Getting hightop fade barbershop

SUPERLIGHT Episode 9
By Roc Hatfield
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Aetherians of the New Empire are banned from ever returning to Aetheria or from joining into the One. The border net is a solid wall to non-authorized Aetherians, impenetrable. The Elo Eloahim passes through the net without a hitch.
The Blade has now come to a full stop. The shuttle carrying Excelsior Andriel is docking with the Blade. Once the shuttle is cleared of occupants, it will return to the Elo Eloahim autonomously.
Excelsior Andriel has made his way back to the bridge of the Blade and is admiring the border net through the giant viewer screens. I haven't been out here for many strands. Beautiful to look at.
Send some technicals out to one of those nodes to have a look at it. I am sure it is manifest, but there must be a way to defeat it. I want to tear a hole in it, big enough to push the Blade through it, Andriel says.
There is only one express elevator that drops down to the 17th floor. The operator must enter a series of codes as the elevator descends. The codes are changed frequently like a password.
There are government secrets on 17 that can never be accessed by unauthorized personnel, says Steven as the elevator nears the bottom floor of the Pine Bluff underground base. The door opens and Nancy, Walter, Brad and the two techies spill out of the elevator to a large hall with long corridors running down each side. The footprint of the bottom floor covers about 120,000 square feet, about the size of a car factory or supersized retail store.
We have all your gear in a lab down this hallway, says Steven. We are anxious to see your device at work, Oscar says. Hey, do you guys want to see something really cool? Steven asks.
All three nod in unison. Great. Follow me, Steven says.
The group walks down a hall and enters a lab, lots of tables, computers, not much to see really. Up on one table is a group of long plastic tubes, 12 inches in diameter, maybe 4 or 5 feet long. You can see mirrors at the end.
Wow, this looks interesting, Walter says. You are looking at the real reason we went into Iraq. Saddam had this built from instructions found on ancient Sumerian clay tablets found near where Babylon once stood.
They called it the Looking Glass. Our CIA guys heard about it and had photos and diagrams of it smuggled out of Iraq. We recreated it out at Area 51, Groom Lake actually.
When they saw that it worked, the powers that be, Steven makes air quotes with his hands, decided to go in and get it. This is the real deal. The whole 9-11 scam was part of an elaborate plan to get this thing out of Iraq. That’s my opinion.
Plus other sundry items. Walter, Nancy, and Brad are just stunned. Steven turns on a light source that bounces around from mirror to mirror and ends up at a large concave mirror, 15 inches in diameter.
You can see faint moving images on the mirror's surface that look like old 8mm grainy film. It looks like rioting in the streets, store shelves empty, a stark apocalyptic scene. Large crowds gather around the U.S. Capitol building and the Vatican.
Steven, where are these images coming from? Brad asks. From the future? Steven responds. No? Brad says. Yes, from the future. Steven says.
Somehow, light being moved over all these mirrored surfaces breaks out a light that is streaming in from the future. Walter moves in closer. So are these images just random snippets? Or are they organized in some manner? Walter questions.
The best we can tell is that they are like listening to an old AM radio at night. Stations from far away can drown out stations that are close by. Just sort of a jumble of music coming in and fading out.
It seems that the images are from different points in the future. One may be 5 years out and the next 50 years away, Steven says. So, what is so important about it, Nancy asks? Think about it, Nancy, having advanced warning of coming events.
Plus, many times we can see advanced technology. It's priceless, Oscar says as he reaches over and turns off the device. The one big drawback, however, is that, just us witnessing of these events will change them.
It's a very tight loop. We have been shooting video from the big mirror. When we compare previously shot video from images from the look in glass, they are different.
Some in subtle ways and others in major ways. Simply observing the future changes it. So we only keep it on for brief periods until we understand this phenomenon better, Steven concludes. Okay, let's get you guys settled into your lab. I am really looking forward to learning more about this superlight. Our world is amazing, isn't it? Steven says,
Washington DC is spectacular at sundown. The lights from the monuments and government buildings make for dramatic and exciting backdrop for the world leaders and dignitaries that visit, as well as the everyday politicians that haunt the city. A group of high-powered cabinet secretaries and military bosses have sit down for an emergency meeting with the president. Gentlemen, greetings and thank you for coming up here to the White House on such short notice.
I have been receiving phone calls and veiled threats from world leaders all day. Number one, what is all this fuss really all about? And secondly, what is going to be our stance in regards to this crazy technology, which I have heard very little about? Are we just going to take it from a private company and turn it over to all the governments of the world? The president asks out of breath, Mr. President, if I may, says Senator Abramson, who is seated on one of the two sofas just in front of the president's big resolute desk. I believe I was the first one to hear of this device.
I heard from a doctor that works at the company, one of my constituents. He came to me frantic and told me many details about this device. He had the presence of mind to film an experiment he participated in, shot on his cell phone.
I was so concerned about this horror show being in my district, I contacted the FBI director to look into it, for I thought it was a national security risk at the highest degree. The FBI director sent in a team with a warrant to seize any and all evidence related to the Superlight project. Brad Hillier, the company CEO, was one step ahead of us and had already moved all key components of the device and associated files and plans.
We have no leads at the moment as too where he and members of his staff are hiding out. I would like to offer whatever assistance I can, being that this thing was created in my district. I would like to help if I can.
Thank you, Senator. We can use all the help we can get. I want to thank you all again for coming up, and I would like to suggest that each of you consult with your respective departments and get me a letter that lays out your thoughts on how to proceed with this situation.
Please give me something by the end of tomorrow. I will then be better informed on my decisions on how to deal with this issue. Thank you all for coming.
All the attendants stand and stream out of the Oval Office. Ed Bramson hangs back. Mr. President, I had a deep black officer from the Space Force speak to my oversight committee, and she let it be known that she knew about Hilliard before any of this became public.
I have no way of getting to her. But I thought you should know, she may have information regarding Hilliard. Very interesting, Senator.
I will try looking under some rugs. But as you know, I have little authorization over deep black project sites or the people that run them. Please stay in contact, Senator.
Atlan, the home world of the Aetherians, is the seat of the Old Dominion. The large planet sits just outside the massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, in a large cluster of stars orbiting the event horizon. The light from all the nearby stars eliminate all darkness.
Every planet in this cluster is lit every hour, all over the globe by multiple stars. Massive bright stars can be seen in every direction. Humans could not exist here, the heat and radiation would evaporate the water in a human body in seconds.
But it's paradise to the Aetherians that dwell here. An indescribable garden, hundreds of millions of vast mansion homes with complex landscaping. There are over 100 planets inhabited by the Aetherians in this sector.
One more beautiful and amazing as the next, Atlan is home to the One. The One walks these gardens from time to time, and abides in a mountain compound known as Shiloe Ahim. Ambassador Lucentel the hand of the One, is an Ark ancestor.
He was with the One long before the Matterverse was spoken into existence. There are a small number of Ark ancestors, as many as 100 are known to live. The Akashe, the Ancient Hall of Records, holds records telling the story of the One and the Ark ancestors alone on Atlan.
The Ark ancestors wanted a family and asked the One to enrich them with sons. The One said he would extract a small spark of himself and release it as a son for each Ark ancestor. Many years later, the Ark ancestors developed the ability to petition the One for new sons and daughters.
The sons and daughters of the Ark ancestors are slightly less powerful than the Ark ancestors. Over billions of years, the eternal Aetherians have multiplied into trillions of beings and lower beings. The lower beings take the form of many exotic creatures that inhabit thousands of planets scattered across the Aetherians' Old Dominion.
Atlan is standing by to receive us, Ambassador, announces the Commander on duty. Please dock and secure the Elo-Eloahim. I would like to travel down to Atlan as soon as possible.
Brad, Nancy, and Walter have finished setting up the superlight in the big lab that Steven and Oscar gave them. Brad, you need to see the footage I shot of you while you were sleeping in the van. The interview I did with your driver, Zia, Nancy says.
What? You interviewed my driver? Brad says surprised. Yes, when you were asleep in the van, Nancy says, as she is cutting up the video footage. Okay, here we go.
Brad is watching the video, riveted by it. He turns it off. Well? Nancy asks. It's nice, I always wanted a daughter, Brad giggles.
I am sorry this shit is so crazy that if I don't laugh, I would cry. We haven't peeled back even one layer of this onion yet, and it's already difficult to keep up with. When I came out here with Archer on his private plane, Captain Carpenter introduced me to her little grey alien friends.
We flew aboard a small silver disc-shaped craft to their home base, that sits out around the rings of Saturn. Nancy looks right at Brad. Stop Brad, are you high right now?.
Brad pauses, don't you remember at lunch, Captain Carpenter said I would bring you up to speed. Well, I am bringing you up to speed right now. Drivers, waterbots, now grey aliens and UFO discs, what's next? Nancy asks with indigence.
Brad says, who knew a high-frequency light designed to see cracks in critical aircraft components and machinery would cause intergalactic turmoil. So as I was saying, my understanding is that the Superlight is a threat to a huge data collecting operation that these high freaks have been doing for eons. High freaks? Walter asks puzzled.
Oh, that's just a name I gave them. They are the beings that inhabit the realm that we see with the Superlight. They function at a super high frequency of light.
Their world is as real as ours, just operating at a higher frequency. Without the advent of the Superlight, we would never know that they are all around us and strewn all across the universe, Brad continues. The high freaks drive avatars or waterbots as Zia calls us, without our knowledge, so they can collect millions of terabytes from hundreds of telemetry points during the lifetime of the avatar.
It seems that the traveler or waterbot is just a spacesuit, be it an advanced one for the high freaks, Brad concludes. So the superlight reveals this relationship to the travelers, and that is what they are concerned about. Follow the money.

I can't figure out who sent them to me! None of my disc golf homies would have spent the money on the Firebird (which surprised me when I googled it as a non-firebird thrower!).
Separately packaged. I thought they were the new Løft Neon and Titanium I funded on Kickstart, and was super stoked! But now I'm even more stoked AND confused!
The Firebird is fucking amazing by the way. Yes, I throw all my not-cheap discs. It's apparently a less stable run - my first thought was "holy shit, this goes a long way before dumping," and then I looked it up, and the description said something like "known to fly straight with a very late, very strong fade." Super unique in my bag! Definitely made a spot!
Anyone else ever get surprise mystery discs?!?

I discovered Ironsworn a few years back during a Print-and-play / Solo gaming phase brought about due to the pandemic lockdown. I had played and enjoyed Four Against Darkness and quickly started looking for something else to scratch the Solo RPG/Gaming itch. Ironsworn seemed really interesting for a number of reasons:

1. The narrative first approach interested me as someone who has enjoyed creative writing forever but lacked the focus to actually sit down and do it regularly.
2. The very relaxed attitude to the setting. The Ironlands felt like it was as much a jumping off point for world creation as an interesting world to explore. The Your Truths exercise only increased this feeling and was a joy to complete on its own, even without playing the game.
3. The extremely well written (Free!) rulebook which quickly became something I read to relax, again without even begining to play the game.
4. The Oracles felt incredible to roll on and discover new exciting and unexpected avenues for storytelling.

Despite all of this interest, I initially struggled to get a campaign off the ground. I would enjoy creating the world and a character but then after a brief start, lose interest in my personal journey and return back to looking at the rulebook or finding other resources available, or watching Me, Myself and Die! or some other, much more practised, solo player.
I think the reason for this was that I didn't have a set method for actually playing the game. I would switch between: messing with Roll20 or Ironjournal, jotted down notes in a notepad, using a word document on my laptop and various other ways as I basically procrastinated actually making headway in my story. Even printing and organising the Lodestar reference book along with various cheatsheets in a nice folder for eventual use once I stopped dithering about. In the end, it got shelved. Always in the back of my mind and never completely forgotten but not touched for a couple of years.
Then recently I got an urge and had a quick glance through the rulebook PDF which was on my phone and I realised something I should have known all along; Ironsworn isn't a strict, crunchy system but a tool for personal storytelling and to relax into it.
So after rereading the entire rulebook (haha, of course! I love that thing) and also looking into the newer version of Ironjournal, I started and it's even better than I imagined once everything starts to flow and analysis paralysis fades.
My current setup is:
• A tablet (less distractions than a laptop) and a Bluetooth keyboard (for faster typing and easier access to formatting controls).
• The newer Ironjournal open in split screen with a Google document - I use Ironjournal for the truths, the character sheet and progress tracks, map and location/NPC tracking. The Google doc is for the my campaign journal as I can have a nicer, more novel-like font (helps me alot for all types of writing) and also allows me to format it clearer between narrative and mechanics over the inbuilt journal function of IJ.
• After using the inbuilt dice rolleoracle roller in IJ for a short while, I have switched to psychical dice and a dice tray and I now refer to my stats and the oracles in Eric Bright's Expanded Oracles document (which now includes Shawn Tomkins original oracles as well). Manually making the calculations and assessing the results. - Although this method is slightly longer, it seems to produce better narrative discussions for me rather than the extremely quick way in which IJ throws the results at you.
• I also have the rulebook PDF open as a pop out for reference along with the Expanded Oracles PDF.
• Finally, something I have discovered and I find interesting is using the UNE (Universal NPC Emulator) and BOLD (Book of Legends and Deeds) both by the late Zach Best. I believe these pre-date Ironsworn by a good 10 years and in someway do a similar job as some of IS's oracles but there is something about the structure and the results being framed as a leading question I find helpful and exciting.
All in all, I think I've found a good workflow to progress stories and enjoy the system (finally!).
Next upgrades on my list are:
• To become familiar with Delve and introduce that - I have the PDF and have read a large chunk of it but haven't bit the bullet and used it (I also haven't felt the base game lacking or the need for more as of yet).
• To get some heavy metal dice as the tactile element of them appeals to me in a way I can't quite explain (haha!).
• To become more familiar with how best to map out or otherwise create visual counterparts for my adventures, either using AI image generation or something else. Currently using a generated village map from Watabou's Procgen Arcana as a starting point for my characters home village.
Any advice or things that people have found to be personally beneficial in getting and keeping your games interesting and flowing well would be greatly appreciated.
Not sure if I wrote this post for advice or to simply consolidate my relationship with the Ironsworn system for myself. Either way, here is it!