Snook drawing

They did such a great job with her attempts to hide the pregnancy. In 4X3 she had on solid black to create a solid front and not draw attention to any individual area. In 4X4, she had on her usual blazer but it was buttoned and just didn't quite hang right and it was even more apparent when she wore the blazer with the belt in 4X8. In 4X10 when her secret is finally out, she wears her blazer open at Caroline's vacation house and she's visibly pregnant (and carrying high.) The fact that Sarah Snook was pregnant IRL for the last couple of episodes helped, I'm sure.

EDIT: okay this post got a little controversial so I'd like to clear up my personal stance on the characters :D This is my first reddit post like ever participating in discourse so I'd appreciate it if we could all stay cordial here 😭

1. I, 18F as of literally a few months ago, find Tom to be one of the most relatable characters on the show. And it's because he's literally WRITTEN to be universally relatable to some degree - he's your average corporate Joe who's in way over his head. Maybe he'll be even more relatable to me a few years down the line when I'm stuck in corporate hell lmaoo
   
2. BECAUSE I find him relatable, it's easier for me to nitpick his character (yay self criticism!!). Lmao I also just realized I tend to find myself stuck in people-pleasing hell just like him (explains the amount of edits I felt compelled to make on this post💀)
   
3. I admit my argument is biased so please take what i say with a grain of salt, for multiple reasons.
   

3.1 Nate is a bit forgettable considering he gets like 1 scene a season so i forgot about his general scumminess. I personally think he's a cheating douche who lacks political or moral conviction but I still think he's one of the more well-adjusted characters on the show (like, have you seen the competition lmaoo), especially recently after his semi-supportive talk with kendall which i appreciated from him. So while he definitely has his faults, I PERSONALLY feel like the NateHate is a bit overblown due to people rallying behind Tom because of his relatability.
3.2 Gotta point out that people fixate on Nate's flaws and kinda demonise him because of his universal douchiness. We all know a Nate, we all hate him, and few are immune against feeling exasperated when he pops up. I won't take that away from you 😭 But, subjectivity aside, his offenses are quite tame in comparison to the other characters (this is quite relativist, i know, but...There's literal fascist/abusive characters who aren't getting a fraction of nate's hate which leads me to believe the hate is bordering on vitriol at this point

1. I'm not trying to defend Shiv. She has her own share of awful character traits/behavior. I can recognize their marriage as MUTUALLY toxic and emotionally abusive, but the scales between who is more of a victim is CONSTANTLY tipping throughout the show. Their relationship is nuanced, I know. But speaking within the context of the balcony scene, I felt Tom was way more out of line this time, and his words reminded me of a lot of misogynistic rhetoric I've been exposed to (which for the most part I think is unintentional, but I digress). Snook's performance really helped me empathise with the hurt Shiv is feeling in the scene, what can I say. It really draws parallels between Shiv's conversation with her mother which caught my eye. In trying to marry a man who is not like her father she ended up marrying someone who emulates her mother when cornered. That's rough
   
2. It's undeniable that some will find it hard to empathise with Shiv due to her obscene wealth and gender. Not to blame anyone who doesn't like/relate to her obviously - but it's important to take into account how her character's experience may not resonate with you not because of just her faults. Her flaws are definitely compounded due to the subtext of her character. Food for thought I guess??
   
3. All the characters suck, end of. At this point im just gonna root for Connor 😭 (mostly) unproblematic king shit!
   

Heres my original post below, keep in mind my corrections lol:
Honestly I can't think of anything nate has done to prove himself to be as bad a person as everyone paints him out to be. Sure he knowingly had an affair with a married person but that's literally it, he keeps his head down, is well-adjusted, does his job well, isnt a fascist or a complete piece of shit.
The nate hate I feel is mostly coming from men who project themselves onto Tom's character because they feel personally victimised by people in their lives for whatever reason. But the thing is - Tom is not a victim. He's just as conniving and mean spirited as the rest of the cast. He's only nice to his superiors so he can climb up the social ladder and has routinely treated his subordinates like shit whenever he can (Greg, his employees, etc). But because Tom is surrounded by giants most of the time, obviously he's going to come across as "meek" and "nice" because he's forced to play that role.
Truthfully, he's an opportunistic social climber from an upper middle-class family who has some...concerning red flags to say the least. Are we forgetting how he tracked Shiv's period cycle to get her pregnant without her knowledge? Not out of love or anything, just to secure his place in the family even through DNA.
People bring up him getting thrown under the bus for the cruises scandal as a 'woe is Tom' moment but 1) he actually IS complicit in it, he still buried the evidence himself 2) Shiv DID save Tom, and it was even at the expense of her own brother, which is why it irks me to no end how Tom routinely denies the opportunities and protection he receives from Shiv in light of their marriage issues. He has a right to feel upset but dude, face it, you married into money with the intent of getting money and you've BEEN getting money. And power. And shields. And you have your wife to thank for all that.
That balcony argument...whew. Digging into her wounds in the most hurtful and misogynistic way possible by saying she's damaged goods incapable of love or motherhood, hurting her with the same talking points Shiv's own mom has weaponized against her since childhood,, and if that wasn't enough - dug the knife deeper by stating the unsaid in that she couldn't get her dad's approval. The same dad she's still mourning. Shiv didn't dig into him hard ENOUGH for his nastiness I feel
Overall, masterful performances from the both of them, you can really feel the hurt of both characters. But don't deny Shiv her own pain because you buy into her facade of ruthlessness and Tom's facade of niceness. And for the love of God please invest time into healing your own relationships and trauma instead of projecting onto Tom and completely demonising other characters in the process.
Edit: to preface this im a womanTM who doesn't think much of nate but like. To me he's literally just There. I don't hate or like him so when I see the sheer amount hate towards his character it's usually either for this reason or because of the Douchey particles he naturally emanates 😭
Double edit: I stand corrected in terms of nate's hateability, he has his share of douchiness, but in my defense he's too forgettable for me to think about, let alone dislike, so the hate towards his character still feels dramatic to me

The battlefield was silent for one second. Just one second of peace, until the Shadow Hunter’s neurones clicked and charged in. “ AH NU CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE!” yelled the Scavs, cocking their weapons and beginning to fire. Lyosha on the other hand who was still at the guard tower, was incapacitated. He had seen what these could do, the war machines of the Reikgon, the blessing of Reikala, genetically modified human beings, tortured, abused and driven insane, losing their humanity and transformed into bloodthirsty slaves. The Reikgon had successfully created a new entity, an apex predator, It was known as The Seal. A sigil that manifested with Reikala’s power. They had played God’s Hand.
The Shadow Hunter’s unsheathed their sickles and began to spin them around with blurry speeds, blocking all projectiles and ricocheting them back into the toxic snow. “SHELL OUT!” yelled a Scav, producing a M67 Hand Grenade. He pulled back the pin and threw the grenade right at a Shadow Hunter’s feet. The fuze detonated perfectly, ripping apart the Shadow Hunter with the sheer force of the explosion. The Scavs cheered, but their suffering was about to begin, unaware to the fact that the Shadow Hunter’s had used their brother as a diversion to begin to climb the wall. “ BROTHER’S“ roared a Scav with a baseball cap and untidy stubble. “ Draw your melee and bring the battle to them!” This of course was the completely wrong thing to do. “ AH NU CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE!” screamed the Scavengers once more, before they drew their close range weapons, and jumped off the wall. Lyosha, who had been at the Guard tower the whole time watched as once proud battalion of warriors, were slowly being reduced to blood, organs and limbs. “ AARRGH“ wailed the Scavenger with the baseball cap as his arm was dismembered with one clean slice from a sickle, before having a demonic claw being punched through his gut and his head ripped off with splatter of blood on the Shadow Hunter’s face. The battle was going to be lost, and they all knew it.
”Comrade, the battle is lost! Get up!” Lyosha awoke to the sight of his friend Olezhek, holding in one hand a bloody fire axe and in the other, a freshly decapitated Shadow Hunter head. “Wha…..” mumbled Lyosha, disorientated and confused. “ You collapsed, looks like the time with the Reikgon didn’t help ya, did it, comrade?” Olezhek helped Lyosha onto his feet and handed him a discarded Ruger LCP he had found underneath a fellow scav’s limp frame. “ Lyosha, my friend, we are going to have to make a run for it. The Outpost has fallen. The Scavenger Leader has already left in the spare drop-ship. We gotta get ba-”. “ I wouldn’t do that if I were you” A pistol clicked. “Get your hands in the fucking air! You scav scum!” roared the Agent. “ For you scavenger shit, a bullet is to good for you!” “Now follo-“ The Agent never finished his sentence, and he never would. “Sorry, early bedtime for you” giggled a nearby woman, throwing knife at the ready. She had jet black hair, a tactical vest and ripped blue jeans. “You 2, you better come with me, this situation is a bit mire complicated as you might think…” Olezhek snook a brief glance at Lyosha to see if she was to be trusted,Lyosha simply took his hand, gave him his best smile, and walked behind the woman into the decaying winter…
​
Hi there! Me again. Just wanted to say thanks for the support on this project and well done if you reached the end! About what happened to the apostle… thats going to be an epic fight scene with another character…and if you read carefully, there are more loose ends! :shock: They’ll be coming in the next series, The Cytherean! I’ll also post another Apostle, but it’s just going to be all combined into one post. So with that being said…
​
Godspeed Agents!
-CK@n3r

From the first scene, it's clear the kids had a relatively decent idea. Not a great one, but they had a reasonably coherent plan. They were ready to go. But it wasn't enough, it wasn't going to get Daddy's attention, which is all they REALLY wanted. So they took what they had and threw it away to chase Pierce, which they had no plan for.
Shiv, of course, it waging a war on two fonts. And you can see the toll it's taking on her. I can't believe I'm going to say it because I love Sarah Snook, but Shiv looked BAD in this episode. Her clothes aren't fitting right, and her makeup is making her look aged, even more than Roman. She's the YOUNGEST of the kids. Now nothing on this show happens on accident. Even if Snook has put on some weight after having a kid, you can tailor her clothes and change her blocking to hide that (just like they did in S3). Her marriage is clearly on her mind, and all it takes is one call from Tom for her to get so flustered even the brothers clue in on it. For someone who's always in control, her marriage (and it's impending dissolution) is very much out of her control. And it's all there in how she looks, very much a deliberate choice by the show.
There's a ton going on in Logan's birthday party, but for a man who has everything, there is literally no one who loves him in that room. A reasonable amount of loyalty, a lot of sycophants, but no love. Logan is virtually a mirror of Shiv now ... both unable to SAY what they need to, somehow thinking that will hurt worse than how they hurt NOW. He's ruined all his relationships trying to protect his legacy. The irony is that his legacy would have been protected if he'd just loved his kids because they'd have protected it for HIM, instead of for themselves. By pitting his kids against each other to find a successor, all he did was get them to work together against him. All he has left is the company bearing his name that he's about to sell ...
Tom and Shiv and THAT SCENE. Tons have pointed out Tom's wedding ring, and I think the big giveaway there is just how much of what Tom is doing is performative, both for Logan to show he's loyal to him and not to his wife, but also to Shiv to show he won't be bullied into submission any more. But at home, he still considers himself married. Of course, Shiv is massively conflicted because while she can't abide the betrayal and is not comfortable being put into a submissive role, it reminds her of her father (daddy issues) and that's causing a lot of turmoil. The way Tom talks to her ... He can see that conflict and is trying to help draw her out. He's as much therapist as he is husband here. He knows she can't express herself ... so the conversation is happening on two levels, and the subtext is what we see changing here.
The final scene took me a bit to process. Why did Logan care what was happening at the network he wasn't going to be in control of in about 36 more hours? It's because Logan's party, the kids going after (and in theory, winning) Pierce, and realizing that those closest to him are all employees ... what does Logan have left? The only thing left that he cares about bearing his name is his company. That phone call shows that Logan isn't going to give up the company after all. Maybe he's figured out it's the only way to bring his kids back into the fold. Maybe he has ... a plan? Or maybe he's just decided to burn it all down. The one thing this show rarely gives us is insight into Logan. Maybe this is going to be the season that changes that.

So my players just hit the new moon in game. No matter where in ten-towns they would have been located, all the locals would have been gearing up for the coming sacrifice. My players, however, ignored it completely. They happened to be in Caer-Dineval and while the town gathered to march their food out into the tundra the players snook away to spy on the Caer while the Black swords weren't home. I want there to be consequences to skipping out on the sacrifice, things like harsher weather came to mind but I would like my players to notice that it has gotten worse for them since after the sacrifice so they can draw that conclusion and so that it is a real choice for then next time weather to skip the sacrifice or participate, this time they skipped it because they just assumed nothing would happen to them and they saw it as an opportunity to gather intel (despite a warning from an npc that not participating is a bad idea). Any ideas how I can show that their choice had consequences?

Like Mace Windu does it against Palpatine, Luke does it to a sleeping Kylo Ren when it's a freakin lightsaber, they could just poke, done. But now in Kenoby, after the internet has been at it for so long, Reva does it again when Vader is with his back to her. Why does this keep happening?
Or they could just start/draw it at a person, similar to how Kylo Ren kills Snook

This exclusive hunt at San Isabel Scout Ranch comes with a voucher for an Antlered Deer and accommodations for your stay during the Oct 29th-Nov 6th, 2022 rifle season. Hunters will have access to the entire property.
​
At 9,000 feet, where the air is clear and cool, San Isabel Scout Ranch provides the perfect setting. Views from the camp are breathtaking, with towering peaks to the West and a view of a valley to the east. Beautiful vistas surround the area that are sure to give you a memorable experience.
​
Two options are available for the 2 available vouchers
Two Options:
Buy it Now
(First Come - $2,000) OR
Drawing on Sept 21st:
1 ticket for $20
3 tickets for $50
7 tickets for $100
Contact Jeremy Snook to purchase tickets or call (719)219-2915

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A LONG-DELAYED PROMISE FULFILLED

They who are on the summit of a mountain can see all men; in like manner they who are intelligent and free from sorrow are enabled to ascend above the paradise of the Gods; and when they there have seen the subjection of man to birth and death and the sorrows by which he is afflicted, they open the doors of the immortal.

—From the Tched-du brjod-pai tsoms of the BKAH-HGYUR
​
IN the January number of the Theosophist for 1882, we promised our readers the opinions of the Venerable Chohan-Lama —the chief of the Archive-registrars of the libraries containing manuscripts on esoteric doctrines belonging to the Ta-lοϊ and Ta-shü-hlumpo Lamas Rim-boche of Tibet—on certain conclusions arrived at by the author of Buddha and Early Buddhism. Owing to the brotherly kindness of a disciple of the learned Chohan, than whom no one in Tibet is more deeply versed in the science of esoteric and exoteric Buddhism, we are now able to give a few of the doctrines which have a direct bearing on these conclusions. It is our firm belief that the learned Chohan’s letters, and the notes accompanying them, could not arrive at a more opportune time. Besides the many and various misconceptions of our doctrines, we have more than once been taken severely to task by some of the most intelligent Spiritualists for misleading them as to the real attitude and belief of Hindus and Buddhists as to “spirits of the departed.” Indeed, according to some Spiritualists “the Buddhist belief is permeated by the distinctive and peculiar note of modern Spiritualism, the presence and guardianship of departed spirits,” and the Theosophists have been guilty of misrepresenting this belief. They have had the hardihood, for instance, to maintain that this “belief in the intervention of departed human spirits” was anathema maranatha in the East, whereas it is “in effect, a permeating principle of Buddhism.”
What every Hindu, of whatever caste and education, thinks of the “intervention of departed spirits” is so well known throughout the length and breadth of India that it would be loss of time to repeat the oft-told tale. There are a few converts to modern Spiritualism, such as Babu Peary Chand Mittra, whose great personal purity of life would make such intercourse harmless for him, even were he not indifferent to physical phenomena, holding but to the purely spiritual, subjective side of such communion. But, if these be excepted, we boldly reassert what we have always maintained: that there is not a Hindu who does not loathe the very idea of the reappearance of a departed “spirit” whom he will ever regard as impure; and that with these exceptions no Hindu believes that, except in cases of suicide, or death by accident, any spirit but an evil one can return to earth. Therefore, leaving the Hindus out of the question, we will give the ideas of the Northern Buddhists on the subject, hoping to add those of the Southern Buddhists to them in good time. And, when we say “Buddhists,” we do not include the innumerable heretical sects teeming throughout Japan and China who have lost every right to that appellation. With these we have nought to do. We think but of Buddhists of the Northern and Southern Churches—the Roman Catholics and the Protestants of Buddhism, so to say.
The subject which our learned Tibetan correspondent treats is based on a few direct questions offered by us with a humble request that they should be answered, and the following paragraphs from Buddha and Early Buddhism:

I have dwelt somewhat at length on this supernaturalism, because it is of the highest importance to our theme. Buddhism was plainly an elaborate apparatus to nullify the action of evil spirits by the aid of good spirits operating at their highest potentiality through the instrumentality of the corpse or a portion of the corpse of the chief aiding spirit. The Buddhist temple, the Buddhist rites, the Buddhist liturgy, all seem based on this one idea that a whole or portions of a dead body was necessary. What were these assisting spirits? Every Buddhist, ancient or modern, would at once admit that a spirit that has not yet attained the Bodhi or spiritual awakenment cannot be a good spirit. It can do no good thing; more than that, it must do evil things.
The answer of Northern Buddhism is that the good spirits are the Buddhas, the dead prophets. They come from certain ‘fields of the Buddhas’ ” to commune with earth.

Our learned Tibetan friend writes:

Let me say at once that monks and laymen give the most ridiculously absurd digest of the Law of Faith, the popular beliefs of Tibet. The Capuchin Della Penna’s account of the brotherhood of the ‘Byang-tsiub’ is simply absurd. Taking from the Bkah-hgyur and other books of the Tibetan laws some literal descriptions, he then embellishes them with his own interpretation. Thus he speaks of the fabled worlds of ‘spirits,’ where live the ‘Lha, who are like gods’; adding that the Tibetans imagine ‘these places to be in the air above a great mountain, about a hundred and sixty thousand leagues high and thirty-two thousand leagues in circuit; which is made up of four parts, being of crystal to the east, of the red ruby to the west, of gold to the north, and of the green precious stone—lapis lazuli—to the south. In these abodes of bliss they—the Lha—remain as long as they please, and then pass to the paradise of other worlds.'
This description resembles far more—if my memory of the missionary-school-going period at Lahoula does not deceive me— the ‘new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven’ in John’s vision—that city which measured ‘twelve thousand furlongs,’ whose walls were of ‘jasper,’ the buildings of ‘pure gold,’ the foundations of the walls ‘garnished with all manner of precious stones’ and ‘the twelve gates were twelve pearls’—than the city of the Jang-Chhub either in the Bkah-hgyur or in the ideas of the Tibetans. In the first place, the sacred canon of the Tibetans, the Bkah-hgyur and Bstan-hgyur, comprises one thousand seven hundred and seven distinct works—one thousand and eighty-three public and six hundred and twenty-four secret volumes— the former being composed of three hundred and fifty and the latter of seventy-seven folio volumes.
Could they even by chance have seen them, I can assure the Theosophists that the contents of these volumes could never be understood by anyone who had not been given the key to their peculiar character, and to their hidden meaning.
Every description of localities is figurative in our system; every name and word is purposely veiled; and a student, before he is given any further instruction, has to study the mode of deciphering, and then of comprehending and learning the equivalent secret term or synonym for nearly every word of our religious language. The Egyptian enchorial or hieratic system is child’s play to the deciphering of our sacred puzzles. Even in those volumes to which the masses have access, every sentence has a dual meaning, one intended for the unlearned, and the other for those who have received the key to the records.
If the efforts of such well-meaning, studious and conscientious men as the authors of Buddhist Records of the Western World, and Buddha and Early Buddhism—whose poetical hypotheses may be upset and contradicted, one by one, with the greatest ease—resulted in nought, verily then, the attempts of the predecessors and successors of the Abbés Huc, Gabet and others must prove a sorry failure; since the former have not and the latter have, an object to achieve in purposely disfiguring the unparalleled and glorious teachings of our blessed master, Shakya Thub-pa.
In the Theosophist for October, 1881, a correspondent correctly informs the reader that Gautama the Buddha, the wise, ‘insisted upon initiation being thrown open to all who were qualified.’ This is true; such was the original design put for some time in practice by the great Sang-gyas, and before he had become the All-Wise. But three or four centuries after his separation from this earthly coil, when Asoka, the great supporter of our religion, had left the world, the Arhat initiates, owing to the secret but steady opposition of the Brâhmans to their system, had to drop out of the country one by one and seek safety beyond the Himalayas. Thus, though popular Buddhism did not spread in Tibet before the seventh century, the Buddhist initiates of the mysteries and esoteric system of the Aryan Twice-born, leaving their motherland, India, sought refuge with the pre-Buddhistic ascetics; those who had the Good Doctrine, even before the days of Shâkya-Muni. These ascetics had dwelt beyond the Himâlayan ranges from time immemorial. They are the direct successors of those Âryan sages who, instead of accompanying their Brâhman brothers in the prehistorical emigration from Lake Manasarovara across the Snowy Range into the hot plains of the Seven Rivers, had preferred to remain in their inaccessible and unknown fastnesses. No wonder, indeed, if the Âryan esoteric doctrine and our Arahat doctrines are found to be almost identical. Truth, like the sun over our heads, is one; but it seems as if this eternal truism must be constantly reiterated to make the dark, as much as the white, people remember it. Only that truth may be kept pure and unpolluted by human exaggerations—its very votaries betimes seeking to adapt it, to pervert and disfigure its fair face to their own selfish ends—it has to be hidden far away from the eye of the profane. Since the days of the earliest universal mysteries up to the time of our great Shâkya Tathâgata Buddha, who reduced and interpreted the system for the salvation of all, the divine Voice of the Self, known as Kwan-yin, was heard but in the sacred solitude of the preparatory mysteries.
Our world-honoured Tsong-kha-pa closing his fifth Damngag reminds us that ‘every sacred truth, which the ignorant are unable to comprehend under its true light, ought to be hidden within a triple casket concealing itself as the tortoise conceals his head within his shell; ought to show her face but to those who are desirous of obtaining the condition of Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi’—the most merciful and enlightened heart.
There is a dual meaning, then, even in the canon thrown open to the people, and, quite recently, to Western scholars. I will now try to correct the errors—too intentional, I am sorry to say, in the case of the Jesuit writers. No doubt but that the Chinese and Tibetan Scriptures, so-called, the standard works of China and Japan, some written by our most learned scholars, many of whom—as uninitiated though sincere and pious men—commented upon what they never rightly understood, contain a mass of mythological and legendary matter more fit for nursery folklore than an exposition of the Wisdom Religion as preached by the world’s Saviour. But none of these are to be found in the canon; and, though preserved in most of the Lamasery libraries, they are read and implicitly believed in only by the credulous and pious whose simplicity forbids them ever stepping across the threshold of reality. To this class belong The Buddhist Cosmos, written by the Bonze Jin-ch’an, of Pekin; The Shing-Tao-ki, or ‘The Records of the Enlightenment of Tathâgata,’ by Wang- Puh, in the seventh century, The Hi-shai Sûtra, or ‘Book of Creation,’ various volumes on heaven and hell, and so forth—poetic fictions grouped around a symbolism evolved as an after-thought.
But the records from which our scholastic author, the monk Della Penna quotes—or I should rather say, misquotes—contain no fiction, but simply information for future generations, who may, by that time, have obtained the key to the right reading of them. The ‘Lha’ of whom Della Penna speaks but to deride the fable, they who ‘have attained the position of saints in this world,’ were simply the initiated Arhats, the adepts of many and various grades, generally known under the name of Bhanté or Brothers. In the book known as the Avatamsaka Sûtra, in the section on ‘the Supreme Âtman—Self—as manifested in the character of the Arhats and Pratyeka Buddhas,’ it is stated that ‘Because from the beginning, all sentient creatures have confused the truth, and embraced the false; therefore has there come into existence a hidden knowledge called Alaya Vijñâna.’ ‘Who is in the possession of the true hidden knowledge?’ ‘The great teachers of the Snowy Mountain,’ is the response in The Book of Law. The Snowy Mountain is the ‘mountain a hundred and sixty thousand leagues high.’ Let us see what this means. The last three ciphers being simply left out, we have a hundred and sixty leagues; a Tibetan league is nearly five miles; this gives us seven hundred and eighty miles from a certain holy spot, by a distinct road to the west. This becomes as clear as can be, even in Della Penna’s further description, to one who has but a glimpse of the truth. ‘According to their law,’ says that monk, ‘in the west of this world, is an eternal world, a paradise, and in it a saint called Ho-pahme, which means “Saint of Splendour and Infinite Light.” This saint has many distinct “powers,” who are all called “chang-chub”,’ which—heads in a footnote—means ‘the spirits of those who, on account of their perfection, do not care to become saints, and train and instruct the bodies of the reborn Lamas, so that they may help the living.’
This shows that these presumably dead ‘chang-chubs’ are living Bodhisatwas or Bhanté , known under various names among Tibetan people; among others, Lha or ‘spirits,’ as they are supposed to have an existence more in spirit than in flesh. At death they often renounce Nirvâna—the bliss of eternal rest, or oblivion of personality—to remain in their spiritualized astral selves for the good of their disciples and humanity in general.
To some Theosophists, at least, my meaning must be clear, though some are sure to rebel against the explanation. Yet we maintain that there is no possibility of an entirely pure ‘self’ remaining in the terrestrial atmosphere after his liberation from the physical body, in his own personality, in which he moved upon earth. Only three exceptions are made to this rule:
The holy motive prompting a Bodhisatwa, a Sravaka, or Rahat to help to the same bliss those who remain behind him, the living; in which case he will stop to instruct them either from within or without; or, secondly, those who, however pure, harmless and comparatively free from sin during their lives, have been so engrossed with some particular idea in connection with one of the human mâyâs as to pass away amidst that all-absorbing thought; and, thirdly, persons in whom an intense and holy love, such as that of a mother for her orphaned children, creates or generates an indomitable will fed by that boundless love to tarry with and among the living in their inner selves.
The periods allotted for these exceptional cases vary. In the first case, owing to the knowledge acquired in his condition of Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi—the most holy and enlightened heart—the Bodhisatwa has no fixed limit. Accustomed to remain for hours and days in his astral form during life, he has power after death to create around him his own conditions, calculated to check the natural tendency of the other principles to rejoin their respective elements, and can descend or even remain on earth for centuries and millenniums. In the second case, the period will last until the all-powerful magnetic attraction of the subject of the thought—intensely concentrated at the moment of death— becomes weakened and gradually fades out. In the third, the attraction is broken either by the death or the moral unworthiness of the loved ones. It cannot in either caselast more than a lifetime.
In all other cases of apparitions or communications by whatever mode, the ‘spirit’ will prove a wicked ‘bhuta’ or ‘ro-lang’ at best—the soulless shell of an ‘elementary.’ The ‘Good Doctrine’ is rejected on account of the unwarranted accusation that ‘adepts’ only claim the privilege of immortality. No such claim was ever brought forward by any eastern adept or initiate. Very true, our Masters teach us ‘that immortality is conditional,’ and that the chances of an adept who has become a proficient in the Alaya Vijñana, the acme of wisdom, are tenfold greater than those of one who, being ignorant of the potentialities centered within his Self, allows them to remain dormant and undisturbed until it is too late to awake them in this life. But the adept knows no more on earth, nor are his powers greater here than will be the knowledge and powers of theaverage good man when the latter reaches his fifth and especially his sixth cycle or round. Our present mankind is still in the fourth of the seven great cyclic rounds. Humanity is a baby hardly out of its swaddling clothes, and the highest adept of the present age knows less than he will know as a child in the seventh round. And as mankind is an infant collectively, so is man in his present development individually. As it is hardly to be expected that a young child, however precocious, should remember his existence from the hour of his birth, day by day, with the various experiences of each, and the various clothes he was made to wear on each of them, so no ‘self,’ unless that of an adept having reached Samma-Sambuddha—during which an illuminate sees the long series of his past lives throughout all his previous births in other worlds—was ever able to recall the distinct and various lives he passed through. But that time must come one day. Unless a man is an irretrievable sensualist, dooming himself thereby to utter annihilation after one of such sinful lives, that day will dawn when, having reached the state of absolute freedom from any sin or desire, he will see and recall to memory all his past lives as easily as a man of our age turns back and passes in review, one by one, every day of his existence.

We may add a word or two in explanation of a previous passage, referring to Kwan-yin. This divine power was finally anthropomorphized by the Chinese Buddhist ritualists into a distinct double-sexed deity with a thousand hands and a thousand eyes, and called Kwan-shai-yin Bodhisatwa, the Voice-Deity, but in reality meaning the voice of the ever-present latent divine consciousness in man; the voice of his real Self, which can be fully evoked and heard only through great moral purity. Hence Kwan-yin is said to be the son of Amitabhâ Buddha, who generated that Saviour, the merciful Bodhisatwa, the “Voice” or the “Word” that is universally diffused, the “Sound” which is eternal. It has the same mystical meaning as the Vâch of the Brâhmans. While the Brâhmans maintain the eternity of the Vedas from the eternity of “sound,” the Buddhists claim by synthesis the eternity of Amitabhâ, since he was the first to prove the eternity of the Self-born, Kwan-yin. Kwan-yin is the Vâchîshvara or Voice-Deity of the Brâhmans. Both proceed from the same origin as the Logos of the neo-platonic Greeks; the “manifested deity” and its “voice” being found in man’s Self, his conscience; Self being the unseen Father, and the “voice of Self” the Son; each being the relative and the correlative of the other. Both Vâchîshvara and Kwan-yin had, and still have, a prominent part in the Initiation Rites and Mysteries in the Brâhmanical and Buddhist esoteric doctrines.
We may also point out that Bodhisatwas or Rahats need not be adepts; still less, Brâhmans, Buddhists, or even “Asiatics,” but simply holy and pure men of any nation or faith, bent all their lives on doing good to humanity.
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THE DOCTRINES OF THE HOLY "LHA"
​

The forms under which any living being may be reborn, are six-fold. The highest class are the Lha, ‘spirits, highest beings, gods’; they rank next to the Buddhas, and inhabit the six celestial regions. Two of these regions belong to the earth; but the four others, which are considered as superior mansions, lie in the atmosphere, far beyond the earth.
As a consequence of premature decease, the ‘Bardo’ is prolongated. This is the middle state between the death and the new rebirth, which does not follow immediately, but there exists an interval which is shorter for the good than for the bad.—(EMIL SCHLAGINTWEIT. Buddhism in Tibet.)

The notes that follow are compiled, or rather translated, as closely as the idiomatic difficulties would permit, from Tibetan letters and manuscripts, sent in answer to several questions regarding the western misconceptions of Northern Buddhism or Lamaism. The information comes from a Gelung of the Inner Temple—a disciple of Bas-pa Dharma, the Secret Doctrine.

Brothers residing in Gya-P-heling—British India—having respectfully called my master’s attention to certain incorrect and misleading statements about the Good Doctrine of our blessed Phag-pa Sang-gyas—most Holy Buddha—as alleged to be carried on in Bhod-Yul, the land of Tibet, I am commanded by the revered Ngag-pa to answer them. I will do so, as far as our rules will permit me to discuss so sacred a subject openly. I can do no more, since, till the day when our Pban-chhen-rin-po-chhe shall be reborn in the lands of the P-helings—foreigners—and, appearing as the great Chom-dë n-da, the conqueror, shall destroy with his mighty hand the errors and ignorance of ages, it will be of little, if of any, use to try to uproot these misconceptions.

A prophecy of Tsong-ka-pa is current in Tibet to the effect that the true doctrine will be maintained in its purity only so long as Tibet is kept free from the incursions of western nations, whose crude ideas of fundamental truth would inevitably confuse and obscure the followers of the Good Law. But, when the western world is more ripe in the direction of philosophy, the incarnation of Pban-chhen-rin-po-chhe—the Great Jewel of Wisdom—one of the Teshu Lamas, will take place, and the splendour of truth will then illuminate the whole world. We have here the true key to Tibetan exclusiveness.
Our correspondent continues:

Out of the many erroneous views presented to the consideration of our master, I have his permission to treat the following: first, the error generally current among the Ro-lang-pa—spiritualists—that those who follow the Good Doctrine have intercourse with, and reverence for, Ro-lang-ghosts—or the apparitions of dead men; and, secondly, that the Bhanté —Brothers—or ‘Lha,’ popularly so-called—are either disembodied spirits or gods.

The first error is found in Buddha and Early Buddhism, since this work has given rise to the incorrect notion that spiritualism was at the very root of Buddhism. The second error is found in the Succinct Abstract of the Great Chaos of Tibetan Laws by the Capuchin monk Della Penna and the accounts given by his companions, whose absurd calumnies of Tibetan religion and laws written during the past century have been lately reprinted in Mr. Markham’s Tibet.
“I will begin with the former error,” writes our correspondent.

Neither the Southern nor Northern Buddhists, whether of Ceylon, Tibet, Japan or China, accept western ideas as to the capabilities and qualifications of the ‘naked souls.’
For we deprecate unqualifiedly and absolutely all ignorant intercourse with the Ro-lang. For what are they who return? What kind of creatures are they who can communicate at will objectively or by physical manifestation? They are impure, grossly sinful souls, ‘a-tsa-ras’; suicides; and such as have come to premature deaths by accident and must linger in the earth’s atmosphere until the full expiration of their natural term of life.
No right-minded person, whether Lama or Chhipa—non-Buddhist—will venture to defend the practice of necromancy, which, by a natural instinct has been condemned in all the great Dharmas—laws or religions—and intercourse with, and using the powers of these earth-bound souls is simply necromancy.
Now the beings included in the second and third classes—suicides and victims of accident—have not completed their natural term of life; and, as a consequence, though not of necessity mischievous, are earth-bound. The prematurely expelled soul is in an unnatural state; the original impulse under which the being was evolved and cast into the earth-life has not expended itself—the necessary cycle has not been completed, but must nevertheless be fulfilled.
Yet, though earth-bound, these unfortunate beings, victims whether voluntary or involuntary, are only suspended, as it were, in the earth’s magnetic attraction. They are not, like the first class, attracted to the living from a savage thirst to feed on their vitality. Their only impulse—and a blind one, since they are generally in a dazed or stunned condition—is, to get into the whirl of rebirth as soon as possible. Their state is that we call a false Bar-do—the period between two incarnations. According to the karma of the being—which is affected by his age and merits in the last birth—this interval will be longer or shorter.
Nothing but some overpoweringly intense attraction, such as a holy love for some dear one in great peril, can draw them with their consent to the living; but by the mesmeric power of a Ba-po, a necromancer—the word is used advisedly, since the necromantic spell is Dzu-tul, or what you term a mesmeric attraction—can force them into our presence. This evocation, however, is totally condemned by those who hold to the Good Doctrine; for the soul thus evoked is made to suffer exceedingly, even though it is not itself but only its image that has been torn or stripped from itself to become the apparition; owing to its premature separation by violence from the body, the ‘jang-khog’—animal soul— is yet heavily loaded with material particles—there has not been a natural disintegration of the coarser from the finer molecules— and the necromancer, in compelling this separation artificially, makes it, we might almost say, to suffer as one of us might if he were flayed alive.
Thus, to evoke the first class—the grossly sinful souls—is dangerous for the living; to compel the apparition of the second and third classes is cruel beyond expression to the dead.
In the case of one who died a natural death totally different conditions exist; the soul is almost, and in the case of great purity, entirely beyond the necromancer’s reach; hence beyond that of a circle of evokers, or spiritualists, who, unconsciously to themselves, practise a veritable necromancer’s Sang-nyag, or magnetic incantation. According to the karma of the previous birth the interval of latency—generally passed in a state of stupor—will last from a few minutes to an average of a few weeks, perhaps months. During that time the ‘jang-khog’—animal soul—prepares in solemn repose for its translation, whether into a higher sphere—if it has reached its seventh human local evolution—or for a higher rebirth, if it has not yet run the last local round.
At all events it has neither will nor power at that time to give any thought to the living. But after its period of latency is over, and the new self enters in full consciousness the blessed region of Devachan—when all earthly mists have been dispersed, and the scenes and relations of the past life come clearly before its spiritual sight—then it may, and does occasionally, when espying all it loved, and that loved it upon earth, draw up to it for communion and by the sole attraction of love, the spirits of the living, who, when returned to their normal condition, imagine that it has descended to them.
Therefore we differ radically from the western Ro-lang-pa— spiritualists—as to what they see or communicate with in their circles and through their unconscious necromancy. We say it is but the physical dregs, or spiritless remains of the late being; that which has been exuded, cast off and left behind when its finer particles passed onward into the great Beyond.
In it linger some fragments of memory and intellect. It certainly was once a part of the being, and so possesses that modicum of interest; but it is not the being in reality and truth. Formed of matter, however etherealized, it must sooner or later be drawn away into vortices where the conditions for its atomic disintegration exist.
From the dead body the other principles ooze out together. A few hours later the second principle—that of life—is totally extinct, and separates from both the human and ethereal envelopes. The third—the vital double—finally dissipates when the last particles of the body disintegrate. There now remain the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh principles: the body of will; the human soul; the spiritual soul, and pure spirit, which is a facet of the Eternal. The last two, joined to, or separated from, the personal self, form the everlasting individuality and cannot perish. The remainder proceeds to the state of gestation—the astral self and whatever survived in it of the will, previous to the dissolution of the physical body.
Hence for any conscious action in this state are required the qualifications of an adept, or an intense, undying, ardent and holy love for someone whom the deceased leaves behind him on earth; as otherwise the astral ego either becomes a ‘bhûta’—‘ro-lang’ in Tibetan—or proceeds to its further transmigrations in higher spheres.
In the former case the Lha, or ‘man-spirit,’ can sojourn among the living for an indefinite time, at his own pleasure; in the latter the so-called ‘spirit’ will tarry and delay his final translation but for a short period; the body of desire being held compact, in proportion to the intensity of the love felt by the soul and its unwillingness to part with the loved ones.
At the first relaxation of the will it will disperse, and the spiritual self, temporarily losing its personality and all remembrance of it, ascends to higher regions. Such is the teaching. None can overshadow mortals but the elect, the ‘Accomplished,’ the ‘Byang-tsiub,’ or the ‘Bodhisatwas’ alone—they who have penetrated the great secret of life and death—as they are able to prolong, at will, their stay on earth after ‘dying.’ Rendered into the vulgar phraseology, such overshadowing is to ‘be born again and again’ for the benefit of mankind.

If the spiritualists, instead of conferring the power of “controlling” and “guiding” living persons upon every wraith calling itself “John” or “Peter,” limited the faculty of moving and inspiring a few chosen pure men and women only to such Bodhisatwas or holy initiates—whether born as Buddhists or Christians, Brâhmans or Mussulmans on earth—and, in very exceptional cases, to holy and saintly characters, who have a motive, a truly beneficial mission to accomplish after their departure, then would they be nearer to the truth than they are now.
To ascribe the sacred privilege, as they do, to every “elementary” and “elemental” masquerading in borrowed plumes and putting in an appearance for no better reason than to say: “How d’ye do, Mr. Snooks?” and to drink tea and eat toast, is a sacrilege and a sad sight to him who has any intuitional feeling about the awful sacredness of the mystery of physical translation, let alone the teaching of the adepts.
Further on Della Penna writes:

‘These chang-chüb—the disciples of the chief saint—have not yet become saints, but they possess in the highest degree five virtues—charity, both temporal and spiritual, perfect observance of law, great patience, great diligence in working to perfection, and the most sublime contemplation.’

We would like to know how they could have all these qualities, especially the latter—trance—were they physically dead!

These chang-chüb have finished their course and are exempt from further transmigrations; passing from the body of one Lama to that of another; but the Lama [meaning the Dalai-Lama] is always endowed with the soul of the same chang-chüb, although he may be in other bodies for the benefit of the living to teach them the Law, which is the object of their not wishing to become saints, because then they would not be able to instruct them. Being moved by compassion and pity they wish to remain chang-chüb to instruct the living in the Law, so as to make them finish quickly the laborious course of their transmigrations. Moreover, if these chang-chüb wish, they are at liberty to transmigrate into this or other worlds, and at the same time they transmigrate into other places with the same object.
This rather confused description yields from its inner sense two facts: first, that the Buddhist Tibetans—we speak of the educated classes—do not believe in the return of the departed spirits, since, unless a soul becomes so purified upon earth as to create for itself a state of Bodhisat-hood—the highest degree of perfection next to Buddha—even saints in the ordinary acceptation of the term would not be able to instruct or control the living after their death; and, secondly, that, rejecting as they do the theories of creation, God, soul—in its Christian and spiritualistic sense— and a future life for the personality of the deceased, they yet credit man with such a potentiality of will, that it depends on him to become a Bodhisatwa and acquire the power to regulate his future existences, whether in a physical or in a semi-material shape.
Lamaists believe in the indestructibility of matter, as an element. They reject the immortality, and even the survival of the personal self, teaching that the individual self alone—i.e., the collective aggregation of the many personal selves that were represented by that One during the long series of various existences—may survive. The latter may even become eternal—the word eternity with them embracing but the period of a great cycle—eternal in its integral individuality, but this may be done only by becoming a Dhyan-Chohan, a ‘celestial Buddha,’ or what a Christian Kabbalist might call a ‘planetary spirit’ or one of the Elohim; a part of the ‘conscious whole,’ composed of the aggregate intelligences in their universal collectivity, while Nirvâna is the ‘unconscious whole.’ He who becomes a Tong-pa-nyi—he who has attained the state of absolute freedom from any desire of living personally, the highest condition of a saint—exists in non-existence and can benefit mortals no more. He is in ‘Nipang’ for he has reached the end of ‘Thar-lam,’ the path to deliverance, or salvation from transmigrations. He cannot perform Tul-pa—voluntary incarnation, whether temporary or life-long—in the body of a living human being; for he is a ‘Dang-ma,’ an absolutely purified soul. Henceforth he is free from the danger of ‘Dal-jor,’ human rebirth; for the seven forms of existence—only six are given out to the uninitiated—subject to transmigration have been safely crossed by him. ‘He gazes with indifference in every sphere of upward transmigration on the whole period of time which covers the shorter periods of personal existence,’ says the Book of Khiu-ti.
But, as ‘there is more courage to accept being than non-being, life than death,’ there are those among the Bodhisatwas and the Lha—‘and as rare as the flower of udambara are they to meet with’—who voluntarily relinquish the blessing of the attainment of perfect freedom, and remain in their personal selves, whether in forms visible or invisible to mortal sight—to teach and help their weaker brothers.
Some of them prolong their life on earth—though not to any supernatural limit; others become ‘Dhyan-Chohans,’ a class of the planetary spirits or ‘devas’ who, becoming, so to say, the guardian angels of men, are the only class out of the seven-classed hierarchy of spirits in our system who preserve their personality. These holy Lha, instead of reaping the fruit of their deeds, sacrifice themselves in the invisible world as the lord Sang-gyas—Buddha —did on this earth, and remain in Devachan—the world of bliss nearest to the earth.

​
H.P. BLAVATSKY
Lucifer, September, October, 1894

If you've been paying attention at all the past couple of years, then you probably have an idea what I'm talking about. Hurricanes are becoming stronger, the west coast is the middle of an unprecedented megadrought and the water source for 10s of millions of people on the west coast is running dry.
> [States in the Colorado River basin are scrambling to propose steep cuts in the water they’ll use from the river next year, in response to a call by the federal government for immediate, drastic efforts to keep the river’s main storage reservoirs from reaching critically low levels.] (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/climate/colorado-river-water-cuts.html)
If that weren't enough, we're still experiencing shortages and bottle necks that started during the pandemic, which hasn't stopped by the way. [Monkeypox was just declared a "Global Health Emergency"] (https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/monkeypox-outbreak-constitutes-global-health-emergency-who-2022-07-23/). This is the status that Covid was given two months before it was officially declared a pandemic.
> [ The WHO last issued a global health emergency in January 2020 in response to the Covid-19 outbreak and two months later declared it a pandemic.] (cnbc.com/2022/07/23/who-declares-spreading-monkeypox-outbreak-a-global-health-emergency.html)
All of this while the world is looking at looming food shortages caused by poor growing conditions in various parts of the world and an ongoing war in Europe, while many places also are simultaneously experiencing levels of inflation not seen in decades. To say that we have a long, dark, difficult, stony road ahead, would be an understatement in my opinion.
I've taken the lead on doing the sourcing and project management for all of the major preparations that my family has taken. I know that I'm not the only person that has been taking steps to try and prepare for whatever is to come.
I was wondering what are other people doing to prepare ought it might be helpful to get a thread where people post the prices of major things that they've done to prepare in different parts of the country and how they're financing them.
Things that I've gotten include

• Hurricane impact windows: About $22k all in financed through [Ygrene] (https://ygrene.com/)
• I got a private well drilled: $2k financed through home equity (It was very difficult to find a well driller that was taking on new projects and wasn't booked 6months - 1 year in advance).
• I got my home irrigation system completely redone and connected to the new well: $2.8k.
• I got all of the old decorative landscaping dug up and will be getting a "foodscape" planted. This includes multiple fruit trees, berry bushes, perennial greens, herbaceous plants, root crops as well as various flowering plants to attract pollinators: $5k
• I decided to take up scuba diving/spearfishing/bow fishing as hobbies. My state has a problem with many invasive species, including multiple species of freshwater and saltwater fish. No license is required to hunt them and the state actively encourages people to kill/catch as many as possible. But I will be getting a license. It also has the added benefit of getting me outside and back in shape; I've lost 20lb since the start of the year.
• Costs in equipment and training so far have included:
  • $275 for a basic open water scuba certification through SDI. I plan on doing the advanced open water through the same shop where they have an entire course on either spearfishing for lionfish or lobstering. That would be an additional $299.
  • $65 for a new diving mask (I had an older cheap one but it is made out of plastic. You need one made out of tempered glass if you're going to be doing any sort of serious diving.
  • $35 diving boots
  • $50 for a used recurve bow with a 40lb draw weight.
  • $62 bowfishing mount adapter
  • $65 bowfishing reel
  • $50 1 hour of archery lessons
  • $54 (annual fishing license for saltwater and freshwater with endorsements for catching lobster and snook)
  • $290 annual membership to a local spearfishing club ( I haven't joined yet, but I've looked into it)
  • $252 annual membership to a local archery club that'll give you 24 hour access to a range to practice. They also organize local competitions (I haven't joined yet, but I've looked into it).

We've spent just under $32,500 over the last two years to help harden our house and pick up new skills and equipment that could be useful incase we're ever really in a shtf scenario.
I'm currently looking into getting solar panels installed on my roof, getting the fencing for my property redone in the back and a new section added in the front as well as getting a water treatment system to treat my well water.
What have you done and what has it cost you so far?

Kim Newman
A Shambles in Belgravia
I
To Professor Moriarty, she is always that bitch.
Irene Adler arrived in our Conduit Street rooms shortly after I undertook to assist my fellow tenant in enterprises of which he was the pre-eminent London specialist. In short, sirrah, crime.
The old ‘bread and honey’ came into it, of course. The professor had me on an honorarium of six thousand pounds per annum. Scarcely enough to make anyone put up with Moriarty, actually, but it serviced my prediliction for pursuits the na’ive refer to as ‘games of chance’. Chronic cash shortage set in early, when Pater cut me off without a sou for an indiscretion involving a matched pair of Persian princesses. Libertinage on an heroic scale is my other expensive vice. However, I own that the thrill of do-baddery attracted me, that blood-running whoosh of fright and delight which comes from cocking repeated snooks at every plod, beak and turnkey in the land. When a hunting man has grown bored with bagging tigers, crime can still jangle the nerves and keep up the pecker. Moriarty, frankly bloodless, got his jollies in the abstract, plotting felony the way you might fill in a crossword puzzle. I’ve known him scorn an easy bank raid that would have netted millions and devote weeks to the filching of a tiny item of little worth that happened to be a more challenging snatch.
That morning, the professor was thinking through two problems simultaneously A portion of his brain was calculating the timings of solar eclipses observable in far-flung regions. Superstitious natives can sometimes be persuaded a white man has power over the sun and needs to be given handy tribal treasures if bwana sahib promises to turn the light on again. Bloody good trick, if you can get away with it. The greater part of his attention, however, was devoted to the breeding of wasps.
‘Your bee is a law-abiding soul,’ he said, in his reedy lecturing voice, ‘as reverent to their queen as the clods of England, dedicated to the production of honey for the betterment of all, buzzing about promiscuously pollinating to please addle-minded poets. They only defend themselves at the cost of their lives, for they sting but once. Volumes are devoted to the care of bees, and apiculture exists to exploit their good nature. Wasps do nothing but sting. Persistently venomous, they fly from one assault to the next. Unwelcome everywhere. Thoroughly nasty sorts. We are not bees, Moran.’
He smiled, a creepy thing for a man with lips as thin as his. His near-fleshless head moved from side to side. I was reminded of a cobra I chopped into three wriggling sections in the Hindu Kush. I couldn’t follow Moriarty’s drift, but that was usual. I nodded and hoped he would come eventually to a point. A schoolmaster before taking to villainy, his rambles tended to wind towards some inverted moral.
‘Summer will be upon us soon,’ he mused, ‘the season for picnicking in the park, for tiny fat arms to go bare, for governesses to sit and gossip unveiled, for shopgirls and their beaux to spoon in public. This will be a bumper year for our yellow-and-black-striped friends. My first generation of polistes pestilentialis is hatching. The world is divided, Moran, between those who sting and those who are the stingees.’
‘And you would be the sting-ers,’ shrilled that voice.
The American Nightingale had been admitted by Mrs Halifax, the superannuated harlot who kept a brothel on the lower floors. Moriarty had persuaded Mrs H to let us have the flat rent-free. Following the interview at which this matter was arranged, she wore a bandage on her right hand. He acquired a neatly amputated little finger which, in a vial of brine, he used as a paperweight. In these rooms, the Consultantship of Moriarty and Moran received ‘clients’.
‘Miss Irene Adler,’ acknowledged Moriarty. ‘Your Lucia di Lammermoor was acceptable, your Maria Stuarda indifferent and you were perhaps the worst Emilia di Liverpool the stage has ever seen.’
‘What a horrible man you are, James Moriarty!’
His lips split and sharp teeth showed.
‘My business is being horrible, Miss Adler. I make no effort at sham or hypocrisy.’
‘That, I must say, is a tonic.’
She smiled full-bore and arranged herself on a divan, prettily hiking her hemline up over well-turned ankles, shifting her décolletage in a manner calculated to set her swanny mams a-wobble. Even Moriarty was impressed, and he could keep up a lecture on the grades of paper used in the forgery of high-denomination Venezuelan banknotes while walking down the secret corridor with the row of one-way mirror windows into the private rooms where Mrs H’s girls conducted spectacularly indecent business day and night.
I still maintain all would have been well if only I’d shown the Adler minx what was what straight off, tossed her skirts over her head, plonked her fizzog-down on the reception room rug (a tiger whose head snarled as if he still bore a grudge from that tricky shot I made bringing him down) and administered one of my famous ‘Basher’ Moran Specials. Had I but properly poked that Yankee popsy, she might have broken the habit which eventually set all manner of odd bods scurrying around trying to clear up her confounded messes.
Irene Adler had the face of an angel child, the body of a full-grown trollop and a voice like a steel needle slowly sliding into your brain. Even warbling to an audience of tone-deaf polacks, she hadn’t lasted as prima donna. After her Emilia flopped so badly the artistic director of the Warsaw Opera had to blow his brains out, the company cut her adrift, leaving her on the loose in Europe to the disadvantage of several ruling houses.
And here she was on our settee.
‘You are aware that the services I offer are somewhat unusual?’
She fixed Moriarty with a steely glint that cut through all the sugar.
‘I am a soprano from New Jersey,’ she began, pronouncing it ‘Noo Joisey’. ‘I know what a knob crook looks like. You can figure all the sums you like, Professor, but you’re as much a capo di cosa nostra as the Moustache Petes in the back-room of the Burly-Cue. Which is dandy, because I have a job of burglary that needs doing urgently. Capisce?’
The professor nodded.
‘Who’s the military gent who hasn’t taken his glims off my teats for the last minute and a half?’
‘Colonel Sebastian Moran, the best heavy-game shot our Eastern Empire has ever produced.’
‘Good with a gun, eh? Looks more like a shiv-man to me.’
She pointed her index fingers at her cleavage, which she thrust out, then angled her fingertips up to indicate her face.
‘That’s better. Look me in the lamps, Colonel.’
I harrumphed and paid attention. If she hadn’t wanted fellows to ogle, she shouldn’t have worn that dress. There’s no reasoning with women.
‘Here’s the thing of it,’ she said. ‘Have you heard of the Duke of Strelsau?’
‘Michael Elphberg, so-called “Black Michael”, second in line to the throne of Ruritania.’
‘That’s the fellow, Prof. Things being slow this season, I’ve been knocking around a bit with Black Mike. They call him that because of his hair, which is dark where the rest of his family’s is flame-red. He’s a gloomy, glowering type as well so it suits him on temperamental grounds too. As it happens, photographs were taken of the two of us in the actual pursuit of knocking-around. Artistic Studies, you might say. Six plates. Full figures. Complete exposures. It would ruin my reputation should they come to light. You see, I’m being blackmailed!’
Her voice cracked. She raised a kerchief to her eye to quell a tear, then froze, a picture of slighted maidenhood. Moriarty shook his head. She stuffed the hankie back into her sleeve and snorted.
‘Worth a try just to keep my hand in. I’m a better actress than critics say, don’t you know? Obviously, I’m not being blackmailed. Like you said, there are stingers and stingees. We are stingers.’
‘And the stingee?’
‘Another bloody colonel. Colonel Sapt. Chief of the Ruritanian Secret Police. Which has been a dozy doddle for the last thirty years, since it’s one of the most peaceable, least-insurrection-blighted spots on the map. Not so much as a whiff of dissent since ‘48. When, admittedly, the mob burned down the old White Palace. There are very scenic gardens on the site. Anyway, intrigue stirs. King Rudolf is getting on, and two sons have claims to the throne. Rudolf the Red, the older, is set on shoring up his case by marrying his cousin, Princess Flavia. Where do they get these names? If you put them in an opera, you’d be laughed off stage. Sapt is loyal to Rudolf. Lord knows why, but there you are. Some people are like that. He’s also a keen appreciator of the aesthetic worth of a fine photo.’
‘I see,’ I said, ‘this Sapt thinks to blacken Michael’s name - further blacken, I suppose - so the duke will never be king.’
Irene Adler looked at me with something like contemptuous pity.
‘Gilbert the Filbert, Colonel of the Nuts, if those pics were seen, Black Mike’d be the envy of Europe. He’d be crowned in a wave of popularity. Everyone loves a randy royal. Look at Vicky’s brood. No, Sapt wants the photographs off the market, so Mikey can be nagged into marriage by Antoinette de Mauban, his persistently pestering mistress. Which would scupper any chance he might have with Flavourless Flavia.’
‘You said Rudolf was engaged to the princess?’
She made a gesture, suggesting the matter was in the balance. ‘Whichever Elphberg marries Flavia is a cert to be king. Black Michael is scheming to cut his half-brother out. Are you following this?’ ‘
Moriarty acknowledged that he was.
‘Why do you want those photographs?’
‘Sentimental value. I come off especially well in Study No. 3, where the light catches the fall of my hair as I lower my... No? Not convinced? Rats, I must work on this acting lark. Obviously, I want to blackmail everyone - Colonel Sapt, Black Mike, Red Rudi, Mademoiselle Toni, Princess Lavatoria... With half Ruritania paying me to keep quiet and the other half to speak up, I should be able to milk the racket for a good few years - at least, until succession is settled - and secure my comfortable old age.’
She could not have been more than twenty-five.
‘And where might these “artistic studies” be found?’ Moriarty asked.
She dug into her reticule and produced a paper with a map drawn on it.
‘The Ruritanian Embassy in Belgravia,’ she said. ‘I have a collector’s interest in floor plans, schedules of guards, and the like.’
‘What’s this?’ the professor indicated a detail marked with a red circle.
‘A safe, hidden behind the portrait of Rudolf III, in the private office of Colonel Sapt. If I had the key, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve been driven to associate with criminals by the need for skills in cracksmanship. You come highly recommended by Scotland Yard.’
Moriarty sniffed haughtily. ‘Scotland Yard have never heard of Professor Moriarty, except in my capacity as a pure mathematician.’
‘For someone as crooked as you, I call that a recommendation.’
Moriarty’s head started bobbing again. He was thinking the thing through, which meant I had to look after practicalities.
‘What’s in it for us, missy?’ I asked.
‘A quarter of what I can screw from the Elphbergs.’
‘Half.’
‘That’s extortion!’
‘Yes,’ I admitted with a wink. ‘We’re extortion men, you might say. Half.’
She had a little sulk, made a practised moue, shimmied her chest again, and bestowed a magnificent smile that warmed my insides. At some point in this business, I knew the old ‘Basher’ Moran Special would be required.
‘Deal,’ she said, sticking out a tiny paw to be shaken.
I should have shot her then and there.
II
The Ruritanian Embassy is a mansion in Boscobel Place. Belgravia fairly crawls with embassies, legates and consulates. The streets throng with gussied-up krauts strapped into fancy uniforms, tripping over swords they wouldn’t know what to do with if a herd of buffalo charged them. I’ve no love for your average Johnny Native, but he bests any Frenchy, Sausage-Eater or Dutchman who ever drew breath. Never go into the jungle with a Belgian, that’s my motto.
If Irene Adler had gone to a run-of-the-mill safe-breaker like that cricket-playing fathead, the caper would have run to after-midnight window-breakage and a spot of brace-and-bit boring, with perhaps a cosh to Colonel Sapt’s dome as an added extra.
Moriarty scorned such methods as too obvious and not sufficiently destructive.
First, he wrote to the Westminster Gazette, which carried his angry letter in full. He harped on about the sufferings of the slum-dwellers of Strelsauer Altstadt some of which weren’t even made up, which is where the clever part came in - and labeled Ruritania ‘the secret shame of Europe’. More correspondence appeared, not all from the professor, chiming in with fresh tales of horrors carried on under the absolute monarchy of the Elphbergs. A long-nosed clergyman and an addle-pated countess formed a committee of busybodies to mount a solemn vigil in Boscobel Place. The protest was swollen by less-dignified malcontents - Ruritanian dissenters in exile, louts with nothing better to do, crooks in Moriarty’s employ.
Hired ranters stirred passersby against the vile Ruritanian practice (invented by the professor) of cleaning the huge cannons of Zenda Castle by shoving little orphan girls into the barrels and prodding them with sticks until their wriggling wiped out the bore. A few of the Conduit Street Comanche - that tribe of junior beggars, whores, pickpockets and garotters whose loyalty the professor had bought - got themselves up as Zenda Cannon Girls, with soot on their faces and skirts, and threw dung at anyone who so much as dared step outside the Embassy.
After typical foreign bleating and whining, Scotland Yard sent two constables to Boscobel Place to rap truncheons against the railings and tell the crowd to move along quietly. To the Comanche, a bobby’s helmet might as well have a target painted on it. And horse dung is easily come by on the streets of London.
So, within three days, there was the makings of a nice pitched battle outside the Embassy. Moriarty and I took the trouble to stroll by every now and then, to see how the pot was boiling.
Hawk-eyed, the professor spotted a face peering from a downstairs window.
‘That’s Sapt,’ he said.
‘I could pot him from here,’ I volunteered. ‘I’ve a revolver in my pocket. It’d be a dicey shot, but I’ve never missed yet.’
Moriarty’s head wavered. He was calculating odds.
‘He would only be replaced. We know who Sapt is. Another Secret Police Chief might not be such a public figure.’
My right hand was itching and I had a thrill in my water.
I had a notion to haul out and blast away, just for sport and hang the scheme. There were enough bearded anarchists about to take the blame. Sometimes an idea takes your fancy and there’s nothing to do but give in.
Moriarty’s bony hand was on my wrist, squeezing. Hard.
His eyes shone. Cobra eyes.
‘That would be a mistake, Moran.’
My wrist hurt. A lot. The professor knew where to squeeze. He could snap bones with what seemed like a pinch. He let me have my hand back.
Moriarty rarely smiled, and then usually to terrify some poor victim. The first time I heard him laugh, I thought he had been struck by deadly poison and the stutter escaping through his locked jaws was a death-rattle. That day’s Times report from Ruritania solicited from him an unprecedented fit of shoulder-shaking giggles. He wound his fingers together like the claws of a praying mantis.
The prompt for this hilarity was Black Michael’s vow to free the Zenda Cannon Girls!
‘Let us wish him luck in finding them,’ said the professor. ‘How delicious that the duke should be our staunch ally in this enterprise. Then again, Queen Victoria has also expressed sympathy for our imaginary orphans.’
Flashes came from the Embassy. My hand was on my revolver.
‘More photographs,’ said the professor. ‘Colonel Sapt’s hobby.’
Sapt’s face was gone, but a box-and-lens affair was pressed against the window. Moriarty and I had coats casually up over our faces, against the wind.
‘The Secret Police Chief likes to know his enemies. A man in his position collects them.’
‘Why’s Sapt in London anyway? Shouldn’t he be crackin’ down on bomb-throwers on his home turf?’
Moriarty pondered the question.
‘If we are to believe Miss Adler, Sapt can best serve his cause here.’
‘His cause, Moriarty?’
‘Up the Red, down the Black. But the Elphberg Brothers are halfway across Europe. So, Sapt’s attention is directed here on subtler business.’
‘The woman?’
Moriarty’s shoulders lifted and dropped.
‘The old goat probably hopes she’ll give him a tumble to get her snaps back,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll wager he pulls the pics out of the safe every night and gives ‘em a proper lookin’ over.’
‘If that were the case, she wouldn’t have engaged us. Miss Adler does not strike me as a lady who likes to share. Yet she has willed over half the earnings of a profitable enterprise to us.’
‘No choice, Moriarty. Who else could get her what she wants?’
The professor tapped his teeth.
‘No one but us, Moran. Evidently.’
Moriarty’s fingers went to his watch-pocket. In my years of association with the professor, I never saw him pull out the timepiece I presume anchored the chain across his flat middle. Once an associate understood the import of timekeeping, everything went to schedule. Otherwise, there might have been consequences.
He had barely stroked his chain when Filthy Fanny dashed from the crowd and began kicking the police guard.
Fanny had been successfully presenting herself as a ten-year-old waif for a full two decades without anyone being the wiser. It was down to the proper application of dirt, which she arranged on her face with the skill other tarts devote to the use of paints and powder.
Now, Filth wore the sooty skirts of a Zenda Cannon Girl. And heavy shinkicking clogs.
She harangued in backslang (‘Reggub the Esclop!’) that sounded mighty like Ruritanian, or whatever heathen tongue they use.
After some painful toe-to-shin business, the plod got his truncheon out.
With a command of the dramatic that would put a Drury Lane tragedienne to shame, Filth tumbled down the Embassy steps, squirting tomato juice from a sponge clapped over her eye.
Moriarty handed me a cobblestone and pointed.
I threw the stone at the gawking copper, and fetched off his helmet. I’d once brought down a Bengal tiger with a cricket ball in exactly the same manner.
Then, the mob rose and rushed the Embassy. Moriarty hooked me with an umbrella handle and we milled in with the crowd.
The front doors caved, and the first rush of intruders slid about on the polished marble foyer floor like drunken skaters. Three guards tried to unscabbard sabres, but the Comanche set about stripping them - and the environs - of anything redeemable. Pawnshop windows would soon display cuirasses, plumed helms and other items stamped with the Elphberg Seal.
Sapt poked his head out of his door. Moriarty signalled. A couple of bruisers laid hands on the Secret Police Chief.
The professor sidled next to the anarchist with the biggest beard and suggested he draw up a list of demands, phrasing it so the fellow would think the whole thing was his idea.
Sapt looked about furiously, moustaches twitching. Dirty hands held him fast.
A bunch of keys rattled on Sapt’s belt. Moriarty pointed them out, and an urchin brushed past, deftly relieving Sapt of the keys.
‘Give him a taste of what the cannon girls get,’ I shouted.
We left the mob happily shoving the Secret Policeman feet-first up the nearest chimney. The anarchist had posted lookouts at the doors, and was waving an ancient revolver at the still-surprised constables.
‘You can’t rush us,’ said Comrade Beard. ‘This Ruritanian territory is claimed by the Free Citizens’ Committee of Strelsauer Altstadt. Any action against us will be interpreted as a British invasion.’
The average London crusher isn’t qualified to cope with an argument like that. So they bullied someone into making them tea, and told the anarchist to hang fire until someone from the foreign office turned up. In return, Beard promised not to garotte any hostages just yet
Sapt, it appeared, had got stuck.
With all this going on, it was a simple matter to slip into Sapt’s private office, take down the portrait and open the safe. It contained a thick, sealed packet - and, disappointingly, no cash box or surplus crown jewels. Moriarty handed me the goods, and looked about, brows knit in mild puzzlement.
‘What? Too easy?’
‘No, Moran. It’s just as I foresaw.’
He locked the safe again.
There was a clatter of carriages and boots outside. Boscobel Place was full of eager fellows in uniform.
‘They’ve called out the troops.’
‘Time to leave,’ said the professor.
Back in the foyer, Moriarty gave the nod. Our Comanche confederates left off pilfering and detached themselves from those still intent on making a political point.
Sapt had fallen head-first out of the chimney, blacked like a minstrel. The professor arranged the surreptitious return of his keys.
We left the building as we came, through the front door.
The Comanche melted into another crowd.
I came smack face-to-face with a junior guards officer, who was about to set diplomacy aside and invade. I stiffened my neck and snapped off a salute, which was smartly returned. Once you’ve worn the colours, they never wear off.
‘Carry on, lieutenant,’ I said.
‘Yes, sir,’ he responded.
As so often, Moriarty had contrived not to be noticed. Like those lizards who can blend into greenery, he had the knack of seeming like a forgettable clergyman or a nondescript tutor, someone who has got off the omnibus two stops early and wandered into a bloodbath which was none of his doing.
We strolled away from the battle. Shouts, shots, thumps, crashes and bells sounded. Nothing to do with us.
A cab waited on the corner.
III
Moriarty was in a black thinking mood. He chewed little violet pastilles of his own concoction and paced his room, hands knotted in the small of his back, brow set in a crinkled frown.
I was still full of the thrill of jizzwhackery, and minded to pop downstairs to call on Flossie or Pussie or whatever the tiny blonde with the lazy eye said she was called. After the hunting grounds, the boudoir – I’d learned that in India, along with how to keep an eye on your wallet in the back of your trousers while they’re draped over a chair.
But the professor was preoccupied.
The evening papers were in, along with tear-sheets of fuller reports that would be in tomorrow’s editions. Sapt was claiming that dangerous Ruritanian revolutionary movements needed to be exterminated. He called upon Great Britain, Ruritania’s ancient ally, to join the crusade against insurrection, alleging that the assault upon the Embassy (and his person) had been equally an insult to Victoria and Rudolf. Typical foreign sod, wanting us to fight his battles for him.
Back in Streslau, there had been street skirmishes between Michaelists and Rudolfites. Many arrests had been made, and Sapt was expected to return to his country with information which would lead to a complete sweep of the organised troublemakers.
The packet of photographs lay on our bureau. It seemed that reclaiming this property of a lady had interesting side-effects - Moriarty’s imaginary revolution had genuinely to be put down.
‘I hope the blasted country don’t go up in flames before Irene can cash these chips, Moriarty. She’ll get no blackmail boodle out of ‘em if they’re hangin’ from lamp posts in the public gardens.’
Moriarty growled. He left the room, and closeted himself in the dark, buzzing space where he raised his wasps and plotted the courses of heavenly bodies.
Speaking of heavenly bodies, my eyes went to the packet.
The seal was nice and red and heavy and official.
I remembered the line of Irene Adler’s throat, the trim of her calves under silk, the swell of...
No one had said anything about not examining the merchandise.
I listened out - Moriarty was whistling to his wasps, likely to be absorbed for hours; there was no tread on the stair and Mrs Halifax was ordered to keep all callers away. So, no chance of interruption.
I sat at the bureau, and turned up the gas-lamp to illuminate the blotter.
With a deft bit of penknifery, I lifted the seal intact so it could be re-attached with no one the wiser. My mouth was dry, as if I’d been in a hide for hours, watching a staked-out goat, awaiting the pad of a big cat. I poured a healthy snifter of brandy, an apt accompaniment to this pleasurable perusal.
With a warm pulse in my vitals, I slid the contents out of the packet.
It was like iced water tipped into my lap.
‘Disgustin’,’ I blurted.
A sheet of paper was slipped into the sheaf of photographs.
* * * *
MY DEAR COL. MORAN
I knew you’d not be able to resist a peek at these ‘artistic studies’. Sorry for the disappointment.
For what it’s worth, you may keep all monies which can be raised from them.
If b--------l proves unprofitable, I suggest you license them to a manufacturer of postcards.
My very best to the Prof. I knew I could rely on him to toss a pebble in the pond, sending out ripples enough to make a maelstrom. An ordinary workman would just have secured the package and been done with it. Only a genius on the level of a Buonaparte could turn a simple task into the prompt for turmoil raised across a whole continent.
Please convey the thanks of another colonel. Being Chief of Secret Police in ‘one of the most peaceable, least-insurrection-blighted spots on the map’ was not a career with a future. The Elphbergs were intent on retiring him, but now - I fancy he’ll be kept on with an increase in salary.
I expect you to retain the last figure for sentimental reasons, and I remain, dear Colonel Moran, very truly yours,
IRENE ADLER
I flipped through several more entirely innocent tourist photographs of picturesque Ruritania, until - at the bottom of the stack - I beheld the full face of the American Nightingale. In this final, studio-posed photograph she wore the low-cut bodice she’d affected on her visit to Conduit Street, somewhat loosened and lowered, though - dash it! - artistic fogging around the edges of the portrait prevented complete immodesty. Through the fog was scrawled her spidery autograph, ‘as ever, Irene’. Even thus frozen, she looked like the sort who would be much improved by a ‘Basher’ Moran Special. I gulped the brandy, and chewed my moustache for a few moments, contemplating this turn of events.
Behind me, a door opened.
I swivelled in the chair. Moriarty looked at me, eyes shining - he had thought it through, and was unhappy. When the professor was unhappy, other creatures - animals, children, even full-grown men - tended to learn of it in extreme and uncomfortable manners.
‘Moriarty,’ I began, ‘I’m afraid we’ve been stung.’
I held up Irene’s photograph.
He spat out a word.
And that was how a great shambles broke out in Belgravia, shaking the far-off kingdom of Ruritania, and how the worst plans of Professor Moriarty were exploited by a woman’s treachery. When he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always as that hitch.

(sorry for not posting when i usually do, uni work took over this afternoon and slipped from mind. damm coding)
prologue ep1 ep2
N: Uzi!!!
N just bursted through the landing pod’s door. He put down the canisters on the floor but none of them were standing upright. At least they were all sealed. Instead of sorting them out he rushed in frantically searching for Uzi. N eventually found Uzi but she was tinkering around with some sort of cylinder.
Uzi: what is it?
N: a disassembly drone has come to hunt you down. We gotta get out of here!
Uzi: it’s about time one came. Ok how many and where is their pod?
N: a worker drone said that it was just one but had a specific agenda to hunt you down. He sounds dangerous but also the worker drone said, “he is dead focused on Uzi and nothing else”. Wonder if is friendly though.
Uzi: considering how I haven’t met many disassembly drones that are friendly, imma go with wanting to kill me. Weird how its only the one instead of the usual 3. Shame we won’t get to have any quality time but I got a plan to stick to.
N: what’s that? (As he points to the cylinder on the desk)
Uzi: this? Been waiting for another disassembly drone to come down so I had the time to make this. It turns speech into something overly complicated and hard to even understand a single word. Humans call this language “bri’ish”.
N: but…. What’s the point of it then?
Uzi: to use on V. so she doesn’t say what we are doing and generally just to slow it down.
N: tha…that won’t…hurt her though?
Uzi: no it wont so relax. If I’m gonna have at least a chance to get my revenge I’m gonna need my railgun. Here is the plan. I’m gonna get far away from here while you fly back to the colony and get my railgun. When you have it, meet back here and we can find the landing pod together better equipped.
???: F.N.G’s I take it. Well, let’s knock on the front door then.
N: that sounds like him.
Uzi: ahh, he came quicker than expected. Go and get my railgun, I need to install this into V and high tail out.
(With HP76)
HP76: EITHER OPEN UP OR I WILL USE FORCE!
No response.
HP76 took the hunting rifle off his back. bolt action rifle with a small clip underneath. It also had an unusual placed vertical handle grip on the end. His pushes it forward and pulls downwards to pull out an Uzi, while putting away the rifle.
HP76: last chance.
No response.
HP76 kicked open the door. A couple of attempts but got there in the end. As he entered the pod, N snook out behind the back as he flew overhead. HP76 was clearing all the rooms until he came across one where V is still trapped but the only light in the room is coming from a spotlight, pointing on her.
HP76: well, that’s not suspicious at all. HEY! Drone, respond.
Nothing.
He used his night vision to look around for a light switch and expecting some form of hidden trap but nothing of an obvious threat. He flicked the switch and the lights came on. She just laid there still in the same position, powered down. He walked over to V still looking over his shoulder and anywhere else someone could jump out from.
HP76: run diagnostics. Firewall code dr0n35.
On V’s screen was lots of code running in green text. Moments a pop up appeared saying “all systems light green. Booting up”.
Moments later, V was online
V: Voila! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified. And has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious of violation.
Still V: the only verdict is vengeance, a vendetta held as a votive not in vain. For the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. (Small slightly evil laugh) verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose. So let me simply add that it’s my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.
HP76 just slapped V so she powered off.
HP76: detect anomalies.
Some time passed for the system to process until it showed a blueprint of V and a foreign object up located close to her voice box. He opened her up, took it out and crushed it with ease. He closed her up and powered her back on once more.
V: oh finally I can speak properly now. Thanks. My name is V.
HP76: I gathered. What’s your purpose here?
V: I was hunting down worker drones but then this one managed to convince a disassembly drone to side with her. They tied me up and planned to kill all humans.
HP76: this the drone you are on about?? (As he shows her the footage).
V: yes, and the disassembly drone is around the same height as me, has a winter coat and is a complete idiot.
HP76: then I have a new target. You carry on with the mission here, I’ll we deal with those two.
???: Uzi….. you here?? I got the railgun.
HP76 turned around and saw N standing there, oblivious that this was the disassembly drone Thad warned him about. HP76 started to scan N and V’s description was a perfect match. Same height roughly, winter coat, complete idiot and carried the same gun used to murder J with. His screen just turned to the x and pounced for N. V didn’t waste any time and got out in search for Uzi.
HP76 managed to land his pounce on N and sent both rolling outside, with N dropping the railgun. The 2 were now outside and in a standoff between one another.
N: I’m serial designation N. you also new to our squad?
HP76 didn’t even respond back as he started to spin his tail round.
N: oohhhh you’re the disassembly drone that the worker drone warned me about. Well, you….d-don’t look that scary at all.
HP76: lets see how long you stand for.
HP76 sent his tail flying at N’s chest but he dodged it with ease. The tail was stuck in the walls of the corpse spire.
N: missed me!
He just ignored that as he was coming towards N at an alarming rate. Arm drew back and ready to punch. by the coating of his teeth he dodged it but HP76 bulldozed right through the spire, leaving a gaping whole.
HP76: hope you got insurance for this thing, but if I was you, that shouldn’t be your top concern. Let’s dance.
He charged at N but not in a run, but on all 4’s, like an animal. N fired his machine gun but he just couldn’t keep up with his unpredictable pattern of movements. He finally got close so N he had no choice but to bring out the swords. Hack and slashing but they made minimal effect on HP76. HP76 didn’t even use his swords and he kept on blocking with his tail, with precision movement every time.
HP76: I got practice on you kid. now it’s my turn. Keep up.
He wove his tail on the floor and in between N’s legs and drew out his sword. N was cornered with the sword on the front and a precision tail behind. He tried to get free of this predicament by trying to step over it but either the tail or the swords Shepard him back to his place. If he was going to survive this, he would need some way to get out of this predicament…. And fast, before he’s turned into an oil Caprio drink.
(With V)
V: that worker drone keeping me locked up. Just wait until I get my hands on her. I’m gon—
She cut herself mid-sentence when she noticed Uzi not so far from her. The x formed on her visor and flew into cover.
Uzi: hopefully I don’t bump into that new disassembly drone. Hope N is fine because this worker drone scored lucky with finding where the new one landed. And looked in perfect condition as well.
??: I told you to let me go and I would kill you quickly…. that time has gone now. I’m gonna enjoy this.
V was flying above and circling her. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. V came plummeting downwards towards Uzi as she just managed to dodge it. V was now charging with swords draw. Uzi managed to break off a rusty car door and used it as a shield. Because the swords and arm’s r one and not separate, Uzi turned the door around which forced V to pull back to free her front this lock. Uzi pushed forward and then pulls straight backwards to headbutt V. her swords were free from the door but had a massive headache now.
V: you’ll pay for that!
(Back with N and HP76).
N was taking cuts from all sides and would carry on if he didn’t do something fast. N had nothing to lose at this point so may as well try it. He places his tail in the ground and locked it in place. He moves again to one side but the swords herd him back to centre. He broke to the other side immediately and pressured HP76, forcing him to block with his own swords. The tail was supposed to stop him from getting away but it was tangled in N’s tail he placed on the ground, not allowing the tail to stretch further no matter how much he pulls. N now free of the trap, he took flight and flew outside of the spire.
HP76: impressive, and I am not easily impressed. You have worth, shame it was wasted when you joined the enemy team!
Instead of flying right after him, he simple ran outside and used a grapple hook that came out his arm to climb up higher to where N was. N was flying higher but he looked down to find HP76 hot on his tail, even without using wings.
HP76: the skies are not your friend. I slain a dozen flyers, this is no different.
HP76 takes out a missile from his other arm and takes aim. He fired it where it wouldn’t have any chance of hitting N but all according to plan. He remote detonated it causing the explosion to knock N off balance so then HP76’s grapple hook can find it’s mark.
HP76 which had now managed to catch N in the air is fighting in a tug of war. Both of them fight for as long as they can. Eventually, N prevailed and pulled HP76 off the spire.
HP76 thoughts: too easy.
He started to retract his hook making him shoot upwards in the sky. While still latched onto N, mid-air he cut N’s wings clean of and sent him falling, scraping his entire face across the face of the spire. HP76 held N upwards and over the side of the spire by the neck
N: What the hell are you?
HP76: death!
He threw N downwards and into the thicc fog below. HP76 took out his hunting rifle, taking aim for N’s chest predicted path was. He pulled the trigger which followed with numerous noises of smashes and finished on a loud thud.
HP76: 1 down, 1 to go. Now to find Uzi.
HP76 went back to the landing pod to try and find clues. Around the back were footprints that hadn’t blown away by the winds yet. Looking outside of the spire there were only 3 directions Uzi could have gone but the way the tracks point, it only left 1 way.
After some time jumping from rooftop to rooftop, he finally heard a scream of pain. HP76 hastened in the direction and within moments later, he found V pinning down Uzi, priming for the kill.
V: I am gonna enjoy watching you die slowly you litt---
All Uzi saw next was a tail without the nanite canister go straight through V’s chest. She looks around V and sees the new disassembly drone for the first time. All V can do is stare at the tail that penetrated her and sticking out of her chest.
HP76: GET OVER HERE!!!
He pulls V back with 1 mighty pull and V is tethered backwards at high speeds. The tail comes out and his hook punch comes into her face, shattering the visor. She landed with a sickening collapse to the ground, lifelessly.
HP76: 2 down, 1 to go. (Looks around) dammit, target got away. Oh well, I love a good game of hide n seek.
V was all the was left behind, laid there motionless. Her screen black like the pool of oil around her. The only thing that broke the silence around her was N, limping his way over to the corpse. The bullet from where HP76 shot him was nowhere to be seen on him. When he finally got to where V lied, he collapsed to his knees, pouring his heart out.
N: NOOO!!!!!! (weeps) why??!!!??!?! Why couldn’t of you just listened to us?? Why?? Uzi was gonna help us break free and you got caught in a crossfire. (Weeps start to die down just to sniffles) JcJenson is the bad guy here. I’ll make em pay. I’ll avenge you V. I never even got to tell you how much I secretly loved you V. (cries on her breasts) I’ll miss you.
(fades to black)

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I couldn't do anything about it. Sorry for the wait. Don't particularly like this chapter, but here it is regardless. Enjoy ^{and sorry for the wait.}
Tommy snook back up to his room, jar of coffee and cans of coke in hands. He was careful not to make any noise. He hadn't slept in days.
'Get a good nights sleep,' his parents had said. 'They're just nightmares,' they said. Tommy was sixteen, and he'd had his fair share of nightmares. However, these were not nightmares. How could they be? If his parents would just listen to him, just fucking listen to him, they'd understand. They'd understand that there was a reason he'd been having trouble in school for a few days. They'd understand why he was so afraid. They'd understand why he slept - or, stayed awake with, in more accuracy - with a knife by his side.
The first night he could remember it happening was terrifying, just as the others were. But, in comparison to the third night, it was merely a stroll through a park. He had a dream. There was a man, his features shrouded in shadow. He chased Tommy. Caught him. Strangled him. Tommy tried to fight back, but ultimately failed. The man then ripped off Tommy's shirt and scarred him. That was a nightmare, for sure. It was, of course, until he woke to cuts covering his torso. His parents disregarded this as him getting into another fight. Tommy got into a lot of them.
The same dream - more or less - came with the second night. When he woke up that time, there were pools of blood with heads and various organs floating in them. He screamed, but when his parents rushed in, the pools had disappeared along with the body parts.
The third night was the worst so far. He couldn't remember the dream, though he could make an estimated guess. He awoke to find himself in sleep paralysis. Scary enough as it is, but even worse when he saw the man from his dreams out of the corner of his eye. The man moved into clear view, staring to cackle. He must've stood there for hours, just cackling. He then moved up to Tommy, drawing a knife of some kind, cackling all the while. Tommy couldn't move. Couldn't scream. Could barely breathe. He leaned into Tommy and whispered 'You're mine, Tommy. You. Are. Mine.'
He then cackled again. The whole room seemed to shake, and the man ran at the window, breaking it and escaping. Tommy remained in sleep paralysis for a time. When he broke free he ran into the kitchen, got the shotgun, and waited. Magic might not work, but a well placed bullet should. He waited and waited and waited. Eventually, he went back to his room, having convinced himself it was just a dream.
'It was just a dream it was just a dream it was just a dream,' he quietly repeated to himself. He then opened the door. The window was smashed.

 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

Tommy got his Maths test back. Thirty-seven percent. A fail. Tommy had never been great, or heck, even that good at maths, but this was low. Even for him. He left the class as soon as the bell rang. He walked outside and froze. There was a man standing there, in the middle of the yard. The shadow seemed to seep off him, yet also kept his features shrouded. The man started walking towards him, smiling. He couldn't see the man smiling, but he just knew. Tommy looked around. There was nobody else there. Why was there nobody else there? Looking around turned out to be a mistake. The man had made significant progress on his journey towards him. Tommy screamed and turned, trying to run. He was caught in the mans grasp. In a desperate attempt to get away, Tommy shrugged his bag off and legged it. He ran inside and turned around to look at the man. He was walking. Why was he walking instead of running? Tommy didn't care. He ran through the corridors, encountering nobody. He reached the Principal's office. He burst the door open to find Ms. Gnosis and Mr. Renn talking.
"What is the meaning of this?" demanded Ms. Gnosis.
"There's a man chasing me!" Tommy blurted out.
Mr. Renn teleported somewhere and Ms. Gnosis turned a book, revealing a panel decorated with various different knives.
"Come here," Ms. Gnosis said, softly.
She sat him down in a chair, far away from the door and not particularly close to the window. After a few minutes of him sitting down and Ms. Gnosis standing, knives in hand, Mr. Renn appeared.
"I didn't find anybody," Mr. Renn stated. "What did the man look like?"
"I - I don't know," Tommy admitted, "He had his face covered."
"I see. Did anybody else see him?"
"No. Nobody else was there."
"I see," Mr. Renn said again.

 * * * * * 

Fletcher asked Militsa to talk to him outside for a moment. She gave Tommy a knife and told him to stay put.
"What?" she asked.
"I checked the entire school. They're people everywhere. If there was someone here, they would've been seen. Some of the students had videos of Tommy running away. There was no man in the video. There's also no camera footage."
"You're saying that Tommy is lying? Why would he do that?"
"I don't think he's lying. I did find one thing. Cracks."
"So there was someone here. So what happened? Why isn't there any footage?"
"Y'know, you don't work eith Skulduggery Pleasant for over a decade without picking up a thing or two. Tommy is evidently afraid. There's no footage of this man. Almost as if someone is toying with his mind."
"Fear magic," Militsa said, as the cold realisation dawned on her. It was something she knew all too well.
"Exactly."
"And the cracks?"
"Well, there's obviously somebody following him - at the least. He's using fear magic. There was a Tunneller involved. That gives me two conclusions. Conclusion A is that someone is using fear magic on him. He's also a Tunneller, and the cracks are just there to scare. Conclusion B is the same premise, except it's two people. A Uniterro and a Tunneller."
"That," Militsa said, "is some good detective work."
"Thanks," Fletcher said, grinning.

 * * * * * 

Victor had been following the kid for a few weeks now. He started tomenting him a little while ago. It had been fun. It had. The kid - Tommy something or other - was getting real scared. And scarred. That was a fun bit.
Some had compared him to Pennywise. This was the stupidest fuckin' thing Victor had ever heard. Pennywise? Fucking Pennywise? That was a fucking insult. He would be the shit out of Pennywise and then he'd make him his bitch. Anybody with a braincell would know that. He thought about the sheer stupidity of the thought while he was watching Tommy through the window. The mini cloaking sphere came in handy, he had to admit. Poor Tommy was crapping his pants trying to stay awake. Not that Victor cared. He was going all out this time. Dante and Alastair were too occupied to watch him.
He waited there for a few hours. Tommy eventually fell asleep. Victor smiled to himself. He tunnelled into the room. He got lucky with this house. It already had cracks in the walls. He popped out and started to whistle. It had become a favourite way of his to draw attention. He didn't whistle any tune in particular, just what felt right. When that didn't wake the bastard up, Victor walked up to Tommy and slapped him. Tommy woke up immediately and screamed. Victor threw himself against the wall, making it look like there was some kind of invisible force protect the kid from him. Tommy jumped out the window, breaking the glass and landing on his stomach. Ouch.
Tommy ran off into the night like a moron and Victor laughed. He popped briefly back into the wall and brought back out with him a leather sash decked out with knives and guns. The kinda shit you'd see a soldier wearing. He walked to the broken window and did a pencil dive into the ground outside. He followed Tommy like that for a long time. He rose out of the ground at regular intervals, though. Needed to keep the fear alive. Any sensible teenager would've ran into a crowded pub or some shit, but Tommy was under the influence of Victor's fear. Of course he wasn't thinking straight.
Victor eventually rose out of the ground a final time and walked a bit. It didn't matter, the kid had run for a long time. Long enough to reach the cliff. Tommy reached the tip of it, and Victor smiled as he fell backwards with fear of what he thought was bellow. He started cackling and moved towards Tommy.
Tommy reached a cliff. Why had he come out here of all places? Jeez, he was stupid. He looked back to see the man walking towards him and he was full of fear again. He ran towards the edge, desperate to escape. He looked down and was met by the most horrific thing he had ever seen. A black thing with no face looked back at him. The creature was infinite in size. Tommy knew instantly it was a Faceless One. The Faceless One rose, growing taller than Mount Everest and Tommy fell back out of fear. He got up, tried to run, turned, but was met by the man cackling and pointing a revolver at him. He was dead anyway, and he wanted to die at this point. The man put a new magazine into his gun and fired at his leg.
Dante ran. He'd been watching Victor in secret, and this was going too far. He had taken a break from watching him to get a cup of coffee and a bun, and came back to the boy's house to find the window smashed and a faint trace of blood on the glass. The one time he took a feckin' break. He ran all over, trying to find them. His mini cloaking sphere protecting him from the view of everyone else. It was probably a good thing he'd gotten a haircut, otherwise his hair would've gotten in the way of his vision. He ran all over. The Humdrums, The Sanctuary, the various estates, other districts and sectors. Nothing. He went further. He prayed that Victor hadn't gone too far, not again...

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I couldn't do anything about it. Sorry for the wait. Don't particularly like this chapter, but here it is regardless. Enjoy ^{and sorry for the wait.}
Tommy snook back up to his room, jar of coffee and cans of coke in hands. He was careful not to make any noise. He hadn't slept in days.
'Get a good nights sleep,' his parents had said. 'They're just nightmares,' they said. Tommy was sixteen, and he'd had his fair share of nightmares. However, these were not nightmares. How could they be? If his parents would just listen to him, just fucking listen to him, they'd understand. They'd understand that there was a reason he'd been having trouble in school for a few days. They'd understand why he was so afraid. They'd understand why he slept - or, stayed awake with, in more accuracy - with a knife by his side.
The first night he could remember it happening was terrifying, just as the others were. But, in comparison to the third night, it was merely a stroll through a park. He had a dream. There was a man, his features shrouded in shadow. He chased Tommy. Caught him. Strangled him. Tommy tried to fight back, but ultimately failed. The man then ripped off Tommy's shirt and scarred him. That was a nightmare, for sure. It was, of course, until he woke to cuts covering his torso. His parents disregarded this as him getting into another fight. Tommy got into a lot of them.
The same dream - more or less - came with the second night. When he woke up that time, there were pools of blood with heads and various organs floating in them. He screamed, but when his parents rushed in, the pools had disappeared along with the body parts.
The third night was the worst so far. He couldn't remember the dream, though he could make an estimated guess. He awoke to find himself in sleep paralysis. Scary enough as it is, but even worse when he saw the man from his dreams out of the corner of his eye. The man moved into clear view, staring to cackle. He must've stood there for hours, just cackling. He then moved up to Tommy, drawing a knife of some kind, cackling all the while. Tommy couldn't move. Couldn't scream. Could barely breathe. He leaned into Tommy and whispered 'You're mine, Tommy. You. Are. Mine.'
He then cackled again. The whole room seemed to shake, and the man ran at the window, breaking it and escaping. Tommy remained in sleep paralysis for a time. When he broke free he ran into the kitchen, got the shotgun, and waited. Magic might not work, but a well placed bullet should. He waited and waited and waited. Eventually, he went back to his room, having convinced himself it was just a dream.
'It was just a dream it was just a dream it was just a dream,' he quietly repeated to himself. He then opened the door. The window was smashed.

 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

Tommy got his Maths test back. Thirty-seven percent. A fail. Tommy had never been great, or heck, even that good at maths, but this was low. Even for him. He left the class as soon as the bell rang. He walked outside and froze. There was a man standing there, in the middle of the yard. The shadow seemed to seep off him, yet also kept his features shrouded. The man started walking towards him, smiling. He couldn't see the man smiling, but he just knew. Tommy looked around. There was nobody else there. Why was there nobody else there? Looking around turned out to be a mistake. The man had made significant progress on his journey towards him. Tommy screamed and turned, trying to run. He was caught in the mans grasp. In a desperate attempt to get away, Tommy shrugged his bag off and legged it. He ran inside and turned around to look at the man. He was walking. Why was he walking instead of running? Tommy didn't care. He ran through the corridors, encountering nobody. He reached the Principal's office. He burst the door open to find Ms. Gnosis and Mr. Renn talking.
"What is the meaning of this?" demanded Ms. Gnosis.
"There's a man chasing me!" Tommy blurted out.
Mr. Renn teleported somewhere and Ms. Gnosis turned a book, revealing a panel decorated with various different knives.
"Come here," Ms. Gnosis said, softly.
She sat him down in a chair, far away from the door and not particularly close to the window. After a few minutes of him sitting down and Ms. Gnosis standing, knives in hand, Mr. Renn appeared.
"I didn't find anybody," Mr. Renn stated. "What did the man look like?"
"I - I don't know," Tommy admitted, "He had his face covered."
"I see. Did anybody else see him?"
"No. Nobody else was there."
"I see," Mr. Renn said again.

 * * * * * 

Fletcher asked Militsa to talk to him outside for a moment. She gave Tommy a knife and told him to stay put.
"What?" she asked.
"I checked the entire school. They're people everywhere. If there was someone here, they would've been seen. Some of the students had videos of Tommy running away. There was no man in the video. There's also no camera footage."
"You're saying that Tommy is lying? Why would he do that?"
"I don't think he's lying. I did find one thing. Cracks."
"So there was someone here. So what happened? Why isn't there any footage?"
"Y'know, you don't work eith Skulduggery Pleasant for over a decade without picking up a thing or two. Tommy is evidently afraid. There's no footage of this man. Almost as if someone is toying with his mind."
"Fear magic," Militsa said, as the cold realisation dawned on her. It was something she knew all too well.
"Exactly."
"And the cracks?"
"Well, there's obviously somebody following him - at the least. He's using fear magic. There was a Tunneller involved. That gives me two conclusions. Conclusion A is that someone is using fear magic on him. He's also a Tunneller, and the cracks are just there to scare. Conclusion B is the same premise, except it's two people. A Uniterro and a Tunneller."
"That," Militsa said, "is some good detective work."
"Thanks," Fletcher said, grinning.

 * * * * * 

Victor had been following the kid for a few weeks now. He started tomenting him a little while ago. It had been fun. It had. The kid - Tommy something or other - was getting real scared. And scarred. That was a fun bit.
Some had compared him to Pennywise. This was the stupidest fuckin' thing Victor had ever heard. Pennywise? Fucking Pennywise? That was a fucking insult. He would be the shit out of Pennywise and then he'd make him his bitch. Anybody with a braincell would know that. He thought about the sheer stupidity of the thought while he was watching Tommy through the window. The mini cloaking sphere came in handy, he had to admit. Poor Tommy was crapping his pants trying to stay awake. Not that Victor cared. He was going all out this time. Dante and Alastair were too occupied to watch him.
He waited there for a few hours. Tommy eventually fell asleep. Victor smiled to himself. He tunnelled into the room. He got lucky with this house. It already had cracks in the walls. He popped out and started to whistle. It had become a favourite way of his to draw attention. He didn't whistle any tune in particular, just what felt right. When that didn't wake the bastard up, Victor walked up to Tommy and slapped him. Tommy woke up immediately and screamed. Victor threw himself against the wall, making it look like there was some kind of invisible force protect the kid from him. Tommy jumped out the window, breaking the glass and landing on his stomach. Ouch.
Tommy ran off into the night like a moron and Victor laughed. He popped briefly back into the wall and brought back out with him a leather sash decked out with knives and guns. The kinda shit you'd see a soldier wearing. He walked to the broken window and did a pencil dive into the ground outside. He followed Tommy like that for a long time. He rose out of the ground at regular intervals, though. Needed to keep the fear alive. Any sensible teenager would've ran into a crowded pub or some shit, but Tommy was under the influence of Victor's fear. Of course he wasn't thinking straight.
Victor eventually rose out of the ground a final time and walked a bit. It didn't matter, the kid had run for a long time. Long enough to reach the cliff. Tommy reached the tip of it, and Victor smiled as he fell backwards with fear of what he thought was bellow. He started cackling and moved towards Tommy.
Tommy reached a cliff. Why had he come out here of all places? Jeez, he was stupid. He looked back to see the man walking towards him and he was full of fear again. He ran towards the edge, desperate to escape. He looked down and was met by the most horrific thing he had ever seen. A black thing with no face looked back at him. The creature was infinite in size. Tommy knew instantly it was a Faceless One. The Faceless One rose, growing taller than Mount Everest and Tommy fell back out of fear. He got up, tried to run, turned, but was met by the man cackling and pointing a revolver at him. He was dead anyway, and he wanted to die at this point. The man put a new magazine into his gun and fired at his leg.
Dante ran. He'd been watching Victor in secret, and this was going too far. He had taken a break from watching him to get a cup of coffee and a bun, and came back to the boy's house to find the window smashed and a faint trace of blood on the glass. The one time he took a feckin' break. He ran all over, trying to find them. His mini cloaking sphere protecting him from the view of everyone else. It was probably a good thing he'd gotten a haircut, otherwise his hair would've gotten in the way of his vision. He ran all over. The Humdrums, The Sanctuary, the various estates, other districts and sectors. Nothing. He went further. He prayed that Victor hadn't gone too far, not again...