo book.
Now, that said, I am putting a little bit more effort into the adventures you see just because I am sharing them with you all and want to provide more clarity in the process than what my typical note-taking would be. Find what works for you!
Now let’s get started! Let’s go through the mechanical bits one-by-one and address how to create them. For our first adventure, I won’t go into too much detail about every choice made since we’ve already covered a lot of material, but rather an explanation of how to accomplish the encounter design. We’ll be focusing more on encounters in this post. While we could talk about designing monsters, hazards, or even subsystems, let’s keep things simple.
First up is the inciting incident in the roadside inn. Now, a tooth fairy swarm at such a low level would be a disastrous first encounter for a group, so we’ll rule that out right away. We’ll be using the guidelines found starting on page 75 of the GM Core Book for this, but I’ll be referencing the AoN pages throughout. The first thing we need to do is decide what our encounter budget is. Given that we want this to be an introduction to the game, let’s make this a Low encounter for our level 1 group. This means we have 60 XP to use to choose our creatures. To find out how much a creature is worth, we compare its level against the party’s level and use this handy chart. Our Tooth Fairies (only level -1) are worth 20 XP to our level 1 party. That means we can use three of them for our encounter. Nothing fancy, but we’ll mix things up as we continue!
Our investigation is going to be a bit more open-ended. We know when combat starts and ends, but the players dictate the flow of the story when they are given the reins of what to do next. And that’s a good thing! But we need to provide them with options that both advance the story and engage them. We have a pretty easy path here - the PCs want to chase after the tooth fairies, but they don’t know where to start. Let’s create a few areas for them to explore. Something like…

• Common Room: Asking patrons, maybe even tending to injuries; success here should put the players on the right track on where to go, and introduce the idea that the fey had a goal in mind during the attack (Using Charisma skills)
• Kitchen: Searching through to find what the fey may have been looking for - a great place to introduce treasure, especially a cold iron weapon (likely a dagger) to give the PCs something to combat the fey (Searching, Perception)
• Overnight Rooms: Here we can put in some more hints about what the group may encounter when they confront the fey; I like the idea of a traveling merchant staying here who offers the PCs a way to deal with a Hazard they could run into later in the adventure
• Backyard: Here we can see that the inn’s dog has been taken, but Investigating PCs can find more clues - like a trail of blood from where the dog fought back. (Nature, Survival, Perception?)
  • Quick note: The game should never hinge on the PCs discovering something. If we want to go this route, we instead introduce a way to “fail forward” like “the PCs can find the fey camp after some wandering, but the sun has already gone down, giving them an hour of dim light before it becomes dark.”

Importantly, when deciding on the DC of these skill checks, we are going to refer to the Level-Based DCs chart (found on page 53 of the GM Core) and keep things around that area, typically adjusting for easy (-2 DC) or hard (+2 DC) while also keeping some wiggle room in between.
And we come now to overcoming challenges, where the meat of our adventure lies. Now, our group should know their enemy and where they’re located, or at least they have a goal in mind. Now it’s our job to put barriers in the way to that goal. Looking back over our rough draft, there are a few ideas for encounters there that seem interesting. I picked out three and want to workshop them a little. We also look through the Bestiary for creatures that fit the theme we’re going for, which is something of a fight against the fey and nature.

• A Low encounter with a Hunting Spider and a number of Hampering Webs
• A Moderate encounter with three Melixies who have swiped some sweets from the inn
• Finally, a Severe encounter with six Tooth Fairies - our finale

However, as I look over the adventure, there isn’t much for the PCs to engage with that isn’t just combat and on top of that, the encounters aren’t terribly exciting. Let’s look at the pain points. The first that I see is that the PCs are encouraged to just move from scene to scene fighting, so what about a way to circumvent the encounter for clever players? On top of that, I want another antagonist to give the fey a bit more character. Finally, the finale encounter is… somewhat dull. Using those three ideas as our tent pole encounters, let’s try something like…

• A Trivial encounter of an elite Sprite who was left to watch the inn. Their role is not to engage the PCs directly, but tail them and strike when they’re preoccupied. Players then have a chance to spot the sprite out and chase him off before he ambushes them in the spider fight.
• The Melixie encounter is changed to have the three fey fighting loudly and distractedly over cake or pie. Clever characters could use the opportunity to slip by or get the jump on them.
  • As a side note, we can also tempt the group with some treasure here, as well as another hazard
• Lastly, let’s keep the Severe encounter, but instead of a boring fight against six Tooth Fairies, we’ll make it three Tooth Fairies and their “pet” Snapping Flytrap who has the weak template since the fey have been feeding it nothing but stolen sweets, coins, and teeth.
  • I’m a little leery of this combat, but if we make the arena large enough, it should be easy for the group to keep away from the plant.

With the mechanics handled, we can write a resolution and give the PCs a big pat on the back for a job well done!
This is also the point in adventure writing where we want to start thinking about Treasure. Now this is hardly enough to get the group the 1000 XP they need to level up - maybe about 1/3rd of that. So we can take a look at the Treasure By Level and roughly sprinkle about a third of that throughout the adventure. Again, I personally like to put in things that will be immediately useful at lower levels.
With all that said and done, let’s take a look at the finished product!
Stepping in with a quick note here, much of this idea was put together during the transition from Legacy PF2 content to Remastered. The following adventure includes some Legacy content, but not in any way that will complicate the experience.
Link to the Low-Level Adventure, “Dognapping!”
As we said earlier, there’s a little more effort put into the presentation of this adventure just to make it easier to parse and for people to use at home if they like. You don’t need to do so much with your own games! If you know the story well enough, just a few notes on a piece of paper and you’re good to go.
Making It Spicy - Alterations Rough drafts are our way of getting ideas down on paper so that we can refine them into a complete thought. However, that’s not to say that we’re always finished after that. Something I enjoy doing is looking at encounters or adventures that I’ve written and adding a little “spice.” What this means is putting in a bit more flavor to either make a scene more memorable, give characters in an encounter more options, or to change how my players look at the game. Adding “spice” does not mean making things harder - it looks to enhance the experience, not bog it down.
While this is certainly not a necessary part of adventure design, I recommend keeping it in the back of your mind. It can even help when running pre-written adventures! So, here are a few “spicy” ideas for this adventure.

• Stitchleaf carries with him a few nets that he happily throws on the PCs when they’re doing battle with the spider before extinguishing his light and slipping away to Hide behind a tree. Likewise, the sprite could even speed ahead to warn the thicket should it look like the PCs will overcome the spider. This removes the possibility of slipping past the melixies and Stitchleaf can join in another encounter, becoming a recurring enemy.
• The thicket itself has enough space within its thorns to allow Tiny creatures like the fey to enter, Take Cover, Sneak, and Hide. When the odds start to turn against them, the melixies use this to great effect.
• The tunnels into the thicket and between the two “rooms” act as choke points for Medium creatures, requiring them to Squeeze (DC 15 Acrobatics) through. On a failure they treat the tunnels as difficult terrain, but take 1d4 piercing damage in the process. This can create a feeling of being “locked in” once a battle has begun.

Wrapping Up - The End And that’s it! Making a low-level adventure is actually quite a straightforward process. We didn’t have to design any new monsters, plan for higher level magic, or create a sweeping, grand story. We came up with a very simple direction and put the pieces together in a way that’s hopefully fun and interesting for the table!
Up next? We’ll take a look at mid-level adventures, when characters start to break the rules a little more!

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Hi, if you're reading this please try to help get the word out. There are a number of issues in the game that have been fixed, but there's still many more to go, and some of them may not even be known to the public. I'm putting down a list of everything I've encountered, and some changes I would like to see in future patches. Cheers!
I really just hope this gets enough traction for the devs to notice and fix.
This is a list I've been working on since launch and will include things that have been addressed (but will be crossed out)
Issues:

1. During cutscenes after using the hide UI button to take screenshots, pressing anywhere in the screen moves the cutscene forward, instead of returning the UI, this causes unintentional cutscene skipping.
   
2. In Yinlin's character story quest, Yinlin refers to the MALE Rover as a female in her EN Voicelines.
   
3. Cinematic Cutscenes tend to have voice lines cut off.
   

4. Some bosses run around so much they leave their "zone" and end up resetting.
5. Occassional sound effect bugs, and BGM not playing.

1. Camera has a feature where there's a separate combat & regular distance, but when a combat ends, the camera stays far away even when regular distance is set to 0.

Issues exclusive to Mobile: (Including workarounds to circumvent them for other mobile players)

1. MAJOR OVERHEATING ISSUE (Use Low Power Mode or use an AC and point it at the phone). To add context, iPhone 12 & 13 are capable of playing the game at its allowed maximum settings without issue when playing in a very cold environment. In a warm environment, even the lowest graphical settings are heating the phone up. A user on X who helped me with the Low Power Mode tip mentioned "My 2 cents. The FPS is at 30/60 but the display is 120Hz".
   
2. Mismatch in mobile device orientation & in-game orientation when the charging port is on the left side of the hand. (to avoid this, make sure the charging port is in the right side of your hand)
   

3. Ghost buttons aka my palms are fat and are touching the edge of the screen (use a thick phone case to avoid this).

1. Occassional stuttering in Low Power Mode. (issue does not happen for me outside of Low Power Mode)
   
2. Blobflies have low-render priority in mobile phones, you can't see them unless you're extremely close to them.
   
3. Sound effects stop playing when phone gets slightly hot. This happens regardless of Low Power mode or not.
   
4. EVERYTIME I TRY TO REPORT A BUG ON MOBILE AND LEAVE THE INQUIRY MENU, IT CLOSES MY TICKET! HOW CAN I SUBMIT A REPORT WHEN IT ALWAYS CLOSES THE TICKET!?
   

Changes I would like to see in the game:

1. Larger Sonance Casket Hitbox.

2. Camera Lock-on Feature improvement.
3. Remove Tacet Field cutscene.
4. Put a limit on NPC purchase so you don't overspend.
5. Reserve Waveform.
6. Increased Event Rewards.

1. Blue & Purple Tuner convert to Gold.

8. Adjust Waveform Cost & Reward in multiple instances.

1. A Library to store all documents you find in the open world, so you can read them at a later time.
   
2. Item or Feature so you can Synthesize anywhere, not just in Jingzhou.
   
3. Layered Map.
   
4. Regarding single instance dungeons, make sure the chest are incredibly HARD TO MISS. I hate when I PERMANENTLY MISS A CHEST.
   
5. Echo sorting by set in the Echo Merge.
   
6. A cutscene viewer in suggested Library.
   
7. Re-recording of 1.0 story with proper voice direction.
   
8. Camera panning in 1.0 is "odd", often characters are speaking but the camera is pointed elsewhere.
   

Unverified Issues: (if anyone can check if this is true let me know!)

1. Yinlin's Weapon is not working correctly. Only one stack is obtained.
   
2. Yinlin's S6 is not working as intended.
   

That's about it, my list used to be bigger but the devs have been patching the game so much they've wiped out more than half of the issues I've experienced. All that's left are on the list above and the ones crossed out is a known issue that's going to be addressed in a future patch.
In any case, the OVERHEATING issue on mobile is a serious problem, and I hope they fix it quickly.

The defunct warehouse of Valdemar Machinery has slowly been sinking into the earth for decades, twisting and descending like a soaking, porous cork languidly driving itself down into a puddle of muck, its facades all twisted askew, the walls leaning, the roof caving, sinking, down, down... and the panoramic maw like choking despair having already brought it within sight of its own digestion. Many of the walls had split from their foundations, some lay utterly crumbled, piled upon the ancient and indecorous ruins of industry.
Like a putrid caldera broken free from the deep internal pressure of earth, a swampy marshland now surrounds the place like a dank and fetid moat that floats rather than flows. Broken sticks, blades of old mown grass, leeches, and bellied-up lifeless amphibians swirl in slow, still circles like dead stars hovering around an opaque and monochrome event horizon. The malodorous ichor creeps unseen into the senses a fair distance removed from the broken and tattered gates, themselves enmeshed in defunct wires around the entrance that once served to flood the property with harsh electric beams so bright as to shun the scrap vestiges of moon in the sky.
As it was, by sheer impulse, I indeed pursued my curiosity, not once thinking or comptehending, not once reasoning or stopping to rest or to ask myself, "Why?" Indeed, the buried enterprise had stood loftily before me in a single unbroken framework, an insular, ironwrought image of harsh and lurid darkness. There, it stood in my thoughts, abrupt and martial, intimidating, hostile, before I had even hit the freeway.
'Bloody Mary', say the myth makers, resides within the very walls of Valdemar Incorporated - the cursed reflection appearing at will, never in the same place, not even from mirrors, from that which reflects- the walls peal back of their own will, the scattered remnants of light fall back as into a precipice. Otherwise, all reality vaporizes in an instant, and she shudders forth like thunder and lightning, jumps out at the unsuspecting victim without warning, and so it is paramount - proceed slowly. Take comfort in your fears and appropriate them as a scrap of hellfire - make fear friend.
I cannot but admit a sense of the carnal attached to the thought, seductive to my own sensual eccentricities as often as vile to the vulgar, that I derive a certain untamed passion at being scared out of my wits - that the inevitable confrontation with the fantastic might not stir up something ravenous or self-destructive.
I digress.
Easing alongside an old rotting security shack, after having followed the driveway without lights, I shut off the engine. Berenice was already awaiting my arrival, but when I approached her car, I found it empty and dark, like a tomb untenanted.
I called her repeatedly, but the rings rang hollow. In this place, at this time of night, empty, still, vacant, and removed ten miles from our neighborhood, an anxious sensation gripped my heart.
I circled the building, calling after her, ringing her phone, the calls moving in intervals to an empty voice at the end of many abrupt processions. Nothing stirred, no phone shouted back.
I was at a loss and could scarcely imagine, considering with what ease she could be frightened, how in any conceivable way she could have entered that shadowy warehouse alone, such was the undeviating nature of her timid character. She could never do this, never have entered on her own, *not without force*.
Now I was bound. My own morbid passions notwithstanding, an urgency arose, an indistinct, but perhaps unusually distinct, voice called out in my mind. I proceeded, step-by-step, to breach that shuddering miasma that surrounded the building like a disease, a plague, soaking warm as blood into my shoes, into my socks, curdling the soles of my feet white.
The only visible point of entry that I could find after numerous passages around the premises was a tear in the crumpled door above the loading dock. But this couldn't be - a broken sledgehammer lay in two halves on the ground, and the sliver through which a chilly interior breeze filtered (the night was humid and airless) could not have given way to a human body (without shedding a few drops of blood). I fixed my eyes on the uneven shards of hammerfall. "But why would she have...?"
Again, I raised a soaring, searching cry, which merely bounded back at me like a manic resignation.
I routed the breezy sarcophagus again at close range, indifferent to the mess of muck it made of my shoes and pants, and inspected closely, and but for a broken window that could never have admitted a body without a life's worth of bloodshed, there was nothing, nothing but the loading dock entry door. I scrounged a crowbar out of a pile of mesh and mold and wedged and wracked it with all my might when abruptly an icy blast fired out like a putrid and moldering backdraft I ducked and forced myself in and found myself in the mouth of utter darkness. Despite my impulse to scream her name, some untenable asseveration impelled me to silence, and then to deliberation. Then, it encumbered me, the death-anxiety I had been enduring over my mother, slaving under, servicing, and dying along with. The shaft of nacreous skylight cutting across the scum-ridden floor was behind me. I had already begun to walk and hadn't even suspected my own movements, lost in the reveries of dearer fears.
Like darkness pervading darkness, poured forth like oil; that my will carried me so far that I at last could not figure exactly where I was standing, or near what - was I about to make a fatal misstep and plunge fifty feet? how had I gotten here? wherefore and from whence had my body carried me? where went the light? the light!- I was lost in and penetrating deeper into the perforations of a corporeal void, an endlessly ceasing abyss. I was free, and therefore enslaved - enslaved by the very exercise of freedom.
I could not see, was blind, choking down motes and tasting swoons of dust, coughing it out of my lungs, but standing still. I dropped to my knees. I felt the floor, the metal edges, and the musty concrete, and began to crawl.
I crawled a long, long time, stretching my arms as far as i could on every side looking for vats to fall in, or shards pf metal to be pierced by, clambering, clawing. Far off, the world continued to exist: a church bell struck once, shouting out of phantom lungs to remind me of existence existing - I had been ninety minutes already, had but once cried Berenice's name, and all the while remained- restrained, buried alive some place far away.
Though the building maintained its opacity and rigid dimensionality, though clusters of dust gagged me, though that chilly and paradoxical blast of air-
Alas... My finger brushed a cold dab of warm flesh. No way it could not have been flesh because I felt the bones, too. I smelled the malodor of roses and geraniums and formaldehyde (I worked for a family friend once who embalmed and knew the scent intimately).
My head began spinning; I felt as- no, believed that, I had been lying in bed in my childhood home, in the childhood dark, snuffing the childhood scent, shrouded in the childhood blankie, and thus did my mind revolve....it was as if I was drunk on the most intoxicating, most powerfully pure grade of Deja Vu along which no sentient animal had ever ridden, and I momentarily lost all sense of reference, of reality. It was as if I was on the verge of a seizure - the nerve signals firing pell-mell in all the wrong directions, firing like tank cannons, destroying one another, and my body...for Christ sake, my bones, it's as if they were streaked with razors, that in my tremulous shuddering I had been sawing myself put of my own natural jacket....I could taste all the blood, I was rolling in it, slipping in it like oil- and then-
The walls were no more. I reached out and felt nothing but that drafty chill, that dank and tepid river of stench, and I could hear, perceive, my own dead mother's voice as she screamed my name - *Berenice!*
Two feeble beams, arms, something indescribable and yet ineluctable had raised me to my feet, raised me, and, face to face with the oval mirror, I gazed within, and saw the terrible face, the affrighted countenance of my own self, pale as a sheet, looking in at the consumptive curse that really is my ownself, only the face in the mirror stood with her chin tucked into her breast, eyes closed, mouthing words which I could not make out, could not comprehend, and then she opened her eyes, raised them to me, and screamed... .....and the glass shattered, and my mother whispered, again and again, as she had since time immemorial, the name, the curse- Bloody Mary