Register platypus gamehouse
Uhhh... Where's The Grouch?
2024.04.11 21:46 Unique_Recording_364 Uhhh... Where's The Grouch?
 | You guys notice that The Grouch is missing on this Nimrod CD tracklist. No, it's not a bootleg and it does appear on the CD itself. I think it might be something to do with the fact that it's an Australasian import, but could this be a super rare error or something? submitted by Unique_Recording_364 to greenday [link] [comments] |
2024.03.27 22:40 Strange_storm4 [WTS][WTT] Silver and Gold, stop on by and take a gander.
PROOF: https://imgur.com/a/JOTxAaT
-if prices are off please let me know. Did my best to price below lowest I found from major dealers. Reserve the right to fix post errors.
-Also I will decide on responding order.
Silver:
OPM 1oz rounds 28$
random 1oz Niue 2023 Phoenix coin 27$
1- 1 Anguilla Lobster silver coin 27$
silvertown 1oz bar
1- yugioh magician girl 1oz silver round 75$ 338/500
2oz platypus Aussie 2021 70$
2oz yr of the mouse 2020 100$
J&M 10oz silver bar 270$
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
1ABC 10oz silver bar 255$
10oz Geiger Silver bar
Nordic Mint 10oz silver bars 255$ each
10oz 3d silver round 270$
1- Provident Mint Wildlife set, 10 1oz silver rounds, full set 375$
1 silver kilo 2023 Aztec calendar 1350$
1- 51oz 2015 lunar Aussie silver goat set 1775$
Plat:
1- 1/3oz Aussie Marlin 2020 350$
GOLD: 1g free with 2.5k purchase10 gold franc free withgold
1- 1/2 2020 Us mint end of ww2 coin 1375$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 745$
1- 2015 1/4 Jamestown PR70DCAM 575$
1- 5g year of the dog PAMP bar 425$
1- 1/10 Aussie wedge tail 2018 250$
10 gulden 427$ each
2- 10 franc 225$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
submitted by Strange_storm4 to Pmsforsale [link] [comments]
-if prices are off please let me know. Did my best to price below lowest I found from major dealers. Reserve the right to fix post errors.
-Also I will decide on responding order.
- any grades are are a guess by me or by the person I bought them from. If not slabbed don’t trust the grade.
Silver:
1- 1 Anguilla Lobster silver coin 27$
1- yugioh magician girl 1oz silver round 75$ 338/500
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
1
1- Provident Mint Wildlife set, 10 1oz silver rounds, full set 375$
1- 51oz 2015 lunar Aussie silver goat set 1775$
Plat:
1- 1/3oz Aussie Marlin 2020 350$
GOLD: 1g free with 2.5k purchase
1- 1/2 2020 Us mint end of ww2 coin 1375$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 745$
1- 2015 1/4 Jamestown PR70DCAM 575$
1- 5g year of the dog PAMP bar 425$
1- 1/10 Aussie wedge tail 2018 250$
2- 10 franc 225$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
2024.03.24 18:35 Strange_storm4 [WTS][WTT] silver and gold, collectible, generic and old.
PROOF: https://imgur.com/a/OBfbByV
-Also I will decide on responding order.
Silver:
90% 10$fv modern proof quarters 195$
3- OPM 1oz rounds 28$ each
1- random 1oz Niue 2023 Phoenix coin 27$
1- 1 Anguilla Lobster silver coin 27$
1- silvertown 1oz bar 27$
1- yugioh magician girl 1oz silver round 75$ 338/500
1- 2oz platypus Aussie 2021 70$
1- 2oz yr of the mouse 2020 100$
1- J&M 10oz silver bar 270$
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
1- ABC 10oz silver bar 260$
1- 10oz Geiger Silver bar 280$
3- Nordic Mint 10oz silver bars 260$ each
1- 10oz 3d silver round 275$
1- Provident Mint Wildlife set, 10 1oz silver rounds, full set 400$
1- 1 silver kilo 2023 Aztec calendar 1370$
1- 51oz 2015 lunar Aussie silver goat set 1775$
Plat:
1- 1/3oz Aussie Marlin 2020 350$
GOLD: 1g free with 2.5k purchase
1- 1/2 2020 Us mint end of ww2 coin 1375$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 750$
1- 2015 Jamestown PR70DCAM 575$
1- 1993 California Gold 1/4 575$
1- 5g year of the dog PAMP bar 425$
1- 1/10 Aussie wedge tail 2018 250$
4- 10 gulden 430$
3- 10 franc 225$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. (Though I’ll cover tip) -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
submitted by Strange_storm4 to Pmsforsale [link] [comments]
UNTIL 1500hrs EST today, take 5$ off for every 300$ spent.
-if prices are off please let me know. Did my best to price below lowest I found from major dealers. Reserve the right to fix post errors.-Also I will decide on responding order.
- any grades are are a guess by me or by the person I bought them from. If not slabbed don’t trust the grade.
Silver:
90% 10$fv modern proof quarters 195$
3- OPM 1oz rounds 28$ each
1- random 1oz Niue 2023 Phoenix coin 27$
1- 1 Anguilla Lobster silver coin 27$
1- silvertown 1oz bar 27$
1- yugioh magician girl 1oz silver round 75$ 338/500
1- 2oz platypus Aussie 2021 70$
1- 2oz yr of the mouse 2020 100$
1- J&M 10oz silver bar 270$
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
1- ABC 10oz silver bar 260$
1- 10oz Geiger Silver bar 280$
3- Nordic Mint 10oz silver bars 260$ each
1- 10oz 3d silver round 275$
1- Provident Mint Wildlife set, 10 1oz silver rounds, full set 400$
1- 1 silver kilo 2023 Aztec calendar 1370$
1- 51oz 2015 lunar Aussie silver goat set 1775$
Plat:
1- 1/3oz Aussie Marlin 2020 350$
GOLD: 1g free with 2.5k purchase
1- 1/2 2020 Us mint end of ww2 coin 1375$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 750$
1- 2015 Jamestown PR70DCAM 575$
1- 1993 California Gold 1/4 575$
1- 5g year of the dog PAMP bar 425$
1- 1/10 Aussie wedge tail 2018 250$
4- 10 gulden 430$
3- 10 franc 225$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. (Though I’ll cover tip) -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
2024.03.22 16:51 CacheValue First day for of work in Cat Tail City
It was the first day of a new life for u/Khorde_the_Husk
Cat Tail City had extended an offer to work here in the bustling metropolis. It had been one thing to be invited here to work, but another all together to see it in person. A mix of old world charm and modernity, the original town still stood with it's walls erected. But a series of residential properties and industrial facilities were being built all around the old city.
Outside the main gate there were several guards, a transport truck with some CatFolk in the back pulled out, most of them with their fur looking singed. Two individuals approached chatting with each other, Khorde waited while the two chatted, he could over hear;
"There were 13 of them left." Said u/Aggressive-Ad5557
"What happened exactly?" The high elf asked, clad in red velvet armor and glimmering bronze amor hardpoints, with a polished bronze shield to match.
"Some wizard tried to cast a fireball in their village, something went wrong and it destroyed the entire town." He replied,
"There were more survivors but they're in no condition currently so they're being treated on site." Replied the man.
"Very well." She said, scrying on her handled manapad, before putting it away.
"Oversee their transportation to the processing area, make sure they get what they need and see to them, like the others."
He nodded, and gave a wave to the two transport trucks after the troops looked them over briefly, as an inspection.
She walked over to Khode and extended her hand,
"Welcome, its good to meet you. I'm Sorcella Ravine, Offical Court Wizard.
"I trust you have all your documernts in order, let me take a look at them."
She quickly thumbs through the paperwork, before handing it back it Khode.
"I believe everything is here, if you want to just head down to the financial district, the bank at the CTSE will register your citizenship and process your payroll information."
She says, signing off on it and handing it back.
A nearby solider walked over, a half orc looking brute. He wore mismatched armor, with faint lettering that had been scrubbed from it, with mismatched patching over laid. He shifted in his armor, uncomfortably, moving an M3A1 in one hand and dragging a horse lead with the other.
"Ma'am. Horse." Said the half orc. Sorcella mounted the horse, steading it by the reins, as she did she looked over the half orc.
"Mage. Follow." Said the half orc, motioning in one broad arm motion.
"I'll meet you at Delfan Tower once you're finished. I have work to do regarding a discovery in the mines."
Sorcella rode off into the distance, the city gates open and the city grandeur washes over you; the city streets were clean, and maintained by magic enchanted brooms or other devices. Small familiars and minor demons roamed, sweeping dust into little controlled motes and dispelling them, cleaning windows and gathering trash.
A street vendor was selling his wares, bars of chocolate and baked goods. Another shop is open selling luxury goods and other items imported from the empire of King Platypus the 1st. Other stores all bristled with hustle and bustle. A sense of serenity takes over, as the blue sky with few clouds and gentle warm breeze carriers the nearby smell of sea and salt.
In the fiscal district, the banking folks at the CTSE are very quick and happy to help. The location serves as a one stop for embassy and banking, so enrolling as a citizen is fairly quick and painless, especially with the right signed documentation.
"That should be everything you need." Said the man at the bank, handing back the information.
"You saftey deposit box is available as well, for any goods or materials you may want to store securely."
A brief nod and a brisk walk through town, on the way there is a kind of military parade.
The first is a company of undead, dressed in full MOP and support gear, you only even know they're undead at first because of your experience as a mage. They're all armed with surplus gear and bayonets, equipped as sappers and CQC combat.
The nextcompany is one of all summoned Imps, carrying various types of support gear and equipment. Alot of heavy machinegun teams, combat engineers, explosive experts and medical personnel.
The third is a group of soliders, dressed like the half orc from the gate but their gear was in better shape. The lettering was all still scrubbed off like his, however. They were armed with a series of firearms, such as Shotguns, The M3A1 Grease Guns, some have handguns and riot shields and overs heavy machienguns or RPGs. Then the usual; several tanks, missile carriers, some magic super weapons are being shown off.
After watching for a moment, you pass onto Delfan Tower. It's humble, and modest, retaining some of it's old world architecture. Inside at the desk, there are two Cat Folk chatting. Both have luxurious coats, and are adorned with extravagant gem stones and fine jewelry. Some of the finest Cat Folk you've ever seen, actually. They wore tapered Togas, like that of anciet heiresses of Greece or Rome and spoke with a practiced suppleness;
'Hello, and welcome to Delfan Tower."
One of them said, their voice carrying a piercing serenity.
"You must be the new mage Sorcella spoke to us about earlier."
She said, as she pushes one of her locks out of her face, her ear twitching slightly.
"Do you have your paperwork ready?" She asks. You hand it over.
"Wonderful." She simply smiles, her soft blonde auburn hair and stunning green eyes burn across the quiet, an exquisite individual.
"I can process these papers, my assistant here can take you to your office."
She says, as one of the other cat folk, this one black haired and purple eyed, but just as stunning if not more;
"You'll love it here." She says,
"Ever since I was brought here, I've loved it. Not at first obviously, because of the war and what happened but ... "
Their voices echoed through the halls as the walked to and by each room, and the treasures there within.
submitted by CacheValue to wizardposting [link] [comments]
Cat Tail City had extended an offer to work here in the bustling metropolis. It had been one thing to be invited here to work, but another all together to see it in person. A mix of old world charm and modernity, the original town still stood with it's walls erected. But a series of residential properties and industrial facilities were being built all around the old city.
Outside the main gate there were several guards, a transport truck with some CatFolk in the back pulled out, most of them with their fur looking singed. Two individuals approached chatting with each other, Khorde waited while the two chatted, he could over hear;
"There were 13 of them left." Said u/Aggressive-Ad5557
"What happened exactly?" The high elf asked, clad in red velvet armor and glimmering bronze amor hardpoints, with a polished bronze shield to match.
"Some wizard tried to cast a fireball in their village, something went wrong and it destroyed the entire town." He replied,
"There were more survivors but they're in no condition currently so they're being treated on site." Replied the man.
"Very well." She said, scrying on her handled manapad, before putting it away.
"Oversee their transportation to the processing area, make sure they get what they need and see to them, like the others."
He nodded, and gave a wave to the two transport trucks after the troops looked them over briefly, as an inspection.
She walked over to Khode and extended her hand,
"Welcome, its good to meet you. I'm Sorcella Ravine, Offical Court Wizard.
"I trust you have all your documernts in order, let me take a look at them."
She quickly thumbs through the paperwork, before handing it back it Khode.
"I believe everything is here, if you want to just head down to the financial district, the bank at the CTSE will register your citizenship and process your payroll information."
She says, signing off on it and handing it back.
A nearby solider walked over, a half orc looking brute. He wore mismatched armor, with faint lettering that had been scrubbed from it, with mismatched patching over laid. He shifted in his armor, uncomfortably, moving an M3A1 in one hand and dragging a horse lead with the other.
"Ma'am. Horse." Said the half orc. Sorcella mounted the horse, steading it by the reins, as she did she looked over the half orc.
"Mage. Follow." Said the half orc, motioning in one broad arm motion.
"I'll meet you at Delfan Tower once you're finished. I have work to do regarding a discovery in the mines."
Sorcella rode off into the distance, the city gates open and the city grandeur washes over you; the city streets were clean, and maintained by magic enchanted brooms or other devices. Small familiars and minor demons roamed, sweeping dust into little controlled motes and dispelling them, cleaning windows and gathering trash.
A street vendor was selling his wares, bars of chocolate and baked goods. Another shop is open selling luxury goods and other items imported from the empire of King Platypus the 1st. Other stores all bristled with hustle and bustle. A sense of serenity takes over, as the blue sky with few clouds and gentle warm breeze carriers the nearby smell of sea and salt.
In the fiscal district, the banking folks at the CTSE are very quick and happy to help. The location serves as a one stop for embassy and banking, so enrolling as a citizen is fairly quick and painless, especially with the right signed documentation.
"That should be everything you need." Said the man at the bank, handing back the information.
"You saftey deposit box is available as well, for any goods or materials you may want to store securely."
A brief nod and a brisk walk through town, on the way there is a kind of military parade.
The first is a company of undead, dressed in full MOP and support gear, you only even know they're undead at first because of your experience as a mage. They're all armed with surplus gear and bayonets, equipped as sappers and CQC combat.
The nextcompany is one of all summoned Imps, carrying various types of support gear and equipment. Alot of heavy machinegun teams, combat engineers, explosive experts and medical personnel.
The third is a group of soliders, dressed like the half orc from the gate but their gear was in better shape. The lettering was all still scrubbed off like his, however. They were armed with a series of firearms, such as Shotguns, The M3A1 Grease Guns, some have handguns and riot shields and overs heavy machienguns or RPGs. Then the usual; several tanks, missile carriers, some magic super weapons are being shown off.
After watching for a moment, you pass onto Delfan Tower. It's humble, and modest, retaining some of it's old world architecture. Inside at the desk, there are two Cat Folk chatting. Both have luxurious coats, and are adorned with extravagant gem stones and fine jewelry. Some of the finest Cat Folk you've ever seen, actually. They wore tapered Togas, like that of anciet heiresses of Greece or Rome and spoke with a practiced suppleness;
'Hello, and welcome to Delfan Tower."
One of them said, their voice carrying a piercing serenity.
"You must be the new mage Sorcella spoke to us about earlier."
She said, as she pushes one of her locks out of her face, her ear twitching slightly.
"Do you have your paperwork ready?" She asks. You hand it over.
"Wonderful." She simply smiles, her soft blonde auburn hair and stunning green eyes burn across the quiet, an exquisite individual.
"I can process these papers, my assistant here can take you to your office."
She says, as one of the other cat folk, this one black haired and purple eyed, but just as stunning if not more;
"You'll love it here." She says,
"Ever since I was brought here, I've loved it. Not at first obviously, because of the war and what happened but ... "
Their voices echoed through the halls as the walked to and by each room, and the treasures there within.
2024.03.10 21:36 Strange_storm4 [WTS][WTT] Let’s move some silver and gold!
PROOF: https://imgur.com/a/dNSQ54A
-if prices are off please let me know. Did my best to price below lowest I found from major dealers. Reserve the right to fix post errors. -open to making bundle prices, just ask.
-Also I will decide on responding order. Don’t like that??? Then send a Bin
Silver:
90% 5fv$ walking liberty 0.50$ piece. 100$
12- 1oz monarch silver legos 32$ each
24- 1/2oz monarch silver Lego 17$ each
5- 1oz mixed rounds 25$ each
2- 1oz Scottsdale bar 27$ each
1- J&M 10oz silver bar 275$
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
25- 1/2oz Australian was in pacific coin 13$ each
2- 2oz Aussie platypus 2021 60$ each
2- 100g scottsdale stackers 86$ each
2- 2021 Niue Owls 1oz silver coin 27$ each
1- 1.25oz Canadian buffalo 2015 35$
1- 10 1oz 1999-2000 Maple privy firework 400$
1- 10oz RCM silver bars 265$ each
2- 10oz Archangel silver bar 280$ each
1- ABC 10oz silver bar 257$
4- 10oz Sunshine mint silver bar 257$ each
5- 5oz Scottsdale Stacker 135$ each
10- 2oz Scottsdale Stacker 57$ each
2- 5oz Scottsdale Round 135$ each
1- Provident Mint Wildlife set, 10 1oz silver rounds, full set 400$
1- 1 kilo 2023 Aztec calendar 1400$
Platinum:
1- 1oz 2014 American platinum Liberty 1100$
GOLD: 1g free with 2k purchase
25- 1$ Goldback 4$ each
1- 1/2 2020 Us mint end of ww2 coin 1500$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 775$
1- 1/4 2015 Proof PF70 ultra cameo 775$
1- 2015 Jamestown PR70DCAM 600$
1- 1993 California Gold 1/4 600$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
submitted by Strange_storm4 to Pmsforsale [link] [comments]
-if prices are off please let me know. Did my best to price below lowest I found from major dealers. Reserve the right to fix post errors. -open to making bundle prices, just ask.
-Also I will decide on responding order. Don’t like that??? Then send a Bin
- any grades are are a guess by me or by the person I bought them from. If not slabbed don’t trust the grade.
Silver:
90% 5fv$ walking liberty 0.50$ piece. 100$
12- 1oz monarch silver legos 32$ each
24- 1/2oz monarch silver Lego 17$ each
5- 1oz mixed rounds 25$ each
2- 1oz Scottsdale bar 27$ each
1- J&M 10oz silver bar 275$
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
25- 1/2oz Australian was in pacific coin 13$ each
2- 2oz Aussie platypus 2021 60$ each
2- 100g scottsdale stackers 86$ each
2- 2021 Niue Owls 1oz silver coin 27$ each
1- 1.25oz Canadian buffalo 2015 35$
1- 10 1oz 1999-2000 Maple privy firework 400$
1- 10oz RCM silver bars 265$ each
2- 10oz Archangel silver bar 280$ each
1- ABC 10oz silver bar 257$
4- 10oz Sunshine mint silver bar 257$ each
5- 5oz Scottsdale Stacker 135$ each
10- 2oz Scottsdale Stacker 57$ each
2- 5oz Scottsdale Round 135$ each
1- Provident Mint Wildlife set, 10 1oz silver rounds, full set 400$
1- 1 kilo 2023 Aztec calendar 1400$
Platinum:
1- 1oz 2014 American platinum Liberty 1100$
GOLD: 1g free with 2k purchase
25- 1$ Goldback 4$ each
1- 1/2 2020 Us mint end of ww2 coin 1500$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 775$
1- 1/4 2015 Proof PF70 ultra cameo 775$
1- 2015 Jamestown PR70DCAM 600$
1- 1993 California Gold 1/4 600$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
2024.03.07 20:12 Strange_storm4 [WTS][WTT]Spring cleaning has arrived! Grab your gold and silver today!
PROOF: https://imgur.com/a/SbCz80Z
-if prices are off please let me know. Did my best to price below lowest I found from major dealers. Reserve the right to fix post errors. -open to making bundle prices, just ask.
-Also I will decide on responding order. Don’t like that??? Then send a Bin
Silver:
90% 5fv$ walking liberty 0.50$ piece. 100$
12- 1oz monarch silver legos 32$ each
24- 1/2oz monarch silver Lego 17$ each
1- 2oz 2023 silver libertad 70$
6- 1oz mixed rounds 25$ each
1- alien coin 1oz silver round 26$
1- J&M 10oz silver bar 275$
7 - misc 1oz silver Silvertowne bars 26$ each (3 designs)
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
25- 1/2oz Australian was in pacific coin 13$ each
18- 1oz legendary warrior round (4 types) 25$ each
2- 2oz Aussie platypus 2021 60$ each
2- 100g scottsdale stackers 88$ each
2- 2021 Niue Owls 1oz silver coin 27$ each
1- 1.25oz Canadian buffalo 2015 35$
1- 10 1oz 1999-2000 Maple privy firework 400$
2- 10oz RCM silver bars 265$ each
2- 5oz pony express silver bar- 140$ each
1- 2019 5oz Apollo PF70 Ultra cameo 300$ (340$ and up comps)
1- Provident Mint Wildlife set, 10 1oz silver rounds, full set 400$
1- 5oz Hayleybug silver bar 250$
1- Full 51oz kilo to 1/2oz Aussie lunar 2015 Goat set—— 1900$ (could not find a full set to compare to, feel free to send offer)
1- 1 kilo 2023 Aztec calendar 1400$
Platinum:
1- 1oz 2014 American platinum Liberty 1100$
GOLD:
6-1/10 AGE 235$ each
1-napoleon 1/10 gold coin
1- 1/10 Maple 1998 Eagle Privy 300$
1- 1/2 2020 Us mint end of ww2 coin 1500$
1- 2020 1/2oz AGE. Ms70 1300$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 775$
1- 1/4 2015 Proof PF70 ultra cameo 775$
1- 2015 Jamestown PR70DCAM 600$
1- 1993 California Gold 1/4 600$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
submitted by Strange_storm4 to Pmsforsale [link] [comments]
Trade value:
trade for goldbacks
—-3.3$ per 1gb. —-Spend over 1.5k and goldbacks will be valued at 3.5$ per 1gb-if prices are off please let me know. Did my best to price below lowest I found from major dealers. Reserve the right to fix post errors. -open to making bundle prices, just ask.
-Also I will decide on responding order. Don’t like that??? Then send a Bin
- any grades are are a guess by me or by the person I bought them from. If not slabbed don’t trust the grade.
Silver:
90% 5fv$ walking liberty 0.50$ piece. 100$
12- 1oz monarch silver legos 32$ each
24- 1/2oz monarch silver Lego 17$ each
1- 2oz 2023 silver libertad 70$
6- 1oz mixed rounds 25$ each
1- alien coin 1oz silver round 26$
1- J&M 10oz silver bar 275$
7 - misc 1oz silver Silvertowne bars 26$ each (3 designs)
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
25- 1/2oz Australian was in pacific coin 13$ each
18- 1oz legendary warrior round (4 types) 25$ each
2- 2oz Aussie platypus 2021 60$ each
2- 100g scottsdale stackers 88$ each
2- 2021 Niue Owls 1oz silver coin 27$ each
1- 1.25oz Canadian buffalo 2015 35$
1- 10 1oz 1999-2000 Maple privy firework 400$
2- 10oz RCM silver bars 265$ each
2- 5oz pony express silver bar- 140$ each
1- 2019 5oz Apollo PF70 Ultra cameo 300$ (340$ and up comps)
1- Provident Mint Wildlife set, 10 1oz silver rounds, full set 400$
1- 5oz Hayleybug silver bar 250$
1- Full 51oz kilo to 1/2oz Aussie lunar 2015 Goat set—— 1900$ (could not find a full set to compare to, feel free to send offer)
1- 1 kilo 2023 Aztec calendar 1400$
Platinum:
1- 1oz 2014 American platinum Liberty 1100$
GOLD:
6-
1-
1- 1/10 Maple 1998 Eagle Privy 300$
1- 1/2 2020 Us mint end of ww2 coin 1500$
1- 2020 1/2oz AGE. Ms70 1300$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 775$
1- 1/4 2015 Proof PF70 ultra cameo 775$
1- 2015 Jamestown PR70DCAM 600$
1- 1993 California Gold 1/4 600$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
2024.03.05 11:13 Maned_Wolf_444 Ne Potentiality
Source: https://cognitivetype.com/ne-behaviorism-mythology/
https://preview.redd.it/jd1bwvnnphmc1.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=2fd1fcfa4f82464f0da644c84b2b6bfb60ad4b23
Metabolism
Ne is a function that absorbs objects in real-time (Pe) and then extrapolates (N) new objects from their indiscriminate recombinations. Similar to how finding a ten-dollar bill on the street opens up a spectrum of possibilities for what to do with the money, a possibility space opens up around the objects Ne registers. In this space, Ne seeks out unconventional ideas for what the objects can transform or recombine into. As the recombinations become more unconventional, their capacity to generate even more novel association chains increases, diverging ad infinitum.
Behaviorism
The Ne function is motivated to discover new information, whether by absorbing it from the outside or by synthesizing it out of existing datasets through creative alchemy. It is highly imaginative, which is to say it's driven by images and information structures of all kinds. However, these images are not immediately evidenced in the environment but are all those that the environment evokes by containing an adjacent graphical relationship to the present. When faced with a situation the Ne user will only casually consider the literal objects before them as their mind soon drifts up, around, and behind those immediate objects to uncover the visual and conceptual implications related to that moment. They are quick to leap beyond the physical world and become lost in their heads; conjuring up novel ways to interpret situations as they unfold. They have a talent for manipulating information spatially and relationally; fitting together ideas that are otherwise largely disconnected from each other. They may find themselves comparing elements of the periodic table to music bands, or entertaining highly unlikely "What if..." scenarios for the fun of it. As children, they may be absentminded daydreamers oblivious to their surroundings and caught up in a self-made world of equal parts fiction and reality. The domain of their imagination can be far more interesting to them than whatever is happening in the outer world. Some may nurture this world with stories they make up, complete with characters, landscapes, and perhaps an entire legendarium.
But the time the Ne user spends in their head often translates to time not spent in reality. Far more than the average student, they will be prone to space out in class and be unable to get through long texts or any tasks that require a very slow or arduous pace. Their perception of the world outside of their interests will be faint, hazy, or splotchy. If something is not particularly rich with associative potential, the details of objects in daily life will soon fade, leaving only their general impression as an after-image in their mind. When listening to others, as they’re absorbing the person’s words, one word will trigger a mental tangent midway and they’ll pursue it curiously at the loss of what else the other person is saying. They can live a klutzy existence, tripping on objects, wearing mismatched clothes, losing things, and forgetting appointments regularly. But despite this exterior inattentiveness, internally they may experience quite a hyperactivity of thought. Far more is happening within than without and this can also cause troubles such as over-thinking, excessive worrying about outcomes or not getting a good night’s sleep from an inability to slow down their mental chatter. They may find it difficult to keep a steady mental pace and can often be diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, or Sensory Processing Disorder. Reality can register to the Ne user as a series of information flashes that are somewhat spontaneous and which channel from every previous dataset collected in the unconscious.
The Ne user's capacity to synthesize such high volumes of information sometimes leads to spooky insights, uncanny realizations, and predictions of the relevant situation. Suddenly a vision may flash before their eyes, stitched together from hundreds of unconscious micro-correlations accumulated around this moment; converging into one instance in time. This can lead to a semblance of clairvoyance where the Ne user attains some knowledge of the unseen causalities of the universe. They may come to deeply trust this sense, whenever they feel it manifest. However, these sudden flashes will not represent a stable ability and their appearance will be as unpredictable as their inspiration. In other cases, this can produce a habit of serendipity where the individual participates in a cosmic flow towards meaningful happenstances by consciously or unconsciously directing their energies in those vectors. The Ne users will attune themselves to the real-time synchronicities of the universe, ebbing and dancing in harmony with an eternally unfolding fractal toward undiscovered lands. At a more modest scale, the Ne user's information synthesis will regularly evoke epiphanies when various information vectors -- previously suspended in an unconscious superposition -- click into alignment and burst forth immediate realizations that alter the fabric of their mind and their paradigm. In all of these cases, the Ne user is rapidly altered -- seemingly by a divine act -- into a more true alignment with reality as it may exist at the widest scale possible.
At a much more practical level, the strong Ne user is not only driven to absorb and synthesize information but also to actively participate in the information-collecting process. They will enjoy engaging with elements of reality through tinkering and experimentation. More than a few household devices may be taken apart as they yearn to see what’s inside. They may take up a variety of interests ranging from sculpting to rock collecting, music composition, cosplaying, animation, voice acting, puppeteering, and ventriloquism – but will rarely become experts at any of them. As a jack of all trades and master of none, they will dabble with mediums frequently but may find themselves changing hobbies every few years. This can also cause a great deal of disarray in their personal lives, as they soon lose interest in a once-beloved life trajectory. Repetition is among their biggest turn-offs, and this can also lead to a life-long struggle with keeping a set occupation unless the Ne user is fortunate enough to find a job that is as dynamic and evolving as their interests. They enjoy being on the cusp of their understanding and seeing what lies still beyond their reach. Over time, every interest they've ever had has the potential to spontaneously reignite itself in them. On a whim, they may circle back around to a hobby after having packed it up in the garage for years or decades, and continue their joy for it as if no time had passed. Indeed, they often have closets or garages filled with various unfinished hobbies or projects - waiting for an occasion to become the center of their attention.
The Ne user will also have an integral sense of humor and bring that with them into many of their interactions. They’ll have the capacity to convert their wild imaginings into out-of-context parallels; comparing a person’s gait to a limping platypus, an unusual jawline to a can opener, or a shih tzu to an animated mustache. They’ll juxtapose ideas together in absurd and off-the-wall ways and highlight the unseen peculiarities of things. The Ne user will have a natural drive to spark up the environment; to provide levity and life to situations as well as to their own life. Life is too dreary if you can’t have a little fun. Wordplay can be a favorite medium of humor, where they'll manipulate the semantics of the situation to make puns and associations. "Oh you can sit here with me, chairing is caring!" or "That omelet was egg-squisite! But the bacon was hogwash" or spoonerisms like "I'm stoing to the gore" may be commonly heard phrases. This sense of humor can lead many Ne users into stand-up comedy or adopt a role as a talk show host for their ability to improvise and keep the flow of a conversation going in unexpected directions.
The Ne user will also have a playful tendency to parody multiple characters and scenarios in real time. A certain event or external sound/word will trigger an association chain that reminds them of a scene or meme, and their mind instantly re-enacts the memory both mentally and physically. The Ne user wears many hats and could be a sort of walking record of enactments, ready to sprint into their acting mode at a moment's notice when the situation presents itself. They will manifest this in the form of "mini-skits" that imitate the iconic qualities of a thing. The Ne user may be an expert at playing with their facial muscles, making a wide range of expressions. They may also excel at modulating their voice tone, picking up and repeating accents from movie stars or obscure demographics. At a more functional and less recreational level, this gives the Ne user the ability to be adaptive and construct personas in social situations. If they are driven to assume a certain professional or social role, they may seamlessly be able to play the part. This can sometimes become a longstanding act, as they use the persona for months until the Ne user may even forget that they assimilated or constructed the character in the first place.
When the hardships of life cause a fall out of emotional health for the Ne user, their first instinct will be to divert their attention away from the overwhelming pain. Humor, recreation, and consumerism will be exercised as an antidote to their pain, often leading them to engage in reckless spending, and jovial displays, and to seek out more risky experiences. On the inside the Ne user will be viscerally compelled to stay on the run by an avoidance of their anxieties and fears. They’ll feel that they would not be able to stand up to the full magnitude of their despair, and rather than have it crush them, they choose to highlight or exaggerate positives and downplay or ignore the magnitude of any negatives. They may also become immersed in a certain media, binge-watching Netflix or playing video games instead of tending to pressing responsibilities. Despite a completely conscious awareness of the necessity of certain actions, the more pressing a responsibility is, the more their mind will fight powerfully to avoid it, disallowing proper mental focus and follow-through. The Ne user will conflict with their mind as it struggles to do anything else but what it's supposed to do. Therefore, rather than address the issue head-on, the stressed Ne user may skirt around the problem and find something more magnetic to focus on and just wait for the project, assignment, or relationship to fail on its own.
Mythology
https://preview.redd.it/6x2y8e68qhmc1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=c03696d7d0792b80c99d7eaafd66145c62f4a2cc
The spiritual experience of Ne is called Mer, which is described more completely on this page. Mer is a psychological archetype best known as the Puer Aeternus; a Divine Child with the ability to distort or alter reality. As a symbol, Mer appears in the form of a golden egg, a genie lamp, or a deux ex machina. We find the spirit of Mer in characters such as Peter Pan), Paprika), and The Little Prince. These archetypal characters are almost always unbounded by gravity, able to fly, and always have some capacity to use magic playfully. They are provisional, innocent, and entirely without responsibility. Like the spirit of Mer, there is a quality that Ne brings to its user which is floaty, flighty, surreal, and nebulous. It may feel as if every mental step taken is a leap into new worlds, causing them to have a fantastical, spritely energy or the quality of air. The individual enveloped by Mer may feel non-literal, non-corporeal, and as if they were a caricature of themselves. Relating this quality to the music, the floaty energy of Ne carries the tone of Mozart's Turkish March or the Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairy.
The myth of Mer, when personally felt, ignites a yearning for reality to contain something other than the mundane and ordinary. There is a craving for something more than this, which hearkens back to a time when reality did exist as an interesting and unknown place that had not yet been dulled by repeated exposure. A return to infancy; rebirth. It represents the way we are before the world's laws and restrictions oblige us to narrow our perceptions into practical parameters. As such, Mer carries the capacity to rejuvenate weary eyes and unlearn all that prevents us from truly appreciating the mysteries of this universe. Mer may notice how odd it is that humans suddenly fall unconscious and helpless for eight hours every day, and nobody seems to mind it. It may ask why we have five fingers and not four, or why we only have long hair on our head, or why we have eyebrows - and other questions that any 'sensible' adult has long since stopped caring about. The evocation of Mer is like that of a newborn child who is seeing things for the first time. As the laws of physics haven't yet been established, anything seems possible and the child explores this new universe he has landed into with no prejudice whatsoever. Mer is especially captivated by glittery things such as prisms for their magical capacity to generate a rainbow spectrum, the allure of distant stars, and the reflection of light on morning dew. It holds an eternal wanderlust that compels its user to see what's beyond the next horizon or around the next corner.
As is true of all archetypes, Mer also has a dark form. When life has remained monotonous and dreary for too long, the Ne user's psyche will begin to suffocate and atrophy in the wake of their restrictive situation. Anything that can transform their world away from its present parameters -- even if it's violent and destructive -- will be felt as better than continuing along the same road. Reality becomes a prison that must be escaped, and they will escape this reality in the only way possible; by going deeper into fantasy. The individual's repressed desire for life will break the shackles of life through a series of nightmares and eventually into waking daydreams; distorting reality into chaotic and manic dreamworlds. We see this exemplified perfectly in the tale of Alice in Wonderland, where what starts as a playful fantasy devolves into a frightening world of impossible creatures and surreal situations filled with wacky characters made from the juxtaposition of concepts or memes. The form of Mer will switch from a Divine Child into a playfully mischievous daemon. The Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter are, in this tale, the archetypes of the dark side of Mer; speaking to the individual through cryptic, nonsensical absurdities. Here Mer begins to have a strong crossover with Ver's trickster archetype; enjoying pranks and developing a dark sense of humor. Other depictions of this iteration of Ne are seen in Invader Zim or Rick & Morty where the protagonists are mad scientists who use their talents for chaotic, fantastical amusements. Madness is chosen above the sterility of sanity, and mischief is taken above the blandness of sensibility.
Inter-Function Dynamics
https://preview.redd.it/v35nla3dqhmc1.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=349ac9a4d9106458c727c3688573cfa3b31e3be9
https://preview.redd.it/6yr9bhgeqhmc1.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=c95708790b6a0a50eed9c5be45fc85592f71c77a
submitted by Maned_Wolf_444 to mbti [link] [comments]
https://preview.redd.it/jd1bwvnnphmc1.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=2fd1fcfa4f82464f0da644c84b2b6bfb60ad4b23
Metabolism
Ne is a function that absorbs objects in real-time (Pe) and then extrapolates (N) new objects from their indiscriminate recombinations. Similar to how finding a ten-dollar bill on the street opens up a spectrum of possibilities for what to do with the money, a possibility space opens up around the objects Ne registers. In this space, Ne seeks out unconventional ideas for what the objects can transform or recombine into. As the recombinations become more unconventional, their capacity to generate even more novel association chains increases, diverging ad infinitum.
Behaviorism
- Daydreaming
The Ne function is motivated to discover new information, whether by absorbing it from the outside or by synthesizing it out of existing datasets through creative alchemy. It is highly imaginative, which is to say it's driven by images and information structures of all kinds. However, these images are not immediately evidenced in the environment but are all those that the environment evokes by containing an adjacent graphical relationship to the present. When faced with a situation the Ne user will only casually consider the literal objects before them as their mind soon drifts up, around, and behind those immediate objects to uncover the visual and conceptual implications related to that moment. They are quick to leap beyond the physical world and become lost in their heads; conjuring up novel ways to interpret situations as they unfold. They have a talent for manipulating information spatially and relationally; fitting together ideas that are otherwise largely disconnected from each other. They may find themselves comparing elements of the periodic table to music bands, or entertaining highly unlikely "What if..." scenarios for the fun of it. As children, they may be absentminded daydreamers oblivious to their surroundings and caught up in a self-made world of equal parts fiction and reality. The domain of their imagination can be far more interesting to them than whatever is happening in the outer world. Some may nurture this world with stories they make up, complete with characters, landscapes, and perhaps an entire legendarium.
- Lack of Attention
But the time the Ne user spends in their head often translates to time not spent in reality. Far more than the average student, they will be prone to space out in class and be unable to get through long texts or any tasks that require a very slow or arduous pace. Their perception of the world outside of their interests will be faint, hazy, or splotchy. If something is not particularly rich with associative potential, the details of objects in daily life will soon fade, leaving only their general impression as an after-image in their mind. When listening to others, as they’re absorbing the person’s words, one word will trigger a mental tangent midway and they’ll pursue it curiously at the loss of what else the other person is saying. They can live a klutzy existence, tripping on objects, wearing mismatched clothes, losing things, and forgetting appointments regularly. But despite this exterior inattentiveness, internally they may experience quite a hyperactivity of thought. Far more is happening within than without and this can also cause troubles such as over-thinking, excessive worrying about outcomes or not getting a good night’s sleep from an inability to slow down their mental chatter. They may find it difficult to keep a steady mental pace and can often be diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, or Sensory Processing Disorder. Reality can register to the Ne user as a series of information flashes that are somewhat spontaneous and which channel from every previous dataset collected in the unconscious.
- Mass Data Absorption
- Serendipity & Flash Visions
The Ne user's capacity to synthesize such high volumes of information sometimes leads to spooky insights, uncanny realizations, and predictions of the relevant situation. Suddenly a vision may flash before their eyes, stitched together from hundreds of unconscious micro-correlations accumulated around this moment; converging into one instance in time. This can lead to a semblance of clairvoyance where the Ne user attains some knowledge of the unseen causalities of the universe. They may come to deeply trust this sense, whenever they feel it manifest. However, these sudden flashes will not represent a stable ability and their appearance will be as unpredictable as their inspiration. In other cases, this can produce a habit of serendipity where the individual participates in a cosmic flow towards meaningful happenstances by consciously or unconsciously directing their energies in those vectors. The Ne users will attune themselves to the real-time synchronicities of the universe, ebbing and dancing in harmony with an eternally unfolding fractal toward undiscovered lands. At a more modest scale, the Ne user's information synthesis will regularly evoke epiphanies when various information vectors -- previously suspended in an unconscious superposition -- click into alignment and burst forth immediate realizations that alter the fabric of their mind and their paradigm. In all of these cases, the Ne user is rapidly altered -- seemingly by a divine act -- into a more true alignment with reality as it may exist at the widest scale possible.
- Tinkering
At a much more practical level, the strong Ne user is not only driven to absorb and synthesize information but also to actively participate in the information-collecting process. They will enjoy engaging with elements of reality through tinkering and experimentation. More than a few household devices may be taken apart as they yearn to see what’s inside. They may take up a variety of interests ranging from sculpting to rock collecting, music composition, cosplaying, animation, voice acting, puppeteering, and ventriloquism – but will rarely become experts at any of them. As a jack of all trades and master of none, they will dabble with mediums frequently but may find themselves changing hobbies every few years. This can also cause a great deal of disarray in their personal lives, as they soon lose interest in a once-beloved life trajectory. Repetition is among their biggest turn-offs, and this can also lead to a life-long struggle with keeping a set occupation unless the Ne user is fortunate enough to find a job that is as dynamic and evolving as their interests. They enjoy being on the cusp of their understanding and seeing what lies still beyond their reach. Over time, every interest they've ever had has the potential to spontaneously reignite itself in them. On a whim, they may circle back around to a hobby after having packed it up in the garage for years or decades, and continue their joy for it as if no time had passed. Indeed, they often have closets or garages filled with various unfinished hobbies or projects - waiting for an occasion to become the center of their attention.
- Puns & Quirky Humor
The Ne user will also have an integral sense of humor and bring that with them into many of their interactions. They’ll have the capacity to convert their wild imaginings into out-of-context parallels; comparing a person’s gait to a limping platypus, an unusual jawline to a can opener, or a shih tzu to an animated mustache. They’ll juxtapose ideas together in absurd and off-the-wall ways and highlight the unseen peculiarities of things. The Ne user will have a natural drive to spark up the environment; to provide levity and life to situations as well as to their own life. Life is too dreary if you can’t have a little fun. Wordplay can be a favorite medium of humor, where they'll manipulate the semantics of the situation to make puns and associations. "Oh you can sit here with me, chairing is caring!" or "That omelet was egg-squisite! But the bacon was hogwash" or spoonerisms like "I'm stoing to the gore" may be commonly heard phrases. This sense of humor can lead many Ne users into stand-up comedy or adopt a role as a talk show host for their ability to improvise and keep the flow of a conversation going in unexpected directions.
- Imitations & Parodies
The Ne user will also have a playful tendency to parody multiple characters and scenarios in real time. A certain event or external sound/word will trigger an association chain that reminds them of a scene or meme, and their mind instantly re-enacts the memory both mentally and physically. The Ne user wears many hats and could be a sort of walking record of enactments, ready to sprint into their acting mode at a moment's notice when the situation presents itself. They will manifest this in the form of "mini-skits" that imitate the iconic qualities of a thing. The Ne user may be an expert at playing with their facial muscles, making a wide range of expressions. They may also excel at modulating their voice tone, picking up and repeating accents from movie stars or obscure demographics. At a more functional and less recreational level, this gives the Ne user the ability to be adaptive and construct personas in social situations. If they are driven to assume a certain professional or social role, they may seamlessly be able to play the part. This can sometimes become a longstanding act, as they use the persona for months until the Ne user may even forget that they assimilated or constructed the character in the first place.
- Under Stress: Distraction & Escapism
When the hardships of life cause a fall out of emotional health for the Ne user, their first instinct will be to divert their attention away from the overwhelming pain. Humor, recreation, and consumerism will be exercised as an antidote to their pain, often leading them to engage in reckless spending, and jovial displays, and to seek out more risky experiences. On the inside the Ne user will be viscerally compelled to stay on the run by an avoidance of their anxieties and fears. They’ll feel that they would not be able to stand up to the full magnitude of their despair, and rather than have it crush them, they choose to highlight or exaggerate positives and downplay or ignore the magnitude of any negatives. They may also become immersed in a certain media, binge-watching Netflix or playing video games instead of tending to pressing responsibilities. Despite a completely conscious awareness of the necessity of certain actions, the more pressing a responsibility is, the more their mind will fight powerfully to avoid it, disallowing proper mental focus and follow-through. The Ne user will conflict with their mind as it struggles to do anything else but what it's supposed to do. Therefore, rather than address the issue head-on, the stressed Ne user may skirt around the problem and find something more magnetic to focus on and just wait for the project, assignment, or relationship to fail on its own.
Mythology
https://preview.redd.it/6x2y8e68qhmc1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=c03696d7d0792b80c99d7eaafd66145c62f4a2cc
The spiritual experience of Ne is called Mer, which is described more completely on this page. Mer is a psychological archetype best known as the Puer Aeternus; a Divine Child with the ability to distort or alter reality. As a symbol, Mer appears in the form of a golden egg, a genie lamp, or a deux ex machina. We find the spirit of Mer in characters such as Peter Pan), Paprika), and The Little Prince. These archetypal characters are almost always unbounded by gravity, able to fly, and always have some capacity to use magic playfully. They are provisional, innocent, and entirely without responsibility. Like the spirit of Mer, there is a quality that Ne brings to its user which is floaty, flighty, surreal, and nebulous. It may feel as if every mental step taken is a leap into new worlds, causing them to have a fantastical, spritely energy or the quality of air. The individual enveloped by Mer may feel non-literal, non-corporeal, and as if they were a caricature of themselves. Relating this quality to the music, the floaty energy of Ne carries the tone of Mozart's Turkish March or the Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairy.
- Rebirth & Child-like Wonder
The myth of Mer, when personally felt, ignites a yearning for reality to contain something other than the mundane and ordinary. There is a craving for something more than this, which hearkens back to a time when reality did exist as an interesting and unknown place that had not yet been dulled by repeated exposure. A return to infancy; rebirth. It represents the way we are before the world's laws and restrictions oblige us to narrow our perceptions into practical parameters. As such, Mer carries the capacity to rejuvenate weary eyes and unlearn all that prevents us from truly appreciating the mysteries of this universe. Mer may notice how odd it is that humans suddenly fall unconscious and helpless for eight hours every day, and nobody seems to mind it. It may ask why we have five fingers and not four, or why we only have long hair on our head, or why we have eyebrows - and other questions that any 'sensible' adult has long since stopped caring about. The evocation of Mer is like that of a newborn child who is seeing things for the first time. As the laws of physics haven't yet been established, anything seems possible and the child explores this new universe he has landed into with no prejudice whatsoever. Mer is especially captivated by glittery things such as prisms for their magical capacity to generate a rainbow spectrum, the allure of distant stars, and the reflection of light on morning dew. It holds an eternal wanderlust that compels its user to see what's beyond the next horizon or around the next corner.
- Madness & Mischief
As is true of all archetypes, Mer also has a dark form. When life has remained monotonous and dreary for too long, the Ne user's psyche will begin to suffocate and atrophy in the wake of their restrictive situation. Anything that can transform their world away from its present parameters -- even if it's violent and destructive -- will be felt as better than continuing along the same road. Reality becomes a prison that must be escaped, and they will escape this reality in the only way possible; by going deeper into fantasy. The individual's repressed desire for life will break the shackles of life through a series of nightmares and eventually into waking daydreams; distorting reality into chaotic and manic dreamworlds. We see this exemplified perfectly in the tale of Alice in Wonderland, where what starts as a playful fantasy devolves into a frightening world of impossible creatures and surreal situations filled with wacky characters made from the juxtaposition of concepts or memes. The form of Mer will switch from a Divine Child into a playfully mischievous daemon. The Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter are, in this tale, the archetypes of the dark side of Mer; speaking to the individual through cryptic, nonsensical absurdities. Here Mer begins to have a strong crossover with Ver's trickster archetype; enjoying pranks and developing a dark sense of humor. Other depictions of this iteration of Ne are seen in Invader Zim or Rick & Morty where the protagonists are mad scientists who use their talents for chaotic, fantastical amusements. Madness is chosen above the sterility of sanity, and mischief is taken above the blandness of sensibility.
Inter-Function Dynamics
https://preview.redd.it/v35nla3dqhmc1.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=349ac9a4d9106458c727c3688573cfa3b31e3be9
- Ne+Ti Ephemeralist
- Ne+Fe Inspirer
https://preview.redd.it/6yr9bhgeqhmc1.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=c95708790b6a0a50eed9c5be45fc85592f71c77a
- Ne+Fi Etherealist
- Ne+Te Inventor
2024.02.27 19:18 Strange_storm4 [WTS][WTT] I like to move it, move it, I like to move it, I like to move silver and gold!
PROOF: https://imgur.com/a/55HfYMk
-if prices are off please let me know. Did my best to price below lowest I found from major dealers. Reserve the right to fix post errors.
-Also I will decide on responding order. Don’t like that??? Then send a Bin
Silver: Spend 250$ can get a 1oz silver bar at 24$ (while they remain)
7 - misc 1oz silver Silvertowne bars 27$ each (3 designs)
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
2022 Rolling Stones 1oz coin 28$ each
attack cats from intaglio (ninja,soldier) 29$ each
1- queens beast 2oz coins 60$ I pick 70$ you pick$
1- 2021 Niue Owls 1oz silver coin 27$ each
3- 1oz provident mint 2014 horse 26$ each
1- 1.5oz Canadian 2013 polar bear coin 42$
1- 1.25oz Canadian buffalo 2015 35$
2oz Aussie Platypus 2021 58$
1- apmex 5oz silver bar 130$
1- 10oz Britannia silver bar 255$
1- 10oz RCM Silver bar 260$
2- 10oz silver OPM bars 250$ each (buy a opm bar can buy a opm 1oz round at 23$)
1- 100oz Silvertowne Pony Express silver bar 2400$
24oz of 1 and 1/2oz silver legos from monarch. 29$ for 1 oz block 16.5 for 1/2oz block. ——- not for sale unless spending 750$ on other items. ( don’t really care to sell them, but they were in the picture)
GOLD: 1g gold bar 50$ with purchase of at least 1000$ gold.
1- 0.85oz Early Release 2016 signed NGC SP70 1/2,1/4,1/10 Set 2600$
1/10 1997 Maple 225$
1/10 2023 RP Toro 245$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 775$
1- 1oz 2017 Isle of Man angel 2400$
1- 1/4 2015 Proof PF70 ultra cameo 775$
1- ms64 1925B Swiss 20 franc 550$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
submitted by Strange_storm4 to Pmsforsale [link] [comments]
Trade value:
trade for goldbacks
—-3.3$ per 1gb. —-Spend over 1.5k and goldbacks will be valued at 3.5$ per 1gb-if prices are off please let me know. Did my best to price below lowest I found from major dealers. Reserve the right to fix post errors.
-Also I will decide on responding order. Don’t like that??? Then send a Bin
- any grades are are a guess by me or by the person I bought them from. If not slabbed don’t trust the grade.
Silver: Spend 250$ can get a 1oz silver bar at 24$ (while they remain)
7 - misc 1oz silver Silvertowne bars 27$ each (3 designs)
3- 2015 kooks 1oz silver coins 30$ each
1- queens beast 2oz coins 60$ I pick 70$ you pick$
1- 2021 Niue Owls 1oz silver coin 27$ each
3- 1oz provident mint 2014 horse 26$ each
1- 1.5oz Canadian 2013 polar bear coin 42$
1- 1.25oz Canadian buffalo 2015 35$
1- apmex 5oz silver bar 130$
1- 10oz Britannia silver bar 255$
1- 10oz RCM Silver bar 260$
2- 10oz silver OPM bars 250$ each (buy a opm bar can buy a opm 1oz round at 23$)
1- 100oz Silvertowne Pony Express silver bar 2400$
24oz of 1 and 1/2oz silver legos from monarch. 29$ for 1 oz block 16.5 for 1/2oz block. ——- not for sale unless spending 750$ on other items. ( don’t really care to sell them, but they were in the picture)
GOLD: 1g gold bar 50$ with purchase of at least 1000$ gold.
1- 0.85oz Early Release 2016 signed NGC SP70 1/2,1/4,1/10 Set 2600$
1- 1988 1/4 Aussie nugget PR70 775$
1- 1oz 2017 Isle of Man angel 2400$
1- 1/4 2015 Proof PF70 ultra cameo 775$
1- ms64 1925B Swiss 20 franc 550$
I accept Zelle, Venmo, cashapp and Crypto. Please no messages or notes, smiley face if something needed.
I am also happy to use a middleman at buyers expense. -Likely will use halfdeafyeller if he is agreeable.
-Shipping will be 10 dollars CONUS. -Insurance is extra and useless for bullion -registered mail also available at extra cost, covers bullion but slower in mail.
-if trading, each person pays for shipping to other person.
Disclaimer: As I have seen this commonly when buying here. I am responsible for package until delivered to the USPS store on my end; after that it’s out of my hands and literally in USPSs hands. I will package well. If coin is seen in hard case it will stay in the case.
Everything has been bought off major bullion dealers or from this sub. Also sigma testing now in house!
2024.01.27 17:42 chip599XX_VGRLeader Return VGR Policy
Return VGR Policy is an Alternate Episode of Return Policy in the VGR Universe. Annoyed at waiting in really long lines at the return counter, Uzi invents a "Back-to-the-Store-Inator" to send things back to the store where they came. Meanwhile, Phineas and Ferb stage an extreme batting challenge their friends take place in while ULA and Meggy are keeping an eye on Candace, meanwhile Candace's obsession to bust coincides with her and Jeremy's visit to the Frutiger Aero Water Park.
This is a Fan Made Episode for Phineas and Ferb VGR Edition.
In the backyard, Baljeet, Buford, Margo, Tari, Ena), and Whisk arrives, Baljeet asks but mathematically observe Isabella's and Meggy's grand slam, much to Whisk's chagrin. Phineas gets an idea to do an extreme batting challenge. Ena then asks where Karen and Perry is, and Phineas replies that they're "at home", indicating they're standing on home plate which Karen replies "Okay". As soon as the gang walks away, Karen and Perry walks into an elevator under home plate.
In Agent Karen's and Agent P's Lair, Major Monogram is onscreen with a reverse mohawk, two individual eyebrows, and a split in his moustache. He explains that the electric razor he recently bought was defective. He tells Agent Karen and Agent P that Uzi Doorman has been waiting on line in return counters and several items have been appearing at return counters. Agent Karen and Agent P gets to work.
At the Super Duper Mega Superstore, Linda suggests to Candace to do her own shopping trip while she waits for her at the register. Candace collects all the personal hygiene products she needs in her basket. Just as she is about to get deodorant, Jeremy approaches her, noticing her sniffing her armpit. Candace nervously covers this up by claiming to be shopping for her mom, and that she was actually heading to the Frutiger Aero Water Sports Aisle. Jeremy invites Candace to the Frutiger Aero Water Park in Frutiger Aero City, and Candace accepts the invitation.
At Doorman's Evil Incorporated, Karen and Perry are trapped by a Clearance Sale Sticker. Uzi explains to Karen and Perry that her Broken Inator parts were messing up the worth of our of her home, so she built the Back-to-the-Store-Inator, so that she wouldn't have to make that long trip to the store to return her items. As a bonus, when his items get returned, she automatically gets her money back, although She gets it in the form of pennies.
At the Aqua Eco, Jeremy and Candace are about to go down a water slide on surfboards, which Candace is scared of. Before she goes down, Person750 mentions in passing that Phineas and Ferb built the ride.
Back in the backyard, which is now a very complex batting cage, Pomni and Klee have joined Whisk and Ena in batting. Phineas and a rather overexcited Isabella are in an announcer's booth, while Ferb is the pitcher and ULA and Meggy are the Guards while an eye on Candace while Meggy is still watching at her Former Rival Whisk. The objective of the game is to hit each item for ten points and hit the target to win it all. Whisk bats first, and while she hits several items, she does not reach the target. Ena calculates his batting angle, yet he does not reach the target either. Pomni and Klee do not do any better, and Buford even breaks the ball apart.
Meanwhile, back at the Frutiger Aero Water Park in Frutiger Aero City, Jeremy is having the time of his life, while Candace is screaming her lungs out. When Candace washes up on shore, her Samsung Galaxy A24 Phone rings. Linda is angry at her for not telling her that she would be with Jeremy at the Frutiger Aero Water Park in Frutiger Aero City and for waiting in line for almost half an hour. Linda tells her daughter to come home as soon as possible. Jeremy washes up on shore and asks Candace if she wants to go again, but Candace says she has to go home.
Back at D.E.I., Perry frees himself and Karen by literally slashing his price with a coupon. They fights Uzi and jumps on the Inator, causing many items such as her collection of Murder Drones Merchandises, to go back to where she got them.
Meanwhile, Whisk and Ena are tied at 90 points. Whisk goes up to bat. At first it seems like the ball will hit the target, but instead, it gets caught in the net at the top. Ena still does not do any better.
After zapping Uzi's Sony Bravia X75WL TV), Perry punches her in the back and ends up breaking the Inator, which fires off randomly. At the superstore, Monogram and Carl are at the return counter returning the defective razor, oblivious to a N Dog Pillow appearing there.
In the backyard, Ena shows Whisk a rather complex mathematically diagram on a chalkboard showing that they might be able to work together to finally hit the target. Jeremy drops Candace off at her house, and she sees the batting cage. She tries to get her mom to bust her brothers, but she is still angry at her for earlier. ULA steals Linda's Bags at the Trunk of Linda's 1992 Chevrolet Suburban GMT400 Eighth Generation) and gives it to Meggy by hiding it. When Linda saw her Bags realizing that she actually forgot and ULA told Linda to get her Bags back which Linda agrees to ULA and drives her 1992 Chevrolet Suburban GMT400 Eighth Generation back to the store and Candace but-but-buts yet again and ULA told Candace that she stole Linda's Bags to Meggy by hiding it to the Flynn-Fletcher's House. So instead that Candace drags Jeremy to the backyard while ULA and Meggy followed her.
Ena is measuring Whisk's batting angle assuring Whisk that it will work. Margo lobs a ball at Whisk, and Whisk hits a grand slam, hitting every item and finally the target. The gang, with Candace, Jeremy, ULA, and Meggy, all look in amazement as the batting cage launches into the air and bursts into fireworks. Candace is once again discouraged about another failed bust attempt and ULA is success which Meggy congrats Whisk for the batting angle.
Back at D.E.I., Uzi's pockets are enormously deep with pennies. Karen deflects an Inator ray onto Uzi's clothes leaving her in nothing with her Bikini. Uzi then wonders what would happen if a person was zapped by the ray. Just as she is about to finish her sentence, she gets zapped right back to the Hospital where she was born in Copper City in the arms of a Male Worker Drone Nurse.
Candace confesses to Jeremy that she was embarrassed by the fact that she was shopping for teen hygiene products at the store, explaining why she lied about being at the Frutiger Aero Water Sports Aisle. Jeremy assures her that he isn't embarrassed. Just as they hug, ULA interrupts them and punch Candace in the Face for her Victory.
submitted by chip599XX_VGRLeader to phineasandferb [link] [comments]
This is a Fan Made Episode for Phineas and Ferb VGR Edition.
Episode Summary
Candace is on her Samsung Galaxy A24 Phone with Stacy talking about her relationship with Jeremy. In the backyard, Phineas, Ferb, ULA, Meggy, and Isabella play baseball. Linda enters the room to tell her she is going to the store and asks Candace if she needs anything. Candace at first says she does not need anything, but then gives a long list of personal hygiene products. Linda offers Candace to come with her and get her own stuff, but Candace worries that ULA will be around to stop Candace from bust her brothers. Linda tells her the faster they are done shopping, the faster they will get home to bust the boys.In the backyard, Baljeet, Buford, Margo, Tari, Ena), and Whisk arrives, Baljeet asks but mathematically observe Isabella's and Meggy's grand slam, much to Whisk's chagrin. Phineas gets an idea to do an extreme batting challenge. Ena then asks where Karen and Perry is, and Phineas replies that they're "at home", indicating they're standing on home plate which Karen replies "Okay". As soon as the gang walks away, Karen and Perry walks into an elevator under home plate.
In Agent Karen's and Agent P's Lair, Major Monogram is onscreen with a reverse mohawk, two individual eyebrows, and a split in his moustache. He explains that the electric razor he recently bought was defective. He tells Agent Karen and Agent P that Uzi Doorman has been waiting on line in return counters and several items have been appearing at return counters. Agent Karen and Agent P gets to work.
At the Super Duper Mega Superstore, Linda suggests to Candace to do her own shopping trip while she waits for her at the register. Candace collects all the personal hygiene products she needs in her basket. Just as she is about to get deodorant, Jeremy approaches her, noticing her sniffing her armpit. Candace nervously covers this up by claiming to be shopping for her mom, and that she was actually heading to the Frutiger Aero Water Sports Aisle. Jeremy invites Candace to the Frutiger Aero Water Park in Frutiger Aero City, and Candace accepts the invitation.
At Doorman's Evil Incorporated, Karen and Perry are trapped by a Clearance Sale Sticker. Uzi explains to Karen and Perry that her Broken Inator parts were messing up the worth of our of her home, so she built the Back-to-the-Store-Inator, so that she wouldn't have to make that long trip to the store to return her items. As a bonus, when his items get returned, she automatically gets her money back, although She gets it in the form of pennies.
At the Aqua Eco, Jeremy and Candace are about to go down a water slide on surfboards, which Candace is scared of. Before she goes down, Person750 mentions in passing that Phineas and Ferb built the ride.
Back in the backyard, which is now a very complex batting cage, Pomni and Klee have joined Whisk and Ena in batting. Phineas and a rather overexcited Isabella are in an announcer's booth, while Ferb is the pitcher and ULA and Meggy are the Guards while an eye on Candace while Meggy is still watching at her Former Rival Whisk. The objective of the game is to hit each item for ten points and hit the target to win it all. Whisk bats first, and while she hits several items, she does not reach the target. Ena calculates his batting angle, yet he does not reach the target either. Pomni and Klee do not do any better, and Buford even breaks the ball apart.
Meanwhile, back at the Frutiger Aero Water Park in Frutiger Aero City, Jeremy is having the time of his life, while Candace is screaming her lungs out. When Candace washes up on shore, her Samsung Galaxy A24 Phone rings. Linda is angry at her for not telling her that she would be with Jeremy at the Frutiger Aero Water Park in Frutiger Aero City and for waiting in line for almost half an hour. Linda tells her daughter to come home as soon as possible. Jeremy washes up on shore and asks Candace if she wants to go again, but Candace says she has to go home.
Back at D.E.I., Perry frees himself and Karen by literally slashing his price with a coupon. They fights Uzi and jumps on the Inator, causing many items such as her collection of Murder Drones Merchandises, to go back to where she got them.
Meanwhile, Whisk and Ena are tied at 90 points. Whisk goes up to bat. At first it seems like the ball will hit the target, but instead, it gets caught in the net at the top. Ena still does not do any better.
After zapping Uzi's Sony Bravia X75WL TV), Perry punches her in the back and ends up breaking the Inator, which fires off randomly. At the superstore, Monogram and Carl are at the return counter returning the defective razor, oblivious to a N Dog Pillow appearing there.
In the backyard, Ena shows Whisk a rather complex mathematically diagram on a chalkboard showing that they might be able to work together to finally hit the target. Jeremy drops Candace off at her house, and she sees the batting cage. She tries to get her mom to bust her brothers, but she is still angry at her for earlier. ULA steals Linda's Bags at the Trunk of Linda's 1992 Chevrolet Suburban GMT400 Eighth Generation) and gives it to Meggy by hiding it. When Linda saw her Bags realizing that she actually forgot and ULA told Linda to get her Bags back which Linda agrees to ULA and drives her 1992 Chevrolet Suburban GMT400 Eighth Generation back to the store and Candace but-but-buts yet again and ULA told Candace that she stole Linda's Bags to Meggy by hiding it to the Flynn-Fletcher's House. So instead that Candace drags Jeremy to the backyard while ULA and Meggy followed her.
Ena is measuring Whisk's batting angle assuring Whisk that it will work. Margo lobs a ball at Whisk, and Whisk hits a grand slam, hitting every item and finally the target. The gang, with Candace, Jeremy, ULA, and Meggy, all look in amazement as the batting cage launches into the air and bursts into fireworks. Candace is once again discouraged about another failed bust attempt and ULA is success which Meggy congrats Whisk for the batting angle.
Back at D.E.I., Uzi's pockets are enormously deep with pennies. Karen deflects an Inator ray onto Uzi's clothes leaving her in nothing with her Bikini. Uzi then wonders what would happen if a person was zapped by the ray. Just as she is about to finish her sentence, she gets zapped right back to the Hospital where she was born in Copper City in the arms of a Male Worker Drone Nurse.
Candace confesses to Jeremy that she was embarrassed by the fact that she was shopping for teen hygiene products at the store, explaining why she lied about being at the Frutiger Aero Water Sports Aisle. Jeremy assures her that he isn't embarrassed. Just as they hug, ULA interrupts them and punch Candace in the Face for her Victory.
End Credits
Second verse of Extremely Extreme (standalone broadcast)
Cast
- Phineas Flynn (Phineas and Ferb)
- Ferb Fletcher (Phineas and Ferb)
- Ulenna Celica as ULA (Hands Up)
- Meggy Spletzer (SMG4)
- Candace Flynn (Phineas and Ferb)
- Karen the Cat (SMG4)
- Perry the Platypus (Phineas and Ferb)
- Uzi Doorman (Murder Drones)
- Isabella Garcia-Shapiro (Phineas and Ferb)
- Baljeet Tjinder (Phineas and Ferb)
- Buford Van Stomm (Phineas and Ferb)
- Margaret Mordecai as Margo (Hands Up)
- Tari (SMG4)
- Ena (Ena))
- Whisk Nekellie (Sunset Paradise)
- Linda Flynn-Fletcher (Phineas and Ferb)
- Stacy Hirano (Phineas and Ferb)
- Jeremy Johnson (Phineas and Ferb)
- Francis Monogram (Phineas and Ferb)
- Carl Karl (Phineas and Ferb)
- Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus)
- Klee (Genshin Impact)
- Person750 (VGR Edition)
- Male Worker Drone Nurse (Murder Drones and VGR Edition)
2024.01.23 17:50 PerilousPlatypus One Man Armageddon
They were desperate.
Ruse understood their pain. Their terror.
It was a terrible to thing to lose your home.
The Xan planetary defense fleet bore down on him, hundreds of lasers targeting his OMA in a futile attempt to prevent the inevitable. One set of numbers ticked up, shifting from green to yellow as heat began to build up on his OMA's ceramic crust. Another number ticked down, indicating the distance between him and his target. The ones going up weren't fast enough to stop the one going down.
[Guardian.AI => Ruse.Pilot] Enemy assessment complete. Automation options available. Recommended: Rotation, Defensive Batteries, Navigation. Query: Aggressive or defensive tactical posture?
Ruse ingested the stream of data. It careened down his neural pathways, making his brain ache. The pain was getting worse. He'd been in-field too long. Plugged in too long. Humans weren't made to be half machine. But they also weren't made to give up when there was a job to do and revenge to be had either.
The options were all in acceptable parameters. The defensive choices proposed "simplifying" the battlefield by destroying the planetary fleet before the planet, giving his OMA increased flexibility to respond to battlefield dynamic shifts -- Guardian shorthand for reinforcements showing up -- at the expense of additional time before completing the mission objective. Aggressive options showed the shortest optimal path for achieving the objective, largely ignoring the planetary fleet.
Ruse found it ironic that the option with greater destruction was considered defensive. Let's play it safe by blowing literally everything up. But that was AI logic. Perhaps he should amend the naming convention from Defensive to "Fuck Everything Up" and Aggressive to "Fuck Your Planet in Particular." It'd make him feel better about choosing the Defensive path.
[Ruse.Pilot => Guardian.AI] Nomenclature amendment. [DEFENSIVE] to [FUCK EVERYTHING UP]. [AGGRESSIVE] to [FUCK YOUR PLANET IN PARTICULAR]. Execute [FUCK EVERYTHING UP].
[Guardian.AI => Ruse.Pilot Acknowledged. Executing FUCK EVERYTHING UP.
The odds were hardly fair. Three hundred and thirty-four of theirs just wasn't enough. Not against an OMA battle sphere. Ruse watched as the red targets began to disappear as the OMA engaged. Occasionally Ruse would interject into the flow of Guardian's commands, implementing alternatives. Exterior cameras and censors accented the neural feed with visuals, depicting the ongoing destruction.
Space stations were pulverized with mass drivers.
Dreadnoughts were melted to slag with lasers.
Fighters were torn to shreds with plasma bursts.
Everywhere, Xan were killed.
Ruse didn't feel the thrill in it any more. Maybe because he was tired. Maybe because he'd done it seventeen times before. Maybe because it didn't matter. They're already taken his home. He was just there to return the favor.
Revenge, pure and simple.
It was hard to feel much joy when your mission was sharing pain, just the dull satisfaction of a job well done.
Ruse watched as the enemy's projected fleet threat dropped. With every passing scan, the number declined. When a dreadnought was destroyed, a full point would disappear. Less for support ships and fighters. The heat buildup on his ceramic crust continued, though not at a rate that risked much beyond an outer layer of shielding. He could speed up the process with an adjustment to tactics given that he'd need a retrofit regardless.
[Ruse.Pilot => Guardian.AI] Propose Tactic Amendment: [SHED][CERAMIC CRUST SEGMENT] if [ORANGE] and [TARGET DENSITY > 35%]
[Guardian.AI => Ruse.Pilot] This will reduce crust efficiency by 17%. This will have a projected impact on mission outcome. Report following.
Ruse reviewed the report.
He'd save 6 minutes. No risk to mission otherwise. Minimal risk of needing an additional retrofit to the second crust layer.
[Ruse.Pilot => Guardian.AI] Execute proposed tactic amendment.
Immediately, multiple chunks of ceramic crust were propelled outward, destroying nearby vessels that had drawn close to engage him. Mostly fighters.
The planet loomed large in the background, slowly drawing closer. He hadn't bothered to review the particulars of the inhabitants. The details never made him feel any better about the nature of his work. He was here to destroy whatever was clinging to that rock and move on to the next one. The planet was an objective, not a civilization.
He wondered whether the Xan had played their own mind games when they had come for Earth. Probably not. They hadn't even been present when they'd done the deed. The gutless cowards had propelled an asteroid at relativistic speeds through a wormhole. Chickenshit.
They must have thought that was the end of the matter. Fire off a boulder, destroy a planet, and watch Humanity crumble under the weight of losing their home. He didn't blame them, it had worked for 'em before. The Xan Empire was built on the husks of the civilizations unlucky enough to come into contact with them. Thousands of worlds and hundreds of vassal species, all ground to dust beneath the heel of their tentacled masters.
Fuckers probably didn't even have heels. But saying ground to ooze beneath their suckers sounded weird.
But this time, the Xan had miscalculated. All they'd succeeded in doing by killing 90% of Humanity is royally piss of the remaining 10%. The loss of Earth meant the loss of a lot of mouths to feed, a lot of material needs to support, and a lot of distraction. Once home had been removed from the equation, once it was no longer about protecting anything, it became very easy to focus on destroying instead.
The first OMA was developed and launched within two years of the fall of Earth. They were a miracle of science, blending biology with technology to produce previously unimaginable destructive potential. In the past, Humanity had operated within careful guidelines, rules between the nations to ensure Humanity wouldn't go too far down any one path they couldn't walk back from.
Human augmentation was limited.
AI capabilities were restricted.
Weapons of Armageddon were banned.
The One Man Armageddon program did away with all of that. There weren't rules any more, just the mission. Ruse was the thirty-fourth person selected to pilot an OMA. The path to getting the opportunity had been brutal. A battery of filters, tests, and medical procedures, carefully curating the perfect blend of man and machine. Somewhere, buried beneath the ceramic crusts and circuitry there was a small chamber housing his body, but it felt like a foreign in distant thing.
Ruse was the OMA and the OMA was Ruse.
He was One Man Armageddon.
He was Humanity's vengeance.
Xan fleet effectiveness dropped into the low single digits. Perhaps there were more vessels lurking in the shadow of the planet, but it hardly mattered. If they made themselves known, they would be dealt with in kind. After a few passing seconds, he reached the optimal firing distance.
[Ruse.Pilot => Obliterator.AI] Commence T-30 countdown. Full destruction. Issue planetary notification.
[Obliterator.AI => Ruse.Pilot] Acknowledged. Commencing.
A number began to tick down from thirty. Dull thuds registered within the distant chamber housing his body as internal structures shifted to accommodate the Obliterator Cannon. It was a relatively quick process, carefully engineered due to the incremental risks associated with retracting the ceramic crusts around the firing mechanism.
Separately, a beacon launched, transmitting a blanket communication to the planet and local space across all known channels.
This is Ruse.
I am Human.
You are nothing.
The Obliterator Cannon timer reached zero. Within seconds, the planet's crust began to slough away, melting as the core destabilized and poured outward. Ruse watched as the atmosphere burned.
[Ruse.Pilot => OMA.Command] Objective complete. Require retrofit. Request port pathing.
[OMA.Command => Ruse.Pilot] Acknowledged. Pathing transmitted.
It would be good to get back among people again. He'd been out for a long time.
He took another look at the planet, the molten core spinning wildly as the core and mantle spun away into the black of space.
"You should have left us alone."
Space distorted around the OMA and, a moment later, it was gone.
PerilousPlatypus
submitted by PerilousPlatypus to HFY [link] [comments]
Ruse understood their pain. Their terror.
It was a terrible to thing to lose your home.
The Xan planetary defense fleet bore down on him, hundreds of lasers targeting his OMA in a futile attempt to prevent the inevitable. One set of numbers ticked up, shifting from green to yellow as heat began to build up on his OMA's ceramic crust. Another number ticked down, indicating the distance between him and his target. The ones going up weren't fast enough to stop the one going down.
[Guardian.AI => Ruse.Pilot] Enemy assessment complete. Automation options available. Recommended: Rotation, Defensive Batteries, Navigation. Query: Aggressive or defensive tactical posture?
Ruse ingested the stream of data. It careened down his neural pathways, making his brain ache. The pain was getting worse. He'd been in-field too long. Plugged in too long. Humans weren't made to be half machine. But they also weren't made to give up when there was a job to do and revenge to be had either.
The options were all in acceptable parameters. The defensive choices proposed "simplifying" the battlefield by destroying the planetary fleet before the planet, giving his OMA increased flexibility to respond to battlefield dynamic shifts -- Guardian shorthand for reinforcements showing up -- at the expense of additional time before completing the mission objective. Aggressive options showed the shortest optimal path for achieving the objective, largely ignoring the planetary fleet.
Ruse found it ironic that the option with greater destruction was considered defensive. Let's play it safe by blowing literally everything up. But that was AI logic. Perhaps he should amend the naming convention from Defensive to "Fuck Everything Up" and Aggressive to "Fuck Your Planet in Particular." It'd make him feel better about choosing the Defensive path.
[Ruse.Pilot => Guardian.AI] Nomenclature amendment. [DEFENSIVE] to [FUCK EVERYTHING UP]. [AGGRESSIVE] to [FUCK YOUR PLANET IN PARTICULAR]. Execute [FUCK EVERYTHING UP].
[Guardian.AI => Ruse.Pilot Acknowledged. Executing FUCK EVERYTHING UP.
The odds were hardly fair. Three hundred and thirty-four of theirs just wasn't enough. Not against an OMA battle sphere. Ruse watched as the red targets began to disappear as the OMA engaged. Occasionally Ruse would interject into the flow of Guardian's commands, implementing alternatives. Exterior cameras and censors accented the neural feed with visuals, depicting the ongoing destruction.
Space stations were pulverized with mass drivers.
Dreadnoughts were melted to slag with lasers.
Fighters were torn to shreds with plasma bursts.
Everywhere, Xan were killed.
Ruse didn't feel the thrill in it any more. Maybe because he was tired. Maybe because he'd done it seventeen times before. Maybe because it didn't matter. They're already taken his home. He was just there to return the favor.
Revenge, pure and simple.
It was hard to feel much joy when your mission was sharing pain, just the dull satisfaction of a job well done.
Ruse watched as the enemy's projected fleet threat dropped. With every passing scan, the number declined. When a dreadnought was destroyed, a full point would disappear. Less for support ships and fighters. The heat buildup on his ceramic crust continued, though not at a rate that risked much beyond an outer layer of shielding. He could speed up the process with an adjustment to tactics given that he'd need a retrofit regardless.
[Ruse.Pilot => Guardian.AI] Propose Tactic Amendment: [SHED][CERAMIC CRUST SEGMENT] if [ORANGE] and [TARGET DENSITY > 35%]
[Guardian.AI => Ruse.Pilot] This will reduce crust efficiency by 17%. This will have a projected impact on mission outcome. Report following.
Ruse reviewed the report.
He'd save 6 minutes. No risk to mission otherwise. Minimal risk of needing an additional retrofit to the second crust layer.
[Ruse.Pilot => Guardian.AI] Execute proposed tactic amendment.
Immediately, multiple chunks of ceramic crust were propelled outward, destroying nearby vessels that had drawn close to engage him. Mostly fighters.
The planet loomed large in the background, slowly drawing closer. He hadn't bothered to review the particulars of the inhabitants. The details never made him feel any better about the nature of his work. He was here to destroy whatever was clinging to that rock and move on to the next one. The planet was an objective, not a civilization.
He wondered whether the Xan had played their own mind games when they had come for Earth. Probably not. They hadn't even been present when they'd done the deed. The gutless cowards had propelled an asteroid at relativistic speeds through a wormhole. Chickenshit.
They must have thought that was the end of the matter. Fire off a boulder, destroy a planet, and watch Humanity crumble under the weight of losing their home. He didn't blame them, it had worked for 'em before. The Xan Empire was built on the husks of the civilizations unlucky enough to come into contact with them. Thousands of worlds and hundreds of vassal species, all ground to dust beneath the heel of their tentacled masters.
Fuckers probably didn't even have heels. But saying ground to ooze beneath their suckers sounded weird.
But this time, the Xan had miscalculated. All they'd succeeded in doing by killing 90% of Humanity is royally piss of the remaining 10%. The loss of Earth meant the loss of a lot of mouths to feed, a lot of material needs to support, and a lot of distraction. Once home had been removed from the equation, once it was no longer about protecting anything, it became very easy to focus on destroying instead.
The first OMA was developed and launched within two years of the fall of Earth. They were a miracle of science, blending biology with technology to produce previously unimaginable destructive potential. In the past, Humanity had operated within careful guidelines, rules between the nations to ensure Humanity wouldn't go too far down any one path they couldn't walk back from.
Human augmentation was limited.
AI capabilities were restricted.
Weapons of Armageddon were banned.
The One Man Armageddon program did away with all of that. There weren't rules any more, just the mission. Ruse was the thirty-fourth person selected to pilot an OMA. The path to getting the opportunity had been brutal. A battery of filters, tests, and medical procedures, carefully curating the perfect blend of man and machine. Somewhere, buried beneath the ceramic crusts and circuitry there was a small chamber housing his body, but it felt like a foreign in distant thing.
Ruse was the OMA and the OMA was Ruse.
He was One Man Armageddon.
He was Humanity's vengeance.
Xan fleet effectiveness dropped into the low single digits. Perhaps there were more vessels lurking in the shadow of the planet, but it hardly mattered. If they made themselves known, they would be dealt with in kind. After a few passing seconds, he reached the optimal firing distance.
[Ruse.Pilot => Obliterator.AI] Commence T-30 countdown. Full destruction. Issue planetary notification.
[Obliterator.AI => Ruse.Pilot] Acknowledged. Commencing.
A number began to tick down from thirty. Dull thuds registered within the distant chamber housing his body as internal structures shifted to accommodate the Obliterator Cannon. It was a relatively quick process, carefully engineered due to the incremental risks associated with retracting the ceramic crusts around the firing mechanism.
Separately, a beacon launched, transmitting a blanket communication to the planet and local space across all known channels.
This is Ruse.
I am Human.
You are nothing.
The Obliterator Cannon timer reached zero. Within seconds, the planet's crust began to slough away, melting as the core destabilized and poured outward. Ruse watched as the atmosphere burned.
[Ruse.Pilot => OMA.Command] Objective complete. Require retrofit. Request port pathing.
[OMA.Command => Ruse.Pilot] Acknowledged. Pathing transmitted.
It would be good to get back among people again. He'd been out for a long time.
He took another look at the planet, the molten core spinning wildly as the core and mantle spun away into the black of space.
"You should have left us alone."
Space distorted around the OMA and, a moment later, it was gone.
PerilousPlatypus
2023.12.26 08:07 PerilousPlatypus The Next Level
I was going to die.
My runemail had reached it limits. The heads up display was a sea of red, taking great pains to highlight exactly how broadly up Shit's Creek I was. Two third of the core systems were in contingency mode. The other third had just given up.
Fucking quitters.
Mana tanks were mostly dusted. I had maybe one more shot of go-juice before I was just gonna be plain ole meat and bones. Not that it would have mattered, my spellbook was exhausted -- it'd take weeks to get it restored. I was down to cantrips and life-sacs, and, as much as I love slightly illuminating a room, it probably wasn't going to get the job done against an infestation like this.
Another dozen reticles popped up in the HUD. Two greater fiends. A gaggle of imps. An abominex. Way more than I could handle in my current state. Probably more than I could handle fresh out of the drop ship. "Well, shit." I sighed, more resigned than fearful. It was always going to come this -- you didn't put on the runemail with an eye to longevity.
Besides, I'd had more than a few turns around the world. I wasn't going out green. I was one mildewy son-of-a-bitch.
Well, fine. Might as go out with a bang.
The last mana tank registered empty as the runemail injected it directly into my spine. Not the preferred place, but the fastest way to get it into the system. My senses immediately sharped, the world taking on a crispness. New reticles highlighted as the demon horde turned their attention on me.
I was the last man standing. Twelve Mailcarriers had dropped with a simple mission: Hold. And we'd done our level best. We'd bought 'em six days. Two days beyond mission estimates. Fuckin' bean counters always shorted us.
My left foot slid forward and I hunched down, my hands splaying outward, moving into my casting stance. "Lifeshot." I said into my helm. The spell highlighted and an alert flashed: This spell requires the Mailcarrier to offer their own life force as a component of casting. Proceeding will result in your death. Continue?
I groaned. Who the fuck let a lawyer into the Mailcarrier operating system? "Continue," I gritted out. The alert was replaced with a long string of runes, arranged neatly on page thirty-nine of my spellbook. My left hand moved to my hip, where my spellbook was resting within its integrated satchel. I pressed my palm against the button, releasing the runes and drawing them into my hand.
The demons scrabbled forward, eager to exact their vengeance. Behind them, the abominex lumbered forward, the great behemoth standing forty feet tall. Its sewn together skin bulged out obscenely, with the tears in flesh revealing the squirming, animated corpses within. I settled my gaze on it, my eyes fixated on the swirl of black energy pulsing in the middle of its chest. If I was going to go down, I was going to shoot for maximum points.
My left hand came forward and I leaned into the movement. I drew the runes into my body, feeling them course through my veins and brand themselves on my heart. I gasped at the shock of it. For obvious reasons, I'd never casted a life-sac spell before. I could definitively say that, if this was the experience, I never intended to again.
As the last rune settled into place, I felt the power well up within me, a giant wave looking for release. I wouldn't be able to contain it for long.
But I managed to contain it for long enough to get the job done.
As I fell to my knees, my vision fading to black, I saw the abominex shudder and then rip apart at the seams.
"Gotcha."
All went black.
-=-=-=-
"It's an impressive performance, truly," a lilting voice said from behind me. "And very exciting, if I do say so myself. And I'm really truly thankful for it. The first Human to break through. Wow! Huge. Momentous. I don't want to make it all about me, but this is a big moment for both of us. I've waited so long to get my halo, so having a new plane open up a big a deal. Not that it's guaranteed or anything, but it's a promising first step. Very promising!"
The voice nattered on as I tried to gather my senses. I was blinded by a blaring light. I couldn't smell anything. Or move. Everything felt slightly out of place but somehow more whole than it'd been in a long time. The HUD was gone, so it was hard to get any sense of precision on the topic. I hadn't realized how dependent I'd gotten on the runemail to tell me how I felt.
"Status," I said.
No response. Strange. At least a verbal readout should occur.
"Status!" I repeated.
At this, the voice paused for a moment. "Oh, I'm so sorry, you had to leave the armor behind. Material goods struggle with interplanar transportation. It's sort of a souls-only highway, if you take my meaning. We have to recreate everything on this side. Speaking of, is you body to your liking? The measurements in the blueprint tend to be quite accurate but there's often so much going under the surface that we can miss. Particularly the features from lived experience that we can't quite replicate when building a body from the blueprint." The voice sighed now, "Which is really quite a shame. There'd be a shorter integration period if we could make the adjustments, but the Boss is quite adamant on the topic. They're always saying 'There is there and here is here.' But if that's supposed to be some big rule then I don't get why we even have soul vestment. It doesn't make any sense."
"No, it doesn't." I tried to turn, but found I couldn't. My body couldn't find purchase on anything. It felt like I was unmoored, drifting in space. "Who are you?
"Me? Oh! I'm so sorry, I got so carried away I forgot proper introductions. The light dimmed and a wisp emerged in my peripheral vision, floating along until it was directly in front of me. "I'm Jebediah Zacarian Lucinian. Or--" A bunch of lights pulsed within the wisp in rapid succession. "But I'm quite content to be called Jeb." The wisp noticeably brightened when it said the word Jeb. "I've always wanted to have a nickname. Angels are too formal for that, which is quite disappointing. You're lucky, you've had eighty-seven."
"Eighty-seven?" I replied.
"Yes, though the vast majority were applied to you during your earliest years by your parents. They've likely failed to imprint upon your memory. Which is a shame, really. Schnookums it particularly endearing." The pulsing paused for a bit. "You may also call me Schnookums if you would prefer it to Jeb and would not mind my borrowing it..." It drifted off, sounding almost hopeful.
Schnookums was out. "Jeb, where am I?"
Jeb's light dulled slightly at the choice of name, but forged onward. "That's quite tricky to explain, but thankfully there is a prepared script on the topic. I memorized it some time ago, and have practiced it many times. It's part of the Obligated Communications Protocol, which is just a fancy way of calling all of the stuff I'm supposed to say when I get a chance to say it. Pay close attention, there will be a quiz on it later." The lights in the background faded further, making Jeb appear even brighter by contrast.
When Jeb spoke again, the voice was more serious. "Long ago, the Prime Plane was created by forces mysterious and powerful -- Quick Aside! The forces were mysterious and powerful but that isn't their name or anything, it's just the sort of forces they were! I wanted to clarify because it can be confusing. I spent a few eons calling them 'Mysterious' and 'Powerful' and it was very embarrassing when I found out the truth. Anyways back to the OCP. -- The Prime Plane is anchor of existence, the root from which the Planar Tree springs. With the passage of time, the Planar Tree has grown full. The trunk has many branches. Those branches have their own branches. At the end of each branch are a series of leaves. Each of these leaves is a Plane of Existence. There are many millions of them now." Jeb interrupted their own speech again. "Just so you know, this version of the OCP was designed specifically for Humans in case their Plane ever broke through. I hope the metaphor is easy for you to follow, we don't have much experience with trees. Though I would like to get to know some better, they seem quite friendly."
All of this made very little sense. I was beginning to wonder whether it was possible to call in a supervisor. Jeb seemed to struggle with whatever task it was they were supposed to be doing. It felt like a very shitty tutorial offered in the most confusing way possible.
Jeb's light dimmed greatly. They emitted a sigh. "Yes, it's possible to call in a supervisor, though I would rather you not."
I froze. Could they read my thoughts?
"Yes," Jeb replied.
[We can talk in here if you want, but we're generally advised to avoid telepathic communications with species not already oriented toward it. It can often lead to unplanned and unintended consequences.]
Jeb's voice boomed in my head, somehow ear-splitting.
I reached up and clutched my ears, "Get out!"
"I'm very sorry about that. I really am making a mess of this. I was so sure it would go well. I spent so much time preparing." Jeb's light dimmed to a dull twinkle. "If you would like I could request the assistance of a more seasoned Guide."
I schooled my thoughts into order, considering my options. It was a strange exercise, to control each thought out of concern for how Jeb might interpret it. For all of they flaws, Jeb did seem to be well-meaning. There was no guarantee a more seasoned Guide would be the same. "What are you trying to do, Jeb?"
"Guide you," they replied glumly. Their light barely a flicker. "That's an Angel's job. Or, at least, my job. Maybe for not much longer."
I decided to sidestep that and focus on the issue at hand. "Guide me where?"
"To your place on the Prime Plane," Jeb replied.
I made a conscious effort to remain patient. "Isn't my place back on my plane? Last I remember I was fighting to protect my home. I'd rather go back and help with that." I was strangely calm, given everything going on. The memory of that battlefield and the home I'd left behind was still real, but it felt somehow distant. As if it had happened to someone else, someplace else. Which appeared to be true.
"Planar transportation is a one-way thing. Once you move to a higher level, you can't go back down." Jeb bobbed up and down, bouncing back and forth. I got the distinct impression it was thinking. "Once your soul leaves the leaf and goes into the branch, it can't go back. We call it breaking through. Break through conditions are quite complicated and very difficult to reach. Many leafs never have a soul break through. I was very hopeful about Humanity though, it's a very impressive species. I thought it might be possible, and you've just proven that it is!" Jeb was twinkling more now. "It's a shame it took the Rot to make it happen. No one should have to deal with them."
"Them?"
"You call them demons. They're the Rot to us. A blight on the Planar Tree, tainting branch and leaf alike. Your plane has recently been forced to confront them, which is quite sad. We wish we could help, but the Planar Tree is beyond us. We can cultivate and we can tend, but we cannot intervene. The Rot has no such restriction. It corrupts everywhere it goes. Many leafs have been lost. Whole branches even." A brief silence ensued.
I tried to picture such a thing, but it was a level of mind-fuckery beyond my capacity. I did agree that the Rot wasn't something anyone should have to deal with. "So, now that I have 'broken through,' what am I supposed to do? Just hang out and talk with you Jeb?"
"Well, that's part of it!" I suppressed a mental groan. "I'm to be your Guide, after all. But mostly what we'd like you to do is what you were already doing: fighting them."
"I already died once doing that, I'm not sure I fit the bill."
Jeb floated closer now, their flight flaring with a new, molten red color. "Oh, you're so very wrong there. Part of your break through triggered contingencies was your overkill factor, which is a fancy way of measuring how much damage you dealt to the Rot relative to the expected outcome with available resources. A breakthrough contingency is triggered at three hundred percent, which means you did three times more damage to the Rot than predicted--"
"--Fucking bean counters are always shorting us.--" I broke in.
"--which led us to believe that soul vestment would be a suitable use for your consciousness on our Plane."
"Soul vestment?" I asked, confused by the term.
"Yes. We re-attach your soul to a recreation of your body, provide you with Angellic armaments modified to your capabilities, and then send you to cleanse the Rot from planar branches. It's very heroic work and I am led to believe quite satisfying to souls that break through on battle oriented contingencies."
"This isn't my body? It feels like my body..." I replied, flexing my fingers and toes. And unsettling feeling of something being off settled on me. I had regained feeling in my big toe, something I hadn't felt in over ten years. "Almost."
"I could sever the nerve endings in your toe if you would prefer, though it would be off blueprint and generally frowned upon. The Boss has required we not make lived experience adjustments without prior authorization. Boss says it's important that the vested souls understand that who they are here is different than who they were there, even if they're still the same. If you're confused, don't worry, I am too."
"I'd prefer if you'd stay out of my head," I replied, unnerved.
"It's quite impossible for me. It would be like asking you to not see me. If you prefer, I can pretend I'm not aware of your internal thoughts, though it will make getting things done considerably more difficult. Not that I'd mind, but it could result in you needing to be revested a lot more than you'd like."
"Revested?"
"Have your soul re-attached to a new body. Like reincarnation only you're still you and you remember old you even though you're new you." Jeb bounced back and forth. "There wouldn't be this...ahem...excellent tutorial the next time, but you'd need to go through adjustment again. Every time you lose your body."
"So, what are you saying, I'm immortal?"
"Until you deny vestment or the Rot consumes the Prime Plane, I should be capable of gathering your soul and routing it back here whenever you lose a body." Jeb dimmed suddenly, "Unless you're caught by a soul snatcher, then your soul will be eternally tormented. I don't recommend getting caught by a soul snatcher. Eternal torment is very miserable, nasty stuff."
"Fight forever, dying over and over again. This sounds like Hell," I replied.
"Yes, exactly!" Jeb brightened considerably. "Only you're here to destroy the Devil."
I warmed to the topic. "With what?"
"You'll be thrice blessed! Purified, sanctified, and endowed with Angellic Armaments! It's very exciting stuff. I've watched a thrice bless ceremony on many occasions and the vested soul is always extremely pleased with the outcome."
"And why is that?"
"Well, it has to do with battle contingency break throughs. Overkill factor is just a small part of it. The bigger parts have to do with the nature and quality of the soul -- who they fight for, how they fight, what they will sacrifice. These souls want to fight. They want to do justice. And, since they all died in service of a greater good, they love the idea of retribution." Jeb flared molten red again. "That's a long way of saying they absolutely adore Angellic Armaments."
"Are they more powerful than runemail?"
"Oh yes! Much! If you would like, we can proceed past the introduction and just get to the good stuff."
I smiled. "Yes, Jeb, let's do that."
PerilousPlatypus
submitted by PerilousPlatypus to HFY [link] [comments]
My runemail had reached it limits. The heads up display was a sea of red, taking great pains to highlight exactly how broadly up Shit's Creek I was. Two third of the core systems were in contingency mode. The other third had just given up.
Fucking quitters.
Mana tanks were mostly dusted. I had maybe one more shot of go-juice before I was just gonna be plain ole meat and bones. Not that it would have mattered, my spellbook was exhausted -- it'd take weeks to get it restored. I was down to cantrips and life-sacs, and, as much as I love slightly illuminating a room, it probably wasn't going to get the job done against an infestation like this.
Another dozen reticles popped up in the HUD. Two greater fiends. A gaggle of imps. An abominex. Way more than I could handle in my current state. Probably more than I could handle fresh out of the drop ship. "Well, shit." I sighed, more resigned than fearful. It was always going to come this -- you didn't put on the runemail with an eye to longevity.
Besides, I'd had more than a few turns around the world. I wasn't going out green. I was one mildewy son-of-a-bitch.
Well, fine. Might as go out with a bang.
The last mana tank registered empty as the runemail injected it directly into my spine. Not the preferred place, but the fastest way to get it into the system. My senses immediately sharped, the world taking on a crispness. New reticles highlighted as the demon horde turned their attention on me.
I was the last man standing. Twelve Mailcarriers had dropped with a simple mission: Hold. And we'd done our level best. We'd bought 'em six days. Two days beyond mission estimates. Fuckin' bean counters always shorted us.
My left foot slid forward and I hunched down, my hands splaying outward, moving into my casting stance. "Lifeshot." I said into my helm. The spell highlighted and an alert flashed: This spell requires the Mailcarrier to offer their own life force as a component of casting. Proceeding will result in your death. Continue?
I groaned. Who the fuck let a lawyer into the Mailcarrier operating system? "Continue," I gritted out. The alert was replaced with a long string of runes, arranged neatly on page thirty-nine of my spellbook. My left hand moved to my hip, where my spellbook was resting within its integrated satchel. I pressed my palm against the button, releasing the runes and drawing them into my hand.
The demons scrabbled forward, eager to exact their vengeance. Behind them, the abominex lumbered forward, the great behemoth standing forty feet tall. Its sewn together skin bulged out obscenely, with the tears in flesh revealing the squirming, animated corpses within. I settled my gaze on it, my eyes fixated on the swirl of black energy pulsing in the middle of its chest. If I was going to go down, I was going to shoot for maximum points.
My left hand came forward and I leaned into the movement. I drew the runes into my body, feeling them course through my veins and brand themselves on my heart. I gasped at the shock of it. For obvious reasons, I'd never casted a life-sac spell before. I could definitively say that, if this was the experience, I never intended to again.
As the last rune settled into place, I felt the power well up within me, a giant wave looking for release. I wouldn't be able to contain it for long.
But I managed to contain it for long enough to get the job done.
As I fell to my knees, my vision fading to black, I saw the abominex shudder and then rip apart at the seams.
"Gotcha."
All went black.
-=-=-=-
"It's an impressive performance, truly," a lilting voice said from behind me. "And very exciting, if I do say so myself. And I'm really truly thankful for it. The first Human to break through. Wow! Huge. Momentous. I don't want to make it all about me, but this is a big moment for both of us. I've waited so long to get my halo, so having a new plane open up a big a deal. Not that it's guaranteed or anything, but it's a promising first step. Very promising!"
The voice nattered on as I tried to gather my senses. I was blinded by a blaring light. I couldn't smell anything. Or move. Everything felt slightly out of place but somehow more whole than it'd been in a long time. The HUD was gone, so it was hard to get any sense of precision on the topic. I hadn't realized how dependent I'd gotten on the runemail to tell me how I felt.
"Status," I said.
No response. Strange. At least a verbal readout should occur.
"Status!" I repeated.
At this, the voice paused for a moment. "Oh, I'm so sorry, you had to leave the armor behind. Material goods struggle with interplanar transportation. It's sort of a souls-only highway, if you take my meaning. We have to recreate everything on this side. Speaking of, is you body to your liking? The measurements in the blueprint tend to be quite accurate but there's often so much going under the surface that we can miss. Particularly the features from lived experience that we can't quite replicate when building a body from the blueprint." The voice sighed now, "Which is really quite a shame. There'd be a shorter integration period if we could make the adjustments, but the Boss is quite adamant on the topic. They're always saying 'There is there and here is here.' But if that's supposed to be some big rule then I don't get why we even have soul vestment. It doesn't make any sense."
"No, it doesn't." I tried to turn, but found I couldn't. My body couldn't find purchase on anything. It felt like I was unmoored, drifting in space. "Who are you?
"Me? Oh! I'm so sorry, I got so carried away I forgot proper introductions. The light dimmed and a wisp emerged in my peripheral vision, floating along until it was directly in front of me. "I'm Jebediah Zacarian Lucinian. Or--" A bunch of lights pulsed within the wisp in rapid succession. "But I'm quite content to be called Jeb." The wisp noticeably brightened when it said the word Jeb. "I've always wanted to have a nickname. Angels are too formal for that, which is quite disappointing. You're lucky, you've had eighty-seven."
"Eighty-seven?" I replied.
"Yes, though the vast majority were applied to you during your earliest years by your parents. They've likely failed to imprint upon your memory. Which is a shame, really. Schnookums it particularly endearing." The pulsing paused for a bit. "You may also call me Schnookums if you would prefer it to Jeb and would not mind my borrowing it..." It drifted off, sounding almost hopeful.
Schnookums was out. "Jeb, where am I?"
Jeb's light dulled slightly at the choice of name, but forged onward. "That's quite tricky to explain, but thankfully there is a prepared script on the topic. I memorized it some time ago, and have practiced it many times. It's part of the Obligated Communications Protocol, which is just a fancy way of calling all of the stuff I'm supposed to say when I get a chance to say it. Pay close attention, there will be a quiz on it later." The lights in the background faded further, making Jeb appear even brighter by contrast.
When Jeb spoke again, the voice was more serious. "Long ago, the Prime Plane was created by forces mysterious and powerful -- Quick Aside! The forces were mysterious and powerful but that isn't their name or anything, it's just the sort of forces they were! I wanted to clarify because it can be confusing. I spent a few eons calling them 'Mysterious' and 'Powerful' and it was very embarrassing when I found out the truth. Anyways back to the OCP. -- The Prime Plane is anchor of existence, the root from which the Planar Tree springs. With the passage of time, the Planar Tree has grown full. The trunk has many branches. Those branches have their own branches. At the end of each branch are a series of leaves. Each of these leaves is a Plane of Existence. There are many millions of them now." Jeb interrupted their own speech again. "Just so you know, this version of the OCP was designed specifically for Humans in case their Plane ever broke through. I hope the metaphor is easy for you to follow, we don't have much experience with trees. Though I would like to get to know some better, they seem quite friendly."
All of this made very little sense. I was beginning to wonder whether it was possible to call in a supervisor. Jeb seemed to struggle with whatever task it was they were supposed to be doing. It felt like a very shitty tutorial offered in the most confusing way possible.
Jeb's light dimmed greatly. They emitted a sigh. "Yes, it's possible to call in a supervisor, though I would rather you not."
I froze. Could they read my thoughts?
"Yes," Jeb replied.
[We can talk in here if you want, but we're generally advised to avoid telepathic communications with species not already oriented toward it. It can often lead to unplanned and unintended consequences.]
Jeb's voice boomed in my head, somehow ear-splitting.
I reached up and clutched my ears, "Get out!"
"I'm very sorry about that. I really am making a mess of this. I was so sure it would go well. I spent so much time preparing." Jeb's light dimmed to a dull twinkle. "If you would like I could request the assistance of a more seasoned Guide."
I schooled my thoughts into order, considering my options. It was a strange exercise, to control each thought out of concern for how Jeb might interpret it. For all of they flaws, Jeb did seem to be well-meaning. There was no guarantee a more seasoned Guide would be the same. "What are you trying to do, Jeb?"
"Guide you," they replied glumly. Their light barely a flicker. "That's an Angel's job. Or, at least, my job. Maybe for not much longer."
I decided to sidestep that and focus on the issue at hand. "Guide me where?"
"To your place on the Prime Plane," Jeb replied.
I made a conscious effort to remain patient. "Isn't my place back on my plane? Last I remember I was fighting to protect my home. I'd rather go back and help with that." I was strangely calm, given everything going on. The memory of that battlefield and the home I'd left behind was still real, but it felt somehow distant. As if it had happened to someone else, someplace else. Which appeared to be true.
"Planar transportation is a one-way thing. Once you move to a higher level, you can't go back down." Jeb bobbed up and down, bouncing back and forth. I got the distinct impression it was thinking. "Once your soul leaves the leaf and goes into the branch, it can't go back. We call it breaking through. Break through conditions are quite complicated and very difficult to reach. Many leafs never have a soul break through. I was very hopeful about Humanity though, it's a very impressive species. I thought it might be possible, and you've just proven that it is!" Jeb was twinkling more now. "It's a shame it took the Rot to make it happen. No one should have to deal with them."
"Them?"
"You call them demons. They're the Rot to us. A blight on the Planar Tree, tainting branch and leaf alike. Your plane has recently been forced to confront them, which is quite sad. We wish we could help, but the Planar Tree is beyond us. We can cultivate and we can tend, but we cannot intervene. The Rot has no such restriction. It corrupts everywhere it goes. Many leafs have been lost. Whole branches even." A brief silence ensued.
I tried to picture such a thing, but it was a level of mind-fuckery beyond my capacity. I did agree that the Rot wasn't something anyone should have to deal with. "So, now that I have 'broken through,' what am I supposed to do? Just hang out and talk with you Jeb?"
"Well, that's part of it!" I suppressed a mental groan. "I'm to be your Guide, after all. But mostly what we'd like you to do is what you were already doing: fighting them."
"I already died once doing that, I'm not sure I fit the bill."
Jeb floated closer now, their flight flaring with a new, molten red color. "Oh, you're so very wrong there. Part of your break through triggered contingencies was your overkill factor, which is a fancy way of measuring how much damage you dealt to the Rot relative to the expected outcome with available resources. A breakthrough contingency is triggered at three hundred percent, which means you did three times more damage to the Rot than predicted--"
"--Fucking bean counters are always shorting us.--" I broke in.
"--which led us to believe that soul vestment would be a suitable use for your consciousness on our Plane."
"Soul vestment?" I asked, confused by the term.
"Yes. We re-attach your soul to a recreation of your body, provide you with Angellic armaments modified to your capabilities, and then send you to cleanse the Rot from planar branches. It's very heroic work and I am led to believe quite satisfying to souls that break through on battle oriented contingencies."
"This isn't my body? It feels like my body..." I replied, flexing my fingers and toes. And unsettling feeling of something being off settled on me. I had regained feeling in my big toe, something I hadn't felt in over ten years. "Almost."
"I could sever the nerve endings in your toe if you would prefer, though it would be off blueprint and generally frowned upon. The Boss has required we not make lived experience adjustments without prior authorization. Boss says it's important that the vested souls understand that who they are here is different than who they were there, even if they're still the same. If you're confused, don't worry, I am too."
"I'd prefer if you'd stay out of my head," I replied, unnerved.
"It's quite impossible for me. It would be like asking you to not see me. If you prefer, I can pretend I'm not aware of your internal thoughts, though it will make getting things done considerably more difficult. Not that I'd mind, but it could result in you needing to be revested a lot more than you'd like."
"Revested?"
"Have your soul re-attached to a new body. Like reincarnation only you're still you and you remember old you even though you're new you." Jeb bounced back and forth. "There wouldn't be this...ahem...excellent tutorial the next time, but you'd need to go through adjustment again. Every time you lose your body."
"So, what are you saying, I'm immortal?"
"Until you deny vestment or the Rot consumes the Prime Plane, I should be capable of gathering your soul and routing it back here whenever you lose a body." Jeb dimmed suddenly, "Unless you're caught by a soul snatcher, then your soul will be eternally tormented. I don't recommend getting caught by a soul snatcher. Eternal torment is very miserable, nasty stuff."
"Fight forever, dying over and over again. This sounds like Hell," I replied.
"Yes, exactly!" Jeb brightened considerably. "Only you're here to destroy the Devil."
I warmed to the topic. "With what?"
"You'll be thrice blessed! Purified, sanctified, and endowed with Angellic Armaments! It's very exciting stuff. I've watched a thrice bless ceremony on many occasions and the vested soul is always extremely pleased with the outcome."
"And why is that?"
"Well, it has to do with battle contingency break throughs. Overkill factor is just a small part of it. The bigger parts have to do with the nature and quality of the soul -- who they fight for, how they fight, what they will sacrifice. These souls want to fight. They want to do justice. And, since they all died in service of a greater good, they love the idea of retribution." Jeb flared molten red again. "That's a long way of saying they absolutely adore Angellic Armaments."
"Are they more powerful than runemail?"
"Oh yes! Much! If you would like, we can proceed past the introduction and just get to the good stuff."
I smiled. "Yes, Jeb, let's do that."
PerilousPlatypus
2023.11.26 02:54 PerilousPlatypus A Turn in the Battle Everlasting
The Battle Everlasting is the father of countless tales. Stories, myths, and legends are a natural consequence of a conflict waged across, realm, time, and space. A vast array of scholarship has been dedicated to the war, and I am humbled by the giants my work now stands upon.
As the reader will know, Humanity has been locked in this conflict for millennia. Our allies, Elf, Dwarf, and Dragon, have been steadfast but our combined might has proven to be insufficient to push back against the Darkness. Our great salvation has been the work of the Gate Smiths, allowing us to open portals to new Light Realms to reinforce ourselves against every surge in Darkness.
Many realms have been lost. We have managed to salvage what we could before their descent into the Dark, but it is difficult to quantify precisely how much wisdom, knowledge, and strength is sacrificed each time we are forced to sever a Gate.
This is due to a lack of investment in Macro Theory. For far too long have we focused on the details, losing the bigger picture. My work is dedicated to the expansion of Macro Theory and it has already produced surprising results, including the first attempt at a logistical assessment framework across all one thousand, two-hundred and twenty-eight realms currently embroiled in the conflict. Upon investigation into this logistical assessment framework, I have noticed a curious trend: we appear to be winning.
I understand this will be met with shock and skepticism, and I beg the reader the opportunity to show my work. The turn in the Battle Everlasting appears to be tied to the unlocking of a new Human Light Realm and the influx of Arch Mages therefrom. While most Human Light Realms can be relied upon to produce a handful of Arch Mages capable of pushing upon the Darkness, this particular realm appears to have one Arch Mage who is fully beyond any previously recorded measurements of power.
This discovery has not been more broadly understood to the deep fragmentation in communications between our Central Commands and the outlying realms. This Arch Mage, one Senzenius Cataclysti (you will need to forgive the name, the Humans of this Light Realm are particularly theatrical), resides seven Gates away from the nearest central command. His Realm was nearly abandoned to the Darkness, but ultimately received a Gate opening when the Realm's stubborn persistence was observed.
Upon my recent research sabbatical, I made my way through the intervening Gates to Arch Mage Senzenius Cataclysti's Realm, known as Pin in the Black. Many of the Realms between here and there are under considerable duress, that particular path being noticeably within the territory deemed "corrupted" but not yet abandoned.
Upon arriving at Pin in the Black, I can only say I can barely grasp how Humanity has held on in the face of such a host of Darkness. It remains a Light Realm, but it does so in defiance of all understood mechanics of the Battle Everlasting. Despite numerous attempts, I was unable to secure a direct interview with Senzenius Cataclysti, but through my diligence, I did obtain the account of Lastrini duCataclysti, one of his apprentices. The account describes the battle between Senzenius and a great Daemon, which, if true, would be the only time a single Arch Mage has successfully foiled a Daemon.
If my calculations are correct, it would appear that this battle represented a turn in the tide. Since Senzenius' victory, the forces of Darkness have increasing reallocated their attention to Pin in the Black. By my estimation, Senzenius currently wages war against a Host drawing from no fewer than twenty-two Realms. I was unable to use a douser to confirm all twenty-two Black Gates, but I did catalogue at least fourteen.
This is unheard of. Moreover, since Senzenius has engaged in the battle, we have made marked progress on various fronts, which I have detailed in this addendum alongside the Apprentice's account. It is my strong recommendation we immediately undertake a reinforcement effort and simultaneously learn what we can of Senzenius' unique talents.
Sincerely Yours,
Dr. Hallu Arkkanaën
Senior Researcher, Institute for the Study of War
-=-=-=-=-=-
Addendum One -- Account of Apprentice Lastrini duCatalysti on the 12th Morning of Golden Ray within the Light Realm Pin in the Black.
I awoke to the sound of chaos. A great clanging of bells from the Four Towers encircling Catalysti Spire. To my recollection these bells have never been used beyond the keeping of time. Their discordant chimes were a shock, and I stumbled from my bed just as the door to my sanctum opened. I was greeted by Master Oakrus, who stood bedecked in runeplate, a grimace fixed to his face. Master Vern Oakrus was rarely the pleasant sort, but he seemed particularly grim.
"Up, Lastrini," he said to me.
"I am getting up, can you tell me what is going--"
"To the Arch Mage. Immediately. I will say what I can once we are underway," he interrupted.
I gawked for a moment, trying to gather myself. It had been some time since I was summoned before the Arch Mage, my spellcrafting efforts having failed to impress him. I had hoped for another audience with the passing of Bright Season, but I had little expectation with that regard. I was brought to reality but the slap of Vern's hand upside my head. "Get on with it," He said. I blinked once and then jumped into action.
Thankfully, it took blessed little time to get ready. Within a minute I had my apprentice robe over my head, my sandals upon my feet, and my spell satchel in hand. We left the door and began to make our way up the stairs leading to the top of the spire. "Where are the other apprentices?" I asked.
"They've been tasked with transfer webs. The Arch Mage has sent for you alone."
"Why me?"
"He's detected a twist in the fabric." Vern's eyes glanced toward me. "A puncture, with naught but evil beyond."
I stumbled, and only managed to regain my footing with Vern's firm hand on my shoulder. "So I was right?" I swallowed, a thousand thoughts running through my head. "There is a dark force?"
Vern nodded, a sheen of sweat forming on his brow as he took the stairs two at a time. "It appears so. The Arch Mage would know more."
"What can I do to help?"
"I'm not sure, but I expect he will need your assistance in spellcrafting. For all of the disfavor heaped upon your shoulders, it would appear your work in light magic is now very much in favor."
"I see." My work on the separation between Light and Dark had preoccupied me for most of my time as an Apprentice. It was generally viewed as a waste of time, producing, at best, minor use cases compared to more practical magics dealing with the elements, primal forces, or technological embedment.
We continued on in silence except for the huffing of our breath. A downside of my disfavored position was a sanctum on the lower floors. I had once wondered why there was no lift installed, until it was explained to me that the journey up the stairs was a reminder of a person's status. It seemed a tremendous waste of time, but I had long since learned the lesson of not pushing on things that were immovable.
The peak of the spire was a single room, with the stairs leading up to a magically sealed hatch separating the Arch Mage's sanctum from the remainder of the tower. As we approached, the hatch shimmered and then dissipated, leaving the sanctum open to us. We climbed the last few stairs and emerged into the sanctum.
It was a chaotic place, with spell parchments and rune blocks strewn about everywhere. It was a priceless amount of magic to have laying about, but it was well in keeping with the Arch Mage's habit. He was a great collector and consumer of magic. My idiosyncratic fascination with light magic had won me my apprenticeship, though the interest had faded when I had failed to progress my craft sufficiently to retain the attention and largesse of the Arch Mage.
After a quick scan, I saw the Arch Mage staring out a window of the keep, his eyes fixed on some unseen horizon. He was still dressed in his night shirt, though he managed to emanate power regardless. I approached and then dropped into a deep bow, "You called for me, Arch Mage?"
"Hmm? Oh? Lastrini, yes...yes, I see you." He mumbled, his eyes moving from me and then back to the window. "There is something coming, Lastrini. A great Darkness."
My throat was dry. My experiments began to make more sense. Each day I had been casting the same light spells and measuring their effect. With each day, they had grown weaker. Most recently, it had almost felt as if the darkness were a living thing, striking back at the spell as soon as it was unleashed. The moment was always accompanied by an oppressive sense of malevolence.
"My experiments have--"
He waved a hand as he cut me off, "I've read them all."
I dared look up, my eyes wide. How had he seen any of them?
A small grin appeared on his face, turning up the corners of his lips and dragging up his heavy beard. "I am an Arch Mage and this is my Spire." He gestured to the spot beside him. "Come, stand beside me and tell me what you see."
I nodded again and shuffled over next to him. I looked out the window and saw nothing. He glanced at me. "Prismatic Eyes," he whispered. I almost coughed in shock. That was a spell. My spell. He had learned it. Was using it. The honor of it was enough to make me faint. Instead, I gathered my resolve and pulled up my spell satchel, flipping between the contents until I found the appropriate page.
I prepared my mind, centering it deep within my soul and then reached down and lay hold of the runes on the page, dragging them from the parchment until they swirled in my hand. I then raised my hand to my face, pressing the runes against my eyes. They were absorbed. When I opened my eyes next, the world stood in stark contrasts. The colors around registered with a keenness that was almost unbearable. When I looked toward the window, a wash of brilliant light filled my eyes, staggering me. Tears formed.
"Focus," the Arch Mage whispered.
With great effort, I kept staring through the window. Then, amidst the sea of brilliance I saw it -- a blotch of black. Slowly expanding. I gasped and took a step back. I collided with a box of runes and then fell over, landing in a tumble. After a moment of disorientation, I was able to see a thin, reedy hand offering me help. Without thinking, I clutched it and was hauled back to my feet, only then realizing it was the Arch Mage himself who had assisted me. I fell into another immediate bow and tried to right the box of runes I had toppled over, only to be stopped by the Arch Mage. "Leave it."
He crooked a finger and beckoned me over to a large desk. It was dominated by a massive spell parchment, covered in intricate lines and runes. It was among the most complicated spells I had ever seen, but I began to notice similarities. Clusters of runes arranged in patterns that matched those in my own spell satchel.
"Is that...are those?"
He nodded, "Much of this work is built upon your own, Lastrini. I had hoped to have more time, but this evil does not afford itself to our whims." He sighed, his fingers running along the runes. "This spell will protect the Spire. So long as the Spire stands, I will be able to draw magic from the transfer webs of the other apprentices. It is your responsibility to make sure the spell remains active and balanced." He pointed to two clusters of runes. "There is a very real chance there will be burnout within one of these clusters. If I had more time, I would be able to find a more elegant solution, but this evil must be stopped before it spreads."
I poured over the runes. "You've combined the light runes with tech embed runes." I shook my head in wonder. "I wouldn't have thought it possible. Light seemed too finicky to accept containment and channeling."
"It may be. Hence the warning to you. It is upon you to maintain the spell. If you do not, it will cost me my life and the lives of a great many others."
"Is there no one else you can turn to? Other Arch Mages?" I asked. The relationships between Arch Mages were cool at best, but this seemed the sort of thing to lay rivalries aside for.
He smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. "They have been warned of the danger. I have offered them my knowledge. Some may come. Many will not. They look to the protection of their own Spires and they do not possess an apprentice skilled in Light Magic. It would appear my diverse tastes have offered me a unique advantage on that front."
"Do the other magics not work?"
"To varying degrees. At best, they are capable of stalling the darkness. Only light appears to be effective at destroying it."
I nodded, "Be careful. It reacts to the presence of light magic most...violently." I said, suppressing a shudder at the memory of my most recent experiment.
"I will be as careful as we can afford. I am not without my own tricks." This time, the smile did reach his eyes as he pulled out a drawer in the desk and reached down. A lifted up another spell satchel from within the drawer, the cover was emblazoned with a fiercely glowing sun. "You were so close, Lastrini. Closer than you could know. With only a few weeks more, I think you would have gotten it. You were not idle during your exile."
My eyes followed the satchel as he opened it. It was thick. Likely containing dozens of spells. "I have left detailed notes. Should you have the time, I will need you to bend it toward crafting additional satchels and instructing the others. I do not know how much of this power this Darkness can withstand, and I do not intend to be left without resources. He turned the satchel toward me, and I could only stare in admiration at the spell. It was beautifully crafted.
"Do you see the root of it?" He whispered.
I leaned forward, looking at the tight cluster of runes sitting in the center of the page. They were arranged in a small box around a blotch of black. "My light cage!" I exclaimed.
"It was built upon your work. Perhaps it will be strong enough. Perhaps not. I have included contingency plans." He flipped a page. There were an incredibly intricate set of runes connected by lines around the figure of a man. "Bright Armor." He flipped another page, and now there were thick lines of runes that bloomed out into a spearhead on one end. "Light Lances." He continued to flip through the pages. "And many more."
He tapped a stack of papers beside him. "Detailed notes. You are expected to replicate and improve these spells, Lastrini." He looked into my eyes. "Do you understand?"
I nodded, "Yes, Arch Mage." I paused, "When will you begin?"
"There seems to be little advantage in waiting." He reached down into the satchel and yanked the runes from the page with practiced ease. He then slammed his hand into his chest. Quickly his robes were replaced by an unfolding construct of pure light, arranging itself to the contours of his body and. then filling in with layer upon layer of glittering scales. I took a moment to admire the work for the beauty it was. Once the construct was fully assembled, the Arch Mage reached over to the table with the Spire spell. This time he pulled them off with more effort, the magnitude of the spell being weighty even for him. With practiced care, he then pushed it into the floor of the keep, which thrummed and pulsed. Bit by bit, the material of the stonework took on a golden hue, emanating light that seemed to gather around the Arch Mage.
He waited for a moment, inspecting the progress. "This should work." He raised a fist and clenched it, and a pulse of power rose up from the floor and filled his hand with a molten sun. I covered my eyes from the brightness. "Yes, this will do nicely."
The Arch Mage's form, now encased in bright armor, was substantially increased. As he lumbered toward the window, he knocked runes and parchment away. The rune blocks, made of wax, melted while the parchments burned. A single walk had cost a fortune. I winced, wishing I had thought to clear the way. As he reached the window, he turned back and looked at me. "I'm counting on you, Lastrini." He said. Before I could response, he turned back to the window and leapt out.
I rushed toward the window. I was again blinded by the brilliance, but now I saw a point of light that was somehow even brighter, making its way toward the dark blotch. The point of light was trailed by a long cape of brightness extending all of the way back to the spire.
His lifeline.
"I won't let you down," I whispered.
Then I turned back to the room and made my way to the desk. The stack of notes loomed large in my mind. If I was to help, I would need to break through the walls that had held me back. The Arch Mage was counting on me.
Pulling the first sheaf off the top, I looked at it and read the cover.
The Sun Satchel
by Apprentice Lastrini duCatalysti
in consultation with Arch Mage Senzenius Catalysti
My eyes teared up.
"I won't let you down," I repeated, louder this time.
PerilousPlatypus
submitted by PerilousPlatypus to HFY [link] [comments]
As the reader will know, Humanity has been locked in this conflict for millennia. Our allies, Elf, Dwarf, and Dragon, have been steadfast but our combined might has proven to be insufficient to push back against the Darkness. Our great salvation has been the work of the Gate Smiths, allowing us to open portals to new Light Realms to reinforce ourselves against every surge in Darkness.
Many realms have been lost. We have managed to salvage what we could before their descent into the Dark, but it is difficult to quantify precisely how much wisdom, knowledge, and strength is sacrificed each time we are forced to sever a Gate.
This is due to a lack of investment in Macro Theory. For far too long have we focused on the details, losing the bigger picture. My work is dedicated to the expansion of Macro Theory and it has already produced surprising results, including the first attempt at a logistical assessment framework across all one thousand, two-hundred and twenty-eight realms currently embroiled in the conflict. Upon investigation into this logistical assessment framework, I have noticed a curious trend: we appear to be winning.
I understand this will be met with shock and skepticism, and I beg the reader the opportunity to show my work. The turn in the Battle Everlasting appears to be tied to the unlocking of a new Human Light Realm and the influx of Arch Mages therefrom. While most Human Light Realms can be relied upon to produce a handful of Arch Mages capable of pushing upon the Darkness, this particular realm appears to have one Arch Mage who is fully beyond any previously recorded measurements of power.
This discovery has not been more broadly understood to the deep fragmentation in communications between our Central Commands and the outlying realms. This Arch Mage, one Senzenius Cataclysti (you will need to forgive the name, the Humans of this Light Realm are particularly theatrical), resides seven Gates away from the nearest central command. His Realm was nearly abandoned to the Darkness, but ultimately received a Gate opening when the Realm's stubborn persistence was observed.
Upon my recent research sabbatical, I made my way through the intervening Gates to Arch Mage Senzenius Cataclysti's Realm, known as Pin in the Black. Many of the Realms between here and there are under considerable duress, that particular path being noticeably within the territory deemed "corrupted" but not yet abandoned.
Upon arriving at Pin in the Black, I can only say I can barely grasp how Humanity has held on in the face of such a host of Darkness. It remains a Light Realm, but it does so in defiance of all understood mechanics of the Battle Everlasting. Despite numerous attempts, I was unable to secure a direct interview with Senzenius Cataclysti, but through my diligence, I did obtain the account of Lastrini duCataclysti, one of his apprentices. The account describes the battle between Senzenius and a great Daemon, which, if true, would be the only time a single Arch Mage has successfully foiled a Daemon.
If my calculations are correct, it would appear that this battle represented a turn in the tide. Since Senzenius' victory, the forces of Darkness have increasing reallocated their attention to Pin in the Black. By my estimation, Senzenius currently wages war against a Host drawing from no fewer than twenty-two Realms. I was unable to use a douser to confirm all twenty-two Black Gates, but I did catalogue at least fourteen.
This is unheard of. Moreover, since Senzenius has engaged in the battle, we have made marked progress on various fronts, which I have detailed in this addendum alongside the Apprentice's account. It is my strong recommendation we immediately undertake a reinforcement effort and simultaneously learn what we can of Senzenius' unique talents.
Sincerely Yours,
Dr. Hallu Arkkanaën
Senior Researcher, Institute for the Study of War
-=-=-=-=-=-
Addendum One -- Account of Apprentice Lastrini duCatalysti on the 12th Morning of Golden Ray within the Light Realm Pin in the Black.
I awoke to the sound of chaos. A great clanging of bells from the Four Towers encircling Catalysti Spire. To my recollection these bells have never been used beyond the keeping of time. Their discordant chimes were a shock, and I stumbled from my bed just as the door to my sanctum opened. I was greeted by Master Oakrus, who stood bedecked in runeplate, a grimace fixed to his face. Master Vern Oakrus was rarely the pleasant sort, but he seemed particularly grim.
"Up, Lastrini," he said to me.
"I am getting up, can you tell me what is going--"
"To the Arch Mage. Immediately. I will say what I can once we are underway," he interrupted.
I gawked for a moment, trying to gather myself. It had been some time since I was summoned before the Arch Mage, my spellcrafting efforts having failed to impress him. I had hoped for another audience with the passing of Bright Season, but I had little expectation with that regard. I was brought to reality but the slap of Vern's hand upside my head. "Get on with it," He said. I blinked once and then jumped into action.
Thankfully, it took blessed little time to get ready. Within a minute I had my apprentice robe over my head, my sandals upon my feet, and my spell satchel in hand. We left the door and began to make our way up the stairs leading to the top of the spire. "Where are the other apprentices?" I asked.
"They've been tasked with transfer webs. The Arch Mage has sent for you alone."
"Why me?"
"He's detected a twist in the fabric." Vern's eyes glanced toward me. "A puncture, with naught but evil beyond."
I stumbled, and only managed to regain my footing with Vern's firm hand on my shoulder. "So I was right?" I swallowed, a thousand thoughts running through my head. "There is a dark force?"
Vern nodded, a sheen of sweat forming on his brow as he took the stairs two at a time. "It appears so. The Arch Mage would know more."
"What can I do to help?"
"I'm not sure, but I expect he will need your assistance in spellcrafting. For all of the disfavor heaped upon your shoulders, it would appear your work in light magic is now very much in favor."
"I see." My work on the separation between Light and Dark had preoccupied me for most of my time as an Apprentice. It was generally viewed as a waste of time, producing, at best, minor use cases compared to more practical magics dealing with the elements, primal forces, or technological embedment.
We continued on in silence except for the huffing of our breath. A downside of my disfavored position was a sanctum on the lower floors. I had once wondered why there was no lift installed, until it was explained to me that the journey up the stairs was a reminder of a person's status. It seemed a tremendous waste of time, but I had long since learned the lesson of not pushing on things that were immovable.
The peak of the spire was a single room, with the stairs leading up to a magically sealed hatch separating the Arch Mage's sanctum from the remainder of the tower. As we approached, the hatch shimmered and then dissipated, leaving the sanctum open to us. We climbed the last few stairs and emerged into the sanctum.
It was a chaotic place, with spell parchments and rune blocks strewn about everywhere. It was a priceless amount of magic to have laying about, but it was well in keeping with the Arch Mage's habit. He was a great collector and consumer of magic. My idiosyncratic fascination with light magic had won me my apprenticeship, though the interest had faded when I had failed to progress my craft sufficiently to retain the attention and largesse of the Arch Mage.
After a quick scan, I saw the Arch Mage staring out a window of the keep, his eyes fixed on some unseen horizon. He was still dressed in his night shirt, though he managed to emanate power regardless. I approached and then dropped into a deep bow, "You called for me, Arch Mage?"
"Hmm? Oh? Lastrini, yes...yes, I see you." He mumbled, his eyes moving from me and then back to the window. "There is something coming, Lastrini. A great Darkness."
My throat was dry. My experiments began to make more sense. Each day I had been casting the same light spells and measuring their effect. With each day, they had grown weaker. Most recently, it had almost felt as if the darkness were a living thing, striking back at the spell as soon as it was unleashed. The moment was always accompanied by an oppressive sense of malevolence.
"My experiments have--"
He waved a hand as he cut me off, "I've read them all."
I dared look up, my eyes wide. How had he seen any of them?
A small grin appeared on his face, turning up the corners of his lips and dragging up his heavy beard. "I am an Arch Mage and this is my Spire." He gestured to the spot beside him. "Come, stand beside me and tell me what you see."
I nodded again and shuffled over next to him. I looked out the window and saw nothing. He glanced at me. "Prismatic Eyes," he whispered. I almost coughed in shock. That was a spell. My spell. He had learned it. Was using it. The honor of it was enough to make me faint. Instead, I gathered my resolve and pulled up my spell satchel, flipping between the contents until I found the appropriate page.
I prepared my mind, centering it deep within my soul and then reached down and lay hold of the runes on the page, dragging them from the parchment until they swirled in my hand. I then raised my hand to my face, pressing the runes against my eyes. They were absorbed. When I opened my eyes next, the world stood in stark contrasts. The colors around registered with a keenness that was almost unbearable. When I looked toward the window, a wash of brilliant light filled my eyes, staggering me. Tears formed.
"Focus," the Arch Mage whispered.
With great effort, I kept staring through the window. Then, amidst the sea of brilliance I saw it -- a blotch of black. Slowly expanding. I gasped and took a step back. I collided with a box of runes and then fell over, landing in a tumble. After a moment of disorientation, I was able to see a thin, reedy hand offering me help. Without thinking, I clutched it and was hauled back to my feet, only then realizing it was the Arch Mage himself who had assisted me. I fell into another immediate bow and tried to right the box of runes I had toppled over, only to be stopped by the Arch Mage. "Leave it."
He crooked a finger and beckoned me over to a large desk. It was dominated by a massive spell parchment, covered in intricate lines and runes. It was among the most complicated spells I had ever seen, but I began to notice similarities. Clusters of runes arranged in patterns that matched those in my own spell satchel.
"Is that...are those?"
He nodded, "Much of this work is built upon your own, Lastrini. I had hoped to have more time, but this evil does not afford itself to our whims." He sighed, his fingers running along the runes. "This spell will protect the Spire. So long as the Spire stands, I will be able to draw magic from the transfer webs of the other apprentices. It is your responsibility to make sure the spell remains active and balanced." He pointed to two clusters of runes. "There is a very real chance there will be burnout within one of these clusters. If I had more time, I would be able to find a more elegant solution, but this evil must be stopped before it spreads."
I poured over the runes. "You've combined the light runes with tech embed runes." I shook my head in wonder. "I wouldn't have thought it possible. Light seemed too finicky to accept containment and channeling."
"It may be. Hence the warning to you. It is upon you to maintain the spell. If you do not, it will cost me my life and the lives of a great many others."
"Is there no one else you can turn to? Other Arch Mages?" I asked. The relationships between Arch Mages were cool at best, but this seemed the sort of thing to lay rivalries aside for.
He smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. "They have been warned of the danger. I have offered them my knowledge. Some may come. Many will not. They look to the protection of their own Spires and they do not possess an apprentice skilled in Light Magic. It would appear my diverse tastes have offered me a unique advantage on that front."
"Do the other magics not work?"
"To varying degrees. At best, they are capable of stalling the darkness. Only light appears to be effective at destroying it."
I nodded, "Be careful. It reacts to the presence of light magic most...violently." I said, suppressing a shudder at the memory of my most recent experiment.
"I will be as careful as we can afford. I am not without my own tricks." This time, the smile did reach his eyes as he pulled out a drawer in the desk and reached down. A lifted up another spell satchel from within the drawer, the cover was emblazoned with a fiercely glowing sun. "You were so close, Lastrini. Closer than you could know. With only a few weeks more, I think you would have gotten it. You were not idle during your exile."
My eyes followed the satchel as he opened it. It was thick. Likely containing dozens of spells. "I have left detailed notes. Should you have the time, I will need you to bend it toward crafting additional satchels and instructing the others. I do not know how much of this power this Darkness can withstand, and I do not intend to be left without resources. He turned the satchel toward me, and I could only stare in admiration at the spell. It was beautifully crafted.
"Do you see the root of it?" He whispered.
I leaned forward, looking at the tight cluster of runes sitting in the center of the page. They were arranged in a small box around a blotch of black. "My light cage!" I exclaimed.
"It was built upon your work. Perhaps it will be strong enough. Perhaps not. I have included contingency plans." He flipped a page. There were an incredibly intricate set of runes connected by lines around the figure of a man. "Bright Armor." He flipped another page, and now there were thick lines of runes that bloomed out into a spearhead on one end. "Light Lances." He continued to flip through the pages. "And many more."
He tapped a stack of papers beside him. "Detailed notes. You are expected to replicate and improve these spells, Lastrini." He looked into my eyes. "Do you understand?"
I nodded, "Yes, Arch Mage." I paused, "When will you begin?"
"There seems to be little advantage in waiting." He reached down into the satchel and yanked the runes from the page with practiced ease. He then slammed his hand into his chest. Quickly his robes were replaced by an unfolding construct of pure light, arranging itself to the contours of his body and. then filling in with layer upon layer of glittering scales. I took a moment to admire the work for the beauty it was. Once the construct was fully assembled, the Arch Mage reached over to the table with the Spire spell. This time he pulled them off with more effort, the magnitude of the spell being weighty even for him. With practiced care, he then pushed it into the floor of the keep, which thrummed and pulsed. Bit by bit, the material of the stonework took on a golden hue, emanating light that seemed to gather around the Arch Mage.
He waited for a moment, inspecting the progress. "This should work." He raised a fist and clenched it, and a pulse of power rose up from the floor and filled his hand with a molten sun. I covered my eyes from the brightness. "Yes, this will do nicely."
The Arch Mage's form, now encased in bright armor, was substantially increased. As he lumbered toward the window, he knocked runes and parchment away. The rune blocks, made of wax, melted while the parchments burned. A single walk had cost a fortune. I winced, wishing I had thought to clear the way. As he reached the window, he turned back and looked at me. "I'm counting on you, Lastrini." He said. Before I could response, he turned back to the window and leapt out.
I rushed toward the window. I was again blinded by the brilliance, but now I saw a point of light that was somehow even brighter, making its way toward the dark blotch. The point of light was trailed by a long cape of brightness extending all of the way back to the spire.
His lifeline.
"I won't let you down," I whispered.
Then I turned back to the room and made my way to the desk. The stack of notes loomed large in my mind. If I was to help, I would need to break through the walls that had held me back. The Arch Mage was counting on me.
Pulling the first sheaf off the top, I looked at it and read the cover.
The Sun Satchel
by Apprentice Lastrini duCatalysti
in consultation with Arch Mage Senzenius Catalysti
My eyes teared up.
"I won't let you down," I repeated, louder this time.
PerilousPlatypus
2023.10.14 18:57 Twistedoveryou01 My DM used a picture of me in a presentation.
This was not a good thing. My DM hates me, no clue why. He seems to be obsessed with getting all of us to quit. I wear a hat at work. I teal Perry the platypus hat. I’ve worn a hat like this for over 10 years. The DM hosted one of the group meetings. The first and only employee picture that was on the screen was a picture of me sitting on the register. My sm told me this. She knows I sit on the register counter during lunch so the cashier doesn’t have to find me during my lunch. Stores laid out weird. My sm was so embarrassed because half of the people in that room know me. I’m one of those people when sm get called to go help clean up stores, I was sent also. (Before he was DM)
I’m the person at my store who has the backbone. I also keep it in my head that anything I say to him, falls onto my sm. She knows how much I’ve held my mouth with him. We’ve known each other for years. She was on vacation last week, DM knew I was in charge and he still blew up her phone. I’ve caught him on way to many lies. Most recently was Wensday and I had to call him. P4 is Sunday for us. I count milk eggs, stock and damage. I’ve been doing this every Sunday for the past year. He tells me we don’t do these things p4. I okayed him when I talked to him. Reviewed the cbl quiz and knew I was right.
Sorry this turned into a rant but I feel like I’m being harassed by this guy blasting my picture to everyone at this meeting. No other employee pictures were used. I’m at a loss on what to do. If my health insurance wasn’t needed I would easily find a new job. Has this happened to anyone else or what can I do not not be used as propaganda? Who would I contact? Edit: you all seem to think I care way to much about wearing a hat. I don’t it’s just a habit. I care way more about the DM going through our camera footage only and blowing up a picture for everyone to see. It embarrassed my SM. I also care about his lying.
submitted by Twistedoveryou01 to DollarGeneral [link] [comments]
I’m the person at my store who has the backbone. I also keep it in my head that anything I say to him, falls onto my sm. She knows how much I’ve held my mouth with him. We’ve known each other for years. She was on vacation last week, DM knew I was in charge and he still blew up her phone. I’ve caught him on way to many lies. Most recently was Wensday and I had to call him. P4 is Sunday for us. I count milk eggs, stock and damage. I’ve been doing this every Sunday for the past year. He tells me we don’t do these things p4. I okayed him when I talked to him. Reviewed the cbl quiz and knew I was right.
Sorry this turned into a rant but I feel like I’m being harassed by this guy blasting my picture to everyone at this meeting. No other employee pictures were used. I’m at a loss on what to do. If my health insurance wasn’t needed I would easily find a new job. Has this happened to anyone else or what can I do not not be used as propaganda? Who would I contact? Edit: you all seem to think I care way to much about wearing a hat. I don’t it’s just a habit. I care way more about the DM going through our camera footage only and blowing up a picture for everyone to see. It embarrassed my SM. I also care about his lying.
2023.08.12 04:37 RaccoonWithSprinkles Ello Creation System - Deep Dive
 | submitted by RaccoonWithSprinkles to toys [link] [comments] Ello Creation System, 2002-2004? While scrolling on Youtube I found myself remembering about the Ello Creation System, and after trying to look for pictures of the sets I used to have I found myself getting into a hyperfixation hole about the whole thing. I'm not so sure how obscure or unknown they are, but after a while I was able to uncover a bit of history about them, and I want to share that with the world. Ello-Opolis: People, Places and Things set In the late 90's to early 2000;s, Ivy Ross was the head of Mattel's creative division, being in charge of "Project Platypus", a team developing a new set of building toys aimed for preteen girls. In that team was Richard Manville, who developed the concept and idea for the toy, from the branding and packaging to the look of the pieces. After Bratz launched, Ivy Ross left Mattel and a couple of months after Ello Creation System was discontinued. One thing that I find interesting is how the Wikipedia page says it was discontinued in 2004, while in Mattel's own website it states some of the toys were released in 2005. Also, not all of the sets are listed on Mattel's website, such as Ello-Opolis Cats and Dogs, and On The Go Snow (which even has an Amazon listing), and there's even some that I haven't found any pictures of besides the ones on the Mattel website like the watch and the scooter. High Res image of the scooter set from Richard Manville's Tumblr. No other pictures currently exist on the internet (that I've found). A very interesting thing I'd like to share is what I've found on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, which mentions the name Ello Creation System and its logo were registered under Mattel until 2011, for its use in items such as toys, educational games, clothing and shoes, bed spreads, lunch boxes, cutlery, hair combs, toothbrushes, backpacks, stationary, lamps, shampoo, and even bandages, they sure wanted to be covered in case the name went big. One of the Ello trademarks on the USPTO website In that same search I found out that after their trademark ran out, in 2013 LeapFrog grabbed the name "ello" for a brand of water bottles, which was one of the intended uses Mattel had for the line. The reason for the discontinuation is still unknown, but since Manville is still present in social media maybe he could bring some light into it. Since I'm not any type of notorious journalist, documentary YouTuber or any of the sorts I don't think I've got the qualifications to bother him about an obscure project he ran 20 years ago, but maybe one of you does, in which case I'd love to hear about it to get the end of the mystery, my ASD brain would absolutely appreciate that!! Let me know if any of you knew about this, or if you've got any other info you'd like to share about the toys! Whether it be your stories about playing with them or if you know any bits or pieces missing! |
2023.07.22 21:11 NorthernScrub Some of the new bots
As expected, a whole host of bots have appeared after the demise of BotDefence and others. These new spambots don't always use an API, either - some of them load a page into memory and vomit their content on to reddit in the same way an end user would.
This new campaign has some of the hallmarks of the pro-russia spambot campaign, which occurred during the opening months of the russian invasion of ukraine - as specified in my post here: https://www.reddit.com/NewcastleUponTyne/comments/155kajd/the_weird_posts_that_are_popping_up/
Thankfully, a significant proportion of these posts are being caught by the spam filter, and a goodly amount of the remainder are being caught by a filter that parses posts and comments by any user with an auto-generated username. This rule is demonstrated below for your convenience.
Many thanks to /ufsv for the original rule, which was designed to combat the temu spam in comments.
submitted by NorthernScrub to ModSupport [link] [comments]
This new campaign has some of the hallmarks of the pro-russia spambot campaign, which occurred during the opening months of the russian invasion of ukraine - as specified in my post here: https://www.reddit.com/NewcastleUponTyne/comments/155kajd/the_weird_posts_that_are_popping_up/
Thankfully, a significant proportion of these posts are being caught by the spam filter, and a goodly amount of the remainder are being caught by a filter that parses posts and comments by any user with an auto-generated username. This rule is demonstrated below for your convenience.
Many thanks to /ufsv for the original rule, which was designed to combat the temu spam in comments.
type: submission author: account_age: < 2 months name (regex, case-sensitive): 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~name: [ 2023.07.06 18:35 SAIEXtokens GMX: one of Avalanche’s most active DEXs
GMX has emerged as one of the top decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on the Avalanche network, exhibiting significant trading volume and popularity. Over the past 90 days, GMX has executed approximately 68.6k swaps, involving over 8k unique swappers. Notably, the weeks of April and June saw a surge in activity, with around 6k weekly swaps and over 1k unique swappers.
The total volume swapped on GMX amounts to nearly 500 million USD, with an average volume per swap of around 7.4k USD. April experienced a peak in volume, reaching approximately 80 million USD during the second week, but it decreased to below 20 million USD in May. However, the activity rebounded in June, with volume reaching around 70 million USD. The average swapped volume was higher during the weeks of increased activity, ranging from 5k to 10k USD during other weeks.
Among the GMX pools, USDC-WAVAX has consistently been the most active, followed by USDC-USDC.e and USDC-WETH.e. These pools accounted for the majority of swaps, while other pools had comparatively lower activity levels. USDC-WAVAX exhibited notable dominance, gaining a significant share of the overall swaps over the past weeks, surpassing 50% in distribution.
When considering the number of unique swappers, the USDC-USDC.e pool initially held the top position, with around 500 weekly active swappers. However, since June, its activity has declined to approximately 100 swappers. On the other hand, USDC-WAVAX witnessed important peaks during April and mid-June weeks, with over 400 unique weekly swappers. Only the USDC.e-WAVAX pool registered similar numbers, surpassing 200 swappers. This shift in dominance has resulted in USDC-WAVAX gaining a larger percentage share of the total swaps, while other pools lost their earlier prominence.
Examining volume swapped, certain pools experienced a surge in April, with BTC.b-WETH.e, USDC-USDC.e, and USDC-WAVAX reaching nearly 20 million USD during the second or third week. However, most other pools remained below 10 million USD and witnessed decreasing volumes over time. Notably, BTC.b-WETH.e pool recorded a significant increase in mid-June, surpassing 60 million USD. Over the past 90 days, USDC-USDC.e pool had the highest total volume, followed closely by BTC.b-WETH.e and USDC-WAVAX.
In comparison to other DEXs on the Avalanche network, GMX's swap count and number of swappers are relatively lower. However, GMX has exhibited consistent activity levels week by week. It represents a smaller percentage share of total swaps and swappers compared to its top competitors, such as Trader Joe, which accounts for over 60% of the market share.
Despite lower swap and swapper counts, GMX stands out in terms of trading volume. It ranks third globally over the past 90 days, with a volume exceeding 500 million USD. This places GMX in competition with DEXs like Woofi and places it above other DEXs such as Platypus and Pangolin. Notably, Trader Joe remains the leading DEX in terms of volume. GMX's average volume represents around 15% of the total volume swapped on DEXs, but its share has recently increased to over 20%.
To see the full analysis and sutain the results with charts, feel free to go to the full dashboard here.
submitted by SAIEXtokens to CryptoMoonShots [link] [comments]
The total volume swapped on GMX amounts to nearly 500 million USD, with an average volume per swap of around 7.4k USD. April experienced a peak in volume, reaching approximately 80 million USD during the second week, but it decreased to below 20 million USD in May. However, the activity rebounded in June, with volume reaching around 70 million USD. The average swapped volume was higher during the weeks of increased activity, ranging from 5k to 10k USD during other weeks.
Among the GMX pools, USDC-WAVAX has consistently been the most active, followed by USDC-USDC.e and USDC-WETH.e. These pools accounted for the majority of swaps, while other pools had comparatively lower activity levels. USDC-WAVAX exhibited notable dominance, gaining a significant share of the overall swaps over the past weeks, surpassing 50% in distribution.
When considering the number of unique swappers, the USDC-USDC.e pool initially held the top position, with around 500 weekly active swappers. However, since June, its activity has declined to approximately 100 swappers. On the other hand, USDC-WAVAX witnessed important peaks during April and mid-June weeks, with over 400 unique weekly swappers. Only the USDC.e-WAVAX pool registered similar numbers, surpassing 200 swappers. This shift in dominance has resulted in USDC-WAVAX gaining a larger percentage share of the total swaps, while other pools lost their earlier prominence.
Examining volume swapped, certain pools experienced a surge in April, with BTC.b-WETH.e, USDC-USDC.e, and USDC-WAVAX reaching nearly 20 million USD during the second or third week. However, most other pools remained below 10 million USD and witnessed decreasing volumes over time. Notably, BTC.b-WETH.e pool recorded a significant increase in mid-June, surpassing 60 million USD. Over the past 90 days, USDC-USDC.e pool had the highest total volume, followed closely by BTC.b-WETH.e and USDC-WAVAX.
In comparison to other DEXs on the Avalanche network, GMX's swap count and number of swappers are relatively lower. However, GMX has exhibited consistent activity levels week by week. It represents a smaller percentage share of total swaps and swappers compared to its top competitors, such as Trader Joe, which accounts for over 60% of the market share.
Despite lower swap and swapper counts, GMX stands out in terms of trading volume. It ranks third globally over the past 90 days, with a volume exceeding 500 million USD. This places GMX in competition with DEXs like Woofi and places it above other DEXs such as Platypus and Pangolin. Notably, Trader Joe remains the leading DEX in terms of volume. GMX's average volume represents around 15% of the total volume swapped on DEXs, but its share has recently increased to over 20%.
To see the full analysis and sutain the results with charts, feel free to go to the full dashboard here.
2023.06.23 04:46 notcoreybernadi Back to the bush! Part 2 of the Australian Legal Tour
Hooley Dooley, crew. You were all so excited to see some Australian Legal Animals, that I thought we’d better do another tour, and what better time than a Friday afternoon? There’s so much to see out there, and it’s all so wonderful and unique!
Let’s jump right in!
First off the bat, we’ve got the elusive in house counsel. One of only two species of monotreme, these gorgeous but shy creatures are a little bit of everything to everyone. Some of them do have barbs on their flippers that deliver a nasty, venomous sting, but most of the time they just want to be left alone to hide under a rock or in their burrow.
Less shy is the magistrate. The first port of call for all criminal matters and occasionally petty civil matters that can’t be dealt with by a civil and administrative tribunal. These amazing animals have evolved a rough exterior that is a very effective defence mechanism to deter the bullshit sob stories regularly being thrown at them.
By contrast, this smiley little thing is the work experience kid. Having grown up in an environment away from the worst of humanity, the happiest marsupial hasn’t yet developed the jaded cynicism common to many other Australian legal animals. She’s just happy to get to wear her new pencil skirt and eat the leftover sandwiches from the mediation she got to sit in on.
Hey, while we’re here, I also want to show you part of the legal environment, because it’s absolutely fascinating. It’s called the High Court Registry and let me tell you, it’s a real doozy of a thing to navigate. Margins off by a millimetre, or put your paginate in the wrong place? You’ll be stuck here for hours, if not days. Tell you what, I’d rather not!
Now on our last tour, many of you asked to see a criminal defence lawyer, and would you look at that we’ve managed to find one. Usually solitary, defence lawyers are known for their pungent odour, extremely loud and disturbing screech, keen sense of smell, and ferocity when feeding. While usually aggressive, and usually territorial, they will sometimes eat and defecate together in a communal location. They are both hunters and scavengers of carrion. (note: this is pretty much verbatim from Wikipedia, and yet the shoe still fits)
I was also asked to show you a transactional lawyer, and here we have a great example of a junior M&A solicitor. Would you look at this beauty? Virtually silent, well camouflaged and - as you would expect from a lawyer not frequently in Court, a bit weak in the feet department. They tend to be very active at night, largely due to the demands of their rainmaking boss
Another carrion feeder, here we have the solicitor and registered migration agent. These big, cold-blooded lizards often get a bad wrap, particularly because they tend to prey on smaller, comparatively helpless animals, and steal eggs from the nests of birds and snakes. They’ve also been known, in more densely populated areas, to fossick through the rubbish looking for something to sustain them - which makes them a bit of a natural enemy to the family lawyer we looked at on our last tour. They’re pretty common throughout Australia, but tend to stay in their own little patch of territory, because they don’t have the ability or motivation to venture much further. They have got a rather nasty bite to them, but most of the time when confronted by something bigger and meaner, will scurry away as quick as their little legs can carry them.
Speaking of having a bad wrap, here we have the property lawyer (residential and conveyancing). These critters have been expanding the boundaries of their natural habitat as the urban sprawl expands and the property market continues to experience unprecedented warming. The property lawyer subsists on a diet of small matters, and has a hardwired urge to shuffle papers around, sometimes making huge piles of it in the oddest of places. All this paper is used to incubate junior property lawyers, who are small, timid, and use their natural drab camouflage to avoid the attention of their natural predator, the property lawyer - litigation and disputes. Yikes!
Now, for a change of pace, here we have a member of an administrative tribunal. You will have heard a lot of stories about Tribunal members: they spend most of the day napping, they’re smooth brained, they’re riddled with chlamydia… and look, most of that is true. But they’re also highly adapted to their natural environment, and a diet of work that is toxic to most animals and not very fulfilling. Unfortunately, despite being listed as a protected species for many years now, these truly unique and fascinating creatures now face an uncertain future because of government policies that will impact their natural habitat.
For a final stop on our tour, I want to show you one of my favourite Australian animals, the High Court Justice. These absolutely beautiful creatures are just the most impressive hunters you’ll come across in the Australian legal landscape. They have no natural predators, and their habitat ranges across the entire continent. They are extremely powerful, and have incredible eyes for detail that allow them to pick out important facts from great distances away. And would you get a load of that icy stare! I tell you what, they are absolutely amazing to observe from a distance, but you sure wouldn’t want one getting their claws into you!
Crickey, that’s it for today. Let me know what you want to see next time!
submitted by notcoreybernadi to auslaw [link] [comments]
Let’s jump right in!
First off the bat, we’ve got the elusive in house counsel. One of only two species of monotreme, these gorgeous but shy creatures are a little bit of everything to everyone. Some of them do have barbs on their flippers that deliver a nasty, venomous sting, but most of the time they just want to be left alone to hide under a rock or in their burrow.
Less shy is the magistrate. The first port of call for all criminal matters and occasionally petty civil matters that can’t be dealt with by a civil and administrative tribunal. These amazing animals have evolved a rough exterior that is a very effective defence mechanism to deter the bullshit sob stories regularly being thrown at them.
By contrast, this smiley little thing is the work experience kid. Having grown up in an environment away from the worst of humanity, the happiest marsupial hasn’t yet developed the jaded cynicism common to many other Australian legal animals. She’s just happy to get to wear her new pencil skirt and eat the leftover sandwiches from the mediation she got to sit in on.
Hey, while we’re here, I also want to show you part of the legal environment, because it’s absolutely fascinating. It’s called the High Court Registry and let me tell you, it’s a real doozy of a thing to navigate. Margins off by a millimetre, or put your paginate in the wrong place? You’ll be stuck here for hours, if not days. Tell you what, I’d rather not!
Now on our last tour, many of you asked to see a criminal defence lawyer, and would you look at that we’ve managed to find one. Usually solitary, defence lawyers are known for their pungent odour, extremely loud and disturbing screech, keen sense of smell, and ferocity when feeding. While usually aggressive, and usually territorial, they will sometimes eat and defecate together in a communal location. They are both hunters and scavengers of carrion. (note: this is pretty much verbatim from Wikipedia, and yet the shoe still fits)
I was also asked to show you a transactional lawyer, and here we have a great example of a junior M&A solicitor. Would you look at this beauty? Virtually silent, well camouflaged and - as you would expect from a lawyer not frequently in Court, a bit weak in the feet department. They tend to be very active at night, largely due to the demands of their rainmaking boss
Another carrion feeder, here we have the solicitor and registered migration agent. These big, cold-blooded lizards often get a bad wrap, particularly because they tend to prey on smaller, comparatively helpless animals, and steal eggs from the nests of birds and snakes. They’ve also been known, in more densely populated areas, to fossick through the rubbish looking for something to sustain them - which makes them a bit of a natural enemy to the family lawyer we looked at on our last tour. They’re pretty common throughout Australia, but tend to stay in their own little patch of territory, because they don’t have the ability or motivation to venture much further. They have got a rather nasty bite to them, but most of the time when confronted by something bigger and meaner, will scurry away as quick as their little legs can carry them.
Speaking of having a bad wrap, here we have the property lawyer (residential and conveyancing). These critters have been expanding the boundaries of their natural habitat as the urban sprawl expands and the property market continues to experience unprecedented warming. The property lawyer subsists on a diet of small matters, and has a hardwired urge to shuffle papers around, sometimes making huge piles of it in the oddest of places. All this paper is used to incubate junior property lawyers, who are small, timid, and use their natural drab camouflage to avoid the attention of their natural predator, the property lawyer - litigation and disputes. Yikes!
Now, for a change of pace, here we have a member of an administrative tribunal. You will have heard a lot of stories about Tribunal members: they spend most of the day napping, they’re smooth brained, they’re riddled with chlamydia… and look, most of that is true. But they’re also highly adapted to their natural environment, and a diet of work that is toxic to most animals and not very fulfilling. Unfortunately, despite being listed as a protected species for many years now, these truly unique and fascinating creatures now face an uncertain future because of government policies that will impact their natural habitat.
For a final stop on our tour, I want to show you one of my favourite Australian animals, the High Court Justice. These absolutely beautiful creatures are just the most impressive hunters you’ll come across in the Australian legal landscape. They have no natural predators, and their habitat ranges across the entire continent. They are extremely powerful, and have incredible eyes for detail that allow them to pick out important facts from great distances away. And would you get a load of that icy stare! I tell you what, they are absolutely amazing to observe from a distance, but you sure wouldn’t want one getting their claws into you!
Crickey, that’s it for today. Let me know what you want to see next time!
2023.06.05 19:57 KilosunWS I wrote the Cabbage Merchant as a protagonist for a school assignment
I had a creative writing class last semester, and one of the assignments was to image a side character from a well-known story as the main character. So I went over the word count writing too much about the Cabbage Merchant. And it goes a little something like this:
"The Avatar is here?"
"That's the rumor." said the cantaloupe vendor across the street.
"That he's in Ba Sing Se, I mean. It's not like we'd see him out here in the middle ring."
"I wouldn't bet on it." I said, shuddering. "If I know the Avatar, he'll be here."
The cantaloupe vendor scoffed. "What's that supposed to mean? How would you know the Avatar?"
"Well, I've never actually met him..." I confessed. "But he and I walk the same path."
The cantaloupe vendor sized me up, scanning my body with his eyes. I could see the disbelief on his face. "Uh, aren't you a merchant?" He asked. "You sure don't look like a Bender or-"
"No!" I didn't mean to be rude, but I had to make my point. "We literally walk the same path! He's been following me all the way from the southern coast!"
"Oh, you came from the southern coast?" He was trying pivot the conversation. He didn't believe me. "That's quite a ways. Have you been to Kyoshi Island?"
"Yes! That was the last time business was doing well..." I considered dropping it. No one else believed me, why should he?
"It was right after I returned to the mainland that I heard about the Avatar's return." He sighed and looked away. I could see the he was trying to dismiss me, but I couldn't let it go. He had to understand! Someone had to!
"He went to Kyoshi Island right after I did! I went to Omashu, and they turned me away at the city gate, even though I'm a respected produce merchant! The guards tossed my wares into the moat - not a hint of remorse! A few days later, the king of Omashu announced he held a meeting with the Avatar that same day!"
"That sounds like coincidence..." the cantaloupe vendor offered.
"But THEN-" I wish I hadn't raised my voice but I couldn't help it. "I saw him! In a town further up the coast! He leaped over the stand I had set up and destroyed it with his Airbending! Tell me - how many times have you had to rebuild your cart for carrying your cantaloupe!" I stepped closer. Maybe he just needed to see the sincerity in my eyes.
"Um, rebuild it? I... never have?"
"I've rebuilt mine THREE TIMES!" I held up three fingers right in front of his face. "He must have sent spirits to follow me. Just 2 weeks ago when I tried to get into the city, they denied my entry AGAIN!. And they had a platypus bear destroy my cart!" I pulled him in close. If he could just look me in the eye surely he would see I'm right. "And if he's here now, he must have gotten on the ferry right after me! Maybe he was on the same on in disguise!"
"Get off!" The cantaloupe vendor pushed me away. He still couldn't see. "I've had enough of your tall tales!" He picked up he cart of cantaloupe and walked off to another part of the market square.
I sighed. No one ever believed me. Maybe they were right, why would the Avatar try to sabotage me?
Just then I heard a noise. No, more like dozens of noises. I turned to look. The was a whole zoo of animals running wild through the streets! Tiger-dillos, babboo-lions, a platypus bear, there were too many to register!
I stood tall in front of my cart and raised my arms high and wide, yelling to try to protect my wares. I felt the cart nudge me from behind. A rabbaroo had gotten past me! It was crunching on the perfect, fresh green leaves I had been just about to sell. It carelessly pushed my stock around as it bounced from head to head. I did my best to catch the ones that fell before they hit the ground, but there were too many.
It was happening again! I was losing my wares, my livelihood, by precious produce all over again!
"MY CABBA-!"
Just then, the rabbaroo looked me right in the eye. Its expression was so utterly bland and indifferent.
"...oh forget it." I tossed the cabbage head in my hands over my shoulder and walked away. If the Avatar decrees it, I guess I'll find another way to make my living.
submitted by KilosunWS to TheLastAirbender [link] [comments]
"The Avatar is here?"
"That's the rumor." said the cantaloupe vendor across the street.
"That he's in Ba Sing Se, I mean. It's not like we'd see him out here in the middle ring."
"I wouldn't bet on it." I said, shuddering. "If I know the Avatar, he'll be here."
The cantaloupe vendor scoffed. "What's that supposed to mean? How would you know the Avatar?"
"Well, I've never actually met him..." I confessed. "But he and I walk the same path."
The cantaloupe vendor sized me up, scanning my body with his eyes. I could see the disbelief on his face. "Uh, aren't you a merchant?" He asked. "You sure don't look like a Bender or-"
"No!" I didn't mean to be rude, but I had to make my point. "We literally walk the same path! He's been following me all the way from the southern coast!"
"Oh, you came from the southern coast?" He was trying pivot the conversation. He didn't believe me. "That's quite a ways. Have you been to Kyoshi Island?"
"Yes! That was the last time business was doing well..." I considered dropping it. No one else believed me, why should he?
"It was right after I returned to the mainland that I heard about the Avatar's return." He sighed and looked away. I could see the he was trying to dismiss me, but I couldn't let it go. He had to understand! Someone had to!
"He went to Kyoshi Island right after I did! I went to Omashu, and they turned me away at the city gate, even though I'm a respected produce merchant! The guards tossed my wares into the moat - not a hint of remorse! A few days later, the king of Omashu announced he held a meeting with the Avatar that same day!"
"That sounds like coincidence..." the cantaloupe vendor offered.
"But THEN-" I wish I hadn't raised my voice but I couldn't help it. "I saw him! In a town further up the coast! He leaped over the stand I had set up and destroyed it with his Airbending! Tell me - how many times have you had to rebuild your cart for carrying your cantaloupe!" I stepped closer. Maybe he just needed to see the sincerity in my eyes.
"Um, rebuild it? I... never have?"
"I've rebuilt mine THREE TIMES!" I held up three fingers right in front of his face. "He must have sent spirits to follow me. Just 2 weeks ago when I tried to get into the city, they denied my entry AGAIN!. And they had a platypus bear destroy my cart!" I pulled him in close. If he could just look me in the eye surely he would see I'm right. "And if he's here now, he must have gotten on the ferry right after me! Maybe he was on the same on in disguise!"
"Get off!" The cantaloupe vendor pushed me away. He still couldn't see. "I've had enough of your tall tales!" He picked up he cart of cantaloupe and walked off to another part of the market square.
I sighed. No one ever believed me. Maybe they were right, why would the Avatar try to sabotage me?
Just then I heard a noise. No, more like dozens of noises. I turned to look. The was a whole zoo of animals running wild through the streets! Tiger-dillos, babboo-lions, a platypus bear, there were too many to register!
I stood tall in front of my cart and raised my arms high and wide, yelling to try to protect my wares. I felt the cart nudge me from behind. A rabbaroo had gotten past me! It was crunching on the perfect, fresh green leaves I had been just about to sell. It carelessly pushed my stock around as it bounced from head to head. I did my best to catch the ones that fell before they hit the ground, but there were too many.
It was happening again! I was losing my wares, my livelihood, by precious produce all over again!
"MY CABBA-!"
Just then, the rabbaroo looked me right in the eye. Its expression was so utterly bland and indifferent.
"...oh forget it." I tossed the cabbage head in my hands over my shoulder and walked away. If the Avatar decrees it, I guess I'll find another way to make my living.
2023.05.19 17:41 shadowswimmer77 Growing up my Dad and I always went camping. One year, we brought the rest of the family.
The dilapidated, wooden building whose sign proclaimed it as the home to “Allegheny Adventures,” its red paint weathered and peeling, looked more abandoned than closed. The van parked next to the building was equally devoid of habitants, though there were three canoes loaded onto its attached trailer.
“Where the hell is everyone?” Dad wondered to himself, hands tapping the steering wheel annoyedly. The SUV idled quietly on the dirt road that terminated at the gravel lot adjacent to the building. The car windows were down letting in the comfortable warmth of a mid-August afternoon.
“What’s going on, Dale?” Sean called to Dad from the jeep behind us, his head sticking out the window. Through the windshield I could see my older sister, Tara, asleep next to him, her foot braced against the dashboard where she was riding shotgun, but couldn’t spy her friend Amanda in the back seat.
“Dunno, babe,” Dad answered back, “looks like the Dead Heads forgot we were coming.”
“Seriously?” Sean’s voice carried a put-upon tone, “you said this was going to be fun.”
Dad rolled his eyes. “I’ll take care of it.” He turned to me as he opened the door and stepped out. “Stay here, Paul, keep an eye on your brother.”
“He’s not my brother,” I mumbled quietly under my breath as he slammed the door.
“What was that?” Dad asked leaning back in the window.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly.
“That’s what I thought,” Dad said with an arched eyebrow, “Stay here.”
He hitched up his shorts and started walking to the building.
“I’m booooored,” Dennis whined from the seat behind me.
“Shut up, Dennis,” I told him, still looking at Dad as he climbed the three rickety steps and banged on the screen door at the top.
“That’s no way to talk to your brother, Paulie Waulie.”
I turned back to him.
“Just because our dads are married doesn’t make you my brother, you little scab.”
He stuck his tongue out at me, but my glare was enough to make him turn back to his video game magazine with a grumble. I returned my attention to the building where Dad had switched tactics and was trying the door. It swung open as he pulled and he called back to us, “Be right back,” before stepping inside, the screen banging noisily behind him. I checked my watch and saw it was just a little past two.
Sean got out of the jeep, pushing his designer sunglasses up his nose and stretching exaggeratingly. For a moment everything was serenely quiet, the only noises the low rumble of the car engines and the slight whisper of a breeze.
“Dale, everything ok in there?” Sean shouted toward the door Dad disappeared through. There was no answer, and the silence extended for several long heartbeats.
Abruptly, the screen door practically exploded outward, slamming against the side of the building and eliciting a shriek of surprise from Sean. A haggard looking man wearing a scraggily beard and a brilliantly colored tie-dye t-shirt emerged, stumbling down the steps. He barely caught himself from face-planting in the dirt before spinning in place back toward the building, his balance wavering. Concerned, I opened the door and got out, but didn’t know what else to do. Looking back, I saw Tara was awake and that she and Amanda had gotten out of the jeep, their mouths both twisted into frowns. Dennis had dropped his magazine, his jaw open in dull shock. My dad exited the building after the man, a look of confused bemusement upon his face.
“No! No way, no how. I ain’t going and I ain’t taking you, dude,” the man I recognized as Jerry Conroe, the owner of Allegheny Adventures, shouted at my dad, jabbing his finger towards him violently.
“Jerry,” Dad spread his hands in a placating gesture, “What are you talking about? Paul and I have been coming here for years. We paid in advance months ago.”
“Nuh uh, man,” Jerry shook his head vehemently, “not a chance. You know how we ain’t gotten any rain this summer? River’s the lowest it’s been in like eighty years. Turns out that ain’t a good thing.”
“I looked online just yesterday. Everything says the water’s still deep enough for canoes, just not some of the bigger stuff. We shouldn’t have a problem.”
“I ain’t TALKING about the fucking canoes, man,” Jerry screamed, spit flying everywhere.
Dad wiped away a few flecks that landed on his beard. “Gross. Look, Jerry, I think you’re a little too stoned to be talking business. Where’s Cheryl?”
“Cheryl’s….” Jerry drifted off before collapsing to his knees sobbing, “Gone, man. Cheryl’s gone,” he managed to get out.
“Dale?” Sean had walked up near our car, eyes wide with concern. Dad held his hand up, warding Sean back. He knelt down next to Jerry, speaking quietly near the crying man’s ear. Jerry kept sobbing but after a minute or two started nodding his head, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes. Dad stood and clapped him on the shoulder, then helped him to his feet.
“We’ll get the trailer loaded with our gear. Get sobered up and I’ll let you know when we’re ready to go.”
Jerry continued to nod before stumbling back up the steps and back into the building, the screen again slamming noisily behind him.
“Paul?” Dad looked at me, “Sean and I will park the cars. Could you take Dennis and the girls to the shed and help them get the lifejackets and paddles?”
“Sure, Dad,” I turned back to Dennis, “let’s go, puke stain.”
“Is that normal?” I heard Sean ask Dad as I walked behind the building towards the equipment shed.
“Nah,” Dad said, “Jerry’s just a little more baked than usual. I think his wife left him.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“That’s the guy you and Dad have always talked about?” Tara asked, catching up to me as we reached the shed. “I thought you said he was cool.”
“He is, his wife too. I mean, they always have been anyways,” I shrugged as I pulled open the door, “I guess that’s why Dad tells us not to do drugs.”
“You’re such a square, Paul,” Amanda ruffled my hair as she walked behind Tara into the shed, perusing the equipment, “I bet he could get us some really good shit. Now,” she turned back to me with a malicious grin, “think you could help me find a lifejacket that will fit over my girls?” she arched her back, causing her chest to stick out provocatively.
Tara rolled her eyes and gently shoved Amanda, “You’re ridiculous. Don’t tease him,” she turned to me, seeing my eyes practically bugging out of their sockets, “and you’re a pig.”
“Hey!” I protested.
“Ooooo, Paulie’s got a girlfriend,” Dennis crooned from the doorway.
“Shut UP, Dennis!”
“Sorry, Paul,” Amanda smiled wryly, “You’re cute, but you’re not my type. I like my men older. Now your dad on the other hand…mmm, if he weren’t gay…”
“Oh my GOD,” Tara shrieked, grabbing a lifejacket and paddle at random and storming back out of the equipment shed, “I can’t believe I invited you on this trip!”
“You need me, honey!” Amanda called after her, “Without another source of estrogen on this trip you’ll die!”
She chuckled, turning back to me. “Seriously, though, can you help me find a good lifejacket?”
“Sure. Dennis, grab a small, I’ll help you get it sized in a second,” I told my stepbrother, pulling on my own jacket with practiced motions before handing Amanda a medium, “Here, try this one.”
Amanda tapped her lip with her finger thoughtfully as I adjusted the various straps. “How’s that work anyway? I mean, Sean throws a giant blip on my gaydar, but your dad is, like, totally hetero-seeming. And both of them obviously had kids with previous wives.”
I shrugged.
“I think it was just a different time. When they were our age, they felt forced to try and fit in. Sean says he ‘finally realized he couldn’t repress who he was anymore’ and that’s what ended his first marriage. My mom left Dad, Tara, and me when she found her ‘soulmate’ in her weekly bible study.“
“Dude, that sucks. No wonder Tara never told me. How’d Sean and your dad meet?”
“Community theater. They played Jean Valjean and Javert opposite each other in Les Miserables. The rest is history.”
“That is so CUTE! And your dad does theater? MUSICAL theater?!” Amanda gasps, “God, he would so be my type.”
It was almost four by the time we got the gear on the trailer, had Jerry, still likely stoned but considerably less upset, drive us the twenty-five miles north to the river entry point, unloaded, and got the canoes ready to launch.
“Ok, Jerry,” my Dad stroked his beard, “you get back home safe and we’ll see you in a couple days, yeah?”
Jerry mumbled something under his breath but nodded agreeably and waved before slamming the van door closed and driving away.
“You know the most interesting people,” Sean mused.
I went to get in the canoe my dad was standing next to, but he put a hand on my shoulder.
“Ah, hold on a sec, Paul. I think you and Dennis should share a canoe.”
“What?! Dad…”
“No come on, think about it. You’re the most experienced one here besides me,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “Sean’s not much of an outdoorsman, but I think he’ll do ok with Amanda.”
“Well, why can’t Dennis go with you, and I get Tara then?” I hissed back.
“Big senior too cool for his little brother? No, come on Paul. He’s too light compared to me. You know it’s important to keep the canoes at least somewhat balanced. Besides, he looks up to you.”
“Dad, I don’t…”
“Paul…” Dad interrupted my protest and crossed his arms. I could tell an argument wasn’t going to end my way.
“Fine,” I grumbled, “but remember it’s your fault if the little idiot won’t listen to me and tips the canoe.”
“Good man,” Dad slapped my back and turned his attention to the rapidly darkening sky. “Now, we’d better get a move on. Despite what Jerry said about not having any rain this summer, I think we’re about to get some. Let’s just go to the first island down to pitch camp for the night. It’ll ease the others in, and with good luck we’ll get the tents up before the weather hits.”
If we had any luck, it wasn’t good.
The issues started almost immediately. Dennis was not only too weak to really help with the paddling from his seat in the front of the canoe, but the little shit actively worked against me. He dipped his paddle in the water forcing me to constantly change the side I was rowing on, and at one point even back paddled, snickering at his cleverness. Before long, we were far behind the other two canoes. I cast what I hope was an “I told you so” look in Dad’s direction, but even from as far away as I was I could tell he and Tara were laughingly engaged in conversation and he didn’t notice.
“Stop it, you little fart muncher.”
At last, Dennis tired of being annoying and simply leaned back on the gear we had piled in the middle of the canoe, pretending to go to sleep. Without having to compensate for his sabotage I was at least able to get us going in something resembling a straight line, though with just me rowing there was no hope we would be able to catch the others before they got to the campsite.
The island in the middle of the river that Dad had chosen was only about a mile and a half down from the launch point, but even that took us the better part of an hour to navigate. The rain started to fall about half a mile out, a slight drizzle at first but gradually increasing. I could see ahead where the other two canoes had made the bank of the island. Dennis sat up with a shriek of surprise. As the rain picked up, he actually started helping me row. Even with both of us paddling in unison, by the time Dennis and I finally reached the campsite and managed to pull our canoe out of the water, we were fully soaked through.
Coming into a clearing we had used in past years, Dad was in the process of staking the weather fly down on a small two-person tent, while Sean sat hopelessly in the middle of a pile of poles and tarp. The girls were nowhere to be seen so I could only surmise they were in the tent Dad was working on. He paused as he saw us stumble up.
“Paul, I’m going to finish getting the girls settled, then I’ll help Sean with our tent. Why don’t you and Dennis unload the gear from your canoe and stack it under that tree over there with the rest of it. Then take the hatchet and the hacksaw and try to find some wood so we can get a fire going.”
“In this?” I raised my hands to indicate falling rain, a distant rumble of thunder helping illustrate my point. “It’ll all be soaked.”
Dad threw me a grin.
“Don’t worry, kiddo, I packed some dry tinder. Once we get it started the wood’ll burn, might just be a little smokier than normal.”
I grumbled but moved towards the canoe and started pulling out bags and coolers, shuttling them to the tree with the other equipment and supplies. To my surprise Dennis helped without even a snarky comment. By the time we got the gear unloaded, Dad and Sean had the second tent about halfway up. I walked towards them, hatchet in one hand and a waterproof flashlight in the other.
“We’re all set. How come you didn’t have the girls go get wood while you were waiting for us?”
Dad laughed.
“Didn’t trust them to find the right kind. Also, come on, will it kill you to prove that chivalry isn’t dead?”
I shook my head and sighed.
“Come on Dennis.”
From previous stays on the island, I knew it wasn’t huge, maybe a ten-minute walk from end to end. Each year there were usually one or two decent sized trees that have fallen over, so I was fairly confident we’d be able to find some deadwood, though I was still skeptical how well it would burn with all the rainwater soaking through it. I just knew that sometimes there was no point in arguing with Dad.
Despite the extended daylight hours of summer, the clouds had caused night to fall prematurely. I was glad I thought to bring the flashlight; otherwise, it would have been way too easy to trip and fall face-first into a mud puddle. I played the beam on the ground in front of me, carefully choosing my steps, periodically pausing to shine the light off to the sides, looking for fallen logs. Dennis followed me, head down and grumbling, swinging the hacksaw he was carrying and letting it hit against the tall grass and various plant life that lined the narrow animal trail I had us walking on.
Finally, after maybe ten minutes of searching, I found something promising. A tree had fallen, and the way it rested against one of its still-standing neighbors seemed like it may have even gotten a little bit of top cover from the rain. I handed the flashlight to Dennis.
“Here, hold the light for me. I’m going to use the hatchet to try and get some of the small stuff cleared off then I’ll swap you for the saw.”
“Why can’t I saw?”
I looked up at the still falling rain.
“Because I can do it faster and I’d like to get out of this crap and into dry clothes as soon as I can, wouldn’t you?”
Dennis mumbled something under his breath but grunted and shined the light on the fallen tree as I’d asked. I started to clean off the smaller twigs, working by the light. Dennis started hopping from foot to foot to try and stay warm, causing the beam to sway, but I managed to bite my tongue and not say anything.
I had switched to the hacksaw, cutting off and stacking some good looking, inch thick branches, when a keening wail carried high over the falling rain, sounding from somewhere not very far down the river. Dennis snapped the flashlight beam around wildly.
“Paul! What was that?”
I paused for a moment, listening, and heard an answering call echo, this one from farther up the river in the opposite direction. Its solitary weirdness sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature that had dropped fiercely with the storm. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at full attention.
“I..I don’t know. Maybe some kind of bird or frog or something.”
“In this rain?” Dennis’s voice hissed, incredulous.
I shook my head, shrugging off the fear.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s not here. Let’s get this finished up and back to the tents.”
I got back to work, and to his credit, Dennis held the light steady.
We returned to the campsite maybe twenty minutes later, both carrying armfuls of cut branches. The tents were both now fully set up. Dad had also erected a makeshift tarp over a circle of stones he’d arranged to serve as a bonfire pit to help protect the flame from the weather. He’d crouched over a small pile of paper and would scraps, carefully setting them to provide the maximum chance of the fire catching.
Dennis dumped his wood next to him.
“Where’s my dad?” he asked, and Dad nodded toward our tent.
“He’s getting changed, Dennis. Why don’t you go do the same? Paul, can you help me get the fire going?”
I sighed internally but nodded and moved to help him as Dennis disappeared into the tent.
Waiting until the flap zipper closed fully, I whispered to Dad, my voice low.
“Did you hear those noises?”
Dad nodded.
“Yeah, we all did. Scared the crap out of Sean, he jumped about a mile. The girls were pretty freaked out too.”
“They aren’t the only ones. Dad, what the heck was that?”
“Dunno, son. Can’t say I’ve heard anything quite like it before. Maybe a mountain lion?”
“A mountain lion?” I squeaked. “TWO of them? Do they even live around here?”
“Maybe they got lost from over near Penn State. Hey, they probably don’t swim very well.” Dad grinned, “But all the more reason to get this fire started.”
We finished arranging the starter, the tarp doing a surprisingly good job of keeping it dry, until Dad at last nodded in approval.
“That should do it. Let’s give it a shot.”
He took out a long Bic lighter and set the flame to the rolled newspaper in several different spots. The tinder caught quickly, the wood snapping merrily, and we moved to stack the branches Dennis and I cut into a rough pyramid over the starter material. The sticks smoked considerably as they began to dry, but eventually caught just as Dad predicted. He looked over to the remaining pile.
“Nice job, Paul. Those won’t last very long though. We need something bigger if we want to keep this going through the night.” I sighed. “I think the tree I got these from will work, I’ll just have to cut some logs from farther down the trunk.”
“Ok. I hate to ask,” Dad glanced up at the still falling rain, a peal of distant thunder rolling from away over the mountains that line the river, “but any chance you could go cut a few good-sized ones before you get cleaned up?”
“You can’t come with me?”
“I think I’d better stay here, just in case any of the camping newbies need anything. I’m sorry this trip is off to such a rough start. You want to take Dennis again?”
I didn’t have to take a moment to think about it.
“No. I’ll get it done faster by myself. Besides, he’s already probably changed.”
Dad clapped me on the shoulder.
“Proud of you, Son.”
I rolled my eyes and stood, grabbing the hacksaw and flashlight from where I’d set them.
“I’ll leave the hatchet with you. Don’t think I’ll need it to cut the big stuff.”
Dad nodded in agreement.
“Hey!” he called.
I paused, turning back to him.
“I love you, Paul.
“Love you too, Dad.”
“We’ll be waiting here!” he grinned.
I scowled and trudged away back towards the fallen tree.
I found the spot Dennis and I had come from without difficulty and got to work, setting the light in a way to shine on where I was cutting. The rain had blessedly stopped, at least temporarily, but the cold front that brought it had caused an eerie fog to begin to seep sinuously up from the undergrowth. The temperature had continued to drop and it was only the physical activity that was keeping me from shivering. It was probably not too cold yet, maybe in the lower fifties, but the change from the upper eighties of the earlier afternoon made it feel much worse than it actually was.
Something nagged me at the back of my mind as I worked on the tree, but it was several long minutes before I realized exactly what it was. Other than the rasp of the saw gliding back and forth against the tree, and the distant gurgle of the river flowing past the island shore, the night was utterly still and quiet. No birds called, no insects chirped, just dead silence. Another chill ran down my back as my mind returned to the mysterious cries from earlier, and then back farther to Jerry’s strange warnings from this afternoon. Despite what I told Dennis, and what Dad told me, those sounds were like nothing I’d ever heard before.
I got back to my work with a will, focusing on getting enough wood to last the night so that I could get out of my sopping clothes and curl up in my sleeping bag until morning. I told myself that surely the light of day would ward off whatever it was that made those sounds, but a little voice at the back of my mind asked “but what if it doesn’t?”.
The going was slower than earlier, the lower parts of the tree between six and eight inches thick and taking much more effort to work through. Still, I’d managed to cut a good number of pieces, enough that I was thinking it may take multiple trips to get back to the campsite, when I paused, my ears registering another sound from back the way I came. Thinking about it, I realized that the noise had been going on for several minutes now, interrupting the earlier silence I had previously noted, but I was so focused on my work that at first I didn’t notice the change. The sound was faint but distinct.
Screaming.
I hesitated for just a moment, fear causing paralysis, before another cry, high pitched and full of pain, launched me into action.
The firewood forgotten, I sprinted back towards the campsite, saw in one hand, flashlight in the other, the beam bouncing wildly in front of me as I ran. I took a bad step and fell face first, sliding along the wet ground, the hacksaw dropping from my hand and skittering into the undergrowth. I left it, having managed to keep hold of the light, picked myself up, and continued my mad dash. I ran as fast as I could, my breath pounding in and out of my lungs, a stitch cramping along my side, but all the while my fears told me that my greatest efforts won’t be enough.
I burst from the brush into the clearing. The fire still burned merrily where Dad and I set it, but the rest of the campsite was in utter disarray. The tents were collapsed, the flaps violently torn open, poles snapped jaggedly, reaching like broken bones of a compound fracture. Our gear was strewn about haphazardly. Of the rest of my group, Dad and Sean, Dennis, Tara, and Amanda, I saw no sign, outside of a terrible, wet, redness that seemed to mark and stain every piece of gear. I stood, mouth open in shock, my mind whirling as it tried to comprehend what I was seeing, but knowing the shallow pools dotting the soaking ground here and there could only be blood.
A wordless groan alerted me to the collapsed tent.
I rushed to the noise and cried out in horror at the sight of my father’s ruined body. I knelt down beside him, cradling his head in my lap. The flickering firelight was enough to see the vicious wounds all across his face, pouring red. His jaw was horribly broken, his chin shifted almost two inches to the right of where it should be. His eyes were swollen shut, and his nose turned at an impossible angle. The hatchet I’d left with him at the fire was buried three inches into his chest, and I could see white poking through a hole in his left pant leg. The rest of him was fully covered by the deep furrows of claws, as if a wild animal tried to tear him apart.
I’d done a couple years in the Boy Scouts, earned a medical merit badge, but I was at a loss for anything to do for him. Still, I gently started to lay Dad down, thinking to try and find the first aid kit that must still be somewhere in the ruined piles of gear, but he reached out, grabbing my wrist with surprising, desperate strength. In a haze, I noticed two of his fingers had been torn from his hand. I stopped moving him, leaned down to listen, to see if he was going to try and say something. Maybe he could tell me what caused this catastrophe, what happened to the others. All I could hear, though, was the rough wheeze of his breath being painfully forced in and out of his lungs. Tears fell from my eyes, intermingling with the blood still seeping from his face, as his breathing caught, rattled, and then stopped.
A sob escaped my throat as I clutched at my father’s corpse, the best and strongest man I’d ever known. My thoughts were a jumble of puzzle pieces in my head, shock and grief and disbelief all fighting for position. My entire body trembled uncontrollably.
Unexpectedly, one realization managed to push through the gauze that my mind was wrapped in, the thought cool and cold as a piece of granite. Whoever did this to Dad was still out there. They had the others, and they might come back for me.
My stomach turning, I reached down, bracing myself, and managed to pull the hatchet out of Dad’s chest, the blade releasing with a sickening crack. A downpour of blood escaped from the newly revealed opening, but I told myself I wasn’t causing any more harm. There was no more harm to cause.
I sniffed hard to clear my incredibly stuffed nose. I stood and took stock of my situation. There was no phone to call for help. Dad always insisted on completely unplugging for the trip, and it’s not like there’d have been service even if I had one. Sean, Dennis, and the girls were missing, possibly dead, or possibly worse. If I tried to find help, it would be hours before I got back with anyone, and by then it would be too late to do anything. I moved down to the canoes.
All three were where we left them, but enormous tears had been ripped in each of their hulls. There was no way I could use one as is. As I looked over the boats, trying to determine if there was any way to repair one enough to make it at least partially floatworthy, the beam of my flashlight caught on a series of footprints impressed in the riverbank, the dirt made soft by the recent rainfall. I shuddered to see them. Larger than a grown man’s, the prints were made by something heavy, its feet both clawed and webbed like an enormous platypus. A rustling in some nearby bushes caused me to start. Cautiously I approached the noise, using the hatchet to push away some of the tall grass hiding the motion, my mind going numb as my flashlight found the source.
The creature was big. Not huge, certainly, but definitely over six feet long and weighing several hundred pounds. It had four limbs, roughly arranged in the same anatomical layout as a human. The beam of my light reflected dully off slimy scales covering the entirety of its body, their color a dark green, almost black. Both its hands and feet were webbed and clawed like the footprints I found, but its fingers looked like they might be dexterous enough to use tools. The thing’s head was some kind of hideous cross between human and fish. Whiskers like a sturgeon drooped from its cheeks and it opened its mouth to snarl at me, its teeth arranged in a circular pattern like a lamprey. The sound it made was weak, but I recognized the same strange call that Dennis and I heard earlier.
I could also tell it was badly hurt. The thing was trying to drag itself back to the river, but there was an enormous gash in its shoulder impeding it. Its left arm was almost torn from its body and leaking blood, though not as much as I would have expected. I realized that Dad must have been the one to wound this creature, though he certainly got the worst of the exchange. A cold fury began to work its way up from deep inside my stomach, and I raised the hatchet with the intent to finish the monster off before a thought stopped me.
I had no way of knowing where Tara and the rest were taken, but it must have been by other creatures like this one. It appeared to be aquatic, or amphibious, and with no way of even knowing which way they went down the river, I’d have no way to find their lair on my own. I considered the dilemma and came upon a possible solution. Noting the relative slowness that the creature was managing to claw its way to the water, I went back to the trashed campsite and began rifling through the gear. It didn’t take me long to find what I was searching for: a spool of all purpose parachute cord and a box of chem lights. I pulled out my pocket-knife and quickly cut lengths of cord, tying slip-knot loops through half a dozen of the lights before cracking them to life in a bright green flash of neon. I also took a pair of two-foot long pieces of cord and tied one end to each handle of the hatchet and flashlight, the other to my belt, before securing the tools as best I could in my waistband.
Returning to the creature, who was only feet from the river, I took my lifejacket from the ruined canoe and pulled it on. I took four others and used their straps to tie them to each other, considering the next step of my strategy. The closeness to the water, or possibly my nearness, sent the monster into greater efforts, as it flopped, squirming towards the perceived safety of the river. I softly approached it and, as it thrashed, managed to loop three of the chem lights around its various limbs, securing the last one just as it made the water. It would have to be enough. Being submerged seemed to invigorate it, confirming my suspicions of the creature’s aquatic nature, though it was still clearly hampered by its wound. If it weren’t for my doctored lights, it would have been impossible to tell where the creature was in the water, and even with them I could tell I’d have to try to stay close or risk losing it.
Slipping into the river, I arranged myself on the secured lifejackets like a makeshift raft and began to follow the fleeing fish monster, hoping against hope that it would take me to wherever my family is.
I abandoned all sense of time, my focus entirely kept on keeping track of the three, small balls of glowing light moving gradually down the river. I followed the creature through one fork, then another, then another, before I lost track and stopped trying. I was thankful the thing was as badly hurt as it was; I realized its injury was all that was keeping it moving slowly enough that I could keep it in sight, and likely the only reason it hadn’t attacked me.
My throat tightened when I saw one of the chem lights separate from the others, falling to the bottom of the river and sinking into the silt, apparently having been kicked lose from the monster. Somewhat unsteadily, the other two glided away though, continuing in the same direction they had been, so I kept following, sending up a silent prayer that the remaining cords stayed secure.
Abruptly, the motion stopped. The lights which I’d been following perhaps two feet underwater now bobbed to the top. Cautiously I approached, fearful I knew the reason. Before long, I confirmed I was right; the monster had bled out. It floated on the surface of the river, a lethal goldfish dead in its massive bowl.
The cold and wet and dark, unnoticed until now, warded away by fear and the adrenaline of my pursuit, came crashing down on me. I shivered, supported by the extra lifejackets I could only hope I’ll need, trying to figure out what to do next.
I tried to work things through logically. We’d been traveling quite a way from the island. The monster lair couldn’t be much farther. Besides, for a lack of better ideas, and since I didn’t have anything truly better to do, I’d just have to try and search the riverbank for a cave or something. And pray.
I moved to the side of the river the creature seemed to be heading for. Nearing the bank, I fumbled for my flashlight. My heart leapt when I found it wasn’t there before I remembered the safety line I’d tied to it. Thanking my past self for his preparations, I traced the cord still secured to my belt and pulled the flashlight into my grasp. I had to smack it against my palm a time or two before it weakly turned on, its claims of a waterproof nature apparently more for advertisement than actual use.
It didn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for.
The Allegheny isn’t terribly deep even in wet years, maybe eight or nine feet on average. I could see from the marks on the bank where the water would typically be four feet overhead, and the yawning hole I found was only submerged about halfway. I thought back to what Jerry had said earlier, about how this was the driest season in decades. Any normal year, the opening would be fully underwater, but now…
I shone the flashlight into the hole, fear of dark enclosed spaces gripping my heart. The opening was certainly big enough that I could fit, but there was no way to know that it stayed that way, no way to know this was in fact the monster’s lair, or that Tara or Dennis or Amanda or Sean were still alive.
My mind returned to Dad’s ruined face, his last, gasping breaths, and I sighed. I had to try.
It was awkward going to say the least, dragging the four extra life jackets with me, but if I found any of the others, and if they were in bad shape, and if we had to swim any distance to get out…
There were way too many “ifs” going through my mind.
The tunnel went into the riverbank for fifty yards or so before dipping down. It remained consistently half-full and I float-swam along. My breathing rate increased, reaching the point I was practically hyperventilating, the claustrophobic sense of the earth crushing in around me competing with the understanding that I may be trapping myself in a den of killer fish monsters. I managed to get ahold of myself and continue onwards.
After a subjective eternity, the passage I’d been swimming through emerged into a cavern of significant size, maybe fifteen or twenty feet tall and three times that across. Coming out of the wall I fell with a splash into a sort of underground lagoon that took up the majority of the cavern. The walls of the cave glowed with a faint luminescence, enough to faintly see by, though I didn’t know enough marine biology to say what kind of algae or whatever was causing it. I swam to the shore, and found my efforts were rewarded. There were dozens of webbed clawprints similar to those on the island, as well as some other marks that looked like something had been dragged. I could only hope it was the rest of my group.
There were at least a dozen different passages off the cavern I was in, but the freshest prints and drag marks seemed to head down three of them. There might have been other exits to this underground warren, but I didn’t know where they were, and it was going to be way too difficult to bring the lifejackets with me. I had no idea how we would get back up the passage I came in through, but that would have to be something I figured out later. I found a small recess in the wall that I was able to stash the extra vests in before taking out the hatchet and flashlight, picking the leftmost footprint marked tunnel at random, and creeping along as stealthily as my squelching shoes would let me.
The flashlight was almost unnecessary. The algae persisted enough to light my way so I kept the beam off, and moved as carefully as I could, pausing every few steps to listen for sounds that might reveal the location of more monsters or my family. Seemingly far away down the passage, I heard hooting calls like the ones Dennis and I heard earlier, but there was something about the tone that made me think it was just the creatures communicating, rather than an alarm that they knew I was there.
The passage floor was slimy, so I very careful to avoided slipping and falling. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any other passageways to choose from, or else I would have had to start making some difficult choices. The tunnel I’d chosen opened into a cavern only slightly smaller than the one containing the lagoon. The algae on the walls here was even more highly concentrated, and though it was not as bright as lighting a lamp, the glow was still more than enough for me to see by.
I wished I couldn’t.
Sean was suspended upside down, his arms and legs secured spread-eagle to poles on either side of him by rough looking rope and surrounded by four of the fish-monsters, one considerably larger than the others. A piece of wood had been wedged in his mouth, but I could see he was awake, his wide eyes fear-filled and wild, his head whipping back and forth.
My earlier suspicion that the creatures could use tools was confirmed as the largest creature took a flint knife and deftly cut away Sean’s clothes, leaving him hanging naked. It made its strange cries all the while, and I realized that, based on the rapt attention of the three smaller creatures, this must have been the monster’s version of a school lesson. Clothes fully removed, the monster took Sean’s hair in one clawed hand, bent his head back, and cut his throat.
I stifled a cry, jamming my hand into my mouth as Sean’s life poured from the gaping wound. I could tell he was trying to scream himself, but between the wooden gag and his own blood choking him, he only managed to emit a panicked gurgle. The gout didn’t last long, the creature must have severed both carotid arteries, and soon the blood was only dripping. I fought the urge to be violently ill as the fish monster continued to dress its catch, slicing open Sean’s belly and removing his stomach and intestines, the smell like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
I cautiously edged away from the gruesome scene, unable to take it for even another moment. I was furious that I didn’t do something to save Sean but at the same time knew there was nothing I could have reasonably done. I could only pray I would have better luck with Dennis and the girls.
I made it back to the entrance cave and followed the second tunnel with the drag marks. I still moved cautiously, but faster than I had before. If I’d been only a few minutes faster, maybe I could have done something to help my stepfather; I couldn’t let something like that happen to the others.
Similar to the first tunnel, this one also didn’t seem to have any offshoots. Part of me wondered whether these paths are natural rock formations or if the creatures somehow carved them out. Where the other was fairly straight, this one was far more winding with noticeable changes in elevation. The height of the tunnel remained relatively constant, thankfully, and other than having to duck a time or two my earlier feelings of claustrophobia were generally kept at bay.
The room the second tunnel emerged into was smaller than the one Sean was murdered in. The algae remained on the walls, though in lesser concentration. The room was dim and, if I was right that these passages had been designed by the creatures, there must have been a reason for that. The floor was covered in almost a dozen of what I could best describe as nests, their makeup comprised of everything from ratty blankets and old scraps of leather to tree branches and castaway clothing. I carefully peeked into the closest nest, my stomach turning at the mass of squirming flesh writhing and convulsing in its middle. It was several long seconds before I realized what it must be: a pile of fish monsters in some kind of larval stage. I’d stumbled upon the monster’s version of a nursery. The tadpole things, their mouths gaping wide with those lamprey-like teeth, wiggled and gnashed disgustingly.
“They’re all gone.”
(continued in comment below)
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“Where the hell is everyone?” Dad wondered to himself, hands tapping the steering wheel annoyedly. The SUV idled quietly on the dirt road that terminated at the gravel lot adjacent to the building. The car windows were down letting in the comfortable warmth of a mid-August afternoon.
“What’s going on, Dale?” Sean called to Dad from the jeep behind us, his head sticking out the window. Through the windshield I could see my older sister, Tara, asleep next to him, her foot braced against the dashboard where she was riding shotgun, but couldn’t spy her friend Amanda in the back seat.
“Dunno, babe,” Dad answered back, “looks like the Dead Heads forgot we were coming.”
“Seriously?” Sean’s voice carried a put-upon tone, “you said this was going to be fun.”
Dad rolled his eyes. “I’ll take care of it.” He turned to me as he opened the door and stepped out. “Stay here, Paul, keep an eye on your brother.”
“He’s not my brother,” I mumbled quietly under my breath as he slammed the door.
“What was that?” Dad asked leaning back in the window.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly.
“That’s what I thought,” Dad said with an arched eyebrow, “Stay here.”
He hitched up his shorts and started walking to the building.
“I’m booooored,” Dennis whined from the seat behind me.
“Shut up, Dennis,” I told him, still looking at Dad as he climbed the three rickety steps and banged on the screen door at the top.
“That’s no way to talk to your brother, Paulie Waulie.”
I turned back to him.
“Just because our dads are married doesn’t make you my brother, you little scab.”
He stuck his tongue out at me, but my glare was enough to make him turn back to his video game magazine with a grumble. I returned my attention to the building where Dad had switched tactics and was trying the door. It swung open as he pulled and he called back to us, “Be right back,” before stepping inside, the screen banging noisily behind him. I checked my watch and saw it was just a little past two.
Sean got out of the jeep, pushing his designer sunglasses up his nose and stretching exaggeratingly. For a moment everything was serenely quiet, the only noises the low rumble of the car engines and the slight whisper of a breeze.
“Dale, everything ok in there?” Sean shouted toward the door Dad disappeared through. There was no answer, and the silence extended for several long heartbeats.
Abruptly, the screen door practically exploded outward, slamming against the side of the building and eliciting a shriek of surprise from Sean. A haggard looking man wearing a scraggily beard and a brilliantly colored tie-dye t-shirt emerged, stumbling down the steps. He barely caught himself from face-planting in the dirt before spinning in place back toward the building, his balance wavering. Concerned, I opened the door and got out, but didn’t know what else to do. Looking back, I saw Tara was awake and that she and Amanda had gotten out of the jeep, their mouths both twisted into frowns. Dennis had dropped his magazine, his jaw open in dull shock. My dad exited the building after the man, a look of confused bemusement upon his face.
“No! No way, no how. I ain’t going and I ain’t taking you, dude,” the man I recognized as Jerry Conroe, the owner of Allegheny Adventures, shouted at my dad, jabbing his finger towards him violently.
“Jerry,” Dad spread his hands in a placating gesture, “What are you talking about? Paul and I have been coming here for years. We paid in advance months ago.”
“Nuh uh, man,” Jerry shook his head vehemently, “not a chance. You know how we ain’t gotten any rain this summer? River’s the lowest it’s been in like eighty years. Turns out that ain’t a good thing.”
“I looked online just yesterday. Everything says the water’s still deep enough for canoes, just not some of the bigger stuff. We shouldn’t have a problem.”
“I ain’t TALKING about the fucking canoes, man,” Jerry screamed, spit flying everywhere.
Dad wiped away a few flecks that landed on his beard. “Gross. Look, Jerry, I think you’re a little too stoned to be talking business. Where’s Cheryl?”
“Cheryl’s….” Jerry drifted off before collapsing to his knees sobbing, “Gone, man. Cheryl’s gone,” he managed to get out.
“Dale?” Sean had walked up near our car, eyes wide with concern. Dad held his hand up, warding Sean back. He knelt down next to Jerry, speaking quietly near the crying man’s ear. Jerry kept sobbing but after a minute or two started nodding his head, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes. Dad stood and clapped him on the shoulder, then helped him to his feet.
“We’ll get the trailer loaded with our gear. Get sobered up and I’ll let you know when we’re ready to go.”
Jerry continued to nod before stumbling back up the steps and back into the building, the screen again slamming noisily behind him.
“Paul?” Dad looked at me, “Sean and I will park the cars. Could you take Dennis and the girls to the shed and help them get the lifejackets and paddles?”
“Sure, Dad,” I turned back to Dennis, “let’s go, puke stain.”
“Is that normal?” I heard Sean ask Dad as I walked behind the building towards the equipment shed.
“Nah,” Dad said, “Jerry’s just a little more baked than usual. I think his wife left him.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“That’s the guy you and Dad have always talked about?” Tara asked, catching up to me as we reached the shed. “I thought you said he was cool.”
“He is, his wife too. I mean, they always have been anyways,” I shrugged as I pulled open the door, “I guess that’s why Dad tells us not to do drugs.”
“You’re such a square, Paul,” Amanda ruffled my hair as she walked behind Tara into the shed, perusing the equipment, “I bet he could get us some really good shit. Now,” she turned back to me with a malicious grin, “think you could help me find a lifejacket that will fit over my girls?” she arched her back, causing her chest to stick out provocatively.
Tara rolled her eyes and gently shoved Amanda, “You’re ridiculous. Don’t tease him,” she turned to me, seeing my eyes practically bugging out of their sockets, “and you’re a pig.”
“Hey!” I protested.
“Ooooo, Paulie’s got a girlfriend,” Dennis crooned from the doorway.
“Shut UP, Dennis!”
“Sorry, Paul,” Amanda smiled wryly, “You’re cute, but you’re not my type. I like my men older. Now your dad on the other hand…mmm, if he weren’t gay…”
“Oh my GOD,” Tara shrieked, grabbing a lifejacket and paddle at random and storming back out of the equipment shed, “I can’t believe I invited you on this trip!”
“You need me, honey!” Amanda called after her, “Without another source of estrogen on this trip you’ll die!”
She chuckled, turning back to me. “Seriously, though, can you help me find a good lifejacket?”
“Sure. Dennis, grab a small, I’ll help you get it sized in a second,” I told my stepbrother, pulling on my own jacket with practiced motions before handing Amanda a medium, “Here, try this one.”
Amanda tapped her lip with her finger thoughtfully as I adjusted the various straps. “How’s that work anyway? I mean, Sean throws a giant blip on my gaydar, but your dad is, like, totally hetero-seeming. And both of them obviously had kids with previous wives.”
I shrugged.
“I think it was just a different time. When they were our age, they felt forced to try and fit in. Sean says he ‘finally realized he couldn’t repress who he was anymore’ and that’s what ended his first marriage. My mom left Dad, Tara, and me when she found her ‘soulmate’ in her weekly bible study.“
“Dude, that sucks. No wonder Tara never told me. How’d Sean and your dad meet?”
“Community theater. They played Jean Valjean and Javert opposite each other in Les Miserables. The rest is history.”
“That is so CUTE! And your dad does theater? MUSICAL theater?!” Amanda gasps, “God, he would so be my type.”
It was almost four by the time we got the gear on the trailer, had Jerry, still likely stoned but considerably less upset, drive us the twenty-five miles north to the river entry point, unloaded, and got the canoes ready to launch.
“Ok, Jerry,” my Dad stroked his beard, “you get back home safe and we’ll see you in a couple days, yeah?”
Jerry mumbled something under his breath but nodded agreeably and waved before slamming the van door closed and driving away.
“You know the most interesting people,” Sean mused.
I went to get in the canoe my dad was standing next to, but he put a hand on my shoulder.
“Ah, hold on a sec, Paul. I think you and Dennis should share a canoe.”
“What?! Dad…”
“No come on, think about it. You’re the most experienced one here besides me,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “Sean’s not much of an outdoorsman, but I think he’ll do ok with Amanda.”
“Well, why can’t Dennis go with you, and I get Tara then?” I hissed back.
“Big senior too cool for his little brother? No, come on Paul. He’s too light compared to me. You know it’s important to keep the canoes at least somewhat balanced. Besides, he looks up to you.”
“Dad, I don’t…”
“Paul…” Dad interrupted my protest and crossed his arms. I could tell an argument wasn’t going to end my way.
“Fine,” I grumbled, “but remember it’s your fault if the little idiot won’t listen to me and tips the canoe.”
“Good man,” Dad slapped my back and turned his attention to the rapidly darkening sky. “Now, we’d better get a move on. Despite what Jerry said about not having any rain this summer, I think we’re about to get some. Let’s just go to the first island down to pitch camp for the night. It’ll ease the others in, and with good luck we’ll get the tents up before the weather hits.”
If we had any luck, it wasn’t good.
The issues started almost immediately. Dennis was not only too weak to really help with the paddling from his seat in the front of the canoe, but the little shit actively worked against me. He dipped his paddle in the water forcing me to constantly change the side I was rowing on, and at one point even back paddled, snickering at his cleverness. Before long, we were far behind the other two canoes. I cast what I hope was an “I told you so” look in Dad’s direction, but even from as far away as I was I could tell he and Tara were laughingly engaged in conversation and he didn’t notice.
“Stop it, you little fart muncher.”
At last, Dennis tired of being annoying and simply leaned back on the gear we had piled in the middle of the canoe, pretending to go to sleep. Without having to compensate for his sabotage I was at least able to get us going in something resembling a straight line, though with just me rowing there was no hope we would be able to catch the others before they got to the campsite.
The island in the middle of the river that Dad had chosen was only about a mile and a half down from the launch point, but even that took us the better part of an hour to navigate. The rain started to fall about half a mile out, a slight drizzle at first but gradually increasing. I could see ahead where the other two canoes had made the bank of the island. Dennis sat up with a shriek of surprise. As the rain picked up, he actually started helping me row. Even with both of us paddling in unison, by the time Dennis and I finally reached the campsite and managed to pull our canoe out of the water, we were fully soaked through.
Coming into a clearing we had used in past years, Dad was in the process of staking the weather fly down on a small two-person tent, while Sean sat hopelessly in the middle of a pile of poles and tarp. The girls were nowhere to be seen so I could only surmise they were in the tent Dad was working on. He paused as he saw us stumble up.
“Paul, I’m going to finish getting the girls settled, then I’ll help Sean with our tent. Why don’t you and Dennis unload the gear from your canoe and stack it under that tree over there with the rest of it. Then take the hatchet and the hacksaw and try to find some wood so we can get a fire going.”
“In this?” I raised my hands to indicate falling rain, a distant rumble of thunder helping illustrate my point. “It’ll all be soaked.”
Dad threw me a grin.
“Don’t worry, kiddo, I packed some dry tinder. Once we get it started the wood’ll burn, might just be a little smokier than normal.”
I grumbled but moved towards the canoe and started pulling out bags and coolers, shuttling them to the tree with the other equipment and supplies. To my surprise Dennis helped without even a snarky comment. By the time we got the gear unloaded, Dad and Sean had the second tent about halfway up. I walked towards them, hatchet in one hand and a waterproof flashlight in the other.
“We’re all set. How come you didn’t have the girls go get wood while you were waiting for us?”
Dad laughed.
“Didn’t trust them to find the right kind. Also, come on, will it kill you to prove that chivalry isn’t dead?”
I shook my head and sighed.
“Come on Dennis.”
From previous stays on the island, I knew it wasn’t huge, maybe a ten-minute walk from end to end. Each year there were usually one or two decent sized trees that have fallen over, so I was fairly confident we’d be able to find some deadwood, though I was still skeptical how well it would burn with all the rainwater soaking through it. I just knew that sometimes there was no point in arguing with Dad.
Despite the extended daylight hours of summer, the clouds had caused night to fall prematurely. I was glad I thought to bring the flashlight; otherwise, it would have been way too easy to trip and fall face-first into a mud puddle. I played the beam on the ground in front of me, carefully choosing my steps, periodically pausing to shine the light off to the sides, looking for fallen logs. Dennis followed me, head down and grumbling, swinging the hacksaw he was carrying and letting it hit against the tall grass and various plant life that lined the narrow animal trail I had us walking on.
Finally, after maybe ten minutes of searching, I found something promising. A tree had fallen, and the way it rested against one of its still-standing neighbors seemed like it may have even gotten a little bit of top cover from the rain. I handed the flashlight to Dennis.
“Here, hold the light for me. I’m going to use the hatchet to try and get some of the small stuff cleared off then I’ll swap you for the saw.”
“Why can’t I saw?”
I looked up at the still falling rain.
“Because I can do it faster and I’d like to get out of this crap and into dry clothes as soon as I can, wouldn’t you?”
Dennis mumbled something under his breath but grunted and shined the light on the fallen tree as I’d asked. I started to clean off the smaller twigs, working by the light. Dennis started hopping from foot to foot to try and stay warm, causing the beam to sway, but I managed to bite my tongue and not say anything.
I had switched to the hacksaw, cutting off and stacking some good looking, inch thick branches, when a keening wail carried high over the falling rain, sounding from somewhere not very far down the river. Dennis snapped the flashlight beam around wildly.
“Paul! What was that?”
I paused for a moment, listening, and heard an answering call echo, this one from farther up the river in the opposite direction. Its solitary weirdness sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature that had dropped fiercely with the storm. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at full attention.
“I..I don’t know. Maybe some kind of bird or frog or something.”
“In this rain?” Dennis’s voice hissed, incredulous.
I shook my head, shrugging off the fear.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s not here. Let’s get this finished up and back to the tents.”
I got back to work, and to his credit, Dennis held the light steady.
We returned to the campsite maybe twenty minutes later, both carrying armfuls of cut branches. The tents were both now fully set up. Dad had also erected a makeshift tarp over a circle of stones he’d arranged to serve as a bonfire pit to help protect the flame from the weather. He’d crouched over a small pile of paper and would scraps, carefully setting them to provide the maximum chance of the fire catching.
Dennis dumped his wood next to him.
“Where’s my dad?” he asked, and Dad nodded toward our tent.
“He’s getting changed, Dennis. Why don’t you go do the same? Paul, can you help me get the fire going?”
I sighed internally but nodded and moved to help him as Dennis disappeared into the tent.
Waiting until the flap zipper closed fully, I whispered to Dad, my voice low.
“Did you hear those noises?”
Dad nodded.
“Yeah, we all did. Scared the crap out of Sean, he jumped about a mile. The girls were pretty freaked out too.”
“They aren’t the only ones. Dad, what the heck was that?”
“Dunno, son. Can’t say I’ve heard anything quite like it before. Maybe a mountain lion?”
“A mountain lion?” I squeaked. “TWO of them? Do they even live around here?”
“Maybe they got lost from over near Penn State. Hey, they probably don’t swim very well.” Dad grinned, “But all the more reason to get this fire started.”
We finished arranging the starter, the tarp doing a surprisingly good job of keeping it dry, until Dad at last nodded in approval.
“That should do it. Let’s give it a shot.”
He took out a long Bic lighter and set the flame to the rolled newspaper in several different spots. The tinder caught quickly, the wood snapping merrily, and we moved to stack the branches Dennis and I cut into a rough pyramid over the starter material. The sticks smoked considerably as they began to dry, but eventually caught just as Dad predicted. He looked over to the remaining pile.
“Nice job, Paul. Those won’t last very long though. We need something bigger if we want to keep this going through the night.” I sighed. “I think the tree I got these from will work, I’ll just have to cut some logs from farther down the trunk.”
“Ok. I hate to ask,” Dad glanced up at the still falling rain, a peal of distant thunder rolling from away over the mountains that line the river, “but any chance you could go cut a few good-sized ones before you get cleaned up?”
“You can’t come with me?”
“I think I’d better stay here, just in case any of the camping newbies need anything. I’m sorry this trip is off to such a rough start. You want to take Dennis again?”
I didn’t have to take a moment to think about it.
“No. I’ll get it done faster by myself. Besides, he’s already probably changed.”
Dad clapped me on the shoulder.
“Proud of you, Son.”
I rolled my eyes and stood, grabbing the hacksaw and flashlight from where I’d set them.
“I’ll leave the hatchet with you. Don’t think I’ll need it to cut the big stuff.”
Dad nodded in agreement.
“Hey!” he called.
I paused, turning back to him.
“I love you, Paul.
“Love you too, Dad.”
“We’ll be waiting here!” he grinned.
I scowled and trudged away back towards the fallen tree.
I found the spot Dennis and I had come from without difficulty and got to work, setting the light in a way to shine on where I was cutting. The rain had blessedly stopped, at least temporarily, but the cold front that brought it had caused an eerie fog to begin to seep sinuously up from the undergrowth. The temperature had continued to drop and it was only the physical activity that was keeping me from shivering. It was probably not too cold yet, maybe in the lower fifties, but the change from the upper eighties of the earlier afternoon made it feel much worse than it actually was.
Something nagged me at the back of my mind as I worked on the tree, but it was several long minutes before I realized exactly what it was. Other than the rasp of the saw gliding back and forth against the tree, and the distant gurgle of the river flowing past the island shore, the night was utterly still and quiet. No birds called, no insects chirped, just dead silence. Another chill ran down my back as my mind returned to the mysterious cries from earlier, and then back farther to Jerry’s strange warnings from this afternoon. Despite what I told Dennis, and what Dad told me, those sounds were like nothing I’d ever heard before.
I got back to my work with a will, focusing on getting enough wood to last the night so that I could get out of my sopping clothes and curl up in my sleeping bag until morning. I told myself that surely the light of day would ward off whatever it was that made those sounds, but a little voice at the back of my mind asked “but what if it doesn’t?”.
The going was slower than earlier, the lower parts of the tree between six and eight inches thick and taking much more effort to work through. Still, I’d managed to cut a good number of pieces, enough that I was thinking it may take multiple trips to get back to the campsite, when I paused, my ears registering another sound from back the way I came. Thinking about it, I realized that the noise had been going on for several minutes now, interrupting the earlier silence I had previously noted, but I was so focused on my work that at first I didn’t notice the change. The sound was faint but distinct.
Screaming.
I hesitated for just a moment, fear causing paralysis, before another cry, high pitched and full of pain, launched me into action.
The firewood forgotten, I sprinted back towards the campsite, saw in one hand, flashlight in the other, the beam bouncing wildly in front of me as I ran. I took a bad step and fell face first, sliding along the wet ground, the hacksaw dropping from my hand and skittering into the undergrowth. I left it, having managed to keep hold of the light, picked myself up, and continued my mad dash. I ran as fast as I could, my breath pounding in and out of my lungs, a stitch cramping along my side, but all the while my fears told me that my greatest efforts won’t be enough.
I burst from the brush into the clearing. The fire still burned merrily where Dad and I set it, but the rest of the campsite was in utter disarray. The tents were collapsed, the flaps violently torn open, poles snapped jaggedly, reaching like broken bones of a compound fracture. Our gear was strewn about haphazardly. Of the rest of my group, Dad and Sean, Dennis, Tara, and Amanda, I saw no sign, outside of a terrible, wet, redness that seemed to mark and stain every piece of gear. I stood, mouth open in shock, my mind whirling as it tried to comprehend what I was seeing, but knowing the shallow pools dotting the soaking ground here and there could only be blood.
A wordless groan alerted me to the collapsed tent.
I rushed to the noise and cried out in horror at the sight of my father’s ruined body. I knelt down beside him, cradling his head in my lap. The flickering firelight was enough to see the vicious wounds all across his face, pouring red. His jaw was horribly broken, his chin shifted almost two inches to the right of where it should be. His eyes were swollen shut, and his nose turned at an impossible angle. The hatchet I’d left with him at the fire was buried three inches into his chest, and I could see white poking through a hole in his left pant leg. The rest of him was fully covered by the deep furrows of claws, as if a wild animal tried to tear him apart.
I’d done a couple years in the Boy Scouts, earned a medical merit badge, but I was at a loss for anything to do for him. Still, I gently started to lay Dad down, thinking to try and find the first aid kit that must still be somewhere in the ruined piles of gear, but he reached out, grabbing my wrist with surprising, desperate strength. In a haze, I noticed two of his fingers had been torn from his hand. I stopped moving him, leaned down to listen, to see if he was going to try and say something. Maybe he could tell me what caused this catastrophe, what happened to the others. All I could hear, though, was the rough wheeze of his breath being painfully forced in and out of his lungs. Tears fell from my eyes, intermingling with the blood still seeping from his face, as his breathing caught, rattled, and then stopped.
A sob escaped my throat as I clutched at my father’s corpse, the best and strongest man I’d ever known. My thoughts were a jumble of puzzle pieces in my head, shock and grief and disbelief all fighting for position. My entire body trembled uncontrollably.
Unexpectedly, one realization managed to push through the gauze that my mind was wrapped in, the thought cool and cold as a piece of granite. Whoever did this to Dad was still out there. They had the others, and they might come back for me.
My stomach turning, I reached down, bracing myself, and managed to pull the hatchet out of Dad’s chest, the blade releasing with a sickening crack. A downpour of blood escaped from the newly revealed opening, but I told myself I wasn’t causing any more harm. There was no more harm to cause.
I sniffed hard to clear my incredibly stuffed nose. I stood and took stock of my situation. There was no phone to call for help. Dad always insisted on completely unplugging for the trip, and it’s not like there’d have been service even if I had one. Sean, Dennis, and the girls were missing, possibly dead, or possibly worse. If I tried to find help, it would be hours before I got back with anyone, and by then it would be too late to do anything. I moved down to the canoes.
All three were where we left them, but enormous tears had been ripped in each of their hulls. There was no way I could use one as is. As I looked over the boats, trying to determine if there was any way to repair one enough to make it at least partially floatworthy, the beam of my flashlight caught on a series of footprints impressed in the riverbank, the dirt made soft by the recent rainfall. I shuddered to see them. Larger than a grown man’s, the prints were made by something heavy, its feet both clawed and webbed like an enormous platypus. A rustling in some nearby bushes caused me to start. Cautiously I approached the noise, using the hatchet to push away some of the tall grass hiding the motion, my mind going numb as my flashlight found the source.
The creature was big. Not huge, certainly, but definitely over six feet long and weighing several hundred pounds. It had four limbs, roughly arranged in the same anatomical layout as a human. The beam of my light reflected dully off slimy scales covering the entirety of its body, their color a dark green, almost black. Both its hands and feet were webbed and clawed like the footprints I found, but its fingers looked like they might be dexterous enough to use tools. The thing’s head was some kind of hideous cross between human and fish. Whiskers like a sturgeon drooped from its cheeks and it opened its mouth to snarl at me, its teeth arranged in a circular pattern like a lamprey. The sound it made was weak, but I recognized the same strange call that Dennis and I heard earlier.
I could also tell it was badly hurt. The thing was trying to drag itself back to the river, but there was an enormous gash in its shoulder impeding it. Its left arm was almost torn from its body and leaking blood, though not as much as I would have expected. I realized that Dad must have been the one to wound this creature, though he certainly got the worst of the exchange. A cold fury began to work its way up from deep inside my stomach, and I raised the hatchet with the intent to finish the monster off before a thought stopped me.
I had no way of knowing where Tara and the rest were taken, but it must have been by other creatures like this one. It appeared to be aquatic, or amphibious, and with no way of even knowing which way they went down the river, I’d have no way to find their lair on my own. I considered the dilemma and came upon a possible solution. Noting the relative slowness that the creature was managing to claw its way to the water, I went back to the trashed campsite and began rifling through the gear. It didn’t take me long to find what I was searching for: a spool of all purpose parachute cord and a box of chem lights. I pulled out my pocket-knife and quickly cut lengths of cord, tying slip-knot loops through half a dozen of the lights before cracking them to life in a bright green flash of neon. I also took a pair of two-foot long pieces of cord and tied one end to each handle of the hatchet and flashlight, the other to my belt, before securing the tools as best I could in my waistband.
Returning to the creature, who was only feet from the river, I took my lifejacket from the ruined canoe and pulled it on. I took four others and used their straps to tie them to each other, considering the next step of my strategy. The closeness to the water, or possibly my nearness, sent the monster into greater efforts, as it flopped, squirming towards the perceived safety of the river. I softly approached it and, as it thrashed, managed to loop three of the chem lights around its various limbs, securing the last one just as it made the water. It would have to be enough. Being submerged seemed to invigorate it, confirming my suspicions of the creature’s aquatic nature, though it was still clearly hampered by its wound. If it weren’t for my doctored lights, it would have been impossible to tell where the creature was in the water, and even with them I could tell I’d have to try to stay close or risk losing it.
Slipping into the river, I arranged myself on the secured lifejackets like a makeshift raft and began to follow the fleeing fish monster, hoping against hope that it would take me to wherever my family is.
I abandoned all sense of time, my focus entirely kept on keeping track of the three, small balls of glowing light moving gradually down the river. I followed the creature through one fork, then another, then another, before I lost track and stopped trying. I was thankful the thing was as badly hurt as it was; I realized its injury was all that was keeping it moving slowly enough that I could keep it in sight, and likely the only reason it hadn’t attacked me.
My throat tightened when I saw one of the chem lights separate from the others, falling to the bottom of the river and sinking into the silt, apparently having been kicked lose from the monster. Somewhat unsteadily, the other two glided away though, continuing in the same direction they had been, so I kept following, sending up a silent prayer that the remaining cords stayed secure.
Abruptly, the motion stopped. The lights which I’d been following perhaps two feet underwater now bobbed to the top. Cautiously I approached, fearful I knew the reason. Before long, I confirmed I was right; the monster had bled out. It floated on the surface of the river, a lethal goldfish dead in its massive bowl.
The cold and wet and dark, unnoticed until now, warded away by fear and the adrenaline of my pursuit, came crashing down on me. I shivered, supported by the extra lifejackets I could only hope I’ll need, trying to figure out what to do next.
I tried to work things through logically. We’d been traveling quite a way from the island. The monster lair couldn’t be much farther. Besides, for a lack of better ideas, and since I didn’t have anything truly better to do, I’d just have to try and search the riverbank for a cave or something. And pray.
I moved to the side of the river the creature seemed to be heading for. Nearing the bank, I fumbled for my flashlight. My heart leapt when I found it wasn’t there before I remembered the safety line I’d tied to it. Thanking my past self for his preparations, I traced the cord still secured to my belt and pulled the flashlight into my grasp. I had to smack it against my palm a time or two before it weakly turned on, its claims of a waterproof nature apparently more for advertisement than actual use.
It didn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for.
The Allegheny isn’t terribly deep even in wet years, maybe eight or nine feet on average. I could see from the marks on the bank where the water would typically be four feet overhead, and the yawning hole I found was only submerged about halfway. I thought back to what Jerry had said earlier, about how this was the driest season in decades. Any normal year, the opening would be fully underwater, but now…
I shone the flashlight into the hole, fear of dark enclosed spaces gripping my heart. The opening was certainly big enough that I could fit, but there was no way to know that it stayed that way, no way to know this was in fact the monster’s lair, or that Tara or Dennis or Amanda or Sean were still alive.
My mind returned to Dad’s ruined face, his last, gasping breaths, and I sighed. I had to try.
It was awkward going to say the least, dragging the four extra life jackets with me, but if I found any of the others, and if they were in bad shape, and if we had to swim any distance to get out…
There were way too many “ifs” going through my mind.
The tunnel went into the riverbank for fifty yards or so before dipping down. It remained consistently half-full and I float-swam along. My breathing rate increased, reaching the point I was practically hyperventilating, the claustrophobic sense of the earth crushing in around me competing with the understanding that I may be trapping myself in a den of killer fish monsters. I managed to get ahold of myself and continue onwards.
After a subjective eternity, the passage I’d been swimming through emerged into a cavern of significant size, maybe fifteen or twenty feet tall and three times that across. Coming out of the wall I fell with a splash into a sort of underground lagoon that took up the majority of the cavern. The walls of the cave glowed with a faint luminescence, enough to faintly see by, though I didn’t know enough marine biology to say what kind of algae or whatever was causing it. I swam to the shore, and found my efforts were rewarded. There were dozens of webbed clawprints similar to those on the island, as well as some other marks that looked like something had been dragged. I could only hope it was the rest of my group.
There were at least a dozen different passages off the cavern I was in, but the freshest prints and drag marks seemed to head down three of them. There might have been other exits to this underground warren, but I didn’t know where they were, and it was going to be way too difficult to bring the lifejackets with me. I had no idea how we would get back up the passage I came in through, but that would have to be something I figured out later. I found a small recess in the wall that I was able to stash the extra vests in before taking out the hatchet and flashlight, picking the leftmost footprint marked tunnel at random, and creeping along as stealthily as my squelching shoes would let me.
The flashlight was almost unnecessary. The algae persisted enough to light my way so I kept the beam off, and moved as carefully as I could, pausing every few steps to listen for sounds that might reveal the location of more monsters or my family. Seemingly far away down the passage, I heard hooting calls like the ones Dennis and I heard earlier, but there was something about the tone that made me think it was just the creatures communicating, rather than an alarm that they knew I was there.
The passage floor was slimy, so I very careful to avoided slipping and falling. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any other passageways to choose from, or else I would have had to start making some difficult choices. The tunnel I’d chosen opened into a cavern only slightly smaller than the one containing the lagoon. The algae on the walls here was even more highly concentrated, and though it was not as bright as lighting a lamp, the glow was still more than enough for me to see by.
I wished I couldn’t.
Sean was suspended upside down, his arms and legs secured spread-eagle to poles on either side of him by rough looking rope and surrounded by four of the fish-monsters, one considerably larger than the others. A piece of wood had been wedged in his mouth, but I could see he was awake, his wide eyes fear-filled and wild, his head whipping back and forth.
My earlier suspicion that the creatures could use tools was confirmed as the largest creature took a flint knife and deftly cut away Sean’s clothes, leaving him hanging naked. It made its strange cries all the while, and I realized that, based on the rapt attention of the three smaller creatures, this must have been the monster’s version of a school lesson. Clothes fully removed, the monster took Sean’s hair in one clawed hand, bent his head back, and cut his throat.
I stifled a cry, jamming my hand into my mouth as Sean’s life poured from the gaping wound. I could tell he was trying to scream himself, but between the wooden gag and his own blood choking him, he only managed to emit a panicked gurgle. The gout didn’t last long, the creature must have severed both carotid arteries, and soon the blood was only dripping. I fought the urge to be violently ill as the fish monster continued to dress its catch, slicing open Sean’s belly and removing his stomach and intestines, the smell like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
I cautiously edged away from the gruesome scene, unable to take it for even another moment. I was furious that I didn’t do something to save Sean but at the same time knew there was nothing I could have reasonably done. I could only pray I would have better luck with Dennis and the girls.
I made it back to the entrance cave and followed the second tunnel with the drag marks. I still moved cautiously, but faster than I had before. If I’d been only a few minutes faster, maybe I could have done something to help my stepfather; I couldn’t let something like that happen to the others.
Similar to the first tunnel, this one also didn’t seem to have any offshoots. Part of me wondered whether these paths are natural rock formations or if the creatures somehow carved them out. Where the other was fairly straight, this one was far more winding with noticeable changes in elevation. The height of the tunnel remained relatively constant, thankfully, and other than having to duck a time or two my earlier feelings of claustrophobia were generally kept at bay.
The room the second tunnel emerged into was smaller than the one Sean was murdered in. The algae remained on the walls, though in lesser concentration. The room was dim and, if I was right that these passages had been designed by the creatures, there must have been a reason for that. The floor was covered in almost a dozen of what I could best describe as nests, their makeup comprised of everything from ratty blankets and old scraps of leather to tree branches and castaway clothing. I carefully peeked into the closest nest, my stomach turning at the mass of squirming flesh writhing and convulsing in its middle. It was several long seconds before I realized what it must be: a pile of fish monsters in some kind of larval stage. I’d stumbled upon the monster’s version of a nursery. The tadpole things, their mouths gaping wide with those lamprey-like teeth, wiggled and gnashed disgustingly.
“They’re all gone.”
(continued in comment below)
2023.04.12 14:58 Lamarian67 WICCA - Chapter 21 - Judgement Massacre
Power. It was what everyone sought after. Influence, strength, fame, prestige, people wore their power around like a coat. Whether down in the deep crevasses of crime or high up in the government of the world, power gave security. It gave security to the people,, gave them someone to look towards in times of strife and misery. The power made their leaders untouchable.
One of the leaders was currently splayed out over the couch. His arm was hanging off the side, his head was on top of a pillow, and the rest of him was splattered against the wall. Another had been laid out upon the floor like a frog in a science class after the dissection, flesh pulled apart and limbs scattered in the way that only wild animals or unruly high schoolers could. The third had his back pressed up against the window of the skyscraper as a hooded figure stalked towards him. Dressed in a fully covering body-suit, with the face covered by a smooth visor with a strange symbol on it, her posture was slumped slightly. The stains of blood were barely visible against her black outfit, but the stench of gore was enough to make one throw up.
Of course, power hardly did that. No-one was truly untouchable, whether the leaders or humanity as a whole. When the walking disasters had first scoured the land, that had been all the more apparent. Yet humanity did not fall and crumble, it stood up and fought as it had during the ice age, in the wars that ravaged it across the years, in the face of the harsh world of magic and monsters. At least, that’s what people liked to believe.
The leader’s hand grasped around a gun and held it up in trembling arms. Gunshots ran across the room as metal tore into flesh and blood bloomed over the walls. A single second and the wound all vanished and the fabric knitted itself together. The bullets still fired, desperately, hysterically, tearing into the walls and ceiling more than the approaching figure. The gun soon stopped firing, only letting out small clicks. The figure grabbed the gun and threw it away. She stomped her foot on the man’s chest and he cried out in pain.
Humanity didn’t crumble in the face of the Scourges. Humanity crumbled as the cities fell and the homeless littered the streets, as paranoia, desperation and geopolitical tension heightened, as technology and weaponry advanced further and further and countries raced for dominance.
“Who are you?” He managed to wheeze out.
The figure turned her head to the side. She lifted her foot and slammed it down, and the man’s chest erupted in a shower of viscera, staining the walls and blotting out the crescent moon. Right outside the window, the whirl of helicopter blades was growing louder and louder until it was deafening. Bullets shattered the glass to pieces and dug deep into the floor. When the fire ceased, the figure was still standing there, and the floor was stained with gore.
The world was teetering on the edge. All it would take for it to fall was a little push.
A being, terrible, pale, vast, descended from the darkness and tore into the helicopter. More and more appeared from the sky, a hum like thunder emanating off of them as they picked apart the remains of the helicopter, like vultures tearing apart carrion. The city below glimmered and writhed, a bustle of technology and people. One of the creatures swooped down and landed upon the broken glass. The figure mounted it and then they were all off, back into the dark abyss of the night.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
78 dead. That was the latest body count from the Estonian Sanctuary. And that didn’t even take into consideration those grievously injured in the battle. Well, battle was generous. As soon as that… being had arrived, the Sanctuary had become a butcher house. Claren sighed and rubbed his forehead.
There had hardly been a panic when one of the Sanctuaries - Greece, if Claren remembered properly - was under assault. There’d been trepidation, true, but no-one expected that when they sent a few Sanctuary agents to help out, they would stop hearing from them as soon as they engaged, or that when more were sent to recover them, all that they would find were brutalised corpses. There’d been a bit more panic then, but still, nothing close to what would come.
The next time there’d been an attack, they sent more experienced, more ruthless, more powerful agents, and it was expected that that would be the end of that. What the cameras had shown was not the outcome that the Sanctuaries had expected. The first oddity was the swarm.
Claren’s fingers drummed on the keyboard and images popped up. Bodies like horses and tails like scorpions, they reminded Claren of the platypus, and the understandable scepticism the scientists who first heard of it must have had. They had wings like that of a locust, long hair and horns upon their head which almost looked golden. What was most striking of them, however, was their faces - humanoid except for the large, powerful fangs, strong enough to tear through bones and metal if the videos were any notion. Although strange, these creatures weren’t the main focus.
More images popped up. In them stood a lone figure. Unimposing, slightly hunched, with a hooded black bodysuit and a helmet, reminiscent of the Cleaver’s own visor. There was a strange pattern on the helmet - a circle interlocking with a triangle. She wasn't particularly imposing. In fact, she was rather slight, and the body posture suggested fatigue of some sort. Despite that, there was an air of dread in those pictures, although that may be due to what transpired next.
The screaming was rather short-lived, so it didn’t get on Claren’s nerves as much as it would have otherwise. As soon as the group had engaged with the figure, the frontliners had been torn to shreds instantly. The backliners had found out that their magic and weapons were rather ineffective, and soon after was when the screaming stopped.
The Sanctuaries initially speculated that it was some planned takeover from the criminal underworld. That theory soon fell flat when seven gangs were found slaughtered in the following weeks. If there was one benefit to all this, it was that Claren had less work to do.
He looked at the last image that had been sent before the cameras were cut. The figure stood among the remains of the agents, the blood stains faint against her bodysuit. Even with the visor, Claren could tell she was looking right at the camera.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Claren walked into the meeting the following morning, pressing his body against the wall to avoid the people storming past. He’d taken the time to finish off any excess paperwork, so Arena and Kyra were already there when he arrived. Despite the bustle and hustle of the room, there was a small pocket of empty space. Claren squeezed his way past, flinching away from swinging arms and crushing bodies, and made his way over to it. Sitting at the table, a pleasant smile upon his face as always, was Epoch Atlas. He glanced at Claren before looking back at the crowd. Claren hurried over to where Arena and Kyra were standing.
“What’s with the crowd?” he asked, having to raise his voice above his preferred volume.
“Every Grand Mage, elder and major mob-boss was called here to discuss the situation,” Kyra explained. Her height put her above more or less everybody in the room, and the beanie planted firmly on her head made her stand out. Claren scratched at his arm. The noise was getting to him. Thankfully, at that moment Epoch Atlas raised a hand and a weight pressed onto the room, sending it into silence.
“I believe everyone who will arrive, has arrived. Please, take your seats.”
In order to prevent conflict between the Sanctuaries and criminal underworld, Epoch Atlas was seated at the head of the table. Some of the elders and crime lords didn’t appear very pleased about that. Despite that, they sat, and they listened.
The Grand Mage of Australia, Wick Arrant, spoke up. “As of now, five sanctuaries and seven major gangs have been slaughtered, all by this one being.” He pressed on a button and a screen flashed the image of the figure that Claren had seen last, complete with the corpses upon the ground. There were quite a few grimaces.
Claren looked around the table from where he was seated, Arena in between him and Kyra. Every Grand Mage and elder was here, barring the dead ones, even the usually absent Canadian Grand Mage. After the Scourge assault had left every major world power severely weakened, especially America, there’d been a scramble for power, and Canada had emerged at the top. The world powers soon managed to regain their standing, but Canada maintained its position as the new world’s top dog. Due to this, the Canadian Grand Mage was saddled with more work than the others, as sorcerers and non-magical people alike flocked to the nation.
Sitting near the middle, looking like he’d fit in better with the crime-lords, was Darian Mandela. The American Grand Mage was without any Elders, and his eyes were shadowed by sunglasses as usual. Of all the people in the room, he and Epoch were the only ones smiling; although his smile wasn’t exactly pleasant.
Claren had been absentmindedly listening to the proceedings, and snapped back to full attention when Epoch Atlas began to speak.
“I suppose it’s settled. One group is sent to evacuate everyone, while another attempts to terminate the subject. Unless there’s any complaints?” He let the sentence hang in the air before continuing. “Well then, this meeting is adjourned until the situation has been resolved.”
As people filed out the room, Epoch pulled the three of them aside.
“I have someone for you all to meet. He’ll be supporting the group dedicated to taking down the subject. I hope you’ll find him a useful asset.”
Out from a doorway, ducking under it slightly, came an incredibly tall man, standing even over Kyra. He was rather gaunt and looked ever so slightly nervous, as if he was worried he forgot something. His smooth black hair was mid-length for a man, and he was wearing a leather jacket, orange T-shirt and long black pants. He waved his hand.
“Uh, hi. I’m Devona Verdant.”
Arena stepped forward and gripped his hand tightly, shaking it. “Arena Aegis. Pleasure to meet you.” Claren gave a nod of acknowledgement and Kyra gave a wave.
“Unless you’re going to continue with the introductions, I suggest heading home, getting some rest.” Epoch said. “It’s only a matter of time before the bloodshed continues.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was only a few days before the next assault. Arena stepped through the portal into pure chaos. The portal shut quickly after her, narrowly avoiding having someone’s severed arm tossed into her house. Claren ran up to her, his shield shimmering all around him. All around him, sorcerers were fighting massive beasts, stingers slashing and tearing at flesh and bone. Arena threw her spear and it exploded within one of the monsters, shredding it to ribbons almost instantly. Under a minute, and everything had already gone to hell.
“Evacuation went fine, but it turns out that Sanctuary agents and criminals don’t work together well,” Claren muttered. “Kyra closed the portal as soon as she could but some blood got on the carpet.”
“I noticed. Tell her I’ll clean it up. Where did the subject go?” She asked.
Claren pointed towards the stairs. “Everyone who tried to stop them was…” He gestured towards the mutilated corpses around the base. “You better hurry.” Before Arena turned to go, Claren grasped her hand. “Arena. Stay safe.” And with that he disappeared back into the chaos.
She twirled around and almost collided with Devona, who was looking pointedly at the floor.
“I didn’t see him grab your hand,” he blurted out.
Arena sighed to herself. “Let’s just get to the stairs.”
He grasped her arm and the two of them vanished, reappearing near the top of the building. Arena hummed. She’d expected a bit of nausea, yet she felt perfectly fine. She turned her attention to what she saw in front of her.
Standing within the empty office, staring at the ground, was the subject. She tilted her head to the side.
“The Elders aren’t here,” Arena called. From the stairs, she could see more people filing in as the sound of slaughter raged below. Guns loaded and hands flared. The figure turned around to face them.
Tension hung in the air, spinning and sharpening into blades that seemed to hover right at their throats. All of them stared at the figure, her dark visor with a strange pattern splattered onto the face like blood. The silence was so sharp that barely anyone seemed to dare to breathe. The figure took a single step forward.
The first shot tore through the woman’s stomach, spraying blood and guts all across the floor. The second shattered across her helmet and the third opened a hole within her chest. She stumbled back ever so slightly. The wound vanished. She righted herself. She continued to step forward as bullets and magic tore through her body with raw abandon, the gore that now coated the floor squelching with every step. Devona looked like he was about to throw up.
Glass exploded from everywhere in the room, swarming the figure before digging deep into the skin. Arena could feel it tear the body apart within seconds, ripping through flesh and bone again and again. Too many times for it to have worked. The woman sprang out of the storm and her hand collided with one of the sorcerers. The body ruptured like a pinata spraying bright pink and red candy everywhere. A foot lashed out and hit another in the side, carving out most of the torso with a single hit. One of the men, an enhancer, ran forward. He was a few limbs and a pile of guts a second later.
Arena cursed out loud. One of the people turned to run, screaming, and was promptly skewered by a stinger. An energy stream soon burned away the head of the beat it belonged to. The remaining sorcerers were either also attempting to flee or were keeping their distance, sending a barrage of firepower that continued to remain ineffective. Arena grabbed Devona’s arm.
“Get down there and tell Claren to call everything off.” She sighed internally at Devona’s blank stare. “The guy you didn’t see grab my hand?” He nodded and vanished. When Arena turned back, all she saw was dead bodies and a figure in a black bodysuit.
“You work quickly, don’t you?” She didn’t respond. “No villainous monologue? I can respect that.” She darted forward and Arena dealt a long slash against her throat, sliding to the side and digging her spear into her side. She didn’t even flinch. Arena drew blood again and again, and yet it seemed to do nothing. Sand formed underneath Arena’s shoes to provide better traction upon the blood slicken ground. Her opponent wasn’t half-bad, leveraging her quick healing to power through anything Arena threw. There were a few times Arena almost felt her fingers make contact.
She created a massive hook and chain with her glass, digging deep into flesh and throwing her opponent through the window and down to the ground. Glass formed a slide that Arena skidded down, landing with a thud upon the earth. Seems that the group was still fighting despite the attempts to evacuate, as the monsters circled the sky and roared their terrible, humanoid cries.
Arena faced her opponent again, twirling her spear as it reformed in her hand. She didn’t seem phased in the slightest, the bodysuit wet and dripping with blood. Arena threw her spear and sliced through the woman’s knee, severing her leg before it appeared again. A beast came flying at Arena, claws extended before a bullet pierced it through the head. She looked over to see Kyra glance over at her right as a monster snagged onto her and yanked her into the air.
In that split second of shock, Arena felt something slash deep against her back. She saw the stinger rise back in the air, spraying her blood onto her before a fireball was flung onto it and ignited the beast. There was a split second to register what happened before pain wracked her body. She collapsed to her knees, her throat constricting and her body losing all feeling except for the ever encompassing pain.
The figure stepped closer, staring down upon her with that black visor.
“Who-what are you? Why are you doing this?” Arena managed to croak out.
“Who am I?” She echoed. Her voice was soft, softer than Arena had intended, yet lacking anything resembling kindness or empathy. “I am the Angel of Death. And this is judgement.”
As she reached her hand towards Arena’s face, a sudden thought bubbled above the agony. “So, this is how I die.”
A figure appeared next to Arena and grabbed her shoulder. All she saw was the hand of the Angel closing on empty air before everything went black.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tap. Tap. Tap. The tapping was almost undetectable under the constant hum. The room was covered end to end in screens, all displaying images in such rapid flashes it would be impossible for any normal person to register it all. Harlow Wolfsbane sat upon the floor, their fingers continuing to drum a near-silent pattern upon the hardwood. Off to the side, sipping upon a milkshake, dressed in a loose jacket and tank top was Axon Macina.
“How’s the screens?”Works better with my power than the regular ones, that’s for sure.
She nodded. The air was filled with an uncomfortable silence before she spoke up again.
“So, what you make of it all?”Subject’s magic appears to be a form of super-strength and regeneration. It’s not unheard of for disciplines to manifest with multiple abilities, yet something seems off.
“Doesn’t it, you know, disturb you a little? All this death?”
They shrugged. Not especially.
Yet another awkward silence, broken up by a long, loud sip of a milkshake. “Why aren’t you out there, by the way? Ain’t taking down freaks kinda your territory?”
Epoch wanted me to find more information before I potentially engaged.
“So, what have you discovered?”
Nothing you’d be interested in. They stared into the ground once again, fingers tapping absentmindedly. The room fell silent once again as the screens flashed green, yellow, and red, red, red.
submitted by Lamarian67 to SkulduggerySubreddit [link] [comments]
One of the leaders was currently splayed out over the couch. His arm was hanging off the side, his head was on top of a pillow, and the rest of him was splattered against the wall. Another had been laid out upon the floor like a frog in a science class after the dissection, flesh pulled apart and limbs scattered in the way that only wild animals or unruly high schoolers could. The third had his back pressed up against the window of the skyscraper as a hooded figure stalked towards him. Dressed in a fully covering body-suit, with the face covered by a smooth visor with a strange symbol on it, her posture was slumped slightly. The stains of blood were barely visible against her black outfit, but the stench of gore was enough to make one throw up.
Of course, power hardly did that. No-one was truly untouchable, whether the leaders or humanity as a whole. When the walking disasters had first scoured the land, that had been all the more apparent. Yet humanity did not fall and crumble, it stood up and fought as it had during the ice age, in the wars that ravaged it across the years, in the face of the harsh world of magic and monsters. At least, that’s what people liked to believe.
The leader’s hand grasped around a gun and held it up in trembling arms. Gunshots ran across the room as metal tore into flesh and blood bloomed over the walls. A single second and the wound all vanished and the fabric knitted itself together. The bullets still fired, desperately, hysterically, tearing into the walls and ceiling more than the approaching figure. The gun soon stopped firing, only letting out small clicks. The figure grabbed the gun and threw it away. She stomped her foot on the man’s chest and he cried out in pain.
Humanity didn’t crumble in the face of the Scourges. Humanity crumbled as the cities fell and the homeless littered the streets, as paranoia, desperation and geopolitical tension heightened, as technology and weaponry advanced further and further and countries raced for dominance.
“Who are you?” He managed to wheeze out.
The figure turned her head to the side. She lifted her foot and slammed it down, and the man’s chest erupted in a shower of viscera, staining the walls and blotting out the crescent moon. Right outside the window, the whirl of helicopter blades was growing louder and louder until it was deafening. Bullets shattered the glass to pieces and dug deep into the floor. When the fire ceased, the figure was still standing there, and the floor was stained with gore.
The world was teetering on the edge. All it would take for it to fall was a little push.
A being, terrible, pale, vast, descended from the darkness and tore into the helicopter. More and more appeared from the sky, a hum like thunder emanating off of them as they picked apart the remains of the helicopter, like vultures tearing apart carrion. The city below glimmered and writhed, a bustle of technology and people. One of the creatures swooped down and landed upon the broken glass. The figure mounted it and then they were all off, back into the dark abyss of the night.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
78 dead. That was the latest body count from the Estonian Sanctuary. And that didn’t even take into consideration those grievously injured in the battle. Well, battle was generous. As soon as that… being had arrived, the Sanctuary had become a butcher house. Claren sighed and rubbed his forehead.
There had hardly been a panic when one of the Sanctuaries - Greece, if Claren remembered properly - was under assault. There’d been trepidation, true, but no-one expected that when they sent a few Sanctuary agents to help out, they would stop hearing from them as soon as they engaged, or that when more were sent to recover them, all that they would find were brutalised corpses. There’d been a bit more panic then, but still, nothing close to what would come.
The next time there’d been an attack, they sent more experienced, more ruthless, more powerful agents, and it was expected that that would be the end of that. What the cameras had shown was not the outcome that the Sanctuaries had expected. The first oddity was the swarm.
Claren’s fingers drummed on the keyboard and images popped up. Bodies like horses and tails like scorpions, they reminded Claren of the platypus, and the understandable scepticism the scientists who first heard of it must have had. They had wings like that of a locust, long hair and horns upon their head which almost looked golden. What was most striking of them, however, was their faces - humanoid except for the large, powerful fangs, strong enough to tear through bones and metal if the videos were any notion. Although strange, these creatures weren’t the main focus.
More images popped up. In them stood a lone figure. Unimposing, slightly hunched, with a hooded black bodysuit and a helmet, reminiscent of the Cleaver’s own visor. There was a strange pattern on the helmet - a circle interlocking with a triangle. She wasn't particularly imposing. In fact, she was rather slight, and the body posture suggested fatigue of some sort. Despite that, there was an air of dread in those pictures, although that may be due to what transpired next.
The screaming was rather short-lived, so it didn’t get on Claren’s nerves as much as it would have otherwise. As soon as the group had engaged with the figure, the frontliners had been torn to shreds instantly. The backliners had found out that their magic and weapons were rather ineffective, and soon after was when the screaming stopped.
The Sanctuaries initially speculated that it was some planned takeover from the criminal underworld. That theory soon fell flat when seven gangs were found slaughtered in the following weeks. If there was one benefit to all this, it was that Claren had less work to do.
He looked at the last image that had been sent before the cameras were cut. The figure stood among the remains of the agents, the blood stains faint against her bodysuit. Even with the visor, Claren could tell she was looking right at the camera.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Claren walked into the meeting the following morning, pressing his body against the wall to avoid the people storming past. He’d taken the time to finish off any excess paperwork, so Arena and Kyra were already there when he arrived. Despite the bustle and hustle of the room, there was a small pocket of empty space. Claren squeezed his way past, flinching away from swinging arms and crushing bodies, and made his way over to it. Sitting at the table, a pleasant smile upon his face as always, was Epoch Atlas. He glanced at Claren before looking back at the crowd. Claren hurried over to where Arena and Kyra were standing.
“What’s with the crowd?” he asked, having to raise his voice above his preferred volume.
“Every Grand Mage, elder and major mob-boss was called here to discuss the situation,” Kyra explained. Her height put her above more or less everybody in the room, and the beanie planted firmly on her head made her stand out. Claren scratched at his arm. The noise was getting to him. Thankfully, at that moment Epoch Atlas raised a hand and a weight pressed onto the room, sending it into silence.
“I believe everyone who will arrive, has arrived. Please, take your seats.”
In order to prevent conflict between the Sanctuaries and criminal underworld, Epoch Atlas was seated at the head of the table. Some of the elders and crime lords didn’t appear very pleased about that. Despite that, they sat, and they listened.
The Grand Mage of Australia, Wick Arrant, spoke up. “As of now, five sanctuaries and seven major gangs have been slaughtered, all by this one being.” He pressed on a button and a screen flashed the image of the figure that Claren had seen last, complete with the corpses upon the ground. There were quite a few grimaces.
Claren looked around the table from where he was seated, Arena in between him and Kyra. Every Grand Mage and elder was here, barring the dead ones, even the usually absent Canadian Grand Mage. After the Scourge assault had left every major world power severely weakened, especially America, there’d been a scramble for power, and Canada had emerged at the top. The world powers soon managed to regain their standing, but Canada maintained its position as the new world’s top dog. Due to this, the Canadian Grand Mage was saddled with more work than the others, as sorcerers and non-magical people alike flocked to the nation.
Sitting near the middle, looking like he’d fit in better with the crime-lords, was Darian Mandela. The American Grand Mage was without any Elders, and his eyes were shadowed by sunglasses as usual. Of all the people in the room, he and Epoch were the only ones smiling; although his smile wasn’t exactly pleasant.
Claren had been absentmindedly listening to the proceedings, and snapped back to full attention when Epoch Atlas began to speak.
“I suppose it’s settled. One group is sent to evacuate everyone, while another attempts to terminate the subject. Unless there’s any complaints?” He let the sentence hang in the air before continuing. “Well then, this meeting is adjourned until the situation has been resolved.”
As people filed out the room, Epoch pulled the three of them aside.
“I have someone for you all to meet. He’ll be supporting the group dedicated to taking down the subject. I hope you’ll find him a useful asset.”
Out from a doorway, ducking under it slightly, came an incredibly tall man, standing even over Kyra. He was rather gaunt and looked ever so slightly nervous, as if he was worried he forgot something. His smooth black hair was mid-length for a man, and he was wearing a leather jacket, orange T-shirt and long black pants. He waved his hand.
“Uh, hi. I’m Devona Verdant.”
Arena stepped forward and gripped his hand tightly, shaking it. “Arena Aegis. Pleasure to meet you.” Claren gave a nod of acknowledgement and Kyra gave a wave.
“Unless you’re going to continue with the introductions, I suggest heading home, getting some rest.” Epoch said. “It’s only a matter of time before the bloodshed continues.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was only a few days before the next assault. Arena stepped through the portal into pure chaos. The portal shut quickly after her, narrowly avoiding having someone’s severed arm tossed into her house. Claren ran up to her, his shield shimmering all around him. All around him, sorcerers were fighting massive beasts, stingers slashing and tearing at flesh and bone. Arena threw her spear and it exploded within one of the monsters, shredding it to ribbons almost instantly. Under a minute, and everything had already gone to hell.
“Evacuation went fine, but it turns out that Sanctuary agents and criminals don’t work together well,” Claren muttered. “Kyra closed the portal as soon as she could but some blood got on the carpet.”
“I noticed. Tell her I’ll clean it up. Where did the subject go?” She asked.
Claren pointed towards the stairs. “Everyone who tried to stop them was…” He gestured towards the mutilated corpses around the base. “You better hurry.” Before Arena turned to go, Claren grasped her hand. “Arena. Stay safe.” And with that he disappeared back into the chaos.
She twirled around and almost collided with Devona, who was looking pointedly at the floor.
“I didn’t see him grab your hand,” he blurted out.
Arena sighed to herself. “Let’s just get to the stairs.”
He grasped her arm and the two of them vanished, reappearing near the top of the building. Arena hummed. She’d expected a bit of nausea, yet she felt perfectly fine. She turned her attention to what she saw in front of her.
Standing within the empty office, staring at the ground, was the subject. She tilted her head to the side.
“The Elders aren’t here,” Arena called. From the stairs, she could see more people filing in as the sound of slaughter raged below. Guns loaded and hands flared. The figure turned around to face them.
Tension hung in the air, spinning and sharpening into blades that seemed to hover right at their throats. All of them stared at the figure, her dark visor with a strange pattern splattered onto the face like blood. The silence was so sharp that barely anyone seemed to dare to breathe. The figure took a single step forward.
The first shot tore through the woman’s stomach, spraying blood and guts all across the floor. The second shattered across her helmet and the third opened a hole within her chest. She stumbled back ever so slightly. The wound vanished. She righted herself. She continued to step forward as bullets and magic tore through her body with raw abandon, the gore that now coated the floor squelching with every step. Devona looked like he was about to throw up.
Glass exploded from everywhere in the room, swarming the figure before digging deep into the skin. Arena could feel it tear the body apart within seconds, ripping through flesh and bone again and again. Too many times for it to have worked. The woman sprang out of the storm and her hand collided with one of the sorcerers. The body ruptured like a pinata spraying bright pink and red candy everywhere. A foot lashed out and hit another in the side, carving out most of the torso with a single hit. One of the men, an enhancer, ran forward. He was a few limbs and a pile of guts a second later.
Arena cursed out loud. One of the people turned to run, screaming, and was promptly skewered by a stinger. An energy stream soon burned away the head of the beat it belonged to. The remaining sorcerers were either also attempting to flee or were keeping their distance, sending a barrage of firepower that continued to remain ineffective. Arena grabbed Devona’s arm.
“Get down there and tell Claren to call everything off.” She sighed internally at Devona’s blank stare. “The guy you didn’t see grab my hand?” He nodded and vanished. When Arena turned back, all she saw was dead bodies and a figure in a black bodysuit.
“You work quickly, don’t you?” She didn’t respond. “No villainous monologue? I can respect that.” She darted forward and Arena dealt a long slash against her throat, sliding to the side and digging her spear into her side. She didn’t even flinch. Arena drew blood again and again, and yet it seemed to do nothing. Sand formed underneath Arena’s shoes to provide better traction upon the blood slicken ground. Her opponent wasn’t half-bad, leveraging her quick healing to power through anything Arena threw. There were a few times Arena almost felt her fingers make contact.
She created a massive hook and chain with her glass, digging deep into flesh and throwing her opponent through the window and down to the ground. Glass formed a slide that Arena skidded down, landing with a thud upon the earth. Seems that the group was still fighting despite the attempts to evacuate, as the monsters circled the sky and roared their terrible, humanoid cries.
Arena faced her opponent again, twirling her spear as it reformed in her hand. She didn’t seem phased in the slightest, the bodysuit wet and dripping with blood. Arena threw her spear and sliced through the woman’s knee, severing her leg before it appeared again. A beast came flying at Arena, claws extended before a bullet pierced it through the head. She looked over to see Kyra glance over at her right as a monster snagged onto her and yanked her into the air.
In that split second of shock, Arena felt something slash deep against her back. She saw the stinger rise back in the air, spraying her blood onto her before a fireball was flung onto it and ignited the beast. There was a split second to register what happened before pain wracked her body. She collapsed to her knees, her throat constricting and her body losing all feeling except for the ever encompassing pain.
The figure stepped closer, staring down upon her with that black visor.
“Who-what are you? Why are you doing this?” Arena managed to croak out.
“Who am I?” She echoed. Her voice was soft, softer than Arena had intended, yet lacking anything resembling kindness or empathy. “I am the Angel of Death. And this is judgement.”
As she reached her hand towards Arena’s face, a sudden thought bubbled above the agony. “So, this is how I die.”
A figure appeared next to Arena and grabbed her shoulder. All she saw was the hand of the Angel closing on empty air before everything went black.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tap. Tap. Tap. The tapping was almost undetectable under the constant hum. The room was covered end to end in screens, all displaying images in such rapid flashes it would be impossible for any normal person to register it all. Harlow Wolfsbane sat upon the floor, their fingers continuing to drum a near-silent pattern upon the hardwood. Off to the side, sipping upon a milkshake, dressed in a loose jacket and tank top was Axon Macina.
“How’s the screens?”Works better with my power than the regular ones, that’s for sure.
She nodded. The air was filled with an uncomfortable silence before she spoke up again.
“So, what you make of it all?”Subject’s magic appears to be a form of super-strength and regeneration. It’s not unheard of for disciplines to manifest with multiple abilities, yet something seems off.
“Doesn’t it, you know, disturb you a little? All this death?”
They shrugged. Not especially.
Yet another awkward silence, broken up by a long, loud sip of a milkshake. “Why aren’t you out there, by the way? Ain’t taking down freaks kinda your territory?”
Epoch wanted me to find more information before I potentially engaged.
“So, what have you discovered?”
Nothing you’d be interested in. They stared into the ground once again, fingers tapping absentmindedly. The room fell silent once again as the screens flashed green, yellow, and red, red, red.
2023.03.29 19:06 CaptApathyMC i did the hardest wikispeedrun
 | submitted by CaptApathyMC to brag [link] [comments] |
2023.03.23 17:34 deepseed_ March Mapness Update 3 - First Matchups Announced!
Hello there map creators and pubbers!
But first, a note about bracket structure. The bracket will have four quadrants. Each quadrant will have it's own seeding 1 through 4. The four quadrants will be named North, South, East, and West. South will be neutral flag maps and the other three quadrants will be capture the flag maps. Without further ado, here are the 2 seed vs 3 seed matchups for each quadrant:
North 2 Splat by Thanos Ball, Tumblewood & ThePlaymaker vs. 3 Bingo by Tumblewood & Pingu (tumblewood v tumblewood just happens to be how the MTC ratings fell!)
South 2 Liftoff by Tumblewood vs. 3 Jet Stream by BigBird
East 2 Pendant by Pingu vs. 3 Cairo by OuchMyBalls
West 2 Waterbed by OuchMyBalls vs. 3 Disassociation by NIGEL & icePlatypus
Registration Update: We are sitting at 45 players registered for the event out of our goal of 64. If you have already registered without a team, please go recruit some people! If you have not registered yet, what are you waiting for? You can register here.
If you would like to test out these maps ahead of time there are two ways to do it: 1) Click the map link, then click on test underneath the map image (this is the easiest way) 2) Create a group in tagpro, click play private games, drag yourself onto a team, click on the drop-down box on the right that says "random" and select Fortunate-Maps under the heading Externalum (it is about 3/4 of the way down the list), input the 5-digit map ID (the 5 digits at the end of the map links above) in the pop-up box, click launch game, then click back to the main tagpro game and click play now. The advantage to the second option is you can change the settings such as boost and bomb timers so that you can see how the map works without having to wait for things to respawn.
Congrats to the map creators above for making it into the tournament! Be on the lookout for the 1v4 matchups tomorrow in the final March Mapness update. See you all on Saturday :)
-Wings
submitted by deepseed_ to TagPro [link] [comments]
March Mapness is THIS SATURDAY MARCH 25 @ 9PM ET
You've been waiting patiently and now it's time for the first half of the bracket reveal...But first, a note about bracket structure. The bracket will have four quadrants. Each quadrant will have it's own seeding 1 through 4. The four quadrants will be named North, South, East, and West. South will be neutral flag maps and the other three quadrants will be capture the flag maps. Without further ado, here are the 2 seed vs 3 seed matchups for each quadrant:
North 2 Splat by Thanos Ball, Tumblewood & ThePlaymaker vs. 3 Bingo by Tumblewood & Pingu (tumblewood v tumblewood just happens to be how the MTC ratings fell!)
South 2 Liftoff by Tumblewood vs. 3 Jet Stream by BigBird
East 2 Pendant by Pingu vs. 3 Cairo by OuchMyBalls
West 2 Waterbed by OuchMyBalls vs. 3 Disassociation by NIGEL & icePlatypus
Registration Update: We are sitting at 45 players registered for the event out of our goal of 64. If you have already registered without a team, please go recruit some people! If you have not registered yet, what are you waiting for? You can register here.
If you would like to test out these maps ahead of time there are two ways to do it: 1) Click the map link, then click on test underneath the map image (this is the easiest way) 2) Create a group in tagpro, click play private games, drag yourself onto a team, click on the drop-down box on the right that says "random" and select Fortunate-Maps under the heading Externalum (it is about 3/4 of the way down the list), input the 5-digit map ID (the 5 digits at the end of the map links above) in the pop-up box, click launch game, then click back to the main tagpro game and click play now. The advantage to the second option is you can change the settings such as boost and bomb timers so that you can see how the map works without having to wait for things to respawn.
Congrats to the map creators above for making it into the tournament! Be on the lookout for the 1v4 matchups tomorrow in the final March Mapness update. See you all on Saturday :)
-Wings