So my husband and I booked a 10 night Mediterranean cruise on the Norwegian Viva that set sail on May 25. We were stupid and included airfare as part of the package, because they were having a special deal. We also had them set the flight days to 1 day before the cruise and 3 days after the end, so we could have time in Athens and Rome outside of the sailing dates. The flight to Athens was a complete mess; here’s what happened:

• We woke up on Wednesday to find that our original flight time had been pushed from 1:20pm to 5:00pm, due to a flight delay on the airline's part (no other explanation given to us). Our next flight was in Chicago at 6pm, and if we left at 5pm EST, we would get there at 5pm CST - tight but doable.
• We get to the airport in the afternoon and find our flight is now delayed to 5:25pm; now we're getting worried about catching that 6pm Chicago flight.
• Continue to sit there and it’s delayed further to 5:45pm; we'd never catch that Chicago flight. We call NCL and they say to talk to the airline (United).
• So we call United, and the best they can tell us is to ask our flight attendant to contact the Chicago flight and hold it for us.
• At this point, it’s all moot, as our first flight is now delayed to 6:25pm, and we would arrive after our Chicago flight.
• It’s roughly 5pm now, and I begin frantically calling NCL and United to try to figure out what we're supposed to do - do we take this first flight and hope for some solution in Chicago? United tells us they have no other flights today that would get us where we need to go (everything is booked) from either our home airport or Chicago and that we would have to stay overnight in Chicago if we go there. Okay, but if we do that, what happens then? United tells us we have to talk to our "travel agent" (e.g. NCL) and have them coordinate our plane tickets.
• So I talk to NCL's "airfare specialists" who were absolutely useless. They could not/would not help us, and just told us to talk to United. They would then forward me to United which ended up going to a voicemail box that told me that my situation would be resolved within 30 days. Awesome.
• I finally found someone at United who thought she could get us from our home airport to Newark, then Amsterdam, then Athens. But she couldn’t finalize the whole thing, because Lufthansa (who were the carriers for our last two legs of flight) would have to sign off on it (I don’t know why, that’s just what I was told).
• I then spoke to a nice gentleman at Lufthansa who said the United lady had fried everything up, but he would fix things - eventually he had us set up for a new set of tickets leaving the next morning that would get us to Athens eventually. I could see the new flights in my United app, and received an email confirmation of them. So we went home, expecting to be able to leave the next day.
• Later that night, I try to check us in. No record of these new tickets. United says they have no idea what I’m talking about. I try to call Lufthansa and their US support line is giving a busy signal (no joke). After multiple attempts, I finally try calling the Canadian support office, who confirmed that they were getting a busy signal too when they tried calling the line; also confirmed that he could see no new tickets in his system and that there was nothing he could do to help us, and that we need to speak to our travel agent.
• I then called NCL's "airfare specialists" again, and they’re shut down for the night. Awesome. So I call the personal cruise consultant line, and get told there’s nothing they can do, I have to wait till the airfare office is open in the morning.
• At this point, it seemed like a risk to try to rely on them to resolve this and get us to Athens in time, as they had been zero help so far, so I just said eff it, and shelled out $3600 for Delta tickets for an airport 2 hours away; we managed to get to Athens in time for the cruise, thankfully.

As for what happened to the new tickets that strangely disappeared - my best guess is that because they were tied to that original confirmation number, when we didn’t show up in Chicago, somehow the whole thing got cancelled, including our new tickets. I don’t know what we could have done differently in this situation to resolve it better.
Another lesson learned - make sure you check what is surrounding your cabin, not just on the sides, but above and below. Our cabin is apparently above a dishwashing station and there is non-stop clattering and a thumping noise from the washing machine. It goes all day from about 5am to midnight. So far our complaints have started an "investigation" - at this point, I would take a downgrade room-wise, so long as it’s quiet. I’m so tired that I’m having trouble getting through our excursions; too exhausted to enjoy them, and we've still got 5 more days to go.
I’m feeling pretty disheartened about this whole trip - we've spent a *lot* of money on this trip, and it’s not the experience I was hoping it would be.

“Golden rules” about buying cheap flights, like booking domestic flights 57 days before the departure date, are no longer valid, as there has been a huge shift in the travel industry in what days were thought the cheapest to booking flights. If a study has not been conducted recently, or only one year ago, do not put too much faith in it; there’s no reason to worry about booking a flight far in advance. The stellar tips below are current.

Check airlines which don’t appear on 3rd party websites

One of the major weaknesses of Internet search engines is that they frequently will not display the flights of all airlines such as Southwest, Frontier, and Allegiant. To solve this problem, use a free resource like Wikipedia to learn which of these airlines operates a certain airport. Visit Wikipedia, go to their airport page, and search for a section called “Airlines and destinations.” You are advised to locate a list of each airline that flies to that airport as well as all the nonstop destinations that airport operates. So, once you become aware of any carriers which did not show up in your first searches, you could now look for flights straight on the airlines’ sites.

Search one-way & round-trip flights

Once upon a time the majority of round-trip flights were cheaper than booking two one-way airfare flights. That’s no longer the situation today. For instance, Southwest and Jetblue set their prices for their flights on a one-way basis; and a round-trip flight is only the sum of the 2 one-way rates. So, you’ll want to check one-way flight rates to ensure you buy the best round-trip deal by pairing two one-way flight tickets, probably on two different carriers.

Look for one seat at a time

There exists a virtually unknown quirk in how carriers price seats which could result in greater prices if searching for many passengers as opposed to a single ticket. Airlines put their inventory in fare classes, or called buckets, which are not always obviously visible to customers. For instance, there may be just three seats left in a fare bucket for $300 each, and the next higher bucket may be $400 for each ticket. But, if you happen to look for four seats, each one would end up falling into the $400 fare bucket.

Search alternate airports

At times the cost of a certain flight is extremely high that it could be a good idea to use your second or even third choice of airports. For instance, you perhaps are aware of the New York area’s 3 biggest airports: New York-JFK, Newark (EWR), and New York-LaGuardia. But did you know that Stewart (SWF), Westchester (HPN), and Long Island McArthur (ISP) are also in the region? Several airlines permit you to look for all airports in a region by just specifying the destination as the city itself rather than a certain airport. The ITA Matrix tool is also a great way to look for close by if you do not know the area too well, and Google Flights offers a “Nearby airports” option to assist in this search, too.

Don’t always travel direct

Being flexible with your route you’ll be flying is another way to find a cheap flight. For instance, at times it’s cheaper to travel to London and use a budget airline to Amsterdam instead of flying directly to Amsterdam from the actual departure city.
To utilize this approach, learn how much it costs to fly directly to the target destination. Next, open Google Flights, type in the destination’s details like country name to see the rates to nearby airports. If the difference happens to exceed $150 dollars, find out how much it actually is to fly from the 2nd airport to the main destination.

Leverage elite status

Although having elite status will not allow you to book flights at a discount, you still could use it to save money another way. But with elite status with the majority of airlines let you to standby for earlier flights or perform same-day verified flight modifications. This can permit you to buy a discounted airline flight at an awful time, only to modify it to the flight you really want but at no extra charge. Even without elite status, the charge to standby or make a same-day verified flight modification might be less than the airfare difference between the flight you truly want and the lowest option that day.

Use the correct credit card

The right credit card may very well provide you major savings on flight tickets in a number of various ways. For instance, The Platinum Card from American Express now offers 5x points on all airline bookings made directly with the carrier or with Amex travel, worth 10 cents each dollar spent, based on TPG’s recent valuations. That card in addition offers the International Airfare Program, providing cardholders discounts for premium class flights on certain airlines.

Search for free hotels and stopover tours

Whenever an airline imposes a lengthy layover because of its very tight schedule, the airline will usually offer a free STPC, or stopover paid by carrier, which can include a free tour or hotel room as well.

Don’t mind the myths

The initial and main fact to know whenever locating a cheap flight is there exists no magic trick for achieving this objective. There are however a ton of myths floating online about certain ways to seek cheap flights. Without doubt, you must have run into a lot of them while searching for the best flight deals.
Airline companies use advanced technology like computers and pricing algorithms for determining flight prices and offer deals based on various factors like time of the year, weather, time of day, passenger demand, fuel prices, competitor prices, and others. These myths and similar ones will lead you astray.

Be flexible in respect to your travel times & dates

Airline flight rates vary a lot depending on upcoming holidays, day of the week, and time of the year. August is a major month for flying to Europe, and plenty of people are planning to travel somewhere hot during winter or fly while the kids are taking a break from school.
In summation, if you’re traveling when everyone is also flying, then logically your flight price will be higher.

Flexibility is everything for cheap plane tickets & cheap flight deals

The more flexible you are, you’ll get better cheap flight deals you can book. Here’s a new way of doing things: Instead of deciding where to go next, choosing dates, and then searching for the cheap plane tickets to certain destinations on those particular dates, consider first selecting your destination and dates based on the best going deals available. By exercising greater flexibility where you travel and the specific dates you fly, you will have a far better opportunity to find cheaper airfare.

Book first, think later for cheap flight finder cancellation

Take complete advantage of the free 24-hour cancellation window while purchasing flights. Because of the Department of Transportation’s strict regulations, any cheap flight booked to or from the United States could be canceled without worry of incurring a penalty, for 24 hours after the flight’s reservation; it must be booked no less than one week before the flight’s departure. Yes, it’s a very good idea to use a cheap flight finder these days. What this means is that if you buy a flight and the ticket price drops within 24 hour window, you could cancel the original flight and purchase the new, less expensive one.
Warning: the 24-hour rule can only work for flights directly bought with the airline or with booking engines such as Priceline.

Set a price alert for all cheap flight tickets

You can choose emails or push notices to your cell phone which will tell you exactly when the flight you are interested in has increased or decreased in price. This may be a great way for getting the best possible price on all cheap flight tickets in the near future. You can do this on the majority of search travel sites and OTAs. Why miss out on potential easy savings? You can then always locate flight tickets cheap when you need them.

Buy in foreign currency to get cheap flight ticket

Because regular fliers travel abroad now and then, you could switch the currency on the airline’s website to determine if the price would be listed in other monies.
You can save big this way. For example, if an airline increased the flight price in US dollars but not in Indian rupee, you could book flights at half the price! But this may require altering either the location or language on the airline’s website; or you may change to the home country’s URL, where ticket prices are generally cheapest by searching in its local currency. This is how you can in fact find cheap flight ticket to wherever you like to travel.

Sign up for an airline’s travel rewards credit card for cheap flight booking

One of the smartest ways to take full advantage from travel credit cards is to use the hefty sign-up bonuses. For example, if you sign up for a new travel card when the airline is offering unusually high quantity of bonus miles, you could score yourself literally thousands of dollars worth of reward points by just opening the card.
Although several of these travel cards could have higher annual fees, a big sign-up bonus may amount for months or even years worth of cheap flight booking for you and your whole family.

The cheapest day to book flights

Even though you might see great deals flashing on your computer screen for international airfare three to six months out, if you are flying during peak times, or perhaps your plans are not very flexible, it’s smart to begin searching sooner. The cheapest day to book flights actually evades many flyers.
This does not automatically mean you ought to purchase tickets when hitting the 6-month window; hold on till you book cheap flights online. And, just ignore the old advice that travel experts often repeat regarding booking the cheapest flights at 3:00 a.m. on Tuesday; that used to be true but now airfare prices are updated often and great deals could pop up any given moment when least expected. So, now you can secure a flight cheap most of the time.

Utilize momondo to book cheap flight air tickets

Upon finding what you imagine to be the cheapest flight wherever, try searching on Momondo; it will search dozens of OTAs; bear in mind that it may not display the cheapest fares seen on large OTAs and Google Flights. But you got a greater chance to find cheap air tickets sooner this way. Otherwise, only one cheap air ticket may be attained, if tried another manner. Now you too can enjoy when you book cheap flight tickets when you need them.

Fly cheap during the low season

Have you ever scanned flight prices from the USA to Europe’s insanely popular cities in August? Surpassing quite easily $1000.00, they can frighten seasoned and expert travelers alike.
But are those the same ticket prices in February? So, fly cheap from major hubs in USA to Europe, you could often locate roundtrip flights throughout the winter months for less than $400 or even $300!

Fly basic economy for cheap air flights

A basic economy flight ticket could save you money, if you do not require checked luggage or advance seat selection. Pay only for what you need. In theory, you’ll achieve cheap air flights via this option.

Enroll in the airline’s loyalty program for cheap airfare

If you fly one particular airline often, join its loyalty program in order to earn points each time you go anywhere. Then, you can redeem such points for upgrades or cheap airfare in the future. If you accumulate enough miles and achieve a considerable status with the airline, you might receive free upgrades. Now, you can take fuller advantage of cheap air fare whenever you require it.

Skiplag to discover hidden-city cheap airfares & last minute flights

Hidden-city ticketing happens by booking a flight to a place beyond your final destination, and then end your flight on the layover city. This could help you in getting cheap airfares as well as best last minute flights to most destinations. Think about it: can you imagine a better, more creative way to book cheap air fares while searching the Internet?

Prolong your layovers for cheapest flight tickets

Sometimes only by extending a layover a few days in another city in-between, you can score cheapest flight tickets to your original destination. In conclusion, more often than not, you’ll usually find the cheapest flight ticket by following this method consistently. Why not? A lot of people are discovering that they are by accident getting the cheapest flight via the extended layovers.

Don’t overlook sales for cheapest flight booking

Airlines are frequently offering amazing deals which you may jump on fast enough and save yourself hundreds of dollars on your next flight. Sign up for your favorite airline’s newsletter to be on top of their latest flight deals. This is yet another way to know about the cheapest flight booking that becomes available whenever.

Focus on going across the ocean for cheap fly tickets

If you are thinking to visit a distant location, it could be less expensive to book one ticket to the main hub, and then a second ticket from there to your final destination. For example, if you wish to fly to Alhambra, Spain, it’s probably cheaper to book one roundtrip flight from your home to Madrid and a second roundtrip ticket from Madrid to Alhambra than it would be to buy a ticket to Alhambra on one itinerary. In essence, you’ll end up with cheap fly tickets by following the above example.

Don’t overlook destinations with low cost carriers to get cheapest flights

Carriers such as Frontier, AirTran, and Southwest all drive down airfares along their routes. So, it may be quite wise to travel a bit longer to a larger airport with low-cost carriers, because even major carriers flights will most likely be cheaper. Using this method regularly, you are more likely to find the cheapest flights to most if not all your destinations. Why not take advantage of low cost flights whenever possible?

Avoid Friday, Sunday flights, & traditional air travel days

This may mean going away before and returning later than usual, or even flying exactly on the holiday. Pelletier, the air travel specialist, says you can save up to 50% by simply flying Christmas Eve or Day. She said: “We saved $300 per ticket around Thanksgiving for our family of four by flying out the Saturday before Thanksgiving and coming back the Saturday after. Not everyone can swing that with their work schedules, so my advice is to leave Thanksgiving day and return on Saturday for cheaper fares.”

Begin with a reputable flight search engine to find cheapest international flights

While searching for a flight, the initial thing you will wish to do is determine which airlines run a certain route and get an estimated price on the biggest carriers. Opposed to individually visiting all of these airlines’ sites, begin by looking for a website which will provide results from many airlines and different combinations of carriers. You may end up with the cheapest international flights this way. So, you could start with Expedia or another such as Orbitz, Hotwire, Travelocity, and Cheap Tickets. Do not ignore Google Flights, which, though a very powerful search engine, know that it’s not a booking platform and can’t buy a flight ticket there. This is how you could find cheapest flights to many popular locations.

Be flexible where you go to book discount flights

If for some reason or another you cannot be flexible with the time factor of your flight, then try to be flexible with your destinations. It’s ideal to be both. However, you still can save a lot of money and book discount flights by being flexible with either factor.
You don’t have to conduct manual searches, going city by city and day by day. Websites such as Google Flights, Skyscanner, and Momondo provide explore tools and permit you to add your nearest airport and see a world map with all the possible flights on it. This helps you to quickly compare many destinations with no need to brainstorm each potential option.

Fly budget airlines/carriers

Many years ago, you were generally stuck flying with traditional costly airlines. That’s not true anymore. Budget airlines today service both short and medium-haul routes all over the world.
For example, AirAsia provides incredible cheap flight deals around Australia and Asia for less than $150 dollars! Indian and Middle Eastern air carriers sell cheap flight tickets throughout Africa and the subcontinent.

Book early: how to find the cheapest flights

You can discover how to find the cheapest flights by booking early. Although flight rates continue climbing the nearer you get to departure, there exists a great spot along the way when airline companies start to reduce or increase flight prices based on demand. Do not wait till the last moment but do not book too far in advance. The ideal time to buy your flight ticket is about 2 to 3 months prior to your departure, or even about 5 months prior if you’re flying there in their peak season.

Demographics: White Male, Mother has Bachelors of Science, Family income of 98k, Title 1 School, Small town (~16k residents)
Stats: 11 APs - Calc AB & BC, Bio, APUSH, Euro, Gov, Psych, Lang, Lit, Chem, Physics C I assume all scores will be a 5.
3.98 unweighted gpa 4.54 Weighted gpa (0.333 weight for honors classes & 1.0 for AP)
Currently 5th in class, hope to get 1st or 2nd next year
36 ACT Composite (36 for all sub scores)
ECs: 1) Speech & Debate - Freshman Year 2) DECA - Sophomore-Senior Year (President) 3) Community Service Club - Junior Year 4) NHS - Junior & Senior Years 5) JV Tennis - Sophomore-Senior Year 6) Supermilage - Senior Year 7) Robotics? - Maybe Senior Year 8) Private Pilot License: - received my pilots license on my 17th birthday. Less than 500 pilots are 17 in the world. This took me over a year to complete and is my passion 9) Mitchell Flight Club: Elected Club secretary by over 40 members. I manage intra club communications. This club has 2 airplanes and hangars. I help coordinate monthly meetings aswell. 10) Projects: - currently working on designing a wind tunnel, have made model rockets, worked with 3D printing, made rc planes, arduinos, some coding, plan on designing parts to make my car more fuel efficient by lowering drag coefficient.
Summer programs: 1) Missouri Scholars Academy: - Top 300 students in Missouri are selected to go to this month long program at mizzou. Every Missouri student has a chance to get in. 2) Boys State: I plan on running for governor but I have not participated in it yet 3) Naval Academy Summer Program 4) Air Force Summer Program 5) Aerospace Academy: Weeklong program in which I work alongside aerospace interns and develop spacecraft equipment.
Awards: 1) Various school recognition awards 2) 1st 2nd and 5th at DECA districts competitions 3) 3rd at DECA State 4) Did not podium but I attended DECA internationals 5) AP recognition 6) NMSQT Finalist probably* (1490 PSAT) 7) Private Pilot License
LORs: Very strong. I have a very good relationship with my teachers
Essays: Quite good, not Shakespeare but pretty good.
Intended Major: Aerospace Engineering
About me: I am a student with a total passion for space and rocketry. I love aviation and I am a pilot.
If anyone has any questions or wants me to go into more depth please let me know! -Drew

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

I have an Australian PPL and looking to continue CPL in Canada. Can I do CPL training with FLVC or do I need to formally convert to Canadian PPL? I’m getting different answers from different schools.
Anyone with experience with Canadian Flight Centre in BC? Their coordinator seems to be very helpful in answering questions just want to know if the instructors there are good too.
How many flying days do we usually get in winter in BC, ON, and NB? I’m thinking if it’s worthy to start training in winter or wait til spring. In Melbourne where I got my PPL, don’t get much flying days
Thank you very much

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Synopsis:
Juliette Contzen is a lazy, good-for-nothing princess. Overshadowed by her siblings, she's left with little to do but nap, read … and occasionally cut the falling raindrops with her sword. Spotted one day by an astonished adventurer, he insists on grading Juliette's swordsmanship, then promptly has a mental breakdown at the result.
Soon after, Juliette is given the news that her kingdom is on the brink of bankruptcy. At threat of being married off, the lazy princess vows to do whatever it takes to maintain her current lifestyle, and taking matters into her own hands, escapes in the middle of the night in order to restore her kingdom's finances.
Tags: Comedy, Adventure, Action, Fantasy, Copious Ohohohohos.
Chapter 245: A Clockwork Wish
The quiet streets of Hartzwiese stood in contrast to the lights of the many inns, bars and taverns.
Despite its modest size, the town boasted as many drinking establishments as there were adventurers somehow drunk enough to be booted from the guild hall. And yet for all the bright lanterns singing from the windows, they paled in comparison to the moonlight as it graced the steps before me. A white carpet ushering me towards a tavern Apple was now using as a stables, and where I could enjoy a complementary room, courtesy of the fact I now owned it.
But before I could put my day’s labours behind me, there was still an important task I had to do.
The most important.
Rewarding my loyal handmaiden, who throughout these arduous days had remained firm and true as much as the sword by my side.
Indeed, no ill deed went unpunished, and no good service went unrewarded.
Why … she even knew the same.
Stopping before a large fountain in the centre of the town square, Coppelia held her palm out towards me as she eyed the faintly glittering surface.
“Gimme change,” she said brightly.
“Change?”
“I want to toss a coin into the fountain~”
My mouth opened wide.
“E-Excuse me! I know very well you possess coins of your own! Furthermore, I’ll not give you money from our hard earned hazelnut croissant fund merely to quite literally toss it away!”
“It’s not throwing it away. It’s making a wish.”
“A wish?”
“Mmh~ drop a coin into a fountain. Get a wish. An absolute bargain. Haven’t you tried it before?”
“Coppelia, I’ve no need to drop coins into fountains. I ring a bell. That’s how my wishes come true.”
“Well, do you have the bell with you?”
I paused.
“... No.”
“There you go, then! Until you get your bell back, you’ll need to toss away coins for your wishes.”
She beamed with childish expectation, palm still outstretched, fully expecting me to humour her request.
Well, sadly for Coppelia, I was not so easily moved!
Our personal finances went into maintaining a minimal standard of living! And that meant every coin we had to spare went into purchasing premium apples and cinnamon rolls! It would be unconscionable of me to allow it to be spent so frivolously!
“Staaaaaaaaaaaare~”
I rolled my eyes.
“... Fine, one copper crown,” I said, rummaging through my bottomless pouch. “Really now, this is hardly a djinn you’re bribing. I’m surprised you wish to add to the fountain and not merely scoop up what’s there.”
“Hey! I have standards! … I don’t like copper, it’s less shiny than silver and gold and gets in the way when I rummage through my ill-gotten gains.”
I offered Coppelia a sigh along with the small coin.
She accepted it with a giggle. As she turned to the fountain, the stars twinkled from her eyes more than the surface of the clear water.
Plop.
It vanished into the depths.
A small proof of our hardship, now given to the fountain to judge and a magpie to steal come the morning.
“And what wish do you hope to acquire through a less shiny copper crown?”
Coppelia merely smiled.
No word left her lips as her turquoise eyes gazed at the fountain’s disturbed surface. She herself was motionless but for the soft wind tugging at the ends of her fluffy golden hair.
And then–she twirled on the spot.
Arms spinning around, she raised them out and stopped like a melodramatic ballerina.
“World domination! I shall subjugate all squishy life under my cute, clockwork heel!”
“Please pick a different wish,” I replied, waving her declaration away as I would a plain chouquette. “World domination has already been chosen by half the world’s rulers. There’s not enough wishes in any fountain to accommodate them all.”
“... Got it! I’ll take an apple strudel!”
“You can wish for something that isn’t already in our possession.”
“In that case, I’ll take an apple strudel from every bakery in the world!”
I nodded. Better. Especially as I was far more dependable than any wishing fountain.
Indeed, as soon as I returned to the Royal Villa, I’d order a squire to go fetch an apple strudel from every bakery in the world as part of some inane quest!
“But what about you?” she asked, never knowing the suffering and hardship her casual request had just caused somebody not me. “Don’t you have any wishes for the totally legitimate wishing fountain?”
I held a hand to my chest, scoffing with a princess’s dignity.
“Ohohoho … for the fountain? No. I’ve no need for a fountain to make my wishes come true, for I have my own strength of purpose. And that is enough to grant all I desire. The prosperity of my kingdom. The health of my family. And the loyalty of my subjects.”
Coppelia leaned towards me, her smile appraising my own.
“Reeaaaally?”
I reacted with the indignation such scepticism deserved … and also a quick glance around me as I eyed for witnesses.
“... W-Well, if I could maybe have one thing, it would be an opportunity to finish reading my current novels. I have been stuck on the same pages for far too long.”
“That really annoys you, huh?”
“I-It’s terrible, Coppelia! At this rate, I’ll need to re-read some of them … and frankly, it’s enough of a strike against my fragile heart to do so once! There is only so much research a princess can take!”
My loyal handmaiden giggled. She wouldn’t if she knew the dangers that overexposure to the world of bestselling adventure romances could cause. I’d seen noblewomen collapsing at court more often with a copy of Scandals Of The Incorrigible Viscount in hand than any knife to the back.
A moment later–
Plop.
A second copper crown was casually tossed into the fountain.
“Done~” said Coppelia with a satisfied clap. “I’ve made your wish for you!”
My mouth widened as I stared between the fresh ripples and her mischievous smile.
“E-Excuse me! Didn’t you say you had no copper crowns?”
“I only said I didn’t like them. I never said I didn’t have just the one lying around. Isn’t that great? Now it means we both get our wishes! Apple strudels and scandalous books galore!”
“C-Coppelia! That is an entirely unnecessary waste of a copper crown … and more besides, I could have wished for a dragon’s hoard!”
“I mean, you could. But if you thought people were a problem before, wait until they know you’re even richer than a normal princess. You’d have burglars breaking into your vault even while you’re still busy swimming around in the pile of gold.”
“Please. That happens regardless of whether or not a dragon’s hoard is involved. And if it ever became a true issue, well … I’d simply solve it by hiring a dragon.”
“You’d hire a dragon to guard a dragon’s hoard?”
“Why not? There’s clearly no better proven warden.”
“Yep, that’s true. They’d even guard it against you. How would you get the treasure back?”
“I wouldn’t. It’d simply exist to slowly erase the population of burglars from my kingdom. That would be its true value.”
Coppelia looked up in thought.
“Huh. That sounds suspiciously like something which could work.”
I smiled with quiet pride. But not too quiet. I had my pride, after all.
“Ohohoh … naturally, I’m not only a princess. I’m a genius … but since I’m mostly a princess, this also means ensuring my retainers are rewarded for their service, and bribed concerning any slovenly faces I may have made.”
“Now that’s the level of subtlety I like. Negative numbers.”
“Well, negative numbers is also how I value most fae trinkets. But perhaps you can find worth in it.”
Coppelia clapped her hands together and beamed.
“Ooooh~! I smell souvenirs! Did you steal toiletries on the way out of the Fae Realm?”
“I did not steal toiletries! … although if I’d seen any, I possibly may have!”
“So you stole something else? Like cutlery?”
“Coppelia! I do not steal things whenever I visit a different plane of existence!”
“Why not? Everyone else does.”
“I am not ‘everyone’. Even when abducted, I’m still required to display the regal bearing of my station, representing always my kingdom and my family … and there was no cutlery, either.”
“Wow. You must have had an awful time.”
I gave a grim nod.
No toiletries. No cutlery. Not even a branded napkin.
The next time I was indiscriminately abducted to the Fae Realm, I’d ensure I would wander lost until a stack of towels accidentally fell into my arms.
“It was dire. But while I didn’t return empty handed, it was with nothing drawn from a dragon’s hoard or edible like a mound of apple strudels. Regardless, here is a gift acquired from the Spring Queen to add to your collection of trinkets and doodads I have no wish to know about.”
Thus, I reached into my bottomless bag, sweated as I fished for a slender object, and then retrieved a small ring of jade.
Unlike the crystal ring gifted to me by the Winter Queen and now embellished by her sister, the jade ring was adorned only with a pattern of crystalline vines upon the band, lacking any jewel set upon it.
Even so, Coppelia’s eyes lit up like a twin pair of moons.
She pointed at herself.
“Wait, is that for me?”
“Indeed, it is. You may have it.”
“Eh … ehhh?! It actually looks expensive, though! I was expecting something like a postcard!”
I raised a brow.
“If you’d prefer a postcard, I’m sure I could ask for one instead.”
Coppelia appeared speechless. Something so impossible not even a fountain could grant it.
Blinking in disbelief, she reached out and accepted the ring. Without putting it on, she held it against the moonlight, studying its finish.
“Ooooh~ it’s so shiny! … Will I blow up if I wear it?”
“No.” I paused. “At least, I don’t think so.”
Coppelia stopped as the ring met her finger.
“There’s no need to fear,” I added as I took a step away. “It’s a ring gifted by the Spring Queen, and so is imbued also by her magic.”
“I’m not hearing anything which says I won’t blow up.”
“You won’t blow up. Probably. After all, this thing is still little more than a child’s trinket. It contains a single favoured plaything from her court of dreams. The very swing she sat upon during our meeting.”
“The swing?”
“The swing. I believe it functions similarly to the bed. Why not try summoning it in the same manner?”
Deciding she’d paid enough tribute to caution, Coppelia popped the ring on.
She studied herself to ensure she hadn’t melted, before raising her hand in curiosity.
“Sooooo … do I just need to say [Summon Swing] and–woooaahh!!”
Poof.
The moment the words left her lips, she was lifted from the ground as a swing of crystalline leaves and vines appeared where she stood, seating her automatically in the process. Against the dour backdrop of Hartzwiese’s decidedly human streets, it shone with as much vividness as the Spring Queen’s mirror-like wings.
Coppelia blinked, her eyes wide as she wrapped her hands around the ropes of crystallised vines.
And then–
She began to swing.
With only the rustling of her clothes and the fluttering of her hair to disturb the quiet scenery, she proceeded to test the Spring Queen’s plaything, wasting little time before she began to swing like a pendulum, backwards and forwards at greater speeds.
She did not say a word, nor voice any thoughts, and although she wore a smile upon her face, it was no different to one she regularly affixed upon herself.
A moment of doubt struck me.
“N-Naturally, it’s rather unorthodox as a gift. It is no great heirloom or weapon, and rather impractical so far as useful function is concerned. But I imagine the ring itself is worth some value. If you do not want it, I’m certain some curio collector would pay for its novelty value. Regardless, please consider it as a bonus.”
Suddenly, Coppelia leapt off the swing in mid-flight. She skipped a few steps owing to the momentum, yet still pirouetted effortlessly on one foot as she twisted around to face me.
Her widening smile was the only warning I received.
“–Hiieeee?!”
Because the next moment …
I experienced the sensation of being hoisted off my feet.
Oh no.
“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!”
Wrapping her arms around my waist, she easily lifted me up.
A feeling I’d experienced once before. And one I had not forgotten. Terror mixed with only the tiniest drop of excitement met me as I was promptly swung like an errant pillow.
“C-Coooppeeeliaaaa!! M-My priiiinnceess imaaggee!!”
With a girlish smile, Coppelia paid no heed to my meek and delicate cry as she twirled on the spot.
Around and around, my hair billowed behind me as all the town became a blur which helped to hide the many holes and cracks in the walls and windows, until somehow, the other side of my hair became known to the opposite side of my face.
“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~”
Just as I felt the world beginning to take on entirely new colours, she came to a stop.
She placed me down, continuing to smile as I waved away her supporting hands. I stumbled as I chased equilibrium, all the while blowing the many strands of my dark hair away from my mouth. My fingers instinctively went into emergency combing mode.
“I-It seems … uughh … you enjoy … the gift … uuuh … I’m … I’m pleased …”
Coppelia stepped back, arms behind her back as she gave another twirl, this time mercifully without me attached. Like a maiden in a meadow, she lightly skipped around her new magically summoned fae swing, examining its fine spring motifs and crystalline details, before finally turning to me once again.
I leaned away, not least because there were now several versions of her before me.
“Thankies~” she said brightly. “I like this a lot!”
I held my tummy, making sure nothing terrible was about to happen before I replied.
“You’re … uugh … you’re welcome …”
She gave a giggle of amusement at my expense, then seated herself on her new swing once again.
For my part, I rather desperately eyed the direction of my kingdom’s latest acquisition. A tavern which possessed very helpful walls. Even if I had no intention on using the beds within them.
After all–
It wasn’t only Coppelia who had reason to smile tonight.
Indeed … I also had a new and improved bed to enjoy!
Now that my minor detour to this corner of my countryside was complete, my only remaining task was to thoroughly and objectively test the Spring Queen’s magic for myself.
Yes … it was time to indulge my face in the Winter Queen’s pillow once again! To hug a silken duvet now gifted with the scent of an eternal meadow! A moment to thoroughly reward myself as I purposefully shoved any and all dangerous thoughts of tomorrow to the wayside!
And nothing, I knew, could disturb me from my slumber!
That ominous feeling I’d forgotten something important?
Why … I barely even felt it!
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Has anyone flown to Japan recently? My last flight around that area was in 2015 and the turbulence was INSANE! I was traveling alone and in the last row of the plane so perhaps I made it all worse in my head. And it was in November...I've read that winter storms in that area increase turbulence? Anyways, that's why I'm traveling this time in the summer. Hoping it's going to be a better flight....!!

i love this song but i was like, who the hell is shinzo abe? So I popped the lyrics in chatgpt and here's a lil breakdown for yall :)
​

1. Captain Planet: An animated environmental superhero TV series from the 1990s.
2. Arab Spring: A series of pro-democracy uprisings across the Arab world starting in 2010.
3. L.A. riots: Violent protests in Los Angeles in 1992 following the acquittal of police officers filmed beating Rodney King.
4. Rodney King: An African American man whose beating by LAPD officers in 1991 was videotaped and widely broadcast.
5. Deep fakes: AI-generated fake videos that can depict people doing or saying things they never did.
6. Earthquakes: Natural disasters caused by the movement of Earth's tectonic plates.
7. Iceland volcano: Refers to the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010, which disrupted air travel across Europe.
8. Oklahoma City bomb: A domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995.
9. Kurt Cobain: The lead singer of Nirvana who died by suicide in 1994.
10. Pokémon: A media franchise created by Nintendo, featuring video games, trading cards, and an animated series.
11. Tiger Woods: A professional golfer who became famous in the late 1990s and faced personal scandal in the 2000s.
12. MySpace: A popular social networking site in the early 2000s.
13. Monsanto, GMOs: Monsanto is a company known for producing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
14. Harry Potter: A globally popular book series by J.K. Rowling about a young wizard.
15. Twilight: A book and film series about vampires and werewolves by Stephenie Meyer.
16. Michael Jackson dies: The pop star Michael Jackson died in 2009.
17. Nuclear accident, Fukushima, Japan: The 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima following a major earthquake and tsunami.
18. Crimean Peninsula: The region annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014.
19. Cambridge Analytica: A data firm involved in a major Facebook data scandal during the 2016 US elections.
20. Kim Jong Un: The Supreme Leader of North Korea since 2011.
21. Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man: Actor Robert Downey Jr. revitalized his career by playing Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
22. More war in Afghanistan: Refers to the prolonged conflict in Afghanistan that began in 2001.
23. Cubs go all the way again: The Chicago Cubs winning the World Series in 2016 after a 108-year drought.
24. Obama: Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017.
25. Spielberg: Steven Spielberg, a renowned filmmaker.
26. Explosion, Lebanon: Refers to the massive explosion in Beirut in 2020.
27. Unabomber: Ted Kaczynski, who conducted a nationwide bombing campaign in the US.
28. Bobbitt, John: John Bobbitt was famously assaulted by his wife Lorena in 1993.
29. Bombing Boston Marathon: The terrorist bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon.
30. Balloon Boy: A 2009 hoax where parents claimed their son was trapped in a runaway balloon.
31. War on Terror: The international military campaign launched by the US after 9/11.
32. QAnon: A conspiracy theory alleging a secret plot against President Trump.
33. Trump gets impeached twice: Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives in 2019 and 2021.
34. Polar bears got no ice: Refers to the melting ice caps affecting polar bear habitats.
35. Fyre Fest: A fraudulent luxury music festival in 2017.
36. Black Parade: Refers to the album by the band My Chemical Romance.
37. Michael Phelps: An Olympic swimmer known for winning 23 gold medals.
38. Y2K: The Year 2000 problem, a computer bug related to the formatting of calendar data.
39. Boris Johnson: The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
40. Brexit: The United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
41. Kanye West and Taylor Swift: Refers to Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift's VMA acceptance speech in 2009.
42. Stranger Things: A popular science fiction TV series on Netflix.
43. Tiger King: A true crime documentary series about exotic animal owner Joe Exotic.
44. Ever Given, Suez: The container ship that blocked the Suez Canal in 2021.
45. Sandy Hook: The 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
46. Columbine: The 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colorado.
47. Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice: Both African Americans whose deaths sparked nationwide protests.
48. ISIS: The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a terrorist organization.
49. LeBron James: A professional basketball player widely regarded as one of the greatest.
50. Shinzo Abe blown away: Refers to the assassination of Japan's former Prime Minister in 2022.
51. Meghan Markle: An actress who married Prince Harry and became the Duchess of Sussex.
52. George Floyd: His death in police custody in 2020 sparked worldwide protests against police brutality.
53. Burj Khalifa: The tallest building in the world, located in Dubai.
54. Metroid: A popular video game series by Nintendo.
55. Fermi paradox: The apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability.
56. Venus and Serena: Venus and Serena Williams, famous tennis players.
57. Michael Jordan, 23: Refers to Michael Jordan, a legendary basketball player who wore the number 23.
58. YouTube killed MTV: The rise of YouTube led to the decline of music television (MTV).
59. SpongeBob: An iconic animated TV show.
60. Golden State Killer got caught: Refers to the arrest of the Golden State Killer in 2018.
61. Michael Jordan, 45: Refers to Jordan's brief return to basketball wearing the number 45.
62. Woodstock '99: A music festival that ended in riots and fires.
63. Keaton, Batman: Michael Keaton, who played Batman in the 1989 film.
64. Bush v. Gore: The controversial 2000 US presidential election.
65. Elon Musk: Entrepreneur known for SpaceX, Tesla, and other ventures.
66. Kaepernick: Colin Kaepernick, who protested police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem.
67. Texas failed electric grid: The power grid failure in Texas during a 2021 winter storm.
68. Jeff Bezos: Founder of Amazon and a prominent billionaire.
69. Climate change: The ongoing global issue of climate alteration due to human activities.
70. White rhino goes extinct: The Northern White Rhino was declared functionally extinct.
71. Great Pacific Garbage Patch: A massive area of marine debris in the Pacific Ocean.
72. Tom DeLonge and aliens: Former Blink-182 member known for his interest in UFOs.
73. Mars rover: NASA's robotic vehicles exploring Mars.
74. Avatar: James Cameron's 2009 blockbuster film.
75. Self-driving electric cars: Autonomous vehicles powered by electricity.
76. SSRI's: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a type of antidepressant.
77. Prince and The Queen die: Refers to the deaths of musician Prince and Queen Elizabeth II.
78. World trade, second plane: Refers to the 9/11 attacks when the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

ISO: The Emperor's New Groove HD, Avatar 4K, Barbie 4K, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 4K, Meg 2 4K, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish 4K, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes 4K Vudu, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 4K, Vudu credits.
May 2024 Universal Rewards - Redeems at MA

• A Dog's Purpose (4K)
• Agnes Browne
• Antz
• Backdraft 2 (4K)
• Being Frank
• Black Christmas (4K)
• Don't Let Go
• Final Account
• Kicks
• Loving
• Raw
• The Sparks Brothers (4K)

4K / HD iTunes
Agent Game (2022) - 4K - iTunes
Buddy Games (2019) - HD - iTunes
Detective Knight: Rogue - 4K - iTunes
Divergent (2014) - 4K - iTunes (split)
Ender's Game (2013) - 4K - iTunes (split)
Fences (2016) - 4K - iTunes (split)
Gigi & Nate (2023) - 4K - iTunes
Infinite (2022) - 4K - iTunes
Jarhead 2: Field of Fire (Unrated) (2014) - HD - iTunes (split)
Star Trek: Into the Darkness (2013) - 4K - iTunes (split)
The Fighter (2010) - HD - iTunes (split)
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012) - 4K - iTunes (split)
Till (2023) - 4K - iTunes
Tomb Raider (2001) - 4K - iTunes
Wonder Park (2019) - 4K - iTunes
4K / HD / SD movies
A Man Called Otto (2023) - HD - MA
Anyone But You (2024) - HD - MA
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2024) - HD - MA Vudu
Big George Foreman (2023) - SD - MA Vudu
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) - HD - MA Vudu GP
Broken City (2013) - HD - Vudu
Buddy Games (2019) - HD - Vudu
Bullet Train (2022) - HD - MA
Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Dog Days (2012) - HD - MA Vudu iTunes GP
Diary of a Wimpy Kid - The Long Haul (2017) - HD - MA Vudu iTunes GP
Divergent (2014) - HD - Vudu (split)
Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022) - HD - MA Vudu
Dumb Money (2024) - HD - MA
Fast & Furious 7 (Extended Edition) (2015) - HD - MA Vudu
Fences (2016) - HD - Vudu (split)
Gran Turismo (2023) - SD - MA
Heaven is for Real (2014) - SD - MA
Hercules (2014) - HD - Vudu (split)
Hunger Games (2012) - HD - Vudu Fandango
Jarhead 2: Field of Fire (Unrated) (2014) - HD - Vudu (split)
King Kong (2005) - HD - Vudu (split)
Migration (2024) - HD - MA Vudu
Priscilla (2024) - HD - Vudu
Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) - SD - MA
Selma (2015) - HD - Vudu (split)
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) - HD - MA
Spider-Man: Far From Home & Spider-Man: Homecoming (1 code) - HD - MA
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2022) - SD - MA Vudu
Spinning Gold (2023) - HD - MA Vudu
Star Trek: Into the Darkness (2013) - HD - Vudu (split)
Taken 2 (2012) - HD - MA Vudu GP
Tar (2023) - HD - MA Vudu
The Equalizer 3 (2023) - HD - MA
The Machine (2023) - HD - MA
The Other Woman (2014) - HD - MA Vudu iTunes GP
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012) - HD - Vudu (split)
The Woman King (2023) - HD - MA
Tomb Raider (2001) - 4K - Vudu
Trolls (2016) - HD - MA
Venom (2018) - SD - MA
Venom (2018) - HD - MA
Vivo (2022) - HD - MA
Wonder Park (2019) - 4K - Vudu
Zero's and One's (2022) - HD - Vudu GP
Disney / HD split
Ant-Man & the Wasp (2018) - HD - GP (split)
Avatar: The Way of Water (2023) - HD - MA Vudu GP (split)
Avengers Endgame (2019) - HD - GP (split)
Big Hero 6 (2014) - HD - GP (split)
Black Widow (2021) - HD - MA Vudu (split)
Black Widow (2021) - HD - GP (split)
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - HD - GP (split)
Captain America: Civil War (2016) - HD - GP (split)
Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014) - HD - GP (split)
Cars 3 (2017) - HD - GP (split)
Cinderella (1950) - HD - GP (split)
Coco (2017) - HD - GP (split)
Cruella (2021) - HD - MA Vudu (split)
Cruella (2021) - HD - GP (split)
Encanto (2022) - HD - MA Vudu (split)
Encanto (2022) - HD - GP (split)
Finding Dory (2016) - HD - GP (split)
Jungle Cruise (2022) - HD - MA Vudu (split)
Jungle Cruise (2022) - HD - GP (split)
Lightyear (2022) - HD - MA Vudu (split)
Lightyear (2022) - HD - GP (split)
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The Mandelbrot set is known for its graphically complex structure which seems to diverge infinitely: the set M starts from a set of values ​​defined in z_n + 1 = z_n^2 + c in which c is a complex coordinate of the Cartesian plane. With a classical wording the fractal would be said to be potentially infinite, if its non-divergence had not been established.
Edit: "from", I meant "for".

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• A Dog's Purpose (4K)
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I'm from California and looooove Wyoming. I've never actually seen it but the pictures are super cute! 😍 all those cute bears🐻 everywhere omg.
So we bought a 4139 acre ranch McMansion monstrosity because we just love Yellowstone and know it's my destiny to live like Beth & Rip with my hubby 🥰😍. Sorry if we're pricing locals out lol.
So I have questions... is my BMW okay for the winters? Lol I hate snow and wind but my NorthFace quarter zip will be good, right? Is there anything to do? I really need a Starbucks ☕️ like 5 minutes from my house but there also needs to be huge shopping malls and high end restaurants. I'll die of boredom if I don't have these necessary amenities.
Also, when do the park Rangers bring out the bears and wolves and stuff? I really want to get some Instagram reels to show all my followers! Who do I contact to schedule a wolf puppy 🐶 photo shoot? I absolutely neeeeed to be holding it for the Gram. I'll settle for riding those fluffy wild cow 🐄 things.
P.S. do I get one of those cowboy hats when the plane lands like how you get a Lei when you land in Maui 🏝? Do I get to pick the color? Because I really want a hot pink one!
K thx looove you guuuuys ❤️

Vecna: Eve of Ruin has a solid premise (a grand tour across the planes to save the multiverse) and a dissatisfying execution. Beyond a few gripes about specific chapters, the most common complaints seem to be about the sidelining of Mordenkainen, the plot twist with Kas, and the total absence of the legendary artifacts that have been associated with Vecna since the earliest days of D&D.
The good news is, all of these problems can be fixed without completely rewriting the adventure. Here are my thoughts about how to restore these important pieces of D&D lore to Vecna: Eve of Ruin.
The third wizard
Mordenkainen is a great character with a rich history, and it's a shame that the big plot twist writes him out of the story entirely. (It also insults the intelligence to suggest that Tasha and Alustriel Silverhand fail to notice that their archmage ally can't cast spells.)
This campaign is much stronger if the real Mordenkainen is actually part of it. He should be working with Tasha and Alustriel Silverhand to stop Vecna's plan, freeing up Kas to operate as a rival quester with his own agenda.
However, if you want to preserve the betrayal plot twist (and the secrets that are attached to it), perhaps Mordenkainen secretly aids Kas, arranging to free him from his imprisonment in the dread domain of Tovag and reunite him with his sword. He could even help Kas steal the completed Rod of Seven Parts from the party in the misguided belief that Kas is best positioned to stop Vecna.
I would argue that this is actually in character for Mordenkainen, whose True Neutral dogmatism inclines him towards balancing rival factions in opposition rather than throwing in his lot with one side; he might genuinely believe that setting Kas against Vecna is the safest path. Of course, Kas intends to betray his erstwhile ally by taking Vecna's place and finishing the ritual himself. Mordenkainen fully expects this, and is cultivating the player characters as his contingency plan. In any case, the archmage should come across as an amoral manipulator, not just a mask for Kas.
The Rod of Seven Parts
As written, Kas's plan is a little underdeveloped. He wants the rod so he can free Miska the Wolf-Spider so Miska will help him fight against Vecna. It's not especially clear why he specifically needs Miska as opposed to any other ally. Surely there are other factions who would be easier to bring into play.
It seems much more likely that Vecna needs Miska, as an ally who is dedicated to overthrowing the natural order of things or even as a potential component of the Ritual of Remaking. Perhaps Vecna plans to sacrifice the demon lord, unleashing powerful primordial forces that will unmake Pandemonium and all of creation. That means Vecna should be actively trying to acquire the Rod of Seven Parts for himself, sending his servants to the different locations where the parts are found and creating new complications for those chapters.
I wouldn't have the Vecna cultists show up in every location, because that would get old fast. Once the party acquires the first part of the rod, they should get a head start on locating the other parts. But if the cultists show up a few times over the course of the campaign it gives Vecna more of a presence and establishes the urgency of completing the quest.
All collection quests have a built-in failure point, or in this case, seven failure points: what happens if the players fail to grab a part of the rod, or if Vecna's cultists get it first? Collection quests work better when the characters don't need to grab all of the items, but this campaign's structure forces the players to retrieve them all so they can proceed to the next chapter.
But Vecna might be counting on that! If the party assembles the rod for him, that's almost as good as assembling it himself. Either they will bring it to Pandemonium or Kas will, and his plans can proceed.
As for his cultists, they have been searching for the rod for years if not generations and they are not privy to all of Vecna's plans. They could be cargo cults executing instructions given to their ancestors. They could also be searching for other precious artifacts, giving Vecna a chance to earn a couple of wins without derailing the party's progress.
War in Pandemonium
Since Vecna and Miska are allies in this redesign--at least until the moment of Miska's sacrifice, anyway--the party will be on Vecna's turf, rather than Kas's, from the moment they arrive in Pandemonium. That seems preferable to me, as it means that Vecna controls more than a single cave and his presence will be felt continuously in the final chapters.
It could also mean that all the demonic forces in the region serve Miska, not Lolth. Given how easily the characters can avoid Lolth's forces if they want to, I'm not certain they are needed in this chapter. However, if you want to preserve the battlefield aspect of chapter 10, perhaps Lolth's forces are there to stop the Ritual of Remaking. She stands to lose just as much as any other power if Vecna succeeds; it's hard to imagine Vecna offering anybody a place by his side in the new multiverse, and it's hard to imagine Lolth being gullible enough to believe him.
If you really want to raise the stakes, perhaps the attacking army is made up of followers of all the demon lords, or even a never-before, never-again alliance of demons, devils, and celestials, all fighting to preserve the current multiversal order. But these unlikely allies will not coordinate effectively (the demons will not coordinate at all), and the Wolf-Spider's legions are both disciplined and boundless. Only the adventurers can break into the Ruinous Citadel and stop the ritual.
The problem is, if they stop it in the citadel, the last chapter becomes an anticlimax. Sure, at that point the party will probably want to hunt Vecna down anyway, but the tension will be a lot higher if Vecna still has a chance of destroying the multiverse. There are a few ways you can manage this:

• Too late. When the party reaches the prison-hall, Kas has already freed and slain Miska, releasing his primordial energies for the ritual. This is guaranteed to continue the adventure but it brings its own kind of anticlimax.
• Double-cross. Just as the party reaches the prison-hall, Kas frees Miska. Thinking Kas is an ally of Vecna (he's missed a lot), Miska fights the party and is shocked when Kas turns on him, slaying him and releasing his energies. This is certainly true to form for Kas the Betrayer.
• Vecna intervenes. Same as the double-cross, but right when the battle is at its most chaotic, Vecna appears and absconds with the Wolf-Spider. He takes Miska back to his lair, where he murders and sacrifices the weakened demon lord and the Ritual of Remaking begins in earnest. This works especially well if Vecna has retrieved the Hand of Vecna, giving him a couple of free castings of teleport.

The last option might be the best one if you want to increase the party's interactions with Vecna. It can serve as a preliminary bout to foreshadow his power, and the party is unlikely to slay him with so many other dangerous foes about.
Kas is happy to allow Vecna to begin the ritual. However, if the party is on the verge of slaying or banishing Kas, he will propose they pool their resources to defeat Vecna. Whether the characters trust him or not is up to them.
Kas's revenge
Kas wants to see the Rod of Seven Parts assembled, but not for the same reasons the Wizards Three and the party do. The wizards want to protect the rod so Vecna can't free Miska (or at least two of them do) and use its powerful law magic to disrupt his ritual.
Kas wants the rod assembled so he can free Miska and complete the ritual in Vecna's place. He is happy to draft along behind the party while they are searching for the pieces, letting them do all the hard work for him. He could show up during the rod quest as a dangerous ally, clashing with the servants of Vecna or even helping the party retrieve a piece of the rod if they are stuck. He will offer to ally with them, but while he won't reveal his actual plans for the rod, it should be clear from the start that any alliance will carry a terrible cost.
The treacherous vampire also wants to find the Sword of Kas so he can slay Vecna. He is much more open about this goal and will present the sword as the best means of stopping his ancient foe. This belief is sincere, but it also makes a good alibi and red herring for his involvement in the campaign, distracting from his interest in the rod. Kas will gladly accept the party's help in retrieving the sword but he will not willingly allow anyone else to claim it.
Eye, hand, sword
The absence of the Eye of Vecna, the Hand of Vecna, and the Sword of Kas from this campaign is one of its biggest disappointments. I can sort of understand why they're missing: the campaign is built around reassembling the Rod of Seven Parts, and the designers probably felt they didn't have the space to add three more artifact hunts. But these artifacts are part of Vecna's history, and adding them will make the campaign feel more like a story about Vecna as opposed to a linear fetch quest with Vecna at its end.
If you want to extend the campaign, then adding new locations for the artifacts isn't a problem. If you're looking to add the artifacts without prolonging the campaign, you could exchange them for some of the rod quests. Perhaps the servants of Vecna have already claimed one or more pieces of the rod, allowing you to skip any chapters you don't want to run or place the artifacts in those locations instead. However, this means the rod won't be fully reassembled until Kas brings the party's pieces to Pandesmos. It's probably more fun for players if they assemble the rod themselves.
Alternatively, perhaps Vecna's artifacts have been gradually drawn to the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts like iron filings to a magnet. You wouldn't have to add any more locations, and the artifacts could serve as secondary goals or impossible choices while the characters are on their quest. Vecna's servants might grab his hand or eye while the party takes a piece of the rod, and Kas will certainly prioritize retrieving his sword since he's counting on the party to rebuild the rod for him.
If you go this route, there are several locations in the campaign that might house one or more of the artifacts.

• Hand of Vecna. This is the easy one. Canonically, it's in the possession of Arkhan the Cruel, a champion of Tiamat who resides in Avernus, and the party will be going to an infernal casino that's connected to Tiamat's lair. Arkhan can easily be encountered in Dragon's Pride.
• Eye of Vecna. Vecna is a native of Oerth, and Acererak might have placed the eye in the Tomb of Wayward Souls as a lure to draw adventurers to their doom. The Amber Temple in the Domains of Dread was once a temple to Vecna (represented as the god of secrets) and might hold his relics; the party could go there after the Death House or in place of it.
• Sword of Kas. The sword's appetite for blood means it is drawn to battlegrounds. It might show up in the wastelands of Eberron or the war-torn lands of Krynn. This could also be a lure in the Tomb of Wayward Souls if the eye is found elsewhere. It's probably better if Kas gets the sword later, giving him more chances to pretend to ally with the party.

Finally, the artifacts could come to the party rather than the other way around. Any or all of them could already have owners who move from world to world in parallel with the characters. The Eye and Hand of Vecna offer some especially interesting possibilities in this regard. The hand can compel its host to commit evil acts and the eye can turn its host into a puppet controlled by Vecna. A hollowed-out servant who wields the Eye of Vecna could be a great way for Vecna to interact with the player characters without putting himself at risk.
Adding the artifacts allows for a more dynamic campaign that responds to the characters' successes and failures. Vecna might be searching for his hand and eye (with the hand proving particularly useful if he has to sacrifice Miska) while Kas tries to retrieve his sword, but the characters should have opportunities to claim some of these artifacts for themselves. Doing so will expose them to their corrupting magic, opening up new storytelling possibilities.
One artifact too many?
Vecna also has a history with the Book of Vile Darkness, serving as its first author. Personally, I wouldn't bother with the book; it isn't that interesting mechanically, and one of the few interactions it does have (the book disappears if its wielder willingly performs a good act) is so incompatible with the campaign's goals of thwarting Vecna that most parties wouldn't be able to hold onto it.
I suppose it might work if Vecna has the book and is using it to conduct the Ritual of Remaking, in which case it serves as an omen of doom and nothing more. This is more of an Easter egg than a Maguffin, and honestly, that's okay. The plot feels kind of overstuffed with Maguffins as it is, and the campaign needs to do more with what it already has.
Many other changes have been recommended for this campaign: expanding or swapping out the quest locations (seriously, what is up with Krynn?), reworking the secrets mechanism, and more. With the exception of a few of the better locations in the quest chapters, just about every part of the campaign has been marked for renovation by somebody.
My own personal preference is to make the minimal changes necessary to run the adventure you want to run. It's easier to remove or rearrange individual elements than it is to rewrite the whole adventure from the ground up. I've kept these revisions as close to the campaign book as possible to make it easier for other DMs to personalize them by adding their own changes. My hope is that these modifications will allow DMs to restore some important pieces of D&D lore and rework the campaign to deliver what it promises. Let me know what you think!

Lake Hood Seaplane Base in Anchorage, Alaska, is the world's busiest seaplane base with about 200 takeoffs and landings daily. Established in the 1930s, it became a crucial hub for connecting remote regions to Anchorage. The base was significantly developed in the 1940s by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In the 1970s, a canal was built to connect Lake Hood and Lake Spenard, enhancing its operations. The base supports year-round aviation, accommodating seaplanes in summer and ski-equipped planes in winter. In 2021, it recorded around 62,297 takeoffs and landings. It hosts about 1,000 single-engine and 33 multi-engine planes.
(Photo by Hasan Akbas / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
https://x.com/mrhasanakbas/status/1795041552135344542?s=46

TL;DR: It seems possible that AH is worried the game overall is too easy so they have been nerfing player firepower to try to make higher difficulties more challenging. However, the best strategy for higher difficulties is to avoid fighting as much as possible, so every nerf further incentivizes players to keep running.
The Bullet Hole Misconception is an infamous real-world "balancing" error where Allied Command in World War II kept losing bombers to anti-air fire, so they decided to make improvements to plane armor. Officers studied returning bombers to see where they were being hit the most.
Essentially, they counted the bullet holes and decided to reinforce the three areas (tail, wings, fuel tank) where they saw the most damage. On the surface, that seems like it makes sense but the issue is that they were only studying returning bombers, i.e. the ones who were able to survive long enough to make it back to base. The three areas where Command wanted to focus protection were, ironically, already some of the safest on the bomber, as those spots could absorb a good deal of damage and the craft could keep flying.
The actual major failure points on the plane were the places that had the fewest holes (cockpit/engine) since the bombers being shot there were the ones who weren't making it back to base.
The BHM is talked about a lot when it comes to counter-intuitive design needs; I've even heard it mentioned before in the context of gaming (pretty sure Skillup talks about the misconception in at least one of his reviews). In the context of Helldivers 2, my guess is that the clearance rates for Difficulty 7+ missions are higher than AH wants to see. Maybe much higher. Difficulty 9 in particular I'd bet is getting completed far more often than anticipated.
In response, AH is trying to increase the challenge by decreasing the damage and survivability of players. But I think they're looking at the wrong bullet holes. If the clearance rate on high difficulty is excessive, I have a strong hunch that it's because players have found that the most efficient way to beat those missions is to fight as little as possible. If you have a coordinated four-stack that is good at dodging patrols and peeling off whenever an engagement becomes overwhelming, then actually finishing the mission is--if not ever easy--pretty manageable. And if your team just wants to focus on the main mission and isn't too arsed about extracting alive, then even D9 becomes surprisingly approachable.
This isn't to say that the higher difficulties are a cakewalk and you should feel bad if you're struggling. Every mission is chaotic and a bad landing or a single teammate who is burning through reinforcements can derail everything. But for an "endgame," D9 isn't the diver graveyard it probably should feel like. I imagine all of the Youtubers (who are going to be better than most players but not that much better) soloing D9 must have made the devs wince a little.
So, if that theory about high-difficulty clearance is correct, AH has an issue. If a PvE game becomes too easy, competitive players tend to leave. Devs are then left with a few options, the main two being either to make the game harder or the player weaker. I think they've been doing both but focusing too much on the latter.
New enemies, the patrol increase, and existing enemy adjustments (Stalkers went from blurry weirdos to invisible demons, for example) have made the game a little tougher but nothing too noticeable. However, on the nerfing side, AH has come down hard on most weapons that stick their head out in the meta. Railgun and Breaker went from top dogs to barely picked. Slugger, Eruptor, Quasar, and crossbow(?!) also got a kick in the knee. At the same time, player safety and self-reliance have been reduced with nerfs to the shield generator, laser drone, and overall ammo economy.
The trend appears to be trying to cripple players juuuust enough to make them want to slow down, stick together, and struggle during fire-fights on the highest difficulties.
But, if all of that is true, I think AH was looking at the bullet holes in the wings and getting the wrong idea. If players are clearing D9 more than they should, it's because the best way to complete the mission is to avoid those fire-fights as much as possible. There are very few times during most missions where you are forced to fight; even extraction can be semi-cheesed by having one person kite around the pelican while the other three are free to finish up samples or side missions. Most of the time, as soon as a fight gets too hairy, you can just sprint away until the bulk of enemies stops following you, turn and kill whatever's left, rinse and repeat.
Weakening the player through primary and support nerfs ends up just making D7+ more frustrating and less fun but not all that much harder to complete if you're wearing your running shoes.
If AH wants the game to be harder, I hope they shift their focus to ramping up mission difficulty, improving enemy AI, new enemy types, new planet modifiers, etc. Making primaries weaker and backpack supports less effective currently just encourages boring gameplay in response.

I've gone down the rabbit hole on the New York Times online archive and it's amazing how little is there before the big "expose" in 2017. There are ZERO articles relating to some of the most widely reported UFO stories like Kenneth Arnold's Mount Ranier sighting. The first reference to the Roswell crash is a 1987 article is a culture piece about people's interest in UFOs.
Below is a long article from 1979 that could have been written today. The same misinformation from the government, the same promise to make a more scientific study (while promising that that study had not already been taking place....)

U.F.O. FILES: THE UNTOLD STORY

By Patrick Huyghe

• Oct. 14, 1979

Patrick Huyghe is a freelance writer in New York.
The Defense Department message bears the classification CONFIDENTIAL. “Subject: Suspicious Unknown Air Activity.” Dated Nov. 11, 1975, it reads:
“Since 28 Oct 75 numerous reports of suspicious objects have been received at the NORAD COC [North American Air Defense Combat Operations Center]. Reliable military personnel at Loring AFB [Air Force Base], Maine, Wurtsmith AFB, Michigan, Malmstrom AFB, [Montana], Minot AFB, [North Dakota], and Canadian Forces Station, Falconbridge, Ontario, Canada, have visually sighted suspicious objects.
“Objects at Loring and Wurtsmith were characterized to be helicopters. Missile site personnel, security alert teams and Air Defense personnel at Malmstrom Montana reported object which sounded like a jet aircraft. FAA advised ‘There were no jet aircraft in the vicinity.’ Malmstrom search and height finder radars carried the object between 9,000 ft and 15,600 ft at a speed of seven knots. ... F‐106s scrambled from Malmstrom could not make contact due to darkness and low altitude. Site personnel reported the objects as low as 200 ft and said that as the interceptors approached the lights went out. After the interceptors had passed the lights came on again. One hour after the F‐106s returned to base, missile site personnel reported the object increased to a high speed, raised in altitude and could not be discerned from the stars....
“I have expressed my concern to SAFOI [Air Force Information Office] that we come up soonest with a proposed answer to queries from the press to prevent overreaction by the public to reports by the media that may be blown out of proportion. To date efforts by Air Guard helicopters, SAC [Strategic Air Command] helicopters and NORAD F‐106s have failed to produce positive ID.”
Though officials have long denied that they take ‘flying saucers’ seriously, declassified documents now reveal extensive Government concern over the phenomenon.
Numerous daily updates kept the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed of these incursions by U.F.O.'s in the fall of 1975. Representatives of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency as well as a handful of other Government desks received copies of the National Military Command Center's reports on the incidents. One report said that an unidentified object “demonstrated a clear intent in the weapons storage area.” Though Air Force records show that the C.I.A. was notified several times of these penetrations over nuclear missile and bomber bases, the agency has acknowledged only one such notification. Subsequent investigations by the Air Force into the sightings at Loring Air Force Base, Maine, where the remarkable series of events began, did not reveal a cause for the sightings.
Despite official pronouncements for decades that U.F.O.'s were nothing more than misidentified aerial objects and as such were no cause for alarm, recently declassified U.F.O. records from the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other Federal agencies indicate that, ever since U.F.O.'s made their appearance in our skies in the 1940's, the phenomenon has aroused much serious behind‐the‐scenes concern in official circles. Details of the intelligence community's protracted obsession with the subject of U.F.O.'s have emerged over the past few years with the release of long‐withheld Government records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Though these papers fail to resolve the U.F.O. enigma, they do manage to dispel many popular notions about the U.F.O. controversy, as well as give substance to a number of others. Official records now available appear to put to rest doubts that the Government knew more about U.F.O.'s than it has claimed over the past 32 years. From the start, it has been convinced that most U.F.O. sightings could be explained in terms of misidentified balloons, cloud formations, airplanes, ball lightning, meteors and other natural phenomena.
But the papers also show that the Government remains perplexed about the nagging residue of unexplained U.F.O. sightings, which amount to approximately 10 percent of all U.F.O. sightings reported. Do they pose a threat to national security? Are they just a funny‐looking cover for an airborne Soviet presence? Even the possibility that these unknowns could be evidence of extraterrestrial visitations has been given serious attention in Government circles. While official interest in U.F.O.'s has long been thought to be strictly the concern of the Air Force, the bulk of whose records has been open to public view for nearly a decade, the recently released papers on U.F.O.'s indicate otherwise. The Departments of the Army, Navy, State and Defense, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and even the Atomic Energy Commission produced U.F.O. records over the years. Many of these agencies still do, and many of their documents remain classified. But it is the C.I.A. that appears to have played the key role in the controversy, and may even be responsible for the Government's conduct in U.F.O. investigations throughout the
U.F.O's have been the province of the nation's intelligence community ever since the beginning of the cold war, when the notion took hold that some flying saucers might actually represent a secret, technologically advanced, foreign weapons system. “Every time we were concerned,” recalls Herbert Scoville Jr., a former chief of the C.I.A.'s Office of Scientific Intelligence, “it was because we wanted to know: Did the Russians do it?”
As the cold war gave rise to the fears of the McCarthy era, official concern over U.F.O.'s even led to the surveillance of several private U.F.O. organizations (as many of their members have long insisted) and to the scrutiny of dozens of individuals suspected of subversive U.F.O. activities.
Perhaps most telling of all, the Government documents on U.F.O.'s reveal that despite official denials to the contrary, Federal agencies continue to monitor the phenomenon to this day.
The monumental task of unearthing the newest batch of records on U.F.O.'s from a bureaucracy that has for years denied their existence can be traced to the efforts of a handful of inquisitive individuals who, armed with the Freedom of Information Act, set off in the mid‐70's on a paper chase of U.S. Government documents on U.F.O.'s. They include Bruce S. Maccabee, a Silver Spring, Md., physicist working for the Navy, who has managed to obtain the release of more than 1,200 pages of documents on U.F.O.'s from the F.B.I.; W. Todd Zechel of Prairie du Sac, Wis.; Robert Todd of Ardmore, Pa.; Larry W. Bryant of Arlington, Va.; and Brad C. Sparks, a student la astrophysics at Berkeley whose five‐year pursuit of the C.I.A.'s U.F.O. file eventually provided the foundation for a 3round‐breaking Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by Ground Saucer Watch (G.S.W.), an Arizona‐based U.F.O.
At the request of G.S.W. director William H. Spaulding, Peter Gersten, an attorney in the New York firm of Rothblatt, Rothblatt & Seijas, filed a civil action against the C.I.A. in December 1977 demanding all U.F.O. records in the agency's possession. The suit seemed to have achieved its goal when late last year the agency released about 900 documents — nearly 900 pages of memos, reports and correspondence that attest to the agency's long involvement in U.F.O. matters. But the civil action has not seen its final day in court.
By Gersten's account, the agency has arbitrarily withheld documents, made deletions without merit, and failed to conduct a proper search for U.F.O. materials. The agency's current actions, he says, perpetuate its 30‐year policy of deliberate deception and dishonesty about U.F.O.'s. “What has been released to us seems to have been rather carefully selected,” says Gersten. “We suspect that the agency is withholding at least 200 more documents than the 57 they have admitted they are keeping from us to protect intelligence sources.” Victor Marchetti, a former executive assistant to the agency's deputy director, agrees with Gersten. The entire exercise, Marchetti wrote recently in a magazine article, “has the same aroma of the agency's previous messy efforts to hide its involvement in drugs and mind‐control operations, both prime examples of a successful intelligence cover‐up.”
The first sighting to be labeled a “flying saucer” by the press occurred on June 24, 1947, when an Idaho businessman flying his plane near Mount Rainier observed nine disc‐shaped objects making undulating motions “like a saucer skipping over water.” As early as World War II, Allied bomber pilots had told of “balls of light” that followed their flights over Japan and Germany. A U.S. Eighth Army investigation concluded that the of “mass hallucination.”
These and other incidents were reported in a 1973 book by David Michael Jacobs, “The UFO Controversy in America,” which until the recent release of Government documents was the most comprehensive reconstruction of the Government's U.F.O. involvement. When Scandinavians reported cigar‐shaped objects in 1946, U.S. Army intelligence suspected that the Russians had developed a secret weapon with the help of German scientists from Peenemiinde. The C.I.A., then known as the Central Intelligence Group, secretly began keeping tabs on the subject. When the unknown objects returned to the skies, this time over the United States in the summer of 1947, the Army Air Force set out to determine what the objects were. Within weeks, Brig. Gen. George F. Schulgen of Army Air Corps Intelligence requested the F.B.I.'s assistance “in locating and questioning the individuals who first sighted the so‐called flying discs....” Undoubtedly swayed by flaring cold‐war tensions, Schulgen feared that “the first reported sightings might have been by individuals of Communist sympathies with the view to causing hysteria and fear of a secret Russian weapon.” J. Edgar Hoover agreed to coopreau have “full access to discs recovered.” The Air Force's behind‐thescenes interest contrasted sharply with its public stance that the objects were products of misidentifications and imaginative populace. A security lid was imposed on the subject in July 1947, hiding potentially “embarrassing situation” the following month, when both the Air Force and the F.B.I. began suspecting they might actually be investigating our own secret weapons. High‐level reassurances were obtained that this was not so.
By the end of the summer, the F.B.I. had “failed to reveal any indication of subversive individuals being involved in any of the reported sightings.” A RESTRICTED Army letter that found its way to Hoover's desk said that the bureau's services actually had been enlisted to relieve the Air Forces “of the task of tracking down all the many instances which turned out to be ashcan covers, toilet seats and whatnot.” Incensed, Hoover moved quickly to discontinue the bureau's U.F.O. investigations.
In September of that year, the Commanding General of the Army Air Force received letter from the Army Chief of Staff Lieut. Gen. Nathan F. Twining, saying that “the phenomenon reported is of something real and not visionary or fictitious,” that the objects appeared to be disc‐shaped, “as large as man‐made aircraft,” and “controlled either manually, automatically or remotely.” At Twining's request, project “Sign” was established.
“Sign” failed to find any evidence that the objects were Soviet secret weapons and before long submitted an unofficial “Estimate of the Situation,” classified TOP SECRET, which indicated that U.F.O.'s were of interplanetary origin. The estimate eventually reached Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, who rejected it for lack of proof. “Sign's” inconclusive final report remained classified for the next 12 years.
After “Sign,” the Air Force continued to collect U.F.O. data under the code name “Grudge.” This six‐month project found no evidence of foreign scientific development and therefore no direct threat to national security. It did, however, stress that the reported sightings could be dangerous. “There are indications that the planned release of related psychological propaganda would cause a form of mass hysteria,” the report stated. “Employment of these methods by or against an enemy would yield similar results ... governmental agencies interested in psychological warfare should be informed of the results of this study."
A press release following the termination of “Grudge” allowed the public to believe that the Air Force was no longer interested in U.F.O.'s. But the Air Force continued to collect reports through normal intelligence channels until a dramatic sighting of a U.F.O. at the Army Signal Corps radar center in Fort Monmouth, N.J., in 1951 led to the reactivation of “Grudge.” The Air Force project was renamed “Blue Book” in 1952, a year that saw a record number of U.F.O. reports.
The situation got out of hand during the summer of 1952. On the morning of July 28, the Washington Post revealed that U.F.O.'s had been tracked on radar at Washington National Airport, the second such incident in a week. Reporters stormed Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon, where switchboards were jammed for days with U.F.O. inquiries. Military installations across the country handled such a volume of reports that “regular intelligence work had been affected,” reported The New York Times.
These events prompted action at C.I.A. headquarters, apparently at a request “from the Hill.” From the start, the agency's involvement was to be kept secret. An August 1 C.I.A. memo recommended that “no indication of C.I.A. interest or concern reach the press or public, in view of their probable alarmist tendencies to accept such interest as ‘confirmatory’ of the soundness of ‘unpublished facts’ in the hands of the U.S. Government.”
The C.I.A.'s Office of Scientific Intelligence (O.S.I.) found that the Air Force's investigation of the U.F.O. phenomenon was not sufficiently rigorous to determine the exact nature of the objects in the sky. Neither did the Air Force deal adequately with the potential danger of U.F.O.‐induced mass hysteria, or the fact that our air vulnerability was being seriously affected by the U.F.O. problem. O.S.I. chief H. Marshall Chadwell thought that our nation's defenses were running the increasing risk of false alert and, worse yet, “of falsely identifying the real as phantom.” He suggested that a national policy be established “as to what should be told the public” and, furthermore, that immediate steps be taken to improve our current visual and electronic identification techniques so that “instant positive identification of enemy planes or missiles can be made.” Ever vigilant, the C.I.A. was keeping an eye on the possibility that U.F.O.'s could be of Soviet origin.
By the winter of 1952, Chadwell had drafted National Security Council proposal calling on program to solve the problem of instant positive identification of U.F.O.'s. In a memo that accompanied the proposal, Chadwell urged that the reports be given “immediate attention.” He thought that “sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.” He said that O.S.I. was proceeding with the establishment of a consulting group “of sufficient competence and stature to ... convince the responsible authorities in the community that immediate research and development on this subject must be undertaken.”
But C.I.A. Director Gen. Walter B. Smith's interest apparently lay elsewhere. In a letter to the Director of the Psychological Strategy Board, he expressed a desire to discuss “the possible offensive and defensive utilization of these phenomena for psychological warfare purposes.” Only later did Director Smith authorize recruiting an advisory committee of outside consultants.
The scientific panel met for four days beginning Jan. 14, 1953. Chaired by Dr. H.P. Robertson, an expert in physics and weapons systems, the panel essentially bestowed the scientific seal of approval on previously established official policy regarding U.F.O.'s. The distinguished panelists felt that all the sightings could be identified once all the data were available for a proper evaluation — in other words, the phenomena, according to the panel's report, were not “beyond the domain of present knowledge of physical sciences.” Neither did the panelists find U.F.O.'s to be a direct threat to national security, though they believed that the volume of U.F.O. reports could clog military intelligence channels, precipitate panic, and lead defense personnel to ignore real indications of hostile action. The panel worried about Soviet manipulation of the phenomenon; that the reports could make the public vulnerable to “possible enemy psychological warfare.” The real danger, they concluded, was the reports themselves.
Fearing that the myth of U.F.O.'s might lead to inappropriate actions by the American public, the panelists decided that a “broad educational program integrating efforts of all concerned agencies” must be undertaken. They sought to strip U.F.O.'s of their “aura of mystery” through this program of “training and ‘debunking.’ “ The program would result in the “proper recognition of unusually illuminated objects” and in a “reduction in public interest in ‘flying saucers.’ “ The panelists recommended that their mass‐media program have as its advisers psychologists familiar with mass psychology and advertising experts, while Walt Disney Inc. animated cartoons and such personalities as Arthur Godfrey would help in the educational drive. To insure complete control over the situation, the panel members suggested that flying‐saucer groups be “watched because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur. The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind.”
The panel's recommendations called for nothing less than the domestic manipulation of public attitudes. Whether these proposals were acted upon, the C.I.A. will not say. But the report was circulated among the top brass at the Air Technical Intelligence Center, the C.I.A.'s Board of National Estimates (of which Hoover was a member), the C.I.A.'s bureau chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, the chairman of the National Security Resources Board, and the director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, who eventually sent a representative to meet with C.I.A. officials in order to “implement the appropriate aspects of the Panel's Report as applicable to Civil Defense.”
The Government's efforts in the 50's and 60's to squelch public apprehension over U.F.O.'s went beyond debunking and even touched the fiber of constitutionally protected free speech. According to author David Michael Jacobs, in 1953 the Air Force pressured Look magazine into publishing disclaimers throughout an article by retired Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe entitled “Flying Saucers From Outer Space.” Then again, in 1965, the Army — in a prepublication review denied clearance for a U.F.O.related article by one of its employees, Larry W. Bryant, a technical editor, until he took the issue to court.
Meanwhile, the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. proceeded routinely in the surveillance of U.F.O. organizations and U.F.O. enthusiasts. People with U.F.O. interests were checked out by the F.B.I. at the request of the C.I.A., the Air Force, or private citizens inquiring about possible subversive activities. None caused as much consternation as the case of Major Keyhoe and the organization he directed, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). The C.I.A. appears to have had a protracted interest in NICAP, which was founded in 1956 and utilized by Keyhoe as an organizational tool for challenging the alleged Air Force cover‐up on U.F.O.'s. Both the C.I.A. and the Air Force were upset by NICAP's wide‐ranging influence. Its prestigious board of directors included, among others, Vice Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first C.I.A. Director (1947‐1950). “The Air Force representatives believe that much of the trouble ... with Major Keyhoe ... could be alleviated,” states a C.I.A. memo dated May 16, 1958, “if the Major did not have such important personages as Vice Admiral R. H. Hillenkoetter, U.S.N. (Ret.) ... on the board. ...” The Air Force suggested that if the Admiral were shown the SECRET panel report he might understand and take “appropriate actions.” Whether or not the Air Force got through to the admiral, Hillenkoetter
The 60's saw further C.I.A. interest in NICAP. After flurry of Washington‐area sightings in 1965, the agency contacted NICAP about seeing some of its case files on the matter. Richard H. Hall, then NICAP assistant director, chatted with a C.I.A. agent in the NICAP office about the sightings, NICAP's methodology, and Hall's background. The agent's memo on the visit suggests that the C.I.A. had some role in mind for Hall, predicated upon his being granted a security clearance. Nothing apparently came of the suggestion. A later set of C.I.A. papers reveals an inter. est in NICAP's organizational structure and notes that “this group included some ex‐C.I.A. and Defense Intelligence types who advise on investigative techniques and NICAP‐Government relations.” There are presently three former C.I.A. employees on the NICAP board of directors, including Charles Lombard, a congressional aide to Senator Barry Goldwater, who is himself a NICAP board member; and retired U.S. Air Force Col. Joseph Bryan III. Bryan feels, as he did back in 1959 when he joined the board, that U.F.O.'s are interplanetary. NICAP's current president is Alan Hall, a former C.I.A. covert employee for 30 years.
In 1966, mounting discontent from members of the press. Congress and the scientific community compelled the Air Force to commission an 18month scientific study of U.F.O.'s under the direction of Edward U. Condon, professor of physics at the University of Colorado. The politically expedient study, in which onethird of the 91 cases examined remained unidentified, reiterated official policy with one novel twist: U.F.O.'s “educationally harmed” schoolchildren who were allowed to use science study time to read books and magazine articles about U.F.O.'s. Condon wanted teachers to withhold credit from any student U.F.O. project. The Air Force took the cue and disbanded project “Blue Book” in 1969.
Less than a decade later, the White House, perhaps in an attempt to make good Jimmy Carter's campaign promise to tell all about U.F.O.'s, suggested via science advisor Frank Press that possibly NASA could undertake a review of any significant new findings since Condon's study. NASA examined the offer, but saw no way to attack the problem on a scientific basis without physical evidence. They envisioned a public‐relations nightmare if they were to accept such a project, and so rejected it. A frank, in‐house evaluation of NASA's options, however, noted that a handsoff attitude only begged the question. So in good spirit, the space agency offered to examine any piece of physical evidence brought to its attention. That position led one Federal aviation official to comment: “If you get a piece of the thing, fine. But don't bother me with anything else.”
These days, the Air Force admits to nothing more than a “transitory interest” in the phenomenon, although military directives still exist for reporting U.F.O.'s.
The C.I.A. is still wary of the possibility that U.F.O.'s. may be of Soviet origin. “The agency's interest,” says Katherine Pherson, a public‐affairs officer for the C.I.A., “lies in its responsibility to forewarn principally of the possibility that a foreign power might develop a new weapons system that might exhibit phenomena that some might categorize as a U.F.O. But there is no program to actively collect information on U.F.O.'s.” The agency's interest cannot be denied, however, as two 1976 memos reveal.
The first, dated April 26, states: “It does not seem that the Government has any formal program in progress for the identification/solution of the U.F.O. phenomena. Dr. [name deleted] feels that the efforts of independent researchers, [phrase deleted], are vital for further progress in this area. At the present time, there are offices and personnel within the agency who are monitoring the U.F.O. phenomena, but again, this is not currently on an official basis.”
Another memo, dated July 14, and routed to the deputy chief in the Office of Development and Engineering, reads: “As you may recall, 1 mentioned my own interest in the subject as well as the fact that DCD [Domestic Collection Division] has been receiving U.F.O. related material from many of our S & T (Science and Technology] sources who are presently conducting related research. These scientists include some who have been associated with the Agency for years and whose credentials remove them from the ‘nut’ variety.”
If nothing else, the success of the U.F.O. paper chase may have lent U.F.O.'s a measure of respectability that has eluded the subject for the past third of a century. Though it appears that no U.F.O. sighting has ever represented an airborne Soviet or foreign threat, the possibility that such an event could occur remains foremost in the coldwar‐conscious Government mind. Should that threat come to pass, military officials believe, our nation's sophisticated defense system would know about it before someone getting a glass of milk in the middle of the night sees the threat hovering outside the kitchen window. Or so we are made to understand the Air Force's seemingly nonchalant advice to the public: “If you see a U.F.O. and you feel the situation warrants it, call your local police.”

Introduction

I am Vic and I love all Renothal decks. Recently, I discovered how much I loved DK as a class for its complex deckbuilding. Today, I will show you what I cooked up!
Like with all Reno decks, this deck doesn't have much internal synergy due to the no duplicate rule. Instead, this deck contains many strong standalone cards (mostly legendaries, which aren't affected by the one card clause anyway).
That's why these decks can get quite pricy (looking at you, Uther and Malfurion) and I don't recommend crafting this, if you want to break the meta.
For reference: I at times had winstreaks of 5-7 games before switching to another deck I cooked and restarting at D5. Sadly, I don't have any records due to playing on mobile. Right now, I am dedicated to bring this to legend, maybe with more discipline and not trying out Tier7 cooks

Code (check comments, mobile users)

YvlBijDFoUX/KMD5bAEl+8Eh/YEs/cE4qQFzaUFoaoF/cQFgvgF/PkFk/sF7f8FyoMG0IMG9YwGhY4G85EGg5IGi5IGlJUG/5cGgJgG65gGkqAGnaIGr6gGy7AGubEGu7EGvbEGwbEGqLgG2OUGpPQGpvQGrPQGQGAAABA4L4Bf3EBdaABv3EBfWMBv3EBQAA

The Cards

Essential

I recommend playing all of these cards in all builds, they are the backbone of every list I'd ever play
Renothal package:
(2) Zephrys the Great - The GOAT
(6) Reno Jackson - The other GOAT
(9) Reno, Lone Ranger - Fuck this card (as long as I still get to topdeck and play it vs a full board)
(3) Prince Renathal - Enables you to play 40 cards at 40 hp, makes your Reno stronger
Good stuff:
(1) Sir Finley, Sea Guide - Like with every Renothal deck, some hands can become clunky or don't have a certain response to an opposing threat. Finley gives you a second chance
(2) Astalor Bloodsworn - Very good standalone card, offers removal, healing and damage in 1 card
(4) E.T.C., Band Manager - Very strong card, I will explain some choices in the sections below
xxx (2) Cold Feet - Just a good disruption card
xxx (2) Down with the Ship
xxx (4) Skeleton Crew
(8) The Primus - God, I love him so much, he's just such a cool card
(10) Climactic Necrotic Explosion - Our main wincon. In case you can't kill your opponent, you can just play this to heal your hero and fill your board with tokens that give you many corpses.

Corpse package

In order to make CNE lethal, you need ways to efficiently spend many corpses. Efficiency means: Gain and then spend corpses and profit off of it. This is one of DKs core mechanics, their Hero Power is basically giving you 1 corpse a turn
Weapons
(1) Runeforging - Part of the four card Weapon package. 1 mana draw 1 is already good. Spending 1 corpse to to make it cheaper? Even better
(4) Quartzite Crusher - Heals for 9, stops Titans from using their effects, removes minions and pisses off Kingsbane Rogue massively
(5) Foamrender - The newest card in this deck. I'd put this into the Essential list, if this weren't a more thematically fitting place. Infinite Arcanite Reaper that also spends 3 corpses a turn???????
(1) Runes of Darkness - 1 mana get a good weapon, spend 3 corpses and cast Upgrade! in one, nothing more to say other than this gets infinetely more fun when you discover one of the above weapons
Gaining Corpses
(2) Mining Casualties - Flood the board and gain 4 corpses, nothing more to say
(3) Rainbow Seamstress - Basically 3 mana Zilliax that gives you two corpses
(3) Blightfang - Insane vs any board based aggro deck, getting 1 token is already good, getting more than that is jsut insane, especially because every one of them becomes a corpse for you to spend
(6) Dr. Stitchensew - Very good standalone card for long games, basically a Mini-Rattlegore that gains you 4 corpses over time
Spending Corpses
(2) Defrost - Pay two, spend two, draw two. Fair deal, right?
(2) Hematurge - Gets you a generally good card for 1 corpse
(3) Corpse Farm - Very efficient, spends up to corpses for a body. I'd say, this pays off at min. 5 to 6 spent corpses
(4) Maw and Paw - A hybrid between gaining and spending. Either a [4 mana 2/8 with Taunt and Battlecry: Gain 5 corpses] or infinite life support, very cool card

Removal

Not only is DK know for its corpse mechanic. Especially its Blood Rune is known for efficient removal
(1) Fistful of Corpses - The bridge between this and the last section, comparable to The Light, It Burns! in its efficiency
(2) Threads of Despair - Defile-adjacent 4 mana nuke that is triggered remotely by your Hero Power. I highly suggest doing the math properly before playing this (definetely never happened to me) (never)
(2) Obliterate - *Insert Exodia joke* I honestly think, this is the best single removal card of all time
(6) Gnome Muncher - This basically has Charge, if you coordinate your moves right. Heals your for 10 more times than not and is honestly one of the best and underrated DK cards
(6) The Headless Horseman - DKs first Hero Card, and it's a cool one too! Basically a very, very overcosted Shadow Word: Death that gains you a lot of value and damage in the lategame
(7) Frost Queen Sindragosa - Aman'thul at home. At least she synergizes with Quartzite Crusher, that's gotta account for something at least, right?
(7) Patchwerk - He and Mutanus walked, so that Boomboss Thor'gun could run. Insane with Brann.

Excavate Package

I know, I know, halving the available cards in a synergistic package is stupid (See Reno Galakrond decks other than Shaman), but to be honest, more times than not, even without the Azerite Rat, they are Battlecry: Get a good card
(2) Kobold Miner - Evil Cable Rat now says "Invoke Galakrond"
(3) Reap What You Sow - Pls make this 2 mana Blizzard, I promise I won't build an Even Excavate Death Knight, I promise
(3) Timeline Accelerator - Basically a tutor for ...
(5) Burrow Buster - Devoted Maniac, if it weren't totally shitty
(4) Skeleton Crew - I'd play this earliest for the Rare treasure, since this makes it cost 0. I play a second copy in ETC because in the late game, you often have excavated 2-3 times and this gets you to you...
The Payoff: The Azerite Rat - Very cool and sticky card, this revives Reska, Sindragosa and anything you summoned off of Corpse Farm. Just keep in mind that this cannot revive The Primus

The Rest

These are just good cards to round off the deck
(1) Miracle Salesman - Best neutral 1 drop that helps cycling
(2) Down with the Ship - Good removal that - like Fistful of Corpses and Reap What You Sow - profit off of The Primus' Frost Rune ability. Strong with Helya, especially vs Reno decks, that's why I play a second copy in ETC
(2) Dryscale Deputy - We don't play many spells and the ones we play are good. Either gives you more removal, a second Reap What You Sow or even a second CNE
(3) Brann Bronzebeard - Helps with Excavating and other Battlecries
(3) Chillfallen Baron - Solid card that draws you 2
(4) Helya - I miss her messing up Reno, Lone Ranger and Doc Holiday, still good to turn off Zeph, Old Reno, Raza and others
(20) Reska, the Pit Boss - Sylvanas on crack, this off of Azerite Rat is disgusting

Mulligan

Normal: Keep a low curve (duh), keep Excavate cards apart from Burrow Buster if you don't have the Coin
For certain matchups:
DK - Doesn't exist
DH - Doesn't exist
Druid - Most often Treant or Reno. I suggest keeping your Plague cards, as well as Threads of Despair, Maw and Paw and Blightfang
Hunter - Doesn't exist
Mage - Doesn't interact with you anyway
Pally - Anything that clears a board early, Zeph and The Primus are insane midgame
Priest - Either Aggro or Reno. Same as Druid
Rogue - Idk how to prepare vs 4 Tier 1 decks, Quartzite Crusher or the cards that get to it always were silver bullets
Shaman - Either Even or Reno. Same as Druid
Warlock - For Darkglare, keep Helya and removal for any early mana cheat bullcrap
Warrior - Doesn't exist

Other playable cards

This wouldn't be a good Renothal guide without suggesting how to personalize this list to your taste. For bigger packages, I suggest cutting the excavate package, some cards from the last section or similar cards (e.g. Hematurge for Frost Strike)
Forge package: Watcher, Eulogizer and Ignis. Eulogizer can gain or spend corpses and is therefore very cool in this deck. I would swap this for the Excavate package. I played this, as well as 1 Bone Breaker and a Zilliax 3000 before Foamrender, but right now, Foamrender is just one of the best cards in Rainbow DK
Zilliax 3000 - You could think about playing a second Mech for Timeline Accelerator, but I dont like it
Other Reno cards - Alex: messes with your Azerite Rat pool // Maruut: just Excavate World Pillar Fragment // Elise: Valid option
Disruption - (e.g. Loatheb, Boompistol Bully, Speaker Stomper, Cultist, Cold Feet, Okani, Pozzik, Theotar, Mutanus) Definetely possible, I'd cut the Excavate package, but keep Brann
Frost engine - (e.g. Harbinger of Winter, Northern Navigation and Frost Strike as well as other Frost cards) make Sindragosa a bigger threat and offer more draw
Pile of Bones - pls give this Rush and make RWYS 2 mana. I promise again Blizzard, I won't abuse it
Handbuff Package - (e.g. Darkhorn Quilter and Handbuff stuff) pretty fun, but weak
Some more Plague Cards - This is fun, but Staff of the Primus is another weapon inferior to Foamrender. Chained Guardian clashes with Azerite Rat, bc it already has Reborn, in case you wanna play all Plague AND Excavate cards
Some cool single cards that I liked in some builds: Card Grader, Nerubian Vizier, Thassarian, Corpse Bride, Boneguard Commander, Hollow Hound, Cage Head/Blight Boar or Mr Smite for Azerite Rat, Toysnatching Geist, Arthas Gift

Closing words

Thanks for reading my guide! I am open for suggestions and your experiences. You can add me, my name is Sonnenaxt#2515