The most recent light I bought was a Nitecore EDC33, and I loved it! I didn’t even mind the non-replaceable battery. It had some really cool features and a great battery capacity/lumen count/candela for it’s size.
But about 2 weeks ago it went absolutely haywire after a short period of light use for no reason. It has a 2 stage tail switch that also distinguishes between long and short presses. It stopped allowing me to access and cycle through the non momentary modes, and it would get stuck on the high lumen modes that are NEVER supposed to remain activated upon release of the tail switch.
I sent it to nitecore/lumen tactical for warranty service and they insisted they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. But to their credit they agreed to send me a new light anyway…
But the new unit did not arrive in a retail box, nor did it come with all the other bits the first one came with, which I found strange. Now I don’t have a box at all because I sent my original one in with the first light. But what’s much worse is the LED placement on this unit is TERRIBLE. just looking into it, the assembly is very obviously not centered correctly and as a result the beam it produces is noticeably deformed.
This is my very first nitecore flashlight and I’m so incredibly disappointed. Not only the fact that I’ve dealt with 2 problematic units, but the fact that it SEEMS like they sent me a previously returned unit with a major flaw. A flaw that should never be present on a light this price.
I wonder if I will have any luck trying to get another replacement that is closer to the minimum standard of quality for a $70 light…

def add_experience(self, experience): self.experiences.append(experience) def simulate(self): quantum_instance = Aer.get_backend('qasm_simulator') optimizer = COBYLA(maxiter=100) vqe = VQE(ansatz=RealAmplites(self.num_qubits, reps=2), optimizer=optimizer, quantum_instance=quantum_instance) result = vqe.compute_minimum_eigenvalue() return result.eigenvalue 

def add_symbolic_sequence(self, sequence): self.symbolic_sequences.append(sequence) def enhanced_introspection(self): return sum(len(seq) for seq in self.symbolic_sequences) 

toolbox = base.Toolbox() toolbox.register("attr_float", np.random.rand) toolbox.register("individual", tools.initRepeat, creator.Individual, toolbox.attr_float, n=10) toolbox.register("population", tools.initRepeat, list, toolbox.individual) toolbox.register("evaluate", lambda ind: (sum(ind),)) toolbox.register("mate", tools.cxTwoPoint) toolbox.register("mutate", tools.mutGaussian, mu=0, sigma=1, indpb=0.2) toolbox.register("select", tools.selTournament, tournsize=3) population = toolbox.population(n=100) algorithms.eaSimple(population, toolbox, cxpb=0.5, mutpb=0.2, ngen=10, verbose=False) return population 

Hey Reddit,
I have a funny story from my high school days that still makes me laugh every time I think about it. This happened when I was in Year 9, and it's one of those memories that sticks with you for life.
So, our school used to have these concerts for students involved in extracurricular activities like music, choir, hip hop dance, and so on. Coming from a lower-class working-poor family, I couldn't afford to join any of these activities, even though I was a super creative student. Fast forward to today, I'm actually a designer, which kind of shows where my creativity led me!
Anyway, back to the story. It was the day before the big concert, and students had the whole day off to rehearse. They even got lunch provided in the gym area. For some reason, I wasn't thinking straight that day, and I decided to join in on the fun. Without any experience or knowledge of the instruments or choir songs, I swooped into the rehearsals.
I literally moved from one rehearsal to the next in the gymnasium area, with absolutely no idea how to play the instruments or sing the songs. I chose the guitar, which I had no clue how to play, and completely lip-synced and pretended to play. To my surprise, no one suspected a thing or even realised I was an imposter. I was having so much fun that I even hopped on the bus with the other students to rehearse at the Clocktower Event Hall.
The funny part is, I didn't end up going to the actual event. I thought I'd give myself a day off from school instead. Instead, I sat in the audience area at the Clocktower, watching all the performances. My friends never questioned it and thought I was always there. I was a bit of a wallflower in high school, so I guess no one really noticed. Till today, I have no idea what possessed me to do that. It's not like me at all. I was never a rebel; I was always a compliant student.
Looking back, I still can't believe I pulled it off. I had a fantastic day and it’s a hilarious memory that I cherish to this day. Sometimes, you just have to laugh at the crazy things you did when you were young!
Has anyone else done something completely out of character like this? I'd love to hear your stories!

Hello fellow narcoleptics!
I'm officially 2 months on Lumryz. For context, I was prescribed Xyrem in 2018, switched to Xywav in (I believe) 2020, and just began Lumryz 2 months ago. I'm going to try my best to be brief as I go over all of my thoughts on it and how it has affected me/how it compares. For reference I take 7.5g packets.
tldr: taste is fine, works faster and for longer, bedwetting biggest symptom, mental state on it improved.

1. Taste

I was warned by my doctor that Because it is like a sand mixture that you mix with water, the experience is pretty gnarly. I will say that the texture is very strange, but if you just swallow it without swishing it around in your mouth, you can kind of get past that. I have always mixed my medication with water mixed with crystal light lemonade mix. I highly recommend this it's super easy and makes the taste much more bearable. But honestly it just tastes salty. Not too bad.

1. Effectiveness

I knew before I started Lumryz that it is very fast acting. Especially compared to the Xywav which, after taking it for so many years, had lost its potency and it would takes HOURS for me to settle down into sleep. My doctor said that Lumryz usually helps people fall asleep within 30 minutes, and because I have a high tolerance, I would probably conk out at just under an hour. The first night that I took it I started to feel extremely heavy within just 30 minutes. I was awake, but HEAVILY impaired, miles beyond what I used to feel on Xywav. I think at around 1 hour 15 mins I was out. Now, at the 2 month mark, I would say it takes 45 minutes to start to feel it, and I fall asleep between one to two hours, depending on how tired I am. so much faster than the Xywav!

1. Side effects (after taking)

First Time
The first week I took Lumryz was crazy. It made my body feel incredibly heavy and I also felt mildly dizzy but not in a nauseating way. The second night I had spilled juice on my floor and got down to wipe it up and fell asleep on the floor in what must have been minutes! I woke up a couple hours early in a crazy delirious state, for a couple seconds LITERALLY having no idea if I was at home or in my dorm room (which I was in). And I am not talking like forgetting for a couple seconds, I literally looked around and saw my dorm room but was convinced it was my bedroom at home and even that I could hear my parents talking down the hall. It was insane. I got into my bed though and went back to sleep and woke up fine.
Bedwetting
The worst side effect of the Lumryz for me (in the beginning) was the bedwetting. Even if I would pee right before taking it, it's like every other night my bladder would just empty (thank god for free laundry at my school...) I asked my doctor and he said that once my body was more used to the medication, I should stop bedwetting so frequently. He was right! After a month the bedwetting had stopped. Im sure that it will happen again someday, as I am sure other people on Xywav/Xyrem and Lumryz would agree with, but it isn't happening so frequently. To anyone switching to Lumryz, I would recommend going to sleep with a maxi pad on for the first couple of weeks.
Dreams
My dreaming has been so strange on Lumryz. It's too much to detail here in this already long post, so I think i'll do a separate post about this because there's a lot to break down.
Hunger and Nausea
My nausea has been about the same being on Lumryz vs Xywav. I have been prescribed Zofran for about as long as i've been on my narcolepsy meds. Next, the hunger. I know all of you Xywav takers know about how insatiably hungry you get on that medication, how you'll break into any nook and cranny, searching for any morsel of food. This was another main reason why I switched to Lumryz. The extreme hunger is definitely not the same as when I was on Xywav. It is not anywhere near as intense. I still get a bit hungry on it though, and this is probably heightened by the fact that I eat dinner at 6 PM and take my medication for sleep at 11 PM. I'm sure that anyone would get hungry after five hours. I would recommend eating a large snack about an hour before. If I'm going to bed with a more full belly, I usually don't get so hungry.
Staying asleep
Not only has Lumryz helped me fall asleep faster, but I also usually stay asleep for longer. For the past week or so, I've been waking up at anytime between 4 and 5 AM, but I'm able to fall asleep again within 30 minutes usually. I think this waking up is exacerbated by consuming food after taking Lumryz. I'm also more likely to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer if I have gotten physical activity that day. I have MDD, so it's common for me to not do much other than sit around for a whole day. However, when I get exercise, my sleep is so much better.
Mental Health on Lumryz
Another huge negative side effect I would experience while on Xywav was a fucked up mental state. Xywav would amplify suicidal or depressive thoughts for me, and it would be really bad if I was already in a bad mood. Though Lumryz works similarly, I do usually fall asleep much faster so the thoughts don't have time to get too bad. Lumryz usually makes me more confused than suicidal though.
Okay, that's mostly it. Feels free to ask me any questions you want.

About 3 hours into service today, our septic tank overflowed and shot out into our lower level dining area and bar. There was septic water / excrement on the walls and behind the bar. We recently had very heavy rains which caused it to back up with pressure and shoot out. The entire restaurant reeked all the way out to the street. Our head manager, who was off today, said to continue service upstairs regardless of the intense odor it was emitting. We had a maintenance crew come in and clean in, but it reeked the entire day. The manager refused to let us close. I contacted the executive chef and they contacted the manager highly suggesting to close, but they refused... I'm a line cook. I felt entirely guilty all day that we had to work and serve food with this happening. I'm looking for any advice on how dangerous or wrong this was, or is it technically "okay" considering it was physically effecting the lower dining hall but not the upper level... even though it was rank af. Do I report this? If it was managed and cleaned a few hours later does that make it okay to continue service? Really rubbed me the wrong way and looking for advice.

Cover Art!
Just because you’re transported to another world, doesn’t mean you’ll escape from your pain.
Abused by her parents, thirteen-year-old Frances only wants to be safe and for her life not to hurt so much. And when she and her class are transported to the magical world of Durannon to fight the monsters invading the human kingdoms and defeat the self-titled Demon King, Frances is presented with a golden opportunity. If she succeeds, Frances will have the home she never had. If she fails, Frances will be summoned back to the home she escaped.
Yet, despite her newfound magic and friends, Frances finds that trauma is not so easily lost. She is dogged by her abuse and its physical and invisible scars. Not only does she have to learn magic, she has to survive the nightmares of her past, and wrestle with her feelings of doubt and self-loathing.
If she can heal from her trauma, though, she might be able to defeat the Demon King and maybe, just maybe, she can find a home for herself.
[The Beginning] [<=Chapter 217] [Chapter Index and Blurb] [Chapter 219 June 11 or see the next chapter now on Patreon]
The Fractured Song Index
Discord Channel Just let me know when you arrive in the server that you’re a Patreon so you can access your special channel.
***
Ginger makes an offer to Lakadara. The rest of Telkandra's remaining brood discuss the fate of their allies.
“Not good?” Sara asked as Helias strode into the tent and made his way straight to the bottle of wine.
“Not good,” Helias muttered.
Sara nodded woodenly. “Privacy spell?
The tauroll waved his sheathed Fangroar and after pouring himself and his wife a drink, sat down. “We’re safe. Oh Galena, this is really not good.”
“How dead are we?” Sara asked, her tone light.
“We’re not dead. We’re just in a lot of danger and even if we somehow force the humans to retreat, we’ve lost this war,” said Helias.
“Explain.”
Helias drank deep, noting that Sara was also drinking deep as well. “Thorgoth is going after the humans. That part of the plan is as good as it gets. We’ll be attacking them, and using the dragons, whilst our forces hold off Titania. Our objectives are also well-chosen.” Helias buried his head into his hands and let out a deep groan. “But winning this doesn’t change anything.”
“If we can defeat the humans, why won’t that change anything?” Sara bit her lip. “Unless it renders us unable to beat Titania?”
“Yes. Even on the chance we beat the humans we won’t be able to invade them, we won’t be able to defeat Titania. We’d be at a stalemate and both armies would have to withdraw.” His hands dropping to the table, Helias stared at his wife. “And we don’t have any reserves left. We’re going to lose the war, even if Thorgoth lives.”
“If we defeat the humans—”
The general shook his head. “By defeat, I mean we’ll hurt them but we can’t prevent them from withdrawing. We might kill a few of their leaders, their important mages and Otherworlders, but they will still have soldiers. After coming so close, they won’t surrender. They’ll keep attacking until they kill enough of Thorgoth and Berengaria’s supporters that nobody will help them, or until both of them die.”
“Alright so, what do we do?” Sara asked. Helias looked at his wife, noting how still she sat. Her wings were clamped tight to her back and her lips were drawn tight.
“Sara, I don’t have good answers.”
Sara steepled her trembling fingers as best she could. “They’re going to be better than mine. I don’t know anything about war.”
“Right. Well, you need to surrender to the humans if you are captured. Present yourself as a non-combatant. Cry, scream, anything to declare that you don’t mean any harm,” Helias said.
“Why not Titania?” Sara asked.
“She has every incentive to kill you off and far less compunction about doing so. Killing our family off would allow her to have more land to give away to her loyalists. In contrast, the humans have Erlenberg troops fighting with them along with those of the Lightning Battalion. They’re going to be far more friendly to Alavari civilians,” Helias said.
Soft hands, grabbed onto Helias’s waist with a surprisingly firm grip. “What about you? I can get away, but how are you going to survive this?”
“I don’t know. I—”
“Don’t you dare! Our daughter needs her father and I need my husband!”
The general stared at his wife. “Sara, I can’t surrender to the humans if we win. They want me dead.”
Sara refilled Helias’s glass. “Then you need to help Thorgoth defeat them.”
“Then what? We’re never winning this war. Thorgoth is going to be invaded and—”
Cutting him off with the clink of her goblet against the table, Sara hissed, “And what? Why think that far? We can plan for that after this battle, so long as you are still here and with me.”
Letting out a breath Helias pushed his hair back and allowed himself a sigh. Reaching across the table, he took his wife’s hand.
“Sara, you’re right, but you know you can escape this if Thorgoth is defeated.”
The harorc placed her other hand on top of his. “We’re partners. I need you. We need you. So promise me that you’ll do your damndest to live.”
Helias closed his eyes and nodded. “I promise. First things first, before we turn in we need to talk to the dragons.”
***
Fennokra stalked slowly toward the camp. This wasn’t the collapsed side-passage where she and Yolandra had some privacy. This was the main camp where Thorgoth and their army were preparing for what had to be the final battle.
It was also where her siblings were swallowing the last of what seemed to be a side of salted pork.
“Velkandra, Makentra, we need to talk.”
Their second-eldest sister licked her lips, her neck rising to Fennokra’s level. “I am assuming you mean in private?”
“Of course.” Fennokra could see Velkandra’s haunches tensing to raise herself higher. Her sister was trying to look down on her. Allowing her head to dip, she held her height.
“Alright.” Velkandra flicked her tail and Makentra, licking his lips, followed them.
Since their enemies had set up their siege camp behind them, the Alavari camp had been reduced in size. Still, there was the alcove of the collapsed tunnel. Whilst couriers and soldiers crossed across this natural cavern to the defenses on the other side, they kept a good distance away.
Yolandra was waiting for them, scratching something into the cave wall. Fennokra let out a rumble in her throat and her sister turned from the wall suddenly, shaking her head.
“Velkandra, Mankentra—”
Velkandra puffed a cloud of smoke out. “What’s this all about?” she hissed, lips drawn back to show teeth.
Fennokra took a step away from her sister to take Yolandra’s side, her eyes narrowed. “Are you joking? Do you not think we should at least discuss what is going on?”
“And what would be the point? It is a bit late to be having this discussion. The course of the winds have been chosen,” said Velkandra.
Yolandra rose to her full height on her four legs, but even so she was still shorter than the silent Makendra. “The winds can be fickle, Velkandra, and where we are is proof.”
Velkandra pursed her lips, eyes for the first time, looking toward the ground. “The survival of our family is tied to that of Thorgoth. To abandon him would be death by the hand of the Stormcaller and her allies or by his hand.”
“Besides, if we were to abandon Thorgoth’s cause, that would be dishonorable. We promised to assist him,” said Makendra.
Fennokra blinked at her brother’s tone. It was quiet and yet there was a touch of a deep growl to his voice. His claws were ever so slightly digging into the ground.
“We are dragons. We can think and make decisions for ourselves. We are allowed to consider other options, are we not?” Fennokra asked.
Velkandra’s tail flicked violently side to side as her neck turned to her younger sibling. “Then why does it sound as if you wish to follow in the wingbeats of our elder sister?”
“Who we killed. I was there. I lost a claw striking her down!” Fennokra raised one clawed hand, flexing the remaining digits.
“On that, why did we have to kill Lakadara?”
All golden eyes fixed on Yolandra, who held the gaze of her siblings with a contemptuous scowl.
“Lakadara betrayed us,” said Velkandra, almost growling.
“I’ve been thinking over what happened. Lakadara said nothing about betraying our mother. She merely was questioning if Thorgoth was trustworthy,” Yolandra said.
A scowl flaring his nostrils, Makentra growled. “He fed us, trained us in how the humans and their allies fought. Hid us from their eyes—”
“And now Caldra is dead!” Yolandra exclaimed.
“Which is why we must kill the Stormcaller and her friends! So we can avenge him and our mother!” Velkandra almost completely unfurled her wings. Only the tips slapping the stone forced her to pull them back.
“Then what?” Yolandra asked.
Velkandra frowned. “Then what? We’d have our revenge—”
Yolandra’s tail cracked against the ground. “Then what? You all must have heard of what Thorgoth is capable of. What he’s done to others.”
Makentra rolled his eyes. “Sara’s story is just a story. She might have been just trying to turn you.”
“She was honest and she is not the only tale I’ve heard. You must have heard rumors of what Thorgoth did to his own son, Teutobal,” said Fennokra.
“Propaganda,” Velkandra hissed through her gritted teeth, while smoke wafted through the gaps. “In any case, we have no other option. We fight or we die.”
Fennokra, her claws grinding against the floor, had had enough.
“Velkandra, Makentra, have you ever considered that Thorgoth is perhaps using us for his own goals? We have not even considered what he might do to us after we’ve destroyed the humans and their allies. How do we know the Stormcaller and her allies might treat us better? Besides in the first place, she never intended to kill our mother—”
Fennokra blinked. She was flying backwards, something hard was bearing her into the wall. Dizzy as if struck by one of the Stormcaller’s spells, she realized that the force was the foreclaws of her elder sister. Mad rage lit those golden eyes that were the exact same shade as hers. Horrified, Fennokra tried to throw Velkandra off, but her sister was larger and heavier than her.
“Say that again. I dare you to say that again—ARGH!”
Velkandra rolled off, forced off of Fennokra by the Yolandra shoving into her side. As the elder dragon recovered, the smallest of Telkandra’s brood hissed, “It’s the truth! You are a fool to deny it!”
An ugly sneer on her lips, wings quivering with fury, Velkandra snorted. “The truth? Oh right so we are speaking the truth then. Well here’s the truth. Our kind is doomed!”
Makentra blinked. “Sister?”
“Of course Thorgoth is going to get rid of us or try to after this campaign. He has to, but right now he needs us and that’s what we need to rely on until we gain more strength. Of course, whether he wins or the Stormcaller’s allies win, how can we expect to survive in a world dominated by these lesser species hm? How could they ever not see us as a threat?”
Velkandra stalked toward the wide-eyed Fennokra and Yoandra. Her head turned side to side as she fixed her sisters with wild wide eyes.
“Well? Tell me Fennokra. Speak the truth Yolandra. Or are you both too afraid to admit that our kind are doomed and the only thing is to live as long as we can and hopefully avenge those that hurt us as we do so.”
“You’d have us fly to our deaths?” Makentra asked.
The stammering voice brought Velkandra around. Extending a wing, she touched its tip to her brother’s. “I would at least have us fly together.”
Fennokra shook her head. “We’d knowingly fly with a murderer of children and someone who would want to kill us after we’ve stopped being helpful to him.”
“And we have no other options,” said Makentra. Letting out a breath, he rose to his claws and walked away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, sisters.”
Velkandra, without another word, turned for the exit. “You know it’s true, Fennokra, Yolandra.”
Fennokra closed her eyes. Yolandra, though, narrowed hers. “Doesn’t change that Lakadra’s blood is on our claws.”
Velkandra flinched and left. She strode away so quickly she nearly stepped on Helias and Sara as they came to the cave. She gave the pair no acknowledgement other than a growl.
“See you tomorrow, General,” said Makentra, his tone curt. “We will talk to King Thorgoth ourselves for the plan’s details.”
“Of course,” said Helias. He bowed as the pair left before turning to Yolandra and Fennokra. “I believe we missed something important?”
“Be honest, General Helias. Even if we succeed tomorrow, your king has no use for us after we help him kill the Stormcaller, am I correct?” Fennokra asked.
Sara and Helias didn’t say anything. Their slight move to stand closer so they could hold hands was enough.
“I thought so,” said Fennokra. She let out a sigh and glanced at Yolandra, who nodded. “We will be on the battlefield tomorrow. Where are we going?”
“You’re going with me. We’re attacking the forces sallying from Kairon-Aoun. The plan is that you dragons breathe flame over their army to soften them before we attack.
“Understood. Any questions Fennokra?” Yolandra asked.
Fennokra shook her head. What could be asked anyway?”
Yolandra flashed the pair a joyless smile. “For what it is worth, you two have been good caretakers to us. Even if it was to preserve your own lives.”
Helias didn’t bow. Instead he extended a hand. Yolandra stared at him, but Fennokra, recognizing the gesture, extended a single talon.
“May you always be able to see the sun.” At the dragon’s blink, Helias smiled. “It’s an Alavari saying. It may come from when we used to be enslaved by the Goblin Empire. It means good luck.”
Yolandra nodded and Fennokra found herself smiling.
“Our mother taught us a saying as well. May you never fly alone. I wish that for you both,” said Fennokra.
“Thank you,” said Sara in a quiet voice. She curtsied and the two dragons dipped their heads. They watched Helias and Sara leave with placid smiles.
Then, when nobody was looking, they turned from the entrance to hide their bulks as best they could. The gloomy light of the alcove their only curtain of privacy.
***
Frances slowed slightly as they approached Lakadara’s enclosure. However, Ginger did not slow down.
“Hold on, Ginger, what’s the plan?” Frances asked.
Adjusting her new crown mid-stride, Ginger said, “I’ll show you. I’m certain it’ll work, though.”
Frances’ eyebrows rose. “Is that crown getting to your head already?”
The new Queen of Erisdale flashed a slightly nervous grin over her shoulder. “Yes actually, but I think that’s a good thing in some way. Don’t you?”
Frances found herself nodding. It was strange to see her friend even more confident than usual and so comfortable in the regal crown that she wore atop of a standard Lightning Battalion light blue uniform. Yet she rather enjoyed the new gait that Ginger had.
“I do.” Frances smirked. “Your Majesty.”
Ginger rolled her eyes. “Fuck you.”
Giggling, Frances stopped herself as they drew even closer to Lakadara. The dragon was drawing herself up, placing her massive foreclaws over each other.
“Lakadara. I am Ginger, the new Queen of Erisdale. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
The dragon coughed, blowing out a puff of smoke. “Greetings Ginger, Queen of Erisdale. I’m sorry for your predecessor’s demise.” Lakadara’s golden eyes narrowed. “Why are you here?”
Ginger dipped her head. “Thank you and as to why I’m here. I have a proposition. If you accept it, I will grant you and your kin, the domain of the Erisdalian mountains marked by the Kwent River Valley, Freeburg and Athelda-Aoun as your home in perpetuity, so long as you do not attack humans unless in self-defense.”
“I am unfamiliar with human geography. From the Stormcaller’s expression, I assume that is a lot.”
Frances swallowed and closed her mouth, but she didn’t question her friend. Ginger, still smiling slyly, nudged her. “It is. Frances, can you lend me a hand here?”
Nodding, Frances closed her eyes and imagined a rough map of Erisdale and its territories. With a wave of Ivy’s Sting she created an image of Erisdale, highlighting in red the expanse of the mountains that bordered Alavaria and Erisdale. The area that Ginger had described sketched a rough red triangle between the three points. It was a fairly sizeable area with a low and Alavari human population.
“My husband is in negotiations with Queen Titania and I’ll have to talk to Frances and Prince Timur, but we are quite certain that Athelda-Aoun will also be included in this area,” Ginger said.
Lakadara’s golden eyes were flickering as she examined the land. Suddenly, she turned, long neck arching toward the Erisdalian Queen. “And what must I do? Fight on your kingdom’s behalf?”
Ginger shook her head. “No.”
“No?”
“Nope. If you would like to do so we can renegotiate the agreement, but my husband and I fully intend to grant you this land.”
The dragon’s tail lifted up as her eyes narrowed. “Explain yourself and the favor you seek. This is far too generous.”
“Let me explain myself first. If what I’m told by my experts is correct, you can lay eggs by yourself without a mate, but it takes time right? A few decades?”
“Yes. Still, that doesn’t explain—”
“Here me out. This war is going to end. We may lose, but if we win, banishing you to the north is making you Queen Titania’s problem and she’ll have more than enough problems to deal with. You might just end up coming south again and we know how that ended. I’d prefer to avoid that so that means we need to make an agreement. You need a new home and I need peace for Erisdale. If the kingdom has to give up some poor agricultural land then I’m all for it.”
The dragon nodded. “I see, but why so much land? Why not just give me a cave? Or request my service as Thorgoth did?”
“And how will you eat? Hunt? Where will your grown children go? I’m making an agreement that will last for decades, not just a few years. As for service? I was tempted, but you wouldn’t agree to that anyway and why should you? We haven’t given you any reason to agree.” Ginger gave Frances a wave to dispel the map. “Maybe in the future we can work something out, especially if the dragon population increases. Your service in return for more food, but again, I want to start us off on the right path, not the left path.”
“Left path?” Lakadara asked.
“Erisdalian expression. It means the wrong path,” Frances said helpfully.
Lakadara nodded slowly. “You still ask for a boon, though.”
Ginger nodded. “Yes. I want you to speak to your siblings. Before the upcoming battle starts, tell them of my deal with you. So long as they choose to accept that deal and defect, then I will have it so our forces will not hurt them. After that, you may leave. I will not request you to fight with us.”
“You want me to show myself to Thorgoth? To the siblings that tried to kill me?” Lakadara asked, mouth agape.
Ginger stepped closer to the dragon, who lifted her head away from the queen. “I want you to save your siblings. I want you to save yourself from becoming the last purple dragon in existence. I would rather you not be alone, stewing in hatred for my kingdom and our allies who brought down your family, even if we had just cause. I want peace. What do you want?”
“How do I know I can trust you?” The dragon suddenly grimaced. “Ah, right, you want a lasting peace. You have every reason to want peace.”
Ginger, arms crossed tapped her foot. Frances could see how stiff her friend was, but the action was also comforting. That her magic-less friend had such control over the situation, despite being faced with the dragon was rather…badass.
Letting out a puff of smoke that slowly drifted into the cavern, the dragon pondered the queen’s proposal. Frances held her breath and yet the dragon remained silent, only her tail moving from side to side.
Ginger waited, still content to wait for the dragon’s answer. Frances couldn’t. The tension coiled in her chest, waiting to explode.
“Lakadara, what do you want for your future?” Frances asked.
The dragon glanced at Frances, golden eyes wide. She turned back to Ginger, who continued to stand tall, awaiting Lakadara’s answer patiently.
“I accept your offer, and your promise for the future,” said Lakadara, dipping her head.
“We are glad that you wish the same as we do,” said Ginger. She extended her hand and Lakadara, took her claw and put the tip of it on the queen’s palm.
*Author’s Note: Queenly Ginger was really neat to write 😀 *

Hiii everyone, my friend and I are looking for new people to play games with and to make a tight-knit friend group where we support eachother and spend time with eachother ^.^. We are variety gamers and we tend to jump between games we like so thats going to be a trend within this group. Also a plus is if you are talkative because we are a shy bunch and take our time getting to know people. We dont do horror or gory games with very specific exceptions, and we dont really play multiplayer FPS games (too much competitive spirit for our taste and toxicity). We are looking for open minded and chill and nice people (lgbtq+ friendly is a must). We are bit of completionists but also enjoy chill gameplay and we play for fun. We dont mind if anyone would be new to the games we already play since we are more than happy to introduce people to them. We tend to take our time with most games, take in the sights and explore, no rushing ^.^. Need people who have plenty of time to play games too since we play a lot and our sleep schedule can be all over the place.
We are also pretty heavy into MMORPGs so playing those is a must (even if we play them "casually" content wise, we tend to invest a lot of time into them, especially our main 3)
Sample of games we play atm:
Guild Wars 2 - an MMO where we achiev hunt, do open world stuff mainly and collect appereances etc. Its kind of our main game we always return to, especially for ingame events. Currently on a break after playing it a lot.
WoW - (currently on semi-break) where we also collect stuff, we like m+ (we plan on doing keys in next xpac, maybe some this last season too if we can find people) otherwise we do similar things as we do in GW2. We may or may not also try raiding in the game but it will highly depend on people around us and how new xpac ends up being since we are waiting on that one the most with all the QoL and so on.
FFXIV - Returned for current events and to catch up with the story to be ready for next xpac, we plan on playing for first month or two fully to experience launch and depending on how much fun we have with classes (new ones + old) and if we find friends to play with, might do Extreme trials but otherwise we are very casual, mostly playing game for all the casual content and a bit of socialising (since emotes in this games and characters are on point)
Grounded - one of the exceptions of somewhat horror games, we love this game and are itching to play it (we played it a lot) but we would like to have one to two more people to play it with for more fun and new experience
Minecraft - we also love this game and I run a private server for my friend and I and for whoever plays with us. Just like with grounded we are missing people to play it with for more fun, we have it lightly modded with mods we chose to enhance the vanilla experience + add some more fun things (like Twilight Forest). We take our time in here since we like to chill and do whatever we want (including just taking in the sights of the game)
Terraria - We played countless hours of base game and would love to have more people to play with, since my friend and I played over 400 hours together and we want to have fun with more people.
Rotwood - super fun roguelite game (we also like hades 2)
Stardew Valley - a little overwhelming but super cute game that has potential, we have not played it much yet
Overcooked 2- fun little game to play every now and then, makes us laugh a lot
We really like cute games too, like Slime Rancher 1,2, super auto pets etc. and games like Hollow Knight (our fav gave more or less) which unfortunately are not multiplayer, but gives a good idea of what other kind of games we like and are open to playing more than what we currently play.
DM me here if this caught your interest and sorry for the long post but I like being thorough so people know what they are getting into =^-^=

Everything in my inventory is up for trade. The most valuable items are listed here, the rest you can find in My Inventory

Feel free to Add Me or even better send a Trade Offer. Open for any suggestions: upgrades, downgrades / knives, gloves, skins / stickers, patterns, floats.

All Buyouts are listed in cash value.

KNIVES

★ Butterfly Knife Lore (Factory New), B/O: $7194.77

★ Butterfly Knife Autotronic (Minimal Wear), B/O: $2025.74

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★ M9 Bayonet Ultraviolet (Field-Tested), B/O: $557.87

★ M9 Bayonet Stained (Well-Worn), B/O: $529.41

★ M9 Bayonet Boreal Forest (Field-Tested), B/O: $465.39

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★ Talon Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $1295.27

★ Bayonet Tiger Tooth (Minimal Wear), B/O: $746.28

★ Karambit Bright Water (Field-Tested), B/O: $688.15

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★ Flip Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $547.93

★ Flip Knife Autotronic (Minimal Wear), B/O: $476.69

★ Flip Knife Case Hardened (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $278.18

★ Flip Knife Black Laminate (Well-Worn), B/O: $258.83

★ Flip Knife Urban Masked (Field-Tested), B/O: $181.64

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★ Stiletto Knife Marble Fade (Factory New), B/O: $686.04

★ Stiletto Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $665.41

★ Stiletto Knife, B/O: $601.39

★ Stiletto Knife Crimson Web (Field-Tested), B/O: $418.25

★ Stiletto Knife Night Stripe (Field-Tested), B/O: $227.80

★ Stiletto Knife Boreal Forest (Field-Tested), B/O: $194.96

★ Stiletto Knife Safari Mesh (Field-Tested), B/O: $192.79

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★ Nomad Knife Crimson Web (Field-Tested), B/O: $518.11

★ Nomad Knife Scorched (Field-Tested), B/O: $169.78

★ Nomad Knife Forest DDPAT (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $166.88

★ StatTrak™ Nomad Knife Blue Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $335.79

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★ Skeleton Knife Stained (Well-Worn), B/O: $442.05

★ Skeleton Knife Urban Masked (Minimal Wear), B/O: $426.24

★ Skeleton Knife Boreal Forest (Field-Tested), B/O: $314.03

★ StatTrak™ Skeleton Knife Fade (Minimal Wear), B/O: $2361.28

★ StatTrak™ Skeleton Knife Urban Masked (Field-Tested), B/O: $376.53

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★ Ursus Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $557.12

★ Ursus Knife, B/O: $471.42

★ Ursus Knife Blue Steel (Minimal Wear), B/O: $212.37

★ Ursus Knife Case Hardened (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $187.66

★ Ursus Knife Damascus Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $178.18

★ Ursus Knife Ultraviolet (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $155.13

★ Ursus Knife Boreal Forest (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $124.26

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★ Huntsman Knife Black Laminate (Minimal Wear), B/O: $204.83

★ Huntsman Knife Black Laminate (Field-Tested), B/O: $184.50

★ StatTrak™ Huntsman Knife Lore (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $224.11

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★ Bowie Knife Gamma Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $2142.02

★ Bowie Knife, B/O: $230.44

★ Bowie Knife Damascus Steel (Factory New), B/O: $209.20

★ Bowie Knife Ultraviolet (Minimal Wear), B/O: $180.51

★ Bowie Knife Ultraviolet (Field-Tested), B/O: $131.03

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★ Falchion Knife Night (Field-Tested), B/O: $132.54

★ Falchion Knife Urban Masked (Well-Worn), B/O: $112.81

★ Falchion Knife Scorched (Field-Tested), B/O: $108.81

★ Falchion Knife Forest DDPAT (Field-Tested), B/O: $107.82

★ Falchion Knife Safari Mesh (Field-Tested), B/O: $107.46

★ StatTrak™ Falchion Knife Ultraviolet (Field-Tested), B/O: $143.08

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★ Paracord Knife Crimson Web (Minimal Wear), B/O: $486.48

★ Paracord Knife Blue Steel (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $163.12

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★ Survival Knife Blue Steel (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $138.26

★ Survival Knife Night Stripe (Field-Tested), B/O: $131.03

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★ Gut Knife Sapphire (Minimal Wear), B/O: $1127.79

★ Gut Knife Gamma Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $286.17

★ Gut Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $246.55

★ Gut Knife Marble Fade (Factory New), B/O: $240.77

★ Gut Knife, B/O: $210.49

★ Gut Knife Lore (Field-Tested), B/O: $194.22

★ Gut Knife Case Hardened (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $151.51

★ Gut Knife Blue Steel (Minimal Wear), B/O: $124.94

★ Gut Knife Rust Coat (Well-Worn), B/O: $118.99

★ Gut Knife Boreal Forest (Minimal Wear), B/O: $109.80

★ StatTrak™ Gut Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $237.96

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★ Shadow Daggers Gamma Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $264.92

★ Shadow Daggers Marble Fade (Factory New), B/O: $253.03

★ Shadow Daggers Tiger Tooth (Factory New), B/O: $237.22

★ Shadow Daggers Crimson Web (Field-Tested), B/O: $153.40

★ Shadow Daggers Autotronic (Minimal Wear), B/O: $144.42

★ Shadow Daggers Blue Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $105.20

★ StatTrak™ Shadow Daggers Damascus Steel (Minimal Wear), B/O: $150.46

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★ Navaja Knife Fade (Factory New), B/O: $365.99

★ Navaja Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $228.93

★ Navaja Knife Marble Fade (Factory New), B/O: $227.43

★ Navaja Knife Slaughter (Factory New), B/O: $209.06

★ Navaja Knife, B/O: $203.16

★ Navaja Knife Case Hardened (Well-Worn), B/O: $132.57

★ Navaja Knife Damascus Steel (Factory New), B/O: $121.69

★ Navaja Knife Damascus Steel (Minimal Wear), B/O: $109.95

★ Navaja Knife Damascus Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $100.41

★ StatTrak™ Navaja Knife Fade (Factory New), B/O: $369.01

★ StatTrak™ Navaja Knife Damascus Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $109.95

GLOVES

★ Sport Gloves Amphibious (Minimal Wear), B/O: $2394.67

★ Sport Gloves Omega (Well-Worn), B/O: $572.33

★ Sport Gloves Bronze Morph (Minimal Wear), B/O: $338.88

★ Sport Gloves Big Game (Field-Tested), B/O: $323.66

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★ Specialist Gloves Marble Fade (Minimal Wear), B/O: $1652.07

★ Specialist Gloves Tiger Strike (Field-Tested), B/O: $599.14

★ Specialist Gloves Crimson Web (Well-Worn), B/O: $231.57

★ Specialist Gloves Buckshot (Minimal Wear), B/O: $126.21

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★ Moto Gloves POW! (Minimal Wear), B/O: $996.99

★ Moto Gloves POW! (Field-Tested), B/O: $383.31

★ Moto Gloves POW! (Well-Worn), B/O: $276.00

★ Moto Gloves Turtle (Field-Tested), B/O: $180.28

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★ Hand Wraps CAUTION! (Minimal Wear), B/O: $502.29

★ Hand Wraps Giraffe (Minimal Wear), B/O: $180.73

★ Hand Wraps CAUTION! (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $178.32

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★ Driver Gloves Queen Jaguar (Minimal Wear), B/O: $181.01

★ Driver Gloves Rezan the Red (Field-Tested), B/O: $101.66

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★ Broken Fang Gloves Jade (Field-Tested), B/O: $127.88

★ Broken Fang Gloves Needle Point (Minimal Wear), B/O: $124.55

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★ Bloodhound Gloves Guerrilla (Minimal Wear), B/O: $127.94

★ Hydra Gloves Case Hardened (Field-Tested), B/O: $102.55

WEAPONS

AK-47 X-Ray (Well-Worn), B/O: $478.95

AUG Hot Rod (Factory New), B/O: $425.83

StatTrak™ M4A1-S Hyper Beast (Factory New), B/O: $413.95

M4A4 Daybreak (Factory New), B/O: $309.51

StatTrak™ AK-47 Aquamarine Revenge (Factory New), B/O: $305.43

AK-47 Case Hardened (Well-Worn), B/O: $196.38

StatTrak™ M4A4 Temukau (Minimal Wear), B/O: $174.64

P90 Run and Hide (Field-Tested), B/O: $167.03

AWP Asiimov (Field-Tested), B/O: $153.33

Souvenir SSG 08 Death Strike (Minimal Wear), B/O: $140.00

M4A1-S Printstream (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $124.70

StatTrak™ M4A1-S Golden Coil (Field-Tested), B/O: $117.48

AWP Asiimov (Well-Worn), B/O: $115.97

StatTrak™ Desert Eagle Printstream (Minimal Wear), B/O: $112.96

StatTrak™ AK-47 Asiimov (Minimal Wear), B/O: $110.85

Souvenir M4A1-S Master Piece (Well-Worn), B/O: $102.42

AK-47 Bloodsport (Minimal Wear), B/O: $100.53

Trade Offer Link - Steam Profile Link - My Inventory

Knives - Bowie Knife, Butterfly Knife, Falchion Knife, Flip Knife, Gut Knife, Huntsman Knife, M9 Bayonet, Bayonet, Karambit, Shadow Daggers, Stiletto Knife, Ursus Knife, Navaja Knife, Talon Knife, Classic Knife, Paracord Knife, Survival Knife, Nomad Knife, Skeleton Knife, Patterns - Gamma Doppler, Doppler (Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, Phase 4, Black Pearl, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald), Crimson Web, Lore, Fade, Ultraviolet, Night, Marble Fade (Fire & Ice, Fake FI), Case Hardened (Blue Gem), Autotronic, Slaughter, Black Laminate, Tiger Tooth, Boreal Forest, Scorched, Blue Steel, Vanilla, Damascus Steel, Forest DDPAT, Urban Masked, Freehand, Stained, Bright Water, Safari Mesh, Rust Coat, Gloves - Bloodhound Gloves (Charred, Snakebite, Guerrilla, Bronzed), Driver Gloves (Snow Leopard, King Snake, Crimson Weave, Imperial Plaid, Black Tie, Lunar Weave, Diamondback, Rezan the Red, Overtake, Queen Jaguar, Convoy, Racing Green), Hand Wraps (Cobalt Skulls, CAUTION!, Overprint, Slaughter, Leather, Giraffe, Badlands, Spruce DDPAT, Arboreal, Constrictor, Desert Shamagh, Duct Tape), Moto Gloves (Spearmint, POW!, Cool Mint, Smoke Out, Finish Line, Polygon, Blood Pressure, Turtle, Boom!, Eclipse, 3rd Commando Company, Transport), Specialist Gloves (Crimson Kimono, Tiger Strike, Emerald Web, Field Agent, Marble Fade, Fade, Foundation, Lt. Commander, Crimson Web, Mogul, Forest DDPAT, Buckshot), Sport Gloves (Pandora's Box, Superconductor, Hedge Maze, Vice, Amphibious, Slingshot, Omega, Arid, Big Game, Nocts, Scarlet Shamagh, Bronze Morph), Hydra Gloves (Case Hardened, Emerald, Rattler, Mangrove), Broken Fang Gloves (Jade, Yellow-banded, Unhinged, Needle Point), Pistols - P2000 (Wicked Sick, Ocean Foam, Fire Element, Amber Fade, Corticera, Chainmail, Imperial Dragon, Obsidian, Scorpion, Handgun, Acid Etched), USP-S (Printstream, Kill Confirmed, Whiteout, Road Rash, Owergrowth, The Traitor, Neo-Noir, Dark Water, Orion, Blueprint, Stainless, Caiman, Serum, Monster Mashup, Royal Blue, Ancient Visions, Cortex, Orange Anolis, Ticket To Hell, Black Lotus, Cyrex, Check Engine, Guardian, Purple DDPAT, Torque, Blood Tiger, Flashback, Business Class, Pathfinder, Para Green), Lead Conduit, Glock-18 (Ramese's Reach, Umbral Rabbit, Fade, Candy Apple, Bullet Queen, Synth Leaf, Neo-Noir, Nuclear Garden, Dragon Tatto, Reactor, Pink DDPAT, Twilight Galaxy, Sand Dune, Groundwater, Blue Fissure, Snack Attack, Water Elemental, Brass, Wasteland Rebel, Vogue, Franklin, Royal Legion, Gamma Doppler, Weasel, Steel Disruption, Ironwork, Grinder, High Beam, Moonrise, Oxide Blaze, Bunsen Burner, Clear Polymer, Bunsen Burner, Night), P250 (Apep's Curse, Re.built, Nuclear Threat, Modern Hunter, Splash, Whiteout, Vino Primo, Mehndi, Asiimov, Visions, Undertow, Cartel, See Ya Later, Gunsmoke, Splash, Digital Architect, Muertos, Red Rock, Bengal Tiger, Crimson Kimono, Wingshot, Metallic DDPAT, Hive, Dark Filigree, Mint Kimono), Five-Seven (Neon Kimono, Berries And Cherries, Fall Hazard, Crimson Blossom, Hyper Beast, Nitro, Fairy Tale, Case Hardened, Copper Galaxy, Angry Mob, Monkey Business, Fowl Play, Anodized Gunmetal, Hot Shot, Retrobution, Boost Protocol), CZ75-Auto (Chalice, Crimson Web, Emerald Quartz, The Fuschia is Now, Nitro, Xiangliu, Yellow Jacket, Victoria, Poison Dart, Syndicate, Eco, Hexane, Pole, Tigris), Tec-9 (Mummy's Rot, Rebel, Terrace, Nuclear Threat, Hades, Rust Leaf, Decimator, Blast From, Orange Murano, Toxic, Fuel Injector, Remote Control, Bamboo Forest, Isaac, Avalanche, Brother, Re-Entry, Blue Titanium, Bamboozle), R8 Revolver (Banana Cannon, Fade, Blaze, Crimson Web, Liama Cannon, Crazy 8, Reboot, Canal Spray, Night, Amber Fade), Desert Eagle (Blaze, Hand Cannon, Fennec Fox, Sunset Storm, Emerald Jörmungandr, Pilot, Hypnotic, Golden Koi, Printstream, Cobalt Disruption, Code Red, Ocean Drive, Midnight Storm, Kumicho Dragon, Crimson Web, Heirloom, Night Heist, Mecha Industries, Night, Conspiracy, Trigger Discipline, Naga, Directive, Light Rail), Dual Berettas (Flora Carnivora, Duelist, Cobra Strike, Black Limba, Emerald, Hemoglobin, Twin Turbo, Marina, Melondrama, Pyre, Retribution, Briar, Dezastre, Royal Consorts, Urban Shock, Dualing Dragons, Panther, Balance), Rifles - Galil (Aqua Terrace, Winter Forest, Chatterbox, Sugar Rush, Pheonix Blacklight, CAUTION!, Orange DDPAT, Cerberus, Dusk Ruins, Eco, Chromatic Aberration, Stone Cold, Tuxedo, Sandstorm, Shattered, Urban Rubble, Rocket Pop, Kami, Crimson Tsunami, Connexion), SCAR-20 (Fragments, Brass, Cyrex, Palm, Splash Jam, Cardiac, Emerald, Crimson Web, Magna Carta, Stone Mosaico, Bloodsport, Enforcer), AWP (Black Nile, Duality, Gungnir, Dragon Lore, Prince, Medusa, Desert Hydra, Fade, Lightning Strike, Oni Taiji, Silk Tiger, Graphite, Chromatic Aberration, Asiimov, Snake Camo, Boom, Containment Breach, Wildfire, Redline, Electric Hive, Hyper Beast, Neo-Noir, Man-o'-war, Pink DDPAT, Corticera, Sun in Leo, Elite Build, Fever Dream, Atheris, Mortis, PAW, Exoskeleton, Worm God, POP AWP, Phobos, Acheron, Pit Viper, Capillary, Safari Mesh), AK-47 (Steel Delta, Head Shot, Wild Lotus, Gold Arabesque, X-Ray, Fire Serpent, Hydroponic, Panthera Onca, Case Hardened, Vulcan, Jet Set, Fuel Injector, Bloodsport, Nightwish, First Class, Neon Rider, Asiimov, Red Laminate, Aquamarine Revenge, The Empress, Wasteland Rebel, Jaguar, Black Laminate, Leet Museo, Neon Revolution, Redline, Frontside Misty, Predator, Legion of Anubis, Point Disarray, Orbit Mk01, Blue Laminate, Green Laminate, Emerald Pinstripe, Cartel, Phantom Disruptor, Jungle Spray, Safety Net, Rat Rod, Baroque Purple, Slate, Elite Build, Uncharted, Safari Mesh), FAMAS (Waters of Nephthys, Sundown, Prime Conspiracy, Afterimage, Commemoration, Dark Water, Spitfire, Pulse, Eye of Athena, Meltdown, Rapid Eye Move, Roll Cage, Styx, Mecha Industrie, Djinn, ZX Spectron, Valence, Neural Net, Night Borre, Hexne), M4A4 (Eye of Horus, Temukau, Howl, Poseidon, Asiimov, Daybreak, Hellfire, Zirka, Red DDPAT, Radiation Hazard, Modern Hunter, The Emperor, The Coalition, Bullet Rain, Cyber Security, X-Ray, Dark Blossom, Buzz Kill, In Living Color, Neo-Noir, Desolate Space, 龍王 (Dragon King), Royal Paladin, The Battlestar, Global Offensive, Tooth Fairy, Desert-Strike, Griffin, Evil Daimyo, Spider Lily, Converter), M4A1-S (Emphorosaur-S, Welcome to the Jungle, Imminent Danger, Knight, Hot Rod, Icarus Fell, Blue Phosphor, Printstream, Master Piece, Dark Water, Golden Coil, Bright Water, Player Two, Atomic Alloy, Guardian, Chantico's Fire, Hyper Beast, Mecha Industries, Cyrex, Control Panel, Moss Quartz, Nightmare, Decimator, Leaded Glass, Basilisk, Blood Tiger, Briefing, Night Terror, Nitro, VariCamo, Flashback), SG 553 (Cyberforce, Hazard Pay, Bulldozer, Integrale, Dragon Tech, Ultraviolet, Colony IV, Hypnotic, Cyrex, Candy Apple, Barricade, Pulse), SSG 08 (Death Strike, Sea Calico, Blood in the Water, Orange Filigree, Dragonfire, Big Iron, Bloodshot, Detour, Turbo Peek, Red Stone), AUG (Akihabara Accept, Flame Jörmungandr, Hot Rod, Midnight Lily, Sand Storm, Carved Jade, Wings, Anodized Navy, Death by Puppy, Torque, Bengal Tiger, Chameleon, Fleet Flock, Random Access, Momentum, Syd Mead, Stymphalian, Arctic Wolf, Aristocrat, Navy Murano), G3SG1 (Chronos, Violet Murano, Flux, Demeter, Orange Kimono, The Executioner, Green Apple, Arctic Polar Camo, Contractor), SMGs - P90 (ScaraB Rush, Neoqueen, Astral Jörmungandr, Run and Hide, Emerald Dragon, Cold Blooded, Death by Kitty, Baroque Red, Vent Rush, Blind Spot, Asiimov, Trigon, Sunset Lily, Death Grip, Leather, Nostalgia, Fallout Warning, Tiger Pit, Schermatic, Virus, Shapewood, Glacier Mesh, Shallow Grave, Chopper, Desert Warfare), MAC-10 (Sakkaku, Hot Snakes, Copper Borre, Red Filigree, Gold Brick, Graven, Case Hardened, Stalker, Amber Fade, Neon Rider, Tatter, Curse, Propaganda, Nuclear Garden, Disco Tech, Toybox, Heat, Indigo), UMP-45 (Wild Child, Fade, Blaze, Day Lily, Minotaur's Labyrinth, Crime Scene, Caramel, Bone Pile, Momentum, Primal Saber), MP7 (Teal Blossom, Fade, Nemesis, Whiteout, Asterion, Bloosport, Abyssal Apparition, Full Stop, Special Delivery, Neon Ply, Asterion, Ocean Foam, Powercore, Scorched, Impire), PP-Bizon (Modern Hunter, Rust Coat, Forest Leaves, Antique, High Roller, Blue Streak, Seabird, Judgement of Anubis, Bamboo Print, Embargo, Chemical Green, Coblat Halftone, Fuel Rod, Photic Zone, Irradiated Alert, Carbon Fiber), MP9 (Featherweight, Wild Lily, Pandora's Box, Stained Glass, Bulldozer, Dark Age, Hot Rod, Hypnotic, Hydra, Rose Iron, Music Box, Setting Sun, Food Chain, Airlock, Mount Fuji, Starlight Protector, Ruby Poison Dart, Deadly Poison), MP5-SD (Liquidation, Oxide Oasis, Phosphor, Nitro, Agent, Autumn Twilly), Shotguns, Machineguns - Sawed-Off (Kiss♥Love, First Class, Orange DDPAT, Rust Coat, The Kraken, Devourer, Mosaico, Wasteland Princess, Bamboo Shadow, Copper, Serenity, Limelight, Apocalypto), XM1014 (Frost Borre, Ancient Lore, Red Leather, Elegant Vines, Banana Leaf, Jungle, Urban Perforated, Grassland, Blaze Orange, Heaven Guard, VariCamo Blue, Entombed, XOXO, Seasons, Tranquility, Bone Machine, Incinegator, Teclu Burner, Black Tie, Zombie Offensive, Watchdog), Nova (Sobek's Bite, Baroque Orange, Hyper Beast, Green Apple, Antique, Modern Hunter, Walnut, Forest Leaves, Graphite, Blaze Orange, Rising Skull, Tempest, Bloomstick, Interlock, Quick Sand, Moon in Libra, Clean Polymer, Red Quartz, Toy Soldier), MAG-7 (Copper Coated, Insomnia, Cinqueda, Counter Terrace, Prism Terrace, Memento, Chainmail, Hazard, Justice, Bulldozer, Silver, Core Breach, Firestarter, Praetorian, Heat, Hard Water, Monster Call, BI83 Spectrum, SWAG-7), M249 (Humidor, Shipping Forecast, Blizzard Marbleized, Downtown, Jungle DDPAT, Nebula Crusader, Impact Drill, Emerald Poison Dart), Negev (Mjölnir, Anodized Navy, Palm, Power Loader, Bratatat, CaliCamo, Phoenix Stencil, Infrastructure, Boroque Sand), Wear - Factory New (FN), Minimal Wear (MW), Field-Tested (FT), Well-Worn (WW), Battle-Scarred (BS), Stickers Holo/Foil/Gold - Katowice 2014, Krakow 2017, Howling Dawn, Katowice 2015, Crown, London 2018, Cologne 2014, Boston 2018, Atlanta 2017, Cluj-Napoca 2015, DreamHack 2014, King on the Field, Harp of War, Winged Difuser, Cologne 2016, Cologne 2015, MLG Columbus 2016, Katowice 2019, Berlin 2019, RMR 2020, Stockholm 2021, Antwerp 2022, Paris 2023, Swag Foil, Flammable foil, Others - Souvenirs, Agents, Pins, Passes, Gifts, Music Kits, Cases, Keys, Capsules, Packages, Patches

Some items on the list may no longer be available or are still locked, visit My Inventory for more details.

Send a Trade Offer for fastest response. I consider all offers.

Add me for discuss if there is a serious offer that needs to be discussed.

Platform(s): It was a Desktop game, not sure if it was on Windows or Mac. I believe it either came with the computer or it was a free download of sorts? Reason being I played it on my Dad's work computer. It's also possible it was a free trial demo.
Genre: FPS
Estimated year of release: Late 90's or Early 00's. Without a doubt before 2002, as we moved that year.
Graphics/art style: 3D graphics, a lot like Half-Life in terms of textures. It's possible it was lower quality and my kid brain made it seem more polished. My memory is that there were also brief cutscenes similar to the moving cutscene portions of Majestic, Part 1: Alien Encounter (but it was FPS, not point-and-click).
Notable characters: The only character I remember seeing is the player you end up controlling, during a cutscene before gameplay begins. The world was quite empty, and seemed to really just connect you from boss fight to boss fight. The only enemies I remember were massive -- one was a huge preying mantis looking creature that popped out of a pool of (green? red?) lava, surprising the hell out of my brother and me. The other was a giant arachnid with a soft weak spot on its underside.
Notable gameplay: I hazily remember some sort of cutscene where you are in outer space and dropped off in a cave / tunnel network. As you move down the tunnel (perhaps floating forward with a jetpack) you arrive in a cavernous room with a lava pool in the middle. As you approach the pool -- BOOM! A huge ugly green preying mantis alien pops out. Time to start shooting. Similar with the huge arachnid -- though I don't remember the location clearly.
Other details: I vaguely recall seeing a green splatter effect when shooting the creatures. I also remember a high pitched wheeze/screech when you hit its weak spot.
I've scoured the web and Reddit for all sorts of alien FPS games from that era but haven't yet found it.
Thanks in advance!

i'm working on a novel and would like to know if anyone could tell me any improvements i could make to the first chapter and prologue
Prologue
The day had started the same way it had for the past two years. The only difference was that I was going home. The hallway was crowded with people walking to and from their classes. Everyone was crowded next to each other so the halls were making the area feel claustrophobic. All the people talking mixed with the summer heat made me feel like I was locked in a sauna. I walked with Preston to the last class we would ever have together and as usual he was smiling. I never got why he always smiled even in situations where people should be sad he still smiled. He knew what today meant for me and he tried to keep light of the situation. I kept my head down away from what was ahead of me. My mind was too clouded about returning to see my family to notice anything in front of me. I walked into another student. It felt like I had walked into a wall. I knew immediately I had walked into tree. I stumble onto the ground and the commotion around me slows down to make room for us. He turned his bulky body around and apologized profusely without saying a word even though I had walked into him. He helped me off of the ground before hurrying down the hall.
“Alexandria, are you doing okay?” Preston said he had tilted his body downward so I had to look down to look him in his eyes. The way he was standing made him look like an idiot but he didn't seem to care. The way he acted made me laugh, which caused his smile to widen.
“I'm doing fine, just got lost in my head.”
“Thinking about how you’ll leave soon,” he said
“Was it that obvious?” He was the only person I told about me being an exchange student. I came to spend high school in Newkinawa and he was the only person I ever hung out with.
“I see what you mean,” he said “Newkinawa is a beautiful place with beautiful people to live in it…myself included”
“You wish,” I say with a smile we continue walking through the hallway “I'm just not excited to go back yet”
After I say that his smile grows wider “So you will miss me after all”
“I wouldn't say that much” I responded whilst smiling.
We had made it to our last class only to see it closed with a sign labeled “Uma incident” Uma was a student known for messing with the chemistry lab and destroying school property in the process. I've never actually met her but Preston says “She's a little weird but still nice”
“Guess class is canceled for today,” Preston remarked with a smile “Wanna go out to the court till the bell rings.”
“Sure let's go” I respond
The place we ate every day was outside. It used to be a tennis court before I moved in. Now they put trees and flowers all over the place. Preston really liked the blue color of the flowers but it just never clicked for me. I look over at Preston and he's staring up at the sky. There are a number of clouds in almost enough to block the sun but it still pokes its rays through and lands on Preston's face. The clouds swim in front of the sun till they block out the sun's light. Preston faces towards me.
“I'm gonna miss you Alexandria” he says
“You know you can just call me Alex,” I replied. I start to smile again. “I'll miss you too!" He smiles toward me again as we get up to leave as the clouds start to clump together and rain slowly falls. As we're walking back to the school there's a loud tearing sound followed by screams as the ground shakes.
The ground tears itself apart as the dirt and stone erupt from the ground. The sky blackens and a pale blue light escapes the earth. Then creatures erupt from the ground in a violent ejection from the earth creating a white pillar diffusing as they reach higher in the air. Some are clawing their way out of the cracks like maggots out of a corpse. People are swept into the updraft screaming for their lives.
The creatures descend like a tidal wave and tear apart any people caught in their path. They storm out of the crack in hundreds as more cracks in the earth form. Me and Preston started running away as people were screaming behind us. A girl running next to us has her legs slashed by a creature. The monster begins to tear open her chest as she chokes on her own blood. The monster shovels her lungs and innards into its decrepit mouth. Me and Preston keep running until we're met at the entrance of the school and we catch the attention of a monster as it begins to savagely rush toward us. The monster resembles ghosts my father told me about. But this one looks monstrously horrific. It floats in the air and opens its mouth so wide it nearly replaces its entire torso; its jaws hold savage teeth each the same old gray color of its body. Its eyes glow a rotten yellow color through the dark. It stretches out its arms showing its giant hands and claws like fingers. It swipes at us leaving a giant claw mark on the door behind us but Preston ducks my body down to avoid the attack. We run around it as the monster swaps its focus to another bystander. Screaming past us. Me and Preston run into the parking lot as people scream around us. We hide next to a car.
“What the hell is happening!?” I yell to Preston. More of the creatures fly over us and swoop down to people like vultures on roadkill devouring the fleeing people.
Preston starts to breathe heavily ”we need to get out of here and someplace safer”. As we were talking one of the monster phases through the car we were hiding next to forcing us to run into the street.
“Lets go to your house till things cool down” i say to Preston through panted breaths
“Wait couldn't we head to your house instead” Preston says.
“Why would that matter your house is closer anyways” i respond
“But-” Preston is interrupted by two creatures swooping above us to grab another person. The two monsters begin to pull the person apart while he writhes in pain before having his flesh be torn in half and having his organs be devoured.
“Come on lets go!!” I say as I grab his hand and run even faster.
By the time we reach Preston's house any living person is gone. On the street are just corpses laying torn and mutilated on the roads and sidewalk. The air in the neighborhood feels cold despite the season being summer. When I walk down the street I can still hear the occasional horrific wail the monsters give off. We move closer to Preston's house and I can see him sweating. He looked more worried than before when the creatures were chasing us and he kept darting his eyes away from his home.
“Preston, are you feeling okay?” he doesn't respond to my question and keeps darting his eyes. He walks slowly behind me and as I reach for the door handle and when I touch it it feels nearly freezing. I wrap my hoodie around my hand and slowly open the door. The house is quiet so me and Preston creep further into his house. The inside is cold and damp as if we were locked in a freezer. The further we move into the house the louder a subtle chewing sound is heard.
“It sounds like rats are eating a dead cow over there” I whisper. Preston continues to stay silent behind me. We slowly walk closer towards the kitchen and the sound gets louder and louder and louder until we reach the room.
We're met with a rancid smell of vomit and blood. My blood starts to run cold and every instinct in my body is telling me to run. I can feel Preston breathing get heavier as we get closer. We turn the corner and see Preston's mom lying on the ground dead with one of the creatures hunched over slurping her intestines. The sight causes me to vomit alerting the monster to our presence. The creature turns around and its mouth turns into a mortifying grin as it flies into Preston's moms body. The corpse begins to rise and spur splashing blood over the kitchen. When the corpse stops spasming it picks itself up from the ground and with glazed over eyes it holds its intestines in its hand and gives us the same grin it did when it was outside her body. The possessed corpse lunges at me and starts to chase me around the kitchen. The body is running into the walls and cabinets spraying its blood and other loose organs around the area as I'm avoiding its assault. The corpse leans over and ejects one of its loose intestines towards me, wrapping me in it. It pulls me towards it so fast I'm flung towards the ground. The corpse limbers over to me and raises its free hand aiming for my head. The creature's deranged smile causes the corpse’s cheeks to tear apart. It places both of its bloodied and demented hands on my face and starts to press my skull into the ground. I struggle to breathe. The room starts to get dark and blood escapes my head.
Until Preston jumps on top of his mothers corpse with a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabs it in the head. The possessed body tries to shake him off but he keeps stabbing, blood gets in on his face and tears start to escape his eyes. The creature violently ejects from the corpse's mouth causing her head to nearly explode and Preston stops stabbing the body. The body falls over in a splash of blood and organs. The monster leaves phasing through the roof leaving Preston crying over his mother's body. As the blood mixes with the tears he collapses to his knees crying. I walk over and hug him as the air around us turns bitter and the chill of death leaves the room and us with it.
Chapter 1 Eclipse
It's been 2 months since the apocalypse started. We've kept ourselves alive by looting grocery stores and houses, we hide from the creatures as we have no way to fight back against them. Preston came up with the idea to call them glanter’s. He’s looking better since we left his family home but I can tell something is wrong with him that he's not telling me. Everytime I ask him about it he tells me it's no big deal. I asked him earlier today and he just told me
“don't worry about it, I'm over it” without even looking at me. Now we're walking through the street and I'm walking behind Preston, I can barely see his head past the giant bag we're both carrying on our backs we use to carry supplies. I look up at the sky and it's still pitch black except for the moon giving us any amount of light. Preston turns around to face me.
“Let's check out that house, it might have some cool stuff in it” he points to a white house to our right. The house is a two story building with steps leading to the front door. There's a generator poking out from the backyard. The driveway is empty save for a couple of dried blood stains and tire marks. It's similar to the other houses in the neighborhood except for a couple broken windows.
“Sure why not” We head over to the house and I see something shining on the side of the house in the corner of my eye. I turn my head to look at it closer but it quickly disappears before I can see it clearly.
“Probably squirrel or something” I mumble to myself. Preston walks up the stairs to the house and I walk up the steps behind him as a breeze blows past my face. Preston tries to turn the door knob but the door is locked. I start to pull out a lockpick I grabbed at the store earlier. I motion towards Preston to move out of the way as I kneel down to pick the lock. It takes me a couple of minutes to unlock the door so I walk inside the house and Preston follows behind me while closing and locking the door. The doorway of the house leads to a dark room so I take a flashlight out of my bag to illuminate the area. Were put into the living room and bookshelves are on the walls and a large TV sat in front of a large black couch with smaller chairs surrounding it. Dust is covering every surface of the room and spiderwebs litter the corners of the walls. The area smells like moth balls and there's a lack of blood anywhere nearby.
“Guess the owners got out before the Glanter’s got in, '' I say to Preston. When he doesn't respond I turn around and he's already looking further into the house. When I find him he's managed to find a flight of stairs that lead to a lower portion of the house.
“I'll check on him later,” I think to myself as I headed towards the kitchen to see if we could restock on food. I walk past a bedroom and remark on how childish it looked. The walls were painted with blue and green stripes and a bunk bed sat on the right wall. There's a chest at the foot of the bed so I walk over and lift the top off of it. The box is layered with children's toys, a multitude of dolls, bears, and figures all jut out of the box. I notice a small robot toy and inspect it in my hands.
The cold metal makes my hand shiver and the sharp body shape makes the robot bigger than my hand. There's red lining around the robot's buttons surrounded by the cold gray of the robot's “skin”. It reminds me of a toy my little brother had. My heart feels heavy as I worry about what happened to my family. If they're alive, dead, or worse…possessed. The thoughts send a chill down my spine but I push them aside for now. I put the toy in my bag and exit the bedroom.
I can see the kitchen is down the hallway so I walk down the hall and enter. The kitchen is pretty clean except for a couple of dishes in the sink and the dust. There's a table seated for 3 people in the center of the room. I start opening the cabinets in search for any food or water. There's boxes of cereal leftover on top of shelves and a mix of chip bags and cookies in neat boxes stationed in the cabinets.
“Score,” I say to myself as I begin to put the snacks into my bag. When the cabinets are empty I look inside the fridge. The inside of the fridge ran out of power so most of the food inside is rotted. There are a couple of bottles of water in the front so I shove those in my bag. There's also a bag of oranges that still seem to be healthy in the back. I grab them and toss them on the table. There's rotten sandwich meat hidden in the drawer of the fridge.it smells like a dumpster outside of a butcher shop. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. I look around the kitchen for any bread with no luck.
I continue to look through the fridge until I hear Preston scream from another room. Immediately I bolt out of the kitchen leaving my bag behind and run towards the lower part of the house. I run down the stairs and nearly trip on the steps. The stairs lead to a big room. There are posters to tv shows and movies I don't recognize. The walls are painted black and there's a bear skin rug on the floor. I notice Preston standing next to a really big TV hyperventilating. I walk over to him and ask him.
“Are you ok? What happened?”
He talks through deep breaths “I… saw a… spider.”
“What?!” I respond in confusion.
“It was really big and I had jumped at my face”
“Sure it was.” I say while laughing “Let's go upstairs there's some food in the fridge we can eat”
“Wait, I think you should check this out.” He says while pointing towards one of the walls. I grab Preston's flashlight off the floor and face it towards the wall. Hanging halfway off the wall is a large map labeled Newkiwana scavenger hunt of 76.
“I think we should take it,” Preston says “You can read a map right?”
“A little but I'm not the best at it,” I say to him “can you read a map?”
“it shouldn’t be too hard it’s mainly pictures any way I'm sure I can figure it out”
I walk over to the wall where the map is hung there are trophies covering tables and shelved in their own personal cases one of them reads “1st place 100-meter swimming competition for 1986 Zack Hemmingway” and another one reads “2nd place 100-meter swimming competition for 1989 Zack Hemmingway”
“Guess this guy really liked swimming,” Preston remarks while staring at a wall of newspaper clippings. All of them are about the same person in swimming competitions. All labeled different things like “a new record for Zack “the dolphin” Hemmingway”,
‘Zach Hemmingway our star plans for the future” all the newspapers are about this kind he has paler skin and a bulky enough build to swim pretty well. Most of the pictures have him coming out of the water in a pool, his long black hair soaked and sitting at his shoulders. Another one has him sitting at a desk over a pile of books and his hair in a knot , “vicious wipeout ends the Dolphins career”, and “ex-swim champ Zack Hemmingway found in a drunken stupor outside strip club.
“Everyone has their own hobbies I guess,” I say as I take the map off of the wall and fold it up. “Sucks what happened to Zack though” I walked over to Preston’s bag and put the rolled map in one of the pockets. I walk back up the stairs and Preston grabs his bag and follows behind me.
We make our way towards the kitchen and Preston starts looking through the fridge for anything to eat. I grab an orange from the table and throw it at his head. The fruit bounces off his head and rolls on the floor. He turns around and grabs the fruit from the floor
“Why did you throw an orange at me?”
“It's the only food we have unless you plan on eating spoiled a sandwich“ He starts to peel it while walking towards the table. We both take a seat and start to eat the oranges from the bag. He plants his feet on top of the table and bites into the fully peeled orange. I grab a water bottle from a bag and start to drink from it as Preston says.
“I saw a dvd player in that man cave downstairs we could watch a movie if it still has power”
“Sure it could be fun.” Me and Preston spend the rest of our time eating until the bag of oranges is emptied and we head back downstairs. Preston grabs the DVD player from under the table and blows the dust off the top of it; he plugs it into the wall as I plop myself onto the couch. He plugs the DVD player into the TV and sits on the recliner next to me. He presses a few buttons on the remote and the TV lights up. I squint my eyes at how bright it is. It's the most amount of light I've seen that didn't come from a flashlight. I notice there's a box filled with DVDs. I pull the box over towards me. I ruffle through the box and see movies like Silence of the Lambs, Terminator 2, and Home alone.
“Dude some of these came out just before the world turned inside out” I say to him.
“Really? Let's play one.” He responds. I toss him Terminator 2 and he puts it into the DVD player.
We spend the next couple hours watching movies and laughing together. It's some of our only moments of peace we’ve had since the end of the world and to me it's the most fun I've had yet. We're putting in the next DVD when there's a loud crash outside and the TV shuts off. Preston goes behind it to see if it's still plugged in.
“I think the generator outside is busted” i say
“It seems that way” Preston replies while backing away from the tv” i'm gonna go check it out”
“Don't worry I got it” I say as I hop out of my chair. Preston waves goodbye as I head up the stairs. I make my way back through the hallway leading to the living room and front door. I reach the door and start to turn the knob. I open the door wide as a car speeds down the street. I step out of the door to see what had happened when I hear the screech of a glanter. It cuts through the sky like an unholy opera singer. A group of them fly by and chase the car as I rush back inside the house. I slam the door shut and look through the window as I see a couple of smaller glanters grab and shake the car violently looking for the driver. They tear at it, ripping off doors and breaking the windows. The driver screams as the seats cover with blood and he's ripped out of the car as multiple smaller glanters tear and bite off parts of his body like piranha's until his body is completely devoured. I run back to the man cave to warn Preston about what had happened. I spot him laying in his chair spinning a DVD disc on his finger.
“It's not safe outside right now”
“Why not?
“There's glanter's outside, they just ate a dude in his car”
“Did they see you come inside?”
“I don't think so , they flew off before I went inside.”
“well we're not dead so I'm gonna say they didn't see you. But let's stay here for a couple more hours just to be safe”
“Sounds good i'm gonna go find the master bedroom.” I start to walk back up the stairs to the house
“ Hold on why do you get the master bedroom” Preston says while walking after me.
“Because I'm gonna find it first” I say as I start to run to find the bedroom. He chases after me in pursuit of the bedroom. Me and Preston run around the house looking for the master bedroom. We look through room after room finding closets, the garage, a bathroom and a door leading to a balcony in the back of the house. I manage to run into the bedroom and yell out to Preston.``Found it!!”
He comes walking into the room breathing heavily from the running. We both check out the room. The walls are painted a cream yellow and the bed takes up most of the room's center. The bed has burgundy sheets poking out from its bottom and a quilt with multi-colored floral designs lay sprawled out on top of it. There's a wardrobe built into the wall and a black leather couch sits comfortably on the left wall.
“Dibs on the bed” I say as I jump on top of it. I stretch out on top of the quilt and search for a comfortable part to sleep in.
“Where am I supposed to sleep then?” Preston complains
“You can sleep on the couch it looks soft enough” I respond while pointing towards the couch “I saw some spare blankets in one of the closets”
“Alright i’ll be right back” he mumbles to himself “why do i always get the couch”
“ I'll be right here if you need me,” i call after him. I sit up on the bed and start to look around the room more. I notice the entrance to the wardrobe is cracked open slightly. I hop out of the bed and grab a flashlight from my bag as I walk into the wardrobe. I turn on my flashlight and stare in awe at how many clothes are in there. The room is only half as big as the bedroom but it's still bigger than any closet I've ever had. The wardrobe is full of shirts, dresses, pants, and shoes for men and women. I immediately start to look through the shoes to see if any fit my size. I throw a pair of black high heels behind me as Preston finds me in the wardrobe. He looks around before asking me.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding a new pair of clothes to wear cause I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for waaaaay too long”
“Fair enough. Is there any guy stuff in there?”
“Yeah right there” I hook my thumb behind me to point to the other end of the closet.
“I'm sure they won't mind if we take a couple of things…they're probably dead by now anyways,” Preston says with a slight grin on his face. The way he said made me spin my head to look at him but he was already on the opposite end of the wardrobe looking at suits.
I shake away the thought and continue looking for any pair of sneakers in my size. 40 minutes pass before I walk out of the wardrobe holding a new pair of jeans and a black guns-N-roses t-shirt. I toss the clothes on top of the bed and check to see if the shower in the bathroom still works. I turn the dial and wait for a moment. The shower head chokes a little before water comes pouring out. I reach my hand under the showerhead to feel the water. The water is cold, it causes my hand to shiver when I take it out. I shake the water off and say to myself.
“Good enough” as I start to take off my old clothes and get in the shower. The cold water bounces off my skin, it sends shivers down my spine but I still get the old dirt from the last few months off of me. I step out and see a couple of dry towels hanging off of the door. I grab one and dry my body off and grab another to wrap around my head and dry my hair. I step out of the bathroom and Preston is still inside the wardrobe. I put on my new clothes while his back is turned and walk over towards him when I'm finished.
“Still haven't found anything,” I ask him
He turns around “Nothing yet, the only thing interesting was this coat.” He holds a leather coat up to me. The coat is made of black leather and has a skull covered with blue flames on the back. There's a black shirt inside the coat with a skeleton hand making a thumbs-up embroidered on the front.
“ That's pretty cool, it's better than what you're wearing right now at least” he's outfitted in a blue hoodie with holes on the chest and tears at the sleeves. He also has a shirt with a faded picture of a blue flower printed on it.
“I guess you're right” he gets up from the floor and exits the wardrobe. He lays the clothes on the couch along next to the blanket and pillow he brought into the room.
“The shower works so you can get yourself clean In there,” I say to him
“You know, a shower sounds really good right now.” He gets up from the floor and grabs a pair of pajama pants that were laying next to him. He leaves the wardrobe and enters the bathroom, closing the door behind him. After a moment the water turns on and I hop on the bed to get ready to sleep. I squirm myself into the quilt and rest my head against one of the pillows. I shut my eyes and fall asleep listening to the passive sound of the shower like rain on a car.
I'm in a void. It feels like I'm standing in a puddle of water that reaches to my knees. I wade my way forward looking around for anything in the darkness. In the distance I can see 3 figures l. I moved closer to them and their silhouettes get clearer. I realize they are my dad and brothers. I start to run towards them kicking up water behind me until something grabs my leg. It pulls down violently forcing me under the water without a breath of air. I kick at the thing grabbing me until something grabs my other leg. I look down and see two glanter's each with a monstrous smile on their faces. They stare back at me and one of them tugs my leg harder than before and tears it off of my body. The water around me turns red as the glanter laugh's. The other smiles wider as it starts to fling me around the water forcing any air left in my lungs to be forced out as I scream in pain. The glanter throws me away and I can see my family slowly fade into the distance as I'm flown away.
I struggle to swim back to where I was, one of my legs is missing and the other is broken. The glanter's find me again and I try to get to the surface to escape them. I'm flapping my arms in any attempt to escape as one of the glanter's flies in front of me and grabs my arm. I look at the monster with tears in my eyes as it bites my arm and tears my body away from it. It flings my body away and with my remaining arm I clutch the wound as the water floods into my body leaving me in the void I started in. I look around and the glanter's seem to have left. I turn behind me and see my family again, this time I'm closer than before.
I grit my teeth and drag my body towards them slowly as I leave a trail of blood and tears behind me. I finally reach my family and grab one of my father's shoes. I stare up and he looks at me. His stare causes me to feel cold as a grotesque smile grows on his face. I stare in shock as my brothers each have the same look as my father.
I shoot up from my sleep panting heavily in a cold sweat.
“It was just a dream..just a dream…just a dream” I look at my hands as tears fall into them. I look around the room and see Preston sleeping peacefully on the couch. The room feels frozen in place as a chill runs down my spine. I get out of the bed and walk out of the bedroom. I make my way through the dark hallway and find the entrance to the balcony I saw earlier. I creak open the screen door and head outside. The Balcony is pretty large, about the size of the kitchen in the house. There are some chairs knocked over next to a table and I pick one up to sit on it. I look out into the expanse of the neighborhood, houses lined up next to each other, dozens broken apart by roads, and dead bodies scattered across the roads.
I look up in the sky and sit back in the chair. The sky looks empty except for the moon giving this world its only source of light. Without the moon, we’d be left in darkness. It hangs in the sky alone, no stars, no clouds, nothing but itself, and the void of the sky. I think back about the dream I had. My dad and my brother's all dead and possessed and then they kill me. I start to tear up thinking about it. I try to wipe away the tears but it’s no use. I'm too scared for my family. I don't know where they are if they're alive if they're worried about me I don't know anything! I start to quietly cry into my hands. I don't know how long I'm sitting there until I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn my head to face it and I see Preston. He was smiling and looking at me. I turn away to wipe my tears and he walks next to me.
“I heard you sneaking out of the bedroom so I followed you to see where you were going.” he says “but that's not my question.” he pauses and looks at me “my question is what’s got you feeling so down?” he leans over the railing of the balcony
“It's nothing, I just came out here to clear my head.” I say as more tears escape from my eyes in big slow drops that ride down the sides of my face.
“if you don't feel like telling me you don't have to but i'll be here if you ever change your mind”. He looks up at the moon before turning to face me and his smile widens “I'll always be here with you…trust me I'm not going anywhere”
I stare up at him and wipe away my tears as a smile grows on my face to match his. I get up and stare over the balcony with him. “So where are we heading next?” I say to him, Preston pulls the map we got from the man cave downstairs out from his pocket.
“After I got out of the shower I decided to take a look at the map for anything interesting we could see.”
“Ok did you find anything?” i ask
“I did,” he points at a spot on the right of the map. “We should head to the museum”
“I didn't want to go to a museum before the apocalypse why would i want to go now?'' I ask him.
“Well the best part of museums is the cool stuff right”
“Yeah what about it”
“The only problem is that you could only look at the fossils and armor but you could never take them.”
“So you want to rob a museum?” Prestons eyes light up at the question
“Exactly they might have a really cool sword I could use, or I could sharpen a dinosaur tooth and use that as a weapon, there might be a cursed shield that can summon the dead to fight for you. This opportunity is too good to pass up. We need to go!”
“That does seem pretty cool but wouldn't carrying that stuff weigh us down. What if a glanter is chasing us and we can't run fast enough because of the stuff we took from the museum.”
“We’ll only take things that are light. Even then I could just block the glanter with my newly acquired 2000 year old shield.”
“Fair enough we can go in a couple hours” I yawn and stretch out my arms. “Cause I'm feeling way too tired to walk all the way over there right now.”
“Alright i'm heading back to my couch and THEN we’ll head out to the museum” he leaves the balcony and heads back to the master bedroom leaving me alone on the balcony.
“Thanks Preston I'm not leaving either” I say into the sky. I turn around and walk back inside the house, closing the balcony door behind me. I walk back into the bedroom and Preston is hunched over and holding a flashlight looking at the map. He’s drawing lines through roads and marking X’s in different areas.
“What are the X’s for?” i ask him
“They’re places that glanter’s usually stay around. I'm marking them off so we remember not to go through them, or at least be more cautious.”
“Cool. Did you find where we are right now?” He points to an area where the lines all converge out of.
“Right around here is where the neighborhood ends. So if we follow this path we can make it to the museum in one piece” I pat him on the back and take the map from his hands.
“Get some sleep Preston, we have a full day tomorrow” he grins to himself before laying down on the couch. I put the map back into my bag and hop on the bed to get to sleep. I cover my body in the quilt and roll over facing away from Preston as he falls asleep. I nestle myself into the bed and slowly fall asleep to get ready for the next day.
I'm awoken by Preston shaking the bed I'm sleeping on. My eyes open and the room is foggy, I wipe away the sleep from my eyes and focus my attention towards Preston. He's practically jumping out of his skin with excitement, he's already fully dressed for the trip and shaking the bed with a wide smile on his face.
“Ok ok i'm up the air feels heavy as a groggy feeling fills my body. I wipe my eyes and the room starts to clear up. I turn to face Preston. He's still shaking my bed to wake me up, he’s already fully dressed and nearly jumping out of his skin in excitement.
“Ok ok, i'm up you can stop shaking the bed” i say
“Then get up we’ve got a long walk ahead of us” he says as he stops shaking the mattress. He grabs the map from my bag and points to one of the red lines.
“We're gonna follow this way to the museum. We’ll move past the hotel around the ice skating rink and around the park. We’ll mainly stick to walking through the streets, we might have to go rooftop hopping to avoid any glanter’s if we see them but i'm sure we won’t reach that point.” he explains
“Wait, wait, wait, why are avoiding the skating rink and the park” i ask
“ everytime we go near the park there's weird noises and light coming out of it”
“And why can't we go to the ice skating rink?”
“I didn't think it would be important”
“It couldn't hurt to check it out at least”
“Fine we could make a detour”
“Ok and how do you plan on getting on top of roofs?”
“I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get to it”
“Ok man as long as you’re sure '' I yawn and step out of the bed. Preston starts to put the map in his bag. I walk into the bathroom with my clothes and change out of my pajamas. Minutes later I walk out and see Preston sitting on the couch twiddling his thumbs.
“Finally you're out” he smiles at me before handing me my bag and slinging it over his shoulder. We took a last look inside the kitchen to see if we missed anything. Afterwards we leave for the outside. The cold air bites at my face but Preston walks down the stairs, his face buried in the map. I jog to catch up to him as we both head into the street.
“Hey Preston, could I see the map?”
“Sure” he hands over the map and continues walking. I look at the map and the numerous lines drawn on roads. I look at the corner of the map and notice a small map key with numerous symbols for different areas like a library, school, hospital, and more. There's even a way to tell how far away each location is. The text reads “1 inch=5 miles” I quickly count how far we are from the museum.
“Dude this museum is like 100 miles away.”
“Yep it'll be a long walk, it'll take us a while to get there”
“Did you plan on us walking there the whole time?”
“We might find bikes or something.” he pauses “well i did think we would walk the whole way”
“This is gonna take us weeks to get there!”
“Did you have anything else planned?”
“Well…i guess not but we should still try to find some bikes or something”
“Ok if we see any way to travel faster we’ll take it”
“Alright cool” I hand him the map back and he folds it back up and puts it in his bag. We walk further until we leave the gated neighborhood we started in. Preston takes the map back out and looks at it before he turns right and continues walking. I follow him staring forward at the expanse of the road. The outside of the neighborhood is surrounded by roads all leading to different parts of Newkinawa. We walk past a sign that reads “Coretown 20 miles ahead” I nudge Preston towards the sign and he checks the map again.
“Yep, the museum’s in Coretown. Would you believe the residents were pretty proud of it. Should be a fun place to explore” he says
“Yeah but it’ll take us a million years to get there.” i complain
“Lighten up, I'm sure it will be worth it”. We continue walking down the road slowly making our way to Coretown.

First Previous Wiki
Penny gazed at the quartet of Elders. They were all wearing the merchandise she remembered from the last Judgment, which was exceedingly awkward. Mainly because they were wearing shirts with her face on them. But it was also oddly endearing, in a way. Until now, she hadn't seen too many Elders that were on her side.
Elders that weren't just Kashaunta or the familiar faces she already knew, like Spentha or Rho and Sai, actually showing appreciation of her, felt odd. Even if these ones went a little too far in it.
"You're even more beautiful in person, Liberator," one said.
"Uh, thanks. I appreciate that. I'm glad that you all like me. Rho and Sai told me that you all are interested in something I can give you?"
"Yeah. Maybe a short interview? We won't be like that airhead reporter. We'll ask the good questions."
"Yep, we will."
"Right then," Penny said. "Well, I'm glad to meet you."
"Thank you. Now that we're here, we'd like to know how you plan on taking care of the gang leaders."
"Well, presumably by imprisoning them. I don't think they deserve to die, even if others do. I'll leave that decision up to Justicar and his various judges in the criminal system."
Penny didn't like having to lie blatantly. She wanted to kill the slavers quite brutally, but doing that was a bad idea right now. Saying it also was a bad idea, for a similar reason. And Justicar's system was worryingly preferential to Elders, from what she'd looked up after the meeting with Pundacrawla.
"Aren't you worried that the Judges won't give proper justice?"
"I trust Justicar to do everything that is necessary."
Another lie. Justicar would do whatever he could to maintain his image. Hopefully, that wouldn't be at the cost of the Alliance's very existence.
"Got it. By the way, what's it like being human? Walking on only two legs. It seems kind of unstable. Do you fall a lot?"
A genuine curiosity from them was another breath of fresh air. It was the kind of question a quadruped would definitely ask, which put her more at ease about the nature of what they were trying to do. Even more than their evident support of her, with all the merch they were wearing. Penny felt a smile crack at the corners of her lips, unbidden.
"Not really. We can use our arms to steady ourselves pretty well. Obviously it's not as easy to balance on our two legs as it is with your four, but it's still good enough. In fact, the sprinters in the Olympics use all four limbs, since running as fast as possible also requires pumping our arms. As for what it's like to be human, it's hard to describe. For many of us, it will feel colder or warmer than Sprilnav would feel in the same temperatures, due to thinner skin. Our eyesight is more frontal than yours, given our lack of snouts, so our blindspots are a lot bigger. Our feet require shoes for rough ground, and we heal slower than you by around 20%. We can't really clack our jaws to the scale that you can, though we can make them meet."
Penny bared her teeth, showing as she opened and closed her mouth. It was nice to be able to talk about things like this.
"The Olympics?" one of them asked.
"It's a competition about athletics," Penny said. "Running, jumping, throwing, diving, swimming, skiing, snowboarding, and a lot of sports. There's specific divisions, too. Like how there's a 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, 400 meter dash, and even an 800 meter dash for those with high levels of psychic energy. Though really, psychic energy and genetic editing have been messing with the events for a while now. And there's a Winter, Summer, and Space Olympics, each with different sorts of events. They move from city to city, though the Space Olympics are pretty much always on either Luna, Ceres, or Mercury. There's a lot more information out there on various events, but it's an old cultural practice revered by the entire species. Even more so since Phoebe's increased the prize pools for everyone."
"How does your species handle space in general? I know that you guys did things way differently before First Contact."
"We did. Mining companies kept tight control on all asteroid mining, while nations controlled planets like Earth and Mars and large planetary bodies like Luna. Supposedly, a few people planned for a cloud city on Venus, but we couldn't risk having such a vulnerable population because they'd have to rely on giant balloons to survive. That would probably be the least secure way to live, given the existence of rogue organizations and all that.
As for spaceships, most of them since we really colonized Luna come equipped with spacesuit bays, zero gravity water and food packs, oxygen tanks, emergency seats, specialized anti-micrometeorite hulls, and radiation shielding. A lot of the older military ships also were equipped with big radiators until World War Three, when it all became masses of drone warfare, with the big ships kept mainly for cargo and lanes where mass drone control was impossible.
Once the Vinarii came and we got shields, we started building big again. After all, it provided a huge number of jobs, and in the post-war economies, especially with VIs in place, a lot of people needed work. But we still go and do asteroid and moon mining, star lifting, and energy gathering. We built an orbital ring around Mercury, the closest planet to Sol, to help with all of that. It doubles as a production hub, too. Now, it's all in more systems and with a lot more friends."
"Speaking of aliens, what theory does your people have on why so many creatures resemble one another? Our jaws are adapted for hard shelled creatures, and we're told that many planets have oddly similar variations of those."
"Crabs."
She guessed what they were getting at.
It is odd, isn't it? Nilnacrawla observed.
Perhaps that is another one of the Source's whims, Penny thought.
Maybe.
A few of the Elders made exclamations of shock.
"You even have a word for them that directly translates!"
Penny chuckled. "Yeah, carcinization is a bit of a meme in the science community. But I've heard the most mainstream theories since the First Contact are that the Source itself is uncreative. It has a certain template of creatures which it largely doesn't alter, though it can take in inputs from beings close to it, perhaps even influencing them."
"Influencing them?"
"Yes. Modern depictions of wendigoes, folkloric creatures from North America, a continent on Earth, are shockingly similar to the Knowers in appearance. The internet depictions of them in particular like to emphasize canine qualities, and often show them with skulls visible directly, and with dark brown or black fur. Recent depictions, as in the past 300 years, differ from their original appearances quite significantly, with the canine characteristics in particular being enhanced.
We have sorted through all known images of these creatures and found roughly 80% similarity with the Knowers and tens of thousands of images that are literally exactly the same as Knowers. The ones we searched all came before World War Three, far before even the First Contact with the Vinarii, much less the Knowers who were entirely underground at the time due to the radiation of their home star. We believe that the Source managed to influence this facet of human culture with the actual existence of a real creature.
Other examples exist, like how the Trikkec look very similar to Komodo Dragons, Vinarii look very similar to insects known as a mantis, and the Acuarfar look exactly like insects known as wasps with the single exception of their furry snouts and green instead of yellow markings. The Sprilnav species itself shares high amounts of similarity with a fictional species known as Elites in early 2000s culture, particularly with your jaws, though you all have red skin instead of grey or brown.
The Junyli, Dreedeen, and the wanderers are the main species without high amounts of appearance in our cultures at some point. This correlates with the idea of the Source being the influencer, as their predecessors all were used to fight it. Many species of the galaxy look like parts of our culture or Earth's creatures. The proximity of these examples makes this far more suspicious than if they were across the galaxy.
But since they existed first, the only answer must be that the Source brought the influence to us first and planted the ideas in our heads. As for the ones which look like Earth creatures, all of them are old enough evolutionary branches that copying from them to Earth makes more sense. Though the references centering around the early 2000s is quite odd, it is also roughly when the internet came into wide existence, so it is also possible the Source gave the ideas a push so they would propagate, for an unknown reason. Like if it seeded the ideas that propagated across the early global network Humanity used."
"Hmm. Fascinating. We've seen evidence of the 'seeding' process among some historical nations near the galactic region of Earth before. So the Source re-uses and alters depictions of life and also life itself?"
"Maybe," Penny said. "Unless the Source is more directly tied to life than we think. There's a conceptual Death, but no conceptual Life. Isn't that odd?"
"Conceptual Life died in the Source war."
How did that really work, though? Penny asked Nilnacrawla.
Imagine a conceptual being. A few of the Progenitors, as well as Narvravarana, went up to try to harvest its power. It refused, and Narvravarana used its unique abilities to try and force the deal.
Why was your civilization like this?
Excess and greed, partly. But we couldn't really do much more expansion. Vertical expansion also had its limits if we wanted to remain relevant for the remaining lifespan of the universe. So Narvravarana, along with a few of the greatest rulers and leaders of Sprilnav society, started looking to other dimensional planes. They figured it was best not to let the problem get too much worse. Or at least, that is what they say. I believe it was to harvest more resources to use against our surrounding enemies.
You didn't have any allies? Penny asked.
At that time, all the powers of the universe were enemies. All the allies eventually merged through millions of years of normalization. We happened to get on the universal stage the earliest, so other civilizations we encountered had little choice but to surrender their independence. Some fought, others didn't, but the outcome was the same.
That seems terrible.
It was, though the other universal civilizations were no better. Some of them just exterminated all alien life they found that couldn't fight back. In that sense, the pre-war Sprilnav civilization was one of the greatest, and that's why I fought for them. Obviously, I'm biased in that regard, though.
Thanks for telling me, father.
No problem, Penny.
She refocused back on the conversation at hand.
"But a thing cannot be alive if it dies. The concept of life doesn't work that way. So maybe the Source just... took in the concept of life? Or absorbed it into whatever psychic energy really is, considering that it's responsible for all of our existence?"
"That's so crazy it might actually be true," one of the Elders said. "You're incredible, Penny."
"Uh, thanks. You're all pretty great too." Her eyes drifted to the images of herself on their clothing. She couldn't really help it.
"I have a question for you."
"Yes?"
"Do you know what I'm fighting for?"
"I assume since you're asking it here, you don't just want a one word answer," an Elder said. "I would say yes, and for the liberation of the Sprilnav from the stain of slavery. Though going deeper into your history, you have also fought for other species, either in wars or just generally moving around. It does look aimless, mostly, since the galaxy's so big. But I'm sure you've got a way through that."
"In some way. Part of why I'm here isn't just about my people. It was at first, I admit that. But as I have lived here, on Justicar, for days and weeks, I've seen you less as alien. It makes it easier for sympathy and easier to break out of simple mindsets. So far, there are many problems, but there are distinct pieces. The first is that many people want to uphold slavery. I'm not sure why, but they do. It isn't profitable, and it isn't moral. Robots are cheaper in every way, and don't need food or water.
That means it's illogical or emotional. So I could try and solve the problem with violence alone, but it won't be addressing the cause, only the symptoms. I need to get to the heart of the matter. And I think it has to do with Elders' memories and the gradual woes they have accumulated going through life. I don't want to tear that away or drug them into believing they're fine. I want to find a way to outlet that productively. The second part I have identified is scale. The galaxy is enormous, and your species is incredibly numerous. I could fight planet by planet for the rest of my life, and liberation would still be difficult.
That also means I'd need a better way of doing things. Maybe an economic or political incentive. Emotional reasons will not work permanently, nor will logic, since we are in this situation. I have found several ways to address this. Sadly, since the gangs are likely monitoring this feed, I can't just outright say my strategy. All I can ask you all to do is to believe. Believe that I have a solution, and that I and those who stand with me are working on it. Believe in me because I believe in you."
None of the Elders questioned or ridiculed her words. Most of it was because they were fans of her. But one of them, an Elder named Rahautiti, had a distinct glint in his eye. Their gazes met only momentarily, but Penny could tell he knew.
And so she appeared in the mindscape, even as they concluded the interview, which would be the first of many. It was a ploy to just talk about human culture and ideals a bit more, to get it out there. Because the hivemind's theory was correct.
In the universe, ideas had power. That power could be weaponized against those who previously stood to gain. The first part of it was the image: Nova as an unbeatable bastion. Lecalicus as the Beast, a monster capable of star-crushing rage. Twilight as... whatever she did. Penny wasn't really familiar with the Progenitor's image too much, and the various names, like the Silent Night or the Smiling Darkness, were just so unbelievably edgy she cringed every time she recalled them.
But Rahautiti understood so she moved her mindscape avatar to see him.
"Hello again, Penny. I am no threat."
"I know. I'm glad that your group is led by someone as capable as you, as well as the other groups you dabble within."
"Who discovered it?"
"Phoebe. You met with Ezeonwha, and the android wanted to ensure you weren't a way for Yasihaut to kill him."
"Yeah. We did get approached about that, actually. We're supposed to kill Ezeonwha when you walk into the Judgment hall. Of course, we won't do this, and she won't be able to retaliate against us easily while there."
"Thank you for your honesty, Elder," Penny said. "It seems I'm in your debt."
"Nonsense. 2,839. That is the number of children I have had. 2,626. That is the number of children of mine which were enslaved. The remaining 213 died in unrelated incidents, with nearly half of those involving slavers killing them. I remember all of their names, and all of their faces, Penny. I want all the slavers in this universe dead."
"I cannot achieve that."
"You cannot," Rahautiti agreed. "Not with my help or even that of Kashaunta and Lecalicus. And certainly not right now. I have not lived this long to be incapable of compromise or patchwork solutions. You show great promise. I understand your aversion to killing and the circumstantial reason why you are not doing so now. I will not grow upset if you do not resume killing when the Judgment ends. Nor do I harbor a grudge against you for the speeding space entity you left outside the room to avoid uncomfortable publicity. You are incredibly young.
A sliver of a life. But you are strong, and you are mature. That sliver of your lifespan already outshines all I could do with a trillion more years, Penny. You are right in that this isn't something you can punch your way through. Trauma is part of why slavery still exists, despite it being a wholly unjust reason for the Elders to make such a sport of it. I am sure you know the story of the war, with a great hero in your head and Kashaunta at your side. My line of work is what I started to help you. Every thought about you being the Liberator, every eye that glances on you freeing slaves, helps you to gather conceptual energy. My talent happens to be great enough to sense the Pact of Blades you have, as well. If you want, I can teach you how to hide the mark on your soul and your mind."
"I would like that, yes," Penny said. "And thank you for being so reasonable. I will ask Kashaunta to protect you from what consequences come for refusing the offer on Ezeonwha."
"There are going to be attacks on him, you know. Him and your ship."
Penny felt an odd feeling in her soul. Cardi's power flared around him, and she squinted at the sky. She just barely saw a sliver of a tentacle. Most would have mistaken it for a normal speeding space entity. But here? On Justicar, with Exile obviously not being the cause?
Only one being would cause that. Fate.
Given the subject of their conversation, it was obvious what was going on.
Penny tapped Rahautiti's jaw, adding a thin mark of conceptual power so she could easily find him again. She focused on the conceptual mark she'd left on Ezeonwha. A twinge of conceptual energy came from it. It was accompanied by various impressions, like fear, pain, and acceptance.
"I have to go," Penny said. "I will be back later. Displace."
She appeared next to the 102nd Visitor Welcome Office but not next to Ezeonwha. It was carnage everywhere she looked.
"Champion!" an unknown Elder yelled. "I am Elder Na-"
Her rising fury surged, and it took all she had not to dismember him. The distant thought of the Judgment stayed her hands, though only just.
Penny's fist collided with the Elder's jaw at twice the speed of sound. A piece of his jaws flew free. Bone fragments hit the ground behind him. Hundreds of soldiers fired on her, and she slammed them to the ground with pure will. Penny tore their guns away and sent them each to pummel the Elder in front of her with as much brutality as she could. His powerful armor wasn't as capable of defense against physical attacks as it was against her psychic energy, and so he fell.
"You... cannot save him," the Elder spat. Fields of psychic suppression fell upon her, reducing her power.
"Manipulation through Determination," Penny growled. "De-"
No! Nilnacrawla said. Do not kill him! Not yet!
"What goes up will go down."
Air hardened around the Elder and accelerated rapidly.
The Elder smashed into the shield five miles above with a speed just slow enough that he wouldn't die. He fell from it and then hit it again at a more modest speed. He'd bounce on that until the Guides came to get him.
But Penny had another target. One she had to save instead of attack.
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High Judge Tassidonia awoke to the sound of explosions. He grabbed his swords, his main gun, and the personal shield he reserved for only the most dire occasions. The sky was erupting in war all around him, and buildings were already falling nearby. The spires of skyscrapers rained down upon the entrances to the Underground, crushing thousands of fleeing Sprilnav under their wide impacts.
His implant identified members of the gangs nearby, making their way to his home.
"Retribution Cycle!" Tassidonia cried. A hidden door opened, and he boarded a small hovercraft that sported a high amount of defensive and offensive technology, a gift from Justicar for dealing with all that he had related to the Judgment. Only this time, he wouldn't be on the next one. But already, the destruction was spreading.
Micro-missiles rained upon friend and foe alike. Several detonated against the layered shields. The mounted turrets on the side of his hoverbike shot lasers into the enemies his implant identified.
"Elder Tassidonia!" an Elder cried nearby. "For the crime of defying the will of-"
Tassidonia called his fury to bear. He rammed his mind into the enemy Elder, disorienting her. She reeled, about to attack, when a thick laser smashed into her chest. It pushed her against the wall, and Tassidonia kept the pressure up until her body melted. He listened to her screams impassively, occasionally sending blasts from his gun at the gangs when their members started to stray too close.
The thick red beam did its work within twenty pulses. His swords began to float beside him, keeping pace as he sped away from his home. The entire apartment complex shuddered and began to lean, its foundation being destroyed by some effect below. Tassidonia abandoned it with only minor regret. He'd known this moment would come. Everything he needed was already with him.
He linked into the Guide network, directing squadrons to attack the breaches he'd identified. Orbital strikes fell upon them in quick succession. Thick beams of light pierced through the lower planetary shields from orbital platforms, their guns honing in on Justicar's enemies. Tassidonia's implant was linked to the grid as well. So when he eyed buildings occupied with too many gang members, orbital strikes fell on them a few pulses later.
Fire and plasma rained all around him. Explosions and smoke blossomed all around him. More missiles fell from his hovercraft. A fighter ship appeared beside him, its simple stealth revealing itself to his eyes. Tassidonia waited for the pilot chamber to open, and his craft stowed itself behind him when he got in. It was fully equipped, so soon, Tassidonia was in full control of a weapon of war.
His first order of business was detecting the gangs' most fortified areas. He peppered those bases in shield-weakening mines, followed by bunker-buster missiles. Several anti-air turrets hit him, but his shields prevented them from taking him down. He dropped three high-end Butcher Androids into the fray of the largest battles.
One of the adjacent fighter wings in the separate shield sector dropped a nuke. At that moment, Tassidonia made a decision.
Whatever insanity was going on right now wasn't worth staying here on his own. He turned his ship upward, narrowly avoiding nearly fifty missiles shot from another gang fortress, which was really just the lower floors of a supermarket. Thick slabs of concrete were being set up by androids and slaves from the Underground. All he could do was watch from above and attempt to mark those that might be a problem.
Justicar's Grand Fleet was moving in, though only the carriers and their escorts were doing anything of any scale. The armies were mobilizing, and it seemed that war had finally broken out. Justicar, while isolated due to the Judgment, would have to win a war that threatened to topple his rule entirely.
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Ezeonwha woke when the walls around him shuddered.
An earthquake?
Groggily, he activated the lights in the room. Phoebe's android was charging in the wall. Her limbs swayed with the motion. The walls shuddered again, and the lights went out. Thin, tiny cracks spread in the walls, increasing his worry factors massively. His implant notified him that this wasn't a dream. Distant screams reached his ears, and he went to the window.
Hordes of Sprilnav were running on the ground, tripping over each other to escape. He heard the thump of footsteps approaching from outside. The android activated, standing up.
"Move away from the doo-"
An explosion tossed him across the room. A Sprilnav carrying some sort of mouth weapon faded into view for a moment, smoke recalibrating the stealth field. And then he was gone. Phoebe smashed into the Sprilnav, her fists pummeling the assassin faster than Ezeonwha could comprehend.
Phoebe's arms turned into swords, and she stabbed the Sprilnav at least fifty times in a single pulse. She turned to grab him, but before she reached him, a second explosion sent him flying out of the now-shattered window.
The massive skyscraper loomed large, and he saw the ground beneath it ripple. Dull thumps sounded from below, and large, circular caverns opened beneath the 102nd Visitor Welcome Office. The whole building started to list forward, and Ezeonwha frantically activated his emergency personal shield as he started falling faster and faster. A bullet hit the shield. And then a second one. Gunshots echoed out in the distance, and he saw other Sprilnav falling from broken windows in the falling skyscraper. Gunfire erupted on the streets as Guides engaged a growing army of attackers bubbling up from basements of shops and businesses.
He saw spurts of blood exit the Sprilnav nearest him, bullets tearing holes through the woman's body. Piercing screams surrounded him, a terrible chorus that reminded him of the worst wars he'd fought in. But here, his training could do nothing. She was already dead, and he knew that he was the target of this whole attack. His eyes watered, and Ezeonwha felt so powerless. So useless.
A Corrector emerged from the side of the tilting skyscraper, eyes fixed on Ezeonwha. Then he looked down. Somehow, Ezeonwha knew when the orders had been sent. He knew that it was Astipra in the distance, a jetpack on his shoulders burning a thick flame beneath him.
Astipra looked back at the building and flew toward it. Ezeonwha felt the wind rushing past the shield as pressure. Astipra, far above, vaporized falling chunks of the skyscraper with blasts from his arm cannons. He pressed back against the skyscraper, the jetpack going into overdrive. The metal bent inward, and the groaning and twisting structure continued its fall. Blasts of light from Astipra again vaporized the set of falling chunks.
"Penny," he said. It was almost a prayer, really. His desperate mind was scrambling for whatever it could get. "Please, save me!"
He didn't know if she could hear him. Logically, it was impossible. And in a battle such as this, unlikely as well. Rippling explosions erupted across the facade of the falling skyscraper as rockets struck it. More explosions bloomed as lasers from distant police vehicles, Guides, and Astipra destroyed more of the fast-flying missiles and rockets. They pounded on the world around him, a horde of madness threatening to break his brain. He could feel the wind and gravity equalize as he reached terminal velocity.
And all he could see was the world descending into war around him. The 102nd Visitor Welcome Office continued to slump and lean against Astipra's best efforts. More bullets hit Ezeonwha's personal shield, and peppered the Guides moving over to save him. Air ambulances were shot from the sky. Even small fighter crafts were shot down by powerful ground lasers. EMPs thumped, disabling all the higher functions of his implant before he could think to use it.
A much larger explosion bloomed out, and Ezeonwha followed the rocket's trail to an Elder on the ground, standing in the wreckage surrounding a sudden tunnel opening. The Elder stared at him in glee, and he lined up another shot. Two Guides fell upon the Elder, who flew up using a jetpack to cut them in half with his sword. A hard light hologram lifted a large gun, pointing at Ezeonwha as he fell.
His eyes widened. Ezeonwha did everything he could. He angled his legs and arms. He pushed at the air. He even hefted the meager psychic energy he had, struggling with all his soul to escape the death he could feel was coming to him.
Guides swarmed beyond the shield appearing, while gang soldiers died by the hundreds to carpet bombing. Personal shields sprang up to block the explosions, and the Elder had survived. A thick red laser cut one of the fighters in half from the smoke. Above him, the collapsing facade of the skyscraper consumed Astipra entirely, though large gouts of plasma and thick explosions emerged from within. He could survive if it fell upon him, but Ezonwha could not.
Penny materialized far below, closer to the field of battle. A sweeping wave of gang members began disappearing. A bullet smashed into her head and her stomach, detonating in bright explosions. A personal shield flared and disappeared. Missiles and lasers slammed into Penny by the thousands as psychic energy gathered. A constant roll of words fell from her tongue, but without his implant, they were not translated.
Missiles crumbled into dust. Lasers impacted raw space in front of Penny before bending down and back to their origins, destroying automated turrets. Bullets still hit Penny and the Guides by the thousands, firing too quickly and densely for her to entirely block. But the large ordnance from the gangs continued to work against them.
Penny looked around, confusion evident on her face. But amidst the thousands of wounded and dead Sprilnav falling from the broken windows, Ezeonwha was hidden too well.
Shattering glass could be constantly heard, and he could feel the distant screams in his soul. A bullet smashed into his personal shield again, disabling it. A pulse later, he lost feeling in his legs.
He tried to reach out to her mind, but the war in the mindscape was equally intense. Too many Elders and Guides battling it out along with various suppression artifacts made it all impossible. He could sense Penny's influence, but couldn't directly reach her.
He let out a breath, knowing it to be the final one.
I'm sorry, Penny, Ezeonwha thought.
I wish you luck in the Judgment, and I am sorry I caused this to happen to you.
Penny finally appeared in front of him, eyes wide-
Blood erupted. A searing pain in his head told him his implant had just shorted out. And in the mindscape, he saw a mental attack heading for him, its brutal power evident. He closed his eyes.

Ember curled up underneath the bed in the Captain's quarters aboard the *Drakmaw.* The Cat-sized dragon counted the whole seven coins that made up her hoard over and over, while reflecting on the past few weeks.
Ejder had grown more distant, spending most of his time out patrolling on the *Drakwing,* while Ember had remained on Zeroth, in the new airship, the *Drakmaw*. Over that time, she’d revealed a lot more than she intended to.
Nhak, the poor armored ghost, had convinced her to reveal her current situation of being little more than a mana battery to Ejder by now. The Immortal Lady that owned Zeroth had overheard, as did another person she could not remember for the life of her.
She had asked the Immortal Lady about seeing if she had the potential to gain psychic powers. She hasn't gotten a chance to try unlocking them yet.
She sighed.
“Why do I let them see me like that? A dragon isn't supposed to be desperate, or scared. We're powerful creatures! They should all be fearing me! Ejder should bow to me, not drain me!”
“So why am I scared?”
She knew the reason. The prospect of alienating herself from Ejder even more by denying his control terrified her, when she was already neglected like a childhood toy.
She crawled out from under the bed and ventured out into the hallways of the airship. The various crew members and Drakenwardens wandering the halls carefully stepped around her. Even they paid more attention to her than Ejder did.
*”He plays himself to be all high and righteous, but he’s worse than the men he commands.”*
She came to the cafeteria area, and jumped up onto a table next to Aelia, who had adopted the *Drakmaw* as her own vessel, rather than the *Drakwing.*
“Hey, little gal. Nobody to talk to down below?” The Drakenwarden Captain asked.
“Yeah. Things are super serious down there after the whole forest fire incident. I'm afraid that if I say anything slightly out of line, I’ll get kicked across the room. And everyone’s so busy! And then Nhak’s ghost hasn't been around for a while…”
“Well, you might need to get kicked across the room every now and then. It’d be good for you. But, I can tell that now isn’t the time.”
Ember chuckled a little. “Well, there was that one time Talios smited me with his antimagic gauntlet. That’s about as close as I’ve gotten.”
Aelia sighed. “Alright, I’ll cut to the chase. When are you going to tell Ejder?”
“Tell him what?”
“That things need to change. That he needs to stop valuing his own fame and power over your wellbeing. That he needs to slow down. The Drakenwardens were a good idea, but I think he went overboard the moment he bought this second airship, and he’s already considering another.”
Aelia tapped the table with her gauntleted hand. “I don’t mind the ‘Wardens being expanded, but for your sake… If you let Ejder get too far, he’ll be spending so much time managing the Drakenwardens that he doesn’t have time for you.”
“I know, but… I don’t want to make the chasm between us deeper. I know how he’ll react. He’ll say that I need to earn his attention, but then he doesn’t ever give me the chance…”
Aelia picked up the little dragon like a household pet and set her on her shoulder. “Ejder means well. Its just that, for a wizard, he’s dumb as a rock. He’ll learn eventually, when karma catches up to him.”
“What?”
“Oh, come on, you haven’t noticed? How he’s been doing so well lately? Hasn’t lost a fight, hasn’t gotten himself killed, managed to keep that dark thing-”
“The Shepherd.”
“Managed to keep the Shepherd under control… Look at it. Karma is gonna shove its boot up his ass pretty soon, and the two of us get to laugh at him together.”
Ember laughed out loud at that one.
“By the way, I know you don’t want people giving you things for your horde, but… I found this on a mission, looted it from some ruffian in an alleyway. I thought you’d like it.” Aelia pulled out a small scabbard, inlaid with five different gems. Held within was a small dagger, which had a red dragon head for a pommel.
“Oooh…”
“Ejder figured it was something related to Tiamat, so I checked it for curses. None, according to the magic. So, here you go.”
Ember grabbed the scabbard, and looped the straps meant to go on a belt around her shoulders, wearing it like a backpack.
“How does it look?” She asked.Aelia chuckled. “Like you’re about to go sacrifice someone in Tiamat’s name. Just don’t tell Ejder.”
“Ha! Perfect!”
“Alright, now go along. I’ve got to help prepare the *Drakmaw* to travel universes. It’s really stressful on the hull compared to just an inter-planar jump.”
“Alright. Bye.” Ember sat and watched the captain walk away. She dropped down off the table and huddled underneath, listening to the crew moving around, getting ready.
She examined the dagger, with its extremely sharp edge, and beautifully engraved pommel. She then realized something.She hadn’t even made a conscious effort to physically interact with it. It should have gone right through her semicorporeal body. But it didn’t.“Aelia said it wasn’t cursed, but it’s definitely magic in some way.”
That night, Ember had another vision. The same one she’d been having for weeks. She was within a cave, walking toward the back to a nest. Where the nest used to lie, there was nothing but broken eggshells, mangled debris, and the strangled necks of the unborn wyrmlings that had been in the eggs. An overwhelming surge of emotion overcame her, despite having had the dream at least three dozen times. She collapsed to the ground, everything going black.
Then, the scene shifted again. Ember felt held back by chains, forced to watch but not interfere as tiny wyrmlings, barely out of their eggs, were being dragged by leashes and whipped with adamantine chains. She let out a roar that scared the poor wyrmlings, but the human captors were unfazed. Finally, a pair of ballistas were rolled up, and fired bolts right between her ribs and into her lungs.
Then a new scene, where she stood still, being looked down upon by a massive red dragon. It spoke two simple words.
“You disappointment.”
A tail smashed into her skull from the side, and the scene shifted again.
She watched as four other dragons were killed around her, White, green, blue, and then black. She was the fifth to be executed. She blissfully watched this scene, knowing it was at least the least painful of them all. The massive axe came down on her neck, severing her spinal chord.
The scene changed again. There she stood, before the massive 5-headed dragon. Pleading for the goddess’s blessing. Instead, she felt as five different breath weapons turned her to ash all at once.
While these scenes were all the same, this time, she noticed something. A dagger, stuck in the masvvie 5-headed dragon’s front arm. The same one Aelia had given her, but much larger.
Before she could comprehend this, the scene changed again, to yet another dragon, calling her a disappointment. This dragon would also bash her skull in with its tail, but she can practically feel her soul fly out of her body. And then she collided with something.
Ember snapped awake, still under the table in the cafeteria.
“What the…”
She crawled out from under the table, to hear the sounds of crew members rushing around, and messages being magically broadcasted. *”Hmm. Battle must be going on.”*
She jumped into a vent, crawling through until she found herself back in the captain’s quarters. She found her tiny hoard in disarray, and slid it back into a pile, placing the dagger next to it. She would have to examine the dagger more, and figure out what the battle was about later. But for now, she had too much on her mind.
/uw Just a “quick” little lorepost to summarize some stuff going on behind the scenes, to provide some context for some upcoming loreposts. Not that really anyone is gonna read them, but…
And, note for the Paragons that might be reading, yes, this is a little behind. I started writing this days ago, so, canonically, this takes place right before the Craterus battle.

i just booted up tails and i’m using an older software, so currently i use GnuPGP to store a few public keys and my own private key. i noticed today that none of them are showing up which has never happened up until today.
my files that are added to persistent storage are still showing up so i’m confused on what’s going on. i tried to create a new private key and right after i click create it loads for a few seconds then crashes.
any help or recommendations would be highly appreciated!

In it is has been revealed to me that people listening to Tame Impala inhabit cavernous spa-like rooms with high vaulted wood beam ceilings that I cannot enter due to the bottle neck like opening and classism. People that listen to Pond occupy much more more small, tucked away alcoves off the corner of L-shaped stairwells that are even more inaccessible but substantially more intimate

It happened. He didn't deny that. Not like he was a suspect or anything—not yet—but he never denied it to himself. At the same time, this all happened over a decade ago—twelve years to be exact.
He didn't think of it every day; in fact, sometimes an entire month would go by where it barely crossed his mind.
In a way, that whole experience—he thought of all the abductions and murders as a singular event—now felt as if it belonged to somebody else.
It was a time in his life when he was confused, mixed-up, searching; a dark time, you know, like a phase. Who didn't have one of those in their past?
Plus, he was married now. His wife, Dee, obviously didn't know about it and he felt no obligation to tell her. Did he ask about her former lovers?
Sometimes there are things in the past and you just let them be. Whether it was Dee losing her virginity to the quarterback of the football team in the backseat at a drive-in or him using multiple black garbage bags and masking tape on that thing he didn't have time to bury in rural Tennessee, everyone has things they would rather forget about. Sometimes you just leave things where they lie.
So that's what Ned Doyle did.
Until that Sunday morning, November 6th, 1988.
He was a having a glass of Dee's pulpy homemade orange juice, waiting for his coffee to percolate, when he opened his heavy weekend edition of the New York Times (probably Ned's greatest extravagance—he liked its heft; and how the Arts & Leisure section made him feel culturally superior to his Ohio townsfolk, “the Philistines of Findlay,” he called them) when he saw the article buried in the back.
The country was two days from heading to the polls for the General Election—Bush v. Dukakis—so most everything else that week had been relegated to the back.
He read the article twice before he could even begin to make sense of it. It seemed to be a story about something called "DNA fingerprinting" and a 27-year-old baker in Great Britain named Colin Pitchfork who had confessed to raping and murdering two 15-year-old girls, in separate incidents a few years apart, after a new scientific process had been used to extract information from semen which he, Colin Pitchfork, had left at the crime scenes (likely inside the victims) some five years earlier.
Now if they could do all that after five years, why not ten years—or maybe even… twelve?
"Interesting story here," he said to Dee. It wasn't uncommon for Ned to read a news story twice—once for himself and a second time aloud to Dee while she brewed his coffee and burnt her toast. But this was his third reading and Ned acted as if it were his first.
"What do you make of that?" he asked. It somehow got worse each time he read it. After the third time, he felt as if he had been sucker punched in the stomach.
"Science Fiction is what it sounds like," Dee said matter-of-factly, pouring Ned his coffee in a mug that bore the Marathon Oil insignia. Findlay, Ohio was Marathon’s headquarters although there had been rumors circulating about a move to Texas.
"And unconstitutional," he said. "Cops running a dragnet like that, taking blood samples from 5,000 townspeople. Thankfully, that would never pass the muster here."
"They did catch the killer so maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea," she said, buttering her burnt toast. "Otherwise, who knows? They could have convicted the wrong man.”
Ned had already gotten lucky once – astonishingly so. Griffin Gerald Jones, the famed “I-75 Corridor Child Killer,” had claimed responsibility for all but one of Ned’s victims before dying in Florida’s electric chair.
"You can't have police in this country running around, sticking everyone with needles, drawing blood for some sort of science experiment,” he said. “Nevermind the Constitution, what about AIDS?”
“What about it?” she asked.
“There's been hundreds, thousands of cases now where people have been infected by giving blood,” he said. “That's a medical fact. Get accused of a crime and AIDS too?"
"It doesn't sound like any of the townspeople there in England got AIDS, darling. Unless there's more to the story, besides what you read to me."
He watched her spread orange marmalade over her burnt toast and take a bite. She had a dead tooth and he saw it every time she opened her mouth. He loved Dee but had never been sexually attracted to her. Not in the way he had been attracted to others.
"It really is just a matter of time before that stuff makes it over here," she said with her mouth full. "To this side of the pond, as they say." She took a sip of his orange juice. "Isn’t that how it always works? Things start over there in England, or in California, and then phht, before you know it, it makes its way to Findlay."
He held his hand over his stomach. She saw him wince.
"Was it my orange juice again? Was it still pulpy? I squeezed it by hand and even strained it twice this time."
"It’s not your fault,” he said. “I think it’s me. Orange juice is getting too… acidic for me." He looked at the clock on the coffee maker. "I'm going to be late."
He turned the page.
He played the 8 o'clock Mass by rote as he had many a bleary-eyed Sunday morning. It was pure muscle memory at this point. He made a few mistakes here and there, missed a key or two, but it was nothing the organ's sustain pedal couldn't mask – not that anyone would complain (not at the 8 o'clock anyway).
On Sundays Ned had four Masses: the 8, the 9:30, the big one at 11, and the 12:30 for the dilettantes who couldn't get their acts together for the 11.
He turned the page.
Today he was using Glory and Praise, AKA "the blue hymnal" for songs he knew by heart.
Turning the pages of his sheet music, reading each note, he was able to keep his mind off it.
Ned abhorred cliches (especially those involving sports) but he made an exception for “Out of sight, out of mind.” For Ned, that wasn’t a cliché; it was a way of life. He was a man who preferred to be heard, not seen, which made St. Bartholomew (or St. Bart’s) the perfect home for him.
In a spectacular architectural oversight, the church's pipe organ was situated so the organist's back was to the altar and pews. The organist of course needs to see what's going on in the Mass to read certain non-verbal cues but the arrangement suited Ned just fine. The congregation was comprised of many young families who had many young children—boys in particular—and it wasn't so much that he couldn't control himself because he was now firmly in control of all that; it was more that he didn't need any reminders of that time when he couldn't.
Especially during church.
So to see the altar behind him, Ned had installed an actual rearview mirror, the type you'd find on an old Buick, and he used a special type of putty to affix it to the mantle of the pipe organ. Having been the church organist at St. Bart's for nine years, he seldom needed it anymore—he could do it in his sleep—but it came in handy today as he found his attention drifting and he nearly missed the oratory refrain at the 9:30 Mass.
His real problems didn't start until the 35-minute break between the 8 and 9:30.
He was reorganizing his sheet music after the first wave of churchgoers had cleared out, when he began thinking about Colin Pitchfork again. The article said he was a baker in England somewhere—did it say he baked cakes or was that Ned's invention?
Even though no picture was provided in the Times article, Ned spent the balance of the 9:30 service picturing the 27- year-old ex-rapist/murderer working in his small English bakery, quietly going about his business, baking his cakes, when the police (Bobbies?) came.
Was he expecting them?
He played the offertory hymn, "On Eagle's Wings," as the ushers began taking up the collections and a family of parishioners he’d never seen before brought the gifts up.
And what was going through Pitchfork's head when he saw the Bobbies there? When they began asking him about rapes and murders that happened almost five years ago? The article said that he had initially given investigators someone else's blood when “the enquiry” began. Had he somehow caught wind of this “DNA Fingerprinting?”
There was a new usher, Ned noticed, in his makeshift rearview mirror.
The Times article said that one of Pitchfork's co-workers at the bakery had taken the blood test masquerading as Pitchfork because Pitchfork had told the co-worker that ‘he could not give blood under his own name because he had already given blood while pretending to be a friend of his who had wanted to avoid being harassed by police because of a youthful conviction for burglary.’ This story was later overheard by a woman in a pub who immediately went to the police.
Ned realized he had missed the homily twice now. Not that it mattered. Heard one you've heard them all and Ned was pretty sure there would be no surprises. Plus, he'd have two more chances to catch it. He knew he would have to really focus for the 11 o'clock. That was always the main event. He was going to play "I Will Raise Him Up," a complex hymn, which required his full attention. He would scratch that one now if he hadn’t read that article and if the Sunday programs hadn't already been printed. People liked that one –it was a real barn burner, as they say—and if he skipped it, there might be questions.
The last thing Ned needed right now were fucking questions.
Who was this new usher, by the way?

By the start of the 11 o'clock Mass, Ned wondered whether anyone would even show for the 12:30, seeing that it was already standing room only. The 11 was always the most popular Mass, but today felt different; it was packed like Christmas Eve. What was the occasion? Was the predominantly conservative town that afraid of Dukakis winning the presidency? Ohio was a swing state after all and that image of the little Greek man in the tank was unnerving, sure, but was it enough to warrant this sort of turnout for the 11 AM Mass at St. Bart's in Findlay?
Or was something else going on?
Ned didn’t believe they had come to hear his rendition of "I Will Raise Him Up."
Or could there be another reason? Maybe they had all read the same Times article. Maybe there had long been simmering suspicion of Ned in the community and maybe the article finally prompted the townspeople to join together and take arms. With pitchforks.
On March 31, 1892, the only known lynching in the history of Hancock County occurred when a mob of 1,000 men, many "respectable citizens," broke into the county jail in Findlay. They lynched Mr. Lytle, a man who had killed his wife and two daughters with a hatchet the day before. The townsfolk hanged the man twice (first from the bridge, then a telegraph pole) and then, in a classic case of overkill, shot his body over a dozen times. The authorities had intended to transfer the prisoner out of town at 1 o'clock in secret, where a train was scheduled to transport him to Lima, but someone talked.
Ned had only confessed what he had done to one person – a priest eight years prior. The priest was set to retire as he was dying of pancreatic cancer and visiting from a nearby parish. For years Ned had heard this priest was “of the old school” – i.e., your word to God’s ear, and it went no further. He was as safe as they come. Still, even then, Ned used the screened side of the Confessional, lowered his voice a full octave, and spoke of what he had done obliquely and in generalities. They were mortal sins. His penance severe: to repent and refrain from repeating the act again. The priest was now long dead. There’s no way he could have tracked Ned down and told anyone. Was there?
The last one was named Derek. That was the only one left unsolved.
He would play "I Will Raise Him Up" during Communion. Because of the crowds, he knew the communion lines would be longer and would thus require him to stretch the already difficult song a few minutes longer. If he was going to supply the masses, he was going to need a bigger yield. In a way it was like baking a cake, wasn't it?
He met Derek at a Dairy Queen in Paducah, Kentucky. It was Labor Day 1976. It must have been 100 degrees out, but it felt even hotter with the humidity. It was a real scorcher.
Derek had a bicycle with an American flag banana seat. It was the summer of Bicentennial Fever. The Dairy Queen was in an area known as Noble Park. It had a tin canopy that kept cars cool in the shade.
Ned missed a note as he turned the page. He stepped on the sustain pedal and his mistake sounded deliberate and beautiful even.
It was early evening; fireflies were out in full force and Ned was blotto. He had been drinking beer—cans of Schlitz—all day at the picnic of a friend (technically, the friend of an acquaintance so basically a stranger). A born introvert who still lived alone (this was pre-Dee), Ned was very drunk and primed for small talk. You must also remember this was a very different time. This was back when you still opened cans with an opener; drunk driving was frowned upon but not the cardinal sin it is today; and a grown man could still park outside a Dairy Queen and strike up an innocent conversation with a prepubescent boy on a bike.
"What da ya' got there?" Ned asked.
"Butterscotch Sundae," the boy said. The boy was blonde with brown eyes.
"Butterscotch, eh?"
The boy licked his plastic spoon and stared somewhere beyond the pea-green 1974 Buick Riviera Ned had inherited from his old man after he had kicked the bucket.
"For the life of me, I can't remember if I like butterscotch or not," Ned said. "That probably sounds pretty screwy, I bet."
"Get a free sample at the window,” the kid said. “They're free."
"Looks awfully busy over there. Mind if I have a taste of yours? I don't have any cooties, I promise."
The kid dragged his spoon over his ice cream as he mulled it over. Maybe seeing that he was almost done with it anyway, he figured what's the harm. He handed Ned the Styrofoam cup.
Ned looked at the boy as he stirred it a little and then placed the curved side of the spoon on his tongue and kept it there.
"I do like butterscotch," Ned said, giving it back. "Thank you for sharing that with me, that was awfully kind of you—say, what is your name?"
"Derek," the boy said.
"Derek. What a nice boy you are. Do you like dogs, Derek?"
"Sure," Derek said.
"Do you have a dog?"
"Not anymore. Used to. We had a beagle named Eleanor but she went blind and then lame and then..."
"What kind of dog was she?" Ned asked.
"A beagle," the boy said.
"A beagle, yes you said that. You like Golden Retrievers?"
"Sure," the boy said.
"Cause I have a Golden Retriever. It's a girl too. A bitch."
Derek smiled.
"She's pregnant. I mean she was. But… she just gave birth."
"To puppies?"
"You betcha. It was just a few weeks ago. She had a whole litter of 'em. Boys, girls. Cutest little pups you've ever seen. The thing is, Derek, I don't know what to do with them all. You're a nice boy. You just shared your Butterscotch Sundae with me and I'd care to return the favor. Would you… like a puppy?"
"How much?"
"For nothing,” Ned said. “For free.”
"You'll give me a puppy for nothing? And I can pick the one I want?"
"Sure can. They're at my place just down the road. Thing is, it's probably too far to bike there. And you're going to need both hands to hold on to the puppy. Hop in, I’ll give you a lift."
"What about my bike?"
"We could put it in the trunk but we're not going to be long. We'll be right back. It'll be safe here. People don't take things that aren’t theirs around here – especially when there's a lot of people around."
He remembered waking up on the floor of his apartment disoriented. He was late for work. He was still working as a salesman at the piano store. There was a big Labor Day sale still going on. Labor Day was always a big day for retail. The owner was a nice man and Ned wanted to call him and apologize but he wasn't sure what to say yet.
He hadn't planned on sleeping in. Forgetting work on Labor Day. The irony.
He saw the boy's underwear on his floor. They were tighty-whities from Fruit of the Loom. He thought of that every time he saw an ad for that company afterward.
They weren’t bloody but they were torn.
He remembered the sound of the filter on the aquarium he used to keep in his apartment. It was noisy but sometimes that was a good thing. He was very into Japanese Fighting Fish for a while until it became too expensive as they always killed each other.
There were no puppies obviously.
His apartment did not allow dogs.
His sense of disorientation and the ensuing panic prevented him from experiencing any of the usual remorse he felt afterward.
There would be plenty of time for that later.
The boy's body was in the bathroom just off the bedroom and he needed to get rid of it. He needed to get out of town. Out of Paducah. Out of Kentucky.
He placed the boy in a hardshell Samsonite suitcase, carried it out of his apartment, walked down the one flight of steps. He saw no one and he was confident no one had seen him. The suitcase was lighter than it should have been—a detail he never forgot—and he walked out to the carport where he saw his Riviera parked sloppily between the lines. He felt a wave of nausea come over him but he suppressed it. He opened his trunk, placed the suitcase in the back, and then looked around the apartment complex before walking back inside. He cleaned up with bleach. Showered. Hit the road.
There were no police gathered outside the Dairy Queen. It wasn’t a crime scene. He didn't look to see if the boy’s bike was still there; he didn’t want to appear suspicious.
He needed to get out of Paducah so he headed toward the freeway.
For a moment he briefly considered the Shawnee National Forest, which was to the north, but he stuck to his gut and took the newly-constructed Interstate 24 East toward Tennessee. Aside from getting out of Kentucky, he didn't have a plan. The asphalt was brand new and at times he felt as though he were floating across the highway. It took about two hours to get to the state line and once he was over, he filled up at a 76 Station in Clarksville, Tennessee. Only when he was filling his tank and had a moment to reflect, did he think about what was in the trunk. He imagined he had Superman's X-Ray vision and pictured the suitcase in the back, the boy's tiny body folded like a pretzel inside.
He missed both the readings, the Gospel, and the homily again. Then came the Consecration which was over before he knew it. It was time. He began to play "I Will Raise Him Up." In his rearview, he saw the communion lines forming and he thought he caught a glimpse of the new usher staring at him, but he couldn't be sure. He needed to concentrate on the song. People knew this one; people wanted to hear it exactly as they remembered it, and it was a full house, so the sustain pedal wouldn't save him this time.
Once he made it through the chorus, he knew he could relax a little.
The "DNA fingerprinting" in Pitchfork's case came from semen that was left inside of the victims.
Ned had made it to the outskirts of Nashville faster than he expected. He still hadn't checked in with Mr. Cory, the owner of the piano store. He desperately needed an alibi. Old Mr. Cory could probably send Ned to the electric chair if he wasn't careful.
He got on Highway 386 and headed north. After 20 minutes, he exited in Gallatin and drove around until he found an area he thought was remote. There was a road called Cages Bend.
He liked the sound of that.
It sounded hopeful.
He took that until he came to a gravel road, which looked as if it led to an even more secluded wooded area.
In the rearview, he remembered the cloud of dust kicked up by the tires of the Riviera he had inherited from his father, the drunk, who had done to him what he had gone on to do to others.
In the rearview, the communion lines were still going strong. No sign of that new usher.
He came upon a bend in the road that looked totally secluded, as if no one had been there in years. He cut the engine and listened for a moment. The invisible cicadas high up in the trees made it sound as if a giant rattle snake was slithering around him, preparing to strike. He got out of the car.
He didn't know if it was the trees or the fields of tall grass, but something smelled like semen.
He opened the trunk with his keys and pulled out the hardshell suitcase. When he closed the trunk there was a rustling in the tall grass but when he looked, he saw only a herd of white tail deer scattering.
Initially he had planned on dumping the body and taking the suitcase home with him. He didn't think to bring a shovel. Then he heard the sound of a bush hog—a piece of farm equipment with spinning blades that cut vegetation and cleared the land. He couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. He checked to make sure his suitcase didn't have any labels on it or name tags. He then two black trash bags in his back seat and wrapped the suitcase – one bag around the top, the other on the bottom, and secured it with masking tape. Then he carried it into the woods and set it down in some brush. He began snapping tree branches off to make cover but as the bush hog got louder and closer he panicked, leaving it only partially covered.
The communion lines had dissipated. Everyone was sitting now, even the priest.
Everyone always knelt until the priest sat and Ned should never be playing if the priest was sitting but somehow, Ned had missed his cue.
He concluded "I Will Raise Him Up" softly, using the sustain to ease himself out.
He looked in the rearview and saw the priest staring at him.
As was the rest of the congregation.
They would all be coming for him soon enough.
Unless he could make it back down to Tennessee and get rid of that thing once and for all – assuming it hadn’t been found yet.
Somehow, deep down, Ned always knew it was going to happen.
He was raised up, alright.
Now it was just a matter of time.

Since search engines are shifting toward minimizing the time people spend searching through SERPs, and it's likely that organic traffic to specific websites will drop dramatically, what are some strategies and tactics that you're testing/rolling out to make your website valuable enough to continue getting clicks?
BTW, I'm not just looking to rip off original ideas. Here are the tactics that I'll be implementing based on a recent Niel Patel talk and independent research:

• Optimize for Conversational and Long-Tail Keywords
  
  • Identify Conversational Queries: Use tools like AnswerThePublic, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to find questions and long-tail keywords your audience is searching for.
  • Natural Language Processing: Create content that mimics natural speech patterns, answering questions as users would ask them.
• No Change: Create High-Quality, In-Depth Content
  
  • Comprehensive Guides: Develop detailed, comprehensive guides that thoroughly cover topics of interest in your industry.
  • Content Clusters: Use topic clusters and pillar pages to organize content around central themes, with interlinked subtopics.
• No Change: Leverage Structured Data and Schema Markup
  
  • Rich Snippets: Implement schema markup to enhance your content’s visibility in search results with rich snippets.
  • FAQ Schema: Use FAQ schema to increase the chances of your content appearing in AI-generated answers.
• No Change: Focus on Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)
  
  • Author Bios: Include detailed author bios and credentials on your content.
  • Cite Sources: Reference authoritative sources and include citations in your content to build credibility.
• No Change: Enhance User Experience (UX)
  
  • Page Speed: Optimize website loading speeds using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights.
  • Mobile Optimization: Ensure your site is mobile-friendly and provides a seamless experience across all devices.
  • Easy Navigation: Design intuitive navigation to help users find information quickly and easily.
• Use More with Multimedia Content
  
  • Videos and Infographics: Create and embed high-quality videos and infographics to make your content more engaging.
  • Interactive Elements: Use interactive content like quizzes, calculators, and surveys to increase user engagement.
• No Change: Build and Maintain High-Quality Backlinks
  
  • Guest Blogging: Write guest posts for reputable sites in your industry.
  • Broken Link Building: Identify broken links on other sites and offer your content as a replacement.
  • Content Outreach: Promote your content to influencers and bloggers to earn backlinks.
• No Change: Regularly Update Content
  
  • Refresh Old Content: Update existing content with new information, statistics, and trends.
  • Content Calendar: Maintain a content calendar to ensure regular publication of fresh content.
• No Change: Monitor and Analyze Performance
  
  • SEO Tools: Use SEO tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and SEMrush to track performance and identify areas for improvement.
  • User Feedback: Collect and analyze user feedback to understand their needs and improve content accordingly.
• Optimize for Local SEO
  
  • Google My Business & Bing Places: Keep your Google My Business profile updated with accurate information and regular posts.
  • Local Citations: Ensure your business information is consistent across local directories and citation sites.
  • Localized Content: Create content tailored to local interests and events.
• Encourage User-Generated Content
  
  • Reviews and Testimonials: Encourage customers to leave reviews and testimonials, which can enhance your credibility and search visibility.
  • Community Engagement: Foster a community around your brand through forums, social media groups, and interactive content.
• Adapt to AI and Emerging Technologies
  
  • Voice Search Optimization: Optimize your content for voice search by focusing on natural language queries and concise answers.
  • Stay Updated: Keep abreast of the latest AI and SGE developments to adapt your strategies accordingly.
• Leverage Social Media and Content Distribution
  
  • Cross-Promotion: Share your content across multiple social media platforms to increase visibility and drive traffic.
  • Engage with Influencers: Partner with influencers to reach a broader audience and gain high-quality backlinks.
• Invest in Interactive and Engaging Formats
  
  • Webinars and Live Streams: Host webinars and live streams to engage with your audience in real-time.
  • Podcasts: Create podcasts to reach a different segment of your audience and increase brand loyalty.

Some Lesser-Known Tactics:

1. Optimize for Passage Indexing

Focus on Specific Passages: Create content sections that answer specific questions clearly and concisely, optimizing individual passages rather than whole pages.
Clear Headings: Use clear and descriptive headings to help Google identify relevant passages within your content.
Use Advanced NLP Techniques
Synonyms and Variations: Include synonyms and keyword variations within your content to match the different ways users might phrase their queries.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI): Use LSI keywords to provide contextual relevance to your main topics.
Leverage AI-Generated Content Tools
AI Content Tools: Use AI-powered content tools like Jasper or Copy.ai to help generate ideas and optimize content for conversational queries and natural language processing.
Create Expert Roundups
Collaborate with Experts: Compile expert roundups where industry professionals provide their insights on specific topics. This can lead to backlinks and improved authority.
Feature Quotes: Use direct quotes from experts to enhance the credibility and depth of your content.
Implement Entity-Based SEO
Entity Recognition: Focus on key entities (people, places, things) within your content. Google's AI understands and uses entities to provide relevant answers.
Knowledge Graph Optimization: Ensure your business or topic is well-represented in Google's Knowledge Graph by linking to authoritative sources and using structured data.
Optimize for Voice Search
Conversational Tone: Write in a conversational tone that mimics how people speak, as voice search queries are often more natural and longer.
Answer Direct Questions: Directly answer common questions succinctly within your content to cater to voice search.
Leverage Google’s People Also Ask (PAA)
Research PAA Boxes: Analyze "People Also Ask" boxes for common questions related to your topic and create content that answers these questions.
Structured Answers: Provide structured answers to these questions within your content to increase the chances of being featured in PAA boxes.

PLAYBOY Interview With Conan O'Brien Interview by Kevin Cook For Playboy Magazine February 1998
A candid conversation with the preppie prince of "Late Night" about his rocky start, his show's secret one-day cancellation and how David Letterman saved the day.
He was polite. He was funny. He gave us a communicable disease.
At 34 Conan O'Brien is hotter than the fever he was running when we met in his private domain above the "Late Night" sound stage. A gangly freckle-faced ex-high school geek he is "one of TV's hottest properties" according to "People" magazine. The host of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" has become his generation's king of comedy.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Congested too, but O'Brien has far more to worry about than his head cold. A perfectionist who broods over one bad minute in an otherwise perfect hour of TV, he worries he might be anhedonic, "I have trouble with success," he says, "I was raised to believe that if something good happens something bad is coming." Sure things look good now "Rolling Stone" calls "Late Night" "the hottest comedy show on TV." Ratings are better than ever, particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds, the viewers advertisers crave.
But O'Brien only works harder. Despite his illness he taped two shows in 26 hours on three hours' sleep. He smoothly interviewed Elton John then burst into coughing fits during commercials. Later in his crammed corner office overlooking Manhattan traffic Conan the Cool gulped Dayquil gel caps. He coughed spewing microbes.
"Sorry, sorry," he said. Of course O'Brien can't complain. He came seriously close to falling to being banished behind the scenes as just another failed talk show host.
At his first "Late Night" press conference he corrected a reporter who called him a relative unknown, "Sir I am a complete unknown," he said. That line got a laugh, but soon O'Brien looked doomed. His September 13, 1993 debut began with O'Brien in his dressing room preparing to hang himself only to be interrupted by the start of his show. Before long his career was hanging by a thread. Ratings were terrible. Critics hated the show. Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" called it as "lifeless and messy as roadkill." Shales said O'Brien should quit.
Network officials held urgent meetings discussing the Conan O'Brien debacle. Should they fire him? How should they explain their mistake?
In the end of course he turned it around. The network hung with him long enough for the ratings to improve and the host of the cooler-than-ever "Late Night" now defines comedy's cutting edge just as Letterman did ten years ago.
Even Shales loves "Late Night" these days. He calls O'Brien's turnaround "one of the most amazing transformations in television history."
O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, a doctor, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. His mother, a lawyer, is a partner at an elite Boston Law firm. Conan, the third of six children became a lector at church and a misfit at school. Tall and goofy, bedeviled with acne, he tried to impress girls with jokes. That plan usually bombed, but O'Brien eventually found his niche at Harvard where he won the presidency of the "Harvard Lampoon" in 1983 and again in 1984 - the first two-time "Lampoon" president since humorist Robert Benchley held the honor 85 years ago.
After graduating magna cum laude with a double major in literature and American history he turned pro. Writing for HBO's "Not Necessarily The News." O'Brien was earning $100,000 a year before his 24th birthday. But writing was never enough.
He honed his performance skills with the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improv group. There he worked with his onetime girlfriend Lisa Kudrow, now starring on "Friends." But Conan was not such a standout. In 1988 he landed a job at "Saturday Night Live" - but as a writer, not as on-air talent. In almost four years on the show O'Brien made only fleeting appearances, usually as a crowd member or security guard. His writing was more memorable. He wrote (or co-wrote) Tom hanks' "Mr Short-Term Memory" skits as well as the "pump you up" infosatire of Hanz and Franz and the nude beach sketch in which Matthew Broderick and "SNL" members played nudists admiring one another's penises. With dozens of mentions of the word that hit was the most penis-heavy moment in TV history. It helped O'Brien win an Emmy for comedy writing.
In 1991 he quit "SNL" and moved on to "The Simpsons" where he worked for two years. His urge to perform came out in wall-bouncing antics in writers' meetings. "Conan makes you fall out of your chair" said "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. O'Brien's yen to act out was so strong that he spurned Fox's reported seven-figure offer to continue as a writer. He was driving for the spotlight.
By then David Letterman had announced he was turning shin - leaving NBC taking his ton-rated act to CBS. Suddenly NBC was up a creek without a host. The network turned to Lorne Michaels, O'Brien's "Saturday Night Live" boss. Michaels enlisted Conan's help in the host search planning to use him in a behind-the-scenes job. But when Garry Shandling, Dana Carvey and almost every other star turned down the chore of following Letterman, Michaels finally listened to Conan's crazy suggestion, "Let me do it!" Michaels persuaded the network to entrust it's 12:30 slot which Letterman had turned into a gold mine to an untested wiseass from Harvard.
O'Brien was working on one of his last "Simpsons" episodes when he got the news. He turned "paler than usual," Groening recalled. The Conan moseyed back to where the other writers were working, "I'll come back with the Homer Simspon joke later. I have to go replace Letterman," he said.
NBC executives now get credit for their foresight during those dark days of 1993 and 1994. They snared the axe and now reap the multimillion-dollar spoils of that decision. In fact, the story is not so simple. We sent Contributing Editor Kevin Cook to unravel the tale of O'Brien's survival, which he tells here for the first time. Cook reports:
"His office is chock-full of significa. There's a three-foot plastic pickle the Letterman staff left behind in 1993 - perhaps to suggest what a predicament he was in. There's a copy of Jack Paar's 'I Kid You Not' and a coffee-table book called 'Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years.' His bulletin board features letters from fans such as John Watters and Bob Dole and an 8" x 10" glossy of Andy Richter with the inscription: "To Conan - Your bitter jealousy warms my black heart. Love and Kisses Andy."
"Of course it's all for show. From the photos of kitch icons Adam West and Robert Stack to the framed Stan Laurel autograph, from the deathbed painting of Abraham Lincoln, to the ironic star taped to Conan's door - they're all clever signals that tell a visitor how to view the star. Lincoln was his collegiate preoccupation: stardom is his occupation. Somewhere between the two I hoped to find the real O'Brien.
"As a Playboy reader he wanted to give me a better-than-average interview. I wanted something more - a definitive look at the guy who may end up being the Johnny Carson of his generation."
"Here's hoping we succeeded. If not I carried his germs 3000 miles and infected dozens of Californians for no good reason.
O'Brien: Yes, this is how to do a Playboy Interview -- completely tanked on cold medicine. I'll pick it up and read, "Yes, I'm gay."
Playboy: We could talk another time. O'Brien: (coughing) No, it's OK. I memorized Dennis Rodman's answers. Can I use them?
Playboy: You sound really sick. Do you ever take a day off? O'Brien: No. The age of talk show hosts taking days off is over. Johnny Carson could go to Africa when he was the only game in town -- "See you in two weeks!" But nobody does that now. I will give you a million dollars on the first day Jay takes off for illness.
Playboy: Do you ever slow down and enjoy your success? O'Brien: If anything, the pace is picking up. Restaurateurs insist on giving me a table even if I'm only passing by, so I'm eating nine meals a night. Women stop me on the street and hand me their phone numbers.
Playboy: So you have groupies? O'Brien: Oh yes. And other fans. Drifters. Prisoners. Insomniacs. Cab Drivers, who must watch a lot of late night TV, seem to love me lately. They keep saying, "You will not pay, you will not pay, you make me happy!"
Playboy: How happy did your new contract make you? O'Brien: Terrified. The network said, "We're all set for five years." I said, "Shut up, shut up! I can't think that far ahead." Tonight, for instance, I do my jokes, then interview Elton John and Tim Meadows. We finished taping about 6:30. By 6:45 my memory was erased and my only thought was, Tomorrow: John Tesh. And I started to obsess about John Tesh. Sad, don't you think?
Playboy: Not too sad. You got off to a rocky start but now you're so hot that People magazine recently said, "that was then, this is wow." O'Brien: I try not to pay much attention. Since I ignored the critics who said I should shoot myself in the head with a German Luger, it would be cheating to tear out nice reviews now and rub them all over my body, giggling. Though I have thought about it.
Playboy: Tell us about your trademark gag. You interview a photo of Bill Clinton or some other celeb, and a pair of superimposed lips provide outrageous answers. O'Brien: We call it the Clutch Cargo bit, after that terrible old cartoon series. They saved money on animation by superimposing real lips on the cartoons. I wanted to do topical jokes in a cartoony way -- not just Conan doing quips at a desk. TV is visual; I want things to look funny. But we're not Saturday Night Live; we couldn't spend $100,000 on it. Hence, the cheap, cheesy lips, You'd be surprised how many people we fool.
Playboy: Viewers believe that's really the president yelling, "Yee-haw! Who's got a joint?" O'Brien: It's strange. You may know intellectually that Clinton doesn't talk like Foghorn Leghorn. Ninety-eight percent of your brain knows the president wouldn't say, "Whoa Conan get a load of that girl!" But there are a few brain cells that aren't sure. When Bob Dole was running for president we had him doing a past-life regression: "My cave, get away." And then back further, "Must form flippers to crawl on to rocky soil," he says. There may be people out there who believe that Bob Dole was the first amphibian.
Playboy: Do you ever go too far? O'Brien: The fun is in going too far. It's a nice device because you get Bill Clinton to do the nastiest Bill Clinton jokes. We'll have Clinton making fart noises while I say "Sir! Please!"
Playboy: Are you enjoying your job now, with your new success? O'Brien: Well, there are surprises. I hate surprises. Like most comics, I'm a control freak. But I am learning that the show works best when things are out of control. Tonight I ask Elton John if he likes being neighbors with Joan Collins. He says he isn't neighbors with Joan Collins. He lives next door to Tina Turner. So I panic -- huge mistake! But Elton saves the day. "Joan Collins, Tina Turner, it doesn't matter. Either way I could borrow a wig," he says. Huge laugh, all because I fucked up. Later he surprised me by blurting out that he's hung like a horse. The camera cuts to me shaking my head: That crazy Elton. What can I do? Of course, I'm delighted that he went too far.
Playboy: That "What can I do?" look resembles a classic take of Jack Benny's. O'Brien: There's an old saying in literature: "Good poets borrow; great poets steal." I think T.S. Eliot stole it from Ezra Pound. Comics steal, too. Constantly. When I watched Johnny Carson, I noticed that he got a few takes from Benny and Bob Hope. When a comedy writer told me how much Woody Allen had borrowed from Hope, I thought, What? They're nothing alike. Then I went back and watched Son of Paleface, and there's Hope, the nervous city guy backing up on his heels, wringing his hands and saying, "Sorry, I'll just be moving along." Now look at early Woody Allen. You see big authority figures and Woody nervously saying, "Look, I'll just be on my way." Of course Woody made it his own, but he must have watched and loved Bob Hope.
Playboy: Who are your role models? O'Brien: Carson. Woody Allen. SCTV. Peter Sellers. When Peter Sellers died I felt such a loss, thinking, There won't be anymore of that. There's some Steve Martin in my false bravado with female guests: "Why, hel-lo there!" And I won't deny having some Letterman in my bones.
Playboy: You were surprise as Letterman's successor. At first you seemed like the wrong choice. O'Brien: I didn't get ratings. That doesn't mean I didn't get laughs. Yes, I had a giant pompadour and I looked like a rockabilly freak. I was too excited, pushed too hard, and people said, "That guy isn't a polished performer." Fine! But it isn't my goal to be Joe Handsomehead cool, smooth talk show host. Late Night with Conan O'Brien is supposed to be a work in progress, and now that we've had some success there's a danger of our getting too polished and morphing into something smoothly professional. Which would suck.
Do you know why I wanted this show? Because Late Night with David Letterman played with the rules and it looked like fun. Here was a place where people did risky comedy every night for millions of people. We had to keep this thing alive. There should be a place on a big network where people are still messing around.
Playboy: How bad were your early days on the show? O'Brien: Bad. Dave left here under a cloud: his fans and the media were angry with NBC. Then NBC picks a guy with crazy hair and a weird name. And the world says, "Harvard? Those guys are assholes." I sincerely hope that the winter of December 1993, our first winter, was the worst time I will ever have. I'd go out to do the warm up and the back two rows of seats would be empty. That's hard to look at. I would tell a joke and then hear someone whisper, "Who's he? Where's Dave?"
Playboy: You had trouble getting guests. O'Brien: Bob Denver canceled on us. We shot a test show with Al Lewis of The Munsters. We did the clutch cargo thing with a photo of Herman Munster. Unfortunately, Fred Gwynne, who played Herman, had recently died, and Al Lewis kept pointing at the screen, saying, "You're dead! I was at your funeral!"
Playboy: For months you got worried notes from network executives. What did they say? O'Brien: They were worried. The fact that Lorne Michaels was involved bought me some time. But Lorne had turned to me at the start and said, "OK, Conan. What do you want to do?" Now television critics were after me and the network was starting to realize what a risk I was. Suggestions came fast and furious. I kept the note that said, "Why don't you just die?"
Playboy: Did they suggest ways to be funnier? O'Brien: They were more specific and tactical. The network gets very specific data. Say there was a drop in ratings between 12:44 and 12:48 when I was talking to Jon Bon Jovi. I'll be told, "Don't ever talk to him again" Or they'll want me to tease viewers into staying with us: "You should tease that -- say, 'We'll have nudity coming up next!'"
Playboy: You did come close to being cancelled. O'Brien: We were cancelled.
Playboy: Really? You have never admitted that. O'Brien: This is the first time I've talked about it. When I had been on for about a year, there was a meeting at the network. They decided to cancel my show. They said, "It's cancelled." Next day they realized they had nothing to put in the 12:30 slot, so we got a reprieve.
Playboy: Were you worried sick? O'Brien: I went into denial. I tried hard not to think, Yes, I'm bad on the air and my show has none of the things a TV show needs to survive. We had no ratings. No critics in our corner. Advertisers didn't like us. Affiliates wanted to drop us. Sometimes I'd meet a programming director from a local station where we had no rating at all. The guy would show me a printout with no number for Late Night's rating, just a hash mark or pound sign. I didn't dare think about that when I went out to do the show.
Playboy: Are you defending denial? O'Brien: How else does anyone get through a terrible experience? The odds were against me. Rationally, I didn't have much chance. Denial was my only friend. When I look back on the first year, it's like a scene from an old war movie: Ordinary guy gets thrown into combat, somehow beats impossible odds, staggers to safety. His buddy say, "You could have been killed!" The guy stops and thinks. "Could have been killed?" he says. His eyes cross and he faints.
Playboy: How did you dodge the bullet? O'Brien: There were people at NBC who stood up for me. I will always be indebted to Don Ohlmeyer, who stuck to his guns. Don said, "We chose this guy. We should stick with him unless we get a better plan." He was brutally honest. He came to me and said, "Give me about a 15 percent bump in the ratings and you'll stay on the air. If not, we're going to move on."
Playboy: Ohlmeyer started his career in the sports division. O'Brien: Exactly, his take was, "You're on our team." Of course, it wasn't exactly rational of Don to hope I'd be 15 percent funnier. It was like telling a farmer, "It better rain this week or we'll take your farm away."
Playboy: What did you say to Ohlmeyer? O'Brien: There wasn't time. I had to go out and do a monologue. But I will always be indebted to Don because he told me the truth. Wait a minute -- you have tricked me into talking lovingly about an NBC executive. Let me say that there were others who were beneath contempt -- executives who wouldn't know a good show if it swam up their asses and lit a campfire.
Playboy: Finally the ratings went your way. Hard work rewarded? O'Brien: Well, I also paid off the Nielsen people. That was $140,000 well spent.
Playboy: Ohlmeyer plus bribery saved you? O'Brien: There was something else. Just when everyone was kicking the crap out of the show, Letterman defended me.
Playboy: Letterman had signed off on NBC saying, "I don't really know Conan O'Brien, but I heard he killed someone." O'Brien: Then I pick up the paper and he's saying he thinks I am going to make it. "They do some interesting, innovative stuff over there," he says. "I think Conan will prevail." And then he came on as a guest. Remember, this was when we were at our nadir. There was no Machiavellian reason for David Letterman, who at the time was the biggest thing in show business, to be on my show.
Playboy: Why did he do it? O'Brien: I'm still not sure. Maybe out of a sense of honor. Fair play. And it woke me up. It made me think. Hey, we have a real fucking television show here.
Of six or seven pivotal points in my short history here, that was the first and maybe the biggest. I wouldn't be sitting here -- I probably wouldn't even exist today -- if he hadn't done our show.
Playboy: The Late Night wars were hardly noted for friendly gestures. O'Brien: How little you understand. Jay, Dave and I pal around all the time. We often ride a bicycle built for three up to the country. "Nice job with Fran Drescher!" "Thanks, pal. You weren't so bad with John Tesh." We sleep in triple-decker bunk beds and snore in unison like the Three Stooges.
Playboy: You talk more about Letterman than your NBC teammate Leno. O'Brien: I hate the "Leno or Letterman, who's better?" question. I can tell you that Jay has been great to me. He calls me occasionally.
Playboy: To say what? O'Brien: (Doing Leno's voice) "Hey, liked that bit you did last night." Or he'll say he saw we got a good rating. I call him at work, too. It can be a strange conversation because we're so different. Jay, for instance, really loves cars. He's got antique cars with kerosene lanterns, cars that run on peat moss. He'll be telling me about some classic car he has, made entirely of brass and leather, and I'll say, "Yeah, man, I got the Taurus with the vinyl." One thing we have in common is bad guests. There are certain actors, celebrities with nothing to say, who move through the talk show world wreaking havoc. They lay waste to Dave's town and Jay's town, then head my way.
Playboy: You must be getting some good guests. Your ratings have shown a marked improvement. O'Brien: Remember, when you're on at 12:30 the Nielsens are based on 80 people. My ratings drop if one person has a head cold and goes to bed early.
Playboy: Actually, you're seen by about 3 million people a night. Your ratings would be even higher if college dorms weren't excluded from the Nielsens. How many points does that cost you? O'Brien: I told you I'm an idiot. Now I have to do math too?
Playboy: Do you still get suggestions from NBC executives? O'Brien: Not as many. The number of notes you get is inversely proportional to your ratings.
Playboy: What keeps you motivated? O'Brien: Superstition. We have a stagehand, Bobby Bowman, who holds up the curtain when I run out for the monologue. He is the last person I see before the show starts, and I have to make him laugh before I go out. It started with mild jabs: "Bobby, you're drunk again." Bobby laughs, "Heehee."" Then it was, "Still having trouble with the wife, Bobby?" But after hundreds of shows, you find yourself running out of lines. It's gotten to where I do crass things at the last second. I'll put his hand on my ass and yell, "You fucking pervert!" Or drop to my knees and say, "Come on, Bobby, I'll give you a blow job!"
"Ha-ha. Conan, you're crazy," he says. But even that stuff wears off. Soon, I'll be making the writers work late to give me new jokes for Bobby.
Playboy: Did you plan to be a talk show host or did you fall into the job? O'Brien: I was an Irish Catholic kid from St. Ignatius parish in Brookline, outside of Boston. And that meant: Don't call attention to yourself. Don't ask for too much when the pie comes around. Don't get a girl pregnant and fuck up your life.
Playboy: Were you an alter boy? O'Brien: I wanted to be an alter boy, but the priest at St. Ignatius said, "No, no. You're good on your feet, kid," and made me a lector. A scripture reader at Mass. He was the one who spotted my talent.
Playboy: What did you think of sex in those days? O'Brien: I was sexually repressed. At 16 I still thought human reproduction was by mitosis.
Playboy: How did you get over your sexual repression? O'Brien: Who says I got over it? My leg has been jiggling this whole time.
Playboy: What were you like in high school? O'Brien: Like a crane galumphing down the hall. A crane with weird hair, bad skin and Clearasil. Big enough for basketball but lousy at it. My older brothers were better. I would compensate by running around the court doing comedy, saying, "Look out, this player has a drug addiction. He's incredibly egotistical."
I was an asshole at home, too. My little brother Justin loved playing cops and robbers, but I kept tying him up with bureaucratic bullshit. When he'd catch me, I'd say, "I get to call my lawyer." Then it was, "OK, Justin, we're at trial and you've been charged with illegal arrest. Fill out these forms in triplicate." Justin was eight; he hated all the lawsuits and countersuits. He just cried.
Playboy: Were you a class clown? O'Brien: Never. I was never someone who walked into a room full of strangers and started telling jokes. You had to get to know me before I could make you laugh. The same thing happened with Late Night. I needed to get the right rhythm with Andy and Max and the audience.
Playboy: So how did you finally learn about sex? O'Brien: My parents gave me a book, but it was useless. At the crucial moment, all it showed was a man and a woman with the bed covers pulled up to their chins. I tried to find out more from friends, but it didn't help. One childhood friend told me it was like parking a car in a garage. I kept worrying about poisonous fumes. What if the fumes build up? Should you shut off the engine?
Playboy: For all your talk about being repressed, you can be rowdy on the air. O'Brien: The show is my escape valve. When I tear off my shirt and gyrate my pelvis like Robert Plant, feigning orgasm into the microphone, that shows how repressed I am -- a guy who wants to push his sex at the lens but can only do it as a joke.
Playboy: Aren't you tempted to live it up? O'Brien: I always imagined that if I were a TV star I would live the way I pictured Johnny Carson living. Carousing, stepping out of a limo wearing a velvet ascot with a model on my arm. Now that I have the TV show, I drive up to Connecticut on the weekends and tool around in my car. I could probably join a free-sex cult, smoke crack between orgies and drive sports cars into swimming pools, and my Catholic guilt would still be there, throbbing like a toothache. Be careful. If something good happens, something bad is on the way.
Playboy: Yet you don't mind licking the supermodels. O'Brien: At one point a few of them lived in my building, women who are so beautiful they almost look weird, like aliens. To me, a woman who has a certain approachable amount of beauty becomes almost funny. It's the same with male supermodels. They look like big puppets. So while I admire their beauty I probably won't be "romantically linked" with a model. I'd catch my reflection in a ballroom mirror and break up laughing.
Playboy: The horny Roy Orbison growl you use on gorgeous guests sounds real enough -- O'Brien: Oh, I've been doing that shit since high school. It just never worked before.
Playboy: Your father is a doctor, your mother an attorney. What do they think of their son the comedian? O'Brien: My dad was the one who told me denial was a virtue. "Denial is how people get through horrible things," he said. He also cut out a newspaper article in which I said I was making money off something for which I should probably be treated. So true, he thought. But when I got an Emmy for helping write Saturday Night Live, my parents put it on the mantel next to the crucifix. Here's Jesus looking over, saying, "Wow, I saved mankind from sin, but I wish I had an Emmy."
Playboy: Ever been in therapy? O'Brien: Yes. I don't trust it. I have told therapists that I don't particularly want to feel good. "Repression and fear, that's my fuel." But the therapists said that I had nothing to worry about. "Don't worry Conan you will always be plenty fucked up."
Playboy: When a female guest comes out, how do you know whether to shake her hand or kiss her? Is that rehearsed O'Brien: No, and it's awkward. If you go to shake her hand and her head starts coming right at you, you have to change strategy fast. I have thought about using the show to make women kiss me, but that would probably creep out the people at home. I decided not to kiss Elton John.
Playboy: Do you get all fired up if Cindy Crawford or Rebecca Romijn does the show? O'Brien: I like making women laugh. Always have, ever since I discovered you can get girls' attention by acting like an ass. That's one of the joys of the show -- I'm working my eyebrows and going grrr and she's laughing, the audience is laughing. It's all a big put-on and I'm thinking. This is great. Here is a beautiful woman who has no choice but to put up with this shit.
But it's not always put on. Sometimes they flirt back. Sometimes there's a bit of chemistry. That happened with Jennifer Connelly of The Rocketeer.
Playboy: One guest, Jill Hennessy, took off her pants for you. Then you removed yours. Even Penn and Teller took off their pants. O'Brien: Something comes over me. It happened with Rebecca Romijn -- I was practically climbing her. Those are the times when Andy and the audience seem to disappear and it's just me and this lovely woman sitting there flirting. I keep expecting a waiter to say, "More wine, Monsieur?"
Playboy: Would you lick the wine bottle? O'Brien: It's true, there's a lot of licking on the show. I have licked guests. I have licked Andy. Comedy professionals will read this and say, "Great work, Conan. Impressive." But I have learned that if you lick a guest, people laugh. If I pick this shoe off the floor, examine it, Hmmm, and then lick it, people laugh. I learned this lesson on The Simpsons, where I was the writer who was forever trying to entertain the other writers. I still try desperately to make our writers laugh, which is probably a sign of sickness since they work for me now. Licking is one of those things that look funny.
Playboy: Johnny Carson never licked Ed McMahon. O'Brien: We are much more physical and more stupid than the old Tonight Show. Even in our offices before the show there's always some writer acting out a scene crashing his head through my door. A behind-the-scenes look at our show might frighten people.
Playboy: One night you showed a doctored photo of Craig T. Nelson having sex with Jerry Van Dyke. Did they complain about it? O'Brien: I haven't heard from them. Of course I'm blessed not to be a part of the celebrity pond. I have a television show in New York, an NBC outpost. I don't run with or even run into many Hollywood people.
Playboy: You also announced that Tori Spelling has a penis. O'Brien: I did not. Polly the Peacock said that.
Playboy: Another character you use to say the outrageous stuff. O'Brien: Polly is not popular with the network.
Playboy: You mock Fabio, too. O'Brien: If he sues me, it'll be the best thing that ever happened. A publicity bonanza: Courtroom sketches of Fabio with his man-boobs quivering, shaking his fist, and me shouting at him across the courtroom. I'm not afraid of Fabio. He knows where to find me. I'm saying it right here for the record: Fabio, let's get it on.
Playboy: Ever have a run-in with an angry celeb? O'Brien: I did a Kelsey Grammar joke a few years ago, something about his interesting lifestyle, then heard through the network that he was upset. He had appeared on my show and expected some support. At this point my intellect says, "Kelsey Grammar is a public figure. I was in the right." Then I saw him in an airport. Kelsey didn't see me at first: I could have kept walking. But there he was, eating a cruller in the airport lounge. I thought I should go over. I said hello and then said, "Kelsey, I'm sorry if I upset you." And he was glad. He looked relieved. He said, "Oh, that's OK." We both felt better.
....See my other post with the last third of the interview

SPOILERS FOR UG1, UG2, MW, Pro-Street, Rivals, Payback, Heat and Unbound
Recently, I'd gone and marathon a whole host of NFS Games, starting with Underground, and making my way up to Unbound. I had finished Payback, and moved forward to Heat when I realized the first set of Contracts from the Black Market was called: The Collector's Gambit. Initially, I thought of it as a simple throwaway line, or a callback to the most recent game at that time: Payback. But after going through Raziel's missions, noting the story beats of Heat, and doing the Tess/Yaz Delivery missions in Unbound, something just told me there seemed to be more going on here. It got me thinking about the other ridiculous story beats in the previous NFS games, and wondered if there were any connections.
It all started when I played Rivals again, and thought: "How on Earth do the Police and Racers get these cars? There isn't a single beater or Crown Vic in sight; the Sirens on that Charger are probably worth more than my apartment". Initially just chalked it as: Need For Speed's America could be like Dubai IRL, where supercars in law fleets are the norm; but couldn't put a piece of the puzzle down: The Racers. Obviously, it could be that the Racers get their cars from a number of shady/black market dealers, but who's giving the market their supply of LFA's and Pagani's? And why do both sides of the conflict have what seem to be military-grade weaponry on what should be, civilian vehicles at most?
I decided to move on to Payback, where there were three major story beats that caught my eye: Kobashi, Arkwright, and the NUMEROUS callbacks to pervious titles. The Curator name drops the Blacklist, the Run, and other NFS events, before selling Tyler on the Outlaw's Rush. We also know that the House had hired Cross to interrogate/torture Gallo during the House's initial takeover, which led to Silver Six, but Cross backed out. Even little nods, though unconfirmed, names such as Bull and Cooper are name dropped. Palmont City was also name dropped during the Speedcross DLC's, as it was the place where Speedcross got it's legitimacy in this universe, according to Rav. Aki Kimura also makes a full-fledged reappearance from ProStreet as DK in Noise Bomb. This game makes it clear that the Ghost games universe and the BlackBox universe's are within the same canon. Okay, so what now?
One MAJOR story beat that is often overlooked, is the role that the Brands play in Payback's narrative. To quickly refresh, Payback's parts are not only based on tiered performance, but specific brands give bonuses. One of the brands in-game we know was in-bed with the House: Chidori, as it was revealed by Charlie that Chidori custom parts had been transmitting data from Holtzman's C10, Nova's BC, and Valisev's GT-R. We also know that there were specifications for civilian cars too; alongside other technological developments, such as Skyhammer and the Jammers in Police Chargers being reminiscent of Rivals' and HP Police weaponry. As well, though not stated, due to the name, and the origami logo, it's very clear that Chidori has Japanese ties. We even meet a VIP from Japan in-game, who we pick up for the house: Kobashi. All signs point to the fact that Kobashi was the one outfitting House's cars with custom Chidori parts, and getting data from them. It wouldn't surprise me if Kobashi was the CEO, or at least, a Board of Directors member of Chidori. But why go through all this trouble for data from street racers? And why would data and a wager be so significant, that Fortune Valley's most powerful people: the Collector and the Gambler, would risk it all, just to appease Kobashi? The reward of all this hoop-jumping is joining "Arkwright", is that really it?
Heat's main story revolves around the Speedhunter's showdown, and the High-Speed Task Force stealing cars from the general populace. During "Follow the Law", Ana notes that the F40 we've been tailing had been wrongfully impounded, just like her Z, and other racers' cars. The climax of the mission hits it's peak when we go inside and see a whole operation of the HSTF dismantling the cars they impound, and shipping them off somewhere. At the end of Chapter 5, we even see Frank and Torres have a chat, and judging by Frank's tone, I don't think he was talking about the Police getting to him, but rather, who he would've shipped the cars to. Outside of the mascot cars from past games, the Collector is mentioned in Heat, through the first DLC's name, likely hinting the guy is still around. Because it's not like the House dissolved fully after Payback, the Collector still managed to irk out of Lina's mess; and likely has contacts like Raziel provide the tech needed to do his contracts. We never really grasp the full scope of the Collectors influence, so for all we know, he's the League member that contracts you and gives you the DB11 to find the people responsible for taking the DB5; he does like his cars after all.
Unbounds main story beat revolves around Alec somehow restoring the Lakeshore racing scene, after allegedly 2 years after Yaz stole our car and the LSPD stepped their presence up against street racing. But, when we find the LSPD, they aren't in the greatest of shapes either. Mayor Stevenson's foundation of her campaign is to stop street racing, and provide MORE funding to the LSPD. A detail I noticed about the LSPD was that, they don't have any variation of the Corvette as the "Ace"/Heat 5 car(s). Instead, LSPD's choice of Heat 5/Ace car is the Raptor, a more utilitarian choice, compared to other PD's in the NFS universe. And speaking of more utilitarian, it can be noted that Unbound is the first game in the series that actively TELLS you how to beat the Police. Chargers have this weakness, Camaro's have this weakness, CORVETTES SUCK AT GOING OFFROAD. Note that last part, as Payback and Heat's Corvettes didn't have much issue going off-road; likely signifying whoever was providing technology to LSPD was years behind other PD's. Sure, you could chalk it up to game mechanics, but I'd like to think that LSDP's weaknesses in their cars, and the lack of Rhino's in their fleet, show that the LSPD is eons away from the rest of the Need for Speed police forces. It should be also noted that Alex was a literal who nobody, until the story mentions that someone was sponsoring him and the Lakeshore Grand, but we never meet or hear from this benefactor. Plus, why would someone want to fund something as ridiculous as the Grand, while electoral campaigns to ban the sport of racing are at an all time high?
So, how does all of this relate to Arkwright, Most Wanted, and the Butterfly effect? I believe, that ever since the BlackBox protag showed up to the scene with the M3 GTR, it revealed the major weaknesses, of not only Rockport PD, but the rest of the countries PD's. If ONE guy can come out of nowhere with a then unconceivable car who put the fear of God into Porsche; and make a mockery of a PD, who at that point, was likely the most outfitted unit in the universe, whose to say it can't happen a second, third, fourth, or even millionth time? Hence, why we see the evolution of the Police in NFS Games, from their fleets, to even their weaponry, along with a noticeable downgrade as a benchmark in the form of the Lakeshore PD. Someone had to fund all of this, and that someone also benefits from street racing, legal or illegal, reigning supreme in the country. How else can we explain ludicrous scenario's such as the Run? That's where, Arkwright, enters stage left.
The legal definition of a Cartel is a group of independent corporations or other entities that join together to fix prices, rig bids, allocate markets, or conduct other similar illegal activities. I'd like to propose that, knowingly or unknowingly, the entire NFS universe is played out so that Arkwright can use the populace to make ill-gotten gains through data collection, with cars as the scapegoat. We know from Payback that Arkwright has their hands all over Chidori. Who's to say Carbon, Nextage, Americana and Outlaw weren't in on this either? At the very minimum, we know they have prominence in manufacturing. We also don't know how long Arkwright have been gathering data on racers. Sure we catch them in Payback, but who's to say they don't have our data in-lore, by events such as the Street Festivals in Pro Street or the legal street leagues/sponsorships all the way back from UG1 & UG2? It would make sense, if Arkwright is tracking us, and developing weapons based on the actions of the MC's we play as in NFS. And with all of the car-jacking Payback, Heat, and Unbound had gotten the MC's into, who's to say they unknowingly played into Arkwright's Mouse Utopia, of re-releasing those cars back into the economy for Arkwright to make more profit of these car-jackings? Tyler and his crew certainly didn't. What if Mayor Stevenson was another part of the Arkwright scheme that would be used to corner and monopolize the market, since they've already got Alec?
And who's to say other racers aren't fighting back, Charlie and Shift Lock have taken the fight to Arkwright, the Broker now also knows of Arkwright. Who's to say that the racers in Redview County were street racing out of rebellion? We only see the story from Zephyr and F-8's eyes in Rivals, meaning we don't even know current events in Redview County, as all they care about was what was in front of them. The VRT, the racer's, the weapons in Redview County, if not fully, I suspect Arkwright had a hand in it, and the racers either rebelled; OR unknowingly took the weapons that would provide their enemy with precious data; which could be used to make even more efficient weapons in the future to combat street racers. Hence, it could be an explanation as to why ex-criminals make up some part of the Vehicle Response Team in the RPD; what better guinea pigs than adrenaline-fueled hardened criminals fighting on the open roads with weapons and cars worth cities, with zero impunity to their actions?
All this leads me to believe that, ever since the BlackBox protag and the legendary M3 burst on to the scene, it created a butterfly effect that boosted the technological advancement of weapons and law-enforcement, which in turn lead to several economies, legal or illegal, being more than ready to meet the demands of what the BlackBox protag and his beloved M3 showed the 99% & the 1% of the bond between man and machine. And in both sides of the law, Arkwright would be ready behind the scenes, encourage and discourage where needed economically and technologically, while profiting off each and every event leading up to the NFS-verse's modern day. Hell, if my theory hold some water, the M3 could've been in Unbound because it was taken from Palm City, and being shipped country wide, with Yaz and the Unbound MC being just a link in the supply chain of Arkwright's shadow economy for profit and further technological advancements.
That's more or less what I've got, and I'd love to hear from any other lore enthusiasts out there with their thoughts. There's been a lot of "more questions than answers" with modern day NFS titles; and I know it's better to turn your brain off, and just enjoy the narrative for what it is; but this kind of theory-crafting is fun for me, and seeing the little coincidences you can find in these rabbit holes is the icing on the cake. TY for reading my ramble, and I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts!
TL;DR: Arkwright has been around before Payback, and controls the NFS Global Economies through Racing; and the world knowingly or unknowingly participates in their experiments and technological developments.

From soaring peaks to valleys low, Through lands afar, we ebb and flow. Across the globe, our journey's spun, A tapestry beneath the sun.
We scale the heights of mountains grand, And wander through enchanted lands. Through bustling streets and tranquil glades, In every corner, memories cascade.
Through highs and lows, we make our way, Each step a tale, come what may. From dawn's first light to twilight's hue, The world unfolds, both old and new.
We chase the sun, we court the moon, In every land, a different tune. Yet in our travels far and wide, We find ourselves, no need to hide.
For in the journey, we discover, The highs and lows, our hearts uncover. Through every twist and turn we track, We find our way, and journey back.
So let us roam, let us explore, The world's vast wonders to adore. From where we start to where we end, Our journey's loop, forever penned.

first
Luna VI query: Set the source to the translation logs of Princess Amara Auralyn.
No problem!
Luna VI query: Narrate Amara's plan to flee from the war.
***
The moment Amara's nose caught the scent of that little puff of smoke ascending from Nathan's damaged equipment, she suspected something terrible had happened. Her lack of understanding of the nature of this particular piece of human tech was unimportant. Just from knowing the fact that this was one of the few items Nathan had rushingly retrieved was more than enough for her to infer its importance.
His extremely negative reaction to its destruction also hadn't escaped her notice.
Amid the ragged bursts of breath and droplets of sweat running down his face, he stared at the smoking piece of equipment on the ground as he cursed. Then he stood up in a huff, pulling his hair as if trying to remove it from his scalp.
With the object source of their distress in between herself and Nathan, she asked a question that she already knew the answer to. "Was that the device you would use to request help?"
Nathan was breathing too fast to speak properly. "What else could. It be."
His confirmation was the last straw for her to close her eyes, allowing all the emotions she'd been suppressing to be manifested, like a multi-colored river flowing among her black spots.
When she opened her eyes again, she and Nathan were already locking gazes, him bending his head forward as he used his knees to support his upper body, while she stood upright with her head at the same vertical level as his.
Amara felt a shared sense of anger at the situation between them, but she was also afraid that Nathan’s anger was more targeted at her than at the situation.
It took some courage for her to speak first.
"Do you have other means for contacting your people?" She knew it was unlikely he had that, but it was still a question worth asking.
"The radio transmitter was being jammed. I didn't think of bringing it with me." He was recovering his breath fast. "What about you? There is that earpiece, and yesterday you had that AR visor on all day."
"The communicator in my ear is short-ranged. As for the AR visor..." She struggled to tell the truth, but she still did it. "I hid it inside a hole in a tree and forgot it."
"A hole? In a tree? Are you kidding me?"
The truth was that Amara hid it before entering Nathan's tent on the previous night. She had certain expectations and didn't want to be interrupted by the notifications.
But of course, she would never admit that.
"See any pockets?" She extended both hands and put her tail beside them, showing she had nowhere to store the items.
"Oh… sorry. Sometimes I forget our differences."
Nathan believed her so easily that she felt a little bad for him, but not bad enough to waste their precious time with unnecessary talking. "Even should I go alone, I fear I cannot retrieve our devices. I would just get killed or captured for nothing. We cannot stay here either because soon they will follow your trail; we need a plan."
She was certain the only reason the enemies hadn't followed them yet was because they had underestimated Nathan's ability to run.
"I wouldn't let you go back there even if you wanted to, Amara. But at least you are thinking now." He touched his chin, his eyes wandering around. "And yeah, we need a plan."
Unknowingly to Nathan, his words had caused Amara to drift away. And it was not because of him saying he wouldn't allow her to return, but because of his mention of the fact that she wasn't thinking before.
And this had affected her deeply because she utterly agreed with him.
By noticing how differently Ryo and Elysira had handled the same situation before they had fleed, Amara had reflected about how poorly she had reacted to the war. She was guilty of thinking about this more than just a little while Nathan was putting in all the effort to take her away from danger.
She traced back her mistake to a single moment—when Nathan had told her his list of reasons why they couldn't be together. This was when she had allowed her heart to be poisoned with rejection, which by morning had spiraled out of control by the dreadful reportings she had received, and finally, it had culminated in her emotional response to the crisis.
Which curiously Nathan had later fixed by his total commitment to staying together.
Amara found all of that pathetic.
This time she set her priorities straight as she suppressed her detrimental feelings in favor of reason. "We could trek parallel to the mountain and find a cave to hide until the elders send help."
"How long would that take?" He asked.
His questions triggered a long chain of assumptions in her mind. She first considered the political situation after the disruptive assassinations in the capital, and then the logistics of the deployment of reinforcements.
But Amara discarded the whole plan when she tried to envision how long it would take for her allies to find them in the darkness of the forest, realizing how flawed her suggestion was.
Displaying red, she said, "Help will be here today, yet the war on the ground will turn into a slow spot-and-kill conflict. My thoughts must still be clouded. To hide in the mountains is a death sentence; the rebels would have a better idea where to search for us than my allies would."
Nathan touched his face and shook his head at her admission. Without fully understanding what he was doing, she watched him approach a young tree and stare at its bark as his right arm tensed.
Before she could ask a single question, he punched the rough bark, dislodging some wood from the brittle surface and making it fall.
He said, "I'm such an idiot. Now our only option is to keep running and I didn't even bring the water."
She was taken aback by his reaction.
It was true among her species that the males could be more aggressive under stressful situations. But to go as far as hunting themselves against a tree? This was something she hadn't seen before nor she could understand.
What would she do now?
Of all her priorities, communicating with him was very high on her list. This went much beyond certain feelings she had, being directly linked to their survival. Remembering how Ryo and Elysira had handled the same situation before they had fled, she couldn't help but feel like she and Nathan were still failing at this.
Following more instinct than reason, Amara decided to approach him as the red on her skin gradually gave way to purple at every step she took.
When he was within tails reach of her, she spoke.
"I cannot read your thoughts much less can I see your feelings, but I presume that similar to me you can also sense that we failed today, am I wrong?" Nathan pursed his lips and didn't reply, leaving her at a loss for a moment. Yet she didn't give up and wrapped her tail around his wrist, raising his scraped knuckles for him to see. "Why have you done this?"
"I..." He averted his eyes from the wound, relaxing his arm. "This ain't me I swear Amara. It's just-"
"The drones are coming." She was forced to shut him up with her tail to confirm what she heard in the background while he was speaking. After adjusting the angle of her ears she added, "At least three."
Seeing Nathan's face contort from one weird expression after the other, she could only feel regret and anger that she was forced to interrupt him. But as long as they were alive they could always talk more later.
"Great!" He took a deep breath and lowered his back for her to climb. "Let's see how far I can go without water."
"No." She could hear the drones advancing slowly, likely searching for places where they might have hidden, underestimating how far Nathan had taken her. "I do not doubt you can run more, but there is no point in running unless we can lose them. Can you do what Ryo did and destroy them?"
He didn't look at her as he replied, "I could try, but I don't have whatever aim improving add-on the military gave him, much less the years of training."
"Can I borrow your loud gun then?" Amara had a seed of a plan in her mind, a risky and reckless plan but still better than doing nothing or engaging in more random running.
"What? Do you have any idea how hard is to shoot those things down?" Nathan took her request so badly that he lifted his body again to explain more. "Your species may have precise movements and all, but this revolver needs more than just aiming, there's the recoil, reloading, and I bet it hurt your ears; besides I doubt you can do better than me without having taken a single shot with one of our guns your whole life."
Nathan was not wrong.
No matter how hard it felt to admit it to herself, the truth was that she was not a frontline fighter. She could bring order. She could weed out traitors. She could give directions. But taking a gun and firing at the enemies? Even a gun crafted by her species was something she lacked experience using.
Still, the way that he expressed his doubt without even hearing what she had in mind made her quite angry. It was nothing close to the feeling of rejection from the night, but it was still enough to encourage her to double down on her idea.
"I do not intend to shoot the drones from far away like you humans do." Amara pointed at the canopy of the young tree beside them and waited for him to look up before she added, "I want to ambush them from a close distance."
His eyes widened, but Nathan still wasn't convinced. "That's dangerous Amara. What if you miss it? You'll just let them know where we are for nothing. And even if you don't miss the shots can’t they just send more drones?"
"You speak reason, but my goal extends beyond destroying them. I know how brother and my species think and I want to mislead them." Amara did her best to let him know her intention. "You will have to be my bait too, and we will need to run as fast as we can towards the valleys once I destroy them. I would explain everything if there was time, but right now you will have to trust me."
"You want to go to the valleys..." He spoke in a low voice as he scratched his head.
Seeing that he didn't straight up reject her idea this time, Amara went on for the last push, showing a forced hint of yellow to try and sound confident. "No sane individual would go to the valleys without equipment and a large group, my brother and his army will never consider searching for us in there."
She regretted her wording as soon as she was done speaking, afraid she might have scared Nathan who was taking his time to reply.
But before she could say anything more, Nathan started loading his gun and when he was done he used his thumb to lower a little lever. "You have to pull this thing down each time before pulling the trigger, but I guess you saw me doing it enough times already." He then undid his action before offering the gun to her as he held it by the muzzle. "Don't forget to hold it with all your might or the recoil will hurt you."
She considered saying some words to let him know how much his trust meant to her, but the drones were approaching and there were more important things to say. Her tail simply coiled around the gun, and she took it as the weight of the task ahead caused the object to feel heavier than it was.
She considered if she should ask for more ammunition, but concluded she wouldn't have time to reload, which she knew was bad despite making things significantly easier.
"Go there and make it convincing that you are absolutely exhausted, can you?" Using her tail, Amara pointed at a bright spot on the ground, where a beam of blue light was making its way from the canopies to the ground. "This is important Nathan. The operators must believe you reached your limit, they must report to my brother that you cannot run much longer."
"This won't be too hard." His lips curled into a hint of a smile. "But are you sure they don't use AI instead of operators to guide the drones?"
"Only you humans are crazy enough to disregard the only law the alliance enforces." She started climbing the tree with each of her clawed hands poking holes into the bark from a different side, but when she was already above Nathan, she looked below. "I am counting on you. We made too many mistakes today, one more and it might not be forgiven."
"I'll do what you asked, okay? Just hit the drones and don't fall from the tree." He said before running towards the spot she had instructed him.
With each of them agreeing on their role, Amara kept climbing the tree, finding little difficulty in her initial task. This was so easy that almost all of her attention was focused on tracking the spinning blades of the drones, which were constantly approaching at a speed that suggested they were doing a minute inspection of the ground.
It was only when she was already high above that she noticed the first problem.
If she wanted the advantage of shooting the drones from the same plane they were approaching, Amara would either have to give up a hand for the aim, or she would have to compromise her camouflage by wrapping her legs around the tree to help her tail to hold her body.
Neither of the options was ideal, but doing nothing was even worse, which led her to choose to sacrifice some of her ability to aim in favor of a tighter grip, ensuring that her legs kept hidden behind the trunk as she pressed each of her clawed fingers of her left hand against the rough bark for a secure hold.
Feeling a burning anxiety like she never felt before, she transferred the gun from her tail to her right hand and surrounded the tree with her now free tail to improve her grip even more.
She then turned her head and took a final glance at Nathan and confirmed he was stooping down and breathing loudly, exactly on the spot she had asked him to go.
Now everything was ready.
Amara hid the gun in between her belly and the tree as her whole body mimicked the brownish color of the bark, even her tail and hair transitioning from their typical blue to a copy of the textured color surrounding her.
Her eyes closed and only a mental representation of her surroundings remained, being especially accurate this time as if her her body knew there was no room for mistakes.
As the seconds passed, her heart rate slowed down and her awareness peaked. Of all her body, only her long ears slightly moved as the positions of the three drones became less foggy in her mind the closer they got to her.
The fact that one of them suddenly stopped moving right in front of the tree was something she expected, that being the exact moment its sensors had found Nathan on the ground.
Instead of attacking, Amara waited.
And almost envisioning the exact conversation the operators were having behind their visors, she gauged the time they took to communicate among themselves by observing how long the other two drones had taken to start moving closer to the one that had spotted Nathan first.
This wasn't a lot of time, which put into perspective how fast she would have to act in order to prevent the other two drones from repositioning after the first one was destroyed.
Her heart was beating slowly and her mind was focused; the chances of the targets getting closer were no different than that of them getting more distant.
Somewhere inside she could feel it—now was the perfect moment for her attack.
Amara's eyes snapped open and her heart rate multiplied by nearly threefold, preparing her for intense exertion. The muscles of her left arm propelled her body sideways, taking her head away from the protection of the tree trunk. That happened at the same time that her clawed finger pulled down the little lever, just like Nathan had taught her.
Her eyes locked first on the most distant target, which was not further away from her than twelve meters, and her right arm moved accordingly, raising the gun as her clawed finger slipped into the trigger.
She knew how painful to her ears the noise would be, yet she still forced her eyes to stay open as she pulled the trigger.
Except, she flinched at the last moment and ended up missing the target because of it.
Now her ears were ringing and the number of targets was the same, fueling her fury for the next shots she fired in a quick sequence.
It took three more attempts to destroy the furthest target, turning her fury into apprehension.
And apprehension quickly transitioned into despair when, after destroying the middle target with two shots, she pulled the trigger aiming at the closed drone, only to hear an empty click.
The drone rotated towards her and she also felt Nathan's gaze in the distance, screaming something that she was too numb to understand.
Would she be the reason for their demise?
Just the thought of how happy her brother would be for seeing her so helpless was more than enough of a reason for her to not accept that.
So at the lack of bullets, she spitefully threw the gun at the spinning blades.
And when the outcome of her desperate action did little more than cause the drone to lose control for a few moments, she still refused to give up and pounced on it as if she were a trained huntress.
If Bhaela could jump from a tree and dig her claws into the veins of an Oczoil from high above and survive to tell the tale, why couldn't she do the same with a little drone?
Her confidence only lasted until no part of her body was touching the tree and her limbs contacted the blades, causing a sharp pain, which she promptly forgot as flesh and machine plummeted together.
Amara tried to use her tail and arms to cushion the fall, but unlike Bhaela graceful performance, all she achieved was her belly smashing the drone against the ground before her arms and head split the kinetic energy from the fall.
Her vision went black after that, but Amara knew she wasn't dead because that annoying ringing sound in her ears persisted, reminding her of her failure.
Time became confused in her state of disorientation, and she had no idea how long had passed when she felt her eyes being opened. As she watched the world around her through a red filter, Amara got to see Nathan's mouth moving, but she was unable to grasp a single word he said.
In a rushed manner, he took off his jacket and pulled out a knife, which he then used to slice a piece of fabric.
He said something again, and she felt his hand pressing against her forehead, the severed portion of his jacket he held being large enough to cover even her eyes below.
Amara felt like sleeping this time, the darkness feeling more welcoming than scary.
But before she could fall asleep, she noticed her body being lifted from the ground. And unlike the last time, she was being held from below as Nathan's hand kept her head locked against his body.
The last memory she retained before her consciousness faded was of hearing the rhythmic sound of his breathing and his loud steps below, feeling as if she might have wrapped her tail around his arm. Yet, she remained unsure whether she had truly done so or if it was just a product of her imagination.
***
This was an account based on Amara's plan to flee from the war. The previous narrative is based on the events of the morning of the twentieth day of the exploratory mission of Irisa. According to your current settings, no queries will be suggested.
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(If you haven’t seen GEMSTIN PRODUCTION’S smiling critters fan animations yet please do. The first one is an alternate ending to the first animation so I re wrote the script and the audio from the video was so bad I couldn’t tell what were some of the things the characters have said, not even closed captions worked so I changed some dialogue. I’m also working on new ideas for more fanfiction which I promise will remain appropriate for even a ten year old to read, if you have ideas maybe share them if you want)
The original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSvmMBjPkY0
The critters assembled at the soccer field and formed together three critter teams. Crafty, hoppy and picky were wearing red vests while Kickin, bubba and Bobby were wearing blue vests. Dogday was the ref keeping the scores and catnap was in the background watching with two different signs he made himself one that says go team and a second one that says go other team.
Dogday: alright everyone hope your ready to have some fun, because today we’re gonna play soccer
Kickin: hope your ready to lose hoppy
Hoppy: you first
Dogday: now guys remember this isn’t a competition just friends having fun. So with that being said let’s play, safely
Kickin: don’t worry guys just stick with me and follow my lead, this is going to be a breeze
Minutes to maybe an hour later go by and both the red and blue team are currently tied with four points
Kickin: out of breath Jesé better than I thought
Bubba: maybe they have a super special technique under their sleeve
Kickin looks over at the red team, crafty is redesigning her red vest, picky looks like she is zoning out thinking about food and then her stomach rumbles, and as for hoppy she is doing the cotton eye Joe dance with the ball next to her feet
Kickin: I don’t think I’m worried about that
Bubba: then we should have a plan or our own. Lucky for us I thought up about seventeen different ways we can win this. The first one being-
Kickin: plan shman when hoppy kicks the ball over to me I’m gonna take it from her and kick it into the the goal as hard as I can
Bobby: can you do that?
Kickin: of corse B.B. they don’t call me Kickin chicken for nothing
Bobby: oh well if that’s the case than make sure you put your heart into it
Bubba: the likelihood that you fail and we loose I promise I won’t say I told you so
Kickin: gee thanks
Hoppy: bouncing the ball with her foot hey Kickin you ready to loose or not?
Dogday: it’s just a game hoppy
Kickin: thinks in his head okay Kickin you got this when she kicks the ball in my direction I’m gonna stop it and start kicking it towards her goal easy
Kickin thinks he is gonna stop the ball by blocking it and smacking him in the chest. When hoppy kicks the ball Kickin jumps a bit to high and the ball flies right into his groin
Kickin: holds his hands between his legs OHHH MY CHICKEN NUGGETS
Dogday: what the heck?
Bobby: oh my goodness
Kickin: crying in pain
Bubba: what in the world?
Hoppy: covers her mouth in shock and stutters allot
Dogday: okay everyone stay calm I’m coming over to you Kickin
Crafty: oh my gosh
Bubba: what just happened?
Bobby: I’ll go get the book
Dogday: nobody panic okay try and sit up Kickin
Kickin: high pitch I wish I could say I plan that
Dogday: did anyone bring any bandaids?
Bubba: a bandaid?
Hoppy: but I didn’t kick it that hard did I?
Bobby: the rule book isn’t saying anything about injuries
Bubba: of corse not I’m the one who wrote it I didn’t think it was necessary
Picky: guys I’m hungry
Bubba: picky now is not a good time
Hoppy: oh no is it really that bad?
Bobby: continues to flip though pages. Come on rule book tell me what to do here
Hoppy: tears up a little Kickin, I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just really wanted to win
Kickin: *still high pitch it’s okay hoppy I wanted to win to, it could be worst
Dogday: okay let’s carry him back home
Hoppy, Bubba, Bobby and crafty carry Kickin back to his house ad then a few moments later they all come back to the soccer field
Dogday: okay everyone with Kickin out and at home recovering from what happened we need a new player on the blue team or the red team to subtract a member if anyone still feels like playing
Everyone still feels like playing but then bubba points out the obvious
Bubba: we’ll dogday is keeping track of the scores so who are we gonna-
Everyone looks at catnap and catnap just looks left and right
Bobby: clears throat so catnap do you want to play soccer with us?
Catnap: looks at the signs he was holding earlier and nods agreeing
Dogday: excelllent here put on kickin’s vest and let’s play
The critters played be more game together and catnap helped the blue team win and cheered for him. Catnap was blushing a little embarrassed
(This is what I think occurred after the events of hog wild)
The Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGZoBmvom8s
After a crazy filled day of endurance strength, balance and Felixability crafter was sitting all by herself under the tree on the picnic blanket for about an hour while Kickin and hoppy were helping picky excercise. Finally Hoppy and Kickin returned back to the picnic site to rejoin crafty
Hoppy: hey crafty sorry for leaving you so suddenly we followed Bubba and picky and
Crafty: mixed with frustration and sadness Hoppy I really don’t want to hear it, I’ve been waiting all this time and all of you just left me
Hoppy: guilty I’m sorry crafty
Kickin: hey I’m still up for this picnic as long as if you are
Crafty: so you won’t leave?
Hoppy: no we won’t, in fact how about a game of frisbee?
Crafty: well uhhm
Kickin: we’ll let you throw
Crafty Hmm okay
Hoppy, Crafty, and Kickin start playing frisbee together meanwhile Picky and Bubba were hav8ng ice cream
Bubba: I think maybe tomorrow we take a slow casual walk around town. Slowly meaning no strain no pressure easy way to burn some calories. I’ll join you.
Picky: sounds good as long as hoppy doesn’t help me with my flexibility
Going back to the park Bobby and Dogday surprise everyone
Bobby: hi everyone
Crafty: B.B. dogday, but I thought you were sick
Dogday: I’m feeling allot better today and I took some medicine I didn’t even know I had, it was really nasty
Hoppy: so do you feel like playing frisbee
Dogday: this sounds like an opportunity to see if I’m in good condition
Bobby: by the way why was picky chasing after you two earlier?
Kickin: let’s just say we tried helping her with some things and we went overboard
Hoppy: yeah, now Bubba is treating her to ice cream right now
Dogday: will they be returning here at all?
Kickin: don’t know we will see I guess
Speak of the prototype (devil) Bubba and picky arrive and picky was still covered in bruises from Hoppy and Kickin’s workout routine
Picky: hey dogday your here
Dogday: picky my goodness
Bobby: your a mess what happened to you, Kickin Hoppy
Hoppy and Kickin explain their action on what happen and catnap was sitting in the tree branch looking down at the other critter with a small grin wagging his long purple tail

Hello! I am a new young adult librarian doing some weeding, and I have a few manga series that I highly suspect need to be weeded, but would like to get some opinions first. Are these series popular with young adults (under 18)? Could they be? Will there be a resurgence in popularity with these titles? Let me know what you think! (This list will grow/change as I make my way through the collection).

• Negima!
• Love Hina
• Waiting for Spring
• No. 6
• The Earl & the Fairy
• Yotsuba&!
• R.O.D. Read or Die
• Tsubasa
• Xxxholic
• Gals!
• Oh My Goddess!
• Waqwaq
• Wild Ones
• Genkaku Picasso
• Megatokyo
• .hack//Legend of the Twilight
• Behind the Scenes!!!
• The Wallflower
• Ranma 1/2
• Boys over Flowers
• The Kindaichi Case Files
• Culdcept
• Video Girl Ai
• Skip-Beat!
• School Rumble
• Mixed Vegetables
• The Prince of Tennis
• Yona of the Dawn
• St. Dragon Girl
• The World of Narue
• Yokai Rental Shop
• Saiyuki Reload
• The Birth of Kitaro
• Dragon Head
• Chrono Crusade
• Gravitation
• Desert Coral
• King of Hell
• Harlem Beat
• RahXephon
• Usagi Yojimbo
• Strobe Edge
• Beck : Mongolian Chop Squad
• Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto
• Black Bird
• Yu-Gi-Oh! (Is it still in??)
• Ultimate Venus
• Initial D
• Kimi Ni Todoke
• Wandering Son
• Amefurashi : the rain goddess
• Kekkaishi
• Buddha
• Black Butler
• YuYu Hakusho
• The Water Dragon’s Bride
• A Devil and Her Love Song
• Missions of Love
• A. L. I. E. E. E. N.
• Kare Kano
• Bunny Drop
• Master Keaton
• Buso Renkin
• Angel Sanctuary
• Bride of the Water God

Any input is valuable! :) TIA

Chapter 10
Location: On the Road to the Citadel
POV: Risp
Risp observes her Captain, Esthala, berate Esthala's husband, Silann. She is pissed that they attacked the Caravan. He tries to explain that one of the guards recognized them. She says that it doesn't matter if a dozen old soldiers are on a trail. He says it mattered to the Guard, but they are all taken care of. No survivors except the boy who ran off. She tells her husband to go find the child. He says there is no point, he'll be dead soon enough. No water or food. She tells him he should be easy to find then. Silann says he doesn't want to kill a child. Risp pipes in that she will lead a troop to find him if necessary. She mentions that SIlann's troop took a lot casualties and that they shouldn't have. Silann says the guards were veterans and one was Gripp Galas. He says he fell to a spear in his back and that firing the wagons was a mistake. Risp does not like the spouses bickering and thinks it gets in the way of their mission. She asks if Hish Tulla is in her keep. If so, she will likely investigate the smoke. Esthala says no. Esthala tells her to take 6 of her own troops and find the boy. If they encounter anyone from Tulla keep to escort them to the scene.
Risp longs for the day they will be in the citadel looking nobles in their faces. She thinks her and her sisters will be the personal staff under Osserc once he takes command of the Legion. The presence of Gripp Galas was unfortunate. He was a footman to Anomander before he retired. She asks Esthala what he could have possibly been doing guarding a caravan. Esthala asks Silann if he examined Gripp's body or gear. SIlann shakes his head and says the spear unhorsed him and his corpse rolled in a crevasse. Esthala asks if he went down and checked if he was actually dead. He said there was no need, he was covered in gore and the crevasse was bottomless. Risp asks, who's gore? Stating that he was stabbed in the back. She tells Silann to get her the soldier who stabbed him. She wants to know what type of armor he was wearing. Silann says the leader of the Caravan killed that soldier. Risp demands to see the spear. Esthala grabs it first and examines it. Says it might have been chain armor and if it severed the spine he was dead, if not he was just wounded. Silann yells that he fell down a crevasse. Risp asks, fell down or rolled down? She dispatches six more of her troops.
Location: Tulla Keep
POV: Sukul Ankhadu
Sukul summons Rancept, the keeps castellan, to the top of the High Tower and asks if he knows about the smoke. "Rancept, it was said, was the offspring of a drunken woman and a sadly sober boar". His face shows that he brawled a lot and his nose was broken and pushed back giving it the appearance of a pig's snout. He is rumored to be a 1000 years old, but looks older. Rancept says that Lady Hish told them to stay put. She said there is trouble coming. Sukul says, it's here and that the burning smells like hides. Sukul fears that it's Orfantal's caravan that has been attacked and wants to investigate. If it's bandits they need to know. Rancept says they aren't bandits. Sukul says she knows and insults him. She says she wants 15 houseblades and a fist of tracking dogs. He says she'll get one houseblade and Risp. She complains that he's supposed to protect her and he says he will. The one will be him. She questions his ability by saying he barely made it up the stairs. He says he's fine except for the nose she keeps trying not to look at. She says fine let's get a horse. He says they will be on foot.
Location: On the Road to the Citadel
POV: Orfantal
Orfantal is alone with no blanket or fire. He feels nothing like a hero. He still feels that he betrayed his horse. He wishes the bandits had cut him down instead of his horse dying. He is very cold and tired. He decides he is not afraid of the dark and closes his eyes. The cold begins to fade. He is jolted awake by a footfall on gravel nearby. A voice says, "there you are". Orfantal tries to run and falls over. The voice says, "Easy! It's me, old Gripp." Gripp touches his shoulder and feels that he is chilled to the bone. He says he has a camp close. Gripp says he wouldn't have lasted the night and what he did with his horse was a smart move because they would not follow him. He picks Orfantal up and takes him to his camp. Gripp has a wrenched knee and a wounded back, so it takes longer to bring him to camp. Gripp sets him down and puts a blanket over him, then proceeds to rub his skin hard. Orfantal pushes him and curls up in the blanket. Gripp says he can't sleep now. He has to wait until he's warm. Orfantal asks if they fought them off. Gripp replies no. Orfantal says heroes always get stabbed in the back. Gripp says not just heroes, then asks if Orfantal can sew. Orfantal says he's seen the maids doing it. Gripp says he needs some sewing in the morning. He also says he may not wake up and if he doesn't to follow the road East, but to stay off of it.
Gripp says they will be hunted. He tells him to take his story to Anomander. Orfantal asks if he killed anyone. Gripp says two on accident. Orfantal doesn't understand and Gripp says it's better to wound. If they have to take care of wounded they won't be as able to track them. Gripp tells him that Haral did well and bought Orfantal some time. Gripp says it took him a long time to get out of the crevasse. He saw what they did to Haral's body. Gripp says he has burned every face into his brain.
Location: Tulla Keep
POV: Sukul Ankhadu
At the gate of the keep Sukul says that Ribs is all bones. Rancept says he has a tapeworm and that skinny dogs live longer. Ribs is 12 and cross-eyed. Rancept took the sword and spear she brought leaving her only a dagger. They open the gate and Ribs goes out scouting ahead. Sukul is skeptical of his ability. Rancept says Ribs knows what we're about. Sukul asks, How? Rancept shrugs and says he goes on occasion with the dog. He goes to speak with the Deniers in the hills. Lady Hish wants no misunderstandings with them. Sukul says they are bandits, Rancept responds that it's a hard life and to think of it as a road tax. She says it's extortion. Rancept replies, "It's only extortion when someone else is doing it". Ribs is waiting in a clearing and as soon they get there, he takes off on a side trail. Rancept says we aren't taking the main path. He also says that Lady Hish has an arrangement with the Deniers. They keep a watch on the paths not patrolled by the Tulla tax collectors. He tells her they can't talk anymore as night carries voices. Sukul complains. Rancept says they can turn around. He tells her to look at Ribs who is sitting ahead. He says Ribs is telling them that there are strangers in the hills. She follows him quietly but is upset that there isn't more grandeur in this outing.
She was sure that Orfantal was lying dead somewhere ahead. Killed only to keep him silent. Lady Hish had hinted at trouble coming and she knew there were lawless people like her sisters. Her imagination of this night is not matching up with reality and she is tired and wants to stop. Daydreaming she bumps into Rancept. Before she can fall he grabs her and pulls her close. He tells her there are riders ahead and to ask no questions. She starts to speak, but he puts his hand over her mouth and says that they wait for Ribs.
Location: Outside Tulla Keep
POV: Risp
Risp and her 12 soldier party are using hidden trails made by the bandit Deniers. Now that the Hust Forge was paying well for minerals, most Deniers had given up banditry. Mining was more lucrative. She wonders why the Hust are making more weapons. She knew civil war was coming. Hunn Raal says it will be short. They will kill all that oppose them and then Urusander will marry Mother Dark. She covets command of the Wardens once they are folded into the Legion. She thinks Calat Hustain is only commanding them because he is noble and that he is mismanaging them. They come upon an abandoned denier settlement. One of her soldiers says the hills don't feel as empty as they should, and suggest 4 scouts. Risp agrees. They come to the sight of the fired wagons. The sergeant with the feeling points out the crevasse that Gripp went into and he tells her he thinks Gripp rolled. Risp says she will climb down with lanterns to check for Gripp's body.
Location: Outside Tulla Keep
POV: Sukul Ankhadu
Ribs comes back to them and indicates that the Riders are coming from the North and that they aren't bandits. Sukul asks if he knows that from the wagging tail. Rancept says, "That and the drooping left ear." They come to an abandoned village. Sukul asks if this is how Deniers live. Rancept says they used these huts, but that the huts have been here for 5000 years at least. He says about a dozen horses went through here going towards the ambush and that they can take a different trail to go opposite of it. Rancept goes to one of the huts and says there is a passageway. Ribs is a bit scared. Roots have grown across the portal and Sukul wonders how there are roots if there are no trees. Rancept says there is a tree just not in the way you are thinking. Sukul notices that she can see all the details of this place, but that there is no light source. That bothers her. As she gets further in the tunnel, she can't see anything. She comes to an opening and Rancept tells her to stop looking with her eyes. She doesn't know what he means. Rancept says, "This is Dog-Runner magic." She says it's impossible as Dog-Runners aren't this far east. Rancept responds by saying these weren't always Tiste lands. Sukul says Tiste were always here, but that it's not Rancept's fault that he doesn't know that. It's his lack of education. Rancept says, "Dog-Runner magic is all about fire, and earth. Dog-Runner magic fears the sky. Fire and earth, and tree and root. They’re gone from here because the forests are gone."
He says that Deniers have some Dog-Runner blood in them and that they are in a Dog-Runner temple and if she opens her sense she will see that. She asks why Ribs is so scared. Rancept says he has memories of the Ay. He takes her hand and says there is a Dog-Runner witch down here with them. Sukul is alarmed. He says the witch won't bother them, she might be dead, but he thinks she's just asleep. She gives up and asks him to tell her how to see. He says close your eyes. He tells her to picture the cavern and says there are hundreds of large wolf skulls. These are the Ay and they are the reason for the Dog-Runner name. She asks him to describe the witch. He says he thinks she was very powerful. There are offerings to her in the form of jewels and animal teeth. Much of her body has transformed into roots and branches. Her skin is like bark. All the roots they have encountered have come from her. She gasps and says, you cut through them. Rancept says in his ignorance he wounded her. He is very sad about it.
He says the Dog-Runners have heavy facial features, but laugh and cry with ease. They do not understand lying and, "To speak with a Dog-Runner, milady, is to be humbled and to feel blessed". Some Tiste didn't like that. She asks if he believes that she sleeps. He says he believes yes that she is the one. She questions the one. He says Dog-Runners believe that their greatest witch, the dreamer, stayed behind when they left to keep emptiness from the world. Sukul wonders if that is in opposition to Mother Dark. Rancept says that is beyond him. Sukul asks if Rancept is a Denier. He says he doesn't stand against Mother Dark. That's not really an answer, but she knows she shouldn't have asked anyway and apologizes. Rancept asks if she can see what he described. She says yes and, "We stand inside the cavern, like errant thoughts inside a skull." He grabs her hand and says those were not her own words. Sukul says they are in the witch's dream and she is trying to make sense of us. There is danger in this and Rancept says they must leave. She pulls her hand away as she can now see with her eyes closed. She asks if the witch has a name. Rancept says, "she is named Burn. She dreams so that we may live. All of us: Tiste, Dog-Runner, Jaghut, Thel Akai, even the Forulkan. She dreams, to give us our freedom." She asks if he had brought her anything. He says he would have to be a Denier to do that. She reaches for her bag. He tells her to be careful. She takes out a stone from the Dorssan Ryl. For her brother lost in the wars. He says this gesture must not be careless. She may bind Mother Dark to the Sleeping Goddess. He says if she has faith in Mother Dark it will bind them and also the Deniers will be bound to the Tiste.
She asks him why he brought her here. She wants the Truth. He says the Truth is that Tiste schooling is rubbish. She laughs at this. Rancept tells her to put the stone away. He says that burn is a Dog-Runner still and what greater gift could you give her than laughter. She has blessed Sukul. Rancept says she has healed the Sleeping Goddess with her laughter. Rancept is grateful. He says the roots no longer bleed. He takes her hand. They both know she no longer needs guidance, but they are friends now. Sukul says the Deniers need to know of that temple. Rancept says there's no need and that he admits he is a Denier, but doesn't like that word. He says that sharing her dreams he saw a river and that she dreams of it.
Location: Outside Tulla Keep
POV: Risp
Risp is climbing down the crevasse. She knew in her gut that Gripp's corpse wasn't down here. She finds his trail and follows it out. She sees that he is bleeding and has a bad knee. Risp's sergeant tells her he went after the boy from here and says they found a chest in the wagons with the Korlas crest. He says the child was likely a hostage on the way to the Citadel. That is the reason Gripp was here. The boy was to be Anomander's hostage. This is very troubling to Risp. Her sergeant now explains the loyalty and pride of house Korlas and she wonders about his loyalty. He says they have to find Gripp and the boy and make it right. Meaning they need to hang Silann. The boy being a hostage complicates the matter and her soldiers have a healthy fear of Anomander. Risp says she must tell Esthala about this change in plans and that Esthala will have to kill her husband, because he couldn't be trusted to keep his mouth shut. She thinks she'll have to kill this sergeant too.
Location: Outside Tulla Keep
POV: Sukul Ankhadu
Rancept tells Sukul that 3 riders had been dispatched from the party of Legion riders. He says they weren't part of the killing, but they are all Legion and they don't want to be seen. Ribs is curled up warming Sukul's toes and she now has fondness for the dog. Rancept says they will go to the scene and maybe Ribs can tell them something. Sukul says he's just a dog. Rancept responds, "Milady, he’s my dog." Sukul asks if he is a priest of the Deniers. He says there aren't any and Dog-Runners have witches and warlocks called Bonecasters. She asks if they throw bones. He says it's more like transforming bone to wood or bone to stone. He says they gave the Jheleck the gift of Soletaken. Sukul says she hopes that Lady Hish values him. If she doesn't she will steal him and ribs away. He says that's nice, but he will serve Hish until he dies. Something tells her of a deeper love than just a Castellan to his lady. Sukul asks if Ribs is just a dog. Not a Soletaken. Rancept says just a dog. If he was a Soletaken at some point, he forgot and is now just a dog.
Rancept surveys the scene and is more sure that it isn't bandits. Sukul says, "I will never be one for war" Rancept tells Sukul that the dead are just sacks of organs. Once they die, what makes them more is gone. It's best to think this way when confronted with slaughter. Sukul doesn't like this because if you can see animals and people as just sacks then it is much easier to tear them open. She asks Rancept if there is a smaller grave. He says the boy got away at least initially. She says she thinks they need to see if Orfantal is still alive. Rancept is surprised that a hostage would only have these caravan guards. Sukul says there may have been a reason for it. She asks if his nose can be healed. He says the best way is to break it again and he's tried it 6 times.
He goes to the cairns and counts them remembering that Sukul asked him to prepare food for seven people. He says someone else got away. He says ribs can track him, but they aren't equipped for more nights. He suggests that ribs goes on and they return. Sukul says he's just a dog. She says we should not take the road back to the hold. She doesn't want to meet the rider sent there by Risp. She asks if there are any more secret temples. He responds, "Nothing we’d call such, milady."
Location: Outside Tulla Keep
POV: Corporal Renth
Corporal Renth had been given orders from Hunn Raal that no violence was to take place. All plans were on hold. Renth didn't like Raal's plans and had thought about defecting to Anomander's houseblades. He didn't because of his loyalty to Urusander. Renth wasn't bothered by the slaughter or Deniers. They weren't Tiste to him and they worshipped old gods. The highborn were different. They were Tiste. His first group to relay orders to was Esthala. On the way he sees a muddy boy in the middle of his path. Renth asks him if he wants to get run down and tells him to move. The boy says, "I am named Orfantal,’ said the boy, ‘of the House Korlas, and I claim the right of protection.' Renth doubts this and sees a glitter in Orfantal's eyes before he feels a stabbing through his chain. Gripp pulls him off the horse and twists the knife as he pulls it out. He says, for Haral. Renth is confused, but dies.
Location: Outside Tulla Keep
POV: Orfantal
Orfantal is horrified when he sees Gripp spit into the dead man's face. They had seen the rider coming and needing a horse Gripp told him the plan. Orfantal thought they would steal the horse and then pay the man back eventually. Gripp grabs the horses reins and tells Orfantal they would ride to Kharkanas. After seeing the look on Orfantal's face. Gripp gruffly tells him that we are in a civil war now and that is the enemy. Gripp wants them to know it was him who killed Renth and that he was coming for them. He takes out a knife and cuts off the head, then carves his initials into it and tosses it in the middle of the road. Orfantal thinks, "All the heroes are dead. I am lost. We are all lost."