Hello everyone, I'm a bit late today with this. Tom Brevoort was sick with Covid so we all wish him well. As usual, here's a summary of some of his Substack Q&As. I always encourage people to read the actual Substack itself for the full context of questions and answers, you can find it here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-145215587

Is the Hellfire Gala over? If so, will some other fancy event take its place? It was very fun seeing all the thoughtfully designed and unique outfits based on characters’ costumes and powers, and even more fun seeing those looks brought to life at conventions. Even if it’s not mutant-focused, it’d be cool to see more Marvel galas/fancy parties.

TB: Hard to hold a gala when your island is gone, Joe. That said, we have been talking about a thing that would fill the same spot in the publishing plan that the Hellfire Gala occupied for the past couple of years. But more on that as we get closer to it.

From an editorial stand-point, does this make it difficult to carry Phoenix over into the new era given how powerful she is? The tidbits that have been shared have mentioned encounters with Captain Marvel, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, The black order, etc, which seems to steer in a different direction from the grand cosmic depiction we saw in RotPox 5. Is the intention to tone down her power levels to a more manageable state where she can be teaming up with the likes of the characters mentioned above, or are there still plans to keep her at that grand cosmic level and explore her as a character that is among the upper echelons of Marvel's cosmic hierarchy and deal with such cosmic abstracts and entities?

TB: Phoenix and PHOENIX are going to be plenty cosmic, Phoenix. But it can be a bit exhausting playing at that scale all the time—to say nothing of limiting to the interests of a great portion of the audience. So when it’s appropriate for the story, we’ll go there. But more typically, if you think of PHOENIX as having the scale and range of something like THOR, you’ll pretty well be on the mark.

What can we expect from Madelyne's future in this new mutant era? I would like to see her in the mystical core, but also her image kind of got hyped with X-men 97 and most people outside our bubble knew her

TB: Madelyine will be showing up next in X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES #7 in a few short weeks, Fernanda.

My questions are: Is there any limit to how far a writer or editorial policy can go in trying to "destroy" a character without the risk of ruining them forever? Do you regret making any controversial decisions that have ruined a character or characters? Looking back, do you consider the editorial policy and/or writing regarding Cyclops, Bishop and Beast to have gone too far? And finally, about controversial decisions as bad as those regarding Bishop, Cyclops and Beast: do you consider that ignoring the storylines as if they never happened and moving on would be the best decision, or is it better to give the characters something like what Geoff Johns did to Hal Jordan?

TB: I’ve heard various versions of this question over the years, Joel, so you’ll have to forgive me if I have to chuckle a little bit. But the idea that any creator or any editor is trying to actively destroy the characters is completely laughable. This idea tends to be an outgrowth of the strange fan disconnect where they view the characters as more like real people than the actual human beings who create these stories. Believe me, nobody is ever looking to do dirt to any of the characters. That said, if we’re not challenging the characters and really putting them through a crucible, then we’re not giving you our best. These are super heroes, and so the whole point of reading is to see them struggle against overwhelming odds and somehow through skill and moxy and smarts and luck to find a way to come out on top. Also, these characters have proven to be extremely resilient over the years—they’ve survived a lot of bad stories and short-sighted decisions and it only ever takes one good story to dust them off and get them back into the fight. They aren’t fragile. and so, from a storytelling point of view, the worst, most boring thing that you can do is to be precious with the toys. They’re toys, they’re meant to be played with and knocked around and smashed up. I don’t know which “editorial policies” you mean when you speak of Cyclops, Bishop and the Beast—I suspect what you’re reacting to are specific story choices with which you disagree, which is fine; but this need to inflate them into “policies” is another thing that fans routinely do—but from my point of view, while there maybe have been stories over the years that I wish hadn’t been done, coming to them completely fresh I don’t find a thing wrong with any of those three characters that keeps them from being used and used well—and so that’s exactly what we’ll be trying to do in the months ahead.

Do you have any thoughts on these kinds of "ally" or more benevolent-neutral human characters in the X-Men narrative, and whether we can expect those dynamics to return in From the Ashes? I know you said in a previous interview Stevie Hunter would return, which was very cool.

TB: I don’t know about “allies” specifically, but we’re definitely going to see more X-Men and more mutants interacting with regular human beings right from the first page of X-MEN #1. Not just with X-Men but throughout the Marvel line, I think our heroes are only heroic when they’re saving regular folks, and I find comic books that only feature characters in tights to get pretty boring pretty fast. We need to be interacting with people of all stripes, allies and ambivalent and antagonistic all the same.

As a big Cyclops fan, I found his treatment during the Krakoa era quite disappointing, particularly regarding certain narrative choices that seemed inconsistent with his established characterization. Over the past 25 years, Cyclops has developed into a complex and pivotal figure, especially highlighted by his evolution into mutantkind's leader which started with Morrison's New X-Men until Bendis' Uncanny X-Men. The Krakoa storyline, with its depiction of Scott's relationships and leadership dynamics, felt to many fans like a regression from his previous development, I don't think he would ever accept to be part of a nation with a council with Mr Sinister (the evil nazi scientist who abused and experimented on him as a child) and Apocalypse, the evil genocidal maniac who ruined his son's life forcing Scott to send him to a bad future to save his life and possessed his body (and then used it as a weapon against his friends) leaving him severely traumatized in the process, there's also the fact that going from mutantkind's savior and leader to being once again beneath Xavier and Magneto felt very mean spirited and disrespectful to the writing of many great writers such as Matt Fraction, Grant Morrison, Whedon, Bendis, etc who worked hard developing his character and an era that many fans of the character consider to be his peak.
Given this context, can we expect the new era to realign his character with the growth and leadership qualities he exhibited before Krakoa?

TB: It sounds like you’re looking for a very specific flavor here, John, and I don’t know that I can quite promise you that. (And that comment about Cyclops being secondary to Xavier and Magneto being “mean-spirited” and “disrespectful” is very much the outlook I was talking about above. Cyclops is a fictional character, it’s impossible to hurt his feelings or make him feel bad.) What I can tell you is that we’re going to be featuring Cyclops front and center in X-MEN—beyond that, it’ll fall to you and readers like you to tell us how well we might be doing.

Since you've mentioned Taylor Swift, what three songs of hers do you associate with the three leading titles of the new X-era: Adjectiveless, Uncanny, and Exceptional?

TB: Wow, that’s a good question, Alex. I’d say that X-MEN is Red, UNCANNY X-MEN is Fearless, and EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN is 22.

Today is Lisa's birthday, and to celebrate, I’m writing a guide on how to play as the humble Librarian of the Knights of Favonius in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition.
Let’s start off with our goals for this build. First and Foremost, we need Lightning and lots of it. Next, we need to be charming and alluring to get people to do your bidding. Lastly, we need to be able to provide off-field utility.
For stats, we’ll be using the Standard Point Array from the Player’s Handbook. Roll for stats if you want, just keep your Intelligence high.
15 Intelligence, as you are an excellent scholar and librarian, being Sumeru Akademiya’s most esteemed graduate.
14 Constitution, as you are a bit frail, but still need to take hits.
13 Dexterity, as you need some protection.
12 Charisma, as you are alluring and charming
10 Wisdom, as while you insightful and wise, you do have a sinister and somewhat immoral side
And 8 Strength, as while you do have a knack for climbing, we just don’t need it for this build.
For race, Lisa is a human, and Variant Humans get a Feat. The Elemental Adept Feat will help with your magic. You get to pick an elemental damage type (go for Lightning) and spells you cast of that damage type ignore damage resistances, and you treat any 1s you roll on damage dice for Lightning spells as 2s. Bump your Intelligence and Dexterity with your 2 Free points, take Persuasion for your Skill of Choice, and take the Sage Background for Arcana and History.
We’ll kick things off as a Wizard. 1st Level Wizards can pick 2 skills from the Wizard list. Insight and Religion would be my picks. As a Wizard, you get a Spellbook where you learn your spells from, and you can copy spells you find into your spellbook. You start off with 3 Cantrips and 6 1st-Level Wizard spells of your choice, and you add 2 extra spells to your Spellbook each time you level up as a Wizard, but you can only prepare an amount of spells from your Spellbook equal to your Wizard Level plus your Intelligence modifier. So for the sake of brevity, I’m just gonna list out the spells you can prepare, and you can freely pick whatever other spells you wish to add to your spellbook. For your Cantrips, take Shocking Grasp, Blade Ward, and Prestidigitation. For your spells, Take Shield, Mage Armor, Chromatic Orb, and Witch Bolt. Last but not least, Wizards get Arcane Recovery, letting you recover spell slots of 6th level or below equal to half your Wizard level on a short rest.
2nd Level Wizards can pick an Arcane Tradition, and the School of Evocation is perfect for dealing damage. You’re an Evocation Savant, meaning you can copy Evocation spells into your spellbook in half the time and at half the cost. You can also Sculpt Spells, meaning when you cast an Evocation spell that has an AOE, you can select an amount of creatures within the spell’s range equal to 1 plus the spell’s level to have them automatically succeed on their saving throws and take no damage from the spell. For your spell at this level, take the spell Charm Person.
3rd Level Wizards can learn 2nd Level Spells. Take the spell Hold Person.
4th Level Wizards get an Ability Score Improvement. Bump your Intelligence for better spells. You can now prepare 2 extra spells at this level. Take the Spells Witch Bolt and Silvery Barbs.
5th Level Wizards can learn 3rd Level spells, take the Spell Lightning Bolt.
6th Level Evocation Wizards get Potent Cantrips, meaning enemies that succeed on saving throws against your damaging cantrips still take half damage. For your spell at this level, take the spell Thunder Step.
7th Wizards can learn 4th Level Spells. Take the Spell Storm Sphere.
8th Level Wizards get another Ability Score Improvement. Cap your Intelligence for the best spells. For your 2 extra spells you can prepare, take the spells Misty Step and Thunderwave.
9th Level Wizards can learn 5th Level Spells. Take the Spell Hold Monster.
10th Level Evocation Wizards get Empowered Evocation, letting you add your Intelligence Modifier to one of the damage rolls for your Evocation spells. For your spell at this level, take the spell Dominate Person.
11th Level Wizards can learn 6th Level Spells. Take the spell Chain Lightning.
12th Level Wizards get another Ability Score Improvement or a Feat. We’ll take the Metamagic Adept Feat, letting you pick 2 Metamagic options from the Sorcerer class, and giving you 2 Sorcery points to spend them on which recharge on a long rest. Transmuted Spell lets you spend a sorcery point when you cast a spell that deals acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison, or thunder damage to turn it into another one of those damage types. Subtle Spell lets you spend a Sorcery Point to cast a spell without Verbal or Somatic Components.
For your Spell at this level, take the spell Disintegrate.
13th Level Wizards can Learn 7th Level Spells. Take the Spell Prismatic Spray.
14th Level Evocation Wizards get Overchannel, letting you deal max damage when you cast a damaging spell of 5th level or lower. The first time you use this feature, you suffer no adverse effect, but each time you use this feature again before finishing a long rest, you take 2d12 Necrotic damage per level of the spell, increasing by 1d12 per level each time you use it, and this damage cannot be reduced in any way.
For your spell at this Level, take Power Word Pain.
15th Level Wizards can learn 8th Level Spells. Take the Spell Control Weather
16th Level Wizards get another Ability Score Improvement. Bump your Dexterity for better AC.
For your spell at this level, take Delayed Blast Fireball.
17th Level Wizards can learn the highly coveted 9th Level Spells. Take the spell Meteor Swarm.
18th Level Wizards get Spell Mastery, letting you take a 1st Level and 2nd Level Wizard spell and be able to cast them for free. I’d suggest Shield and Misty Step. For your spell at this level, take the spell Wish.
19th Level Wizards get our last Ability Score Improvement. Bump your Constitution for more HP and better concentration. Take the spell Delayed Blast Fireball
Our capstone is the 20th Level of Wizard for Signature Spells, letting you pick two 3rd-Level Wizard spells and cast them once each for free per short or long rest. I’d suggest Lightning Bolt and Thunder Step. For your last prepared spell at this level, take the Spell Shatter.
Now that we’ve hit Level 20, let’s go over the strengths of this build. First, you are an excellent damage dealer with a plethora of Lightning spells at your disposal with Elemental Adept allowing for more consistent damage, and Sculpt Spells letting you use your AOE options safely. You also have the benefit of your spells being long range, letting you fight from a safe distance, plus spells like Misty Step and Thunder Step to create distance. Lastly, you have spells like Charm Person letting you have others do your bidding.
For weaknesses, you are a bit squishy, sitting at around 142 average HP. While you do have a free +5 to AC thanks to Shield, and you have 16 AC with Mage Armor, you can still be whittled down quickly if you're not careful. You also have to be wary of Overchannel, since you can easily lose a lot of HP if you keep going for max damage. You’re also vulnerable to Strength and Charisma saves, meaning you can be easily thrown around and banished. Lastly, a lot of your spells have Dexterity Saving Throws, meaning enemies with Evasion can easily dodge out of the way.

I don’t have authorization to share this story, so some of the details will be missing. I’ve tried for the last quarter-century to convince the government to declassify the study files, but these days they don’t even acknowledge I was ever an employee.
My involvement began at twenty, way back in 1997 (I’ll spare you the math — I’m forty-seven). At the time, I was suffering from interminable lucid dreams. You might consider this a gift rather than a curse. Who doesn’t want to control their dream environments? Your subconscious grants you godhood for a brief snatch of time, when the membrane dividing the conscious and unconscious thins to a permeable boundary.
Only, mine extended far beyond the average length. Most experience a few minutes in which to indulge themselves, mostly spent flying, fornicating, or otherwise just meandering in awe. By the time I was a preteen, mine had sprawled across entire nights, subsuming every slumbering moment under lucidity.
You’d think a pubescent boy would know how to busy himself with such a sandbox, but after hour upon hour, night after night, month after month infused with these cosmic powers, I became despondent. Because of the curious time dilation that takes place within a lucid dream, most of my life took place in the lonely confines of my own subconscious. Waking life took on a surreal film and I struggled to engage.
Over the course of my teen years, I tried everything, from valerian root to psychotropics and transcendental meditation. Nothing stemmed the lucidity.
In my sophomore year of college, at the behest of my parents, I enrolled in a sleep study, which involved spending a night at a facility with about a thousand wires attached to my scalp and body. Not exactly the ideal circumstances for a good night’s rest, and yet I still managed to slip quickly into a state of deep sleep. I spent the hours in my false kingdom, populated with my own wild imaginings. A gilded cage for a feckless demigod.
I’ll never forget the look on the attendant’s face when he woke me up the following morning, as if I’d been revealed to him as an alien. Of course, he wasn’t permitted to share the results, so I waited two weeks before I could see the doctor. When I finally sat down with her, she very gently related to me that my brain waves exceeded her expertise — as well as every one of her colleagues.
However, my abnormal mind qualified me to participate in an advanced sleep study involving top scientists in the field. They sought twenty volunteers for their work. Without recourse and desperate to solve my sleep problem, I signed on the dotted line.
I had no idea what I’d just committed myself to.
The initial phase of the “study” involved a month at a desert facility in the remote New Mexican wilderness. I came only with a duffel full of clothes and a couple summer reads to finish before the fall semester. Cell phones were not widely adopted back in ‘97, to the facilitators’ benefit. Had their participants been in contact with the outside world, there surely would have been an information breach.
Despite the ominous location and the facility’s uninviting brutalism, it began with predictable and nonthreatening sleep observance. The uncomfortable helmet of wires was affixed to my scalp for the duration of my sleep, offering the stern researchers a glimpse at my atypical brain. In the mornings, they offered little more than half-hearted smiles and assurances that I was providing them “invaluable data.”
The changeup came during my second stay, when they presented the study subjects with the Pod. It was a hollow metal egg, essentially, that we were told to sleep in. Only, when I drifted off inside the confines of the Pod, my dreams began to mirror the outside world. Instead of visiting my imagined kingdom, I found myself hovering above the silver egg where my unconscious body lay. The shock of it startled me awake and it took the researchers the better part of an hour to calm me back down.
It was then that they finally revealed their intentions. The project sought to explore the connection between lucid dreamers and OBEs — out of body experiences. They believed that if they amplified certain brain waves within the lucid dreamer, they could induce such incorporeal mental projections. Despite the excitement of a new frontier for science and human experience, I rejected their aims, expressing my distrust and fear. In response to my hesitancy, they gently reminded me that I had signed certain documents which entitled them to my time. The tacit message, of course, was that I’d essentially become their prisoner.
Nevertheless, it behooved them to play nice. In exchange for my assistance, they promised they would also alleviate the dissociative effect of my lucid dreams with a drug cocktail they’d been assembling. Carrot and stick.
So we entered the Targeting Phase. Now that we had established OBEs as scientific fact with a series of basic tests that involved projectors reading notes in adjacent rooms, it was time for the next step. The researchers instructed us to stretch our abilities, reaching out into space. This was how I visited each of the planets in our solar system, learned of the submarine species beneath the ice sheets of Europa, the defunct alien outpost on Pluto, and, when my projection achieved intergalactic range, the advanced interstellar empires of the Andromeda galaxy.
But the researchers were conspicuously disinterested in these discoveries, logging them with the same dispassionate nonchalance as a report of a Jupiter storm.
During my third stay at the facility, the researchers held briefings on targets of interest — various points in distant space they wanted their projectors to visit. By then, we’d grown so accustomed to the practice of sending our consciousness at speeds vastly exceeding light into deep space that none of the volunteers questioned the mission.
At first, they sent us to various star clusters, dust clouds, black holes, interested whether we found alien presence in the vicinity. But I had the suspicion these were merely test runs to hone our accuracy in preparation for a more important target.
When they proposed a mission to the Boötes Void, there was an appreciable shift in tone. Despite performing all the same routine, I sensed a greater importance around this particular target.
I had my suspicions confirmed one night when the screams from the neighboring Pod severed my connection with NGC 1300, returning my perception to my body with an alarming jolt. I rose out of my egg to see a host of researchers crowding around the woman I knew only as Participant Twelve, since they barred us from sharing personally identifying information. She sat up in her Pod, eyes squeezed halfway out of her skull as though prodded from the inside. “It’s there!” she cried. “It’s there and it sees me! Oh God, it sees me!”
“What saw her?” I enquired. “Where did she go?”
None of the researchers paid me any attention, but P-14, scrubbing sleep from his eyes, answered, “Twelve was first to visit the supervoid.”
“God, he sees me and he won’t let go!”
Suddenly, her body went rigid, then convulsed. The researchers hauled her out of the Pod and carried her off to the medical wing. We never saw her again. Whenever we asked about her, the facilitators scolded us for seeking personal information. We weren’t trying to identify her. We just wanted to know if she was alright. If we were going to be alright.
They sent the projectors one at a time to the void, though each one came back having missed their target. That, of course, was a lie. They had intentionally misfired. We’d all heard what happened to P-12 and that scared the hell out of everyone.
When my turn came, the researchers warned they would punish me if I failed to accomplish my task. They knew I was more than capable, had shown myself to be a reliable projector for them, much to my chagrin.
As I dozed off, employing the tactics we had developed over the course of the program (which I will abstain from relaying to you, as it might engender an undesirable response from the study’s facilitators), I targeted a star system found on the border between the Ursa Major Supercluster and the Boötes Void.
As my consciousness materialized in the vacuum of space, I felt an ineffable sense of dread. As if experiencing the collective fear of a thousand vast, intergalactic empires crying out into oblivion. No, for oblivion. It’s difficult now to express, as when I hovered there on the verge of that immense nothing, I was joined with something, a consciousness much larger than my own. A sort of bubble enveloping the Boötes Void, a cognitive shield, a mental warning sign cautioning me not to trespass.
There was some communication that transpired between my own consciousness and that of the dome encasing the dark. In summary, I was told that within the void lurked an incomprehensible evil — or what I now translate as evil, because I think at the time the sensation of language transcended human invention, which lacked sufficient vocabulary to describe what occupied the Boötes Void.
There are seventy-three galaxies inside the supervoid, of which sixty have been discovered by earthbound astronomers. Each one of them is a facsimile of another, a replica. Among them is a perfect recreation of the Milky Way, complete with all its lifeforms. I was given this bit of information by the mind that enfolded the void. When asked for what purpose and by whom, it explained, “Its motives exceed your comprehension.”
At the conclusion of our dialogue, I peered into the darkness and sensed a great eye peeling open, holding me in its malicious gaze. Before I shrank away, I felt it reaching out for me, inviting me to stay.
I returned with enough material to spare me the researchers’ rebuke. They conducted three more expeditions to the Boötes Void, each using another participant, each ending as disastrously as Participant Twelve.
The last visitor returned mute, with black eyes. Within days, he lost all his hair, teeth, finger- and toenails. He refused to eat and spent his final hours using the keyboard he’d been given to communicate with to write a single line ad infinitum. “He is the prince who ate the king and all his subjects will invert themselves for all eternity.”
He died one night in his Pod when its wiring short circuited and plunged the entire facility into a fifteen-hour blackout.
The participants were sent home the following day and to my knowledge the facility closed down. The program dissolved and I received a meager compensation for my time as a projector. Two years later, after raising a stink, I received a prescription for a medication specially delivered to my local pharmacy that did finally put an end to my lucid dreams.
But in their place, I have nightmares, and lately they’ve gotten worse. Of a great eye’s malevolent gaze, watching, tirelessly watching. I have the terrible feeling that whatever we discovered in the Boötes Void wants now to ensnare us, and I fear it will, first in dreams, then for eternity. Which is why I’m telling you this now, because the government refuses to warn you. If you dream of a dark god reaching out for you, hide yourself.
Because he longs to invert you for all eternity.

Would like to know how the following violates the scary personal experience rule:
I don’t have authorization to share this story, so some of the details will be missing. I’ve tried for the last quarter-century to convince the government to declassify the study files, but these days they don’t even acknowledge I was ever an employee.
My involvement began at twenty, way back in 1997 (I’ll spare you the math — I’m forty-seven). At the time, I was suffering from interminable lucid dreams. You might consider this a gift rather than a curse. Who doesn’t want to control their dream environments? Your subconscious grants you godhood for a brief snatch of time, when the membrane dividing the conscious and unconscious thins to a permeable boundary.
Only, mine extended far beyond the average length. Most experience a few minutes in which to indulge themselves, mostly spent flying, fornicating, or otherwise just meandering in awe. By the time I was a preteen, mine had sprawled across entire nights, subsuming every slumbering moment under lucidity.
You’d think a pubescent boy would know how to busy himself with such a sandbox, but after hour upon hour, night after night, month after month infused with these cosmic powers, I became despondent. Because of the curious time dilation that takes place within a lucid dream, most of my life took place in the lonely confines of my own subconscious. Waking life took on a surreal film and I struggled to engage.
Over the course of my teen years, I tried everything, from valerian root to psychotropics and transcendental meditation. Nothing stemmed the lucidity.
In my sophomore year of college, at the behest of my parents, I enrolled in a sleep study, which involved spending a night at a facility with about a thousand wires attached to my scalp and body. Not exactly the ideal circumstances for a good night’s rest, and yet I still managed to slip quickly into a state of deep sleep. I spent the hours in my false kingdom, populated with my own wild imaginings. A gilded cage for a feckless demigod.
I’ll never forget the look on the attendant’s face when he woke me up the following morning, as if I’d been revealed to him as an alien. Of course, he wasn’t permitted to share the results, so I waited two weeks before I could see the doctor. When I finally sat down with her, she very gently related to me that my brain waves exceeded her expertise — as well as every one of her colleagues.
However, my abnormal mind qualified me to participate in an advanced sleep study involving top scientists in the field. They sought twenty volunteers for their work. Without recourse and desperate to solve my sleep problem, I signed on the dotted line.
I had no idea what I’d just committed myself to.
The initial phase of the “study” involved a month at a desert facility in the remote New Mexican wilderness. I came only with a duffel full of clothes and a couple summer reads to finish before the fall semester. Cell phones were not widely adopted back in ‘97, to the facilitators’ benefit. Had their participants been in contact with the outside world, there surely would have been an information breach.
Despite the ominous location and the facility’s uninviting brutalism, it began with predictable and nonthreatening sleep observance. The uncomfortable helmet of wires was affixed to my scalp for the duration of my sleep, offering the stern researchers a glimpse at my atypical brain. In the mornings, they offered little more than half-hearted smiles and assurances that I was providing them “invaluable data.”
The changeup came during my second stay, when they presented the study subjects with the Pod. It was a hollow metal egg, essentially, that we were told to sleep in. Only, when I drifted off inside the confines of the Pod, my dreams began to mirror the outside world. Instead of visiting my imagined kingdom, I found myself hovering above the silver egg where my unconscious body lay. The shock of it startled me awake and it took the researchers the better part of an hour to calm me back down.
It was then that they finally revealed their intentions. The project sought to explore the connection between lucid dreamers and OBEs — out of body experiences. They believed that if they amplified certain brain waves within the lucid dreamer, they could induce such incorporeal mental projections. Despite the excitement of a new frontier for science and human experience, I rejected their aims, expressing my distrust and fear. In response to my hesitancy, they gently reminded me that I had signed certain documents which entitled them to my time. The tacit message, of course, was that I’d essentially become their prisoner.
Nevertheless, it behooved them to play nice. In exchange for my assistance, they promised they would also alleviate the dissociative effect of my lucid dreams with a drug cocktail they’d been assembling. Carrot and stick.
So we entered the Targeting Phase. Now that we had established OBEs as scientific fact with a series of basic tests that involved projectors reading notes in adjacent rooms, it was time for the next step. The researchers instructed us to stretch our abilities, reaching out into space. This was how I visited each of the planets in our solar system, learned of the submarine species beneath the ice sheets of Europa, the defunct alien outpost on Pluto, and, when my projection achieved intergalactic range, the advanced interstellar empires of the Andromeda galaxy.
But the researchers were conspicuously disinterested in these discoveries, logging them with the same dispassionate nonchalance as a report of a Jupiter storm.
During my third stay at the facility, the researchers held briefings on targets of interest — various points in distant space they wanted their projectors to visit. By then, we’d grown so accustomed to the practice of sending our consciousness at speeds vastly exceeding light into deep space that none of the volunteers questioned the mission.
At first, they sent us to various star clusters, dust clouds, black holes, interested whether we found alien presence in the vicinity. But I had the suspicion these were merely test runs to hone our accuracy in preparation for a more important target.
When they proposed a mission to the Boötes Void, there was an appreciable shift in tone. Despite performing all the same routine, I sensed a greater importance around this particular target.
I had my suspicions confirmed one night when the screams from the neighboring Pod severed my connection with NGC 1300, returning my perception to my body with an alarming jolt. I rose out of my egg to see a host of researchers crowding around the woman I knew only as Participant Twelve, since they barred us from sharing personally identifying information. She sat up in her Pod, eyes squeezed halfway out of her skull as though prodded from the inside. “It’s there!” she cried. “It’s there and it sees me! Oh God, it sees me!”
“What saw her?” I enquired. “Where did she go?”
None of the researchers paid me any attention, but P-14, scrubbing sleep from his eyes, answered, “Twelve was first to visit the supervoid.”
“God, he sees me and he won’t let go!”
Suddenly, her body went rigid, then convulsed. The researchers hauled her out of the Pod and carried her off to the medical wing. We never saw her again. Whenever we asked about her, the facilitators scolded us for seeking personal information. We weren’t trying to identify her. We just wanted to know if she was alright. If we were going to be alright.
They sent the projectors one at a time to the void, though each one came back having missed their target. That, of course, was a lie. They had intentionally misfired. We’d all heard what happened to P-12 and that scared the hell out of everyone.
When my turn came, the researchers warned they would punish me if I failed to accomplish my task. They knew I was more than capable, had shown myself to be a reliable projector for them, much to my chagrin.
As I dozed off, employing the tactics we had developed over the course of the program (which I will abstain from relaying to you, as it might engender an undesirable response from the study’s facilitators), I targeted a star system found on the border between the Ursa Major Supercluster and the Boötes Void.
As my consciousness materialized in the vacuum of space, I felt an ineffable sense of dread. As if experiencing the collective fear of a thousand vast, intergalactic empires crying out into oblivion. No, for oblivion. It’s difficult now to express, as when I hovered there on the verge of that immense nothing, I was joined with something, a consciousness much larger than my own. A sort of bubble enveloping the Boötes Void, a cognitive shield, a mental warning sign cautioning me not to trespass.
There was some communication that transpired between my own consciousness and that of the dome encasing the dark. In summary, I was told that within the void lurked an incomprehensible evil — or what I now translate as evil, because I think at the time the sensation of language transcended human invention, which lacked sufficient vocabulary to describe what occupied the Boötes Void.
There are seventy-three galaxies inside the supervoid, of which sixty have been discovered by earthbound astronomers. Each one of them is a facsimile of another, a replica. Among them is a perfect recreation of the Milky Way, complete with all its lifeforms. I was given this bit of information by the mind that enfolded the void. When asked for what purpose and by whom, it explained, “Its motives exceed your comprehension.”
At the conclusion of our dialogue, I peered into the darkness and sensed a great eye peeling open, holding me in its malicious gaze. Before I shrank away, I felt it reaching out for me, inviting me to stay.
I returned with enough material to spare me the researchers’ rebuke. They conducted three more expeditions to the Boötes Void, each using another participant, each ending as disastrously as Participant Twelve.
The last visitor returned mute, with black eyes. Within days, he lost all his hair, teeth, finger- and toenails. He refused to eat and spent his final hours using the keyboard he’d been given to communicate with to write a single line ad infinitum. “He is the prince who ate the king and all his subjects will invert themselves for all eternity.”
He died one night in his Pod when its wiring short circuited and plunged the entire facility into a fifteen-hour blackout.
The participants were sent home the following day and to my knowledge the facility closed down. The program dissolved and I received a meager compensation for my time as a projector. Two years later, after raising a stink, I received a prescription for a medication specially delivered to my local pharmacy that did finally put an end to my lucid dreams.
But in their place, I have nightmares, and lately they’ve gotten worse. Of a great eye’s malevolent gaze, watching, tirelessly watching. I have the terrible feeling that whatever we discovered in the Boötes Void wants now to ensnare us, and I fear it will, first in dreams, then for eternity. Which is why I’m telling you this now, because the government refuses to warn you. If you dream of a dark god reaching out for you, hide yourself.
Because he longs to invert you for all eternity.

Hi guys so for context as i bring this situation up, i also would like to know what you overall consider appropriate ways on communicating on insta with strangers we follow and like/heart content of? Sometimes i might respond to a story with a friendly thing like “love yr artwork” or “great photo” nothing much to really look into, and when some message me saying “thx for the follow, cool profile” i pretty much do the same, conversation doesnt usually continue from there, i assume cause, well…we are strangers, its just politeness, though as i dont have many friends amd defo would love to chat more with people on insta i have stuff in common with, i completely understand the awkwardness and fear of it, and with this situation we have perhaps that example from his guys straight up ness, so.. we are both gay men, and i follow a bunch of travel and art profiles/ pages on instaggram cause its what im into, thats what public profiles on the platform are for, right?, and so this one account i started following ,the guy followed me back and messaged me the following,
HIM: “hey, How are you? Nice Profile 😘”
ME: “Hey, i'm gd thx, hbu? and same with yrs :) I especially dig the green eye imagery 👁️💚”
HIM: “Hey, thank you! I’m glad you like my eye color so much 😍 I’m doing great too. You have a really interesting profile. I really like it and I would like to find out more about you: where are you from and what’s your name? 😘
And how did you find out about my profile?”
Ok so…i dont really know how to fully interpret his kissing emojis, and i dont wanna seem rude, im all for a short regular friendly chat but , i dunno isnt it a lil, i dunno? …Quick to ask straight away my name and where im from? Like, i could be overanalysing this but, i thanked him already , we are from diff countries, he seems a legit human being, not a scam bot or that, he has lots of photos of himself and has a few thousand followers but, i just wanna respond nicely, without giving too much of my private life/details out there, advice plz? His photography is awesome, hence me following, and he has been nice from these messages, so how should i best respond to him. Cause ok, say i give my name and country, will he then ask for job title, if i am single, city i live in etc? I don't even know him, i dont love his green eyes lol, it was a post of a really close up shot of his eye which happens to be green, and i was being polite towards that image in my mind, not caring for the color itself, the “how did you find out about my profile” i am obviously fine with answering, it was merecely on homepage a travel pic of his appeared like thousands of others… did i do anything wrong? And going forward how should one socialize with people on insta without revealing too much or if i do then for whatever reason dont wanna chat more

Hi guys so for context as i bring this situation up, i also would like to know what you overall consider appropriate ways on communicating on insta with strangers we follow and like/heart content of? Sometimes i might respond to a story with a friendly thing like “love yr artwork” or “great photo” nothing much to really look into, and when some message me saying “thx for the follow, cool profile” i pretty much do the same, conversation doesnt usually continue from there, i assume cause, well…we are strangers, its just politeness, though as i dont have many friends amd defo would love to chat more with people on insta i have stuff in common with, i completely understand the awkwardness and fear of it, and with this situation we have perhaps that example from his guys straight up ness, so.. we are both gay men, and i follow a bunch of travel and art profiles/ pages on instaggram cause its what im into, thats what public profiles on the platform are for, right?, and so this one account i started following ,the guy followed me back and messaged me the following,
HIM: “hey, How are you? Nice Profile 😘”
ME: “Hey, i'm gd thx, hbu? and same with yrs :) I especially dig the green eye imagery 👁️💚”
HIM: “Hey, thank you! I’m glad you like my eye color so much 😍 I’m doing great too. You have a really interesting profile. I really like it and I would like to find out more about you: where are you from and what’s your name? 😘
And how did you find out about my profile?”
Ok so…i dont really know how to fully interpret his kissing emojis, and i dont wanna seem rude, im all for a short regular friendly chat but , i dunno isnt it a lil, i dunno? …Quick to ask straight away my name and where im from? Like, i could be overanalysing this but, i thanked him already , we are from diff countries, he seems a legit human being, not a scam bot or that, he has lots of photos of himself and has a few thousand followers but, i just wanna respond nicely, without giving too much of my private life/details out there, advice plz? His photography is awesome, hence me following, and he has been nice from these messages, so how should i best respond to him. Cause ok, say i give my name and country, will he then ask for job title, if i am single, city i live in etc? I don't even know him, i dont love his green eyes lol, it was a post of a really close up shot of his eye which happens to be green, and i was being polite towards that image in my mind, not caring for the color itself, the “how did you find out about my profile” i am obviously fine with answering, it was merecely on homepage a travel pic of his appeared like thousands of others… did i do anything wrong? And going forward how should one socialize with people on insta without revealing too much or if i do then for whatever reason dont wanna chat more…

Hey guys, this might be a long one. TW for the "traumatized" portion of the question (non graphic discussion of SA, and SH)
So, just some background of my experience with the asexual community: I literally know more asexual people than allosexual people. My best friend is included in that. All the allosexual people I know are shy and ashamed about sex, so basically I just grew up with no exposure to sexual things beyond basic education and what I could stumble upon online on my own.
And important context for who I am: I'm autistic, 20 years old, and FTM transgender- I came out at 12 and got on testosterone very early at 13. I am also a sexual abuse victim, but not as severe as it could've been. I was also homeschooled with helicopter parents. I am an atheist with no concept of sex being a "sin" specifically though.
So growing up I was often pretty sure of being allo, though this isn't my first time questioning it. The reason I was so confident is that losing my virginity was like, the only thing on my bucket list. My primary exposure to the topic was reading smutty gay fanfiction which made it seem very good lol. Since I felt distinctly averse to sex involving women, but men appealed to me, I thought I experienced sexual attraction to men and was gay, but I'll get back to that later.
I also had/have fixations on fictional men which I always assumed were (sexually motivated) crushes.
However, I always hated being allo. I wanted to fit in with my asexual peers, and I was ashamed and disgusted by partaking in this taboo and inappropriate culture of sexuality. It was so bad that in my mid-teens, I attempted to self-administer conversion therapy to become ace. Any time I thought about anything sexual I'd hurt myself. I had to earn the right to eat by not being sexual, if I didn't have a sexual thought for long enough I'd reward myself with a treat, etc. I believe some of the extremism is because this started while I was being sexually abused so I "realized" sexual behaviours can only hurt me.
I figured it just didn't work after a while though and gave up. It took a few years for the idea of sex to stop making me so nauseous though.
Then I got a total hysterectomy including removing ovaries. An important note about my transition is that testosterone failed to reduce my ovary function so I always had female hormone levels, just plus extra testosterone. So basically I get neutered and all my sex hormones basically just disappear, even my testosterone is extremely reduced.
My sex drive is completely destroyed and I finally have time to reflect without the desire for physical stimulation confusing issues. Remember those fictional crushes? I'm not sure they're sexual. I always just imagine intense platonic affection. Sometimes I focus on seemingly sexually charged regions, like I go wild for a man with a slimmer waist than hips, but my actual thoughts are just "Oh my godddd my short arms (I'm 4'11) could get so much leverage for the BEST HUG". This also only applies to animated characters. I did have a slight fixation on real men in my teens but I made irl male friends for the first time at 19 and it totally disappeared after getting... Well, what I fantasized about, which is just stuff like hugs. If I could ACTUALLY hug these cartoon characters I think I'd be perfectly satisfied lol
But, due to my trauma, I don't know if maybe I'm just too terrified to let it get sexual, so that energy gets channeled into particularly intense platonic affection cravings? I really don't know
Oh and as for the dysphoria, whenever I actually try to imagine myself having sex I just end up having a breakdown over my AFAB anatomy. The idea of letting anyone other than a medical professional see me undressed horrifies me. The idea of letting anyone touch me ~down there~ disgusts me. I'm terrified I'd be how someone realizes they're not attracted to AFAB anatomy. Or worse- that's ALL they're into, and I can't even satisfy it because I wouldn't be able to do it like a woman. Which, yeah, I know I'd never physically enjoy it due to health issues. The furthest I can get with imagining is... Tbh imagine anything where the clothes stay on I guess, and even then I lost any interest I used to have. So, basically tldr on a practical level I CAN'T have sex so maybe I'm sparing myself the pain of unfulfilled attraction by not acknowledging it???
I also think dysphoria could be the driving force behind why I thought I was gay. Basically fixating on male bodies as appealing because I want to look like that, and being dissuaded by female bodies because I hated already looking like that. The more I transition, the more evenly I view male and female anatomy, which is why I wonder if dysphoria is driving my "preference".
This post is a mess but I swear I'm almost done. I told myself during all this post surgery questioning that I can't be sure til my hormones are fixed. Well they are now, everything's in a male range, and... Yeah, still not sure. My old drive is still gone but I'm back to occasional... Ahem, solo activities. And yeah everything I thought was sexual attraction (other than the situation with wanting to hug characters) is still gone. The libido I do have seems to focus on the IDEA of sex rather than on actual people.
So, uh. Yeah, does this sound ace or just traumatized and stuff?? Happy to answer questions, there's more I wanted to say but didn't know how to fit it in.

Good marrow, bonelickers!
Early last month I announced the 19th Speedlang Challenge. I broke the mould with it a little bit by confining how the ambitious among you would actually put together your speedlangs rather than defining a number of requisite features. The bulk of this process had speedlangers root all their creative linguistic decisions in a small set of natlangs, and these natlangs specifically had to be native to areas representative of a chosen clade of organisms. To ensure the clade of organisms was well represented, I also asked for a number of lexical items and conceptual metaphors that had to be specifically inspired by the clade in some way, as well as some aspect of the phonology.
Like last time, I'll provide my thoughts about what I think makes each submission special and the features I particularly like. Afterwards, I'll quickly review what was inspired by the chosen clade, in case that has any bearing on what you kind readers might like to check out, and give out brownie points for any easter eggs I spot, whether intended or not.
Overall this has been a deeply creative round of submissions and I learned a lot, both things I set out to achieve when I thought up this particular challenge. I hope it was just as rewarding a challenge for everyone who submitted as it was for me getting to read up on each entry, and I hope it will be the same for anyone who reads up on them, too.
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Seba Bàsa by Miacomet

Gyps (griffon vultures); Chamic, Bengali, Santali & Mundari
With a name including the element Bàsa, I knew this had to have Indic flavours of one sort of another, and indeed it does! This conlang is largely Austronesian in origin with sound changes from Old Cham, but it has a lot of Bengali influence and is well situated in the Indian subcontinent, and I greatly appreciate the nod to Parsi funerary traditions as an inspiring reason for choosing Gyps. Amusingly, this conlang has many features that fit right into the inspiration for the last speedlang challenge, which I find just delightful, with some split-S marking, dative enclitics, and grammaticalised constructions for simultaneous and sequential events, and light pronouns. Therebeside, the historical clipping, CVK syllable structure, postpositional pronouns, and aspectual auxiliaries speak to sensibilities in my own conlanging, and the dissimilation processes in some of the affixes are a nice touch, too. I'm also a big of fan just how the split-S system is implicated in some verbal polysemy, and I really like how the few voices seem kinda muddy but have clear use cases. What really sets this conlang apart, though, is the consideration paid to the effect of prestige languages. Some phonemes are restricted to loanwords from the local prestige language, and one is even only confined to prestige language-educated speakers, which causes some allophony other speakers don't have. Loaning processes are detailed, too, and the number and classifier system also draws nice lines along the prestige axis with a total of 3 parallel number systems, spread out across both divisions of native vs. loaned classifiers, which themselves have specific semantic domains they each classify, and across divisions of prestige language education. The story at the end, too, is a real treat: it's a translation of Hindu vulture myth, perfect for this project.
Seba Bàsa's Gyps-inspired phonology includes the development of creaky voice from the loss of glottals, glottalised consonants, and final /s/ in Old Cham to recall vulture cries. It's inspired lexicon includes some fun polysemy of vulture behaviours like circling = waiting or sheepling = looking for something desirable. I'm also a big fan of kite (the bird) = messy eater. It's inspired conceptual metaphors include dividing the beginning, middle, and end of a process into eating skin, meat, and bones, respectively, and equating head height/position with one's health or comfortableness as inspired by how vultures droop their heads when ill.
We're starting off string with double brownie points for meeting both the space epic easter egg by calquing the Ewokese word for 'outsider' and the empress easter egg by referring to Buddha's Birthday!
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Kogëdek by u/Porpoise_God

Setonix & Macropodidae more generally (quokkas + kangaroos & wallabies); Noongar, Pitjantjatjara, Wajarri, Guugu Yimithirr, Miriwoong, Guniyandi, Dyirbal, Mbabaram
Aside from the one splant you'll soon see, I think this entry gets the prize for the most unique chosen clade by being A) not a bird, and B) not an ungulate. As great as birds are, quokkas are pretty amazing, too. I'm not too familiar with Pama-Nyungan languages but this did a good job of affecting some of the features I've come to know them for, including but not limited to the phonological natural classes of peripheral vs. coronal, coverb constructions, and the word for 'dog' bearing a striking similarity to English. Split-ergativity features across the noun-pronoun axis, and there's a unique set of duals that specifically refer to sibling, parent-child, or spousal pairs of individuals that I might have to steal for myself. The case marking includes a lative case I haven't seen before, and implicates the comitative in a neat way in comparative constructions. I also appreciate the what-looks-to-be resumptive subject pronominal proclitics; very speedlang 18, and a great example of a fossilised mistake, which I always love to see! The verbs also feature multiple conjugations, and the imperative is implicated for its tenselessness in certain subclause constructions, which has a certain type of quirkiness I'd expect out of some past speedlang challenges.
Kogëdek's Setonix-inspired phonology included a /ç/ in the proto-lang, which bears some resemblance to quokka calls, although it was lost to /s/ and /x/ in the modern language. The inspired lexical entries include roots for different kinds of macropods and styles of jumping, and conflates jumping with breathing. Some of the idioms include "pouch-baby" for pejorative "mama's-boy" and using kangaroo badassery as a metaphor for all sorts of less than ideal situations.
Brownie points for a particularly insidious word-form for 'father'.
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Yatakang by Lichen

Bubalus (water buffaloes); Hindi-Urdu, Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, Burmese, Malay
This one's a little rough around the edges, but it's a good foundation for a nice mix of both SEA features, like the isolating morphosyntax, and unique features, like the class agreement system. It's also got clicks limited to avoidance speech! Diachronics from a proto-lang where considered, and I really like how the typologies of the inspo langs were used as targets for the sound changes. I'll have to keep this workflow in mind! Some of the sound changes include expanding the number of stop contrasts to match the average number of contrasts, or eroding the number of vowels to match that of Malay. Phonotactics were carefully considered with full structures for both mono- and disyllables as well as bare roots vs. compound stems. Grammatically, morphology is mostly limited to a host of different reduplication patterns, which in itself is something I'd really like to see more of! Where this really shines, though, is with its agreement system: nouns are sorted into a 3x2 matrix of 6 classes, portmanteau agreement particles mark for the class of both the subject and the object, the system implicates the social hierarchies common to many SEA languages, and the position of the particle marks modality. Incredibly inspired to pack all that into a set of maybe 36 particles, if you ask me, never mind how it helps to disambiguate fluid word class and how it might be implicated in future plans for Indonesian object-oriented verbs. I'm also a fan of how the temporal question verb patterns like an agreement particle to mark for tense by co-opting the modality marking. We also get some prosody-syntax interfacing with different pitch contours at clause boundaries operating as different sorts of conjunctions.
Yatakang's Bubalus-inspired phonology includes a combination of creaky voice and syllabic nasals to affect a mooing phonaesthetic. The lexical entries exhibit some nice semantic drift from water buffalo activities and behaviours towards more human behaviours, and the planned phrase of hat-hand stroke fur for "suddenly realise a problem, and then pretend there isn't one" just feels exactly like an observation a water buffalo would make observing its human, which I really like. The inspired metaphors are also simple and straightforward, likening roundedness to goodness or knowledge to food, which makes for some brilliantly idiomatic language like "I ate the book" to mean "I read and understood the contents of the book."
Extra brownie points for including both halves of the space epic easter egg to placate both sides of nerddom; the term 'tax-man' is everything it ought to be.
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Kurikiri by Jjommoma

Casuariiformes (cassowaries and emus); Dhuwal, Motu, Tok Pisin
Compared to most other entries, this one's very short and sweet with some Australian sounds and some head-final Papuan grammar (however loose a description that is). That being said, Kurikiri is very inventive in being partially signed with much of its grammatical marking encoded by actions done with the foot, including number, case, definiteness, and some basic TAM.
Aside from the cassowary foot action grammar markers, as well as some lexical entries there-related, Kurikiri also equates flightedness to being ostentatious, disdaining flighted birds out of envy, which I think is a fun thought process for these terrestrially confined birds. There's also some neat phonosemantics in the taboo word for predator being especially difficult to pronounce.
This wasn't the intent, but I'm giving some space epic brownie points for the foot grammar if for nothing else than that it reminds me of Paul Frommer's Thark from John Carter and its telepathic grammatical and verbal lexical expression.
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Whaynisiday by u/Fimii

Spheniscidae (penguins); Māori, Xhosa, Quechua
What do you do when the entire population of penguins achieves human-like levels of intelligence after some gene splicing and they start calling for a language to call their own? Why, you do exactly what the prompt of this challenge asks for and combine the languages native to the homeland of the blue, african, and humboldt penguins! The write up for this conlang does a great job of pointing out what features are from which language exactly, and plays a fun balancing game between some of the phonological and grammatical extremes in its sourcelangs. In so doing it has a few quirks that really tickle the intersection of my linguist and conlanger venn diagram, specifically the presence of what I'd have to interpret as onset morae, as well as semantic noun class marked solely through agreement (which is very Varamm, so I'm not at all biased towards it). There's a handful of fun, rare cases, and the simulative mood fits right into the inspirations for the last challenge to create some vaguely Tupian simultaneous actions. There's a bunch more little grammatical bits that are fun, but impressionistically I appreciate how the more isolating grammar of Māori was incorporated into the synthetic common ground of the other 2 sourcelangs.
Whaynisiday's Spheniscidae-inspired phonology includes a couple syringeal sounds to complement the otherwise human capable inventory. The highlighted lexical entries pay special attention to how penguins locomote with basic stems for different kinds of movement options both on land and in the water, as well as a split in breathing for whether its on land at rest or in the water being active. The conceptual metaphors include a great model of time with the past on land and the future in the inky depths, and the very adorable notion that safety = community, and so naturally a farewell would be a wish of friendship.
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Poro by The Inky Baroness

Rangifer tarandus subsp. (domestic reindeers); Proto-Samic, Komi-Zyrian, Tundra Nenets, Chukchi
Where do I even begin with this one? I was excited to read this one when I first received it, but it was even better than I could have hoped when I got round to reading it! Although, not for any linguistic reasons: the first half of the doc reminds me of Gillian Teft's Anthro-Vision as an anthropological account of reindeers written by a fictitious Finnish researcher rather than any sort of sketched reference grammar, which I love dearly. The latter half, meanwhile, goes into great detail about what went into the first half, including all sorts of motivations or reasons for the decisions made. Some diachrony is detailed, as well as the effects of language contact rooted in actual historical events relevant to the chosen sourcelangs, which is just great to see. I loved the ways in which each of the different sourcelangs were all represented in the final product with it being Samic in origin but including some phonological and grammatical borrowings from Komi and Nenets like the lack of consonant gradation, the verb-final syntax, some vowel changes, and a fantastic predestinative affix that interacts with the conceptualisation of time in some neat ways. All the while, care was taken to do a wealth of research at every step in the process with a fairly extensive bibliography. Hoof clicks all around for this one!
Poro's Rangifer-inspired phonology includes a deer bellow as some sort of epiglottal obstruent that actually patterns with the Nenets glottal stop, as well as some other approximated reindeer vocalisations including what I presume to be grunts or chuffs, both oral and nasal. Care was also taken to think about what a fully reindeerised descendant of Proto-Samic would look like as accords with the included etiological myth for reindeers and reindeer husbandry, but this was well beyond the scope of a speedlang. The lexical entries include all sorts of terms for reindeer physiology, including but not limited to antler velvet, different types of vocalisations, and hoof clicks. These lexical entries feature in some wonderful idioms using antlers to describe social hierarchy, useful- or uselessness, and glibness or malicious intent, as well as an equivalent to "when pigs fly": "to catch a bird between one's hooves."
Extra brownie points both for the nominal hierarchical exaltation of mothers baked into reindeer culture and inclusion of an anti-imperialist message in promoting the research of the under-represented and often stigmatised language and culture of traditionally reindeer herding peoples. Also do keep an eye out for Dr. Dolittle easter eggs: Inky will reward you handsomely if you can spot one!
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Kiwi by NerpNerp

Apteryx & Novaeratitae more broadly (kiwis + cassowaries & emus); English, Māori, Traditional Tiwi, Miriwoong, Bardi
Given the number of bird entries with Indo-Pacific flavours, I'm almost half surprised this was the only kiwi entry: they're such good birbs! As might be expected, this conlang endeared itself to me just as its namesake does. The phonology has all sorts of trills and rhotics, and limits itself to high vowels; it's also got some neat phrase level prosody to mark different sorts of modal information and focus, even including an intrusive glottal stop at the sentence level. Noun incorporation is varied and detailed, and can create some polysynthetic constructions as a consequence of just how exactly the rest of the otherwise fairly analytic morphosyntax works. I'm a particular fan of the deictic categories including 7 different degrees of deixis characterising both distance and motion, and I'm also a fan of of the grammaticalised time of day. Heximal numbers and coverb constructions also feature. There's even a kiwi-capable featural alphabet that each of the examples show off!
Kiwi's Apteryx-inspired phonology includes the trills and high vowels being inspired by kiwi calls and I imagine a little of their anatomy with those long, thin bills. The inspired lexemes include specific types of smells humans can't detect at the expense of any colour terms, reflecting kiwis nocturnal, smell-based lifestyles. The idioms for "a long time ago" or "once upon a time" is absolutely delightful--"when kiwis flew"--and the grammaticalised time of day subdivides the night but not the day, as might be expected from a nocturnal beastie.
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Asamiin by Christian Evans

Asamina (pawpaws); Ottawa, Unami, Tuscarora, Mikasuki, Chitimacha, Timucua
The speech that nourishes! And a splant, too, no less; I was hoping for at least one of these! This one's made all the better by delving into some Eastern North American languages and I really like the flavours this lends itself to. Syncope is abound with all sorts of morphological obfuscation through detailed phonological processes, and animacy plays a key role in the verb complex. Care was also taken to find a phonological common ground between all the sourcelangs, which made for a really interesting set of vowels with a basic 6 vowel inventory, but with 2 nasal vowels that can surface as vocalic allophones to the nasal consonants. The grammar is fairly straightforward but has a few quirks that I really appreciate, including but not limited to the fluid O placement to make for some syntactic focusing strategies I so adore and the optional, enclitic case marking narrowed by various postpositions used as another, separate means of focus. Overall just really well laid out and the formatting is really cute, something I've now come to expect after Yumpịku last time.
Asamiin's Asamina-inspired phonology includes a pharyngeal approximant to recall the really long taproot pawpaws grow, as well as regressive sibilant harmony to recall the mimicry the flowers employ to attract pollinators, both of which are some really inspired departures from the sourcelangs.
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Ekaangäq by Atyx

Haliaeetus pelagicus (Steller's sea eagle); Chukchi, Alyutor, Koryak, Itelmen, Ainu, Nivkh, Evenki, Uilta
A bird that escapes any Indo-Pacific flavours? Well I'll be! Instead of South Pacific this one gives all sorts of North Pacific energy being spoken by a population of eaglefolk native to the Sea of Okhotsk and representative of the languages spoken along its coasts. The Ainu flavours are especially strong with both an Ainu-based consonant inventory and a kana orthography, among others. The vowels also show some interesting lopsidedness with 2 creaky vowels complementing an otherwise fairly straightforward 6 vowel system that feature in a front-back vowel harmony system, though I'm a real fan of the sandhi rules at word boundaries that cause all sorts of fun consonant alternations. Word stress is also detailed and has funky placement rules at odds with my understanding of theoretical prosodic processes! Grammatically there's a few quirks that really stand out to me and tickle my curiosity: a dual distinction on the nouns but not in the pronouns, and polypersonal agreement in a transitive alignment system, the only departure from direct, accusative, and/or ergative alignment in this round of submissions. I also appreciate some of the syncretism in the pronouns!
Ekkangäq's Haliaeetus-inspired phonology includes entirely unrounded vowels and a lack of any labial consonants to reflect the speakers have beaks, as well as the 2 creaky vowels as rooted in their physiology, a common theme for this challenge. The lexicon includes some distinctions between diving and eating as it applies to different kinds of prey. The conceptual metaphor, though, I think is really great equating the passage of time with ice: an iceberg calving off a glacier is birth, melting is ageing, and melting all away is dying. Great stuff!
I think I actually have to give negative brownie points for this one: as much as I appreciate 3 separate orthographies (Kana, Cyrillic, Latin) for some historicity, they are all at odds with the anti-imperialism the brownie criterion requires, and there's no girl power to balance it out.
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Taqồpaq by accruenewblue

Gallus (jungefowl); Hindi-Urdu, Burmese, Thai, Punjabi, Tamil, Indonesian
I'm a little surprised this is, I think, the only truly tonal submission despite all the SEA birds, and it's less synthetic than most in this round of submissions. In either case, this one does a great job of illustrating some tonogenesis and some recent and still very transparent synthetic developments from a formerly isolating language. The tones are simple registers, but they interact with morae in some neat rightwards reassigning sandhi patterns, and they complement a system of 12 vowels in a 3x2x2 matrix of height, frontedness, and roundedness. There's even some vocalic nasal allophones (which is twice now in this round of submissions), and labial consonant-vowel harmony to boot! Grammatically I greatly appreciate all the call-outs for similarities to natural languages, and I wanna shout-out the use of a positive tag question instead of negative. The numbers have this funky sexagesimal base with an octal sub-base and remnants of an old decimal sub-base, which recalls some of the duodecimal remnants in the otherwise decimal system of many European languages.
Taqồpaq's Gallus-inspired phonology includes the tonal system being described as recalling a rooster's crow. The lexicon includes roots for all things chicken, including using the word for 'wattle' as a classifier for hanging things, which is so delightfully what I wanted out of this challenge. The more idiomatic language makes use of chicken behaviours as descriptors: dust baths are metaphors for something useful but not everyone's cup of tea, and continuing to brood after the chicks have hatched is a metaphor for doing a good thing so long it has negative consequences.
Extra brownie points for exalting queen Trưng, first queen of Vietnam, and a nationalist hero who fought against Chinese imperialism. Double whammy right there!
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Ngālin by u/borago_officinalis

Aptenodytes forsteri (emperor penguins); Awabakal, Māori, Norwegian
We already had a penguin splang but this one's a nice twist by focusing on the territorial claims of Antarctica rather than the ranges of more temperate inclined penguins where there are actually native languages. This does a great job of shirking the indigenous implication in the language selection step of the challenge (although I'm very glad to see no English or Spanish), so there's a really neat mix of isolating Māori particles with a fusional Germanic verbal system, and I was able to easily pick up on both reading through the doc. The verb system actually pleases me greatly with a strong/weak contrast and a V2 word order wherein the strong verbs mark tense through stem change and the weak verbs with a tense auxiliary, all whilst maintaining a very Polynesian aesthetic despite the very Germanic number of vowels. The Māori possessive system is also really fun, I think. I can't speak to the Awabakal influences, but I was able to pick up on the one, tiny Mapudungan influence of tone tag particles before it was even explicitly mentioned! Not sure where the negation system came from, but it implicates the weak verbs in a way I so adore. Really sweet, despite the fun grim facts about emperor penguin hatchlings, and I found this one just darling. The myth at the end about how penguins lost their ability to fly is also real treat and is a perfect fit for the project.
Ngālin doesn't have any A. forsteri-inspired phonology, but it makes up for it with the inspired lexicon and idiomatic language. The emperor penguin breeding cycle is detailed with translations for all the important terms along the way, including but not limited to the ritual of transferring egg from mother to father and "motherless" to refer to a newborn, whose mother hasn't yet returned from the sea. There's some great, everyday idioms elided down from full phrases for greeting and consoling another penguin being "which way?" and "next year", and conceptualising a long distance as specifically the distance from colony to see is a nice touch. I also appreciate how the relationship between creche-mates is more important than that between (half-)siblings.
I have to give queen exaltation brownie points purely for the one illustrative example of āmā o pipa "hatchling's mum" grammatically indicating the senior authority of an empress penguin.
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Honourable Mention

I've been kept somewhat apprised of a Urile (North Pacific cormorants) splang by u/PastTheStarryVoids. It's still very much in the works, but it sounds funky with both some polysynthetic flavours, no doubt inspired by some PNW languages, I imagine, and some formorant (cormorant formant) analysis! Keep an eye out for it, I'm sure it'll grace the sub in due time!
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And that's everything I've seen in the time I put together this showcase. I know there were a few among you all who felt inspired but couldn't put anything together during the course of this challenge. I remember mention of a banana and a tree kangaroo splang on the announcement post. If anyone ever uses the challenge to inspire a future project of theirs, please keep me apprised! I'd be interested in seeing them if for nothing else than to see some more projects outside of South Asian and Oceanian birds, as great as those birbs are. I can't believe I didn't see a single monotreme or non-ungulate eutherian, and that there weren't any non-avian reptiles or anything fully aquatic! And no fossil clades, too, for that matter! I'm positive there are the makings of some really funky splangs if the relevant modern continental and climactic boundaries didn't yet exist.
In any case, I hope all parties involved had a great deal of fun through the course of this challenge! I know I did! Until next marrow, bonelickers!

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This weekly thread was set-up following the concern raised by members, summary of reasons mentioned in this comment.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS:

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I’m a non traditional student and I’m considering taking one course (Human Anatomy and Physiology I and II ) through ed2go. It’s offered through University of North Georgia. Has anyone taken a course through ed2go?

First_Previous_
Royal Road_wiki
Worked a bit on the wiki, still a work in progress.
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While Orth tried to get this thing with the crystal right, Clare scooted closer to Mor.
"Mor? I wanted to know something from Snow, but she said I needed to ask you yourself..." Clare began shyly.
Mor looked questioningly at Snow, who just shrugged and stayed silent. This was not her fight.
"What do you need, Clare?" he asked the bashful girl.
"I don't... How should I... You know..." she stumbled onward.
The human let out a whistle °Lucky guy! There's a confession incoming.°
°A confession?° Mor asked, confused.
°Yes! She wants to confess her love for you!° The human answered, and Mor was suddenly painfully aware of Clares'Clares' fidgeting and a nervous crack in her voice.
°What should I do?!° Mor asked slightly panicing.
°Well, do you want to accept it or deny it?° The human asked.
°I don´t know!° Mor answered.
°Oook, so neutral to positive. Then just to the following...° The human explained, and Mor followed their guidance.
Mor looked directly at Clare, grabbing her fidgeting hands, and said in his most soothing voice, "Calm down. Just tell me. What's the worst that could happen?"
Clare looked up, surprised. Orth stopped with his crystal attempts and instead listened in as subtly as possible. Snow just put a hand over her mouth, seemingly in shock. Finally, Clare took a deep breath and went on.
"Snow told me you know how to get a better body, and I wanted to know how!" Clare blurted out, and Orth's interest peaked.
If this was really a possibility, it was too interesting to ignore. Mor was stunned into a surprised silence, his mind processing Clare's words.
°Ups, guess I interpreted that wrong.° The human said.
°What's wrong with you? Do go off saying shit like that if you are not entirely sure!° Mor complained.
°Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I really thought I was right.° The human apologized.
°Why do you always try to get me to be nice to girls?° Mor asked further.
°Firstly, it costs nothing to be friendly and makes you seem likable. Secondly, it's not just girls. It's just that, apart from Orth, no other boy was nice to us, so no reason to be nice to them. Third, don't you want a partner in the future? Being nice now to good girls will make it easier later.° The human explained.
°You know, that's not possible anymore... I used my once-in-a-lifetime chance and got you for it.° Mor said.
°You don't know that you didn't try it again, and even IF. Maybe there is a way for me to go to the afterlife, be reborn, or whatever. When you don't need my help anymore, we can look for something like this, and maybe you can get a girl then!° The human went on.
°So you are just looking out for me?° Mor asked.
°Indeed. You never know what the future brings, so you better be prepared for anything.° The human said.
°Well, thank you, but please tone it down a bit.° Mor said.
°Got, it!° The human agreed.
Snapping out of his stupor, Mor looked at Clare.
"You want to get a "better" body?" Mor asked, and Clare nodded excitedly.
"How do you mean that?" Mor asked further.
"Well, I'm envious of Snow, and I thought we are all kin, so I somehow could get a body like hers..." Clare explained, and Mor understood.
°Help me explain how! You know the actual facts.° Mor pleaded to the human.
°Well, first ask her if she wants a "healthier" shape or more strength, with the former being easier for her to achieve,° the human said, and Mor repeated the question to Clare.
"If you say shape is the easier one... I would like to try that, but what's the difference?" Clare asked, and Mor got another short explanation from the human.
"Shape will do not much for our overall physical strength, but honing your muscles will do that. But trust me, this muscle training thing is very painful. Because we are not using most of them and just relying on magic." Mor explained, and this time, Orth spoke up.
"What do you mean painful?" He asked.
"You know the pain if you run too much to get somewhere faster? The pain that will appear in your legs the next day or the day after?" Mor asked, and Orth nodded.
"Yes, I hate that, but at least we can easily undo this. Clare helped me after Miss Amthyne had dragged you off last time." Orth said.
"Sorry, I originally wanted to help you with that, but with the whole "nobles lie" thing, it slipped my mind. But to get to the point, you can't use magic to "undo" the damage. You can lessen the pain with magic, but your body has to "repair" itself. Only then do your muscles become stronger." Mor explained, and both Clare and Orth whinced.
"No, thank you. I will stick with magic." Orth said.
"And for only the shape?" Clare asked hopefully.
"That's easy. Watch what you eat. Expessialy as soul-kin, we need to eat more. The Cocona-Nuts are very good, for example. Eating is not only for "not dying," but it can help your body build reserves. This means that even if you don't train hard, you get a bit stronger because your body has more fuel. Think of it like a fire. If you put in the perfect amount of material, it burns brightly. If it's not enough, it only simmers, and if you use too much, it might get smothered." Mor explained, getting a surprised look from the other students and an affirming nod from Snow. "That's it?" Clare asked. "Really? You are not lying to me?"
"That's it," Mor confirmed. "For the beginning, just eat as you are used to, and add two or three of the Cocona-Nuts. Eating too much of them will upset your stomach, and trust me, you don't want that." The boy shuddered at the suppressed memory.
"If you are used to this, you should slowly raise your overall intake of everything a bit more, and I mean slowly. We are talking about months here until you are satisfied with your looks. If you think you are too heavy, reduce the intake again or move your body, but then we are getting into the muscle training thing again.
"They are connected?" Orth asked, and Mor nodded.
"Your muscles use this "fuel", meaning they don't need magic energy for more power. No need for a body enhancement spell for simple things." Mor explained.
"That's how you can move like that while hurling other spells!" Orth exclaimed.
"Everyone thought you used two spells at once and wondered how!" Clare added.
°Would be nice, if we could...° The human huffed.
Mor just grinned, giving a wink to both his friends.
"Puts everything in perspective, right? I just need a bit of enhancement magic for some moves, like my high jumps, but that's just the moment when you jump upwards. After that, I can go right back to normal spells." Mor explained proudly.
"You are awesome!" Orth smiled. "Maybe I should try this, regardless of my earlier statement. Would you help me?" he asked, and Mor nodded.
"Sure! But it will be hard and painful." Mor said.
"I get that, but think about the possibilities! You and me, we could do anything. With your help, I could even become the next heir to my family, and then I can help you get better treatment for commoners!" Orth had already begun brainstorming, and Snow smiled at this youthful enthusiasm.
"You want to help the commoners?" Mor asked, and Orth nodded.
"Me and Clare both, because we are friends with one." He said, smiling.
"Thank you both," Mor said touched, and got a grin from both of his friends in return.
After all this, Orth tried a few more times to get this crystal thing right but soon gave up in frustration.
"I just don't have any talent in healing magic." He complained, and Clare chuckled.
"That's the problem with you, high nobles. You just choose your wives according to your preferred element, and therefore, your offspring are only good in that specific magic. Well, good, might be a bit of an understatement, almost unbeatable may be the right word, but suck in everything else!" Clare laughed.
"Aren't you a noble too?" Mor teased her.
"Yeah, but not one like Orth. I'm branch family, and my magic bloodline is not as "pure" as the high born. But because of that, I have an affinity for healing and a good grasp on earth magic." Clare explained.
"Well, for everything else you have your staff." Orth mumbled grumpily. "I don't need to be good at everything, if I just can ask someone else to do it for me. Organizing and gathering talent is our main function as high nobles."
Soon, Orth and Clare waved Mor goodbye and got back to their own tasks, Orth promising to accompany Mor on his "morning runs" in the future.
°He will hate those and probably give up pretty soon. After all, you soul-kin are wimps.° The human half teased.
°Yes, probably, but I want to give him the support, he is a true friend to us.° Mor answered.
After the rowdy bunch had all left, Snow sat opposite to Mor again.
"Want to continue with your training?" She asked, and Mor nodded.
"Yes, I need to get this "energy from around me"-technique down." He said, and they began to try again.
Mor was concentrating very hard and tried to follow Snow's descriptions, and finally, after a few hours of trying, he did it. A small trickle of magic was flowing from around him into the crystal, but he couldn't make it glow anymore. Just getting it to a slight hum was very difficult.
"You did it very well." Snow congratulated him.
"But it doesn't glow anymore, like before?" Mor asked, disappointed.
"Indeed, I didn't want to say anything about it, but I saw the glowing for the first time. You probably got to the maximum capacity of the crystals. After that, I don't know what might happen." Snow explained.
°They propbably just explode, releasing all the energy at once.° Joked the human.
°Really? How do you know?° Mor asked, startled.
°It was a joke! How should I know!° The human sighed.
"So I got the technique down?" Mor asked, and Snow nodded.
"Much faster than I expected. It was worth sticking around for that. Now you just have to practice it so you can do this in a combat situation." Snow said.
"Don't you need to gather more information, you were here just over a week?" Asked Mor, and Snow shook her head.
"I had a good picture of your kin around the second day, but you were the unexpected outlier, so I had to stick with you." Snow confessed.
"So when are you leaving?" Mor asked her.
"That depends on you. Do you want to learn anything else, do you still have questions?" she asked right back.
°Yes. I do.° The human said and Mor nodded.
"Yes Snow, I still have some things. But it´s getting late today, so maybe tomorrow? Mor offered and Snow agreed.

Lydia awoke with Waldo screaming. Lydia quickly got up and activated the magic stones lighting the room, Lydia did not see a reason for him to be screaming and was about to wake him when he went quiet. Lydia wondered what had happened and as she watched him she became concerned he was not breathing but just as she was about to shake him away he started breathing again then he began to weep in his sleep saying “I would take it back if I could. I did not know what it meant. Please, I never meant for this.” Lydia watched over him for several minutes as he repeated this over and over. Lydia did not know why but after a while she embraced him gently.
“It is ok. We all make mistakes.” Lydia said quietly holding him. She did not entirely know why she chose to do this as she felt some concern over what he was apologizing for having done but something made her decide to stay with him. Eventually, he stopped and started sleeping peacefully. Lydia slowly fell back to sleep after he quieted and returned to a peaceful state.
Lydia awoke again with Waldo sitting dressed on the edge of the bed. “Good Morning.”
“Good Morning.” Waldo replied, turning to Lydia. “Sorry, if I woke you in the night. I do not always sleep well.”
“I can understand that. It took almost a year before I could sleep through the night.” Lydia replied.
“I brought breakfast up. Kna mentioned I screamed in the middle of the night. I rarely have a companion… So I did not know. I guess I was extra loud last night. I woke some other patrons.” Waldo said calmly. Lydia climbed out of bed and dressed herself as Waldo watched her but when she looked at him she felt he was lost in his own mind.
"Copper for your thoughts.” Lydia said as she started to lace up her dress. Waldo walked over to her and helped her.
“I thought I knew who I was…but I remembered things last night…” Waldo said hollowly. “I don’t know what I was fighting for… All that time as a soldier and now I remembered… what I learned before arriving here and it isn’t what I thought.”
“Do you want to elaborate?” Lydia asked.
“I am not sure I know how.” Waldo said and there was silence for a moment.
“Well, maybe you should stay here if you don’t know why you were fighting. At least, until you figure out what you want.” Lydia said and feeling better about what she had heard last night she kissed him gently on the cheek. “Thank you. I would stay for breakfast but I need to get to work.” Lydia said, grabbing a piece of bread with an egg off the plate.
“Have a nice day and I hope to see you later.” Waldo said, as she headed toward the door.
“Good luck today!” Lydia said, smiling and left. Waldo collected several things from his pack then stored it under the bed and took the plate of food to the common room where he ate slowly. Waldo noticed that Lydia was not in the common room as he ate breakfast. Waldo did not have to wait long after finishing his breakfast before Strisk arrived.
“Good Morning!” Strisk waved at Waldo moving across the common room.
“Greetings Strisk.” Waldo replied standing and moving to meet him.
“Are you ready to go down to the training grounds?” Strisk asked.
“Yeah, let’s head out.” Waldo said, motioning for Strisk to lead the way.
“Are you in a hurry?” Strisk asked, leading Waldo out.
“No, nothing like that just…” Waldo stopped in the door exiting the inn as he looked out into the city. Waldo had expected Protham to be small but realized it had been dark when he arrived and late that is why he had not realized how expansive it was. Waldo saw a wall sixty or seventy feet tall. Waldo stepped into the street and could see a gate two hundred or so feet down the road in one direction and in the other there was what appeared to be a small square. “How big is Protham?”
“It is just a small village, only five thousand or so. Most people are employed in fishing the lake or harvesting trees.” Strisk replied. “The gnolls recently opened a college here… Something about ley lines and increased power, but that is not my expertise.”
“I am surprised they even care about the ley line. The planet is so saturated with magic I would have thought everyone can easily use it.” Waldo responded.
“I wouldn’t know about that. Are you a mage?” Strisk asked.
“I cannot use magic… I can still feel it pooling.” Waldo said, wondering why he could feel it still since he now knew he could not use it. “It must be something to do with the leveling. I wonder if there is a construct powering the whole system.”
“You are suggesting a magic artifact causes people to level?”Strisk asked, shocked at the strangeness of the idea.
“Um… So I assume it is a mage college of some kind they opened?” Waldo asked, trying to change topics.
“Yeah. I would have suggested going and seeing the head there about your teleporting but from what I have heard they see almost no one who isn’t a student.” Strisk said, starting to walk down the street. Waldo followed, taking in the people and the streets. Waldo noticed most people were gnollish he saw drakes as well but it seemed to be ten to one.
“Lydia said you are a Drake. I have never learned to identify the scaled races apart from one another. It appears that Protham is mostly gnolls and Drakes. What makes a drake a drake and not say a lizardfolk?” Waldo asked, carefully.
“Lydia is right. I am a Drake. Lizardfolk always have tails. Drakes rarely have tails and those that do have a tail almost always have wings. That is usually the easiest way to tell us apart but it is more nuanced. A healthy Drake’s scales are vibrant, we stand out. A healthy lizardfolk has duller scales. Drakes can have horns or spikes across their head and back but never hair. Lizardfolk never have horns but can grow spikes. Usually they grow something more like a fin, which can be over their head or even down their chin to their chest. All the facial features are nuanced except the eye. Drake’s eyes face forward. Lizardfolk’s eyes face out enough to easily tell if you look at them.” Strisk explained calmly. “Kobolds are short but look like Drakes with a tail and all the other scaled races have gills.”
“Thank you. I realize that might have been rude to ask but I assume it is ruder to make a mistake.” Waldo said as they continued to make their way through the mostly empty streets.
“Most drakes consider it the pinnacle of rudeness to mistake us for the lizardfolk. Well the lizardfolk seem indifferent. I once saw a short Lizardman get mistaken for a Kobold and they laughed about it. Well a few days ago I had to break up a bar fight cause a gnoll called a drake a lizard.” Strisk said. “My people need to calm down about being mistaken for another race. Most cannot even tell the other races apart. No offense, but I assume you are a human because Lydia is one without looking at your ears, which are currently covered by your hair you could pass for an elf in my eyes and if you told me you were a dwarf I would believe it… even though, I think you are too tall to be a dwarf.” Waldo laughed at Strisk’s words.
“An elf you say?” Waldo said, smiling and moving his hair from over his ears. “I am a human. However, I can understand the confusion. Even among humans it is possible for some to mistake another human as one of our kin races.”
“Kin race?” Strisk asked.
“Yes, races that share certain broad features and where half races are possible.” Waldo said.
“Then would Drakes not be a Kin race.” Strisk asked.
“You ever seen a half human and half drake?” Waldo asked.
“Well no, but I was told it was possible.” Strisk said, wondering.
“Possible for our race's women’s bodies to respond as if they are creating a blend. However, it is largely my understanding no blend has survived birth. Maybe one is out there but largely our internal anatomy; bone structure, organ placement, organs in general, and finer points don’t blend into something that survives birth if a pregnancy occurs which to my knowledge is extremely rare and usually it is a half race not a full where that can occur according to one report I read most mothers die in labor if they carry the blend to term and the child still dies.” Waldo said calmly. Strisk stopped.
“How do you know this?” Strisk asked. Waldo thought about it for a moment. Realizing he did not know how to explain having millions of years of knowledge on hand a little surprised he had so easily recalled something from another life. As he thought about it he wondered how he could so easily access it. Then he knew. Four of his prior selves had learned to build a mind palace. When the Orc had implanted all the memories, those four had combined their knowledge and laid out everything, which made him wonder how he knew about the interbreeding of humans and drakes, which brought forth the memories of four doctors. One of which was drake. Strisk watched as Waldo stared off into the distance. Suddenly, Waldo went pale and threw up in the street. “What the hell?” Strisk said, jumping back to avoid getting splattered.
“Sorry.” Waldo said, feeling queasy. Waldo pushed the doctor’s memories away realizing he was not ready to go exploring all the memories aimlessly. Waldo pulled out his hip canteen and washed his mouth out. Spitting the water down a nearby drain “Damn. I was hoping to not have to eat until dinner. I assume the interview will have a combat skills test?” Waldo asked, looking at Strisk.
“Well yes, but what was that?” Strisk asked, feeling the response was unjustified for his question.
“Oh, right, your question. Um… I went to a memory I should have left alone. I was thinking about my time studying… when I strayed into an incident.” Waldo said, trying to explain without lying.
“An incident?” Strisk asked.
“I expect there are things you have seen as a city guard you would rather not remember.” Waldo replied, carefully.
“Oh… you mean something like that. I can understand that. Let’s continue on. Just another block or so.” Strisk said, letting Waldo follow him. Neither said anything until they got to the city's barracks. They had crossed near the center of town and were now at a lakeside gate that had a training arena with a large gatehouse next to it.
“How many positions is the guard filling?” Waldo asked as they approached the building.
“We are adding five new full time positions in hope of growth due to the mage college, three part time, and around fifty new reservists.” Strisk said and then opened the gatehouse’s front door.
“Good Morning, Strisk!” A female voice behind the counter greeted as they entered.
“Good Morning, Violet.” Strisk replied. “Is Trag in?”
“Yes, he got in a bit ago and…Who are you?” Violet asked, staring at Waldo as he entered the gatehouse.
“Waldo Winter.” Waldo said, step into the room and bowing slightly to the human girl behind the counter.
“He is with me. Violet. He arrived in town last night under strange circumstances.” Strisk said.
“Is he why you are meeting with Trag this early?” Violet asked, keeping her eyes on Waldo. “Is he a criminal?”
“Yes to the meeting with Trag and not as far as I am aware. You haven’t done anything illegal have you?” Strisk asked, grinning Waldo.
“Admittedly, I have not read your legal code, but assuming it follows traditional patterns of legal codes for structured societies. Not in this city. At least, I very much doubt I have.” Waldo said, smiling lightly at Violet.
“What are you doing here then?” Violet asked.
“Apart from identifying myself to local authorities due to the strange way I arrived. Hopefully, applying for a job.” Waldo stated. Violet frowned.
“Are you applying for citizenship in Protham or just submitting notice of intent to work in Protham?” Violet asked.
“Notice of intent to work, at this time.” Waldo replied, moving up to the desk as Strisk stepped away. Violet handed him a sheet of paper and pulled out a second enchanted page.
“Good luck finding work here. There are not many jobs outside of scribe, barworker, or general laborer for humans in Protham. The Drakes and Gnolls are larger and stronger than humans naturally and they are basically hiring enforcers right now.” Violet whispered to Waldo. “Where are you staying?”
“The Spriggan Inn.” Waldo said, looking at the form, surprised he could read it. As he started to fill out the form he remembered a passage about grown arrivals passing between world and being gifted languages of the worlds they arrived on from death. Waldo tried to remember the author's reasoning for the gift but could not. Waldo wished he had learned written gnollish languages but had only learned their spoken languages.
“How did you come to be there?” Violet said, showing surprise.
“Long story short…Some sort of teleportation accident.” Waldo answered, focused on completing the form.
“Wow… Lucky.” Violet said, thinking it strange he appeared in the only inn with a human working in it in Protham.
“Yes, but I suspect there is a good reason for that.” Waldo said, handing her the completed form.
“You how to read Grofeas gnoll?” Strisk asked, looking at Waldo holding the form out to Violet. “You said you had not heard of this country last night.” Violet took the form looking suspiciously at Waldo.
"No, I am familiar with other gnollish written languages and this is close enough to them that I guessed. Please check that and make sure my responses make sense.” Waldo said, looking at Violet. Waldo smiled at his omission. He was familiar with several gnoll written languages and had learned a few key words like bathroom, food, and price but had not even memorized their alphabet. Violet started to look over the document carefully. Waldo noticed the enchanted page on the desk had a picture of his face on it now with a list of several things about him, such as height, an approximate weight, and the like. Waldo heard a low growl with several inflections. Waldo looked at the gnoll standing by Strisk.
“Would you mind repeating that? I am not sure I quite heard what you said, because I thought you called me a fur lover.” Waldo said, looking narrowly at the gnoll. The gnoll made several more growls at Waldo. The gnoll had reddish brown fur and stood a little shorter than Strisk. Waldo thought the gnoll would probably be considered extremely handsome among gnolls. He was well groomed and clearly muscled under the fur. He even wore a steel breastplate that was polished to a shine. Waldo saw a stamp over his right peck that appeared to be a runic enchantment.
“Because I am not. I learned it at the time because my life depended on it. The gnolls I met were not as affluent as you are here and only knew one language. Their own. I had to learn it or live without speaking. Their treatment of me would have killed me if I had not learned their language. They knew next to nothing of humans and were a tribe secluded in the mountains. They meant well, but due to the harsh circumstances of the location I was slowly dying from starvation and exposure. It took four weeks to learn enough for rough communication after which I found them to be extremely friendly and curious. I spent two years with that tribe before making contact with a human settlement in the area. I managed to broker a peace there because I learned gnollish. So I continued my education and have since learned various spoken dialects.” Waldo responded to the newcomers' growls calmly.
“Why don’t you respond in gnollish?” The gnoll asked, changing languages. Waldo growled back in several inflections and moved a hand. Violet had noticed hand movements when gnolls growled and never associated it with them speaking but Waldo’s movements were so pronounced she realized it had to be part of the gnollish language. “Fair enough. I am Captain Trag. Strisk says you are a soldier.”
“Wait what did you say?” Violet asked Waldo.
“Violet. Don’t be rude.” Strisk chided, curious himself but having held himself back.
“I am sorry. I have just never seen a non-gnoll speak gnollish” Violet said, almost involuntarily. Trag slapped Strisk across the back of the head.
“Strisk, she is our scribe, do not order her around.” Trag said, smiling. Waldo got the sense that Trag did not like Strisk.
“I explained human throats are not well formed for the gnollish language, which hurts my throat the more I speak it and makes my accompanying hand movements more pronounced than is proper.” Waldo explained to Violet.
“Can you teach me?” Violet asked, seeing how beneficial it would be to know gnollish in her job.
“We can talk after the interview.” Waldo said, smiling at Violet.
“Right, sorry. Thank you.” Violet replied looking over at Trag apologetically.
“Excuse me for interrupting your conversation Violet. I will make sure to send Waldo back once we are done.” Trag said, smiling at Violet then turning to Waldo. “What level of soldier are you? Or is it some other fighting class?”
“I don’t have any levels in fighting classes.” Waldo replied.
“And you want to be a city guard?” Trag said looking angrily at Strisk who looked at Waldo surprised.
“Wait, are you a medic of somekind?” Strisk asked, remembering the other night.
“No, just give me a chance. We should go to the training ground if combat assessment is to be a large part of this process.” Waldo stated, a little surprised they had started asking questions in the entrance.
“It is. We can train you in Protham legal code, but we rarely do combat training for our guards; most people come to us with twenty or more levels in a combat class, when they are applying to be a guard.” Trag stated, as Waldo opened the door.
“Where I come from people do not rely on the leveling systems for combat training.” Waldo started walking to the training grounds as Trag and Strisk followed.
“Where are you from?” Trag asked.
“Halcyon. Heard of it?” Waldo asked, knowing the reply.
“Nope.” Trag replied, thinking this human could never keep up with a gnoll or drake in a fight. “What are you wearing?” Trag asked, no longer able to hold back the question as the human looked very strange to him.
“Desert Armored Combat Fatigues, my throwing knives, combat knife, an assortment of tools I have found useful over the years, and a magic sling.” Waldo said, touching different things on his body. “The armor is stab resistant and there are several metal plates spread out in the fabric. If I get the job I would like to wear this until I can afford to get some locally made gear.”
“A magic sling?” Trag asked.
“Yeah, but I have limited ammo for it. It only works with special magic ammo and I doubt you have that here.” Waldo replied.
“Have you heard of a magic sling Strisk?” Trag asked.
“No, that is new to me.” Strisk replied. “I thought you could not use magic.”
“I cannot not cast a magic spell but this is an artifact. I could teach anyone to use it. If I had unlimited ammo or access to a bullet manufacturer I would be happy to show it off but I only have ninety rounds for it.” Waldo explained.
“How long have you been a soldier?” Trag asked, Waldo had seen himself in a mirror and knew they would not believe the truth. Waldo looked like he was in his prime but Halcyon slowed aging massively Waldo was older than any human got to normally and he was still unsure if he had died or Death’s healing had further reduced the effects of aging.
“Nine years.” Waldo replied, pushing it as far as he thought he could. Waldo had put his age down as twenty nine on the form, but knew he looked closer to twenty now. “I expect I will be sparing with one of you?”
“No, we are waiting for your sparring partners. I sent for two reservists. They generally are not needed for regular guard shifts and if they are injured it should not interfere with their regular jobs.” Trag stated, show us how good you are with throwing knives.
“Alright.” Waldo said, pulling four of the weighted knives from their sheaths. Waldo carried twelve in all. Four on his left leg, two on each arm and four on his chest. Waldo started by juggling the knives as he moved into position to throw them. Waldo smoothly plucked them out of the air as he was juggling them and launched them one after another in quick succession down the lane, with the knives sinking deep into the wooden target in a tight group.
“For having no skills that is pretty good. Now for the moving targets.” Trag said, with Waldo looking back at him as he pressed a button. Waldo watched as the targets began to move side to side. Waldo could tell this was intended for arrows as the range was longer than he would usually throw when it came to moving targets.
“May I move up or do you want me to throw from here?” Waldo asked.
“Tark throws from there.” Trag replied, Waldo grabbed two more knives, throwing them half a second after looking back at the target. Both landed bullseyes but Waldo could feel the strain on his muscles. He was not used to this distance. Waldo pulled two more and turned his back to the targets. Waldo slowly strafed toward the center of the range as he had started to the right side. After a moment making sure to give the targets time to move he spun around and with one hand launched both knives. One landed in a bullseye, but the other fell short. Waldo turned his back to the targets and drew all of his remaining knives placing them at the ready in one hand. Waldo turned and threw three and turned back around quickly. He heard 2 thuds and one that was a clang. He was not sure what the third had hit. Waldo spun around and sent his final knife down the lane hitting another bullseye. The three quick throws were not bullseyes but they had all hit targets.
“That is all the throwing knives I carry.” Waldo said. “Shall I collect them?”
“No, Strisk go get the knives and report back on how deep they are.” Trag said, turning the moving targets off. Waldo moved over to Trag as Strisk retrieved the knives. “Only one complete miss, that is not bad. If you are hired then we are gonna have to replace the knives with some weighted rods. We can issue you some bolas while on duty. Unless a kill order is issued, but most the time we will expect people to be taken alive.”
“Understandable. What is a bolas?” Waldo asked.
“It is three pieces of rope tied to each other on one end and has a weight on the other side. When throwing it, the intent is to hit a person's legs and if it works correctly it will wrap around a fleeing person’s legs and trip them. In town it can be tricky to use and for people they have lighter weights. It was originally used to hunt various animals on the plains. If the weights are too heavy they can break bones.” Trag said, explained. “What class are you?”
Waldo had been preparing for this question since they had asked him earlier. “Diplomat.” Waldo replied.
“You have no levels in a combat class but you are a diplomat as a soldier?” Trag questioned.
“When I use skills from it as a soldier it is generally in interrogations, but my personal goal was to try and find less violent solutions to my nation's disputes. So, I ended up becoming a diplomat. The times I acted in that capacity I was glad to have trained as a soldier. Few people seem to want peaceful resolutions. So as a diplomat I have often been met with violence.” Waldo explained twisting the truth. They stood in silence as they waited for Strisk to finish retrieving the knives. Strisk handed Waldo eleven of the knives and Trag one of the knives.
“Six perfect hits. Three near perfects. Two hits. One miss. Ten hits were all very deep. The one that made the clang hit a metal frame holding the target. It dented the metal and chipped his knife.” Strisk reported as Waldo sheathed the eleven knives he had been handed. Waldo looked at Trag just in time to catch his face returning to a neutral state after what Waldo believed to be a frown.
“How is your hand to hand combat proficiency?”Trag asked.
“I am an expert with a knife, however, I could easily swap it out for a padded baton. It would be harder on me, but I am sure I can hold my own.” Waldo said, showing the knife sheathed across his lower back and trying to determine Trag’s mood. Trag examined the knife and could see it was custom made for Waldo and well used.
“Strisk, you are good to go on patrol. Your partner should be ready about now.” Trag said, with a hint of sadness.
“I was hoping to stay and see him fight the reservists.” Strisk said, a little excited and as Strisk said that it clicked for Waldo.
“No one is coming. To test my combat proficiency.” Waldo said, calmly. “Sorry, Strisk. I should have known better.”
“We should go to my office and talk.” Trag said and handed Waldo the chipped knife Strisk had handed him.
“Wait, why?” Strisk asked, Trag.
“Politics, Strisk. Guardsmen are just a little political, which means Trag cannot hire another human. Especially, not in a citizen-facing role.” Waldo said, with a smile. “Am I right?”
“Violet, is our scribe. Citizen’s see her.” Strisk said looking confused.
“Violet is my scribe. She assists with filing and compiling guardsmen reports. She has only covered the front desk on a few occasions and usually it is to give another scribe a break or chance to go to the bathroom.” Trag stated.
“Strisk, thank you for introducing me to Captain Trag. I truly appreciate this opportunity. I would be happy to speak to you in your office Trag.” Waldo said, smiling at both of them.
“Sorry, Waldo… I didn’t realize.” Strisk said dejectly. Waldo laughed lightly.
“You have done no harm at all and even helped me file documents I needed to in order to stay. You introduced me to your Captain. Strisk, you have been nothing but helpful. Please do not feel sorry.” Waldo said, smiling at Strisk.
“Thanks, I guess I should get going.” Strisk said, clearly feeling better. “Sir. Waldo.” Strisk said, nodding his head to each of them and leaving. Trag started heading towards the guard house and motioned for Waldo to follow, which Waldo did in silence. Trag opened the door and sure enough Violet was no longer at the front desk. There was a male Drake scribe sitting behind the counter.
“Sir.” The drake said, standing up to greet them. Trag waved his hand and the drake sat back down. Waldo followed him up a set of stairs and down a hall to an open room with three scribes working on various documents on a table big enough for four, one of which was Violet.
“Your morning report sir.” A female gnoll scribe said, smiling at Trag and holding a folder. She noticed Waldo and her demeanor changed slightly. She glanced at Violet as Trag grabbed the folder.
“Thank you. I have a meeting for a few minutes. Is there anything urgent?” Trag gestured at Waldo. The scribes all looked up and gave a negative nod. “If needed you may interrupt us.” Trag said, opening his office door and leading Waldo into his office. It was a plain room. There were several chairs facing the back of the room with a large desk and chair behind it facing the door. There were two sturdy looking bookcases organized with an assortment of documents. The room was clean and orderly. A couch sat against one wall with a window behind it that had shutters and Waldo noticed a plain axe with a rope next to it leaning against a bookcase. “Please take a seat.” Trag said, opening the folder as he moved around the desk and sat down. Waldo sat across from him. They sat in silence as Trag read over a few reports. “Thank you for your patience.” Trag said look up from the report.
“Anything important?” Waldo asked.
“No, just the normal going on. Except for you of course.” Trag said.
“Yeah, I made a surprising entrance last night.” Waldo agreed.
“Teleportation has a tendency to create some alerts. If Strisk had not reported your arrival last night, the guard may have interrupted your welcome to our fine city.” Trag replied.
“That report is more thorough than I would have liked.” Waldo stated.
“Kna is a friend and Aer is a gossip.” Trag replied.
“I should have waited in the common room. We could have talked last night.” Waldo guessed.
“Doubtful, but I would have known your face this morning if you had.” Trag stated.
“I had hoped this was an offer for contract work of some kind.” Waldo said, frowning slightly.
“It still might be. I have not determined what to do about you.” Trag replied.
“Oh, well is there something you would like cleared up?” Waldo asked, smiling.
“Kna is worried about one of her barmaids. Aer has never seen her friend respond so positively to someone so quickly.” Trag stated, calmly. Waldo knew they were straying into dangerous territory.
“I have never responded to another human as positively.” Waldo replied, honestly.
“Just two soulmates meeting for the first time?” Trag asked, Waldo jerked in surprise at the word reacting before he could stop himself. Waldo realized Trag did not mean it the way he had taken it but it was too late. Trag had been watching him closely and was now looking unsure at Waldo. “I think you have some explaining to do.” Trag said, prepared to strike. Waldo leaned forward and placed his head in his hand dropping his show.
“This cannot under any circumstances leave this room. If you have listeners they need to stop. If you have a way to make the room secure. I will tell you enough to know why.” Waldo said, unsure of what would happen next.
“What, so can you kill me in silence?” Trag asked, feeling concerned about this stranger's response.
“If you want to tie me up feel free, but I am not talking until I am confident the secret won’t leave this room.” Waldo said, sitting back and calming his nerves. Waldo was trying to figure out how to explain this with as little lying as possible. Waldo wondered if he could avoid lying all together. Trag hesitated for a minute then opened a drawer and pulled out a small box. Trag said a command word under his breath and the box activated.
“Alright, we are alone and no one can see or hear us. This better be good or I won’t keep your secret.” Trag said.
“Have you ever been in love so much it hurt your soul?” Waldo asked.
“What?” Trag asked, surprised.
“I have. If I had understood this was possible. If I had known. I would have done so many things differently.” Waldo said, deciding to be as honest as he felt he could. “I thought she was dead. I joined the wrong people to get vengeance. To make it stop. In doing, so I pissed off some really powerful people. I thought my master was strong enough to protect me and I thought I was powerful enough to protect myself. I want to tell Lydia so bad. I want her to remember our time together. Every second we spent together. If I had magic this would be so easy but using magic to accomplish it would be wrong.” Waldo said, with tears in his eyes. “I wish I could just show her. However, the people I pissed off took my ability to use magic. I did not even know that was possible.” Waldo said, holding out an open palm. “Light.” Trag felt magic tug slightly, but nothing happened. “They took my magic so I could not interfere. When they did that I thought they would send me to a prison cell or some equally horrible place. They cursed me with unwanted knowledge I can barely grasp. Part of my mind is still trying to rip itself apart. But instead of sending me to a desert. They toss me like I am nothing and I land inside Spriggan Inn, in Protham barely even hurt. I did know she was the same soul at first. Standing in the dim light of the inn. She looks the same. Alive working as a barmaid in a place I have never even heard of. She doesn’t even remember me but she was drawn to me just like I was to her all those years ago.” Waldo said. “Kna is worried I might hurt her and honestly so am I. However, if we are to separate again I would have her tell me to go. It would be the most painful thing I ever do but I would leave if she asked. I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me, but I have found my dead lover again, my soulmate and I never thought I would see her. She died so I figured that was it. I did not know about the cycle but now I do. So please give me the chance to win her.” Waldo finished with tears at the corners of his eyes. “Please, I am begging you.” Trag knew Waldo was leaving part out but felt he was being honest and looking at Waldo Trag knew he held this man’s life in his hands at this moment. Trag looked at Waldo and activated several skills he had for conversations like this. Trag knew Waldo did not intend harm at this time or harm to his city.
“For the moment. You have convinced me.” Trag said, still slightly concerned, something about him bothered Trag, but Trag was confident the stranger would be unlikely to deliberately cause problems in Protham.
“Thank you for giving me a chance. I will prove I mean no harm.” Waldo said, starting to recover his composure. Trag grabbed the rope and axe, placing them on his desk.
“Do you know how to cut down a tree?” Trag asked.
“Yes.” Waldo replied.
“As captain of the guard. I am allotted two trees every year. The town allows me to do as I will with the tree tokens, I am issued. The mill will pay me five gold per token on average. However, If I cut the tree down and turn in the tree with the token they will right now pay eight gold. If you cut a tree down and turn it in for me. I will let you keep two gold coins of those eight.” Trag stated placing a token on the table.
“Sounds like a good deal.” Waldo replied.
“Have you hunted boar?” Trag asked.
“I have hunted. Not specifically boar but I am familiar with the complexities they present.” Waldo replied, wondering where this was going.
“Currently, we have a boar problem on the western road and several groups have been attacked by boars. It is quite troublesome. Protham does not have an adventuring guild and most hunters will hunt safer game or only kill one or two boars at a time. You can rent a hand cart for a day for three coppers at the docks. Usually they are used to transport fish around town. They are sturdy carts and can hold several hundred kilos. There are several blacksmiths in town that sell quality steel tipped javelins, for a silver. Now they are not perfect for hunting boar but they should work well enough. Currently, I have placed a bounty on boar kills of a silver per boar jaw turned in. We will even buy the dead boar for one and half coppers per five pounds. However, you could show us the boar, collect the silver, then most local butchers will buy dead boar for two copper per five pounds. Those are the current rates for whole boars” Trag explained.
“Sounds like I have a tree to chop down.” Waldo said standing.
“Out the main gate past the mill and then pick an un-worked tree the taller the better. They pay less for trees shorter than twenty feet and more for trees taller than twenty five feet. If you are willing to search there are some forty and fifty footers out there. I expect six gold regardless.” Trag stated.
“Why are you doing this?” Waldo asked.
“It is not one thing. Lots of little things adding up. Kna is a friend and Lydia is important to her. Kna knows I cannot employ you as a guard. This keeps you out of trouble. Solves a problem for me and if you work hard. Kna might start to like you. I was not going to be able to cut my second tree down before the end of the year. There are more reasons, but in the end, I see no downside for me giving you this chance.” Trag stated plainly.
“Well thank you. I appreciate this.” Waldo said and picked up the axe smiling.
“Good Luck. I plan to eat dinner at Spriggan Inn. So if you get back after sunset you can find me there.” Trag said, gesturing for Waldo to leave.
“Thank you, again!” Waldo said, leaving. After he closed the door he looked for Violet but she was not there. Waldo headed to the stairs back to the entryway. Violet wasn’t there either so he left a message for her and headed back to the Inn. Waldo wanted to ditch his armor before heading out to cut down a tree.

This is a deeply speculative post, but I've tried to cite quotes and specific figures wherever I can to help support the analysis.
I don't want to call this a proper theory because I'm not entirely confident in it, but I do think there's enough plausibility that it's worth sharing the hypothesis and hearing from others who may be able to contribute evidence for or against it.
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The Inteyvat is the national flower of Khaenri'ah, and it has "Teyvat" in the name. So it seems like it's safe to assume that it's a native flower to Teyvat, right?
But as I reviewed some of this version's new lore, I came to an interesting realization, given these two quotes:
Here's the two dialogues that mention it:

Mary-Ann:
You're from a very, very faraway place, aren't you, (Traveler)? What sort of flowers bloom there?
{__
Aether:
(Describe the flowers your sister wears in her hair.)
Mary-Ann:
Ah... Those do sound like lovely flowers.
or
Lumine:
The flowers I wear in my hair.‍
Mary-Ann:
I thought those flowers were beautiful the moment I saw you.‍
__}
Traveler:
But I fear that they'll be hard to find now.
-Ann of the Narzissenkreuz, Act III: "If She No Longer Dreams of You...", Mary-Ann's Story

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Traveler's Sibling:

At the end of my journey, I arrived at a place known as "The Sea of Flowers at the End."
Do you remember? A long time ago, when we traveled between worlds together...
You told me... You wanted to find a place in the universe where that one flower was in full bloom.
To have a place like that suddenly appear before me...
Well, would you think of that as a coincidence?
-Archon Quest Chapter IV: Act VI- Bedtime Story, World-Order Narration

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This first quote implies that the Inteyvat is a flower that also appears in the homeworld of the Twins, and the second quote confirms that this is a rare flower, that the Twins were traveling worlds and had rarely if ever found such a flower in other worlds.
But there's something strange about all this: the Sibling comes across The Sea of Flowers at the End and saw a field of these rare flowers. Why would this rare flower appear in Teyvat of all places and not anywhere else in the Twins' journey?
Here's one comically simple explanation: Teyvat just so happens to have been a world where these flowers bloom. This is entirely possible and if it turns out to be the case then that's it, problem solved! If Mihoyo comes out and says "yup, it's a coincidence guys!" I'd be totally fine with that and the rest of this speculation would be quite pointless.
However, we don't have such a clear-cut answer on the Inteyvat's origins. I hypothesize there's a different reason for the appearance of the Inteyvat, one that assumes it's not just some random lucky coincidence– perhaps the Inteyvat is actually an artificial flower to begin with.
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Consider the following: why would the Inteyvat be subject to a condition where being removed from Khaenri'ah causes it to turn hard and lose its softness, as Dainsleif says in the Chasm? If we make the assumption that the Inteyvat naturally grows on this world, why would it be confined to a single nation and subject to a "curse" or "special condition" such as that?
There's something else going on here. The Sibling asks, "Well, would you think of that as a coincidence?" It does seem hard to imagine this being a coincidence, as these flowers seem to be so rare. But the Sibling seems to be approaching this with the attitude of taking this as some sort of sign.
What if this wasn't some prophetic sign that Teyvat was a special world to have the same flowers as the homeworld of the Twins, but rather an illusion meant to deceive the Sibling?
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Let's step back for a moment and consider the circumstances so far, by the time the Sibling would've encountered this so-called Sea of Flowers at the End.
The Sibling is surprised at finding this vast field of rare flowers that have a great emotional significance to themselves and their Twin, the (soon to be) Traveler. This is a field of flowers from their homeworld, yet which also just so happens to be the national flower of Khaenri'ah. This is a nation that's had a long history of research and study of the Abyss, with several prominent figures including the Five Sinners. When the Sibling appeared in this nation, they were supposedly meant to play some meaningful role in shaping its fate.
Among these Five Sinners we have "The Visionary" Vedrfolnir who seems to have had contact with the Sibling during their journey with Dainsleif, and "Gold" Rhinedottir who seemed to play a crucial role in the Cataclysm due to the widespread appearance of her creations and whose mastery over Khemia would reach the point of being able to create an artificial human. These people were major figures during the last days of Khaenri'ah and they would've almost certainly had contact with the Sibling, given that they were already in Khaenri'ah and had met figures like Pierro.
So we have the Sibling, a being from beyond the world with some great significance to Khaenri'ah. The Cataclysm eventually strikes and this Sibling tries to immediately flee, and is then stopped by the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles. The Sibling wakes up alone on Teyvat again and then continues to travel with Dainsleif, until eventually meeting Chlothar and then encountering Vedrfolnir shortly prior to the establishment of the Abyss Order; and within a few years the project to create the Loom of Fate would begin.
There are clearly powerful individuals who have some vested interest in the Sibling, and likely have worked covertly or overtly to influence them. In the end, we see the Sibling has become the leader of the Abyss Order and is waging war on Celestia. Importantly, they specifically mention that Sea of Flowers when speaking with the Traveler, strongly implying that it's one of their biggest motivations for walking down this dark path.
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This is why I suspect that The Sea of Flowers at the End might have been an illusion created by taking a precious memory —that of the flowers of the Sibling's homeland and their desire to find those flowers with the Traveler— and creating an illusory memory space with the intention of striking at the Sibling's heart.
After all, this entire conversation takes place in a memory space created by Caribert and Caribert himself fabricated an appearance since he never grew to be an adult before becoming the foundation for the Loom of Fate. Who's to say that The Sea of Flowers at the End couldn't also be such a memory space?
Furthermore, this could've served as a catalyst for the Sibling making a final decision to walk down the path of the Abyss Order, and seeing how Vedrfolnir directly acted in the past to encourage this decision, it's not hard to imagine that Vedrfolnir and other associated figures may have had some hand in making this illusion happen as well.
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Now we have to ask why the Inteyvat is associated with Teyvat in the first place. Dainsleif calls it the national flower of Khaenri'ah, for instance, but how could such a thing be if the Teyvat never existed in Teyvat in the first place?
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First, we have the physical existence Inteyvat itself. It clearly exists, so how does it exist on Teyvat if it's merely an illusion? The answer is clear... Khemia.
I mentioned Rhinedottir for that reason, because Rhinedottir was incredibly skilled at Khemia, even being able to create a homunculus. And this homunculus, Albedo, also learned Khemia and uses it to create artificial life such as flowers or tree branches.
So it's very likely that Rhinedottir (hell, maybe even a lesser mage) could've used the art of Khemia to create an artificial Inteyvat for the Sibling back when they were still in Khaenri'ah pre-Cataclysm. This explains why there would've been an Inteyvat in Lumine's hair back when the Cataclysm was happening: if Lumine is the Traveler, then Aether placed it in her hair when they were still in Khaenri'ah; and if Aether is the Traveler, Lumine had it in her hair already when he finally woke up.
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Then, we have to answer the "spiritual" existence of the Inteyvat. Dainsleif calls it the national flower of Khaenri'ah, after all. But... Dainsleif is an inhabitant of Teyvat and thus susceptible to Irminsul's influence.
If someone implanted a false memory of the Inteyvat into his mind, and the minds of all other people from Khaenri'ah, then that could convince him and others that the Inteyvat was always an important flower to the people of Khaenri'ah. And since the Sibling seems to be a part of Irminsul's "database" and thus may be susceptible to it as well, then the Sibling could also have fallen under this spell.
Furthermore, consider that Rhinedottir is part of the Hexenzirkel as well. We already have another figure in the Hexenzirkel, Nicole Reeyn, who is known to be actively aware of Irminsul's memory-manipulation power; she's the voice who speaks up in the Sumeru interlude quest when Scaramouche wipes himself from Irminsul. Regardless of whether Nicole personally plays a role in the fabrication of the Inteyvat, we can at least assume that Rhinedottir would be guaranteed to have learned about these properties of Irminsul via Nicole if she wasn't already aware of them.
Though I suspect the Five Sinners likely knew about Irminsul's properties anyways given their power and influence; mentioning Nicole is just my way of guaranteeing that we have at least one solid link between this Irminsul fact and the figures like Vedrfolnir.
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Now, we have an explanation for the physical presence of the Inteyvat (Khemia) and the mental presence of the Inteyvat (Irminsul), and we have a motivation for its fabrication.
It takes a deeply intimate part of the Sibling's personal experience and implants it into the very history of Teyvat and specifically Khaenri'ah, establishing a stronger connection between them.
The Five Sinners would've had the means to fabricate such a flower and then implant it into the memory of the survivors of Khaenri'ah, so they could easily produce "evidence" of its role in Khaenri'ah's history.
This all could've been a big part of pushing the Sibling to become the leader of the Abyss Order: the Sea of Flowers at the End clearly had a big impact on them and they chose to explicitly mention it to the Traveler when discussing why they've chosen to lead the Abyss Order and wage war on the Heavenly Principles.
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Finally, I'd also like to suggest that perhaps the Sibling has already figured out that it was an illusion. After all, in the present they do seem to be aware that memories in Teyvat can easily be manipulated.
However, even if they became aware of this memory manipulation via Irminsul they might still be on the same path for one of two reasons: either they incorrectly assumed they're immune to its effects and thus don't suspect the Inteyvat to be a fabrication, or they know the Inteyvat is fake but believe they've walked too far down this path to turn back now.
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I hope this analysis is substantial enough for y'all! It's hard for me to put these kinds of thoughts into exact words because I tend to try and looking at big-picture ideas and speculate heavily as a result, meaning it takes a lot more work to find concrete evidence to support these ideas.
I've got a variety of similarly "big-picture" hypotheses that I've yet to write about because of that– especially the "Abyss =?= Sea of Quanta" hypothesis.
But I think this is one case where there's just enough evidence in the current story that it's at least worth suggesting this possibility, and further story developments about the Inteyvat can help support or disprove this hypothesis!
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(As a side note, I could almost swear there was something in Genshin's lore that stated that there was a different curse on Khaenri'ah, where people from the Seven Nations who enter Khaenri'ah are forbidden from returning– and if they did, they'd turn to hilichurls.
I can't recall what source it was though, and my searches on the Genshin wiki are futile, so if anyone remembers what this source is [if it even exists] then I'd love to hear it! It was going to be a big part of my theory here, but I can't find the source to cite it so I won't elaborate on it)

As titles says I feel like we should discuss the main being in question the high almighty father himself. Guys if we’re going to discuss the prison planet theory I feel & believe understanding this beings goals will better help us understand the trap & what one should take into account this s*** is important. Now let’s begin!
Who is En.Ki let’s start with that. Mesopotamian deity who was highly worshipped & beloved in Sumerian/Akkadian times where the name Ea was adopted (small thing to note & subtle as well Ea-Earth? Just saying) the translation for this being is as followed “Lord of the earth” Sumerian “house that dwells in water” akkadian the first thing I must say is the title says it! If he’s proclaiming he’s the lord of the earth why isn’t so ? Well let’s dive into that. The globe elite of today know this being quite well as he’s known but many names but I’ll list the ones below that are definitely tie ins Ea Thoth Quetzalcoatl Poseidon Zeus <- I’ll explain this below Lucifer Vishnu Krishna Baal
And many more but here’s the thing & it’s tough to get but follow me these beings & I will repeat it forever are not like us! Period they’re capable of utilizing their light body much like ours but much more concentrated whereas we are fragmented souls. They are full & intact meaning they’re capable of shifting their mock up (Avatar light body) to whatever they see fit for whom ever & here’s the catch they’re capable of manifesting into 3-D if they chose so. At this point we aren’t ready for them & quite frankly I have no qualms to want to meet such a being. But there is more to be said here you see guys we’re in the middle of war spiritually & physically. These being who follow this fucking guy want our bodies! You want to know why ? Guys it might sound crazy to Y’all but please follow me here. Prior to this being annexing the Solar system (much like an army annexing a country here on earth no different just on grander scale as above so below applies) the DNA we have in our bodies is divine & blessed by highest of the high source who originally had a different purpose with us. For those who can astral travel & project you are tapping into latent abilities we all have just we’re incapable of utilizing surface level speaking. Furthermore let’s talk briefly about the trap if I’m playing God & the Devil does it matter where the Energy/Loosh lands ? No! It does not you guys need to see the writing on the all it’s all mind game & a fucking charade set up to keep you duped & not physically in the afterlife too Brian Weiss & Michael newton as well as Dolores Cannon put these beings on the spot it’s all huge construct the BLA (between lives area) & you know who keeps it running ? Not so much them but us! We are equally responsible in this matter just as much as this being is because we still follow the same rules we’ve been following since the fucking deluge! History is bound to repeat if we aren’t willing to accept things for what they truly are & step back & see the manipulation & deception for what it’s really worth.
Guys I want you to really think about all this why this being & his cohorts has done so much to keep us restricted dumbed down & essentially short circuited due to not of our DNA being functional hence the “junk” DNA. Why ? For self vengeance goals that have no value to humanity as a whole this being is the definition of narcissism inside & out seeing us as his children it bothers me why he chose to enlighten (enlil-enlighten I’m just saying subtle wordplay) the few he did knowing his mindset it was bring about elitism went jealous all key elements for a world run on duality & vibration.
I have so much more to explain but I’d love to hear your thoughts & opinions no answer is a wrong answer we’re all in this together so sharing information is vital

It was peaceful pacing back and forth along the top of the shipping containers that marked the border of our camp. The sound of the waves lapping against the dock and the breeze that brought the mingling smells of the ocean were the ideal work environment. It was only the fact that I was up there as a lookout for the undead who might try to get in that made it just short of relaxing.
Having stretched my legs enough, I sat back in the metal folding chair next to Alan, who was flipping through the pages of a worn People magazine. Distracting articles from a simpler time.
“Anyone got married? Or acquired a drug habit?” I quipped quietly, crossing my legs.
Everything we said was quiet on guard duty; it was instinct. There weren’t any zombies close enough to hear us, and we were three containers up off the ground, but the silence in and of itself encouraged us to lower our voices. A world almost devoid of humans was staggeringly silent, especially at night when our camp was sleeping, away from any forests and the nocturnal animals that lived there. You couldn’t hear the sounds of crickets or frogs or owls anywhere for miles. If we heard something, there was a good chance it was a threat.
“Nothing new,” Alan joked back at me. He dropped the magazine in the small pile next to our chairs. When there was little to occupy the mind of a guard, it was important to both have distractions and also company. Otherwise you ran the danger of nodding off. “Matthew McConaughey has been married to his wife Camila Mark for twelve years now.”
“You think any of the celebrities are still alive?” I asked. “That those two are celebrating fourteen years now?”
He grimaced. “They must’ve been in LA. Big city folks? I’m always skeptical that they could survive the mobs.”
“True.”
It was at that point that I heard the telltale rapid scuffling of shoes, the faint sound of an approaching group of zombies, as well as a set of boots hitting the pavement at a faster pace. Alan heard it at the same moment and we both got to our feet, picking up our rifles. Then a figure darted around one of the shipping containers on shore to come into view, someone I recognized. It was Brianna, one of the vampires in our camp, and in addition to her scavenging pack, she had someone else slung over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Prep the gate!” I shouted. The sound carried to the two guards who were on gate duty, likely startling them. Alan and I both looked through the sights of our rifles and started picking off the zombies, years of practice giving us the result of a successful head shot with every valuable bullet. One after one, they dropped, and a dozen zombies became six.
Once Brianna got to the gate, she hefted her baggage off her shoulders and onto the ground, swiftly drawing a weapon from her side, and killed two as Alan and I killed the last four. At that, the echoes of gunshots faded and Brianna leaned over on her knees, gasping for air. She must’ve been running for a while; it takes a long time to tire out a vampire.
“Open the gate!” Alan called, walking over to the edge of the containers to take a look.
The rolling corrugated steel door that we’d built as our entrance trundled upwards. I left my rifle and went to the back of the container we were on, rapidly descending the ladders welded into the sides.
“My fault,” I heard Brianna wheeze as she pulled off her half-conscious vampire’s backpack and laid her down on her back. We were nearby, but gave them a wide berth. The gate rattled as Jack lowered back to the ground, sealing us off from the outside world once again. “We were in a Target. Like a goddamn idiot in a horror movie, I brought them on us with noise.”
“It happens,” Harry answered, looking over the ravaged body of Nancy. There was the upside of being immune to a zombie’s bite, but the downside was that vampires were still made of tasty meat.
The vampires obviously slept during the day and so they would go out at night, their night vision letting them see easily. It was quite an advantage since the zombies still kept to human waking hours. They didn’t sleep, exactly, but they became what we called ‘dormant’. That meant night was the best time to scavenge for supplies, but not if you needed a flashlight.
“Got it,” called a voice that drew my gaze, rapid footsteps approaching. It was Greg, with a bag of blood fresh from the fridge in his hands.
Built to work similar to a Capri Sun, the vampires could puncture the bottom with their fangs and drink straight from it. Luckily there were tons them ready to be shipped in warehouses across the country, and we had dozens of boxes of them on site, ready to be filled. Donating the blood through the standard process you’d have found before The Fall was a much better option than a bite, considering that it was a wound that would have to heal.
Greg handed the bag off to Brianna, since she had the strength to deal with Nancy, not to mention wasn’t a walking Capri Sun like we were. She sat next to her friend and put the bottom of the bag against her mouth, tipping her head up to meet it. “Nancy,” she said sharply. “Drink. Come on.”
The young woman’s eyes fluttered, her right hand twitching in the direction of the bag, and she bit down. Some of the blood leaked even as Brianna held it against her mouth, but that wasn’t anything that could be helped. After a moment of drinking what was spilling out, she got a good seal on it. Nancy gulped down the blood, visibly relaxing from the relief of sustenance that would heal her wounds.
Once she’d pulled everything she could from the bag, Brianna lowered her head back to the pavement. “You good?”
“Yeah,” Nancy breathed. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Nancy would go into decon, since she had infectious saliva all over her skin, but for the moment, she just laid there and let the blood heal her wounds. Another reason only other vampires helped a bitten vampire besides aggression: zombie saliva was something no human could touch without risking infection. Brianna would go through decon too, of course.
“If it’s your fault the zombies found you, are you volunteering to clear out the bodies?” I asked with a dry smile.
Brianna rolled her eyes and smiled back at me. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll drag them away from the camp once I get a bag of my own and get my strength back up. Fair is fair.” That was one thing we were grateful for: other animals couldn’t get infected. Any carnivores would wander out at the smell of the genuinely dead and vultures would flock to them as soon as the sun rose.
“I owe you,” Nancy said, tilting her head toward her friend, blinking languidly. “I’ll help.”
“You don’t owe me shit,” Brianna scoffed. “You’d have done the same thing. And you need to rest and recover.”
“All right, I’ll get decon prepped,” Greg said. “Was the scavenge at least worth it?”
“Oh yeah,” Brianna said, nodding. “We got some good food.”
“Awesome. Leave your bags. They need to go through decon too.”
“Right.”
Brianna leaned down and picked up Nancy once more, following Greg toward the decontamination container.
“Hey, show’s over,” Harry told me with a grin. “Back to your station, soldier.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” I said with a smile and a casual salute.
***
[WP] An uneasy alliance… Humans and vampires band together as the world is ravaged by zombies. Humans need the vampires for protection and the vampires need a food source in the dying world.
***
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/storiesbykaren

It was peaceful pacing back and forth along the top of the shipping containers that marked the border of our camp. The sound of the waves lapping against the dock and the breeze that brought the mingling smells of the ocean were the ideal work environment. It was only the fact that I was up there as a lookout for the undead who might try to get in that made it just short of relaxing.
Having stretched my legs enough, I sat back in the metal folding chair next to Alan, who was flipping through the pages of a worn People magazine. Distracting articles from a simpler time.
“Anyone got married? Or acquired a drug habit?” I quipped quietly, crossing my legs.
Everything we said was quiet on guard duty; it was instinct. There weren’t any zombies close enough to hear us, and we were three containers up off the ground, but the silence in and of itself encouraged us to lower our voices. A world almost devoid of humans was staggeringly silent, especially at night when our camp was sleeping, away from any forests and the nocturnal animals that lived there. You couldn’t hear the sounds of crickets or frogs or owls anywhere for miles. If we heard something, there was a good chance it was a threat.
“Nothing new,” Alan joked back at me. He dropped the magazine in the small pile next to our chairs. When there was little to occupy the mind of a guard, it was important to both have distractions and also company. Otherwise you ran the danger of nodding off. “Matthew McConaughey has been married to his wife Camila Mark for twelve years now.”
“You think any of the celebrities are still alive?” I asked. “That those two are celebrating fourteen years now?”
He grimaced. “They must’ve been in LA. Big city folks? I’m always skeptical that they could survive the mobs.”
“True.”
It was at that point that I heard the telltale rapid scuffling of shoes, the faint sound of an approaching group of zombies, as well as a set of boots hitting the pavement at a faster pace. Alan heard it at the same moment and we both got to our feet, picking up our rifles. Then a figure darted around one of the shipping containers on shore to come into view, someone I recognized. It was Brianna, one of the vampires in our camp, and in addition to her scavenging pack, she had someone else slung over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Prep the gate!” I shouted. The sound carried to the two guards who were on gate duty, likely startling them. Alan and I both looked through the sights of our rifles and started picking off the zombies, years of practice giving us the result of a successful head shot with every valuable bullet. One after one, they dropped, and a dozen zombies became six.
Once Brianna got to the gate, she hefted her baggage off her shoulders and onto the ground, swiftly drawing a weapon from her side, and killed two as Alan and I killed the last four. At that, the echoes of gunshots faded and Brianna leaned over on her knees, gasping for air. She must’ve been running for a while; it takes a long time to tire out a vampire.
“Open the gate!” Alan called, walking over to the edge of the containers to take a look.
The rolling corrugated steel door that we’d built as our entrance trundled upwards. I left my rifle and went to the back of the container we were on, rapidly descending the ladders welded into the sides.
“My fault,” I heard Brianna wheeze as she pulled off her half-conscious vampire’s backpack and laid her down on her back. We were nearby, but gave them a wide berth. The gate rattled as Jack lowered back to the ground, sealing us off from the outside world once again. “We were in a Target. Like a goddamn idiot in a horror movie, I brought them on us with noise.”
“It happens,” Harry answered, looking over the ravaged body of Nancy. There was the upside of being immune to a zombie’s bite, but the downside was that vampires were still made of tasty meat.
The vampires obviously slept during the day and so they would go out at night, their night vision letting them see easily. It was quite an advantage since the zombies still kept to human waking hours. They didn’t sleep, exactly, but they became what we called ‘dormant’. That meant night was the best time to scavenge for supplies, but not if you needed a flashlight.
“Got it,” called a voice that drew my gaze, rapid footsteps approaching. It was Greg, with a bag of blood fresh from the fridge in his hands.
Built to work similar to a Capri Sun, the vampires could puncture the bottom with their fangs and drink straight from it. Luckily there were tons them ready to be shipped in warehouses across the country, and we had dozens of boxes of them on site, ready to be filled. Donating the blood through the standard process you’d have found before The Fall was a much better option than a bite, considering that it was a wound that would have to heal.
Greg handed the bag off to Brianna, since she had the strength to deal with Nancy, not to mention wasn’t a walking Capri Sun like we were. She sat next to her friend and put the bottom of the bag against her mouth, tipping her head up to meet it. “Nancy,” she said sharply. “Drink. Come on.”
The young woman’s eyes fluttered, her right hand twitching in the direction of the bag, and she bit down. Some of the blood leaked even as Brianna held it against her mouth, but that wasn’t anything that could be helped. After a moment of drinking what was spilling out, she got a good seal on it. Nancy gulped down the blood, visibly relaxing from the relief of sustenance that would heal her wounds.
Once she’d pulled everything she could from the bag, Brianna lowered her head back to the pavement. “You good?”
“Yeah,” Nancy breathed. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Nancy would go into decon, since she had infectious saliva all over her skin, but for the moment, she just laid there and let the blood heal her wounds. Another reason only other vampires helped a bitten vampire besides aggression: zombie saliva was something no human could touch without risking infection. Brianna would go through decon too, of course.
“If it’s your fault the zombies found you, are you volunteering to clear out the bodies?” I asked with a dry smile.
Brianna rolled her eyes and smiled back at me. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll drag them away from the camp once I get a bag of my own and get my strength back up. Fair is fair.” That was one thing we were grateful for: other animals couldn’t get infected. Any carnivores would wander out at the smell of the genuinely dead and vultures would flock to them as soon as the sun rose.
“I owe you,” Nancy said, tilting her head toward her friend, blinking languidly. “I’ll help.”
“You don’t owe me shit,” Brianna scoffed. “You’d have done the same thing. And you need to rest and recover.”
“All right, I’ll get decon prepped,” Greg said. “Was the scavenge at least worth it?”
“Oh yeah,” Brianna said, nodding. “We got some good food.”
“Awesome. Leave your bags. They need to go through decon too.”
“Right.”
Brianna leaned down and picked up Nancy once more, following Greg toward the decontamination container.
“Hey, show’s over,” Harry told me with a grin. “Back to your station, soldier.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” I said with a smile and a casual salute.

Hello, all! I have a lot to decompress about after passing yesterday morning. I am happy to answer any questions, offer encouragment and support. Please feel free to message me. I found this sub to be extremely helpful during my study time. I appreciate everyone’s support and advice as this was super useful, and I struggle with intense test anxiety. Thank you, thank you.
Context:
I took my first exam and missed it by 2 points, second time I missed it by 1 point, and my third time I passed the passing score was 66 and got 75. I was distraught after the first two times. I took it on a Saturday morning, which was nice to not have to move things around for work.
Study tips:
1.) After failing it twice, I really hunkered down on what I didn’t understand. I struggled with the IAD domain and honestly I focused on MDD/GAD/Mood disorders. On my last exam, I had 1 career question, 1 group, 1 cultural information question. No couples, no schizophrenia cases, no sexual dysfuntion disorders. I studied in between clients during the day, and 2 hours each evening before bed. Then, I woke up, did some more studying before my day to see if the content had stuck in my brain. I made flashcards for the different theories which helped me lots. I also listened to the CE podcasts on spotify whenever I was driving, they are actually not bad. I really recommend if you are a podcast human. Some are short, some are longer. They talk about everything and really break it down.
2.) Looking for keywords was SO HELPFUL. Do this. I used this acronym based on what I found on here (R.I.E.E=Reduce, Identify, Explore, Educate) Those are important SHORT TERM objectives and goals keywords. Obviously these aren’t the only keywords, however, these are commonly used ones. (E.R.)=Eliminate and Resolve (Long term goals/objective keywords). Familiarize yourself with these, do not memorize. I went stir crazy thinking I had to memorize everything and I just reviewed daily duration of symptoms, specifers, common interventions used for each dx, etc.
3.) I used CE and you can email them a copy of your failed results so you get a free subscription if you don't pass. Don’t pay for it again. I thought CE had confusing questions. The exam was clearer for sure. I did a bunch of narratives and reviewed the trees. The narratives were helpful. Do those. And do the mini ones. Those DSM mini narratives helped me so much feel much more confident in the IAD domain.
4.) Personal therapy. I have some attachment wounds with test taking anxiety. I’ve been seeing a therapist for quite some time and processing these feelings/emotions really helped. I did some EMDbrain spotting which I feel like contributed lots to my success. I leaned on my supervision group, individual supervision, and thankfully my husband for support. Community helped. Community over competition, always.
5.) Study your theories & interventions associated. I had lots of MI/REBT/CBT/DBT. Know how they apply to each diagnosis. So important.
6.) Take your 15 minute scheduled break. I went outside, ate a snack, did some grounding techniques, shed a tear, and got back in.
7.) Don’t rush. You have time. Take your time. Flag the questions and come back if you don’t know it right away.
8.) Study Guides. I purchased a few from the mod of this sub. She has lovely study guides on the cheap and it felt nice to have something already organized to study from.
9.) Study your differential diagnosis and comorbidity. I had lots of those questions.
10.) Utilize breathing techniques during the exam if you find yourself being anxious. Breath. Do some bilateral tapping. You SO can do this. You are not a "bad" therapist by not passing it. You rock. Cheers, :)

Introduction
The period following the American Revolution witnessed the emergence of a new political landscape in the United States, characterized by debates over governance, representation, and the role of the federal government. Concurrently, in the field of chemistry, scientists were beginning to unravel the complexities of acid-base reactions in solution, laying the groundwork for understanding chemical equilibrium and the behavior of substances in aqueous environments. This essay explores the parallels between the evolving politics of post-Revolutionary America and the intricate dynamics of acid-base reactions in solution, highlighting how both phenomena involve processes of transformation, equilibrium, and negotiation.
Emerging US Politics: Debates Over Governance and Representation
In the wake of the American Revolution, the fledgling United States grappled with defining its political identity and establishing a functional system of governance. Debates over issues such as federalism, states' rights, and the scope of governmental authority dominated the political landscape.
Federalism vs. States' Rights
One of the central debates in early US politics revolved around the balance of power between the federal government and the individual states. Federalists, led by figures such as Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, advocated for a strong central government with broad authority to regulate commerce, levy taxes, and maintain national defense. In contrast, Anti-Federalists, including Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, favored a more decentralized approach, emphasizing states' rights and limited federal intervention in local affairs.
Representation and the Constitution
The drafting of the United States Constitution in 1787 marked a critical turning point in the evolution of American politics. The Constitution sought to address concerns over representation, governance, and individual liberties, while also balancing competing interests among states and regions. Key compromises, such as the Great Compromise, which established a bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the House of Representatives and equal representation in the Senate, reflected the delicate balance of power and interests at play.
Acid-Base Reactions In Solution: Equilibrium and Transformation
In the realm of chemistry, scientists were beginning to unravel the complexities of acid-base reactions in solution, a fundamental process that underlies many chemical phenomena. Acid-base reactions involve the transfer of protons (H+ ions) between substances, resulting in the formation of conjugate acid-base pairs and the establishment of chemical equilibrium.
Proton Transfer and Equilibrium
In acid-base reactions, proton transfer occurs between acidic (donating protons) and basic (accepting protons) species, leading to the formation of conjugate acid-base pairs. For example, when hydrochloric acid (HCl) reacts with water (H2O), it donates a proton to water, forming hydronium ions (H3O+) and chloride ions (Cl−). This reversible process establishes a state of equilibrium, where the rates of forward and reverse reactions are equal, and the concentrations of reactants and products remain constant over time.
Buffers and Stability
Acid-base equilibrium is essential for maintaining pH balance in biological systems and regulating environmental conditions. Buffer solutions, which consist of weak acids or bases and their conjugate salts, help to stabilize pH by resisting changes in acidity or alkalinity when small amounts of acid or base are added. For example, blood in the human body contains buffers such as bicarbonate ions (HCO3−) that help maintain physiological pH levels, ensuring the proper functioning of biological processes.
Parallels and Intersections
Despite their apparent differences, the emerging politics of post-Revolutionary America and the dynamics of acid-base reactions in solution share common themes of transformation, equilibrium, and negotiation.
Processes of Transformation
In both realms, processes of transformation are at play as systems evolve and adapt to changing conditions. In politics, the post-Revolutionary period witnessed the transition from colonial rule to democratic governance, with debates and compromises shaping the structure of the new nation. Similarly, in chemistry, acid-base reactions involve transformations of chemical species as proton transfer leads to the formation of new substances.
Establishment of Equilibrium
Equilibrium, whether political or chemical, is a fundamental concept that underlies stability and balance in dynamic systems. In politics, the establishment of equilibrium involves negotiations and compromises among competing interests, resulting in a functional system of governance. Likewise, in acid-base reactions, equilibrium is achieved when the rates of forward and reverse reactions are balanced, leading to a steady-state concentration of reactants and products.
Negotiation and Compromise
Both realms involve processes of negotiation and compromise as stakeholders seek to reconcile conflicting interests and achieve common goals. In politics, the drafting of the Constitution and the subsequent ratification process required compromise among states with divergent interests and concerns. Similarly, in acid-base reactions, the formation of buffer solutions involves compromises between weak acids and their conjugate bases to maintain pH stability.
Conclusion
The post-Revolutionary period in America and the study of acid-base reactions in solution both represent dynamic processes of transformation, equilibrium, and negotiation. In politics, the emergence of a new nation involved debates over governance, representation, and federalism, ultimately leading to the establishment of a functional system of governance. In chemistry, the study of acid-base reactions elucidates the complex dynamics of proton transfer and equilibrium, essential for understanding chemical processes and maintaining environmental and physiological balance. By recognizing the

Hi guys so for context as i bring this situation up, i also would like to know what you overall consider appropriate ways on communicating on insta with strangers we follow and like/heart content of? Sometimes i might respond to a story with a friendly thing like “love yr artwork” or “great photo” nothing much to really look into, and when some message me saying “thx for the follow, cool profile” i pretty much do the same, conversation doesnt usually continue from there, i assume cause, well…we are strangers, its just politeness, though as i dont have many friends amd defo would love to chat more with people on insta i have stuff in common with, i completely understand the awkwardness and fear of it, and with this situation we have perhaps that example from his guys straight up ness, so.. we are both gay men, and i follow a bunch of travel and art profiles/ pages on instaggram cause its what im into, thats what public profiles on the platform are for, right?, and so this one account i started following ,the guy followed me back and messaged me the following,
HIM: “hey, How are you? Nice Profile 😘”
ME: “Hey, i'm gd thx, hbu? and same with yrs :) I especially dig the green eye imagery 👁️💚”
HIM: “Hey, thank you! I’m glad you like my eye color so much 😍 I’m doing great too. You have a really interesting profile. I really like it and I would like to find out more about you: where are you from and what’s your name? 😘
And how did you find out about my profile?”
Ok so…i dont really know how to fully interpret his kissing emojis, and i dont wanna seem rude, im all for a short regular friendly chat but , i dunno isnt it a lil, i dunno? …Quick to ask straight away my name and where im from? Like, i could be overanalysing this but, i thanked him already , we are from diff countries, he seems a legit human being, not a scam bot or that, he has lots of photos of himself and has a few thousand followers but, i just wanna respond nicely, without giving too much of my private life/details out there, advice plz? His photography is awesome, hence me following, and he has been nice from these messages, so how should i best respond to him. Cause ok, say i give my name and country, will he then ask for job title, if i am single, city i live in etc? I don't even know him, i dont love his green eyes lol, it was a post of a really close up shot of his eye which happens to be green, and i was being polite towards that image in my mind, not caring for the color itself, the “how did you find out about my profile” i am obviously fine with answering, it was merecely on homepage a travel pic of his appeared like thousands of others… did i do anything wrong? And going forward how should one socialize with people on insta without revealing too much or if i do then for whatever reason dont wanna chat more…

The dark sky loomed over the horizon, as day became night. Smokes stopped churning from the busy factories, revealing the beauty of the stars. Lights started to flicker; their shine mirrored the sight above.
And yet, tranquillity never came. Horse-drawn carriages and trams still strolled upon the hectic boulevards in the great metropolis of Amberton. A city in a constant.

Still, in such hubbub, a young human boy found his solace. A young, naughty boy who defied his parents’ orders to do his homework. Instead, he read the stories of his favourite adventuring party as illustrated in the new edition of ‘Adventurers Weekly’.
Alone, in his room.

Lying on his bed, the child imagined the events as though he was there to witness. Slowly flipping away, page by page. He thought to himself, “Just one more page!”.
Despite the open book on his desk, he was too entranced by the exploits of his idols. Too entranced to notice the clatter outdoors.
Outside the small building, footsteps can be heard. A person, clad in black naught their eyes, was scaling the brown brick wall. Unnoticed by a living soul.
As they reached the window of the young, naughty boy, their paces abruptly stopped. After a few, light taps from the heel, they stomped. With a leap, they trespassed a private property.

The boy was surprised by the improvised acrobatic show. Reflexively, he recoiled and backed himself to the wall. In the process, his journal was thrown off the mattress.
With his vision subjected to the masked intruder, his heartbeats hurried. His breaths were erratic. Cold sweat dripped from his tanned skin.
Yet, he did not scream. As if being visited by a nightmare in a sleep paralysis, the boy was stunned.
He was fearful.
Afraid.

The intruder stood up and then turned to the child in front of them. With a deep voice, they spoke in an oddly calm manner.
“Hello there, boy.”

The boy did not answer. His voice was shackled by dread.

The intruder saw the journal lying on the floor. They then spoke once again,
“Seems like you’re quite fond of legends and adventures, aren’t you?”
“How about one last story about the fall of Rydyan, the elvish king?”

The boy was still locked in fear, keeping his silence. Tears can be seen forming in his eyes.
Step by step, the intruder approached the bed.

“Well, it’s a classic.” They regaled.
“King Rydyan received a prophecy that his granddaughter shall overthrow his rule. Wanting to prevent that from happening, he ordered his granddaughter to be thrown away.”
“We all know what happened next. The granddaughter learned of her heritage, and she grew up to resent the king. After she gained support from the people, Rydyan was overthrown.”

The boy stared in silence. He was backed into a corner, helpless.
His tan face paled; his body trembled. Tears rained down on his cheeks.

The intruder paused, as they slowly breathed. The reflections of their eyes became wavy, damming the sense of guilt. They tried to maintain composure, but slight trembles still escaped as they spoke yet again.
“You see, young lad. My end was written in the prophecies, with you as the bearer. And I will not make the same mistakes as others did.”

Their right hand reached for their hip, revealing a revolver. The boy wanted to yell, but his mouth was locked, bound by fright. He could only close his eyes.
His story would be a short one.
Then…

a thud.

Unexpectedly, the intruder instead lightly threw the gun at the boy. They then removed their mask, revealing the face of a pale human man. The boy’s eyes widened, for it was the face of his idol.
Julius Joules, the gunslinger of the adventuring party shown in the journal.

The man knelt. “This is no way to meet a fan, I know that.” He said as he gazed at the floor. A single tear raced down through his cheek.
“But I’m sorry, lad. Prophecy is prophecy, and I don’t want us to have a lifelong, bloody feud. So, let us just end this right here, right now, shall we?”

The boy was overwhelmed with emotions. A single drop of joy was there, as he saw his hero in person for the first time. Yet, it was overshadowed by the flood of confusion from the strange turn of events. Outshined by the tides of frustration from the unjustness of the world. Combined, they breached the walls of fear.
As the boy was no longer fettered by silence, a shout bolted from his throat.
“I don’t want to hurt you! Why do I even have to do this? You’re my hero!”

“Again, prophecy is prophecy. Run from it, and it’ll catch up anyway.” Said the adventurer, in an attempt to calm the boy and himself.
“And I can’t even try to deny this one, especially when it comes from the seers of the Ezthos Oracle.”

“NO! I don’t care if some old man from a bunch of stupid islands said that I have to hurt you, I won’t do it!” The boy protested. Stubborn.

Julius sighed, “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt me that much. Just follow my lead and it’ll be quick and painless, alright?” He held the boy’s hand and placed his gun in it. The boy pushed Julius away, adamantly rejecting the idea.

Outside, the commotion had not gone unnoticed. Rapid thumps can be heard approaching the room. As they stopped, the door was slammed wide open. A loud smack echoed through the room, marking the entrance of a middle-aged couple; interrupted the conversation between their child and his hero.
“Samar! Are you alright? What the hell is going on in here?” The mother shouted; a knife held high with her right hand.
As they were about to lunge at the trespasser, a shred of recognition flew, “Is… is that… Julius Joules?”

“Yes, it is me, in the flesh. You’ve come at an unfortunate time I’m afraid.”

“Is… Is that a GUN?” His father, holding a shovel, saw the object in Samar’s vicinity.
As the realisation came over them, they panicked. Yet, they did not lunge. They would not take chances like that, not against the famed adventurer.
The father dropped his shovel. “Please, PLEASE! I beg of you! Don’t hurt him! He’s just an innocent young boy! He’s the only one that we have!” He pleaded.
“I’ll give you anything! ANYTHING! Take our money, silverware, spices, just not our son’s life!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt your son. And neither I yearn for your wealth. I’m here because of a prophecy.” Explained the adventurer.
“The wise seers of Ezthos Oracle declared that your son shall be the bearer of my end. I know how those stories end, so rather than trying to defy them, I’ll just let him fulfil his destiny. Right here, right now.”

“F*CK THOSE PROPHECIES!” Samar shouted, stunning all in the room. His parents might be upset about his choice of words, but there are more pressing matters at hand.
“Why should I care about what is written for me? Why can’t you just still go explore the world?” Said the boy.

“My son is right!” The father spoke, adding to his son’s wisdom,
“Why don’t you just let fate run its course? Why are you worrying about something so distant?”

Julius sighed, “Well, what if I turn evil in the future if we don’t do this now? What if wickedness overtakes me?”

“Are you evil now?” Asked the boy.

“Well, I don’t know." Answered the adventurer.
"I do try my best to help others, but…”

“Then you’re not evil, and you don’t deserve to be hurt! If you turned evil when I grow up, that’s adult me problem, not today’s me problem!” Said Samar.

“Again, he’s right.” The mother spoke,
“Just live your life, don’t let nonsense like that disturb you. You know, you and your adventures mean a lot to him, right?” She said as she pointed out the various journal clippings on the wall.

“But I…” Julius was speechless. Something had snapped within him.
He was maddened, his obsession with fate overtook him. But the words from the family broke his trance.
What has he done?

He trembled for a second, and all of a sudden, he hugged the boy. He was unable to maintain his calm any longer. His tears finally flew.
“I’m sorry, lad! I’m so sorry! You’re right, you don’t have to do this. You don’t deserve this, not this young.”

The boy wept again, overpowered by his feelings.
Julius Joules, his hero, hugged him. He had convinced the adventurer to stop his insane, prophecy-driven plan. Yet, what just happened was still fresh in the boy's memory, and he dreaded the fact that he would be his champion’s doom.
The parents hugged each other. Relieved. Their son is safe for now.

…

Tears stopped dropping from the adventurer. Calmed down, Julius released his hug, and then slowly walked to the window.
“I’m really sorry about all that happened tonight.” He spoke. “I’ll send compensation soon enough. We’ll meet again someday, hopefully not the way I would expect.”

Just before he left through where he came from, however, the boy’s mother interjected.
“Mr. Joules, please, stay a bit longer. We are just about to have dinner!” Said the woman.
“You’ve probably come a long way from here, and I think you looked a tad bit famished, dear.”

“I don’t think I deserve your kindness,” Replied the adventurer.
“Not after everything that just happened.”

“No, it’s alright. We insist!” Joined the father.
“We have enough for everyone!”

Not wanting to be rude, Julius could only accept.
“Very well. Who am I to be above the laws of hospitality?” He said as he put down his right leg from the window.

The mother spoke, “Good! Now, let me just run the pipes so we all can wash our faces!”
With a slight chuckle, she continued. “I know that we all need that after what just happened.”

"Oh please... You've offered so much already." Uttered Julius.
"Thank you." He continued. A smile formed on his face.

(To be continued?)