So 3 years ago I purchased a copy of Pokemon Pinball. I was told that all it needs is a cleaning but when I opened it the entire board was covered in corrosion. Completely in over my head, I threw it in a box and moved on with life.
https://imgur.com/KPuBpOL
The other day while looking for something unrelated I came across the game again. With a lot of soldering experience under my belt since I bought it I decided to try and fix it.
First I gave the pcb a white vinegar bath, ipa scrub, and removed all the components. The ROM chip was the most corroded. You can see in the picture that 4 pads were lost but what's not shown is the five pins that broke off the chip itself.
https://imgur.com/lRH2Ha4
https://imgur.com/lP4dXXh
Next I sanded away the solder mask until I could see all the traces.
https://imgur.com/ij5uFjB
https://imgur.com/r9SkMsg
I then spent a few hours a day for a week painstakingly going over every single trace and vias. It was amazing practice and by the end I was going back and redoing stuff I did at the start. I started off with 28awg wire but that was too thick so I swapped to 36awg enameled wire.
https://imgur.com/MaLANCk
https://imgur.com/XDDq9O8
Once I was satisfied with all the bodge wires, I reconnected all the components.
https://imgur.com/UFePNA8
And was met with complete failure.
https://imgur.com/XSNUfWD
At this point I had sunk enough time into it that I wasn't going to be deterred. I found a reverse engineered pcb schematic and ordered 5 from jlpcb.
https://imgur.com/JTPPwLz
There were some pad size issues. You can see in the following two pictures that I had to attach the resisters and capacitors at an angle to get them connected. And if you look at the 6 pin chip you'll see that only the center pins line up with the pads. The outer 4 have large blobs to connect them to the corresponding pin. I probed with my multimeter to test for continuity and everything s going where it needs to be.
https://imgur.com/ZTjwvlX
https://imgur.com/eHQEkP5
Then I went through the tedious process of resoldering the rom chip. All together I had to grind away and solder bodge wires to replace 6 lost pins.
https://imgur.com/69wSEmS
Finally with everything all transfered to the new pcb it was time to give it a test.
https://imgur.com/X2vPCnx
I got so excited when I saw that Nintendo logo. But it was once again a failure.
That is where I stand at the moment. My current theories are:

1. one of the other components was blown by the corrosion and is causing the white screen.
2. There are still some broken pins on the ROM chip that are being held in place by the plastic. I really hope this isn't it because that would involve a ton of exploratory grinding.
3. The ROM chip is shot.

For the record, despite how it looks in the pictures, none of the pins are shorting to each other. It's just a bad angle.
So any theories on what's the issue? Does anyone know the values of the capacitors and resistors? I do have a test drive game which uses the same board so I could swap the rom chips to narrow down if it's components or chip but I really don't want to redo those snapped legs. Which is why I'm posting here before taking next steps.

So 3 years ago I purchased a copy of Pokemon Pinball. I was told that all it needs is a cleaning but when I opened it the entire board was covered in corrosion. Completely in over my head, I threw it in a box and moved on with life.
https://imgur.com/KPuBpOL
The other day while looking for something unrelated I came across the game again. With a lot of soldering experience under my belt since I bought it I decided to try and fix it.
First I gave the pcb a white vinegar bath, ipa scrub, and removed all the components. The ROM chip was the most corroded. You can see in the picture that 4 pads were lost but what's not shown is the five pins that broke off the chip itself.
https://imgur.com/lRH2Ha4
https://imgur.com/lP4dXXh
Next I sanded away the solder mask until I could see all the traces.
https://imgur.com/ij5uFjB
https://imgur.com/r9SkMsg
I then spent a few hours a day for a week painstakingly going over every single trace and vias. It was amazing practice and by the end I was going back and redoing stuff I did at the start. I started off with 28awg wire but that was too thick so I swapped to 36awg enameled wire.
https://imgur.com/MaLANCk
https://imgur.com/XDDq9O8
Once I was satisfied with all the bodge wires, I reconnected all the components.
https://imgur.com/UFePNA8
And was met with complete failure.
https://imgur.com/XSNUfWD
At this point I had sunk enough time into it that I wasn't going to be deterred. I found a reverse engineered pcb schematic and ordered 5 from jlpcb.
https://imgur.com/JTPPwLz
There were some pad size issues. You can see in the following two pictures that I had to attach the resisters and capacitors at an angle to get them connected. And if you look at the 6 pin chip you'll see that only the center pins line up with the pads. The outer 4 have large blobs to connect them to the corresponding pin. I probed with my multimeter to test for continuity and everything s going where it needs to be.
https://imgur.com/ZTjwvlX
https://imgur.com/eHQEkP5
Then I went through the tedious process of resoldering the rom chip. All together I had to grind away and solder bodge wires to replace 6 lost pins.
https://imgur.com/69wSEmS
Finally with everything all transfered to the new pcb it was time to give it a test.
https://imgur.com/X2vPCnx
I got so excited when I saw that Nintendo logo. But it was once again a failure.
That is where I stand at the moment. My current theories are:

1. one of the other components was blown by the corrosion and is causing the white screen.
2. There are still some broken pins on the ROM chip that are being held in place by the plastic. I really hope this isn't it because that would involve a ton of exploratory grinding.
3. The ROM chip is shot.

For the record, despite how it looks in the pictures, none of the pins are shorting to each other. It's just a bad angle.
So any theories on what's the issue? Does anyone know the values of the capacitors and resistors? I do have a test drive game which uses the same board so I could swap the rom chips to narrow down if it's components or chip but I really don't want to redo those snapped legs. Which is why I'm posting here before taking next steps.

It was late November 2015. I was 51 and one year past my divorce (which was not related to cheating) when I became so disgusted with myself that I knew I had to pick myself up. I was alone for the long holiday, and although I wasn't really sad or lonely, I felt empty. However, I had some extra time to consider how does one picks oneself up.
I made a list of potential New Year resolutions that were individually realistic. Some were really easy and stupid like “have your chipped front tooth fixed” and “take & post a selfie”. These smaller tasks fueled my confidence and provided the energy boosts needed to tackle the more challenging resolutions, like starting a weight loss challenge at work.
Skip ahead to March 4th 2016. I had a Friday lunch date with a married client that I met two weeks prior. Of course, it was not a real date, as I wouldn't impose myself on a married woman, nor would I risk my career or my ego, especially if the signals she seemed to be sending were just a product of my wishful thinking, stimulated by checking off some boxes on the list on the fridge dated 1/1/16.
The following is my thank you note to her for a great date as well as for helping me check a lot of boxes over the past few weeks. I sent her a link to it as it is in the form of my first ever online post (one more check box, YAY!).
************************************** We were only 1 minute in the hotel room; her jeans in a ball on the floor. She sat at the foot of the king sized bed and backed her way into the stack of oversized pillows lining the headboard. I followed as If attached by a leash. I landed somewhat awkwardly on my elbows between her legs finding myself squarely face to face with the tattoo. This tattoo, that she so shamelessly revealed just a week ago, the same tattoo that has been scorching my thoughts and the same tattoo that she promised me complete and unlimited access.
It’s been a long time since I have been here or anywhere near as nice as here, between the legs of a beautiful woman 20 years younger and far out of my league....even when I was her age. I took a second to drink in my fortunate situation. I admired her panties. All day I was so hoping she would wear those same panties as before. She didn’t. These were different but similar enough. The delicate lace and silk perfectly framed the tattoo on her hip. She did not disappoint. There is a fruity jasmine scent, intoxicatingly pleasant, and oh so subtle. It is not here. I’ll need to find its source. I want more of that. (I remember being thoroughly impressed and thinking to myself “This girl is good”.)
I briefly forgot that there was someone else here besides myself and the tattoo. How long have I been down here perving out on her? I wondered. I hesitated, and then apologetically looked up half expecting a well-deserved snarky glare. What I found instead was an ear to ear compassionate smile followed by a tilt of her head and an arch of her eyebrow that said “I like that you like that, carry on”.
With confidence restored that we were still in sync, I adjusted myself so that I was in a good position to thoroughly enjoy what I came to do. I kissed the tattoo hard and gave it a good lick. The challenge for today was “Taste the Tattoo” and I won. I did a small celebration gesture that she rolled her eyes to. I continued to kiss and taste all around until every freckle got some personal attention. As I got to the upper most reaches of her inner thighs, I looked up to check in as I was about to cross a new line. For the first time she was not looking back at me but had laid her head back deep into the pillows, her eyes closed. I took that as a yes!
I marveled at the softness of her inner thighs on my cheeks as I gently placed kisses up one and down the other. As I kissed her through her panties, her hips responded by arching her up in anticipation of each next kiss. Before long, those wonderful panties were just getting in the way. I stopped and pondered whether to just slide them aside or remove them or to risk interrupting the mood and attempt a complete wardrobe removal as we were both still fully dressed except for her jeans.
I didn’t have to ponder long as she knew what she wanted and it was not any of the options I was considering. Still lying back with her head semi submerged within the pillows, she held out her arms as if gesturing for a hug. I moved up her body and when I got close enough she pulled me in for a kiss.
Unbelievably, this was our first kiss. I found it odd that we had not kissed yet and was grateful she thought to stop for a moment to have a kiss. We kissed some and then I settled in to thoroughly enjoy it. However, the kiss to come was not the kiss I was expecting or a kiss I was ready for. It was a kiss that could ruin everything.
Technically, there was one kiss before. It was an awkward kiss 5-10 minutes earlier just after we entered the room. All in about the time it took for the hotel door to close behind us, she tossed her bag on the sofa, had her jewelry off and set on the nightstand while I emptied my pockets and silenced my phone.
We approached each other, and as we met I was looking at the place where the tattoo would be under her shirt and behind her jeans. They were higher cut and could not be pulled down that far to get to the tattoo. They would have to come off. To just reach in and do that would be an uncharacteristically bold move for me. But I did have unquestionable permission to have the tattoo in any way that I desired. I reached down with both hands and took hold of the waistband on each side of the button. I didn’t see her simultaneous move in at me at first. Just as I felt the metal of the button, I felt her reaching her arms around my neck and realized that she was tip toeing up for a kiss. It caught me unexpectedly and I think it showed on my face that it did. I tried to recover and moved back in to accept her lips on to mine but it turned into an awkward peck.
I scolded myself for the selfish moment and just as I was trying to formulate a recovery gesture, she, without missing a beat, gently dismissed my fumble and gracefully restored the momentum. “Oh” she said with surprise in her tone, while looking down at my fingers ready to release her button. Then, in a more playfully quizzical tone, she followed with “I guess you want to get right to THAT then” and she stepped back away from me where I lost grip of her jeans. She replaced my fingers on the button with hers, paused, maybe waiting for me to look up to her eyes, which I finally did, then flashed me a devilishly naughty smile and pulled her jeans down to the top of her boots. She then proudly announced, mostly to herself, “You really are going to let me have fun with you, aren’t you!” seemingly shedding any doubts in her mind that I would go through with this. She then sat at the foot of the all white linen king sized bed, removed her boots and jeans and backed her way into the stack of oversized pillows lining the headboard.
Back to our kiss. The kiss that from now on I will reflect on as our first kiss
Responding to her hug gesture, I moved up her body and when I got close enough she pulled me in for a kiss. I didn’t flub it this time, but again, I didn’t know it was coming, and prolly I should have. It took only ten seconds to adjust and synchronize to each other’s kissing form. It was warm and succulent and sweet and was wonderful. I really was surprised at how nice this felt. I don’t recall married kissing being this enjoyable. I remember saying to myself “Damn, this girl can kiss”.
I was on top, in a position that wasn’t going to be comfortable for as long as I wanted this to last, so I backed away to reposition but she held tight indicating she didn’t want me to move. I gestured at the space next to her and she relented. We then settled in facing one another side by side; her smile confirming that this was a nice place. We were hugging and kissing, pulling each other closer and looking into each other’s eyes. Our legs intertwined and our hands were roaming, but not really in a sexual way, more like trying to make as much body contact as possible. I couldn’t get over how I felt so much more familiarity than there was. What I did not recognize at the time was that this was the physical intimacy catching up to match the virtual intimacy we have been sharing online.
Soon the intensity escalated and it was getting very hot very quickly. The intensity and passion that was building was not something I ever expected or planned for. This was the rare kind of making out where accidental hickeys happen and inadvertent “Oh god I love you’s” slip out. Not that either of those was going to happen but my safe, non-committal no emotional strings encounter was getting too hot to not risk introducing emotions into the situation. And that could happen.
At some point I was no longer kissing her lips and mouth but was kissing her.
I broke contact to catch a breath and maybe get some control of the fire. We stopped for a moment to breathe and cool off. She slid herself on top and I rolled over on to my back to accommodate her. She looked at me with eyes that appeared to agree that it was a good time to slow it down. She closed her eyes and she seemed to enjoy that I was rubbing her back with both hands that I slipped up under her shirt. She presented her lips for me to kiss and then her cheek for the same, then neck and ear and lips again. Her long hair had fallen down around us, surrounding our faces like a vail creating a tiny private and even more intimate space. Inside here it was darker and the temperature and humidity rose quickly. We were breathing each other’s breath between kisses. All of a sudden I noticed that Jasmine was back. Not subtle this time, but deep and fulfilling. I loved it.
This fragrance stuff really works. The next morning just after waking up, I caught an unexpected subtle whiff on my skin under my watch and my heart jumped by 20 beats. Who’d a thunk it possible?
The passion was building again but since I was aware and cautious now, I wanted to enjoy and go with it. I thought I could keep it measured and I did for a while as it does take two. The kissing slowed to half and so did the passion. However, the rest of our bodies started to make up for it and the touching evolved into the sexual. She was still on top of me and my hands were exploring and squeezing on her panty covered butt, then under and in those panties. Her body contact became more targeted as she was now very deliberately mashing her fun stuff all over my fun stuff. The kissing subsided but replaced with the audible accompaniment of her squeaks, moans and quicker breathing timed with her mashing I was no longer in control. The passion was under control but being replaced with something intimately erotic.
I abruptly escaped by gently rolling her over on to her back then getting up and knelling between her legs. I took a moment to catch my breath and wanted to say “That is getting WAY too intimate. Can we get naked and have sex now?” However, I tugged at her panties and said something dorky like “can we take these off now?” Yes, we were still both fully dressed except for her jeans
Since I am the kind of guy who doesn’t kiss and tell, (well, only tells about the kisses) and this is not the forum for it, I am not going to talk about the sexy part over the next 30 minutes. I will tell you that we did finally each get ourselves unceremoniously naked and then the sexy part finishes where it started, with me finishing all over that beautiful tattoo. Of course I did a small celebration gesture that she rolled her eyes to.
*************************************************
Cuddle time. Our snapchats leading up to this encounter were heavy on the anticipation and buildup but didn’t contain a lot of detail about or define what stuff would happen during our “fun” time together.
Me: “Ok then, tomorrow lunchtime, I’m in.”
Her: “OMG Are you saying that you are REALLY going to come here and let me have fun with you?
Me: “I’m REALLY going to come there. I am REALLY going to fully inspect that tattoo, as well as the neighborhood where the tattoo lives.
Her: “I so can’t wait to get my hands on you.”
Me: “WOW….Now that this is real and going to happen, my heart is beating so hard that I am afraid that people can see it through my shirt.”
Her: “You have to tell me, are you being SERIOUS right now? You can’t say this and not show up. It’s OK if you are teasing, but you have to say so that you are now….not tomorrow!!!”
Me: “I am SERIOUS and I PROMISE I will be there. You have gotten to me, BAD. All week with the way we have been talking..err..I mean snapchatting; I can’t get you out of my head. Then today with those tattoo snaps you sent; I can’t get up from my desk. LOL…..NOT kidding NOT teasing.”
Her: “I am BAD, and I like having FUN. I am going to have so much fun with you!!!”
************************************************
The only specific things I recall us acknowledging we would do with our “fun” was tattoo inspection and cuddle time. So as soon as cleanup from sexy time was done we both knew what time it was. For me, as good as the inspection was the cuddle was better. Just as during the sexy time we changed things up and we got to cuddle many ways. We started face to face full contact hugging just like our kissing time with some but less kissing and more being in the moment.
We were still hot (temperature hot now) and sweaty so that didn’t last long. She turned over and we spooned some. I was still craving full body contact but it was still so hot that we had to separate a bit. No contact spooning if you will, with just my one hand caressing her exposed shoulder and arm and hip with an occasional butt cheek squeeze.
It was about that time that we had our first ever personal conversation. On the project there were lots of flirty banter and some personal stories but almost always as part of a group. We had many phone calls and a few project meetings with just us two but never did the conversation get personal. Until now the only personal talks (Chats) we have had have been via Snapchat. I don’t recall who asked the first question of the other, but it was like a dam broke and we started filling in the details of our lives, our feelings and all the things we chatted about.
There was a lot to tell and we were giddy like children (child) best friends re-meeting on the first day of school catching each other up on our summer vacations. At one point she had something compelling to say and faster than a fish out of water she flipped back to facing me so she could gesture with her hand and punctuate through her expression. She landed close. Closer that I think she meant to at first and just a bit awkward I felt. But I was wrong. She didn’t back up an inch. I really couldn’t see her hand but I could feel that she was using it in the 2 to 4 inches of space between our chests. Her face was right into mine. She would lean back or up just an inch when she wanted me to see her eyes or smile or frown for emphasis, then settle back into the pillows with our foreheads or noses or cheeks touching. It was the farthest thing in the world from awkward.
If there was a recurring theme for the day it would be HOT; in every sense and synonym of the word. Again, it was getting too sweaty to remain that close. This time she broke contact to catch a breath and escape the heat. We stopped talking for a moment to breathe and cool off. She sat up, crawled to, and grabbed the (sexy time) clean-up towel that was at the far foot of the bed. She turned around so that she was kneeling facing me as she brought the towel up to her chest to absorb the beads and drips of sweat that had accumulated. As I watched, I again thought of my great fortune to be right here right now feeing what I feel and seeing the beauty before me. She pushed the towel down across her belly button and it fell into her lap.
I observed the soft sunlight reflecting off the white sheets, the white towel, and the white pillows bathed her in perfect light creating just a hint of subtle shadows in all of the right places on her angelic white skin. I started consciously taking photos with my mind. I wanted to capture every nuance and note every detail. I don’t know if I will ever be here again.
I don't recall if my next realization was comprehended in a split second, or if it took ten seconds to develop, but a terrible fear washed over me that for the first time in forever, she was beyond my touch and her next action might be to look for her panties or go jump in the shower. We were after all, deep into the second hour of her hour long lunch.
As I was preparing myself for the pain soon to come, I couldn't understand where it was coming from. I had the BEST DAY EVER, but I felt like an exhausted child who just watched the Disney fireworks finally and knows what that means.
What the hell? What is happening in my head? I don't even know this girl, let alone have feelings for her beyond she made my dick feel good at lunchtime.....and, I guess my ego is healthier since I met her. I have not cheated on my diet since she turned on the flattery the week before. I was sure it had to be somehow manipulative, but I hoped that if only a 5% chance it wasn't AND she liked me AND her mom was single, made it easy to keep my snacking to peas & carrots.
My self esteem has been skyrocketing too, as I have been checking a lot of boxes on my refrigerator. LOL, so many in fact, that I have been adding things to the list after they happened that I didn't dare put on it as they seemed pretty unobtainable just two months before. "Get sent a nude selfie, check. Have the confidence to send one back, check. Take a hottie 32 year old client out to lunch and fuck her brains out, check.
Did I just discover that I like girls who make my self esteem feel good more than I like girls who make my dick feel good?
Shit, that wasn't even on my top ten list. Smart, funny, pretty, Kind, whatever is the opposite of bitchy, fun in bed, boobs and/or an age appropriate figure is always nice, curious, someone you can trust to see you at your worst. Before today, "genuinely being a boost & support of my self esteem" was 10th.
Then BAM. I was hit in the face with the towel. Damn girl, I hope you can handle a spanking because I was just on the verge of making an interpersonal discovery of some importance over here, I thought to myself. I noticed the slightest or possibly mock look of concern on her face as she asks "you're not having any regrets or second thoughts over there are you?". I reflexively replied "Oh god no". Then with some emphasys, I continued "today was incredible. I REALLY needed this and you were PERFECT, thank you".
Again she did not disappoint. She crawled to the top of the bed on the far side and then to me over the pillows and laid down at a 90 angle to me on her stomach parallel to the headboard with her head nearly right on top of mine. She propped herself up a bit on her elbows and we kissed deeply. It was nice.
I made a few attempts to shake my internal drama, get out of my head and get back to my goal of picking my self up after my divorce. Oops, I mean back to pleasing a beautiful woman who clearly was not yet done having her fun with me. The emotional rollercoaster ride over the last hours, days & weeks completely blew out my brains ability to generate or absorb endorphins or whatever happens in a situation like this. Shortly after we had joked around while showering together, kissing goodbye (just like when I kissed my endorphin killing ex wife) and going on back to our separate lives.
I drove the hour or so home, brought my dog to the park and had healthiest and happiest cry I ever had. I don't know what I was feeling or why, but I was feeling again and it brought me much relief and contentedness.
We texted a bit that evening confirming that we each enjoyed our time together and agreeing that we should do that again sometime. The next day, Saturday, her husband took their 5 & 8 year old sons somewhere for the day. We checked in with each other again over text and chatted some about our lunch but the spark or excitement we usually had was not the same.
I reached out again that evening and asked if she was in a place that we could talk on the phone. She resisted but did call me (our first personal phone call). It took her 24 hours to let her cry bubble up. It turns out that our emotional experiences were remarkably similar, albeit from different perspectives.
She much later reveals that she felt emotionally dead for her hubby. She evolved to a bad place where she wanted fuck anyone but her hubby but still fucked him twice a week and had to appear happy to do it, killing her brain chemistry.
We rode the best and worst roller coaster in the world for 6 or 8 months....until the the Cocaine eventually wore off or the unobtainable became obtainable and it wasn't the the same rush for either of us any longer. She was the closest thing to a drug addiction that I ever felt. I never wanted anyone or anything like I wanted her.
My hope is that this story helps one person answer the question "Why the hell would he/she risk giving up their wonderful & loving family for an hour with a douchebag or a skank?"

I am going to apologize ahead of time this is going to be a long post because there is a lot to unpack.
So I (25m) got dumped by my ex (24f) a year ago now. Our relationship had its ups and downs over the 6 years we were together, but that didn’t change how much we loved each other.
Our relationship slowly started to go downhill after my mother passed away in 2018. I lost myself completely, I was a shell of person that I once was. The years following my mothers passing I had lost my job and became completely withdrawn. Since I didn’t have a job I also couldn’t pay my half of the rent and I refused to get a job because I barely wanted to be on this earth. I didn’t reach out to my friends or family. My ex was pretty much the only person I would talk to. But around Covid time I got really bad. I spiraled into the worst depression I’ve experienced in my 25 years on this earth. I would stay up until 9 or 10 am and sleep until around midnight. I stopped talking to my ex almost completely and we stopped hanging out. About 4 or 5 months before my ex dumped me I was severely suicidal. I would leave the house and walk around town in the middle of the night. Mind you I wouldn’t tell my ex where or what I was doing but I think she knew. I would find myself at the bridge we lived near almost every night contemplating jumping but I never did. Side note I was smoking A LOT of weed at this point that she was paying for most of the time. But then the day came.
I was sitting at home while she was at work and I got a text. It said “we need to talk”. She wanted to talk when she got home but I pushed her to just tell me. Then she said she couldn’t do this anymore. My entire world came crashing down. I never thought she would say those words. Later when she got home I did the typical begging. The only thing I really remember from that was her telling me she didn’t love me anymore. I started packing my things the next few days and moved into my friends house.
In the months that followed I had gotten a job and started to really work on my mental health. Somehow my ex and I started talking again and hanging out again. It was looking pretty good for us. I was spending some nights with her and she was looking at me how she used to again. Then out of the blue she cut it off again. Saying something along the lines of “I don’t want to be in a relationship with anyone right now” adding that we could still be friends.
From then until now I have been paying her back the 20 grand that I owed her and we had been off and on friends for awhile. Mainly because I would tell her I couldn’t be friends with her (because I still loved her) and to not text me unless it was about money or if she wanted to try again. She would then text me a week or month later asking me how I’m doing. My dumbass would think she wanted to get back together because she texted me. It always ended up her just wanting to be friends. Until a couple weeks ago when I laid it all out and set the boundaries firm. She got upset with me and a little rude tbh. Still don’t understand that.
Throughout the break up though she said she still loved me but wasn’t in love with me anymore. She would say she still cared about me which her actions showed she did. I asked her the one day if there was any hope we could get back together which she responded with “in the future maybe we can but not right now”. From the times we hung out after the break up I could tell she was still attracted to me. Our conversations were pretty damn good and it seemed like the spark may still have been there.
So I have a couple of questions. Do you think there is any chance we can be together again? If so what can I do that may help in doing so? If not how can I recover from absolutely fucking up our relationship and losing my soulmate (this girl was truly the one for me)? Was I right to not want to be friends with her or was that her way of rekindling our relationship? Is this even salvageable after the damage I have done? It has been a year and I’m still not over her and I just want the pain to go away.

My ex-wife, with whom I share 2 children, believes I shouldn’t cut off her monthly allowance now that she’s in a new relationship.
Context: During COVID, I decided to end my relationship due to feeling undervalued and unsupported, and instead quit my job and pursued a business opportunity. We both share custody of our 2 daughters and have co-parented well for the past 2 years.
During our relationship, my wife was a stay-at-home mother while I worked as a shift supervisor, completing 50+ hours per week to pay the bills. Following the end of our relationship, I moved out but continued to pay those bills so my wife could stay at home care for our children.
Fast-forward 2 years following the divorce: my now ex-wife lives in a large 4-bedroom property that I bought in cash, while I still rent an apartment. I promised to give her 33% ownership of the home as a gift for being the mother of our children and the kids will receive the rest when they’re older. This is now under a signed contract which states she cannot take me to court for child support and first must sell her share of the property if she feels our child support agreement is not enough.
the private child support agreement we have is $800 per week, which is plenty, and an additional $2000 AUD allowance. With no mortgage to worry about, her expenses are very cheap which leaves her more well off than most professions, and she spends every dime of it. every single week, she doesn’t have a penny left.
The reasoning behind the allowance was simple: If I can look after her and can give her the opportunity to stay at home and be with our children full time I will do that to the best of my ability. I also want my daughters to understand that I never left their mum struggling, but instead made it my duty to go above and beyond to support her.
Now, here's the problem: My ex-wife has been in a 4-month relationship with a 22-year-old security guard who makes minimum wage and recently moved into the house with her and the children. I told her that now the relationship is serious, it’s time to re-evaluate her monthly allowance, which essentially led to a complete breakdown.
My point of view is that now that she has a new partner, it should be their responsibility to support themselves financially, regardless of my financial situation.
Her point of view is that she doesn’t see how a new relationship should affect her allowance. She told me he doesn’t make a lot of money, and by doing this, I’m essentially asking her to choose between her relationship or the money.
She believes that by removing her monthly allowance, I’m enforcing control over her and punishing her for having another relationship. She blames me for her being a stay-at-home mother stating that if she could work she would.
To my surprise, a couple of friends have also taken her side, but I can’t help but feel some of them are angry about my financial success, motivating their support behind my ex-wife. If this was any normal couple I would think it’s ludicrous to expect your ex-partner to pay you. Especially if you’re in a new relationship.
In the past year, not only have I given her a hefty allowance, but I also bought her a new Audi RSQ8 to replace her Hyundai Santa Fe, and when she complained the car was too big, I bought her an Audi RS3 Sportsback. I let her spend $190,000 furnishing the house I bought, along with top-of-the-line everything. I’ve bought clothes, paid for dinners, hired a house cleaner, and a guy to maintain the lawns. She also wanted a $20,000 trained German Shepard for protection. Despite this she has accused me of being selfish, greedy, red-pill, and even anti-feminist simply because I don’t want to give her more money.
It seems like she expects me to give her and her partner a free ride on my money, and not many people seem to see it from my point of view.

Memory Transcription Subject: PFC Alus, Yotul auxiliary to the UN Spaceborne Infantry
Date [standardized human time]: March 3\**^rd 2137, 1000 hours ship-time
After Gutierrez showed me to our compartment, and I dropped off my duffelbags, he began leading me to the Armory, where I would be assigned my rifle and 'sensitive items' as he put it. As we walked, my mind churned with more questions.
"Hey, uh, Guts. Back in the supply compartment, you mentioned the 'USMC'? That's the American Marines right? I thought you were UN Spaceborne infantry."
"Yeah, so, I am a Marine. Marine to the core. But Earth sorta got thrown into this whole clusterfuck without having a properly unified military, and instead of trying to set up a whole new service from scratch, they got the big five on the Security Council, being us, the Brits, the French, the Chinese, and the Russkis, to pitch in units. So you got Marines and Army making up the American portion of the SI, and Navy and Airforce making up our part of the fleet. Same for every country that pitched in, even some outside the UNSC." Gutierrez explained, his hands moving about animatedly. "Right now it's a hot mess because none of the standards, paperwork, or anything changed, but I guess they'll probably formalize and standardize the SI and Fleet after all this shit is done. All we currently got that's the same is rifles, uniforms, and equipment. The traditions and paperwork and shit are all wildly different from one countries units to another, and sometimes even within the same country's units because of different branches. The US Marines and US Army for instance, we share a lot of the same shit you know, but our low-level paperwork is branch-specific, and our organization is different."
I thought for a moment about what he was saying as we walked though the passageways, pondering on the idea of what a truly united Human military could accomplish, if everything Humanity had done so far was with a truly thrown-together force. As I looked up again, I saw we were approaching the armory, and mentally filed my next question away for later. We crossed through the threshold, and I found myself standing in front of a grated window, another Human on the other side.
"Sarn't Johnson, I'd like you to meet our new Yotul auxiliary, Alus. We're doing inprocessing, and need to get his weapon and equipment drawn and assigned."
The new Human looked down at me curiously and smiled, before reaching down and grabbing a few sheets of paper from under his desk.
"Alright" the Sergeant said, before moving deeper into the armory, stopping at a weapons cage, before unlocking it and inspecting the rifles line up inside "So, what are we billeting him as?"
"Just an 0311, needs a rifleman's kit and associated gear" Guts replied, leaning forward to watch the Sergeant.
"Gotcha. Just gimme a minute here."
Guts and I watched as the Armorer pulled a cart over, and picked out a rifle, laying it down on the cart, and locking the cage, before moving to the next rack and removing a small black bag, repeating the process along the line of cages across one wall of the armory, before coming back to the front, and pressing a button on his desk. I heard a click from a door next to the grated portal, and Gutierrez waved for me to follow him through the door, and into the armory.
The Sergeant had sat back down, and was poring over what appeared to be a checklist as he inspected each piece of equipment, ticking them off down the list one by one. When he was done, he clipped it to a clipboard, and handed it off to Gutierrez, before looking toward me.
"So, Heard you fellas went through some sorta training dirtside, so you should be familiar with at least the rifle?" He asked, picking up a notably shorter version of the standard UN rifle I had qualified on Earth with.
"Yes, ours were longer, it kinda seemed like they weren't really meant for non-Humans to use. We could all barely aim them shooting, uh, offhand I think it was?"
"Yeah, sounds about right for an indoc unit. The M-36 is a piston gun so it's good bit heavier out front than the old M-16's the Corps used to issue way back, Mag in the back kinda balances the whole shebang on the carbine variants" he slapped the side of the firearm he was holding "But on the full length rifles they're just ungodly long barrels. Ay, Guts, something like a 28-inch heavy barrel on the old M-36A1's?"
"Yeah, something stupid like that," Guts said, looking up from the paperwork he had been signing, as he set it down on the table. "Marines wanted a gun that was the same length or shorter than an M-16, Piston, and could reach out to like 800 meters with 5.56. I think Bushmaster pulled out some old relic from the 20th century and just modernized it? I remember the K&M lawsuit right when we started getting the A1's back in 2130, but yeah."
The sergeant nodded and turned back to me, pointing at the firearm again "So, when the Corps finally removed their head from their fifth point of contact-"
"Their ass" Gutierrez helpfully interjected, grinning
"Yes, But anyways, They saw some issues with going back to a full size rifle, and got carbines made to replace the A1's for combat arms. Shorter barrel, shorter gas system, shorter receiver, way lighter out front. Super nice shooting guns to boot. Bushmaster also sold them on this neat quick-change barrel system they thought up too, so now we have a bunch of smoothbore barrels for flechettes, rifled barrels for traditional ammunition, pencil barrels for riflemen, heavy barrels with bipods for autoriflemen, in a bunch of different lengths. These fuckers are modular as hell."
The sergeant had what was probably the widest grin I'd ever seen on a Human as he finished talking, and it very nearly took me aback, despite the Yotul, myself included, not having the same issues with Human mannerisms as the wider Federation.
"I-I'm not gonna have to carry all of those, right?" I asked, hesitantly, and Gutierrez broke out laughing, while the sergeant suppressed a chuckle.
"Nah kid, we just pick a rifle and swap the barrel to the one you need for what you're doing. Mostly just makes shit easier on my end really. You're just getting a carbine-length pencil barrel, lightest of the bunch."
The Sergeant shifted, bringing the rifle to his shoulder, and pointed it at a canted barrel, sticking the muzzle in, and pulled back the charging handle, sticking a finger into the rifle's ejection port, before looking in, and releasing the charging handle, before pulling the trigger with a 'click'. He then held out the rifle for me, and I took it, surprised at how much lighter it was than the one I had been issued in training.
"So, one M-36A2." the Sergeant said, before pulling a metal cylinder from a small pouch, and peering through it up at one of the lights, before getting up and grabbing a metal rod, and walking over to me. He stood alongside me, and slipped the cylinder over the muzzle of the rifle, before inserting the rod down the barrel, and peering closely at a small gap around the rod.
"And one suppressor. Clears the rod check so that shouldn't give you any issues. Guts should be able to explain the adjustable piston to you so you don't get gassed in the face while you're using it." With a quick twist of a collar on the back of the tube, the armorer pulled the device off the muzzle and stuck it back in it's pouch, and picked up a larger cloth case. He pulled something that looked like a visor on an articulating arm from it, and inserted a pair of batteries into a cylinder that ran along the top.
"This here is the AN/PVS-101 'Fused vision system'. Little heads up display that links up with the rest of your fireteam, and also has thermal and Infrared overlay. Just a fuckin' neat piece of kit honestly. Datalink is hardened to all hell, and the whole system's idiot-proof. I've seen ones that pre-date the Satellite Wars. Uses an accelerometer and gyro system to keep track of where you are in the area, and can pulse lidar to give you visuals in full pitch-black. You can also mark obstacles, enemy troops, vics, whatever with eye-clicks, and the system keeps track and spreads that out to all the linked systems. Plus there's a version that goes to the fireteam leader, which transmits all that collated data back to company level, and gives them an up-to-date picture of everything that's going on. Just honestly fuckin' cool."
He then held up a square plate on the back of the arm to his forehead, and withdrew a small box from the back and touched it to the back of his head.
"The FVS mounts to the socket on the front of your helmet, and the Processing unit just mounts to the rear, acts like a counterweight too which keeps your neck from hurting nearly as much while you're using it."
Placing both items back in the cloth bag, He finally held up what was obviously a handheld radio, and a set of earmuffs.
"This is the AN/PRC-255. It's a radio, and might as well work with Angry Pixies. I know it's got a 60 mile range, and hops frequencies, and the Comms nerds have some kind of black magic ritual to make them work. The hearing protection doesn't have some letter-and-number name, but they hook up to the radio, and they'll also link up to other headsets nearby like the FVS to communicate without radio. The Radio isn't nearly as impressive as the FVS, and the hearing protection hasn't changed in a meaningful way in about a hundred years. 3M is the Browning of comms gear, I swear. And, that's petty much it."
I looked at the neat pile of equipment sitting next to the carbine, and looked down at my hands, realizing I had nothing to carry any of it with, before looking up at Gutierrez.
"Is it alright if you carry some of this, I don't think I can carry it a-" I said, before I was cut off by laughter from Sgt Johnson.
"Nooooooo, no kid." The sergeant said, wiping tears from his eyes. "This all stays here unless you actually imminently need it. It's assigned to you now, but it stays under lock and key." he explained, while Gutierrez seemed to look simultaneously aghast and about to burst into laughter. My abbreviated training had failed to explain a few things, it seemed, as I had simply assumed that they had locked up our equipment because we were were trainees.
"See, everything in here is either VERY killy, or VERY expensive. And Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines around Earth all have a penchant for shenanigans, and breaking anything they touch. Occasionally themselves too, if left entirely unsupervised with dangerous objects. So we don't let any of you have things which can be described as 'Killy', 'Expensive', or 'Killy and Expensive' unless it's specifically pertaining to the task at hand, Rah?"
"I, uh, see yeah. Rah?" I replied, somewhat dejectedly, and slightly confused.
"Rah." The Sergeant said in reply, and began to load all of the 'Killy and expensive' equipment back onto the metal cart, chuckling to himself still, as Gutierrez tapped me on the shoulder.
"Hey, chow's in about an hour, let's get you back to the barracks so you can get your OCUU's on, and outta those class-B's right?"
"Yeah, that sounds good, I don't think I've eaten since before I arrived at the Orbital, I'm starving" I said, as I followed the Spaceborne Infantry Marine out of the Armory's door, and back down the passageway to the berthing areas of Grunt Country.

By my count, there are 15 T5 ships available for just dilithium or a level 40 token, which someone might want a starter build for to help them finish off the episode missions and start the reputation grind. My Strict Budget Build covers the three science vessels, the Baby Step series covers the three cruisers with tactical ensigns, Quick Looks 1 and 2 cover the Hegh'ta Bird of Prey and the Jem'hadar Escort, and there's definitely an argument to be made that some are just bad choices. But there was one more I wanted to take a look at here. This series will not be as thoroughly researched as those previous series, and it will not feature optimized skill builds (there are many resources for that), but the builds will be proven in the Badlands Battlezone and in solo Defense of Starbase One Advanced, as well as extensively parsed in the Wanted (Argala System) patrol with comparisons to similar builds. That should adequately demonstrate that they can get you whatever reputation marks you need, using only mission, basic (generally Mk XII uncommon) Exchange, and Phoenix Store items. Each build will be allowed one Mk XV item to maintain parity with the Strict Budget Build, usually a forward weapon. It's also easy enough to put these together that I could be persuaded to do more if there's a ship that deserves it.
So, why the Vo'Quv? Well it's in the name, it's a carrier. Hangar bays are expensive to boost in this game, but that means they have to be balanced to have pretty good base damage. In this case the two hangars did more than half the damage of most of the other builds in this series with hardly any support for them. The downside to carriers is that they often sacrifice a lot for those hangars. Not so for Flight Deck Carriers, which are pretty much full cruisers, or any of the single hangar types, but the science carriers like the Vo'Quv don't really have an obvious path to getting ship damage, especially on this budget. Their turn rate is terrible, which is a problem for most things, they have only 6 weapons so getting a lot from energy weapons is out, and they don't have a secondary deflector, which did do more on my science vessel build than the hangars did here.
So where did I end up, then? Well, with 6 science ability slots and not a ton of options I couldn't see not using them for some direct exotic damage. And since that required me to face forward, and the turn rate was terrible and I couldn't do much about it, I concluded that I'd have to use turrets in the rear with either beam arrays or single cannons forward, the two widest arc weapon combinations possible apart from pure turrets, although their damage potential is limited. The Chronometric set also seemed like a must have, providing a large amount of EPG and some Polaron cat1 from the tac console, and a bit of aux power from the 2 piece, but I wasn't sure whether I'd want the Morphogenic set or not, since it would mean sacrificing a cannon. Then, I went to the TRINITY DPS Calculator from STO BETTER and started plugging in some rough options. Single cannons outperformed beam arrays even with the Chronometric 3 piece, so that settled that, and getting the crtd from the Morphogenic 3 piece and Cannon Scatter Volley was well worth losing a forward cannon for the torp. Attack Pattern Beta proved a bigger contributor than expected thanks to boosting the exotic damage as well, which is why that's at 2 and CSV is at 1, and easily outperformed including a Torpedo Spread as well. Finally I switched the power settings away from a balanced configuration toward weapons over aux and aux over weapons, and the high aux version did best. So that was the build.
How did it perform? Well it was sluggish, obviously, I expected that. But the DPS was pretty impressive and was reflected in how quickly it got kills. And the survivability was pretty good, with a lot of hull and pretty good healing I really couldn't complain, except that it was so sluggish it was hard to run out of range and heal if I needed to. On the other hand when I did withdraw the fighters kept fighting, contributing to the highest Wanted Elite DPS of any of the builds in the table with only one attempt needed to survive the whole mission (the science vessel could do better by charging in and dying a couple of times, but needed to play cautiously and sacrifice its CPB to survive). They were even powerful enough to handle the Birds of Prey in Starbase One Advanced without any help from the mothership, potentially even without player input, which could be convenient.

Captain Details

Captain Name	Stilt
Captain Career	Science
Captain Faction	Federation
Captain Race	Vulcan
Primary Specialization	Temporal	The best specialization for exotic builds, as well as for ground builds and a good generalist option, it provides debuffs, damage boosts, EPG, and survivability

Space Skill Tree

Rank	Engineering		Science		Tactical
Lieutenant		Advanced Hull Capacity			Advanced Energy Weapon Training	Advanced Projectile Weapon Training
Lt. Commander	Improved Electro-Plasma System Flow	Impulse Expertise	Improved Control Expertise	Drain Expertise	Targeting Expertise	Defensive Maneuvering
			Control Amplification	Drain Infection
Commander	Hull Plating				Advanced Weapon Amplification	Advanced Weapon Specialization
Captain	Defensive Subsystem Tuning		Advanced Exotic Particle Generator	Advanced Long Range Targeting Sensors	Advanced Hull Penetration	Advanced Shield Weakening
Admiral					Coordination Protocols	Advanced Tactical Readiness
					Defensive Coordination
					Offensive Coordination
1 Points Left	8		11		26

Space Skill Unlocks

Purchases	Engineering	Science	Tactical
2	Hazard Emitters III	Science Team III	Tachyon Beam III
5	Battery Expertise	Sector Space Travel Speed
7	Feedback Pulse III	Photonic Shockwave III	Jam Sensors III
10		Maximum Shield Capacity
12			Tractor Beam III
15		Control Resistance
17			Viral Matrix III
20		Shield Drain Resistance
24 (Ultimate)			Focused Frenzy
25 (1st Ultimate Enhancer)			Frenzied Assault
26 (2nd Ultimate Enhancer)			Team Frenzy

This skill tree is my generalist one from Strict Budget Build part 2, and it pretty much needs to be. This build relies on both energy weapon and exotic damage, so it can't afford to neglect either one. There are other generalist skill trees, of course, but that is what you'll need to be looking for, any single purpose tree isn't going to get the job done.

Ship Loadout: Vo'Quv Carrier

Slot	Item	Notes
Fore Weapon 1	Polaron Cannon	The one Mk XV, single cannons are usually a poor choice, but they will outperform beam arrays forward/turrets aft and provide 180 degrees of firing arc
Fore Weapon 2	Polaron Cannon	The Vo'Quv suffers from terrible turn rate so it doesn't want weapons with narrow arcs, but it needs to face forward for the exotic damage
Fore Weapon 3	Morphogenic Polaron Energy Torpedo Launcher	Here for the 3 piece set bonus providing 30% crtd to the whole ship
Aft Weapon 1	Heavy Chronometric Polaron Turret	Mostly need a turret, 2 piece provides some aux
Aft Weapon 2	Morphogenic Polaron Energy Weapon	Another turret, and contributes to the 3 piece
Aft Weapon 3	Polaron Turret	Just a turret
Deflector	Solanae Deflector Array Mk XII Very Rare	Provides more EPG out of the box than any other mission reward
Impulse Engines	Sol Defense Impulse Engines Mk XII Very Rare	With the bonus from getting hit this does just provide the best total turn rate out of the mission rewards at 14.7 degrees/s, replace with Fortified Competitive rep engines
Warp Core	Obelisk Subspace Rift Warp Core	This build only hits 122 aux so this doesn't actually help, could consider Deuterium-Stabilized but the benefit is minimal
Shields	Sol Defense Covariant Shield Array Mk XII Very Rare	2 piece is nice for survivability, alternative would be Jem'Hadar 2 piece for a bit of Polaron cat1.
Devices	Exotic Particle Flood	Crafted in Science R&D. I do have to admit that the materials are a little hard to come by, and Admiralty (with account unlocked ships) is the best source I've found.
	Deuterium Surplus	Evasive Maneuvers in battery form, and you can collect 4 per day from the Alhena system.
	Delta Alliance Reinforcements Beacon	Handy damage boost
3 Engineering Consoles	Console - Engineering - Trellium-D Plating Mk XII Very Rare	Good survivability console, could use a Neutronium instead
	Console - Engineering - Polaric Modulator Mk XII Very Rare	Boosts Inertia, which is rare, as well as turn rate, and slipstream turn rate at warp
	Console - Engineering - House Martok Defensive Configuration Mk XII Very Rare	Boosts turn rate and provides some survivability, an RCS would work too
4 Science Consoles	Console - Science - Temporal Disentanglement Suite Mk XII Very Rare	Nice crit and durability boost, plus some power.
	Console - Science - Temporally Shielded Datacore Mk XII Very Rare	Slightly less EPG than Particle Generators but it makes up for it with the CtrlX
	Console - Science - Particle Generator Mk XII Uncommon	Just need EPG
	Console - Science - Particle Generator Mk XII Common
2 Tactical Consoles	Console - Tactical - Morphogenic Matrix Controller Mk XII Very Rare	For the 3 piece and some polaron cat1
	Console - Tactical - Chronometric Capacitor Mk XII Very Rare	Good EPG, some aux from the 2 piece, and some Polaron cat1, and this build uses all of it
2 Hangar Bays	Hangar - To'Duj Fighters	These provide more DPS than any other hangar that's available by default, and they come with the ship, they will die in heavy AoE content, otherwise use two
	Hangar - Delta Flyers	These have slightly less DPS than To'duj but almost never die in any content, but do require a level 65 KDF character for Cross Faction Flying. Could substitute B'rels for more DPS loss

Officer Details

Bridge Officers
Lt. Commander Tactical	Tactical Team I	Shield distribution and debuff clear, may cause firing cycle problems but I haven't seen it
	Cannon: Scatter Volley I	Excellent weapon damage buff and also spreads APB to up to 3 targets
	Attack Pattern Beta II	Unusual to slot this above the firing mode, but it boosts every damage source and weapon damage is only ~1/4 of the total
Lt. Commander Engineering	Emergency Power to Engines I	More than doubles speed and provides +2 turn rate, essential mobility for any build
	Auxiliary to Structural I	Excellent heal and damage resist, and on a very short cooldown
	Emergency Power to Weapons III	Major energy weapon damage boost
Commander Science	Hazard Emitters I	Good hull heal and debuff clear
	Destabilizing Resonance Beam I	Good exotic damage, used with GW
	Photonic Officer II	Cooldown reduction
	Gravity Well III	Good exotic damage and control
Lieutenant Science	Science Team I	Shield heal and debuff clear
	Tyken's Rift I	Exotic damage, alternate with GW

Traits & Duty Officers

Trait	Name	Description	Notes
Personal Traits	Astrophysicist		A little bit of EPG
	Cannon Training		A little more cannon damage
	Conservation of Energy		Significant exotic damage while solo, but stacks don't last long
	Deft Cannoneer		Boosts turn rate by 1, on this build we need it, from Cannons R&D
	Fleet Coordinator		One of the best traits in the game when on a team
	Give Your All		Excellent hull damage resistance, from Engineering R&D
	Operative		Some extra crit
	Particle Manipulator		The most powerful trait for exotic damage, +50%/+29.6% crth/crtd on this build, from Science R&D
	Photonic Capacitor		Extra Photonic Fleet is nice to have
Starship Traits	None		Unconventional Tactics from completing Strategist is definitely worth slotting here, but I kept it cheap.
Space Reputation Traits	None		You'll start picking these up very quickly, Precision and Advanced Targeting Systems are top picks.
Duty Officers	Projectile Weapons Officer		"Law" from A Fistful of Gorn, a bit of a pain to get there, but worth having
	Projectile Weapons Officer		A common included in my first duty officer pack
	Astrometrics Scientist		Uncommon, also in my first pack, handy to have set
	Conn Officer		From Phoenix, a must have for mobility in any build

This table shows all damage sources in one Wanted Advanced run, with multiple lines from the same source summed together.

Source	DPS
To'Duj Fighters	6594
Delta Flyers	4504
Gravity Well	3571
Photonic Fleet	3170
Polaron Cannons	2889
Destabilizing Resonance Beam	1728
Chronometric Turret	1156
Polaron Turret	1001
Morphogenic Turret	994
Morphogenic Torpedo	855
Tyken's Rift	839
Drain Infection	708
Entropic Rider	144

^{Table formatting brought to you by ExcelToReddit}
Now, let's talk keybinds. In STO on PC you're going to want to learn keybinding eventually, and most of it's not too hard and can be done through the chat window (although it is arguably better to create a separate text file with your binds, that's more complicated). The first thing I always do is to set up a secondary fire weapons button through settings, usually V, just in case I screw up and my intended fire keybind doesn't work. While I'm there I usually set Distribute Shields to Left Shift, it's a pretty good survivability boost, although a lot of people do say it can mess up firing cycles, but personally I've never noticed a problem. Then, the commands you'll want to know are "FirePhasers" or "FireAll", "+power_exec Distribute_Shields", and "+TrayExecByTray # #", where # is a number. Note that the list of commands needs quotation marks around it, and commands should be separated by "$$". So if you typed the following into the chat: /bind y "+TrayExecByTray 0 0 $$ +TrayExecByTray 0 1 $$ +TrayExecByTray 1 2 $$ +TrayExecByTray 1 3" That would create a keybind so that y would activate the first and second abilities in the row labeled 1, and the third and fourth abilities in the row labeled 2 (0 in a keybind means 1 in the UI, 1 means 2, 2 means 3, etc., that's just how it works), starting with the fourth ability in 2 and then proceeding backwards. From there on in it's personal preference, put things where they feel natural to you, where you're used to them being. What I use has evolved naturally over time, I make no claims that it's efficient, just that I'm used to it, and I use it on everything. For fire weapons, distribute shields, Emergency Power abilities, cooldown reduction, often Aux to Structural, and anything else I just want to keep active I use spacebar, like this: /bind space "FireAll $$ +power_exec Distribute_Shields $$ +TrayExecByTray 6 0 $$ +TrayExecByTray 6 1 $$ +TrayExecByTray 6 2 $$ +TrayExecByTray 6 3 $$ +TrayExecByTray 6 4" That's the first 5 slots in row 7, which is usually enough. Then for my firing modes, Attack Pattern Beta, and so on, things with short cooldowns I activate as I attack, I use the 7 key, no good reason for that it just happened, and the first 4 slots in row 3: /bind 7 "+TrayExecByTray 2 0 $$ +TrayExecByTray 2 1 $$ +TrayExecByTray 2 2 $$ +TrayExecByTray 2 3" And finally for my exotic builds I always put Gravity Well and Destabilizing Resonance beam on 2, using the next two slots in row 3, although it is true that the usual logic behind that doesn't apply here, I just did it out of habit: /bind 2 "+TrayExecByTray 2 4 $$ +TrayExecByTray 2 5" That's all the keybinds I use, everything else I activate manually, one at a time, but it does compress 13 keys I might want to be pressing down to 3, which helps a lot.
Now, the difficult thing about this build is that I really don't know how to suggest upgrading it, apart from the obvious necessity of some Competitive Reputation engines to get their Overcharge to improve turn rate, I made sure to use Aux to Structural to pair with the Fortified version of those. The damage is very divided between different types, with about 40% from hangars, 25% from exotics, and 21% from energy weapons, and it's not getting a lot out of any of them, but I'll provide my own ideas and the STO BETTER Basics links for all three. Currently the biggest damage source is the hangars, but trying to improve those would be expensive. Ideally you'd like to pick up Superior Area Denial from the Mirror Strike Wing Escort lockbox ship, or at least the Independent Wingmate space trait, but those are very expensive compared to this build. Even the more minor and less powerful Advanced Engineering – Hangar Craft Power Transmission consoles are starting at 1 million energy credits each on PC for either a Mk XII with a useless mod or a Mk II with an [EPG] mod, or 5 million for a Mk II with [Polaron], while Swarmer Matrix is going for 7 million. If you wanted to work on exotic damage you could of course pick up the Temporal reputation two piece, and then you might want Subspace Vortex or Very Cold in Space to replace the heals with some more damage, but those will cost you 9 million each, and really you'd want to pair them with Spore Infused Anomalies from the Somerville or Batlh C-store ships for a truly potent source of exotic damage. You might be able to get good exotic damage out of the Gravimetric Photon and Particle Emission Plasma torpedoes after picking up the Competitive engines, and those aren't as expensive, but they do give you a much narrower arc. And if you wanted to improve the energy weapons, of course there are reputation items you can pick up starting with the Discovery reputation shield, but you're pretty limited by the combination of poor turn rate and forward firing exotics. You could try to switch to dual (heavy) cannons, probably moving the torpedo to the rear and dropping the plain turret, but I don't think I'm a good enough pilot to pull that off even with Competitive engines, which would leave you with single cannons which have underwhelming base damage and very few set items to support them. I just don't know what direction to go in to make a really impactful improvement in this build.
Finally, here's the table of DPS testing in the Wanted patrol for all five equivalent budget builds. The Luna used the original, unaltered Strict Budget Build, using the mentioned swap of Emergency Power to Shields instead of Aux to Structural for better survivability against non-Borg. The Vor'cha sat somewhere between parts one and two of the Baby Step series, meaning it had exactly the same consoles as the Hegh'ta BoP and similar ones to the Jem Escort, and the beam equivalents of the phaser weapons, with exactly the abilities and personal traits in the Baby Step posts. It must also be said that the Vor'cha and Vo'quv were the only builds to never die on elite difficulty, and the Vor'cha was definitely the toughest, although all the builds took about 20 minutes to get through the mission so using them at that difficulty is a bad idea. The Hegh'ta of course used the Quick Looks 1 build, and the Jem Escort used the Quick Looks 2 build.

	Elite (DPS thousands)	Advanced 1 (DPS thousands)	Advanced 2	Advanced 3	Advanced 4	Advanced Average
Hegh'ta Heavy BoP	20.0	20.1	21.5	22.5	23.2	21.8
Jem'hadar Escort	19.3	23.4	20.6	21.8	19.7	21.4
Vo'quV Carrier	27.3	26.3	28.2	26.6	25.2	26.6
Luna Science Vessel	24.8	31.4	28.3	27.9	27.0	28.6
Vor'cha Battlecruiser	15.1	15.0	14.1	14.8	14.6	14.6

^{Table formatting brought to you by ExcelToReddit}

Hey there, welcome to my little post that probably won't be so little past this point, but thank you for reading as much as you do. I'm known amongst my friends as the over-explainer, so I apologize for the forthcoming novel. If you want to skip most of it, just read the first bit of each bullet point, that should do it.
Age wise, I'm looking for someone between 27 and 34, preferably. Also, I tend to be a night owl, so I sleep during a good portion of the day, and am up at night, so responses may be slow at times.
To begin, some things about myself:

• I'm here to make a friend or two, that maybe grows into something more. I don't care where you are from, though I am a sucker for an accent that isn't from the US. Realistically, at this point in my life, I'm old and tired, and know that it just doesn't magically happen for some people. I don't expect to fall in love immediately, I just want someone to enjoy my hobbies with together, and theirs in turn. It's 2024, the world is going to shit and back, and I just want to find someone I can click with.
• I'm friendly with pretty much anyone of any ethnicity, creed, chosen identification of gender or the inbretween and so on, unless they give me a reason not to be. That usually happens when they decide to be an ass to anyone I care about or myself, try to shove their ideals down my throat, or are clearly just not a good person (this is subjective, but sometimes you just.. you know, get the feeling someone might skin you and turn you into a lamp).
• I'm non-religious and pretty apolitical. I wasn't raised religious and will never be, but am perfectly fine with people believing in anything they want, as long as those ideals or beliefs aren't enforced on myself. Politics wise, I kind of agree with some things on either side, but mostly just don't care. In my experience, politics ruin relationships, friendships, and so much more, just because people as a whole are stubborn.
• I do NOT have my entire life together, plain and blunt. I was in a relationship for a long time that ended very dramatically and poorly, and all of the plans I had to move and so on were crushed, so I'm still getting my actual life together. I'm over the relationship and have moved on mentally and such, just haven't gotten everything else entirely in line. I can explain more if asked, I won't hide anything at all, as that isn't how things work. This doesn't mean I don't have a job and freeload, it just means I'm not a rich dude who owns his own home and will buy you everything you need. It's 2024, most people are struggling.
• My hobbies are varied, but mostly encompass gaming (PC, no mobile or console anymore), reading novels, listening to audiobooks at work, binging movies/shows/animes, and roleplaying, be it Discord, in a game (I'm an old WoW RP nerd), or D&D. I'm a huge sci-fi and fantasy nerd. I just love writing and telling a story with someone that can match and challenge my own ability to write. I also probably know too much backstory for the smallest of things in many fandoms and universes, and if it's something I don't know, I tend to absorb it quickly if it interests me.
• I'm pretty healthy for the most part. I don't smoke, cigarettes or weed, and while I don't care if people do, I'd prefer if it wasn't your entire lifestyle. Vaping also doesn't bother me as much, but I'd prefer if you just didn't really feel the need to murder your lungs, you know? You need them to keep hanging out with me! I do drink a bit here and there, but I'm far from an achoholic. I grew up with a few bartendresses in my close family, and so I just grew to enjoy a couple cold ones, or a wild and weird mixed drink.
• I'm not the most physically fit person right now. I'm not bound to a scooter and spend all day laboring for each breath, but the last few years have been a bit rough on me with depression and other things. That said, I am in the process of starting to work out again, because I've grown tired of not doing that sort of thing anymore.

That was probably more than I should have typed, and if you made it this far, thank you. I know it's a lot, but I'd rather show the kind of person I am and explain a bit (a lot) about myself, than put two sentences and pretend that's enough to satisfy me. Most people won't read this fadon't care about a wall of text, but those of you that manage to are the kind of people that would probably put up with me.
If you are interested at all, feel free to send me a chat request, or a message on here. I have Reddit on mobile, and will respond as soon as I can!

[2.2 Main story spoilers, please only read if you have finished the story]

I've read many posts in this subreddit objecting to Sunday's philosophy on the basis that Sunday's ideals deprive other inhabitants of Penacony of their free will. I think that this does not strike at the heart of why one should object to Sunday's principles. I happen to have some formal training on the subject, so I will try my best to explain why Sunday's beliefs are objectionable. It is important to not simply get the direction of our opinions correct, but also the reason for believing the way we do correct as well.
In this post, I will address Sunday's philosophy and steel-man his arguments (i.e. addressing his arguments for their strongest possible position). I think that many people have felt that there is something right about Sunday's arguments -- we can look at this post for example. Using concepts from real-world political science scholarship, we can find that Sunday's arguments are not morally wrong. I will proceed to provide actual criticisms of Sunday's arguments after addressing our intuitive feelings to agree with Sunday.
A key assumption I make here is that we agree with Sunday/Robin/MC that freedom is good, and we want to maximize freedom under any regime or philosophy we adopt. From this angle, both Sunday and Robin + MC are correct, albeit that Sunday makes a critical misstep in execution that undermines the legitimacy of his entire plan. I'll explain it in the following sections.

Decomposing Sunday's Philosophy: Two principles

Sunday's philosophy can be broken down into two main principles: (1) people should not have to suffer because of their bodily constitution/environment/wealth; and (2) people should have the freedom to use their free time however they like, to achieve their own goals. I'll refer to (1) as the "Firefly principle", and (2) as the "Weekend principle".
Intuitively, we may find that there is nothing wrong with these two principles I've mentioned. This is why we might feel like we should agree with Sunday's ideals. How do we justify our feelings using robust academic concepts?
We can look at this through the idea of "negative" and "positive" liberty by scholar Isiah Berlin. This is the idea that freedom can be defined in two forms: (1) freedom from interference by others (including the environment); and (2) freedom to do things by being empowered with the means to do a given thing.

Negative freedom and the Firefly principle

We'll start with negative freedom and how it is promoted by the "Firefly principle". Basically, Sunday's argument is that people will be more free if they are removed from constraints of health, social status and wealth. Intuition suggests that this is correct, and we are right to follow that intuition. No one should have suffer more than others because they're born into worse circumstances. The famous social justice philosopher John Rawls would say that this suffering due to circumstances not of our own making is arbitrary and unfair.
People affected by their circumstances enjoy less freedom than others because they need to work hardework longecope with more challenges in order to simply live. This extra strain, from factors they cannot control, can be considered interference on a given person. They are forced to suffer the reductions in resources (time, money, etc.) in order to deal with the interference. I call this the Firefly principle because Firefly is the example Sunday uses when talking about this. Firefly is forced to deal with Entropy Loss Syndrome inherent to her circumstances of birth against her will, and has stated that she'd lead a far different life if she weren't bound to her circumstances. The way these circumstances of health, social status and wealth affect a person, against their will, directly contradicts the idea of negative liberty and being free from interference.
On the other hand, Sunday's proposal of removing this factors is convincing because we can see that it really increases the negative freedom of all people. They can reclaim resources that would otherwise be lost to the effects of interference from their circumstances of (lacking) health, social status and wealth. Assuming that we all believe that a greater freedom is preferable to a more limited one, it is clear that Sunday's philosophy, or at least the Firefly principle, is desirable.
In sum, the injustice of this arbitrariness makes us feel that the constraints of health, social status and wealth are morally bad; it is why we feel repulsed by it and in turn attracted to Sunday's ideas.

Positive Freedom and the Weekend principle

We move on to the idea of positive freedom and how we get more of it by following the Weekend principle. The one line that is most striking to most players is Sunday's example of an eternal succession of weekends to replace the working week. This is actually an extreme example which has overshadowed the underlying political position that Sunday holds, which led him to say such a thing. Sunday just wants to give people more resources -- in terms of time -- so that they may be free to pursue their life goals/ambitions. In political science, we call this the "life plan": it refers to what people want to do with their lives, given the resources that they have.
The relationship between the Weekend principle and positive freedom is a simple one. Being given time empowers one (i.e. increases one's positive freedom) because one has access to more resources to accomplish more of what they want. Again, intuitively, we see this as a good thing. We want people to be able to better pursue their dreams, to do what they want to do. To do things requires resources, and Sunday's proposal frees up more resources for people to use on their life goals.

Sunday's problem -- Unilateralism

There is, in fact, nothing wrong with Sunday's philosophy insofar as we consider these two principles. It is the reason that March and Himeko mention that it is difficult to refute Sunday's philosophy in the scene right before the first time you fight Dominicus. If we appreciate freedom and believe it to be desirable for all, Sunday's proposal is morally consistent with our want and appreciation of widespread freedoms.
We set aside the question of whether something done in a dream is as real as something done in reality. It is my belief that the dream/reality thing muddles the scholarly debate regarding Sunday's philosophy, since it is conventionally difficult for one to believe that something done in a dream is more significant that something done in reality. That sort of discussion is probably better left to students of philosophy, who can better argue about the significance of dreams and reality, rather than students of political science. I will deal strictly with the political implications of Sunday's philosophy.
The main problem with Sunday's philosophy is unilateralism. People have been right to point out that Sunday "did not ask for consent". In scholarly terms, we call this despotic/undemocratic behavior. Sunday has not consulted with anyone; he has not engaged in public deliberation; he is using power to enforce the system of government he wants.
Lack of consent is a big issue of course, but a greater concern is dictatorship. Sunday claims that he will be the only person awake, or something along those lines, but it is really a fancy way of saying that he will be sole dictator to dreamland, albeit a utopian one. Ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle might actually agree with Sunday's ideas: they had a deep distrust of the follies of the masses, and would rather a capable hand steer the ship of state. This is likely the role Sunday envisions himself in. That is, Sunday sees himself as the enlightened person who will manage paradise in its inhabitants' stead.
The problem arises from the fact that there is no democratic consultation. Classic arguments against dictatorships will apply to Sunday: what happens if he makes an error in judgment? What if he is unable to adequately respond to peoples' needs, even with the power and networking of The Family and its members combined? These are very pragmatic issues that any ruling organization will face, which I imagine will be an even greater problem for Sunday's lonesome.
To tie this back to our objective of promoting freedom, we observe that under Sunday's arrangement, no-one is guaranteed their freedom under Sunday's dictatorship. One may consider themselves free when Sunday's management aligns with their own interests and objectives, but we cannot guarantee the continuity of this alignment into the future. Those who have their goals misaligned with Sunday's vision of utopia will find themselves necessarily unfree, and with no recourse to alter, replace or escape Sunday's government. The prospect of becoming this group of people who are not adequately represented by Sunday undermines Sunday's entire project of increasing the freedom of the weak.

Conclusion (or TL;DR I guess)

Not only does Sunday face significant problems in running Penacony as its sole manager, he also runs the risk of being unrepresentative due to his unilateralism. Inhabitants of Penacony cannot be assured that Sunday will remain a benevolent ruler.
We know that he would likely be one because we have glimpses into his mind through the omniscient viewpoint of the player. However, no-one else in the story can be sure that Sunday will remain a responsive governor of Penacony. Further, there are no accountability mechanisms to depose Sunday and replace him with another leader should he turn out to be tyrannical or incompetent down the road.
In the field of Political Science, this is the problem of centralizing governmental powers. Generally, we want a government that can respond to the needs of its people. Many systems of government will try to avoid putting too much power in a single person, such that there may be checks and balances that will provide some way for people to hold government accountable for their actions and competence. Being able to choose one's government and its policies is a very important freedom. Sunday's benevolent dictatorship fails this requirement.
So how do we fix this? I highlighted the Firefly principle and the Weekend principle because they cohere very closely to real life ideas of socialism. The idea that people should be free from their circumstances, and should be free to apply themselves to whatever life plans they wish to pursue are key tenets of socialism. The only difference is that under socialism, people will decide societal priorities and use of social resources together in democratic fashion. It's entirely fine when people decide, out of their own volition, that they should use resources in a certain way that enhances their freedom. It is, however, problematic when this decision is done unilaterally, such as in Sunday's philosophy.
Outside of his dictatorial tendencies, Sunday really promotes some classic socialist ideas that are intended to address the moral badness of society's failure in addressing social inequalities and peoples' needs for self-fulfillment. He just needs more time to think over his philosophy and execute on it in a manner that is more democratic.
As a final word and to provide some further reading for those that have become interested in political science analysis, I recommend reading "Why not socialism" by scholar G.A. Cohen for a political-philosophical justification of Sunday's philosophy. It's a pretty short read (~20 pages?) and will help us better understand our intuitive agreement with Sunday's philosophy.

Tomorrow at noon, a freak event occurs in which every person in the world is replaced by a clone of you - exactly the same as you down to your personality, memories, age, etc. None of you know what happened and you will not be able to find a way to change yourselves back.
How do the first 24 hours play out? Several years down the line, how is this new society of entirely you structured?

So today was it and I called the CPS hotline.
My Q is my wife, and we've been in this fight about 3 years now. She tried to kill herself about a year ago with with a fist full of ibuprofen and Benadryl. Shortly after that I took her car to the interlock shop and signed up under their voluntary program, and that was probably my worst mistake. By getting a breathalyzer installed before a DUI she never really faced any consequences. Just replaced blown out tires from curbs and body panels from hitting street signs. We have two kids under 10 and my thought was the breathalyzer was protecting them.
Well that may have stopped her driving drunk but it didn't stop her drinking, she just saved it for the evenings, or on the weekends, and suddenly it became always me bringing the kids places or they couldn't go because she couldn't start her car.
Then last fall she started drinking hand sanitizer. Purell Omni defense...I Guess they didn't put the stuff in it that makes you throw up like they do for mouthwash. So that's been the last 6 months of so of finding those bottles everywhere. Arguments fights threats even getting kicked out for a week didn't stop her. Tried naltrexone to no avail. Two weeks ago started on antabuse and I don't know how, but STILL drinking. I didn't even know that was possible.
Wednesday she drank sanitizer because she "found an old hidden bottle and had a moment of weakness"
Friday she drank because she"wanted to hurt me"
Saturday I took the 8 year old fishing at 5am, left the 5 year old with her, and came home by two to find her flush faced, bloodshot eyes and bumping into walls and chewing my ass for nothing.
I had threatened CPS before but this made it clear she wasn't on the right track. So I called my therapist today and went over what happened. She agreed that engaging in self harm by drinking sanitizer while the primary caregiver crosses a line and that she would call it in as a mandatory reporter and that I should too.
The call took about 5 minutes, they gave me a case number and hung up all in less time than it took to write this post. They said they follow up within 24 hours.
Haven't told her yet as I want her to have one last night of peaceful sleep before whatever happens happens, but I imagine the next few days may be tough.
When she doesn't drink she's great- wakes the kids up, cooks breakfast and does homework and gets them to school on time, and it's a real Dr Jekyll Mr Hyde. If I engineer a family trip for a week where we are all together say in the woods camping it's love and sunshine and roses but as soon as we get back and she slithers off to her stash the monster comes out.
I mean I just can't get over hand sanitizer! I even went on junky forums where druggies and alcoholics give each other tips and everyone there says nah man don't drink sanitizer that's dangerous!
But I can't take it any more. I can't wait for her to go too far or to kill herself or to find out she's shot her kidneys or liver and have to tell my kids why didn't I do more while we bury their mom.
Anyway that's my rant, I can't tell my family or friends so I'm telling you all. Thanks for the support and someone tell me I'm not wrong for finally bringing her hopefully into the world of consequences.

Around 3 weeks ago, I bought a '21 XLT 2.7 4x4 Supercrew in Antimatter Blue with the 302a high package and ~25k miles on it. Overall, I loved my first 2 weeks with the truck. It felt good to drive, the interior was well thought out and felt quality, and the truck looked great with the color and the chrome appearance package. I was super excited to have a dependable, low mileage vehicle, with a warranty if necessary, that I didn't have to hesitate to take on longer road trips. My two vehicles before this were an 02 Tundra with 240k miles and an 09 Corolla with 200k miles, and the main reason I decided to replace them was while they were still Toyotas, they were starting to nickel and dime me on maintenance and I just didn't trust them on longer road trips.
Before deciding to go with the F-150, I test drove a Tacoma and a Ram.
-The Tacoma felt like, well, a Tacoma (I had a 99 for 9 years and beat it to death and it just kept ticking). It felt rock-solid and you could just tell it was gonna be a quality vehicle. However, even in the quad cab, the backseat was a joke. I wanted usable space for adults on longer trips so this was a no-go for me. Other things that kinda made me feel meh were gas mileage, and standard features. The rig I drove was a 2023 SR5.
-The Ram also felt like a great drive. The pairing of the hemi with that transmission is just smooth as butter. The steering felt nice and responsive, but not overly responsive, and the ride quality was great. They really do ride more like luxury vehicles than pickup trucks. The trim I drove was fully loaded. It was a BigHorn/Backcountry that seemingly had every option available. The things that made me shy away from the Ram was the gas mileage (in that truck it would have been even worse due to gearing), and there was just something about the "quality" feel of the truck that just didn't sit right with me.
This brought to the F-150 I purchased. To me, the 2.7 engine is a no-brainer if you don't plan on doing any heavy towing. The reliability of the engine seems pretty solid, and the gas mileage is a huge plus. I also would have never guessed how much fun that thing is to rip around. It is quick. The quality of the interior, to me, seems to be a notch better than that found in the Ram, though I think the Ram may utilize available space a bit better in some aspects. After a few drives around down was I getting ~19-20 mpg in town, and I did a few 4 hour trips into the mountains where I averaged 24-25 mpg. It was performing as I had hoped.
Now onto the dislikes:
-The shifts in the transmission, sometimes, are garbage. It's always into 3 and 4 that are most notable, Once you get 5+ you don't even notice you are changing gear.
-The vibration in the gas pedal is obnoxious. How could Ford call that operating as intended. That should be a recall. It's just flat out unacceptable.
-Rough idle. Its annoying, and is intermittent. I did an idle re-learn and I know it takes time, but it should be better.
Now to the reallll good stuff.
I was driving down the road normally with my buddy and his wife on Saturday morning headed to play some golf. To add an important detail, I am visiting them out of town, about 4 hours away from where I live. Everything seems as normal, going about 45 down the road, and then it was like my truck was in neutral. Engine running and revving fine, just not getting any power to the wheels. I coasted to the stop light where the service light came on and I got a "shift module fault" (I think that's the exact verbiage, cant remember). When I came to a complete stop the truck shifted itself back into Park. When I would try to put it back into gear. Same thing. Turning off and on did nothing. I was stuffed. Had to get it towed. The really awesome part, being a Saturday, is the the only services at the Ford dealers were what lube techs could perform. So I opt to get it towed to a smaller garage to get them to scan it see if its something simple they can either diagnose or fix. Unfortunately it was not. Luckily they were awesome and hooked me up on the troubleshooting cost and let me keep the truck there until I figured out what to do with it Monday.
So now I am stuck, squatting at my buddies place until I can figure out what is going on with the truck. First thing Monday morning I get on the phone and start calling every Ford dealership within 20 miles, and let me tell you I was not impressed at all. Left message with one service advisor and never received a call-back. One dealer had a 2 week lead on transmission work, Another one just said they were backed up. Another one said first they could see me was Wednesday. Another dealer said they couldn't even work transmission problems because their transmissions guys quit a couple of weeks ago. WT actual F, Ford.
I called the Ford customer service line, trying to see how far they will tow and what my temporary vehicle options are. They say I can get towed out to 50 miles for free. So I call a dealer 40 miles away and they can see it and start working on it that day. Good on them, that service advisor was the first guy I spoke with all day that was willing and able to solve a problem and help me out.
Got the update today, they found metal shavings in the fluid, and they were continuing to troubleshoot and I think were in the process of reaching back to Ford to see what they were going to do (under warranty). I will call back tomorrow for another update.
Fortunately, I took my work stuff up with me, so I only missed 2 half days of work. And as irony would have it, I made it back home using a borrowing Ram 1500.
TL; DR; Have owned truck for less than 3 weeks. Driven 1200 miles. Transmission seemingly took a dump. Truck left me stranded 4 hours away from my house, causing me to miss time at work. Service is not readily available, even with multiple Ford dealers around. ETA on repair of truck: unknown. Will keep updated.

First Previous Wiki
Ezeonwha was walking down a long hallway. The dry and plain painted walls and the pure white lighting of the lower levels of the 102nd Visitor Welcome Office helped to frame the dingy realities of those who could only afford these floors. Not even capable of having windows, these were for those who were the cheapest of the cheap or those who mingled with them. He'd passed several Guides on the way in, their claws echoing in the halls as a sign of authority in this lawless land.
Here, mediocrity was king, and he was a loyal servant. He drew his cloak closer about his neck, unwilling to reveal himself to those who weren't already equipped to see through it all. He was famous enough to be an abduction target if he let his guard down. This place was no exception, though Justicar tried to make them such. Too much security on the higher levels and too little on the lower levels. That was the way of things.
Another hallway, this one marked with bullet holes. Two contractors and a Guide were discussing the pricing of the fix project when he turned the corner. Their voices quieted to nothing, the stillness pressing down upon them with the same intensity as the false lighting. Ezeonwha clacked his jaws, giving them a low bow before continuing on his way. He saw the Guide's eyes light up with the sign of his implants getting a reading. It was another impromptu way of tracking via facial recognition, but it was an ancient practice.
Nothing was new about what the Guides did; only how many of them seemed to be on general patrol. Had Justicar hired more of them or actually done full conversions for all of them? Those arm cannons surely weren't cheap or ethical to insert into unwilling participants. And giving a victim a gun they couldn't be disarmed of was a very bad idea, even for Elders. And Justicar was better than most Elders when it came to abject stupidity. He'd likely only been dropped a few hundred times as a child versus the more likely Elder average of a few thousand.
Ezeonwha chuckled at his internal joke, heading deeper underground into the complex. He was going to a certain meeting, and it would be best not to be late. Even if the Guides tracked him, it wouldn't be negative. The group he had been approached by a few days ago wasn't a terror group. He'd looked them up. They dealt in 'freedom and liberation from all chains.'
The Eyes Of Liberty had focused upon Penny as their latest propaganda target and perhaps as a valuable ally in their fight against all tyranny. Though such a flowery message was likely steeped in idealism for the lower ranks, with more pragmatic and likely richer inner circle elites and leaders ensuring the pot would always simmer but never boil or grow cold. That was the way movements such as these managed to skirt the line between inaction and terrorism.
It was a dangerous thing to do. But these were dangerous times. If Penny left, he'd die. Someone with a grudge would kill him. It was a given, and he'd made peace with it now. He needed to get to work, to help others like him and those worse off, with just a small piece of the meager time he had left.
He was in the system as a friend of Penny, so little scrutiny would fall on him as he came and went. He had a new friend, one who was very interested in connecting to Penny.
The offer had come through his communicator, and he'd answered it given its interesting title. After a lengthy discussion about their goals for him and Penny, he'd agreed to at least have a meeting. He didn't tell them that he had a tracker from Phoebe, which would 'be impossible to miss' if things went badly. He knew the value he had, which was why one of the androids was also accompanying him under the guise of being a Sprilnav.
The android was 'walking' on all fours, its mechanical motion entirely silent. It was obscured by a wave of holograms and hard light holograms that would ensure that it wouldn't be considered suspicious beside him. His only guard was a capable one, and Phoebe had all the confidence of an AI who knew that the destruction of her android would only be an inconvenience for her.
Ezeonwha came to an unmarked door with a well-worn door frame. One knock. One pause. Two knocks. Another pause. Four knocks. He waited, and the door swung open. Eight Sprilnav greeted him warily but warmly, their eyes shifting to Phoebe.
The inside of the room was a dull red, coming from a pair of lights in the center of the ceiling that cast dark shadows near the edges. The whole room felt dark and dangerous, and the walls were lined with guns, computers, and several drones. Shelves and drawers were neatly stacked against the wall, as well as five couches and four double beds with ladder access to the top portions.
Bags of food rested atop a trash compactor unit, and the room service button on the inner side of the wall that Ezeonwha could see in the mirror was worn down to the raw metal. No paint jobs here, only grit and business. The room faintly smelled of body odor and assorted foods. Not entirely unpleasant, but also not what he'd expected from a group with sich a flamboyant name. Perhaps they worked in cell-based units. And that was another thing.
Minds were visible in the distance of the mindscape, but the people here were huddled together mentally. They appeared to be haphazard, but Ezeonwha recognized an old army-type defensive formation a mere step from each of their positions. They were more than they appeared. Though based on how their room looked, they probably weren't veterans, just decently trained.
As they walked through the doorway, a scanner activated. One of the Sprilnav, wearing a headset with numbers and letters swirling on the inner side of the visor, called out: "Phoebe android. Commando variant. Risk assessment: Certain Death. Ezeonwha. Carrying two pistols, one hidden in the pack on his left, and the other tucked inside a strap near the lower bottom of his chest."
That made them all pause, sizing each other up. Ezeonwha smiled nervously, failing terribly to break the building tension once again. His nerves started to get to him, but finally, Phoebe spoke. "Well, friends. I, for one, am happy to talk of the business of liberty. Tell us, what do you have in mind for my friend Ezeonwha?"
"It is not about him, AI. It is about the freedom all sentient beings deserve, and which we shall bring to the galaxy no matter if we are alive or dead."
"An honorable goal to strive toward," Phoebe said.
"Thank you. Your words are quite kind for your type."
"I didn't know I had one," Phoebe replied. "But thank you."
Ezeonwha turned his head toward the Sprilnav with all the fancy equipment.
"What is the best way for me and Penny to help in the fight?"
"The best way would be for you to start killing the gang leaders you come across. Barring that, have Penny ignore the graveyards, and continue freeing the slaves as she ought to. The dead have their freedom; the living need her work more."
"I agree with my companion," another of them said. "So far, Penny has done more for the fight for justice than any other on Justicar in generations, so it is a terrible thing to ask more, but we must ask. Even knowing the terrible toll it would have if she loses the Judgment, Sprilnav are at stake."
"People are at stake, you mean," Ezeonwha said. "There is no need to bring species into this."
"There would not be, but it is still a clear factor," another of them said, a female who looked more shifty in her gaze and demeanor. The Eyes of Liberty seemed like one of those groups with too much division.
"Do you disagree with each other often?" Ezeonwha asked innocently.
"Here and there," the tech guy said. "Not often enough to be a problem, and not when what matters is at stake."
"But that is the thing. How can you agree on when something that matters is a stake?"
"Is this a test?"
"Why would it be? Think of it as a genuine concern," Ezeonwha said. "To associate with your group, I have to be certain it will be resilient to change and risks escalating in the future. If the gangs cannot strike at Penny, they will pick the next best targets. Currently, that is me. If I associate with you in a way they can find out, and I assure you they will find out eventually, you all may be at risk as well. And your group's seemingly cell-based design also means large scale mobilization is difficult, ineffective, and risks severe coordination issues which cannot be quickly or safely remedied without changing core security features of it."
"You deduced all of that from context? You are smart, Ezeonwha. And have a good brain in your head. Everlasting knows we need one of those between all of us."
They all shared a laugh.
"I am not as young as I may look," Ezeonwha said. "Penny is not properly learned of the danger that faces us here. I am. The Underground will kill me when this is over. Do you want to die alongside me, all for your beliefs?"
Silence descended again. Ezeonwha kept the pressure on them when one of them stepped forward. "For freedom and liberty? Yes. I would die for that."
"As would I."
"And I."
They all declared the rest in orders that followed the patterns Ezeonwha was noticing. There were variances in their levels of belief and faith in their purpose. Each person had a different level of value difference, which meant that their lives would be worth more or less comparatively.
Cohesion was weaker, too. Not a full defector team, but likely pieces of several. Was that by design from a higher up leader, or was that just circumstance? Another thing to figure out later, that wasn't critical yet, but he would know before he truly went on any missions with them, if he did at all.
He suspected running messages to Penny would be the majority of their tasks. The quality of intelligence the Eyes of Liberty had offered was substantial. Perhaps enough for Penny to turn herself from a major annoyance to the gangs into an actual existential threat. With Justicar's swarming protection of the Fort Court and the 102nd Visitor Welcome Office, there was a limited amount of things that even the gangs could do. And if the rumors were correct, a Progenitor would be partaking in the trial.
"To be clear, if I join up with you, Phoebe would come too."
"Why would we let an AI join us?"
Phoebe smiled. "Without me, you'll die in this fight. You have trained for around 2000 days. You're acceptable combatants, as is Ezeonwha. But you are fighting in a city, and underneath it. You need to know how to keep a low profile. You need to know how to move through a crowd, get in and out. And you need to keep collateral damage to a zero, or the gangs will use you like they have others who had your purpose and were less careful to justify their 'protection' continuing. If you march in there and kill 50 slavers, if you kill a few slaves or a single bystander in the process, your credibility will be smeared. And frankly, with me on your team, you won't get blown up by an IED when you try clearing your first room in a fortress."
"IED?" One of them asked, while the rest digested her statement, going through various levels of offended looks.
"Your translator is too cheap. Improvised explosive device. Here, that can be old engines, reused oil, cracked plastic, frictional fuel bombs, circuit extruders, sodium splash grenades, as well as the more military style attacks they can pack, from small micro rockets all the way up to lower level fission or fusion bombs. Though if you're in a fight with those things involved, you're already dead."
"Why?"
"Because unless you're Elders, or holograms, a nuke will kill you whether you're right next to it or just inside the same shield. They concentrate the thermal pulse, so your bones would be ash before the pain hit your eyes."
"And what protection could you bring against that?"
"Telling you it's there before you start the attack. That is, if you listen to me. I value your lives over that of this android, but also I value Ezeonwha over all of you combined. I will not prevent him from doing this, but I will have you all know the risks involved."
"We are prepared, Phoebe. We have done much of the training you say, though we do not believe the gangs would plant explosive devices in their own fortresses. There is too much risk around that, with betrayals so common. However, the minefields we have scouted are easy to defeat with the right tactics. Perhaps you can give us a briefing on those, too?"
A challenge.
"I can, depending on how long you wish to do this for. But I have the stamina for either hours or weeks, depending on which you choose."
"What of your batteries?"
"They are of sufficient quality," Phoebe assured.
"I hope so."
Their tech guy nodded, more numbers flashing on his visor. Ezeonwha hoped he had a different way of display, like through an implant or something, for the missions in darker areas. The Underground was, by its name, not a place where much natural light was to be found. And the gangs controlled all the power systems in their territory. It was another part of the racket.
"Why aren't you guarding Penny?"
Phoebe's back straightened, a subconscious posture change to make her seem more confident. Ezeonwha caught the tactic for what it was, though without extensive knowledge of bipedal forms, it was less likely the surrounding Sprilnav knew it.
"Penny proved before a trillion eyes she's capable of fighting Elders, Progenitors, and a Dreadnaught Captain. Not to mention her immense power. I can shoot bullets, but she can literally snatch them out of the air and eat them. She has her own way of doing things, and it is a good way."
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Penny landed in the rubble and headed for the Vaquah with a trail of survivors behind her. Many of them, she could recognize the marks of slavery on, with numbers or brands on their skin or just the trauma crouching in their eyes dulled by the pain of a long life in a work camp. Penny went through the wreckage to the shield surrounding the rubble and the defining line between the rest of the city and the destruction. Several news drones flew above her.
More were arriving from various directions. The soft footsteps grew into a constant drumming sound, like a beating heart of doom. Penny marched with them, heading to the spaceport. A large medical operation there quickly rerouted many of its various branches to the most injured freed slaves.
Penny pressed her considerable psychic energy on the entire group, accelerating their healing, slowing bleeding, and generally repairing their bodies and cells from the trauma they'd suffered. But the cloud over their heads did not brighten. The atmosphere remained tense and mournful. Many of them had lost friends, family, and more. She had no right to ask them to feel any different.
She had freed them, that was all. They were not her servants. She was not their ruler.
Several of them came up to her, offering thanks in the small ways they could. Kind words. Attempts at hugs. Even offers of devout prayer and worship, which Penny respectfully declined. She knew, as did most of them, that veneration for her deeds was inevitable. She didn't want to be seen encouraging it at all, since this was a public place where many eyes were upon her.
She knew that it would be misconstrued as a threat if she did. Religions were some of the most major threats entrenched powers could face if not properly co-opted by the state to suit their needs. And here, the 'state' was a military dictatorship billions of years old, ripened with corruption, money, and the immortality of Elders sporting technology beyond any other in the galaxy.
The sky was blue with shields overhead. The Vaquah hung in the distance, its thrusters gently burning to keep it aloft. A trail of shuttles linked the massive ship with several spaceports, including this one. Penny watched the freed Sprilnav get on it one by one, promising themselves to a new life aboard her ship. Technically, they were citizens of the Autonomous Peoples' Stars.
That protection, Penny knew, was why the Vaquah and its innocent inhabitants were still intact. Elders already had hired mercenaries to attack it. They'd failed, thanks to Rimiaha and Penny, but also the defenses of Kashaunta's Grand Fleet when it was in higher orbit. Kashaunta, despite her willingness to use Penny as she would, also had a certain intelligence and empathy. It was highly selective, and only money and power seemed to flip that switch.
But Penny needed the Elder, and Kashaunta only had use for her as an asset. She palmed the new communicator Kashaunta had issued her after the last one's destruction. Kashaunta's hologram appeared. It looked around, noticing the news drones in the air.
"Not here."
"Where?"
"You will know."
In the mindscape, a Sprilnav appeared on Penny's layer. They felt odd to her, almost like the minds of certain humans high up in the hivemind's network. Penny greeted the Sprilnav warmly.
"Hello."
"Queen and Elder Kashaunta requests your presence on her flagship."
"Very well."
In reality, Penny looked around at the crowd. She waited until it dwindled to nothing, and then spoke.
"Displace."
Conceptual energy twisted, and she stood on Kashaunta's flagship, though nearer to the edge than she'd expected. The Elder was waiting for her in an outfit that looked much like pajamas, though they were under a few armor pieces that appeared anything but decorative. Now that Penny noticed it, it was the same sort of armor that Yasihaut had worn to their last encounter, which interfered with conceptual energy. The Sprilnav were highly advanced. She wondered just how far their technology could go. She'd heard mentions of some ships having artificial gravity, and of nanites and programmable matter. But nothing certain.
"Hmm," Kashaunta said, giving Penny a once over. "You have come back. Shall I assume you are still my ally?"
"Nervous, are we?"
"Nervous is what you should be, Penny. The Judgment is coming. Ten days. Indrafabar and Justicar will both be on the court as High Judges. That is not good for us at all. So I figured a bit of prudence was in order. I have thought long and hard about this, and with the great battles of our time so fast approaching, I figure it is time to mend our relationship before the chasm grows any wider."
Kashaunta motioned to a special looking sword sheath on her back. Slowly, she drew a sword. A Soul Blade. Penny began to draw up her armor.
"Oh, I am not wishing for a fight, Penny. I know the damage you could do, even in my sanctum in the sky. Tell me, do you know how Soul Blades are forged?"
"No."
"Good. And tell me, do you know why they draw so much power to swing, even for Elders and beings as capable as us?"
"I have a few theories."
"I am sure you do," Kashaunta said. "But here is the thing. Soul Blades are typically weapons assigned to highly promising Elders, or even Progenitors. Filnatra, undisputed sword master that she is, can wield them as easily as breathing. If I were to swing this blade, there would be no drawback. Why?"
"Because you own that Soul Blade."
"Because this Soul Blade is mine. It is not just something I own. I own around seven or so more Soul Blades, with some weapons nearing their quality lying in my various vaults even now. You did not detect them, because I willed that not to be. I need you to understand this, Penny. You have power. You have might. But you are not invincible. My Soul Blade, if it struck you, would not cutely separate Nilnacrawla or Cardinality from you. Nor would your speeding space entity be able to block this blade with his flesh. If this cut you, it would release unending agony upon you before you exploded in a burst of burnt gore."
Penny sighed. "There is no need to threaten me. Allies do not threaten each other."
"But you do not see me as an ally. You see me as your means to get through the Judgment. You believe I see you as nothing more but a linear singularity maker, and perhaps a passing curiosity I'm backing on a whim. You neglect to imagine that there might be firmer reasons why I back you, and why more Elders are getting drawn into this conflict. You believe I am comfortable with showing you my more pragmatic and ruthless sides because I am comfortable with the fact that you cannot harm me. That you would not dare to do so, when you need my assistance so badly. That I might even be aiming to normalize my 'new' self with you."
"That is hardly my belief alone."
"Is it now."
Kashaunta grinned. There was no warmth in her gaze.
"Nilnacrawla," Kashaunta said. "Cardinality. Exile. Come out and show yourselves. You are being rude as guests."
Exile detached from Penny's head. He grew into the shifting array of fractals and shapes she was more familiar with. What had once grated on her eyes did so no longer. Kashaunta stared at the speeding space entity for ten seconds, then looked back up at Penny.
"He will not work on us. I will cover his form with holograms if he walks through my ship out of courtesy for my workers and crew, if he cannot."
"I am capable, Queen Kashaunta."
"You are quite knowledgable, aren't you?" Kashaunta mused, looking at him hungrily. "Oh, how I wonder what secrets you have in your head. How many of ours do you know?"
"I will not be taken as a hostage," Exile said.
"You will not because I decide not to," Kashaunta said. "Formally, our species are still at war. There is no treaty."
"The Sp'rkial'nova no longer exist."
"Yes, they do," Kashaunta said. "The name was discontinued for use regarding the lesser specimens we created. But I can assure you, Exile, if you wish to go by that name here, that we still do exist. I am a Sp'rkial'nova in the flesh. In the blood. In the mind. In the soul."
"Say what you will, Sprilnav. It changes nothing."
"On that I agree. Though our views on how things are may differ, and yours is wrong, your opinion is not valuable enough to matter."
She turned to Penny. She would have defended Exile, but he gave her a simple shake of his head area.
Nilnacrawla formed out of psychic energy in front of Penny. Cardi did the same beside her. Kashaunta tapped a claw on the ground. Tables and chairs appeared. A chef brought in food that looked passable and a few decent attempts at human cuisine.
"We do not have to eat, though I would expect that all of you at least sit at the table. We will discuss our grievances, and how to solve them before we proceed with the future. We shall first go to the matter of the Alliance. Penny, many in their number wish to establish contact with you. Do you agree to this? If so, I will add their communicator numbers to the translation program I have reserved for your personal use, in case your own device needs another sudden replacement."
"I agree."
"Good. A first step of diplomacy, I would say. Agreement. Now, Nilnacrawla, you look like you have something to say to me. What is it?"
"Free Meridia."
"Meridia was detonated by planet cracker during the 139th Sector 9 Border War. I am sorry more could not be done."
A cold draft of air rushed out of Nilnacrawla's nose. He glared at her. "You let them die."
"I did not. A Grand Fleet was defending that star system, and three came to lay siege. I am many things. A tactician, a queen, an Elder. But I am not a god. I cannot perform miracles. I evacuated 30 billion people from that world and its surrounding stations before the planet crackers hit it. 4 trillion more souls died in that blast. The best I can do is to offer an apology."
"That will never be enough for what you did. If you had never established your nation, they would still be alive."
"They would be slaves. Chattel slaves, not that cute little 'wage slavery' concept privileged people throw around. Perhaps I should remind you just how much darker that reality would have been for your female descendents, specifically. I am a brutal warlord, a dictator with an iron fist. But my claws do not squeeze nearly as tightly as I could. Metrics say that I could extract at least 370% more profit from my people if I simply enslaved them. But despite the shock this may bring to you all, I do have principles. The Autonomous Peoples' Stars are my people. My nation. My empire, if you think I'm imperialist. But I protect them as best I can."
Nilnacrawla's cold anger didn't lessen. Penny placed a calming hand on his front left thigh. He blinked. He let out a long, pained sigh. And he bowed his head to her. Not to Kashaunta, but to Penny.
"There is no need to be cruel."
"My language was accurate, Penny. He is a strong Elder. Everlasting knows he's stronger than most of these fools. Nilnacrawla was and is a hero of the Source war. I respect him enough not to mince words, or to give platitudes. Coddling is for babies. Nilnacrawla is far more mature."
Kashaunta turned to Cardi. "You have been remarkably silent in this, concept."
"I have."
"A wonderfully succinct statement. Perhaps you can shorten it further. But nevertheless, you and I will be working together with Penny much more in the near future. Rest assured, if you refuse to become more independent, you will be nothing more than a crutch for her to rely on before leaving her to fall when you are ripped away."
"When, Elder? I would like to think your protection is sufficient."
"I am sure the truth is quite the opposite, dear. I will now get to the point. Penny needs to move faster, and needs to break out of her shell. She needs to be pushed to do more. She has signed a binding treaty, which shows she is capable of more than barbarian aliens, as some Elders would call her. You, Cardinality, will help her be a high achiever. To do this, you need to learn more about your own history.
That is the theme of the year, after all. History. My history, Penny's history, Sprilnav history, and even Gaia's history, it would seem."
"Gaia? What do they have to do with all of this?" Penny asked.
"Oh, you don't need to worry about that."
"Excuse me? You don't get to decide that, Kashaunta. You will tell me. I refuse to be coddled, like you say. I demand the respect I am owed."
"You forget yourself, Penny."
"I remember myself, actually. I am all I need to be. I can become all I need if I must. You can hold your backing against me all you want, but you won't withdraw it. As you said, more binds you and I than mere money and ideology."
"And if you're wrong?"
"Then I've doomed my species and my nation to war, and this planet to the full power of my wrath."
"Wrath, Penny. Wrath. The Sprilnav have many words for anger, rage, hatred. There is the desire for vengeance, in varying degrees. There is that for justice, which does differ. And that for belonging. I know you believe you are standing up to me as a way to assert your own authority in this relationship of ours. You believe I see you as inferior, and will pull back my help when it is profitable for me. I will not offer you the consequences of what your words could mean.
You already know them, and that argument is as stale as your view on us Elders. I will say this once, Penny. You are the Champion of Humanity. The apex predator of your planet, the only one mostly in charge of an Alliance that does more than merely dream of overthrowing us. It is easy for me to say you are not a threat, though I do not ignore the threat you and your nation are trying to become. Gaia will be a part of your movement, but even my information is not entirely complete. I will not mislead you by claiming I know Gaia's link to this, just that there likely is one.
And I am not unreasonably petty. I am willing to put all our animosity behind us and start anew. Even if you are not willing to do the same, I am willing to make this work for us. You have more people to care for than just the Alliance, now. Do not forget them."
"A lot of words that mean nothing."
"Because you heard, but did not listen. Perhaps it will be easier this way, Penny. I want you to win."
"Explain."
"You wish to overthrow the current Sprilnav led order of the galaxy. Your path to that will likely be through mass slave revolt. A viable strategy that I could spread far beyond just this planet. And I actually agree with you. This Judgment, this utter insanity around the Alliance and your species has shown me the truth. The Elders as a class and a species cannot be trusted to rule any longer. We need new leaders. Better leaders."
"And yourself?"
"As the hypocrite that I am, and the power-hungry ruler of the Sprilnav, I would obviously exclude myself from that number. Let's be realistic. The Sprilnav will never accept a non-Elder ruler. If you wish to see what our insurgencies would be like, imagine the 2090s Struggles of Asia. Expand that to billions of planets, large and small. Countless ships and space stations. We have more collective ships than you have people. And as your military planners know, there is no such thing as an unarmed ship. Without us, without me, your plans are stillborn. Your galactic Alliance or whatever you make will fall to pieces without proper counseling. In essence, my offer to you, and you alone, is this. The galaxy, for the Sprilnav."
"Who backs your offer, with the power to give it?"
Progenitors Lecalicus and Nova appeared in the room.
"I back Kashaunta," Lecalicus wheezed.
"I observe her offer, and wish it a proper outcome," Nova said.
"Thank you, esteemed Progenitors," Kashaunta said, standing just to bow to them. Penny stared at Nova, balling her fists.
"There will be time for battle later," he said. "But not now. Hear out her request. She does not make it lightly."
The Progenitors disappeared.
"If I accept your offer, it will be on a written record."
"No. It will not be, because if that record is written, my nation will be facing war on all sides. A better idea would be for us to keep this under wraps."
"Perfect for betrayal," Nilnacrawla muttered.
"It would be, yes. But consider the second part of this situation, Nilncrawla. If word of this galactic offer, not just the Pact, were to get out, which is why two Progenitors who know the price of interference were called here, it would mean the deaths of Penny and all her kind. Or do you forget what rapidly approaches us?"
Nilnacrawla frowned. "I did. I apologize, Penny."
Kashaunta spoke up again.
"Penny. You believe I will betray you. So I make an offer of collateral. An offer so unbelievably sacred for us Elders that many would recoil at the mere thought of it. Now that you have signed a backed treaty, you are fully qualified."
Kashaunta grabbed her Soul Blade and presented it to Penny.
"What does this mean?"
"Nilnacrawla, tell her," Kashaunta said. "She will trust your mouth more than mine."
"Bonded Soul Blades are priceless artifacts," Nilnacrawla said. "To offer one to another is the ultimate gesture of trust and respect among many martial Sprilnav cultures. It can also allow for a mind bridge, a soul pact, or a proposal for marriage between two great houses, martial families, or Elders of great wealth and power. To offer this to a human... to anyone... is an ultimate sign of backing, and one of trust.
It is a sacrosanct honor, the absolute agreement of speaking truth and respect. The words I can use in any human language are insufficient to describe the weight of this honor. This gesture is one of absolute truth. Family lines with hatred going back millions of years would never dare to violate this honor."
"Only one Elder in history did so, one who once led a group known as the Stannic Resistance. He does so no longer. Penny Balica, Champion of Humanity... if there is nothing else I can give you to prove that I do really back you, there is this."
"...Just how low are my chances in the Judgment for you to resort to this?" Penny asked.
"They are not zero, but your battle with be incredibly difficult even with this boon of mine. The future of the galaxy, I now realize, hinges on the outcome of this. If we do not have enough trust, they will sniff it out, and we will fail."
So she had no choice. But as Nilncrawla continued to explain in her mind, Kashaunta was getting the worse side of the deal. Which meant she was throwing her backing behind Penny for real, beyond all reproach and retraction. Kashaunta, the most powerful Elder in the galaxy.
"And if I reject this gift, or your reasons for it?"
"Circumstances would demand that I kill you and then myself using this blade as a way to cut apart the dishonor, before my remains are dumped into a black hole to be forgotten forever. I would not do this."
"A dark and archaic custom," Penny said. She would have said more, but she looked at Nilnacrawla's face. He was clearly deeply uncomfortable. Her five words had shaken him more than anything she'd ever said to him before.
"You do not understand," Nilnacrawla said. "This is not something to joke or lie about. With a Soul Blade Pact in play, all else must cease. Right now, there is you, and there is her. Accept or decline. The choice, your only choice, is yours."
"How will this look to the Elders in the court? To the Sprilnav, and the people who back me?"
She could see how it would be a boon and a curse.
"You, and I," Kashaunta said. "The whole of the universe between us right now is you and I. No others exist until this one act is done. There will be trust or there will be death. No in between. No middle ground. The nature of this bond will be a Pact of Blades."
Conceptual energy swirled between them. Penny's natural translation, as part of the hivemind, failed for the first time ever. Her communicator likewise did not translate the words Kashaunta spoke.
"Eis nama kaste Penny Balica, sun lanci Dorima Kashaunta. Ko'ri, lanci nupa bes na Dorima'Pecunyanova. Sp'rkial'nova. Sun. Homo Sapiens."
The air grew thick with tension. It was not just emotional, either. Psychic and conceptual energy gathered. The mindscape started to distort as more and more eyes began to view Kashaunta and Penny. But all of them were Sprilnav eyes. All of them were Progenitors. Nova's appeared brightest and largest, nearly six times the size of the next largest pair. They stared at her, sending psychic and conceptual energy down upon her in waves that forced her and Kashaunta to kneel to the ground.
"I apologize for my earlier words," Penny said. "I should not have denigrated this."
Penny stood for an hour, deeply contemplating the Pact. If it was as Nilnacrawla was describing to her, it was a promise that Kashaunta would not break. If she was offering it at all, especially to Penny, it meant she had a level of trust in Penny's capability far above what Penny had previously thought. Apparently, there were even higher agreements than this that were possible, with this Pact being the lowest level of bond and considered unbreakable with the enforcement of consequences coming from the Progenitors themselves.
She thought of her place in Justicar and the wider universe. Hours passed like water. And then, by the end of it, after nearly 19 hours, Penny finally had decided. She gave a short nod to Kashaunta, who had been kneeling to Nova all this time.
Kashaunta gestured at the sword. "Tol, nopa shikai."
Nilnacrawla fed her a few suggestions on what she would need to say.
"I come to this Pact seeking peace, justice, and hope," Penny said. "And a promise not to betray one another, by lies or by treachery."
Nilnacrawla translated Kashaunta's next words to her.
"I come to this seeking trust, understanding, respect, and peace," Kashaunta said. "And a promise not to betray one another, by lies or by treachery. I make this Pact before the gods, those who equal them, and those who surpass them. I bind them to an oath of silence regarding this event, until I directly instruct them otherwise, in a state of a sound mind, body, and soul. Here, we shall step into a future that needs both of us, casting aside that which is unimportant to focus on the ultimate goals we have. I offer my Blade to Penny Balica, of species Homo Sapiens. In this way, we forge a new future, and walk a new path. I accept the Pact."
"I accept the Pact."
Nova and a hundred Progenitors descended. Nova grew larger, and Kashaunta knelt to him. Penny remained standing. His sharp teeth glittered in the light. He pressed his claws to Penny's chest, and to Kashaunta's chest.
"The Pact of Blades is made before the Progenitors. We agree to your vow of silence. The penalty of breaking it will be dismemberment and disposal into a black hole. Penny Balica, Engineer Kashaunta. To break this Pact without mutual agreement is to call down our collective wrath upon yourselves. You both have agreed, and are of sound mind, body, and soul. The Pact is forged. By sword, by word, by action. I, Nova, Everlasting, Lord of the Progenitors, King of all Sp'rkial'nova, Heir to the Mantle of Power, Heir to Narvravarana, Progenitor, Elder, and Sprilnav, declare the deed done, etched in time, space, and Reality."
They winked out of existence one by one, leaving Penny and Kashaunta alone, to ponder the future. Penny's thoughts turned to the Judgment, and her confidence she could win it began to waver. How much worse was this Judgment going to be than before?
Penny stared at Kashaunta's Soul Blade. With careful fingers, she took it. Kashaunta sat up, satisfied.
"Now we can begin. I shall compile all the news about you I can find, and we shall see how to address the questions the High Judges will ask. Now that you trust me, I cannot betray you."

DO NOT COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS. I am NOT OP. Original post by u/God_Dammit_MoonMoon in treelaw
trigger warnings: Tree Destruction
mood spoilers: Mild Confusion
 
(Virginia) Neighbor is on video ripping my eastern redbud sapling out of the ground - 2024-05-05
TLDR -- (location: VA) neighbor came onto my property -- I have her on video coming from her yard and carrying yard debris, looking around as she goes, walking up to one of my redbud saplings, ripping it out of the ground and breaking it in half a couple of times as she walked back to her property. The tree is very clearly on my property. She was (very clearly) looking to see if anyone was around before she did it. What is "standard procedure" here? How do I get her to replace at least the one tree I have her on video destroying? I'd ask how to not make this living situation awkward, but we're way past that at this point.
Long Version:
I live in Virginia in a neighborhood without an HOA. I bought my house a couple of years ago and there were zero large trees in the yard.
All of my neighbors have very landscaped yards. My house needed renovation, so I haven't done much in the yard other than plant some trees so they had time to get established. In the 2 years I've lived here, I've planted 7 trees in the front yard.
4 of the trees I have planted have been eastern redbud saplings on either side of my driveway. The first pair died over the first winter I was here and then I planted the second pair this past fall.
The most recent pair survived. One was absolutely thriving and the other was struggling but had growth. Between the trees and my neighbors property is my mailbox and the trees have mulch rings.
I say these things because it's not like there's a question of whose property the trees were on or did they look dead (and did the neighbor think they were doing me a favor by removing yard debris).
Three weeks ago, I went out to check the mail and the one closest to my neighbors yard was missing. There wasn't a sapling laying on the ground so it wasn't like an animal chewed it at the base and it fell over. The entire thing was gone but the mulch wasn't disturbed. I even dug into the mulch to try to find the root ball because it was so weird. No root ball.
My partner and I couldn't remember the last time we had seen it and we had friends in town helping with the renovation so it went out of our mind as a weird thing. Partner was convinced it was an animal. I was convinced someone stole my tree.
Tonight, I went out to take the garbage to the road and -- lo and behold -- the 2nd redbud is missing.
I look around for it -- in case it's on the ground and it's not there. Mulch isn't disturbed. Exact same situation as the other one. So I dig down to try to find the root ball and there isn't one. it's only 4ft tall, so not like there'd be a big one to begin with.
I call my partner and let them know. They've been out of town but mention when they left Wednesday morning, they remember checking on the tree. So I go to the video footage.
It was there the morning of the 1st and the morning of the 2nd. The morning of the 3rd....hard to tell. It might be there. It might not. I go through more video from friday and confirm the tree is not there.
So I go back to the 2nd and I start going through the video and around 7pm, I get my answer -- I see my neighbor walk onto my property, carrying yard debris from her yard. She's looking around, and then walks up to the tree, rips it out of the ground, and walks back off to her property snapping the tree in half a couple of times as she goes. If I had to guess, she was carrying the yard debris as a cover "oh I thought it was yard debris and I was just trying to help".
I went back to check to see if I have her on video doing the same thing to the first tree, but the video doesn't go back that far unless you specifically save the video (which I didn't think to do). If I were a gambler, I'd put money on the fact that she did the same thing to the first tree.
I know tree law in VA states that if the trees are on your side you can trim them as long as you don't do it to a point where you kill them, but these trees were very much on my property. The one that she killed recently, it was literally the tree, my driveway, a small stretch of yard (where the 1st tree was that went missing) , my mailbox, and then the neighbors yard.
What is standard procedure here on addressing this with a neighbor? I don't want to get police involved for destruction of property but at the same time, who comes onto someones property and rips their trees out of the ground?
Unrelated -- my relationship with this neighbor has always been wonderful. Like I bake them pies and the give me things from their garden. We bring in packages for each other when fedex inevitably delivers them to the wrong house. There was a windstorm in March that blew a tree from their neighbors yard (two houses down from me) into their yard and I went out with my chainsaw to help cut it up so it didn't just sit.
*quick update\*
So this has gathered far more comments than I expected but I figured there were a couple of things that needed to be addressed.
First -- the video. The video is safe. I have a copy on my phone, personal laptop, work laptop, and have sent it to many, many friends because it's such a batshit situation. We have copies should I need to use it.
Second, tree proximity to property line -- because I was curious, I went out with my handy dandy tape measure to check to see how far the trees were planted from the line. The first tree that was yoinked 3 weeks ago was 6ft from the property line. The second tree that was pulled a few days ago was 22 feet 3 inches from the property line. The only one arguably "close" to the property line was the first one (6ft from the line) and honestly, if she had come to me with a concern about it, I probably would have agreed to move it in the fall when it went dormant and it was safe to do so. Instead she chose tree violence.
Third, "the plan". Because my partner travels a lot, we both own our houses (so neither of us are going anywhere), and because I want to make sure she doesn't retaliate against the other 9 baby trees in my backyard (that's fenced in) or my dog, I've decided to take u/kemperflow 's advice to an extent. Basically I'm going to tell them someone vandalized and stole property out of my yard and that I'm going to be going through the video from one of the cameras in the next couple of days and this camera points at the area of the trees. I'm going to ask them if they've had anyone vandalize or steal their property in the last week or so. Basically giving them the opportunity to fess up and give me whatever lie they come up with on the spot as to why she destroyed the trees. If she owns up to it, I'll ask her to buy me new trees to make it right and then tell her she should not come onto my property and do something like this again without my permission. If she doesn't, in a few days I'll go back with the video and give her another opportunity to make it right. At that point if she still doesn't, then I'll report her for theft and destruction of property and have her trespassed. Because we're not going anywhere anytime soon, I don't want to go completely nuclear in the first round. Hopefully it doesn't get to last bit.
Fourth, she is an avid gardener. She has trees lining the back of her property, trees on the property line she shares with me (close to where the redbud massacre of 2024 occurred), a vegetable garden, so many rose and phlox bushes I've lost count and recently added some new low shrubs near the trees on the back of her property. Her yard is very curated with many shrubs, trees, and flowers -- both deciduous and evergreen. While I could be wrong, I don't think her removing the trees had to do with her being concerned about their leaves. If she were, she'd probably take down one of the two 60 yr old maple trees in her backyard.
 
Update: (Virginia) Neighbor is on video ripping my eastern redbud sapling out of the ground - 2024-05-07
Okay, so this will *hopefully* be the final update and there won't be any need to get motion activated sprinklers involved. I'm not ruling them out if this ends up escalating after this post.
Today I worked from my closet because it has a window that just so happens to overlook my neighbors garden and her car was in her driveway so I knew she was home.
Around 1pm she made an appearance so I went out to "check the mail". I waved to her with a big smile and said hello. She said hello and we exchanged minor pleasantries. And then I segued into asking
"Oh hey, have you guys noticed if you've had anything stolen or vandalized in your yard?"
"Oh no. not at all."
"I'm glad to hear it. I've had two trees taken from my yard over the last 3 weeks."
"What do you mean taken from your yard?"
"Well the two redbuds I had at the end of the driveway -- they were saplings and one was by the mail box and the other was by the lamp post. The first disappeared about 3 weeks ago and the second one disappeared sometime after Wednesday last week."
"No, we haven't had anything like that happen."
"That's great. Yeah, I don't know what happened. I'm going to check one of the cameras I have on the property in the next couple of days. It's pointed at the driveway, so it gets clear views of the trees and we'll be able to see what happened. Hopefully it's just animals or something because if someone came onto my property and stole them, I'm going to have to get the police involved for theft."
If I didn't have her attention before, I definitely had it at the last bit because she started asking more clarifying questions about these missing trees -- What kind of trees did you say? And where were they? How big were they?
I answer all of her questions and add on that it sucks because I bought these trees and they had been planted since fall but "Yeah, I guess we will find out what happened in a few days when I have an opportunity to check the video." And that's about the time she says "Oh, That might've been me. I think I thought they were weeds." (For the record — no I do not believe she mistook two 4ft saplings for weeds.)
I let her know that if that's the case, I would like her to replace them. To which she replies that she's not sure but it might've been.
I reassured her that it's okay if she doesn't know. We can wait to resolve this until I view the video because I absolutely do not want her to pay for replacements if she's not responsible.
Y'all. She absolutely did not want me to go to the video.
She asked me what kind of trees again and I told her. She said that if I told her how much they were, she’d pay me back.
And I said “are you sure you don’t want to wait to check the video?”
“No no. I’ll take care of it. Just let me know.”
I pulled my phone up and found comparable redbuds online and we calculated the total that she would owe together. She went inside and gave me cash to get replacements for the redbuds. We stood and chatted for a couple more minutes but I did reiterate that she needed to talk with me before doing something like this in the future and if she see's some weeds that she thinks needs to be pulled on my property to let me know because it isn't fair or right for her to bear the burden of weeding my yard.
And so concludes The Redbud Murder Saga. (I hope)
 
Reminder - I am not the original poster. DO NOT COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS.

By popular demand, I guess...
I was kinda just being a smart-ass, but some of you wanted more so here it is: epilogues for every NPC as if they didn't continue to travel with Gorion's Ward and instead just decided to live their own life. Obviously, there are some implied alignment changes here.
This turned out to be longer than I expected and I kinda just threw it all together while I was working. Please excuse any typos or sloppy writing.
I want to apologize for one thing, though. Viconia's epilogue really only works if GW is a male, so I had to make that assumption for the sake of her story. If it matters any, I easily play just as many female GWs as I do male GWs. In fact, I probably play more female GWs because I don't care for the romances, frequently play the canon party, and want to nip the lame Jah romance in the bud.
But, to have them all in one place, I included my original smart-ass epilogues with the additional ones I created. Now, every character from BG1 and BG2 has an epilogue. I don't have the EE characters, though, because I play the original games and don't really know them.
So, just for funsies, which one is your favorite and why?
"Anomen continued to wait at the Copper Coronet for a party of adventurers willing to travel with him. Maybe it was the grating sound of his voice, or perhaps the way he leered at women, but he continued to remain alone. Eventually, he needed to find work to make ends meet. With Gorion's Ward having disbanded the slave traders and pit fights, Hendak had to find a new form of entertainment for the patrons. As such, he invented an all male review ladies night, and Anomen found work as a 'dancer'. He left the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart to join the less noble order of the pole. He also renounced his faith to Helm and instead allied himself with Waukeen because if you wanna see some groin, you gotta have some coin."
"Despite Gorion's Ward clearing the trolls from her keep, Nalia was not able to reclaim her lands and instead lost her estate to Lord Roenall. The lord offered to let her retain residence in her family's ancestral home, but only in exchange for her hand in marriage. Nalia found the proposition to be repugnant. Instead, she salvaged whatever wealth she could from her family's keep and moved to Athkatla to start a new life. She no longer helped the less fortunate, as she was now among their numbers and had her own problems. Nalia's lack of any practical skills combined with her sense of entitlement sent her into a life of failure followed by drinking and debauchery. She now spends more time back at the Copper Coronet than anywhere else. It is hard to say where she squanders her wealth more, the alcohol, or on the dancers during Ladies Night."
"After the incident with the Planar Sphere, Valygar was finally free of his past, could retire to his cabin, and pursue his true passion: writing. Ironically, the only inspiration he found ended up stemming from his family's checkered past. Valygar's only works that even had middling success were 'Tuesdays with Lavok' and 'Dude, Where's My Planar Sphere', with the latter being made into a production at the Five Flagoons Theater."
"Haer'Dalis continued to work as a performer at the Five Flagoons Theater. Unfortunately, it struggled due to poor management. It might have turned out better if an outside agent with fresh ideas had stepped in, but Gorion's Ward had better things to do than be a bard. While the work was generally steady, the returns were not great and the material was a little low-brow for Haer'Dalis' liking. The tiefling realized he reached rock bottom when he was cast as the lead in a play about a buffoon who apparently lost a plane-shifting apparatus the size of a small castle and had to find it before his parents returned from Neverwinter. After the opening night, he took his own life in his dressing room. His body was found the next morning with a note saying, 'Art is dead and I am art, so I shall join art in death.' Biff the Understudy stepped in for Haer'Dalis despite never having an opportunity to read the script. Nevertheless, the production was a resounding success and launched Biff's career to new heights."
“A heartbroken Garrick found work as a character actor at the Five Flagoons Theater, but eventually gained more success as a writer and director. He found it to be a mostly agreeable situation, aside from a tiefling primadonna who would constantly belittle his work and call it ”trite" and “drivel”. Fortunately, that situation worked itself out in time and Garrick found Biff to be much easier to direct. With the tiefling gone, his ideas had room to grow. He invented a new kind of love story, one where the protagonist doesn't always get the girl at the end but the journey to that ending would be quite amusing. He labeled this genre “the Comedy of Romance” and the works were mostly based on his own life. His plays were quite popular among the commoners, with his top selling shows being 'Sleepless in Saradush', 'Silverymoon Linings Playbook', and 'Crazy Rich Aasimars'. He eventually fully transitioned off the stage into the director's chair. By the peak of his fame, he was married to none other than Queen Ellesime."
“Aerie continued to work at the circus and WOULD NOT SHUT UP ABOUT HER DAMN WINGS. Even Quayle eventually grew sick of hearing about it. This put strain on their relationship. Things took a turn for the better when Ribald Barterman acquired a new curiosity for his shop. It was a magical ring which he sold to Quayle at a reduced rate out of sympathy. This ”treasure" was actually a cursed Ring of Deafness, which Quayle found to be anything but a curse and wore it for the rest of his days."
“Xzar and Montaron were both slain at the hands of the Athkatla Harpers, but this is actually where their story begins. Xzar, as he had done so many times before, had a backup plan of an arcane nature should death befall either he or the halfling. Their mortal essences were pulled to a pocket plane he created. There they could be channeled into restored bodies cloned at his estate. With this particular round of ritual, Xzar had incidentally made a slight error in the incantation and the two found themselves in a time suspended state in Xzar's pocket plane. It was only five minutes for the rest of the world, but it was fifty years for them. This turned out to be a pivot point in their relationship. Having only each other's company in this shadowy void, they were finally able to work out their feelings for each other. When they had returned to the prime material plane, they discovered their mutual animosity was replaced with love. Rather than pick up their life where they left off with the Zhentarim, they decided to pack it all in, moved to Bryn Shander, and start a bed and breakfast. Montaron rediscovered his halfling roots and love for the culinary arts while Xzar would perform seances to connect guests with their late loved ones. Scones and Bones became an overnight success and was consistently listed as a “must see” in Volo's travel guides. In their golden years, the couple co-wrote a memoir of their journey, ‘Brokeback Montaron’, which is sold in bookstores everywhere."
“After briefly crossing paths with Gorion's Ward, Mazzy Fentan continued her crusade as a de facto halfling paladin. She eventually found herself petitioning for membership at the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart in Athkatla after she had singlehandedly saved a village from an ancient dracolich. Despite the extent of her virtue and accomplishment, her petition was denied on the basis that halflings could not possibly be real paladins. This inspired her next crusade, one to break down vocational barriers for all demihuman races. Why couldn't halflings be paladins or dwarves be wizards? And why did gnomes always have to be illusionists? It simply made no goddamn sense. She began to get traction with her quest when she attended lectures by the wizards of the (sword) coast in Candlekeep. With their help, she ushered Faerun into a new edition era where there would be no vocational barriers for adventurers based on their race. Soon, the world began to see roguish halflings that also venerated Helm, while tending to the wilds as a druid. Half-orc bards also studied as wizards while manifesting natural arcane abilities as sorcerers. Tiefling paladins took their crusades to the wilderness and served as rangers, while sidelining as clergy to Mystra. The world was now a liberated place, free to not make any goddamn sense in a myriad of new ways. At one point, Lady Mazzy Fentan of Trademeet (now formally a paladin) crossed paths with a dwarven shadowdancebard and in that moment she regretted everything. Seriously, just take a moment and picture that. It would look fucking ridiculous.”
“Yeslick's clanhome was flooded once again. Despondent and without options, he took work at a smithy in Baldur's Gate but never stopped dreaming of finding both a clan and a home. He found a way to bring this dream to life after a courageous halfling paladin broke down the barriers for, among other things, dwarves to be wizards. Yeslick had an idea. He studied magic diligently until he was able to cast two spells of great importance: Water Breathing and Permanence. He then searched the lands for other clanless dwarves who would be willing to try something new. With the new clan he formed, Yeslick permanently gave all his fellow clansman the ability to breath underwater. They then moved into the flooded Cloakwood Mines and built the first underwater dwarven stronghold. Using his arcane powers, Yeslick also developed the ability to speak with the marine life that shared this stronghold. And, with that, the clan Aquadwarf was born. At one point, Valygar visited and wrote a play based on Yeslick's story. However, he couldn't even get it to stage at the Five Flagoons Theater. The illustrious director Garrick was quoted as saying, “A hero that can breath underwater and talk to fish? Nobody would go for that!"
“Keldorn finally retired from the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart and looked forward to a much simpler life. He rekindled his marriage with Lady Maria and life seemed to improve. It was rather early on when the couple discovered that Maria had become pregnant again. It was also not long after that when Peony, the housekeeper, also became pregnant. Maria started to ask Keldorn about this, but Keldorn started to get defensive and asked, ”Hey, who's the Inquisitor here?" Then Keldorn started to do the math with her to track the conception of Maria's pregnancy. She certainly did not want him to get to the end of that equation, so she quickly changed the subject. She suggested getting a new maid, but Keldorn chastised her for abandoning someone in their time of need who had been like family for years. He forbade Peony's departure claiming that his god, Torm, would not stand for it. Maria then made a passive aggressive comment about Torm being the god of loyalty, but she was mostly just muttering under her breath to get the last word in. Eventually, both children were born and had probably the most awkward upbringing of anyone in Faerun."
“After Gorion's Ward helped Coran take down a wyvern, the rogue brought the beast's head back to the mayor of Beregost for the reward and accolades. He thought this put him in a position to be a hero of great renown and perhaps, just maybe, people would stop mocking him for his flashy attire and completely superfluous eye mask. They didn't. He only gained acceptance when he crossed paths with a ranger who seemed indifferent towards Coran's keen fashion sense. Coran traveled the Sword Coast with his ranger sidekick, righting the wrongs against the ‘little guy’ and taking the law into their own hands when needed. This partnership dissolved when he discovered that the ranger thought Coran was the sidekick. As if! Coran tried to correct the ranger, whose argument was, 'Really, man, if that outfit doesn't scream sidekick then I'm Elminster's twin brother.' The ranger was not related to Elminster and shared no resemblance.
“Kivan never was able to get his revenge on Tazok. Unbeknownst to him, that honor was taken by Gorion's Ward. His thirst for vengeance continued to eat away at him until he found himself in a bat infested cave in the wilderness. It was then he snapped. He turned the cave into his secret hideaway, put together a disguise and started wandering the sword coast looking for evil-doers to punish. He would leave his calling card wherever he saved the day, a token of a bat with longer ears like an elf. And bats already had rather long ears so these bat ears were almost comically obtrusive. Nevertheless, his deeds were generally appreciated and the people stared calling him Bat-elf. For a short spell, another elf tagged along with him and tried to help, but he was so flamboyantly dressed that one could pick his sidekick out of the shadows blindfolded. Kivan eventually had to send him on his way. Unfortunately, his vigilante crusade abruptly ended after receiving a cease and decist order from DC Comics. Kivan could fight both monster and marauder all day, but his 14 Constitution wouldn't hold up against a lawsuit for trademark infringement.”
“Skie was deeply affected by both the death of her brother and the assassination of her father. And yes, her father was actually murdered and didn't lol-jk back to life in some crappy DLC. In any event, through these traumas, she came to realize the puerility of what she thought was her brilliant criminal masterminding. Instead, she decided to settle down and live a more responsible life as an upstanding citizen of Baldur's Gate. She took the reins of her father's estate after his death and rose to prominence as one of the Grand Dukes of the city. She maintained her relationship with Eldoth for quite some time, inexplicably, as he refused to get a job because he didn't want to take attention from his band which he swore was going to make it. However, the bard spent most of the day either lounging at Skie’s estate or gambling away his allowance with games of three-dragon-ante at the Helm and Cloak. Eventually, inspired by the book “Men Are From Menzoberranzan, Women Are From Immilmar," she decided to call it quits with Eldoth and sent him packing. Shortly thereafter, she met a man who was nothing like Eldoth and they settled down together to start a family."
“Eldoth's dreams of being a world-famous musician fronting the greatest band in Faerun never reached fruition. This was partly because he didn't actually have a band and partly because he didn't have the talent to write music. Instead, he just had a lute he purchased at Lucky Aello's Discount Store that only had one A-string and was missing the E-string. Also, Eldoth could only play power chords and he couldn't really sing and play at the same time. Most of the time he would just strum a chord or two and then talk about what the song would do next, often describing a solo and half playing it on an ”air lute" (while he was still holding an actual lute, mind you) to give people the idea as to how the song would sound when it was finally written. Yeah, he was one of those guys. After Skie kicked him to the curb, he bounced between various barmaids who clearly had low self-esteem, but not low enough to keep him around for long. Eventually, he got one of them pregnant and was forced into a shotgun wedding by the barmaid's father. He now works in the kitchen at the same inn as his barmaid wife. She helps the customers up front and he cooks eggs in the back. Eldoth continues to tell himself that this experience will just provide inspiration for his music and that someday he was going to get the band back together."
“After being rescued by Gorion's Ward, Xan made his way to Baldur's Gate to regroup. He spent an inordinate amount of time beating himself up over his failures and trying to muster the gumption to continue his quest to unravel the political turmoil of the region. However, it took him months to get to this point, and by that time, Gorion's Ward already sorted out the problems in the region. Discovering this, he deemed himself a failure yet again and sunk into a deeper depression. He pulled himself out of it when he met a woman who lost most of her family to violent deaths during the iron crisis, yet she still kept herself together and became a local success in a few short years. Xan immediately fell in love with the recently single Skie Silvershield and began to court her. They eventually married and started a family. At Xan's insistence, and inspired by his wife's name, their two daughters were named Sunshine and Rainbow. Xan was a staunch supporter of his wife's career and stayed home to raise the kids. When they were older and needed less attending, he followed a new dream and became a motivational speaker.”
“Korgan had his revenge against his backstabbing crew and employer, but he felt...empty. It was done, but he felt no satisfaction. Disgruntled and disappointed, he decided to lose himself in his cups at the Copper Coronet. Even this did nothing to alleviate his malaise. One night, having passed out drunk in a peasant room at the Copper Coronet, he dreamt of that final fight but something was different. In the background of the battle, there was a glow coming from the door of a shack and he heard the whispering of a language that sounded like it was from Kara-Tur. When he woke the next morning, Korgan returned to the rooftop and found the shack from his dream. He knocked and was greeted by a priest of Illmater. Korgan told the priest of his dream and he was led into the backroom where he found a man from Kara-Tur infirm and huddled over a cup of tea. The priest explained that he had just reincarnated this man of the faith using a heart delivered by a passing adventurer. Korgan took this as a sign, converted to the faith, and the two paired up to help those in suffering as a result of the schemes of others. The tales of Korgan and Yoshimo were not only told in many of a tavern by the bards, but also collected in graphic serials that were popular among the children of Athkatla.”
“Ajantis' death sent him into an afterlife at Everwatch, the realm of Helm. For his honor and diligence, the devout knight was granted an audience with his patron. Ajantis then told Helm what utter bullshit the god was. I mean, c'mon, he's the god of protection, the Vigilant One, and he couldn't protect a group of knights from a dragon's cheap illusion spell that a mage even tried to dispel with True Sight? It was like Helm wasn't even trying. Helm was stunned by the confrontation but also had no valid defense. Ajantis called Helm to a trial that was mediated by Tyr. After careful deliberation, Tyr determined that Helm was sleeping on the job and the judgment was to demote him to a lesser deity. Now, Helm was the patron of guards, but not actual guards that ever see action, just the ceremonial ones whose weapons and armor are super shiny and probably not even real. Ajantis was then granted Helm's old portfolio and became a god that truly protected his followers.”
“Viconia left Athkatla's government district perplexed. She was rescued from burning at the stake by Gorion's Ward and then immediately dismissed. She found this to be unusual behavior for a male. She was accustomed to men either trying to bed her or kill her, but this casual indifference was completely new. Viconia came to be obsessed with Gorion's Ward from a distance. She spiraled into a fantasy where the two of them had a future together. It was pretty bad. There were some extremely embarrassing vision boards involved and that wasn't even the worst of it. When her mania reached critical mass, her obsession actually collapsed and she had an epiphany. She came to realize that she did not need this man, or any for that matter. She started on a journey of self discovery and took a moral inventory of her past relationships. She wrote about it in the book, “Men Are From Menzoberranzan, Women Are From Immilmar”. She then used the revenue from the book sales to open Athkatla's first feminist bookstore. In Her Words became a mecca for women, particularly those who felt trapped in bad relationships. The community that emerged here created the group, Friends of Galia, which strove to free women from abusive relationships. Eventually, the bookstore expanded to include an apartment block above that became a shelter for such women. Occasionally, the partners of these victims would come around to In Her Words in an attempt to drag their partners back home. You can probably guess how a confrontation between a drunken 0-level commoner and a Drow priestess of Shar ends."
“Faldorn was defeated by Jaheira in Trademeet and lost her title of Arch-Druid. In truth, she was relieved to be relieved of the position. Years of pushing forward the Shadow Druid agenda led Faldorn to realize that she had lost touch with the real Faldorn along the way. After some soul-searching, she reinvented herself as a lifestyle guru and developed an entire line of organic health and beauty products under the name, She-Wolf. Both her products and seminars were all the rage in Athkatla, specifically among noblewomen who clearly had too much free time. Faldorn eventually gave up her residence in natural environs for a lavish estate in Athkatla's government district. Her following soon pressured her to petition to join the Council of Six after the fall of the Cowled Wizards left the position open (aside from a short-term replacement). Her petition was a success and she soon found herself on the Council of Six. Under her leadership, she created created the FDAA, the Food and Drink Association of Athkatla. Now, instead of draconian rules governing magic in the city, equally restrictive rules and standards were applied to the food and drink that the people consumed.”
“Barely surviving being gravely wounded by Irenicus, Tiax left Spellhold for Athkatla where he intended to do what he did best: rule. Learning from his past campaign mistakes in Baldur's Gate, he changed his slogan from ”Tiax Rules!" to “Make Athkatla Great Again”. Of course, what he thought would make Athkatla great was putting himself in charge as a despotic leader. But, he toned down that aspect of his platform and instead focused on the history of scheming and backroom dealing of the Cowled Wizards (as if he was any less evil or scheming) and promised the people he would be different than all the other corrupt politicians. Miraculously, despite his obviously apparent character flaws, he succeeded in replacing the Cowled Wizards' representative on the Council of Six. He decided to take their stance on restrictive magic to the next level and banned magic entirely. Since he didn't study the arcane himself, it was no skin of his nose. This move undermined his support base leaving him with only the most backwards and ignorant followers. He was ultimately removed from his position when he insisted the city build a wall around the planar sphere and was expecting that the city's wizards would be the ones to pay for it. After his removal, his few remaining extreme supporters organized an invasion of the main government building under the guise of freedom of assembly. All nine of these “rebels” were rounded up, tried, and sent to prison. Tiax was convicted of treason and reincarnated in Spellhold, which was now just a common prison. After his eventual release, he was prohibited from seeking any position of power in Amn."
"Edwin Odesseiron continued to lay low with the Shadow Thieves for a while. The Cowled Wizards suffered a crippling blow as a side effect of the conflict between Gorion's Ward and Irenicus. Edwin decided to step in and finish the job. His thought was that he could wipe out the Cowled Wizard remnants and then take credit for their defeat, thereby gaining him more clout among the Red Wizards of Thay. After many conspicuous mage battles in the streets of Athkatla, he succeeded. However, the people who noticed his efforts the most were actually the people of Athkatla. They were tired of living under the Cowled Wizards' iron fist and Edwin was lauded as a liberator and hero. He even had a statue in his image raised in Waukeen's Promenade. Edwin was initially nonplussed over people finally giving him the credit he always felt he so rightfully deserved. But, he quickly came to accept their praise and bought in to being a champion for the people. Edwin continued his agenda of liberation when a clearly insane gnome who found his way on the Council of Six tried to ban magic entirely in the city. Edwin and his followers were primarily responsible for having the madman removed from his seat.
“Shar-Teel, Safana, Branwen, and Alora all happened to cross paths with each other at Elfsong one evening. Shar-Teel was looking to fight a man, Safana was looking to shag a man, Branwen was recently petrified by a man, and Alora was just excited to be somewhere new. The four got to talking with each other and, despite having wildly different personalities, seemed to hit it off. Shar-Teel was sarcastic and aggressive, Safana was self-absorbed and man-hungry, Alora was kind and sweet, and Branwen was the matriarch of the group. You wouldn't think this lot would get along, but they actually did, and their differences merely become the fuel for innocuous hi-jinks week after week.”
"With Gorion's Ward's help, Cernd was able to rescue his child that he then abandoned again at the druid grove near Trademeet. He promised that he would return to raise the child, he just needed to run to the general shop in Trademeet for some pipeweed. He never returned, but that was pretty obvious since he didn’t even smoke. Cernd continued to wander Faerun. It came to light in Cormyr that Cernd had actually married, and had children, with numerous women in Cormyr, Amn, the Sword Coast, Tethyr, Calimshan, Turmish, Halruaa, Icewind Dale, Chondath, Sembia, Impiltur, the Silver Marches, and even the Troll Hills (don't ask). Furthermore, it was discovered that Cernd was not actually a druid, just a werewolf that had a Ring of Goodberries. The druid con was so that he could have a reason to abandon his wives and children and move on to a new situation. You would be surprised at how many women could fall for a guy that can conjure an impromptu picnic in the park. Unfortunately for Cernd, Cormyr was not the kind of place to run afoul of the legal system. For the crime of bigamy, he was sentenced to life in prison. He never set foot near a druid grove again, but he was allowed to participate in a work-release program tending to the gardens of nobles.
“Kagain returned to his shop and grew even more bitter, but not over what the death of Entar Silvershield's son had done to his reputation and business. Instead, he resented that even the Enhanced Edition of the game didn't give him a remotely decent companion quest. By Moradin's hammer, Cernd even had a pretty involved companion quest and the story there both starts and ends with a deadbeat dad! Also, Kagain can regenerate! Korgan can't even do that. And another thing! He was sick of people confusing the two of them as if all dwarves look alike or something. Ok, granted, they're both old dwarves with greying beards, but Korgan's beard is tied while Kagain's beard is brushed out. Of course, none of this made sense to anyone, even to Kagain who never actually crossed paths with Cernd or Korgan. However, the dwarf had nothing to do with his time except stand in his shop, isolated and alone, until he was done in by insanity and plantar fasciitis.”
“The death of Khalid shook Jaheira to the core. She convinced herself that she could never love again, certainly not so soon after his death nor with anyone that would be a child in her eyes. That would be absurd and rather tacky. After her escape from Irenicus' prison and deposing Faldorn from the druid grove, she took over as Arch-Druid. Being a Harper just wouldn't be the same without Khalid. However, the grove would allow her to explore a new, but comfortingly familiar, phase of life. She had barely been installed as the Arch-Druid when Cernd dropped off his child and disappeared again. He did not even stay long enough to tell Jaheira the child's name. Knowing he would likely not return, she named the child Khalid after her lost love. Realizing there were other children our there without families to care for them, Jahaeira would send her subordinates to wander nearby lands and bring them to the grove for a better life. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of these children happened to be Cernd's. She eventually renamed the grove to Kinder Garden in honor of the grove's new purpose of giving these children a kinder upbringing. Jaheira's headstrong personality served her well with these lost children, who all loved her as they would any mother. The Kinder Garden became the most thriving druid grove in all of Faerun. Jaheira eventually died in 1547 DR, with hundreds of children haven been rescued in her lifetime, and a memorial was erected in her honor at the grove. The inscription read, 'Nature's Servant Awaits.'"
“After being freed from Irenicus' dungeon, Minsc put his boots on the ground at the Copper Coronet. Being the simple man that he was, he found himself unwittingly recruited into fighting in the gladiator pits (before Gorion's Ward was able to free the slaves). Yet again, Minsc took a blow to the head. But this time, its effects were something completely new. No longer was he the slow-witted evil-slaying ranger, armed to the teeth and packing a hamster. Instead, his intelligence and wisdom started to blossom and he explored, through dissertation, the impact of modern civilization on the overall ecosystem of Faerun. Indeed, before Minsc started his work, the people of Faerun didn't even have the concept of an ”ecosystem". He left Athkatla to pursue a residency at Jaheira's grove where he could study and work in peace. He published works like, “The Intersection of Geopolitics and Biodiversity: Living More but Dying Sooner”, “The Essential Symbiosis Between the Savage and Civilization”, and “Moral Urbanization: Seeking a More Comprehensive Prosperity”. Minsc continued his studies and writing and ultimately produced enough groundbreaking works to have his own annex in Candlekeep. It was shortly after the dedication of this annex that Minsc disappeared from Faerun, never to be seen again."
“Jan Jansen's fate was the most impressive of all as his endeavors shaped the very fabric of Faerun for centuries to come. His story truly serves as a moral lesson for everyone and we should heed its virtue quite seriously. Helping Lissa and Jaella planted a seed of regret in Lissa with regards to her marriage to Vaelag. Speaking of seeds, this reminds Jan of a time when he was helping his Uncle Scratchy with his turnip farm. However, Uncle Scratchy was hoodwinked and the seeds he received were actually purple carrot seeds. You can imagine Uncle Scratchy's surprise when they sprouted and he suddenly had a field of purple carrots. Well, as you probably know, you can't make turnip stew, or turnip casserole, or turnip pie with purple carrots. But it just so happened there was a mage tower nearby and the resident mage needed a vast number of carrots. Apparently, her plan was to animate them as a kind of vegetable army to combat a myconid infestation in cave system rather close to her tower. Of course, animated carrots are quite self-assured and were immune to myconoid's confusion spores. Anyway, Jan had a once-removed cousin, Bobil, that was lost in those caves when he was a young gnome. He had wandered so deep that he found himself in the den of a solitary xvart who was obsessed with a magic ring. Bobil happened to purloin that ring but it turned out to not be magic at all. However, it was still worth enough for Bobil to buy himself a nice cottage in Trademeet. He then started his own turnip farm and had better luck than Uncle Scratchy. Wait, what were we talking about, again?”
“Boo continued his mission to study the sentient life forms of Faerun and determine their potential impact on the metaverse. He preferred the continued company of Minsc due to the ranger's kindness and protectiveness. Boo found this to be quite valuable in his current miniaturized state. Even after Minsc's accident, where his intellect began to expand, Minsc never lost his good heart and inherent kindness and the two remained the best of friends. It was a number of years later that the term of Boo's mission was complete. A team of his fellow people arrived on a spelljammer to collect the giant miniaturized space hamster. Minsc (and Boo) were on a retreat in a remote part of the Neverwinter Wood when a vessel shaped like a giant acorn landed in a nearby clearing. A number of human-sized anthropomorphic hamster-like beings, who called themselves the Ysoki, emerged and met with Boo. One had a strange crystalline device which it used to restore Boo to his proper size. Minsc naturally remained composed while all this was happening. He and Boo talked often and he knew this day would be coming. Boo returned to the spelljammer with his brethren to debrief on the mission. The Ysoki wanted to bring a sample back to their homeworld for further learning and study. Boo offered Minsc for the task, as the exemplar human would fit in nicely with the Ysoki's advanced culture and society. Everyone was in agreement and made the offer to the ranger. Minsc felt like he had made every contribution he could to the people of Faerun, so he accepted and boarded the ship. Boo, excited to finally be on a spelljammer again, took the helm and plotted a course for his homeworld. At his side sat his friend and faithful companion, Minsc.”

I just want to preface this with there is NO set markup for all builders. Every company is different. Different overhead. Different profit. When people say a “20%” standard, they have no idea what they are talking about or they are feeding you a bunch of BS. Production builders are able to charge a lower markup because they have a larger gross revenue. Custom builders that only do a few houses a year have larger markups because they have less gross revenue. Or they can have a lower markup because they have lower overhead or set their net margin at a lower number. The numbers are what they are. There is a reason that 95% of contractors go out of business within the first few years. They might be good at their trade but they are terrible at their numbers. Never go with a cost plus contractor. It is guaranteed that the number they give you is a low ball number to get the job. 100% of cost plus jobs will end at least 30-40% higher than what was originally quoted. Or they will never be completed. What happens then? Here are a few things I would like the cost plus guys to mull over and answer as well as the attorneys I have seen commenting on CP contracts:

1. There is no universal definition of Cost Plus or Time & Material Contracts or billing, thus creating confusion and misunderstandings almost immediately in any contract. Attorneys practicing law in the same town will often have different definitions of what is a Cost Plus or Time & Material Contract.
   
2. Lenders often will not lend on Cost Plus or Time & Material jobs unless there is a "not to exceed" clause. When the job goes beyond the not to exceed clause, you must have written authorization to do that work (signed, dated and completely priced out on a Change Work Order) or your client is not obligated to pay you for the work.
   
3. Some states now have laws that specifically prohibit the use of Cost Plus contracts.
   
4. Based on discussions with attorneys Cost Plus or Time & Material jobs generate lawsuits at a rate of 3 to 1, and arbitrations at 9 to 1 over Fixed Figure contracts.
   
5. Cost Plus or Time & Material contracts are an easy way out of doing detailed project study and estimating. This increases the chances that the original "estimate" for work to be done will be low to very low. You risk accusations of violating the Good Faith & Fair Dealing law for "low balling" estimates. An estimate below the actual price will lead to a fight over money when the real costs start the original estimate. coming in, and the client is requested to pay more for the job than
   
6. Because of the perception that on Cost Plus or Time & Material contracts the owner is required to pay for absolutely everything, many contractors do not write out Change Work Orders and have the owner sign them, falsely believing that they (the contractor) will be paid for all the work that they do on that job.
   
7. Owners often go into a Cost Plus contract thinking they have ample money to cover the job. When the job reaches the 60 percent to 80 percent completion point, and the owners have made multiple changes to the job increasing the cost, they run out of money. Their claim will be that the contractor overcharged from the start of the job, and the contractor will be expected to finish
   
8. For your own protection, you must keep an accurate day-to-day log of all labor, materials, subcontract and other fees or costs on the job to be able to verify your actual expenses to date. If you do not, depending on your contract, you may not be able to collect for undocumented expenses, regardless of what they are or how much work has been done.
   
9. In addition, you must have in your possession every document from the job that has incurred a cost. This includes all time cards, invoices, or any other papers related to the project. If you lose any item, you may not be paid for it.
   
10. With the need to keep very careful records on the jobs, you substantially increase the amount of meeting and preparatory time necessary for the job. Often this time will be three to four times the amount of time necessary to complete a Fixed Figure contract. Cost Plus or Time & Material jobs require at least two, and often three times as many meetings with the client to review job progress, billings, invoices, labor, etc. Who pays for the meeting time and the extra administration time to prep all the documents for labor and invoices from subs and suppliers?
    
11. Who draws the plans and gets the permits on a Cost Plus or Time & Material job? If a mistake is made on the plans, who pays for the time it takes to redraw the plans; and who pays to tear out the mistake and rebuild it?
    
12. Who pays for the engineering if the owner forgets to include it on the plans that they provide; and who pays for your downtime while you wait for these revisions?
    
13. Suppose engineering on a portion of the job gets by the plans examiner, the inspector catches the problem, and the job has to shut down until the engineering is complete and new plans are drawn and ready to use. Who pays for the new plans and delays? Who pays for tearing out the wrong structural work completed, and the materials that are ruined due to tear out? Who pays for the additional labor needed to correct the problem? Who pays for the downtime for you and your crew, driving time; restart up time?
    
14. Will the owner be willing to pay for your travel time to and from your office for meetings or discussions on problems that might arise on the job; or from the jobsite to your suppliers and back to the job site for material pickup that either they or you forgot?
    
15. If you make a mistake on a Cost Plus or Time & Material job, who pays for it? Do you donate your time or is the client willing to pay For it? Who pays for ruined materials? Who pays to go get the new materials and the cost of the vehicle expense to do the pickup?
    
16. Who makes up the material lists for jobs with Cost Plus or Time & Material contracts that are needed before the job starts? If you do, will you be paid for that time?
    
17. Owners are far more prone to want to furnish some or all of the materials for their jobs when using a Cost Plus or Time & Material contract. The contractor is expected to guarantee those materials when installed, not to mention losing the markup on those materials. Who pays for the time to replace defective materials supplied by the owner?
    
18. What happens when the owner is to supply some of the materials and they forget to buy a certain item or don't know what materials to bring to the jobsite? Who pays to get the forgotten items? What happens if it takes the owner two or three days (or longer) to get the needed materials to the jobsite? What do you and your crews do in the meantime, and who pays for that downtime?
    
19. The owner goes to your supplier (with your permission) and charges materials for the job to your account. What happens if you send the owner to a certain supplier you normally use for materials, he purchases the materials, and then later claims that he could have purchased the same materials at another location at a better price? You gave him the higher priced supplier to go to, so you are responsible for the difference in cost.
    
20. Cost Plus or Time & Material reviews show owners what you're paying for materials. This will increase the probability of complaints from owners that they could have bought the same item elsewhere for less money. It also leads to owners believing they only have to pay the amount that they could have bought the materials for.
    
21. Owners expect you to be fully productive on their jobs for 8 hours a day. They will be looking over your shoulder constantly. You will seldom, if ever, get the job done as quickly as they are expecting you to do it. Will they be willing to pay for your state's mandated morning and afternoon breaks for your employees? Will they be willing to pay for smoke breaks, coffee breaks, mobile phone time? Will they pay for the time for you or one of your employees to escort an inspector through the job and answer questions? Who pays for the labor and materials to do required changes?
    
22. The contractor must be far more diligent in policing employees so that they are productive on the job at all times, with no miscellaneous discussions or activities on or about anything other than the job they are working on. Again, this pertains to starting and quitting times, smoke breaks, coffee breaks, mobile phone time.
    
23. It is very difficult to "compete" on Cost Plus commercial jobs, because larger construction companies will take these jobs at cost to build a presence with corporations that allocate multimillion- dollar projects on assignment basis as a result of favorable past performance.
    
24. From the client's standpoint, Cost Plus contracts give the contractor little incentive to get in and get the job done. Instead, the contractor's incentive is to keep the clock running, especially if he doesn't have the next job lined up. Cost Plus jobs often run far longer than would be considered normal with a Fixed Fee contract.
    
25. Owners believe that Cost Plus or Time & Material jobs will cost them less money to build. Therefore, they expect you to charge them less money for the work that you do (i.e. less than your normal overhead and profit). In most cases, owners believe that you should only make: Remodeling: 10 percent overhead and to 10 percent profit New home construction: 10 percent overhead and profit Specialty construction: 6 to 10 percent overhead and 5 to 10 percent profit This makes it extremely difficult for you to use your established markup on that job, especially when you have to show them your invoices at the normally required meetings where you review the job progress and expenses to date.
    
26. Owners do their homework, put their job out for "Bid" at Cost Plus or Time & Material plus 6 percent, 7 percent or 8 percent maximum markup. They tell you if you don't want to bid that way, don't enter a bid. They also tell you that "You're not going to make your normal markup on my job!' In other words, take it or leave it.
    
27. One way many contractors handle Cost Plus or Time & Material contracts is to take items that are considered overhead and stuff those costs into the job cost section. In court, a sharp expert witness will find the overhead items listed under job costs and accuse the contractor of "double dipping" on the job. This immediately paints the contractor as dishonest, making a win in court even more difficult.
    
28. Most Cost Plus contracts give the owner the right to either select the subs for his job from a list supplied by the general contractor, or the owner can hire his own subcontractors that the owner will supervise during the job. What happens if subs hired by the owner don't adhere to the general contractor's time schedule? Who's responsible for delays and downtime caused by their lack of cooperation? What prevents the owner from suing the contractor for lack of supervision and other damages caused because the job did not get done on time?
    

Some say that the night is the calmest time of the day, others never find serenity in the silence of the night.
I remember those nights when I woke up after short slumbers. I absent-mindedly made my way to the sink, purposefully keeping my head down as I washed my face.
Then came that one night, when I kept my eyes shut longer than usual after I had closed the faucet. I remember how I gathered all the courage I had, and I lifted my head slowly. I opened my eyes to see the mirror in front of me, and there I was looking at myself. A twenty-five-year-old man with more than twenty-five grey hairs on his head. That sight turned my apathy into rage. Without thinking, I raised my hand and I started to pluck every grey hair. Every time I plucked a hair I cursed a moment of my life. Hair after hair, I lost count. After I had plucked the last one that I could find I took deep breaths, looking back at myself. My hair was completely dark, like how a young man should have.
In awe of what I had just done, I stared at myself. I brushed back my hair with my hand, and as I did, I saw one last grey hair that hid underneath. I was determined to do to it the same thing that I did, but when I saw it by itself, I felt pity for it; for myself. It seemed as if it were begging for mercy, screaming "what have I done?" I slowly let it go and looked back into my eyes. I took some other deep breaths, and I told myself: "From this moment until the time those hairs grow back, I'll do what I can. To learn how to live, to escape this burden that I hold in my chest." I went back to my room, changed my clothes, and wore my jacket and headed to the house door. I put my hand on the metal handle, I remember how cold it was that winter. I opened the door.
I remember when I took the first step of my journey late at night. The smell of rain fresh in the air. The still water on the roads reflected the yellow lamps, creating a frigid world sparkling with dazzling lights. I slipped my hands into my pockets, and wandered aimlessly through the streets. No sounds were heard that hour, everyone was dreaming in their sleep. I walked between cars and through alleyways, reaching places that I never knew existed. I felt alone at that time, but that solitude was comforting. When I walk alone, no one knows where I go. My feet took the lead, head lost in thoughts.
I found myself on top of a hill at the edge of town. From that hight, I could see where the street lamps stop, drawing a line that separate the light from the dark beyond. Just before the last few lamps, I saw an old building that was abandoned before I was born. From the hill looking down, I could see that it had a large yard surrounded by a wall and a single gate. Everything about that building seemed dead, it was in ruins. I never knew what it was used for. Heard that it was an old storage but I don't know for what. That night, I didn't have the clarity of the mind to consider my decisions. I began walking towards it, wanting to see it up close.
I reached the gate. Its old rusted lock held the door shut with chains, but to my surprise, one of the hinges was completely dislodged giving me an easy access. When I entered I looked around the yard, There were many things scattered on the ground. Old tables, broken doors, and other things that I couldn't figure out how they ended up there. Every step I made was followed by a creaking of wood or the shattering of glass. I remember the way the building towered over me from that angle. The dark, open windows looked like the empty eye sockets of a skull staring back at me. The sound of the wind howling almost like it was daring me to enter. The stillness of that moment stunned me for a minute, and when I turned my back to leave, I heard a sound of something small calling from behind a corner of the building. I slowly moved towards it.
There, I saw a cat that had fear on its face. Next to it was a wooden barrel. When I approached the cat, it hissed at me. I was confused by that, why did it hiss at me instead of escaping? Then I heard a meowing of a kitten echoing inside the barrel. I knew immediately what this cat was protecting, she was the mother of that kitten. I examined the barrel from afar, I noticed that it was upside down. The upper side had a small hole on it, I assumed that was where the kitten fill from. I was certain that the underside didn't have a lid, so all I had to do was to carry the barrel slightly for the kitten to escape. However, every step I took forward, the mother hissed harder and backed up little by little. She couldn't understand that I wanted to help. I was concerned that she would either scratch me to keep me away, or even worse escape and leave her kitten behind.
I looked around me, I saw among the debris a long, wooden cane. I took it to reach the barrel without getting any closer. I walked around to the other side of the barrel where the mother cat couldn't see me. I slowly extended my arm holding the cane, grabbing the barrel by inserting the handle into the hole. I used the cane as a leverage, raising the side closest to the mother. The moment the gap became large enough for them to see each other, I heard the kitten's meows change from an echoing sadness to a bright call of longing. The mother without hesitation grabbed the kitten and ran away as fast as she could. Never looking back. I stood there asking myself: "If I weren't here this night, I wonder, would that kitten have died in that barrel?" I looked up at the face of the building again. Perhaps my feelings that night were only for me to save the kitten. I walked towards the gate again, leaving the building behind.
I walked the streets looking down. Without noticing, I reached a park that had no fence. It was full of children's games and flowers. It seemed like a memento of my past. The swings dangling without anyone to push. Standing next to the slide, I could see that I was taller than it was. It all seemed lost and forgotten, but what was funny to me was how the roses had the same colour of the pale sand under the yellow light. I walked and walked at that park, felt fatigued at the time. I saw a bench left alone in the middle of the grass. I sat there, reflecting on my life. And after some time, I buried my face in my hands.
I heard the sound of steps crushing the grass. They were getting closer until they stopped. I didn't even have the will to look up. I heard a raspy voice: "What's wrong?" I weakly looked back. Saw the face of a concerned old man. Many wrinkles on his face, hair completely white. When I saw him I tightly crossed my arms without saying a word, facing down and away from him. I could feel him staring at me, then without a word, he sat down next to me. The lamps turned off in unison as the light of dawn began to colour the sky. The hum of the breeze was contrasting the bitter silence between us. I didn't know that man and I don't think he knew me, but the circumstances of that encounter make two strangers seem like lifelong companions.
After a while, I heard his voice again: "You know, I remember when I was your age, I had done many foolish things that I am ashamed to admit. I had thrown away the future that I could have had. I regret everything that I did. But I am alive, and you still have a life In front of you. Don't waste it. You are still young". With those words he stood up and left. I saw his silhouette getting smaller and smaller until I couldn't see him anymore. I might have imagined it but the air felt easier to breathe then. The melody of the songbirds were in harmony with the beats of my heart. Amazing is the mind; it shifts from emotion to emotion on a whim, just like how the black night is replaced by the first rays of the sun.
It is that night that I so vividly remember. Now, many years have passed, I sit in my bedroom every morning combing my hair. The signs of age evident on me, my hair is completely grey. I remember that bittersweet night while holding back my tears from spilling, grateful for a moment that passed. I stand up to begin my day. Just as I am about to put my comb back in its drawer, I notice a single hair that has been caught between its teeth. I take that hair and look at it with a smile. The upper half is dark and the lower half is grey.

Ethernet has landline 1900s phones two pairs wires reserved in the spec sheet its 8 or so wires when crimping the ends uses like two with one for ground and one seemingly empty and then has two for phone and some unused, with old 10/100 baseT coax with terminating ends exactly like optical or coax 90s cable TV with optical fiber 99% of the way just your block has coax to the rest which uses the 'same'DOCSIS data over cable standards as fibre optic.. just slightly worse latency and bandwidth is calculated by latency things like wifi lan has like 11 channels or 15 channels of frequency which optical calls wavelengths of light. A 2015 or around there linus tech tips video of him going to a swedish lan party called dreamhack had a bunch of multiple redundant 8Terabit or was it bytes of fibre optic internet they explained with light having 7 colors but having 8terabytes of bandwidth with different wavelengths of light called frequencys or a better term for optics is known as LASER ARRAYS of light at fixed frequencys that often plugs into the PC via ethernet cables or whatever for a gamer lan party or home/residential or small businesses at realistically within budget of anything with enough users to require that bandwidth or 'web hosting or web servers' you dont need to be an undersea cable or international link with 200terabits plus for an internet exchange to your main CBD or the fastest like the netherlands IX...
So the problem im trying to solve is, here in australia we got our undersea cables done wrong they kept breaking and we didnt have a navy or defense force securing our countrys communications to prevent war crimes and keep us connected to the global banking systems or whatever.. and then when our biggest telcos cable or fibre all had dialup speeds for around 2 weeks in the early years 2000s to force us to pay other countrys to connect to their links and be ' end of the line' maybe paywalled or proxied off the internet randsomewared to connect to and borrow bandwidth from other countries satellites and other countries undersea link cables which truly were indestructible to any cruise liner ships anchors whatever being flexible giant steel braided cables big as a CAR when australia finally paid to lay small sections of that stuff to link up to others and not pay randsome to internet butt bandits or have private businesses and multi nationals run their own links and ignore the public our lack of a defense force actually let somalian pirates literally somehow pick up and walk off with our expensive undersea car sized cables filled with a few arms thick of hair thin fibre optics which is cheapest clear resin enamels plastics about $3 not sure if USD per kilometer and resembles modern glass/glazing. How does anybody steal that stuff without people noticing like you cant just load it onto a truck and drive away? or a boat? if only satellites and some sort of defense organization existed to prevent us from being impersonated or whatever.. So now in australia ANYTHING with words like gigabit costs a fortune for a mainboard or switch or ethernet hub.. but the ancient 1900s 10/100 telephone land line wires of ethernet 10/100 clock in at a whopping 13 or so mhz sometimes 27.. and 60 or more mhz for like gigabits and whatever it increases shockingly fast with each mhz clock cycle as its units of work over time in nano seconds or zeptoseconds you see billionths of a second nano second RAM and PC with windows realtime kernel actually uses like ryzen hardware negative latency faster than reality freely syncing with any device in the universe and fixed mhz frequency bus can drive like 50 to 100 or thousands of GPU's and HDDs and monitors or whatever from the one modern multicore PC or whatever.. 90s AMD business server still holds world records for most connected devices though it had stackable CPUs opteron and would have used infinity cache type stuff probably software 3dnow and evolving game worlds tech of 80s and 90s AMD gaming evolved advertising.
So in australia anything gigabits costs hundreds of dollars for a switch router some thousands for lots of ports.. but its the shittiest weakest bandwidth ever with mhz and performance miles short of a raspberry pie or whatever. I had to pay a fortune for a mainboard with 10gigabit LAN port and everytime i got a high speed LAN port its been broken or missing so some pricks can sell ebay routers or switches for thousands here.. not knowing why its so expensive is youre paying fortunes for any real bandwidth because australia has to pay literal somalian pirates for their internet connections or privately owned businesses like telstra for access to their private links and glares at countries like new zealand and hawaii for being super technologically superior.. a cheap USB ethernet adaptor costs under 10 bucks on ebay or whatever and is maybe gigabit and your switches and routers 90% of the time you want the cheapest UNMANAGED switch possible. Yet the mainboard i recently purchased ASUS pro art creator x670E i recall had an issue with some asshats trying to steal pathetic measly 40gigabit USB4 chips from all the boards at the computer store to sell on EBay as other junk, when anything in the universe with an M.2 ULTRA slot does 40gigabits since PCI express 3.0/4.0 as PCI express 3.0 SSD drives famously use a specific I/O controller chip which gives them 38gigabits of the ultra M.2 slots 40gigabits of bandwidth. But for a couple years when AMD had pci express 4.0 and better than M.2 ultra intel was playing catch up on PCI express 3.0 and still had regular m.2 in all their boards until AMD was ready for pci express 5.0 my friend on intel bought the same NVME drives and complained they had corruption errors or issues i later learned his board wasnt fast enough and he was maybe trying to use the samsung magician RAM disk and enable NVME features and functions intel maybe did not yet support.
So.. why is USB 4 so many years late and why is it so dang expensive when terabits of ethernet or anything optical is like the cheapest stuff ever and comes with every internet connection since the 90s at the lowest cheapest mhz and 1900s land line wire telephones ever, remember digital isnt a physical thing and everythings literally analog with a sensor or multimeter whatever mathematically translating it to a graph or algebra equation mapping it into different values digitally +10 -10 whatever using microphones or camera sensor whatever. the gigabits tax and uhh LAN port taxes for dumb gay australians being literally see it via satellite outerspace levels dumb and gay astrogaylian should not apply to the cheapest of raspberry pie free 3d print or laser CNC yourself something computery like risc V for the cheapest of USB flash drives or memory cards etc.
I get intel pretends to have invented court ordered USB to probe their hardware after it was proven to have used other peoples code and chips by the chip makers and them selling computers with keyboard and mouse hardwired in so you bought a whole new computer when a key broke on the keyboard couldnt replace them.. and every other device had USB but theirs didnt free open standard and it kinda being the only way to connect any device in the universe and freely sync with it (mics/phones whatever).
why is 1900s phone tech ethernet so dang expensive to go from 20mhz ranges to 80 or whatever mhz ranges or use something very similar to 90s optical audio SPDIF output or anything remotely like a laser in australia? and who would be dumb and gay enough to be so financially retarded as to think that USB 4 was expensive or special as to steal it? am i... missing something?
also before you complain, but ethernets not the same as USB you cant power over ethernet or use your houses electrical wires as ethernet. You also cant use ethernet for monitors or displays, and its not like you can extend HDMI range limit of a about 10 to 15 meters by swapping its ethernet wires with optical ones for it to maintain its HDMI 0 latency spec or type C USB 0 latency spec. USB lets you connect heaps of devices you cant do that with an internet or ethernet for things like keyboard and mice or monitors or whatever. I understand what you mean power over ethernet or PPOE standards suck theres no way those are a thing. using devices over the internet and not the intranet who does that? thats so dumb. remote administration, theres no such thing youre mistaking malware or rootkits im sure. you cant connect a heap of devices up or entire computers to a ethernet port thats the dumbest gayest thing i've ever heard in my entire life! My gaydar is going off and it looks like the wifi symbol.
when trying to use anything ethernet with lame awful bandwidth thats limited, on my AMD board where the website images show AMD ethernet lists as marvel yukon controller i cannot use as its maybe broken there no light on the back, in devices managers advanced tab you can see the send receive or transmit buffer sizes and countless other ethernet settings are MISSING or a blank space. and are limited to 128 on send and 256 on receive up to 4096 or whatever max. But low latency 128 or 256 is maybe best but not all are an option and most networking features on the intel LAN adapters are missing countless advanced ethernet properties and settings because they're fake and lousy and the worst latency ever and they literally seem to swap your windows kernel out with something not realtime so you cannot ever hope to record or playback audio or video or anything close to a video game in hopes of slowly selling it back to you. Linux distros did this too its the dumbest thing ever that to hear or record or playback or play games you must patch in a realtime kernel for free to game like its the 80s and 90s or DOS or whatever. most 90s PCs were CAS 1 or lower nanoseconds. DDR 3 1600mhz depending the maker might be CAS1-4 latency. How can we verify our kernels are correct? and our ethernet and I/O bandwidth is correct? the youtube video about linus tech tips dream hack lan party of gamers in sweden was edited and reuploaded by illiterate asshat buttpirates maybe from somalia or the ones randsoming us some of their internet connections as a proxy piggy back on the international links as we dont have a defense force or army or whatever and dont know what war crimes are or why they are or what the heck a bank is and sure as shit dont know the cost of anything cheap USB or LAN. The dreamhack linus video falsely shows as 6TERABIT. they wanna steal 2TERABITS of EVERY optical or ethernet devices which isnt the government doing it if they wanna see whats in your computer they can document their reasons of why which is what a warrant is they dont need one if they believe a crime is occuring and literally take the computer by law to inspect it then give it back when nothings wrong they leave you a claim ticket and have you document it at the nearest policing station or whatever fill out forms sign 'they are taking my PC and i can get it back when it wasnt used for crimes." when australia doesnt technically have an internet and doesnt technically have RAID arrays which is required to use USB or SSD or NVME or storage tech with no moving parts and multicore a 2TB SSD is twice as fast and often has 2x 1TB wafer chips in there figure it out the IO controller chip supports many and you can buy the cheapest USB sticks with like 16terabytes of storage space i just see a $extend folder or uhh file format header thingy in the partition in my mainboard bios on that particular drive and using any cheap SSD or USB devices makes linux cry about the partition managers cant write or read extending past the storage limit. it doesnt take a genius to figure out what dumb gay fags the whole internet is.
infinitybitdepthinfinitygraphicsinfinitypixelsinfinityresolution.7z ~ pixeldrain

The following seems to be the establishment view:

1. There is "no such thing as race"
2. Genetic diversity is similar between groups of people
3. Genetic diversity is enhanced by mixing genes between groups of people

However there is a "genetic fallacy" here, where you need to presuppose the existence of "something like a race" that is a distinct group of people, not just selected for randomly, but usually based on some identifying gene type, which is usually focused in a geographic area. Geography and stereotypical racial conceps are, of course, highly correlated. This means that you need to start out from "race" to conclude "there is no races".
The logic is not watertight, and while this line of reasoning, logically speaking, is valid, it is not sound, as you cannot say the initial grouping of races was nonexistent. To conceptualize anything requires some sort of grouping, as even language relies on the concept of sets. Whether you would like to call Africans "set A with haplotype something" doesn't matter; the labeling does not change the essence, philosophically speaking. This means that the establishment view that any grouping exists is basically a fallacy is self-defeating because
(1) It relies on a grouping of peoples that is very similar to the traditional view of race
(2) It then discounts it, destroying the very foundation it relies on, only to replace it with something like "genetics" which sounds more conducive to the globalized community we live in
However in order for genetic diversity to be enhanced, there has to be, on average, a difference between groups, which is borne out by research; on average, two groups of "races" (remember you have to permit the use of this word in order to later discount it anyway, because any grouping of persons based on genetic markers will in the end become something like a eugenic race) differ by some degree, but not so much that two individuals in the same group may differ more than two individuals in different groups. The probability to which this is the case, I'd assume, depends on the individual.
I actually FULLY AGREE to the concept of racial mixing and that it is beneficial for humanity to go that route (despite the worst wishes of supremacists); however, I think the current tone of the research (that I've read so far) actually counteracts this effort by being too dogmatic and doxastic in its wording -- "there are no races, and anyone who disputes this is a racist eugenicist xenophobe, period."
The establishment view is especially problematic when you try and find the "same level of genetic variation" within a relatively, if not very, small population. One extreme would be familial variation or variation within very small countries like some Scandinavian countries where in one they have an app to track the ancestry of your potential spouses as the risk of marrying someone closely related is quite high. One could not do the same line of reasoning for such populations as then you would have to concede that "there is less genetic variation within small populations than without" which in turn, would give you a nationalist picture of race, rather than a genetic one, albeit one that is of course "enlightened" as to not discount Africans and other traditionally disadvantaged minorities. Unless you are to argue that royal incest did not cause the downfall of the Spanish Habsburgs in the early Enlightenment era, you would have to agree that there was less genetic variation within the Habsburg family than between a Habsburg and someone from outside the family.
Here, how large a population should be to qualify within the surprisingly narrow framework of "there is as much diversity between races as within" is again, surprisingly ill-defined, and here, I am afraid that much of the current research depends on ethno-national borders.

~Neptori~
A party was indeed hosted, set up to surround the burning mass of grass that the second creature had been hidden inside, the two severed heads spiked on massive rose thorns high above the half acre of angry flame were eyeless and toothless. Trophies for the queen’s pet Faeries and Fairies.
Tori was half certain she had seen a demon amongst the deadly, fake-friendly, party goers. His eyes didn’t just reflect the fire, they were made from fire. Sparks flew and skittered over his high cheekbones as they made eye contact in passing. A chill went down her spine, a warning and a threat.
She followed quickly after the queen, her gown had been replaced with a shorter gown resembling a white iris flower, the shoes of course matching to look like the stem. High, high heels that didn’t even touch the ground. They hovered over the ground as she fluttered her wings to stay just above her people. A subtle band of wild roses sat on her brow, Neptori only wondered about the thorns and how a flower could be so pale and yet so brightly yellow. Fluffy and tiny, the roses faintly resembled the clouds as the sun fell to make way for darkness in night.
Someone, at some point, had made sunflowers grow twice as tall as they were. They lined the main scenes of the party, their strong, velvety leaves bore golden, burning lanterns. An ashy pink smoke filtered flower shaped holes in the circular… those weren’t lanterns- fairies were nocturnal! Those were burning herbs, were they to keep predators away from the party or to heighten the pixie magic warping the sizes of everything. She took a light whiff taking in the earthy smell, the note of citrine and then the smell of honey fresh from a beehive… she suddenly felt very light. Shaking her head to shake the feeling, she finally caught up to the queen's side. Wings would have been entirely advantageous in this situation, Tori would have to do with waiting till the queen had settled on her throne at hearing distance.
Around and around the party they went, Tori being shown off like a prized pony. The queen didn’t seem to be too hated by her people, it was strange that she had said so earlier. Neptori pinched her brow trying to keep her thoughts from derailing. No, play by her rules and she will have to let Tori go. That’s what she would have to do. So around and around she went some more. Fairies drenched her in new garments. As they were the fashion capital of the realm, they were exceedingly horrified by a poor woman’s rags. Neptori accepted their gifts, too afraid to offend to deny the strange things they put on her. Her coat had been torn from her at some point, her trousers had been replaced with a purple petticoat and a pink pearl corset. Her boots were gone and her feet cried out in pain as she felt the dirt and clovers underfoot. As her toes dug into the soft heaven that was nature. A giggle escaped her, a scraggly cry really. It hurt but it was amazing. She couldn’t remember the last time she had taken her boots off. Her smell was ripe and rank but she didn’t care, her toes weren’t cramped up!
she turned to see if the queen could see- but there was nobody. Just an empty field and those burning herbs finally burning up. The smoke was so thin it fell in scraggly whisps. The morning air seemed too crisp and clean and untamed. She burst into a sprint down the path of trampled grasses. Strange flowers and shrubs had grown underfoot but they were walked all over by what must’ve been an enormous crowd. Then a light, brighter than the awakening blue overhead, the sun. The first rays yawned over the land, sending a golden and blue contrast into the world. She had never felt so at peace. So at one with her surroundings. Her face was numb and cold with it, or maybe the reverse but she was only paying attention to the awakening surrounding her.
The bees and birds and the fairies… everyone began to stir awake as slowly as if time was blinking awake with them. She just stared with watering eyes, taking in the magic that thickened in the air. The scent of apple blossoms washing over her as the land was engulfed in golden hues of every color. Then it was green. The sky was alive with fluffy white clouds, scattered across that simple barrier of blue. It was all so beautiful and it thrummed around her, in her veins it pulsed.
Everything just felt so right, then a shadow fell around her. She turned her surely very glassy eyes to find the queen standing a wreck before her. “There you are pet.” She said with a crooked grin. Her eyes were bright red and brought out the earthy green hues within her irises. Her iris party dress was limp and her band of fluffy yellow roses was gone.
“Wha- “What happened?” Neptori cried out as her knees came crashing down to the dirt and rocks and ashes and… what had happened? “Your very first fairy party it seems.” She waved a hand and the perfect scene made way for the glowing petal walls of the fairy palace.