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What is decisive is not that man frees himself to himself from previous obligations, but that the very essence of man itself changes, in that man becomes subject. We must understand this word subiectum, however, as the translation of the Greek hypokeimenon. The word names that-which-lies-before, which, as ground, gathers everything onto itself. This metaphysical meaning of the concept of subject has first of all no special relationship to man and none at all to the I. However, when man becomes the primary and only real subiectum, that means: Man becomes that being upon which all that is, is grounded as regards the manner of its Being and its truth. Man becomes the relational center of that which is as such. But this is possible only when the comprehension of what is as a whole changes. In what does this change manifest itself? What, in keeping with it, is the essence of the modern age?
When we reflect on the modern age, we are questioning concerned the modern world picture [Weltbild] *12. We characterize the latter by throwing it into relief over against the medieval and the ancient world pictures. But why do we ask concerning a world picture in our interpreting of a historical age? Does every period of history have its world picture, and indeed in such a way as to concern itself from time to time about that world picture? Or is this, after all, only a modern kind of representing, this asking concerning a world picture?
What is the world picture? Obviously a picture of the world. But what does “World” mean here? What does “picture” mean? “World” serves here as a name for what is, in its entirety. The name is not limited to the cosmos, to nature. History also belongs to the world. Yet even nature and history, and both interpenetrating in their underlying and transcending of one another, do not exhaust the world. In this designation the ground of the world is meant also, no matter how its relation to the world is thought (Appendix 5).
With the word “picture” we think first of all of a copy of something. Accordingly, the world picture would be a painting, so to speak, of what is as a whole. But “world picture” means more than this. We mean by it the world itself, the world as such, what is, in its entirety, just as it is normative and binding for us. “To get into the picture” [literally, to put oneself into the picture] with respect to something means to set whatever is, itself, in place before oneself just in the way that it stands with it, and to have it fixedly before oneself as set up in this way. But a decisive determinant in the essence of the picture is still missing. “We get the picture” concerning something does not mean only that what is stands before us - in all that belongs to it and all that stands together in it - as a system. “To get the picture” throbs with being acquainted with something, with being equipped and prepared for it. Where the world becomes picture, what is, in its entirety, is juxtaposed as that for which man is prepared and which, correspondingly, he therefore intends to bring before himself and have before himself, and consequently intends in a decisive sense to set in place before himself (Appendix 6). Hence world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as picture. What is, in its entirety, is now taken in such a way that it first is in being and only is in being to the extend that it is set up by man, who represents and sets forth. Wherever we have the world picture, an essential decision takes place regarding what is, in its entirety. The Being of whatever is, is sought and found in the representedness of the latter.
However, everywhere that whatever is, is not interpreted in this way, the world also cannot enter into a picture; there can be no world picture. The fact that whatever is comes into being in and through representedness transforms the age in which this occurs into a new age in contrast with the preceding one. The expressions "world picture of the modern age" and "modern world picture" both mean the same thing and both assume something that never could have been before, namely, a medieval and an ancient world picture. The world picture does not change from an earlier medieval one into a modern one, but rather the fact that the world becomes picture at all is what distinguishes the essence of the modern age [der Neuzeit]. For the Middle Ages, in contrast, that which is, is the ens creatum, that which is created by the personal Creator-God as the highest cause. Here, to be in being means to belong within a specific rank of the order of what has been created - a rank appointed from the beginning - and as thus caused, to correspond to the cause of creation (analogia entis) (Appendix 7). But never does the Being of that which is consist here in the fact that it is brought before man as the objective, in the fact that it is placed in the realm of man's knowing and of his having disposal, and that it is in being only in this way.
The modern interpretation of that which is, is even further from the interpretation characteristic of the Greeks. One of the oldest pronouncements of Greek thinking regarding the Being of that which is runs: To gar auto noein estin te kai einai.*15 This sentence of Parmenides means: The apprehending of whatever is belongs to Being because it is demanded and determined by Being. That which is, is that which arises and opens itself, which, as what presences, comes upon man as the one who presences, i.e., comes upon the one who himself opens himself to what presences in that he apprehends it. That which is does not come into being at all through the fact that man first looks upon it, in the sense of a representing that has the character of subjective perception. Rather, man is the one who is looked upon by that which is; he is the one who is - in company with itself - gathered toward presencing, by that which opens itself. To be beheld by what is, to be included and maintained within its openness and in that way to be borne along by it, to be driven about by its oppositions and marked by its discord - that is the essence of man in the great age of the Greeks. Therefore, in order to fulfill his essence, Greek man must gather (legein) and save (sozein), catch up and preserve, what opens itself in its openness, and he must remain exposed (aletheuein) to all its sundering confusions. Greek man is as the one who apprehends [der Vernehmer] that which is, and this is why in the age of the Greeks the world cannot become picture. Yet, on the other hand, that the beingness of whatever is, is defined for Plato as eidos [aspect, view] is the presupposition, destined far in advance and long ruling indirectly in concealment, for the world's having to become picture (Appendix 8).
[*12. The conventional translation of Weltbild would be “conception of the world” or “philosophy of life.” The more literal translation, “world picture,” is needed for the following of Heidegger’s discussion; but it is worth noting that “conception of the world” bears a close relation to Heidegger’s theme of man’s representing of the world as picture.
*15. The accepted English translation of this fragment is, “For thought and being are the same thing” (Nahm).]
In distinction from Greek apprehending, modern representing, whose meaning the word repraesentatio first brings to its earliest expression, intends something quite different. Here to represent [vorstel-len] means to bring what is present at hand [das Vorhandene] before oneself as something standing over against, to relate it to oneself, to the one representing it, and to force it back into this relationship to oneself as the normative realm. Wherever this happens, man "gets into the picture" in precedence over whatever is. But in that man puts himself into the picture in this way, he puts himself into the scene, i.e., into the open sphere of that which is generally and publicly represented. Therewith man sets himself up as the setting in which whatever is must henceforth set itself forth, must present itself [sich ... prasentieren], i.e., be picture. Man becomes the representative [der Reprasentant] of that which is, in the sense of that which has the character of object.
But the newness in this event by no means consists in the fact that now the position of man in the midst of what is, is an entirely different one in contrast to that of medieval and ancient man. What is decisive is that man himself expressly takes up this position as one constituted by himself, that he intentionally maintains it as that taken up by himself, and that he makes it secure as the solid footing for a possible development of humanity. Now for the first time is there any such thing as a 'position' of man. Man makes depend upon himself the way in which he must take his stand in relation to whatever is as the objective. There begins that way of being human which mans the realm of human capability as a domain given over to measuring and executing, for the purpose of gaining mastery over that which is as a whole. The age that is determined from out of this event is, when viewed in retrospect, not only a new one in contrast with the one that is past, but it settles itself firmly in place expressly as the new. To be new is peculiar to the world that has become picture.
When, accordingly, the picture character of the world is made clear as the representedness of that which is, then in order fully to grasp the modern essence of representedness we must track out and expose the original naming power of the worn-out word and concept "to represent" [vorstellen]: to set out before oneself and to set forth in relation to oneself. Through this, whatever is comes to a stand as object and in that way alone receives the seal of Being. That the world becomes picture is one and the same event with the event of man's becoming subiectum in the midst of that which is.
Only because and insofar as man actually and essentially has become subject is it necessary for him, as a consequence, to confront the explicit question: Is it as an "I" confined to its own preferences and freed into its own arbitrary choosing or as the "we" of society; is it as an individual or as a community; is it as a personality within the community or as a mere group member in the corporate body; is it as a state and nation and as a people or as the common humanity of modern man, that man will and ought to be the subject that in his modern essence he already is! Only where man is essentially already subject does there exist the possibility of his slipping into the aberration of subjectivism in the sense of individualism. But also, only where man remains subject does the positive struggle against individualism and for the community as the sphere of those goals that govern all achievement and usefulness have any meaning.
The interweaving of these two events, which for the modern age is decisive - that the world is transformed into picture and man into subiectum - throws light at the same time on the grounding event of modern history, an event that at first glance seems almost absurd. Namely, the more extensively and the more effectually the world stands at man’s disposal as conquered, and, the more objectively the object appears, all the more subjectively, i.e., the more importunately, does the subiectum rise up, and all the more impetuously, too, do observation of and teaching about the world change into a doctrine of man, into anthropology. It is no wonder that humanism first arises where the world becomes picture. It would have been just as impossible for a humanism to have gained currency in the great age of the Greeks as it would have been impossible to have had anything like a world picture in that age. Humanism, therefore, in the more strict historiographical sense, is nothing, but a moral-aesthetic anthropology. The name “anthropology” as used here does not mean just some investigation of man by a natural science. Nor does it mean the doctrine established within Christian theology of man created, fallen, and redeemed. It designates that philosophical interpretation of man which explains and evaluates whatever is, in its entirety, from the standpoint of man and in relation to man (Appendix 10).
The increasingly exclusive rooting of the interpretation of the world in anthropology, which has set in since the end of the eighteenth century, finds its expression in the fact that the fundamental stance of man in relation to what is, in its entirety, is defined as a world view (Weltanschauung). Since that time this word has been admitted into common usage. As soon as the world becomes picture, the position of man is conceived as a world view. To be sure, the phrase “world view” is open to misunderstanding, as though it were merely a matter here of a passive contemplation of the world. For this reason, already in the nineteenth century it was emphasized with justification that “world view” also meant and even meant primarily “view of life.” The fact that, despite this, the phrase “world view” asserts itself as the name for the position of man in the midst of all that is, is proof of how decisively the world became picture as soon as man brought his life as subiectum into precedence over other centers of relationship. This means: whatever is, is considered to be in being only to the degree and to the extent that it is taken into and referred back to this life, i.e., is lived out, and becomes life-experience. Just as unsuited to the Greek spirit as every humanism had to be, just so impossible was a medieval world view, and just as absurd is a Catholic world view. Just as necessarily and legitimately as everything must change into life-experience for modern man the more unlimitedly he takes charge of the shaping of his essence, just so certainly could the Greeks at the Olympian festivals never have had life-experiences.
The fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of the world as picture. The word "picture" [Bild] now means the structured image [Gebild] that is the creature of man's producing which represents and sets before. In such producing, man contends for the position in which he can be that particular being who gives the measure and draws up the guidelines for everything that is. Because this position secures, organizes, and articulates itself as a world view, the modern relationship to that which is, is one that becomes, in its decisive unfolding, a confrontation of world views; and indeed not of random world views, but only of those that have already taken up the fundamental position of man that is most extreme, and have done so with the utmost resoluteness. For the sake of this struggle of world views and in keeping with its meaning, man brings into play his unlimited power for the calculating, planning, and molding of all things. Science as research is an absolutely necessary form of this establishing of self in the world; it is one of the pathways upon which the modern age rages toward fulfillment of its essence, with a velocity unknown to the participants. With this struggle of world views the modern age first enters into the part of its history that is the most decisive and probably the most capable of enduring (Appendix 11).
A sign of this event is that everywhere and in the most varied forms and disguises the gigantic is making its appearance. In so doing, it evidences itself simultaneously in the tendency toward the increasingly small. We have only to think of numbers in atomic physics. The gigantic presses forward in a form that actually seems to make it disappear - in the annihilation of great distances by the airplane, in the setting before us of foreign and remote worlds in their everydayness, which is produced at random through radio by a flick of the hand Yet we think too superficially if we suppose that the gigantic is only the endlessly extended emptiness of the purely quantitative. We think too little if we find that the gigantic, in the form of continual not-ever-having-been-here-yet, originates only in a blind mania for exaggerating and excelling. We do not think at all if we believe we have explained this phenomenon of the gigantic with the catchword “Americanism" (Appendix 12).
The gigantic is rather that through which the quantitative becomes a special quality and thus a remarkable kind of greatness. Each historical age is not only great in a distinctive way in contrast to others; it also has, in each instance, its own concept of greatness. But as soon as the gigantic in planning and calculating and adjusting and making secure shifts over out of the quantitative and becomes a special quality, then what is gigantic, and what can seemingly always be calculated completely, becomes, precisely through this, incalculable. This becoming incalculable remains the invisible shadow that is cast around all things everywhere when mas has been transformed in subiectum and the world into picture (Appendix 13).
By means of this shadow the modern world extends itself out into a space withdrawn from representation, and so lends to the incalculable the determinateness peculiar to it, as well as a historical uniqueness. This shadow, however, points to something else, which it is denied to us of today to know (Appendix 14). But man will never be able to experience and ponder this that is denied so long as he dawdles about in the mere negating of the age. The flight into tradition, out of a combination of humility and presumption, can bring about nothing in itself other than self-deception and blindness in relation to the historical moment.
Man will know, i.e., carefully safeguard into its truth, that which is incalculable, only in creative questioning and shaping out of the power of genuine reflection. Reflection transports the man of the future into that “between” in which he belongs to Being and yet remains a stranger amid that which is (Appendix 15). Hölderlin knew of this. His poem, which bears the superscription “To the German,” closes:
How narrowly bounded is our lifetime,
We see and count the number of our years.
But have the years of nations
Been seen by mortal eye?
If your soul throbs in longing
Over its own time, mourning, then
You linger on the cold shore
Among your own and never know them.

The Age of the World Picture
In metaphysics reflection is accomplished concerning the essence of what is and a decision takes place regarding the essence of truth*1. Metaphysics grounds an age, in that through a specific interpretation of what is and through a specific comprehension of truth it gives to that age the basis upon which it is essentially formed*2. This basis holds complete dominion over all the phenomena that distinguish the age. Conversely, in order that there may be an adequate reflection upon these phenomena themselves, the metaphysical basis for them must let itself be apprehended in them. Reflection is the courage to make the troth of our own presuppositions and the realm of our own goals into the things that most deserve to be called in question Appendix 1).
One of the essential phenomena of the modern age is its science. A phenomenon of no less importance is machine technology. We must not, however, misinterpret that technology as the mere application of modern mathematical physical science to praxis. Machine technology is itself an autonomous transformation of praxis, a type of transformation wherein praxis first demands the employment of mathematical physical science. Machine technology remains up to now the most visible outgrowth of the essence of modern technology, which is identical with the essence of modern metaphysics.
A third equally essential phenomenon of the modern period lies in the event of art's moving into the purview of aesthetics. That means that the art work becomes the object of mere subjective experience, and that consequently art is considered to be an expression of human life*4.
A fourth modern phenomenon manifests itself in the fact that human activity is conceived and consummated as culture. Thus culture is the realization of the highest values, through the nurture and cultivation of the highest goods of man. It lies in the essence of culture, as such nurturing, to nurture itself in its turn and thus to become the politics of culture.
A fifth phenomenon of the modern age is the loss of the gods*5. This expression does not mean the mere doing away with the gods, gross atheism. The loss of the gods is a twofold process. On the one hand, the world picture is Christianized inasmuch as the cause of the world is posited as infinite, unconditional, absolute. On the other hand, Christendom transforms Christian doctrine into a world view (the Christian world view), and in that way makes itself modern and up to date. The loss of the gods is the situation of indecision regarding God and the gods. Christendom has the greatest share in bringing it about. But the loss of the gods is so far from excluding religiosity that rather only through that loss is the relation to the gods changed into mere experience." When this occurs, then the gods have fled. The resultant void is compensated for by means of historiographical and psychological investigation of myth.
What understanding of what is, what interpretation of truth, lies at the foundation of these phenomena?
We shall limit the question to the phenomenon mentioned first, to science [Wissenschaft].
In what does the essence of modern science lie?
What understanding of what is and of truth provides the basis for that essence? If we succeed in reaching the metaphysical ground that provides the foundation for science as a modern phenomenon, then the entire essence of the modern age will have to let itself be apprehended from out of that ground.
When we use the word "science" today, it means something essentially different from the doctrina and scientia of the Middle Ages, and also from the Greek episteme. Greek science was never exact, precisely because, in keeping with its essence, it could not be exact and did not need to be exact. Hence it makes no sense whatever to suppose that modern science is more exact than that of antiquity. Neither can we say that the Galilean doctrine of freely falling bodies is true and that Aristotle's teaching, that light bodies strive upward, is false; for the Greek understanding of the essence of body and place and of the relation between the two rests upon a different interpretation of beings and hence conditions a correspondingly different kind of seeing and questioning of natural events. No one would presume to maintain that Shakespeare's poetry is more advanced than that of Aeschylus. It is still more impossible to say that the modern understanding of whatever is, is more correct than that of the Greeks. Therefore, if we want to grasp the essence of modern science, we must first free ourselves from the habit of comparing the new science with the old solely in terms of degree, from the point of view of progress.
The essence of what we today call science is research. In what does the essence of research consist?
In the fact that knowing [das Erkennen] establishes itself as a procedure within some realm of what is, in nature or in history. Procedure does not mean here merely method or methodology. For every procedure already requires an open sphere in which it moves. And it is precisely the opening up of such a sphere that is the fundamental event in research. This is accomplished through the projection within some realm of what is-in nature, for example-of a fixed ground plan*6 of natural events. The projection sketches out in advance the manner in which the knowing procedure must bind itself and adhere to the sphere opened up. This binding adherence is the rigor of research*7. Through the projecting of the ground plan and the prescribing of rigor, procedure makes secure for itself its sphere of objects within the realm of Being . A look at that earliest science, which is at the same time the normative one in the modern age, namely, mathematical physics, will make clear what we mean. Inasmuch as modern atomic physics still remains physics, what is essential - and only the essential is aimed at here- will hold for it also.
Modern physics is called mathematical because, in a remarkable way, it makes use of a quite specific mathematics. But it can proceed mathematically in this way only because, in a deeper sense, it is already itself mathematical. Ta mathemata means for the Greeks that which man knows in advance in his observation of whatever is and in his intercourse with things ; the corporeality of bodies, the vegetable character of plants, the animality of animals, the humanness of man. Alongside these, belonging also to that which is already-known, i.e., to the mathematical, are numbers. If we come upon three apples on the table, we recognize that there are three of them. But the number three, threeness, we already know. This means that number is something mathematical. Only because numbers represent, as it were, the most striking of always-already-knowns, and thus offer the most familiar instance of the mathematical, is "mathematical" promptly reserved as a name for the numerical. In no way, however, is the essence of the mathematical defined by numberness, Physics is, in general, the knowledge of nature, and, in particular, the knowledge of material corporeality in its motion; for that corporeality manifests itself immediately and universally in everything natural, even if in a variety of ways, If physics takes shape explicitly, then, as something mathematical, this means that, in an especially pronounced way, through it and for it something is stipulated in advance as what is already-known. That stipulating has to do with nothing less than the plan or projection of that which must henceforth, for the knowing of nature that is sought after, be nature: the self-contained system of motion of units of mass related spatiotemporally. Into this ground plan of nature, as supplied in keeping with its prior stipulation, the following definitions among others have been incorporated: Motion means change of place. No motion or direction of motion is superior to any other. Every place is equal to every other. No point in time has preference over any other. Every force is defined according to - i.e., is only - its consequences in motion, and that means in magnitude of change of place in the unity of time. Every event must be seen so as to be fitted into this ground plan of nature. Only within the perspective of this ground plan does an event in nature become visible as such an event. This projected plan of nature finds its guarantee in the fact that physical research, in every one of its questioning steps, is bound in advance to adhere to it. This binding adherence, the rigor of research, has its own character at any given time in keeping with the projected plan. The rigor of mathematical physical science is exactitude. Here all events, if they are to enter at all into representation as events of nature, must be defined beforehand as spatiotemporal magnitudes of motion. Such defining is accomplished through measuring, with the help of number and calculation. But mathematical research into nature is not exact because it calculates with precision; rather it must calculate in this way because its adherence to its object-sphere has the character of exactitude. The humanistic sciences, in contrast, indeed all the sciences concerned with life, must necessarily be inexact just in order to remain rigorous. A living thing can indeed also be grasped as spatiotemporal magnitude of motion, but then it is no longer apprehended as living. The inexactitude of the historical humanistic sciences is not a deficiency, but is only the fulfillment of a demand essential to this type of research. It is true, also, that the projecting and securing of the object-sphere of the historical sciences is not only of another kind, but is much more difficult of execution than is the achieving of rigor in the exact sciences.
Science becomes research through the projected plan and through the securing of that plan in the rigor of procedure. Projection and rigor, however, first develop into what they are in methodology. The latter constitutes the second essential characteristic of research. If the sphere that is projected is to become objective, then it is a matter of bringing it to encounter us in the complete diversity of its levels and interweavings. Therefore procedure must be free to view the changeableness in whatever encounters it. Only within the horizon of the incessant-otherness of change does the plenitude of particularity - of facts - show itself. -But the facts must become objective [gegenstiindlich]. Hence procedure must represent [vorstellen] the changeable in its changing, must bring it to a stand and let the motion be a motion nevertheless. The fixedness of facts and the constantness of their change as such is "rule." The constancy of change in the necessity of its course is "law." It is only within the purview of rule and law that facts become clear as the facts that they are. Research into facts in the realm of nature is intrinsically the establishing and verifying of rule and law. Methodology, through which a sphere of objects comes into representation, has the character of clarifying on the basis of what is clear - of explanation. Explanation is always twofold. It accounts for an unknown by means of a known, and at the same time it verifies that known by means of that unknown. Explanation takes place in investigation. In the physical sciences investigation takes place by means of experiment, always according to the kind of field of investigation and according to the type of explanation aimed at. But physical science does not first become research through experiment; rather, on the contrary, experiment first becomes possible where and only where the knowledge of nature has been transformed into research. Only because modern physics is a physics that is essentially mathematical can it be experimental. Because neither medieval doctrina nor Greek episteme is science in the sense of research, for these it is never a question of experiment. To be sure, it was Aristotle who first understood what empeiria (experientia) means; the observation of things themselves, their qualities and modifications under changing conditions, and consequently the knowledge of the way in which things as a rule behave. But an observation that aims at such knowledge, the experimentum, remains essentially different from the observation that belongs to science as research, from the research experiment; it remains essentially different even when ancient and medieval observation also works with number and measure, and even when that observation makes use of specific apparatus and instruments. For in all this, that which is decisive about the experiment is completely missing. Experiment begins with the laying down of a law as a basis. To set up an experiment means to represent or conceive [vorstellen] the conditions under which a specific series of motions can be made susceptible of being followed in its necessary progression, i.e., of being controlled in advance by calculation. But the establishing of a law is accomplished with reference to the ground plan of the object-sphere. That ground plan furnishes a criterion and constrains the anticipatory representing of the conditions. Such representing in and through which the experiment begins is no random imagining. that is why Newton said, hypothesis non fingo, “the bases that are laid down are not arbitrarily invented.” They are developed out of the ground plan of nature and are sketched into it. Experiment is that methodology which, in its planning and execution, is supported and guided on the basis of the fundamental law laid down, in order to adduce the facts that either verify and confirm the law or deny it confirmation. The more exactly the ground plan of nature is projected, the more exact becomes the possibility of experiment. Hence the much cited medieval Schoolman Roger Bacon can never be the forerunner of the modern experimental research scientist; rather he remains merely a successor of Aristotle. For in the meantime, the real locus of truth has been transferred by Christendom to faith - to the infallibility of the written word and to the doctrine of the Church. The highest knowledge and teaching is theology as the interpretation of the divine word of revelation, which is set down in Scripture and proclaimed by the Church. Here, to know is not to search out; rather it is to understand rightly the authoritative Word and the authorities proclaiming it. Therefore, the discussion of the words and doctrinal opinions of the various authorities take precedence in the acquiring of knowledge in the Middle Ages. The componere scripta et sermones, the argumentum ex verbo, is decisive and at the same time is the reason why the accepted Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy that had been taken over had to be transformed into scholastic dialectic. If, now, Roger Bacon demands the experimentum - and he does demand it - he does not mean the experiment of science as research; rather he wants the argumentum ex re instead of the argumentum ex verbo, the careful observing of things themselves, i.e., Aristotelian empeiria, instead of the discussion of doctrines.
The modern research experiment, however, is not only an observation more precise in degree and scope, but is a methodology essentially different in kind, related to the verification of law in the framework, and at the service, of an exact plan of nature. Source criticism in the historical humanistic sciences corresponds to experiment in physical research. Here the name “source criticism” designates the whole gamut of the discovery, examination, verification, evaluation, preservation, and interpretation of sources. Historiographical explanation, which is based on source criticism, does not, it is true, trace facts back to laws and rules. But neither does it confine itself to the mere reporting of facts. In the historical sciences, just as in the natural sciences, the methodology aims at representing what is fixed and stable and at making history an object. History can become objective openly when it is past. What is stable in what is past, that on the basis of which historiographical explanation reckons up the solitary and the diverse in history, is the always-has-been-once-already, the comparable. Through the constant comparing of everything with everything, what is intelligible is found by calculation and is certified and established as the ground plan of history. The sphere of histriographical research extends only so far as historiographical explanation reaches. The unique, the rare, the simple - in short, the great - in history is never self-evident and hence remains inexplicable. It is not that historical research denies what is great in history; rather it explains it as the exception. In this explaining, the great is measured against the ordinary and the average. And there is no other historiographical explanation so long as explaining means reduction to what is intelligible and so long as historiographical explanation so long as explaining means reduction to what is intelligible and so long as historiography remains research, i.e., an explaining. Because historiography as research projects and objectifies the past in the sense of an explicable and surveyable nexus of actions and consequences, it requires source criticism as its instrument of objectification. The standards of this criticism alter to the degree that historiography approaches journalism.
Every science is, as research, grounded upon the projection of a circumscribed object-sphere and is therefore necessarily a science of individualized character. Every individualized science must, moreover, in the development of its projected plan by means of its methodology, particularize itself into specific fields of investigation. This particularizing (specialization) is, however, by no means simply an irksome concomitant of the increasing unsurveyability of the results of research. It is not a necessary evil, but is rather an essential necessity of science as research. Specialization is not the consequence but the foundation of the progress of all research. Research does not, through its methodology, become dispersed into random investigations, so as to lose itself in them; for modern science is determined by a third fundamental event: ongoing activity (Appendix 2).*10
By this is to be understood first of all the phenomenon that a science today, whether physical or humanistic, attains to the respect due a science only when it has become capable of being institutionalized. However, research is not ongoing activity because its work is accomplished in institutions, but rather institutions are necessary because science, intrinsically as research, has the character of ongoing activity. The methodology through which individual object-spheres are conquered does not simply amass results. Rather, with the help of its results it adapts [richtet sich ... ein] itself for a new procedure. Within the complex of machinery that is necessary to physics in order to carry out the smashing of the atom lies hidden the whole of physics up to now. Correspondingly, in historiographical research, funds of source materials become usable for explanation only if those sources are themselves guaranteed on the basis of historiographical explanation. In the course of these processes, the methodology of the science becomes circumscribed by means of its results. More and more the methodology adapts itself to the possibilities of procedure opened up through itself. This having-to-adapt-itself to its own results as the ways and means of an advancing methodology is the essence of research's character as ongoing activity. And it is that character that is the intrinsic basis for the necessity of the institutional nature of research. In ongoing activity the plan of an object-sphere is, for the first time, built into whatever is. All adjustments that facilitate a plannable conjoining of types of methodology, that further the reciprocal checking and communication of results, and that regulate the exchange of talents are measures that are by no means only the external consequences of the fact that research work is expanding and proliferating. Rather, research work becomes the distant sign, still far from being understood, that modern science is beginning to enter upon the decisive phase of its history. Only now is it beginning to take possession of its own complete essence.
What is taking place in this extending and consolidating of the institutional character of the sciences? Nothing less than the making secure of the precedence of methodology over whatever is (nature and history), which at any given time becomes objective in research. On the foundation of their character as ongoing activity, the sciences are creating for themselves the solidarity and unity appropriate to them. Therefore historiographical or archeological research that is carried forward in an institutionalized way is essentially closer to research in physics that is similarly organized than it is to a discipline belonging to its own faculty in the humanistic sciences that still remains mired in mere erudition. Hence the decisive development of the modern character of science as ongoing activity also forms men of a different stamp. The scholar disappears. He is succeeded by the research man who is engaged in research projects. These, rather than the cultivating of erudition, lend to his work its atmosphere of incisiveness. The research man no longer needs a library at home. Moreover, he is constantly on the move. He negotiates at meetings and collects information at congresses. He contracts for commissions with publishers. The latter now determines along with him which books must be written (Appendix 3).
The research worker necessarily presses forward of himself into the sphere characteristic of the technologist in the essential sense. Only in this way is he capable of acting effectively, and only thus, after the manner of his age, is he real. Alongside him, the increasingly thin and empty Romanticism of scholarship and the university will still be able to persist for some time in a few places. However, the effective unity characteristic of the university, and hence the latter's reality, does not lie in some intellectual power belonging to an original unification of the sciences and emanating from the university because nourished by it and preserved in it. The university is real as an orderly establishment that, in a form still unique because it is administratively self-contained, makes possible and visible the striving apart of the sciences into the particularization and peculiar unity that belong to ongoing activity. Because the forces intrinsic to the essence of modern science come immediately and unequivocally to effective working in ongoing activity, therefore, also, it is only the spontaneous ongoing activities of research that can sketch out and establish the internal unity with other like activities that is commensurate with themselves.
The real system of science consists in a solidarity of procedure and attitude with respect to the objectification of whatever is - a solidarity that is brought about appropriately at any given time on the basis of planning. The excellence demanded of this system is not some contrived and rigid unity of the relationships among object-spheres, having to do with content, but is rather the greatest possible free, though regulated, flexibility in the shifting about and introducing of research apropos of the leading tasks at any given time. The more exclusively science individualizes itself with a view to the total carrying on and mastering of its work process, and the more realistically these ongoing activities are shifted into separate research institutes and professional schools, the more irresistibly do the sciences achieve the consummation of their modern essence. But the more unconditionally science and the man of research take seriously the modern form of their essence, the more unequivocally and the more immediately will they be able to offer themselves for the common good, and the more unreservedly too will they have to return to the public anonymity of all work useful to society.
Modern science simultaneously establishes itself and differentiates itself in its projections of specific object-spheres. These projection-plans are developed by means of a corresponding methodology, which is made secure through rigor. Methodology adapts and establishes itself at any given time in ongoing activity. Projection and rigor, methodology and ongoing activity, mutually requiring one another, constitute the essence of modern science, transform science into research.
We are reflecting on the essence of modern science in order that we may apprehend in it its metaphysical ground What understanding of what is and what concept of truth provide the basis for the fact that science is being transformed into research?
Knowing, as research, calls whatever is to account with regard to the way in which and the extent to which it lets itself be put at the disposal of representation. Research has disposal over anything that is when it can either calculate it in its future course in advance or verify a calculation about it as past. Nature, in being calculated in advance, and history, in being historiographically verified as past, become, as it were, "set in place" [gestellt]. Nature and history become the objects of a representing that explains. Such representing counts on nature and takes account of history. Only that which becomes object in this way is - is considered to be in being. We first arrive at science as research when the Being of whatever is, is sought in such objectiveness.
This objectifying of whatever is, is accomplished in a setting-before, a representing, that aims at bringing each particular being before it in such a way that man who calculates can be sure, and that means be certain, of that being. We first arrive at science as research when and only when truth has been transformed into the certainty of representation. What it is to be is for the first time defined as the objectiveness of representing, and truth is first defined as the certainty of representing, in the metaphysics of Descartes. The title of Descartes's principal work reads: Meditationes de prima philosophia [Meditations on First Philosophy]. Prote philosophia is the designation coined by Aristotle for what is later called metaphysics. The whole of modern metaphysics taken together, Nietzsche included, maintains itself within the interpretation of what it is to be and of truth that was prepared by Descartes (Appendix 4).
Now if science as research is an essential phenomenon of the modern age, it must be that that which constitutes the metaphysical ground of research determines first and long beforehand the essence of that age generally. The essence of the modern age can be seen in the fact that man frees himself from the bonds of the Middle Ages in freeing himself to himself. But this correct characterization remains, nevertheless, superficial. It leads to those errors that prevent us from comprehending the essential foundation of the modern age and, from there, judging the scope of the age's essence. Certainly the modern age has, as a consequence of the liberation of man, introduced subjectivism and individualism. But it remains just as certain that no age before this one has produced a comparable objectivism and that in no age before this has the non-individual, in the form of the collective, come to acceptance as having worth. Essential here is the necessary interplay between subjectivism and objectivism. It is precisely this reciprocal conditioning of one by the other that points back to events more profound.
[*1. "Reflection" translates Besinnung. On the meaning of the latter, see SR 155 n. 1. "'Essence" will be the translation of the noun Wesen in most instances of its occurrence in this essay. Occasionally the translation "coming to presence" will be used. Wesen must always be understood to allude, for Heidegger, not to any mere "whatness," but to the manner in which anything, as what it is, takes its course and "holds sway" in its ongoing presence, i.e., the manner in which it endures in its presencing. See QT 30, 3 n. 1. "What is" renders the present participle seiend used as a noun, das Seiende. On the translation of the latter, see T 40 n. 6.
*2. der Grund seines Wesensgestalt. Heidegger exemplifies the statement that he makes here in his discussion of the metaphysics of Descartes as providing the necessary interpretive ground for the manner in which, in the subjectness of man as self-conscious subject, Being and all that is and man - in their immediate and indissoluble relation - come to presence in the modern age. See Appendix 9, pp. 150 ff.
*4. Erlebnis, translated here as "subjective experience" and later as "life-experience," is a term much used by life philosophers such as Dilthey and generally connotes adventure and event. It is employed somewhat pejoratively here. The term Erfahrung, which is regularly translated in this volume as "experience," connotes discovery and learning, and also suffering and undergoing. Here and subsequently (i.e., "mere religious experience"), "mere" is inserted to maintain the distinction between Erlebnis and Erfahrung.
*5. Entgotterung, here inadequately rendered as "loss of the gods," actually means something more like "degodization".
*6. Grundriss. The verb reissen means to tear, to rend, to sketch, to design, and the noun Riss means tear, gap, outline. Hence the noun Grundiss, first sketch, ground plan, design, connotes a fundamental sketching out that is an opening up as well.
*7. "Binding adherence" here translates the noun Bindung. The noun could also be rendered "obligation." It could thus be said that rigor is the obligation to remain within the realm opened up.
*10. “Ongoing activity” is the rendering of Betrieb, which is difficult to translate adequately. It means the act of driving on, or industry, activity, as well as undertaking, pursuit, business. It can also mean management, or workshop or factory.]
To be continued...

So I've been working on this one for quite some time, running sessions here since November, so I thought I'd finally share with the class. My previous domains have all the highly streamlined into a specific gimmick (or if you're being less generous, one-trick ponies), and I wanted to transition to an episodic style campaign for scheduling and session-planning reasons. So I challenged myself to make something that had a lot of potential in the type of sessions, terrain, and factions. I'm pleased with the result and I have endless fun. Dragonmine dungeons, sea monster hunts, and up to my armpits in murder mysteries (Involving everything from serial killers, forced marriages to sea creatures, finding shipwrecks, and backstreet grafting, and their current conundrum involving medieval compacts and mining rights).
What I have here is the stripped down version, hence the lack of things like a detailed backstory, NPCs, or the factions I'm mentioned. These things all exist, but there's far too much for a random reddit post.

Caergwynt

Domain of cursed bloodlines and stolen flesh
Darklord: Dr James Pugh
Genres: Body horror, cosmic horror
Hallmarks: A cursed piscine populace, dragon-flesh grafting surgery, a seaside town.
Mist Talismans: A preserved dragon’s bladder, A piece of leather with a triple-eye tattoo, a carver’s blade

A thousand years ago the people of Dan-y-Mor bargained with the Deep Ones of Thol’Yth, a bargain that caused their home to sink into the sea and has left a corrupting mark on their bloodline to this day. But times have moved on, and in the seaside tourist town of Caergwynt the people try to throw off the chains of the sea and embrace modernity. Dr James Pugh, master surgeon, alchemist, and prodigal son of Caergwynt, brough home with him the discoveries of Dragon-flesh grafting, and how the power within draconic meat can counteract the curse that afflicts them as they age.

But along with innovations, Pugh has brought twisted ideals of supremacy, callousness, and self-loathing to the town. Behind the pastel painted houses and ice-cream stands, Pugh holds the domain in the grips of his ideology. In Caergwynt both beauty and ugliness are skin deep; horror lies beneath both.

And where are they getting this dragon flesh?

Noteworthy Features

Those familiar with [Domain Name] know these facts:
· The coastal population is cursed by their piscine ancestry. Though they appear human to begin with, they start to warp into fish-like beings as the enter middle-age, until eventually they can’t survive on land.
· Magic and the occult arts aren’t banned in the town, but they pride themselves in their modern thinking, and so both are rare and seen with suspicion. Alchemy is very popular, as is natural philosophy of all kinds, though scientific truth is often clouded in ideological bias.
· Minor surgeries involving dragon flesh is hugely popular in the town, primarily as it staves off the piscine transformation. Draconic virtues such as wealth, independence, and power are idealised, while meekness, poverty, and laziness are seen as the result of oceanic taint.
· The inland parts of the domain are mountainous and sparsely populated, but under the mountains dragons lie hibernating in the hundreds. Through use of industrial quantities of sedatives, mining teams, and the skilled blades of the ‘Carvers’, they remove the flesh of living dragons for sale to surgeons.

Geography and locations

At the heart of the domain lies the town of Caergwynt, for which the domain is named, though it extends well beyond the picturesque town. Coastline stretches to the north and south for 9 miles in each direction. Outside the town much of the coastline is steep cliffs with only occasional cove, until the northern most two miles, which level out into sand dunes and finally to an estuary, the river bisected by the mists.

The domain extends another 13 miles inland to the east, almost immediately rising into rolling mountain ranges worn smooth eons ago by glaciers. Beneath these mountains are rich veins of ore, usually lead, copper, tin, silver, and even gold. Not to mention another, slumbering, treasure. These ridges and valleys are mostly populated by sheep farmers and miners, and their distance from the civilised towns means the old traditions still hold strong. Travellers here are likely to be vexed by the remaining fey spirits, whom they have likely offended by breaking their baffling codes.

Lastly, to the west is 13 miles of sea. Beneath the sea here is the remains of Dan-y-Mor, the lands that were drowned. Legends tell that the dragon Rhodri Efydd drowned these lands to punish the people there for their pact with the Deep Ones, and that it’s the survivors of this event that settled in Caergwynt and established the cursed bloodlines that still dwell there. The ruins are now populated by the Deep Ones, and the seas are treacherous to those who do not pay tribute to them.

Caergwynt town The main settlement and namesake of the domain, Caergwynt town is the seat of James Pugh’s power, and the nexus for his ideas. A rail line connects the town to the wider world through the mists, bringing tourists from far and wide to enjoy its pastel houses, seaside attractions, and healthy sea air. The town has grown incredibly rapidly over the past fifty years, so many of the houses are relatively new, painted brightly, and have plumbing. Wealthier houses often have electricity even, as Pugh idealises technological progress as a means of freeing oneself from the overlords of old.

Along the seafront promenade one can find ice-cream stands, circus acts, and countless sun loungers. Many children paddle in the shallows, under the watchful eyes of the many lifeguards. An impressive pier thrusts out to sea over 600ft, hosting a bar, dancefloor, and bandstand, as well as being decorated by colourful electric lights along its whole length.

On an upward-thrust outcropping of stone overlooking the bay, the ruins of a medieval castle can be found. Though much of the old outer portions are now a pleasant picnic overlook, the ruins themselves act as a façade that conceals the home and workshop of Dr James Pugh, the regal remains cloaking the garish metal construction where Pugh conducts his experiments and surgeries.

Dan-y-Mor Long ago, these lands were cast into the sea for the betrayal of the people here to their own kin: In return for protection against floods, the elders of the town betrothed many of their younger relatives to the Deep Ones. When forced to confront the horror of what they’d done, they refused to repent, and so the dragon Rhodri Efydd flooded the land to try and kill off all those tainted by the deep.

Not only did he fail, but the Deep Ones now occupy the ruins in great numbers, growing their strength and plotting their control over the surface. Led by the high priest Xrilath, ancient human structures have been supplemented by cyclopean temples to unfathomable gods. Here Xrilath experiments in creating mutants for his legions, and plots to spread his insanity to all. His aristocrats constantly feud and war over slaves and territory, and his priests construct monuments to induce storms and curses over the ocean. Unnatural reefs and trenches can come and go under the force of their magic, and shipwrecks are a frequent sight.

To this day, the church bells of Dan-y-Mor can be heard when the sea mists are thick.

Llwyd North along the coastline, as the cliffs finally give way to pebbles and finally a sandy beach, sits the unfortunately named Llwyd. Behind the town lies the only flat terrain of the domain, but it is boggy and brackish and so of little use, without a safe harbour like it’s sibling settlement to nucleate around. Thus, it’s a stretched-out town of a few hundred, composing of only two streets running a mile each in parallel along the beach, with the only high ground occupied by a church and a small railway station.
Like Caergwynt, its populace are doomed to mutate as they age, but away from the most intense of Pugh’s influence, they see themselves as more at peace with their nature. Repulsed by their lack of self-repulsion, Pugh has successfully discredited the town as being run-down and dire, stalling its attempt to draw in tourists as Caergwynt has, despite superficially similar pastel houses and beach attractions. Without cash coming in, most of the town is now stuck in a cycle of dilapidation that makes true Pugh’s slander.
Of the ailing attractions, the most notable it the Abominarium, a fledgling zoo that pivoted to displaying captured cryptids and the occasional escaped carver’s pet when funds for proper zoo animals wasn’t available.

Porthniwl
This town lies at the very south of the domain, a ruined place that was bisected by the mists when they descended and never left. Formerly, it was the template that Caergwynt copied to reinvent itself, but now the ebb and flow of the mists leaves it inhospitable and maddening, populated only by aberrations, Aled Llias-y-mor’s Deep-One splinter faction, and insane pirates. The cultists worship and bargain with otherworldly entities that spawn from the mists, welcoming them as Xrilath’s distant kin.

Cwm Crith
Following the river Crith from its terminus in Caergwynt inland (Or better yet, simply taking the narrow-gauge train with the miners each morning) will eventually lead to Cwm Crith, the upper reaches of the Crith valley. Formerly a loose scattering of shepherds, the valley has become dominated by Pugh’s dragonflesh mines that have poked holes in the mountainside. Leaked poisons, smelting effluent, and the residue of toxic ores has rendered the river a pretty but toxic blue colour, and decimated the agriculture of the valley.
While not the only dragonflesh mining compound in the domain, Cwm Crith is by far the busiest and most profitable. Owned of course by Dr James Pugh, Cwm Crith Mining Company, and its subsidiary the Goldscale Carvers, is an economic powerhouse by the standards of the other businesses in the domain. Along with dragon flesh, the draconic influence that seeps into the rocks has imbued the region with rich veins of ore that facilitates the industry of the domain.

Dr James Pugh

_See biography for full account_
Having left the decrepit town as a teenager, Pugh returned with a surprising supply of cash, a doctorate, and ambitious ideas about how the town should enter the bold new world of industry that was emerging. When he returned with a mysterious supply of money, he quickly set to work rebuilding his hometown to fit his own ideas. Where as the curse of their bloodline was formerly an accepted fact of life in the town, he introduced shame of their heritage along with the pioneering surgeries that could counteract it.

Dr James Pugh's Powers and Dominion
Despite being over seventy years old, Pugh appears to be in excellent health. Tall and lean, it’s clear to anyone meeting him, and confirmed by any who knew him as a youth, that he has always possessed an angular but handsome face, one that has only ever expressed seriousness or coldly simmering rage.
However, while age hasn’t affected him too greatly, his own surgery has: He has reptilian eyes, shimmering gold in the irises, and faint golden flecks in all visible skin. Golden scales can be seen around his neck and hands, though his habitual long-sleeved shirts don’t reveal much else. While most grafting subjects are left with swollen and distorted scars to be covered with heavy layers of make-up, Pugh’s few visible stiches are immaculate.
He always wears well made but not flamboyant clothing, so that it is his body, not attire, that draws the eye. Always practical, he is never seen in anything other than the ideal apparel for the occasion.
Though Pugh’s physical self is as full of hypocrisy as his ideology. Despite every sign of refinement and control, he can only maintain this visage by regular consumption of an expensive dragon-blood potion.

His true form, a consequence of his self-inflicted experiments, is a monstrous brute, with heavy staples holding together draconic and human flesh. These wounds are rife with infections that causes him to ooze pus and blood as he moves. While his hulking asymmetrical frame is strong, he suffers greatly from migraines, and thus his intelligence is drowned out by pain and anger. In a mockery of a dragon’s breath weapon, he can vomit great quantities of phosphorescent acid that ignites on contact with air.

Despite seeming to be bursting at the seams, his constitution is remarkable. He has survived poisoning, blood loss, strangulation, and many of his own experimental procedures beyond any reasonable explanation. Grievous wounds will render him in an apparently dead state for several days, but so far he has always woken back up.
However Pugh doesn’t hold sway over the domain by brute force, for almost none know his true condition. His true power is ideological and economic.
With his stolen money, he made many early investments into the mining sector, paid for the rail line that feeds visitors into the town, is the landlord of many homes in the town, and financed most of the tourist attractions. From this he earns a reliable and steady fortune that frees him up to pursue his research, and gives him leverage over a significant amount of the town as their landlord or employer.

Whilst the domains police are not officially under his command, his generous donations, forensic assistance, and loyal local politicians means that they tend to act in his favour.
And when he needs direct actions take, he has the Goldscale Carvers.
As their owner, he has cultivated a collection of brutal and loyal men who aren’t afraid of dirty work. They are also the unofficial biohazard containment specialists of the domain, so Pugh will gladly invent some hazard the police are ill-suited to handle when he wants things handled by his goons.

If attacked, he can choose to transform into his monstrous true form, but will resist doing so at almost any cost. Instead, he is comfortable in using potions and a dueling pistol, along with some magic that resides in him from all his tampering with dragon’s blood.

Dr James Pugh's Torment
· Xrilath is occupied full time with undermining Pugh’s ideology and trying to engineer his fall from grace. The mad aboleth believes only by bringing Pugh down to his level will they all be free of the mists (He’s not wrong either).
· Pugh relies on the dragonflesh mines to not only make money, but also perpetuate his ideology of grafting. Yet he’s terrified one day a dragon will break loose and take revenge on him for his crimes against them.
· Despite all his talk, Pugh has the most monstrous, most obscene grafts of everyone. By his own preaching, if anyone found out, they’d cast him down for his weakness.

Roleplaying Dr Jame Pugh
Pugh is a man of many dualities, hypocrisy made flesh. He’s the tortured spirit of a man whose self-image and true self are incompatible. Pugh’s motives are a web of his enlightened philosophies and base desires. What welds them together is his determination, an iron rod that glows hot enough to burn but never bends.

Pugh believes that gracious physical form belies a noble mind, and vice versa. And that his surgeries are not simple jobs of stitching and cutting, but a means of balancing out a noble intellect with a suitable body, if said body has been unfairly tainted. He blames failed surgeries and the common madness that comes from them on the result of unworthy recipients trying to claim grander forms than they deserve. He practices phrenology, the pseudoscience of determining character from the shape of one’s skull. He will often offer to undertake a phrenological exam on new acquaintances and prospective clients, and fills in the results with assumptions and what knowledge he has gathered on them so far.

In another brazen display of circular logic, he believes that the taint of the deep ones hides the town’s true draconic ancestry, and that the surgery simply helps it rise to the surface. Yet his own true body is a mockery of his own art, the most gruesome of all his patients is himself, and his grandeur is only a façade.

Most tragically, is that from a young age, Pugh has adored the legends of old. He envies the way that the world used to make sense, that people could earn their place by their qualities, and that larger-than-life characters decided the fate of the world. Yet he’s too astute to be blind to the apathetic randomness of the modern world, where logic and science tell us that nobody is truly important. This manifests in his ideology of great people displaying draconic traits, and sometimes in his more crazed experiments…
For Dr James Pugh does go mad. Sometimes for days at a time, he’ll whip himself into a stupor of narcotics and paranoia, lock himself in his laboratory, and perform experiments that would sicken even himself in the light of day. Mockeries of beast of legends, such as drakes and chimeras, are a common result of this.
Bonds: “I have a lot of work still ahead of me: I must fend of the nefarious Deep Ones, perfect my work of removing their curse, and outs my rivals for this kingdom I have built.”
Ideals: “A man should be strong, unwavering, and bold. What he owns is proof of his power. A graceful visage belies a respectable heart.”
Flaws: “I’m surrounded by enemies at all time! I can’t trust anyone! Paranoid? I’ll show you paranoia!” “I’m terrified of dragons.” “My body and blood are tainted and I’m worried I won’t be able to undo any of it.”
Traits: “Yes I’m the smartest man in the room. Any room. All rooms. I take what I want, and by successfully doing so, I prove that I am right to do so.”

Despite his exhaustive list of flaws, Dr James Pugh is an extremely capable individual. Along with his academic brilliance, he has a keen mind for business, strategy, and social manipulation. He can be charming, though more often opts for an aloof commanding presence. Knowing how durable he’s become, he rarely shows fear.
Pugh will try to befriend anyone who seems well-learned, strong-willed, and bold. He’ll compliment those he believes are following his ideals, but the closer they come to being his ideal man, the more he’ll see them as a rival.


Adventures in Caergwynt
By its design, Caergwynt has a wide variety of locations to explore, and several factions to interact with. The ocean is riddled with the feuding Deep Ones, shipwrecks, and the mutated kin of Caergwynt. Inland is host to fey and ghosts that bedevil the simple farming folk, as well as with dragonflesh mines. Caergwynt town is a hotbed for backstreet surgeries, families torn apart by biology, and the clash of the old ways against the new. And while the domain is modern enough for gunpowder, steam trains, and even the odd electric bulb, the history of a thousand years ago still casts its shadow into the current day.

· A pair of serial killers have been abducting those with dragon grafts ripping out the valued flesh, and selling it on the black market. Can anyone track them down?
· A man driven mad by his grafts has become obsessed with a 30 year old shipwreck, claiming that the sunken treasure aboard is his hoard, and has hired help finding it and taking it from a Deep One noble.
· A valuable item has been hidden in an abandoned mineshaft, but the Goldscale carvers have started using it as a convenient place to farm their carrion crawlers.
· A washed-up sea monster has started an outbreak of a strange disease. Pugh is confident he can create a cure, but needs someone to hunt down a living specimen.
· Sightings of a strange creature have spread around the town. Is it a monster from the ocean, or was it created closer to home. To find out, one would have to race the carvers to find and kill it, lest any evidence disappear.

The Wild Arms games have always been on my radar when it comes to JRPGs I had access to growing up but never played since I played the Squaresoft RPGs when I was in HS. I just got through WA1 this last December, and I'm at the halfway point for WA2 having just started the 2nd disc and if I had to sum up most of my thoughts on the game, it would be this review from 21 years ago:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/913703-wild-arms-2/reviews/60233
In short, while I think there are some things that are better in WA2 compared to the first one, the problems it does have IMO would drag it down to being barely above the first one if I had to give it a numeric score.
When my experience involves going to GameFAQs because I'm trying to go through my infinite backlog of games because you have to do some of the stuff like the Voice Recorder "puzzle" or that the translation team couldn't figure out a puzzle that, apparently, makes more sense in JP than it does in the USA in thy last dungeon, and I read that WA3 has a lot of the same "issues" such as having to talk to random NPCs to make progress and to even scan to find the next area of the game which is a stupid mechanic that makes no sense other than to make it easier on the devs to gate people from going into areas and getting their ass handed to them which is part of the fun for some RPG players like myself and also makes no sense if the "empty" space you're walking through is enemy territory and you're just passing by. I already have Kanon in my party and know that the "random scanning" issue is resolved, but it's just a patch on what was and still is a stupid idea.
Pair that with the fact that, if some of the more technically inclined users were to be honest, most of us are playing these games via emulation, and no, that's not the normie, "oohh, Soyny's so kind to provide us access to these games on the PS4/PS5 by streaming and emulation so bad that the V1.0 release of WA3 had a glitch where you could become OP at the beginning of the game," emulation. I'm talking RetroArch, ePSXE, DuckStation. Actual emulation that's de-centralized and not dependent upon the teeth of Sony.
What I'm getting at is that if you use tricks like RA'S Fast Forward Toggle to speed up grinding/item farming, you can turn basically all of these JRPGs which are really just a game of "my numbers trumo your numbers" into essentially interactive movies, except you can actually engage with NPCs and other things in the game proper unlike someone who uploads a "Xenosaga movie" on YT which is just the game's cutscenes rendered in PCSX2 on a high end rig.
Problem is, if WA3 has the same issues as WA2 and is about as long, maybe I'll just retire the series and go on to play either Xenosaga or Valkyrie Profile, which the latter of the two on is a guide game albeit for a different reason than WA where the problem is that at least with Zelda it's an action adventure game where there's multiple ways you can use an item and you're expected to use them constantly, whereas in WA2, it feels like the character items are only used whenever they feel like designing puzzles around them and are not used as well as they were in WA1. Also, I think WA1 just felt better to play. Battles moved along a lot faster and I don't gave to toggle Fast Forward to move things along because of how sluggish the battles move in WA2.
While the music in WA2 is better than WA1, it suffers from the track lengths being as short as they were in WA1 and them re-using tracks all the time. I think if these games opted for less short dungeons, but more quality dungeons to revisit that, maybe with new tools the characters get throughout the game, new pathways open up that gave you stuff like the various guardians and all? This problem would take care of itself.
And that's what I feel is the biggest issue with this series: the games gave awesome music that's fine for when you're just listening to it in a playlist, but when actually playing it? I find I'm either listening to a podcast or some YT playlist most of the time. I've heard that WA3 is better in this regard and that it's the best in being an actual Wild West themed RPG unlike WA1 and WA2 which has inklings of it in its aesthetics, but ends up being a cross between steampunk, every typical Dragon Quest (that's another series I want to experience)/pre-FF6 Final Fantasy medieval theme, and then hints of sci-fi in the end which Final Fantasy liked to do even as far back as FF4!

The metaverse is expected to have a significant impact on the gaming industry in several ways:
Appearance: Personalize your avatar's look with specific details like skin tone, physique shape, and facial traits. Many systems offer advanced customization options for features like eye shape, nose size, and jawline. You can create an appearance that matches your real-life look or reflects the persona you want to portray by selecting hairstyles, hair colors, and facial hair options.
Clothing and Accessories: Your avatar's attire and accessories can reveal a lot about your character and style. Personalize their wardrobe with professional or casual looks, and add accessories that represent your interests, like musical instruments, sports jerseys, or traditional garb.
Personality Traits: Give your avatar personality traits to add nuance and realism to their identity. Use their appearance to visually convey qualities like creativity, confidence, or friendliness through hairstyles, colors, and clothing choices.
Virtual Environments: When designing your avatar, consider the virtual environments it will be used in. Create an appearance that complements the themes and ambiance of these spaces. For example, choose sleek, contemporary attire and accessories for a futuristic cityscape, or opt for magical or medieval-inspired clothing and accessories when exploring a fantasy world.

I had an idea I wanted to share. Originally I was going to post an image but I am still practicing my drawing skills. I'm not ready to draw.
Just a little bit of context. In my medieval fantasy world there is a growing cult centered around a teenage human named Delilah Ming. This group is known as the Cult of the Inventor. Those who worship Delilah gain the ability to perform specific rituals that creates magical constructs. Today I wanted to share one particular construct these cultists can produce.
Gargoyles are magical constructs made of stone and powered by Delilah's godlike magical powers. Their exact physical characteristics such as size are determined by the person who sculpts them. Popular choices are 5 ft. tall humanoid bat-like designs with large wings, a powerful bite, and two arms with claws on the end of them. Some may have a weapon such as a stone halberd built into their hands.
Gargoyles are often used for home defense due to their ability to pretend to be a statue. Another common use is for various facilities operated by the cult. They have a few abilities.

1. Like all constructs, gargoyles do not require food, water, air, nor sleep to function. Instead they are solely reliant on Delilah's magical energy to remain functional.
   
2. Gargoyles are capable of remaining completely still for months, never reacting even when struck. They use this along with ambush tactics to get the drop on unsuspecting intruders. It's not impossible to distinguish between a fake and a real gargoyle but it's certainly difficult.
   
3. Gargoyles with wings can fly for a short duration, only a few seconds. This is great for positioning or even retreating. They can use this ability to swoop down and land a quick first strike on an unsuspecting foe. I'm not sure if this would help during a fight but I don't think so.
   
4. Physically, gargoyles aren't that much stronger than humans. Being made of stone makes them sturdy but an average adult human could theoretically wrestle one down. It may not matter since there aren't a lot humans in my setting and a lot of races are physically stronger than humans.
   

What are your thoughts on gargoyles? Is there anything I haven't considered? Would you want something like this?

First Chapter. Discord. Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road
Deschane had Ven cover for him at the Mapping Agency before he left that morning. She was to say that he’d gone to confer with the main cartographer’s office to discuss standardization of the filing system; as alibis went it was as mind-numbingly boring as the poor suffering adjutants had come to expect of the navigator.
He hobbled down the alleyways of the bottommost galleries of Mound Shakka, grabbing at the walls for balance as he tried to make do without his crutches. He’d topped up on morphine for the pain was wearing a plaster ankle brace inside his oversized boots.
Deschane’s injuries were healing well. He estimated that in a few days he could walk unassisted. Which was fortunate, given that the cobbles were slick with stagnant pools of groundwater seeping up from the reservoir below. Shakka had hit maximum occupancy years ago, the engineers forced to bore and blast their way deeper into the foundations to make room. Now all that separated the bottom dwellers from a watery grave were a few meters of gneiss rock. The resulting subsidence where the water table met the rotting wood shanties meant that malaria and dysentery ran rampant through the slums.
Deschane kept his cycler pistol handy in the waistband of the civvy denims he’d worn to blend in. He kept a weather eye on the gangs of feral youths who haunted the entrances to every lane, their small, quick hands always ready to slip into unsuspecting pockets.
No one gave Deschane any trouble, however—one look at his hovering trigger finger was enough to keep them honest. Men in hard shell hats clomped out of their hovels, leaving their hollow-eyed wives and children as the work gongs summoned them to another shift in the mines, a clattering funicular carriage lowering them into the shafts a dozen at a time. The luckier ones headed up towards the fungus gardens near the central feeder towers. These were the porous lungs of the settlement which not only helped regulate internal atmosphere, but were also where most of the food was grown.
The very richest of the farmers donned their expensive sealant suits to work on the terraces carved into the exterior slopes of the mound. Agriculture on the surface was a high-risk, high-reward activity, especially now that the rains had gone and left the daggergnats to spawn in their thousands. The swarms that hovered just outside musket range could leech a man dry in seconds if given the chance.
Then again, even the interior of the mound wasn’t safe from the other type of bloodsucking scavengers that preyed on civilians.
The army recruiters were out in force this morning. Deschane had always hated them: fat, men in slovenly uniforms that hung around the chop-suet stalls and shoved pamphlets into people’s faces when they were trying to suck down their melted lard and salted rice porridge. He’d never forgiven them for all the promises they’d made to him all those years ago, the same lies they were peddling right now:
“How can you stand eating that slop every day, son?” one called out, “Sign up for the line infantry and it’s three square meals a day, plus extra rum ration.”
“Forget those sissies in the line infantry,” another swooped in, “You look like a big strong lad! Why don’t you give the grenadiers a try?”
“Who are you calling lad, dipstick?” was the outraged reply of a brawny redhead in farmer’s overalls, voice several octaves higher than it should’ve been.
“Oh! Erm, sorry ma’am. Didn’t see you there. But the offer still stands!” the recruiter rallied, “The grenadiers would be glad to have you. The pay’s nearly twice that of a common soldier.”
“And how much is that?”
“Twenty-two carbos a month.”
“How bout that,” the girl sounded impressed, “For twenty-two I’d fall in so quick you’d see me red-shifting. What’s the catch?”
“How’s your throwing arm?”
“Better than yours, lardass,” the woman bragged, rolling up her sleeves to show a set of shoulders like small boulders.
“Then the only ‘catch’ is when you’ll start tossing live grenades down those Amit bug-hole. They’ll be doing all the catching then, that’s fer sure!”
That got a snort of laughter out of the ginger. She reached for the recruiter’s pen to sign on, and she wasn’t the only one. Deschane turned away in disgust. He’d heard it all before.
Everlasting glory for the first man through the breach. The Amits were on the ropes, teetering on the verge of extinction—why not help give them a shove on their way down? Every comrade a willing martyr, every skirmish a victory. There would be a lot of martyrs from this place before the war was won.
Most of the inhabitants of Shakka were freckled, blue-eyed locals, though Deschane did see some fellow Ulysseans in the crowd, the curly brown locks of their hair setting them apart from the rest. Well, that and the scarlet armbands which designated them as foremen and senior technicians.
It was only natural, Deschane thought. You needed men from the core mounds to really get things done. Natives were good workers, but required a firm supervision to meet the monthly quotas.
As for the native he was supposed to meet today, Deschane didn’t know what to think of him yet. All the signs pointed to Sec-Com, the Security Committee which handled internal threats to the Fleet. Was all this just an elaborate trap laid for him by Colonel Leelan and his cronies in the brass? Were they onto him? Deschane’s budding anxiety proved justified only moments later when a strong hand seized his elbow from behind, yanking him into nearby alleyway.
The navigator’s response was immediate. Unable to reach his pistol with the tight grip on his arm, Deschane turned on his heel and executed a tight spinning backfist. Though he was striking blind and off-balance he felt a solid contact, the bony edge of his forearm chopping with the back of his assailant’s head and knocking him off. Deschane drew his pistol, cocking the hammer so that the five loaded chambers rotated with a loud click and pressing the snub-nose into the man’s cheek.
“Alright, you got me!” Nong said, reaching for the sky, “That was my bad!”
“Galloping galaxies, man! What were you thinking, sneaking up on me like that?” Deschane fumed.
“In case you were followed,” the tribesman chuckled, “We had to lose them somehow.”
“I wasn’t. I took precautions.”
“Well, you can’t accuse me of being too careful,” Nong gently nudged the pistol out of his face and dusted himself off, “Not when we’re this deep into the game. Shall we?”
The tribesman had shucked his outlandish garb and put on a miner’s outfit almost identical to the one Deschane wore, with one exception: a purple armband emblazoned with the crossed pick and hammer of a district director. Deschane flicked a finger at it, said disapprovingly:
“I thought the whole idea was for us to be inconspicuous.”
“I’m the Commissioner of Mining for the Occupied Territories. People will recognize me eventually.”
“You told me you were a geologist,” Deschane protested.
“I started out as one, but they promoted me. People skills—I’m told that I have them.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed it,” Deschane said, still somewhat peevish.
“Officially I’m just here to make an inspection of Mound Shakka’s copper mining operations. Command just loves it when us savages come crawling on our bellies to learn from our betters. It’s your cover I’m worried about, navigator. Doesn’t it hurt, walking around without your crutches?”
“Of course it hurts,” Deschane muttered through a clenched jaw, waves of pain radiating from the ankle that he’d just managed to twist all over again, “Let’s just get this over with.”
Thanks to Nong’s indiscretion they managed to skip the line for the funicular entirely. The miners took one look at the tribesman’s armband and parted like the waves before the prow, eyes lowered and backs hunched in an effort to make themselves as tiny as possible. As a commissioner he held the power of life and death over every one of them, though you wouldn’t have guessed it from the way Nong was grinning at them, an uncle come to visit his favourite nephews.
“Carry on, carry on,” he said indulgently, “Pretend like I’m not even here!”
The miners did exactly that and let the two have the carriage all to themselves. An operator fed the guttering motor a jerry can of canefuel and they started down.
“Why didn’t you just tell me you were a commissioner yesterday?” Deschane said after minutes of silence broken only by the rattle of iron chains, “I would’ve taken you seriously from the start.”
“Wanted to see the kind of man you were,” Nong confessed, “The priests of the Chaplainage claim that all men are equal, but this does not bear out in practice. If I had presented myself as another one of your superiors you would’ve just shut up tighter than a clam. That’s the funny thing about people. We like to pretend that we’re above the Amits, but when you get right down to it our society is just as caste-based as theirs. Lock two men in a cell together for a month, and if they haven’t murdered each other by the end of it, you’ll find that they’ve divided the place right in two.”
“One can relate,” Deschane replied, his irritation returning as the tribesman went into another one of his long lectures. He could feel the ambient temperature climbing with every meter they descended. The sweat was making his fresh scabs itch like the devil.
“Very droll, navigator. But I was just getting to the core of my thesis. Humans create order where there is none. Over time, our civilization tends towards greater and greater expressions of organization. Not so long ago we were lobbing rocks from trebuchets and besieging each other’s mounds as often as we did those of the Amits. There used to be eleven distinct human cultures on Arachnea, all competing for the same dwindling resources. Today there is only one: the Fleet.”
The funicular shuddered to a halt as they scraped the bottom of the mineshaft. Deschane grabbed onto the rails to keep from toppling over and hissed:
“I didn’t come all this way for some half-arsed lecture on the human condition. What’s your point, Nong?”
Nong looked positively scandalized at the interruption. No doubt he’d been planning his little speech for some time. He took out a pair of electric torches and held one out to Deschane, saying stiffly:
“If you’ll please come this way.”
The commissioner led Deschane into a narrow borehole dug horizontally into the side of the shaft, the wide beams of their torches throwing long, stalking shadows across the ceiling.
“Here it is,” Nong said as they came to a dead end, shining the circle of yellow light at the blank wall, “The one secret that threatens to undo us all.”
Deschane frowned. All he could see was a pile of dirt. Several layers of dirt, to be fair, neatly stacked atop the other and each a slightly different shade of brown or orange than the others. Seeing that Deschane was unimpressed, Nong produced a geologist’s clawhammer and began to chip at the layers as he explained:
“Do you remember what I told you about the law of superposition?”
“The deeper the layer, the older it gets. Simple.”
“Good. Then what we have here is a summary of mankind’s entire history on Arachnea. These three meters of soil and the strata contained within them are windows into the past. Not that far into the past, though. Only a few thousand years, a geological blink of an eye. The fact is, we haven’t been on this planet very long at all. The reason these young strata are all the way down here is because a fat slab of them slid down during an earthquake—Mound Shakka sits atop a shear zone, you see.”
Nong hacked at the lowest layer and pried out a jagged stone shaped like a teardrop. He handed it over to Deschane and shone a light on it, saying:
“Familiar?”
“It’s an Amit axe head,” Deschane replied, easily recognizing it.
“Four and a half thousand years old,” Nong said. He dug into the layer just above it until his clawhammer struck something with the loud plink! Nong brushed away the sods to expose a twisted heap of lime green bronze.
“Human work. A frying pan. Forged two thousand eight hundred years ago.”
And in the strata above that Nong picked out another Amit tool, this time an awl made from antler and bone.
“So the Amits retook this mound not long after,” Deschane said, “So what? We’re the ones who hold it now.”
“Please bear with me.”
Nong continued his work. In the next one they unearthed fragments of a human skull. The area inside the right eye socket was fused with spidery etchings of gold-hued metal that ended in fibrous roots that stabbed inwards into where the occipital lobe would have been.
“This civilization had working eye implants,” Nong told Deschane, “Some sort of mind-machine interface. Can you imagine that? Some of the skeletons we found were more metal than man. But even that didn’t save them. In the end they only lasted six centuries.”
Nong started digging at the one above it when Deschane put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.
“Let me guess. Amits again?”
“It’s a pattern,” Nong nodded, confirming it, “Our antiquarians identified four distinct human civilizations in this geological formation alone, all of varying levels of technological advancement. All of them were more primitive than the Fleet as it exists today, save for one which was so far beyond us that their power rivalled that of the progenitors. All of them conquered this mound from the Amits, existed here for a time, then were completely eradicated.”
“By what?”
“We don’t know,” Nong said simply, switching off his electric torch and plunging them both into an impenetrable murk, “Both we and Fleet Command believe in this cycle of eradication. The disagreement lies in the interpretation of the data. Command believes that the Fleet has always existed ever since the moment that the ancestor-gods bequeathed Arachnea to us with their dying breaths.”
“To them, all these repetitions of the cycle are just part of one continuous chain of the Fleet’s development, a sinusoidal curve with upswings and downswings. The periods of Amit inhabitation are simply periods during which the Fleet temporarily collapsed due to internal tensions. Their theory is that disunity, mismanagement of resources and civil war hurled us back into the stone ages, not the Amits.”
Deschane could understand the logic behind that. Militarily speaking the Fleet was quickly outstripping the Amits. Ever since the discovery of powder weapons the army had won the majority of large-scale surface battles against its subterranean foe. As a species the Amits lacked the necessary cohesion to wage the kind of total war that the Fleet was capable of waging, marshalling the industrial might of the entire species to mount campaigns of genocide. Each mound was an isolated colony that fought alone or even competed against its neighbours for forage.
“But you don’t agree with their assessment?” he asked.
“No, we don’t. Our interpretation is that these cycles are culturally distinct and have nothing to do with each other. Each time the catastrophe stuck, humanity as a whole underwent a hard reset and had to start all over again from nothing. In which case it follows that we are not the authors of our own destruction. Something else is.”
“And your proof?”
Nong waved a hand at the layers of strata and told Deschane:
“Prota’s team discovered that this fossil record is completely absent at Mound 13 and the far-flung outposts along the front line. There is only one conclusion to be drawn from that: none of the other cycles have ever expanded this far north as we have. But if the external threat is real, then it is out there waiting for us beyond the hills we know.
“And the Fleet is walking right into it,” the navigator finished for him. Curse it all, but he’d known this himself as a gut feeling that he’d never admitted aloud. An existential dread that he’d felt in his gut ever since he’d seen the extent of Mound Euler from a distance, a cruel and obscene obelisk raised by the will of Arachnea, eternity laughing at the futility of life itself. It was the real reason he had tried to stall the offensive for as long as he could. Out there in the silence of the green one could not escape the certainty that there existed forces far beyond the ken of mortal man, forces which had laid low the progenitors at the height of their glory and before which the Fleet could not stand.
“What would you have me do?” Deschane asked.
“What you Pathfinders do best, sirrah. Find the threat and kill it, before it’s too late.”
“If what you say is true, then this thing has a habit of making mincemeat out of all mankind. How could I possibly make a difference against something like that?”
Nong pressed something into the palm of Deschane’s hand and strode back up the tunnel, saying:
“The gods provide, navigator. The gods provide.”
Shining his torch at it, the navigator saw that he was gripping the tiny Divine Engine once again. Deschane clutched it tight amidst the darkness and held to his heart. And just like that, Deschane knew what to do.
First Chapter. Discord. Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road

https://discord.com/invite/vGGtg3qj7w
Server name: Verda Vente RP (18+ RPvP)
Map: Savage Wilds Platform: PC
Style: PVE/RP/PVP Server Location: USA Direct Connect: 216.52.25.102:7783 RP Format: Text Based Max Level: 70 Slots: 60
Welcome to the Isle of Verda Vente!
Verda Vente is an RP server with a focus on storytelling and Mechanical PvP to drive conflict designed to allow our players to create tales of their own throughout the time they spend playing, and with players on all day there is always someone to visit or fight at your hearts content. With PvP, PvE, and RP options everyone has something they can do and relax! Just to show, here are a few...

PvP

~14~ Unique Races that come with their own specialized set of perks and bonuses that make each one a strong contender in our lore and in the game itself. We have: Humans Elves Dwarves Goblins Orcs Aquatics Beast-Kin Dragon-Kin Devil-Kin Fae Celestials Cursed Undead Cursed Vampires And Cursed Werebeasts!
~8~ classes that provide the bonuses needed for each character combination of Race ad Class to excel in what they do. We have: Fighters Rogues Magi Clerics Druids (With Shapeshifts) Rangers Paladins Warlocks
-Raiding opportunities with no restrictions on the use of Trebuchets, bombs, magic, and thrall use with building destruction a hard yes! Raiding times are between 6pm CST Friday, and 12am CST Monday
-Offline Raid protection so you can sleep well knowing that your buildings wont vanish overnight -A thieving system designed for Rogues to have their own spotlight outside of being quick and quiet! -Simple and easy to understand PvP rules that make ticketing far less common and less of a hassle!

PvE

Unique Dungeons scattered throughout the world that can be explored or fought for prizes you cannot get anywhere else. This includes a massive cavern known as the Underdark, and a Hell Dungeon meant for even the most geared groups to have a healthy challenge. Events hosted almost every day by me! Meant to drop rare loot you would be missing otherwise! World Bosses that takes full clans to remove from their perch! High Build counts at 1000 building pieces and 300 placeables per person so even the builders who don't enjoy PvP have room to breathe and relax with their game. High thrall counts at 6 fighting thralls and 1 mount per person that ensure your base is always guarded against the new purge system.
Our modlist was voted on by players at the start of each season, and we have a channel dedicated specifically to mod requests from our players! As examples, we have: -Indrid's custom races and classes -SvS Extended and SvS 2 -Emberlight -Highmane's Arsenal -Ancient Civilization -Ancient Sorcery -Less Building replacements -Shani's Stuff -Devious Desires -And many more high end character customization mods!
-We also have other systems in place to allow players to have the things other servers either don't allow or don't enforce, like: Kingdoms! With a King, Lord, and Heir ranking you and your clan can claim entire regions and set laws in place that are not only RP enforced but Admin enforced as well!
-Lore that is always growing at player request, so your character can have their names plastered in the server history for all time! A clear cut rules list for our moderators and admins, so players can always see what is accepted and expected from them!
With our community the stories have been great, the combat fantastic, and the memories better than the rest. Our server is geared for high end custom characters and buildings, and has delivered. Come and join, make your stories heard, and spend time in a world where we reward people not for dollhousing, but for RP'ing and interacting with others. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3036155384

Hello all, I've been designing bits and pieces for thingiverse for a few months and have recently broken my printer and I have maybe a dozen items that I would like printing.
At this moment I'm trying to work out if it's financially viable down this route as online services are projecting costs of £250 for 0.5kg of material. If I had space on my credit card I'd just buy a new printer.
I'm designing medieval weaponry, so over the next few weeks will have 5-10 full swords to do, with the possibility of future bits and pieces and probably will continue when I either patch my printer back together or buy a new one.
Example file is an old model here https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6470870/ there are repeated sections explained in the detail.
so wondering what costs would be for that being printed in PLA at 0.2mm layer height, 3 walls, 20% infill. And posted to North Wales. And estimated print time. Cheers.
Edit edit: thought I would add that I do technically have a filament in exchange for models with a friend but that has big lead times, so whilst I can get this model done for like £10, it might be 3 plus months until it can be printed and posted.
Edit edit edit have found 3 printers I'm happy to work with, havent told them all yet. But thank you for your assistance, if there is anyone UK based in Cheshire/Flintshire/Wrexham that can save on me doing postage let me know. Also I don't know how to change flare on mobile, I also can't see the two reply messages on here either. Stupid app

This is post #3 in a multipart series intended to help members (and drive-by authors) make the most of our sub. Each post in the series is focused on a single issue we regularly see in posts. Our purpose is to offer suggestions on how not to annoy everyone, and how to get better responses and engagement from our other members. Today's topic is: Grading Coins.
One of the most common questions asked on this sub is: Should I get my coin graded?
TLDR: No.
Long answer: It depends.
Most of the posts we see on this sub asking if OP should get their coin graded are for coins where the clear, resounding, and unequivocal answer is NO. For instance, modern business-strike coinage will not benefit from a TPG grade and slab. Grading is expensive, and while it certainly has a place in the hobby, there is an almost cult-like fascination with always needing to have coins graded by a third-party grader (TPG). This is a very new phenomenon in the hobby - and by "new" I mean it went from unheard-of to commonplace during the lifetime of most members of this sub. Coin collecting is a hobby which stretches back hundreds of years in its modern form, and probably over a thousand years in some form or other. Modern grading services really got started in the 1970s - although most local coin shops offered grading advice long before that. The "big" ones (PCGS and NGC) got their starts in the mid-1980s. The primary concept was to commoditize coins - making it possible for you to mail-order a coin sight-unseen with confidence as to its greysheet value. Additionally, the TPGs have created a de facto authoritative grading standard and may be the most reliable way to guarantee authenticity. This follows a trend in certain other collectibles, namely sports and collectible gaming cards. This trend largely explains the frequently misguided questions on this sub - a TPG slab is seen, for better or worse, as the "best" place for a coin to end up.
Strangely enough, TPG slabs are rarely popular with medieval and ancient coin collectors. On ancientcoins, for example, you will often see posts about people breaking the coins out of their slab. There are a few reasons for this - but the main one is that the appeal of ancient coins is the ability to hold them in your hand. Careful handling won't damage them - after all, they survived a few thousand years underground. Also, every single nice, shiny ancient coin in someone's collection has already been cleaned - so the same "rules" don't apply to ancient coins as modern mint-state coins.
Now that we have that background out of the way - there are a few good reasons to get a coin graded. Below are the most common reasons to get a coin graded, although this isn't an exhaustive list.

1. Ascertaining a coin's authenticity. This mostly matters if you are buying the coin, and the coin is worth significantly more than the costs to get it graded. However, the seller should be the one getting the coin graded in this case - the slab just allows you to make that purchase with more confidence. Note that there are a lot of convincing FAKE coins in FAKE TPG slabs coming out of China - so just seeing a coin in a slab doesn't make it safe - in fact, a convincing slab can make it harder to authenticate the coin inside. Don't buy any commonly counterfeited coins without understanding how to determine the authenticity of the slabbed coin, and the slab itself.
2. Determining the (semi-)objective condition of the coin. In addition to the actual grade, a TPG will ascertain if there are any issues with the coin, such as damage, repair, cleaning, etc. The condition matters the most when there is a big price jump between grades. Many people like to gamble on jump grades: e.g. sending in a really nice coin where the MS-66 is barely worth the cost of grading, but the price of an MS-67 can jump up by thousands of dollars. It also isn't uncommon for someone to assemble sets of coins with the same (or similar) grade. One of the latest fads is low-ball grades - trying to assemble a set of P01 graded coins.
3. Ensuring or maintaining salability and value. Simply put, it is easier to sell a graded coin as the buyer will have more confidence in its authenticity and grade. However, this mostly matters in the context of significantly valuable coins - it doesn't make sense to spend $30 to grade a $20 coin. A graded coin will usually have a better resale value than raw coin - although the difference is often LESS than the cost of grading for lower value coins.
4. Attributing a variety, error or special designation. This is a bit of a niche in the hobby - especially when it comes to things like Morgan dollar VAMs other highly studied and described coin series die varieties. However, there are also designations which indicate a particularly well-struck coin (full bands dime, full head SLQ, etc.) and which can increase the retail price of a coin.
5. Protection/Sentimental - Arguably, this is a terrible reason to get a coin graded... there are plenty of far less expensive methods to protect a coin which do as well as a TPG slab. That being said - TPGs make pretty solid slabs, and if you want to make sure that Grandma's favorite buffalo nickel is kept just how she left it to you - a professionally sealed slab isn't a terrible choice. A lot of specialty modern bullion also goes straight into slabs - this isn't widely accepted as the best idea, but it is extremely common, nonetheless.
6. Documentation of value for insurance/estate purposes. For popular coins, especially US coins, it is easy to get a fairly exact value of a known coin with a known grade. Having this level of certainty PLUS having your coins documented as part of a TPG registry can help simplify the process of documenting an estate or making an insurance claim.

Is there a rule of thumb for a minimum value where it is worth grading a coin? Not really - although considering that it costs $30 (or more) to have a coin graded, most people set the minimum value for grading at $100-$200, since you'll never recoup the cost of grading for anything less than that.
Buying graded coins - There is a common wisdom of "buy the coin, not the slab." When TPGs first started grading coins, there was no such thing as an internet marketplace with high-quality, high-resolution photos of the coins being sold. The idea of commoditizing coins was to be able to conduct business via mail without seeing and holding the coin in your hand. That is still a consideration, but you should also consider this: two coins of the exact same grade may have VERY different eye appeal. This isn't because grading standards are super-subjective - in fact, quite the opposite. Grading companies have a fairly strict standard - and that standard theoretically focuses on objective physical characteristics such as wear or damage, rather on some standard of "this coin looks prettier than that coin" (although, they clearly do take eye-appeal into consideration for the net grade of a borderline coin.) That means that you are really better off seeing the coin (ideally in-person) before you buy it. It isn't uncommon for a collector to pass on higher graded coins because it looks less visually pleasing than lower-graded coin, due to strange toning, type of weadamage, or other conditions. Indeed, many collectors will specifically buy details-graded coins over MS coins to save a considerable amount of money.
What does it cost to grade? This can be confusing for someone who hasn't sent coins to a TPG before. Many people will have a better experience by having their local coin shop, who is a member of NGC/PCGS, send their coins in for grading (or walking them through the process.) Most of the time they will charge a small fee to do this, plus the actual cost of shipping and grading. This takes the guess work out of it. If you send the coin in yourself, make sure you read the guide on the grader's website carefully. Most of the time, there is a tiered system where the grading cost depends on the value of the coin, plus some other factors (is it a US or world coin, is it gold, how fast do you want it back, do you want a special attribution, etc.)
Reference: Who are the TPGs?

1. PCGS and NGC are the two most reputable TPGs. PCGS is often regarded as the better (stricter) grading company for US coins. NGC is pretty good with US coins and is regarded as doing a better job with world coins. You can't really go wrong with either one.
2. ANACS is also a solid company. Market values for ANACS coins are generally a bit less than PCGS- or NGC-graded equivalents, but ANACS fees are a little cheaper.
3. ICG is less popular, as it is considered less consistent than the three aforementioned but is accepted by eBay.
4. CAC used to only be a service that evaluates coins graded by a TPG (awarding green stickers to those considered high end for their grade, and gold stickers for those considered under-graded), but recently has been offering its own limited grading services as well.
5. There are lots of disreputable TPGs. Anyone can buy slabs and make fancy labels for them. So, generally speaking, coins graded by any TPG not mentioned here should be treated as raw - the grade will likely be inflated, and issues such as cleaning or artificial toning may be ignored.

TL;DR:

The "woo-woo" is essential to understanding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Many of us have an aversion to discussion of "the woo" because that's how we've been influenced to think.
Edit to add: I don’t think science is mistaken. I believe ‘woo’ is a placeholder term for aspects too mired in stigma for investigators to address. If we can honestly examine ‘the woo’ and accept the null hypothesis, then we will have furthered our understanding of the phenomena, even if by a negligible margin.

Claims:

I would posit that sufficiently advanced civilizations would have developed the capacity to 'unwind' the energy of their material bodies, creating low-entropy, intelligent-energy complexes that can exist outside of space-time. What we call Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UFOs, aliens, sprites, angels, demons, gods, fairies, djinn, etc.) are these intelligent-energy complexes interacting with humanity using a psycho-spiritual methodology of expanding consciousness in order to promote our capacity to induce the same states of low-entropy, intelligent-energy.
I would further posit that there is an ongoing disinformation campaign designed to stigmatize discussion on the Physics of Energy as it relates to UAP. I would encourage readers of this post to contact their elected officials and request they subpoena individual contractors and unelected officials, compel them to testify under oath as to their knowledge of;

• stigma/disinformation program(s);
• reverse-engineering, patent, and/or capitalization program(s) of found/retrieved craft;
• campaign(s) to prevent the US Government from exercising 'Eminent Domain' over found/retrieved craft, reverse-engineered technologies, patents, and/or capital;
• treaties with extra-national organizations –made without congressional oversight– to fund and perpetuate these activities to defraud and/or cause injury to Citizens of the United States.

Testimony:

J. Robert Oppenheimer: We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to enquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.
US Representative Anna Paulina Luna: Does the Department of Energy currently work with Joint Special Operations Command? Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm: Yes we do.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. [...] Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Max Planck: As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
Werner Heisenberg: The universe is not composed of physical things, but of things that exist in a strange realm, beyond space and time. These things are not material, but immaterial; they are forms, structures, and patterns, or, to use a more technical term, they are information.
Erwin Schrödinger: The sensation of color cannot be accounted for by the physicist’s objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so. We could at best attain an objective knowledge of what nerve fibers are excited and in what proportion, perhaps even to know exactly the processes they produce in certain brain cells—whenever your mind registers the sensation of yellow. But even such intimate knowledge would not tell us anything about the sensation of color.
Garry Nolan: When you start to look into UFOs, the ‘woo’ is just around the corner. [...] To be clear [...] the nuts and bolts "Hollywood alien" concept should be expected to be a far cry from whatever reality might have in store for us. In other words, presupposing the outcome (a variant of debunking) would be a mistake. You know what they say about the word "assume". 😇 I'll put Arthur C. Clarke's "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" up against the expected retort from others of "Extraordinary claims etc" any day of the millennia.
Diana Pasulka: It is rational to approach the topic like this: in the 1400s people were using religious frameworks to describe what they saw in the sky. Today, people do the same thing, but now we live in an ostensibly ‘secular’ society and have achieved flight, so when people see unidentified aerial phenomena, they think of drones or something like stealth aircraft, and maybe UFOs.
Jacques Vallee: It would be nice to hold on to the common belief that the UFOs are craft from a superior space-civilization […]. Unfortunately, however, the theory that flying saucers are material objects from outer space manned by a race originating on some other planet is not a complete answer. However strong the current belief in saucers from space, it cannot be stronger than the Celtic faith in the elves and the fairies, or the medieval belief in lutins, or the fear throughout the Christian lands, in the first centuries of our era, of demons and satyrs and fauns. Certainly, it cannot be stronger than the faith that inspired the writers of the Bible—a faith rooted in daily experiences with angelic visitation.
Karl Nell: I guess I would draw an analogy, though, for people that believe in a certain faith tradition, whatever that faith tradition is, and hold to that and subscribe to that in a very serious and devout way. And sort of pose the question, even for folks of that ilk –and I would count myself as one– if you're confronted with the reality of your religious belief system, like the reality of the metaphysical, an angel, a messenger from God, what have you, that's going to be a sea-state change in your way of dealing with reality, even though you already believe it. So it's one thing to believe, and it's another to know.
Lue Elizondo: Somber, meaning serious. Not, not like Hollywood portrays people partying in the streets and silliness like that. I think you would have some people perhaps turning to religion more so. You might have some people turning away from it. I think you’re gonna have … at that point, the philosophical and theological questions will be raised and people will have some serious soul-searching to do, no pun intended.

Perspective:

<–∞– Excerpt from Rumi's A Great Wagon –∞–>

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.

Howdy folks!
We all love Mcdies, but McDonald's is not the same as something exotic like eating Durians. The same distinction needs to happen to isekais where we should separate the ones that we crave because of familiarity with conceivably extra seasoning (同) from the ones that we desire because it's unique and lean into the unknown (異)
I created a page that explains this in-depth, but I will paste the text version of it below:
https://www.ahusbandoutofthisworld.com/asekai-vs-isekai
For instance, we would consider Isekai Cheat Magician to be quite bland for an isekai. However, for an asekai, it fulfills its duty of being a familiar fantasy that anyone can mindlessly enjoy. Some people eat the same thing every day so this type of Anime would be right up their alley on familiarity alone; like a comfy warm blanket that never makes you uncomfortable.
On the other extreme is the wanderlust amongst us who can't sit still and things get boring quickly. Sure, there's nothing "truly" new unless you go full in experimental which can become nonsensical, but if you have enough new angles on something, it becomes unique in our opinion. Being unique does not necessarily mean better either, but for people who just want to see something new, sometimes that factor alone is entertaining enough.
These two are extreme examples, but we believe they help set the spectrum where most people live within. Some will fluctuate on the spectrum as well, like watching back-to-back asekais will likely make you crave for an isekai to spice it up or the other way around too. With that said, what we're trying to achieve here is a better classification system, as right now “Isekai” has become such a broad term that it's cracking under its own weight and generating a bad rep, not necessarily because of bad content, but improper classification.

What makes it an asekai?

Having three or more similar characteristics portrayed from this list is a stronger indication that the series is asekai. That is unless the series does bring new angles to given characteristics. From parodying it to blatantly making it mundane to shift focus to more important characteristics, there are many ways to “isekai“ it. With that said, if the series puts all of its eggs in one basket, that might not be enough to warrant calling it an isekai.
This example is from a non-isekai series, but it perfectly summarizes what a fresh angle is: Goblin Slayer’s portrayal of goblins and the world impact they cause makes it unique, despite the series races, magic, economy, setting, and world being heavily lifted from the commonly know mythology.
MC(s): Connection/transfer between worlds Truck-kun? Did a star polygon or something akin to it appear underneath the MC(s), and they were whisked away?
MC(s): Low Libido/Lack of relationship Is the MC(s) always shying away from some action? Not because they are celibate, but rather they just seem overly shy that never seem to progress anywhere?
MC(s): Weak-to-overpowered As the name says, does the MC(s) start weaker than everyone else, and grow to be overpowered than pretty much anyone else?
Mythology: Economy/Guilds/Professions Adventurer guild exists and offer the same usual quests you would find in a video game? Does the guild look like a medieval inn?
Mythology: Language Does the MC automatically understand the language of the new world? Is there any world lore to explain how the MC learns the language?
Mythology: Magic Star Polygons or something akin to that behind, below, or in the palm of the caster? Do they scream the spells? Do they use blue magic potions to restore mana? Is magic something only a select few know? Often something you can only tangibly use after going to a specialized school?
Mythology: Politics Are monarchies the only thing around? Is the MC(s) summoned by monarchy magicians or the closely tied church to be used at the summoning monarchy will? Usually to defeat a great evil?
Mythology: Race Does it include elves, dwarves, and halflings and they are all "Good"? Does the same apply to dark elves, orcs, goblins, demons, vampires, etc and are they "bad"? Are there lizard-people and are they neutral to everyone?
Mythology: Religion Does the religion of the world resemble Christianity?
Mythology: World Setting Is the world set in a medieval-like, low-tech setting? Does the MC(s) start in a town where things are more peaceful, like the starter town of an MMORPG?
Plot: Harem-esque/Collection Is the MC(s) collecting characters to follow him around? Does it turn into some sort of Harem?
Plot: Good (Angels) vs Evil (Demons) Did the MC(s) were brought in to defeat a demon or conquer something evil? Will the MC become a hero? Is the church closely associated with the whole thing?

Recommended Asekais

Arifureta: First episode was legit isekai material. The rest not so much. Like holding a filled-to-brim seven-layer taco, but as soon as you take the first bite, everything crumbles. But if you’re like us, you’d still eat the crumbles even though it’s now just a mess.
Death March kara Hajimaru Isekai Kyousoukyoku: THE DEFINITION OF ASEKAI! It was our first one too! without realizing it! And so we have dear memories of it. Like buying fried chicken from your hometown grocery store or bread from the corner bakery near your home, you can feel a warm blanket over you, making you feel cozy and protected when you take a chomp of its freshly made goodness. We don't recommend eating that all day though.
Hyakuren no Haou to Seiyaku no Valkyria: Some interesting Norse mythology sprinkled in, otherwise it’s a brother of the smartphone asekai. We give it a mid to low asekai tier.
Isekai Cheat Magician: If you haven’t watched much anime, then this one is a good way to get caught up with the latest trends. It’s like eating a gas station egg sandwich. As in it’s a gamble whether you will enjoy it, but it would be a badge of honor telling other people you powered through it.
Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu: Tickled our monkey brain. Recommended. We’re still looking for a Rem Galleu figure (with her original outfit, not the wedding dress version.)
Isekai Ojisan: Honest fun seeing this shift in MC perspective and storytelling perspective, but doesn’t really push any boundaries on the mythology. We would watch Season 2 no problem.
Isekai Shokudou: Want to get hungry? This is how you get hungry. All of its eggs are in one basket and soon will become delicious-looking fried eggs. I would bet the illustrators on this show gained a few pounds after spending so much time drawing food. At least we would.
Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni: You can guess where this goes, but if you want to get lost in a power fantasy surrounded by eye-candy girls then this will tickle your monkey brain. If you are on the male spectrum, then nut before watching the show so that your mind isn't filled with any ecchi desires, otherwise it will impact your enjoyment.
Kenja no Mago: Isekai Cheat Magician with a different coat of paint. If you liked watching that, you will like this one too.
Maou-sama, Retry!: They should retry making this huehuehuehue (laughs in Brazilian.) Jokes aside, it’s a mid asekai, or bottom-tier isekai.
Outbreak Company: Like a cousin of GATE. It had great potential to become an isekai but lost enough steam with each new episode that it turned asekai. Although we still have fond memories of it so we put it at top-tier asekai.
Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru: Dollar Store version of Konosuba. Still a fun, decent watch on a rainy day when you want to make some popcorn and turn off your brain for some mindless entertainment.
Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Nattemashita: Cozy anime to watch on a snowy day, or if you’re stressed doing all the things and need to get away to a “happy place“ where nothing really happens. Eat a Big Mac or your favorite comfort food while watching this and it will be as relaxing as jumping in a hot tub.

Recommended Isekais

GATE: Some say that it is only an isekai when the MC is traped on another world, but we refuse that notion. We believe it’s about the 異. If it excels at doing something different while exploring a new world, then it should be considered an isekai.
Hai to Gensou no Grimgar: This one deserves a second chance. It fumbled and lost people’s attention and patience, but we still call it an isekai on the grounds for really trying.
Kaifuku Jutsushi no Yarinaoshi: Isekai Revenge Porn. Whatever you think of it, you can’t call it asekai. Also, there’s a murky divide between Ecchi and Hentai. We personally love the edgy feeling of taking ecchi as far as possible without going into Hentai, but we do give them props for not giving a shit to what people think and going all in! You have our respect!
Konosuba: The way Konosuba pokes fun at isekai mythology is truly an EXPLOSION of goodness.
Log Horizon: They go full bet on exploring the mechanics of a new world dictated by MMORPG game design, and by golly, they did. I still remember and treasure the plot surrounding food in the world.
Mushoku Tensei: Does share some of that isekai mythology, but despite that, the plot/MC and some other world elements are so strong it raised this series to our top isekai!
No Game No Life: Early isekai, yet still just as memorable. No Game No Life Zero did hit it right in the feels.
Overlord: Not much to be said because you likely have watched this one already. So damm good.
ReZero: We still have questions as to what determines a milestone and breaks the loop, but aside from that, truly an awesome series.
Sword Art Online: Season 1 is an isekai in our humble opinion, and an outstanding one at that.
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari: We’re been struggling to decide if this is top tier asekai, or if the plot/MC details rise it to really good isekai. As of writing this, we haven’t watched Season 2 & 3 yet, so that remains to be decided.
Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken: We haven’t watched everything yet, but safe to say Rimuru takes the collection type of plot to a whole new level by building his own kingdom. We’ve seen similar world gaming mechanics before, but we think they are used by the MC to drive a plot that is unique enough to stand out.
Youjo Senki: We're not sure how famous this is among the Western crowd, but we love Tanya and the grittiness of the world.
Thank you for taking the time. What do you think? I love both isekais and asekais, but I'm biased towards isekais, especially when they really push unique parameters in the world rules.
Edit 1: Grammarly made it harder to edit the post on Desktop, so used mobile to remove some of the formatting. Should help some.
Edit 2: changed wording "fine dining" to "exotic foods" to better describe the intention. Also, from the comments, this way to attempt to put some sort of division, or subdivision within isekai is not quite working.

I just do not understand the hate for Knox! I must admit I’m not the biggest fan of most of the chickens but Knox, imo, is in a different league!
Such a cool design, he looks like he just came back from a medieval crusade. I stumbled across him on a Nook island recently after restarting my island. I’d never heard of him before and after looking him up all I could find was hatred towards the poor fella.
For me he’s taken the top spot as my fave villager ever.

Platform(s): It was on the iPad (So tablet?) in the App Store
Genre: I suppose it’s a first person game, you can’t really move around and aren’t able to see your character
Estimated year of release: Possibly 2010 (I played it in early 2018)
Graphics/art style: It’s very similar to the graphics style of a game called Phoenix Simulator (created by turbo rocket games), the lighting in the game was very dim though (but only in the area where the egg was) (I’ll explain more in the other details area)
Notable characters: The only character was the Phoenix, I don’t recall there being any dialogue
Notable gameplay mechanics: In order to hatch the Phoenix egg, you had to use one of those flame fans to make the flames hotter so the egg could incubate. After hatching the egg, you could teach the Phoenix how to fly
Other details: I’m looking for this game because it was removed from the App Store, I don’t remember the name and due to it being removed it isn’t part of the previous apps area, I also cannot for the life of me find anything relating to the game no matter what I search up
In the area where the Phoenix is hatched, the egg is in the middle of a square room on top of a pedestal which has a fire under it, the walls are made of brick which are reminiscent of medieval castle brick walls, and there are burning torches in the corners of the room
Despite there being torches, the area was pretty dim
The only bright area was outside in the flight practise place, the terrain was flat and there was bright green grass with floating hoops which the Phoenix had to fly through
Also: The Phoenix egg took literal WEEKS to hatch, the incubation process was so long that I recall people in the apps review section telling off the devs about it, I suspect that’s maybe why the game was removed.
As for the phoenixes design, it was similar to Turbo Rocket Games Phoenix model but the game definitely wasn’t created by the same people

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