Truth or dare questions freaky

In the Quenta Silmarillion, the people of Nargothrond in general (and Orodreth their second king in particular) are depicted as fickle and weak of character, less like a bulwark and more like a flag in the wind (sorry for the German idiom).
For Orodreth, Curufin straight-out calls him a “dullard slow” (HoME III, p. 237)—and Christopher Tolkien agrees: “It may be that the position imposed on him by the movements in the legend led to the conclusion that [Orodreth] cannot have been made of very stern stuff.” (HoME III, p. 246) Orodreth also leans fully on Túrin from the moment he arrives in Nargothrond (see CoH, p. 163). (For more on how Orodreth became weaker and weaker with every iteration of the story, see here https://www.reddit.com/tolkienfans/comments/1aywrzg/celegormor_the_fall_of_a_prince_charmingpart_2/ )
But the same applies to the people of Nargothrond. The moment Celegorm and Curufin arrive in Nargothrond, even though Finrod is still alive and still king, they immediately take over. As Finrod tells Beren, “And now Celegorm and Curufin are dwelling in my halls; and though I, Finarfin’s son, am King, they have won a strong power in the realm, and lead many of their own people. They have shown friendship to me in every need, but I fear that they will show neither love nor mercy to you, if your quest be told.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19) If his people hadn’t already fallen under Celegorm and Curufin’s sway, Finrod wouldn’t have needed to be concerned about this; note here that he says that “they have won a strong power in my realm”, and that they “lead many of their own people”.
That Finrod is right in his assessment of the backbone of his people is shown the moment Finrod tries to convince his people to follow him on Beren’s quest. Celegorm and Curufin sway the people of Nargothrond with two speeches, putting so much fear into them that they will drastically change how they act for many decades (until Túrin shows up and sways them into the other direction):
“Many other words he [Celegorm] spoke, as potent as were long before in Tirion the words of his father that first inflamed the Noldor to rebellion. And after Celegorm Curufin spoke, more softly but with no less power, conjuring in the minds of the Elves a vision of war and the ruin of Nargothrond. So great a fear did he set in their hearts that never after until the time of Turin would any Elf of that realm go into open battle; but with stealth and ambush, with wizardry and venomed dart, they pursued all strangers, forgetting the bonds of kinship. Thus they fell from the valour and freedom of the Elves of old, and their land was darkened. And now they murmured that Finarfin’s son was not as a Vala to command them, and they turned their faces from him. But the curse of Mandos came upon the brothers, and dark thoughts arose in their hearts, thinking to send forth Felagund alone to his death, and to usurp, it might be, the throne of Nargothrond; for they were of the eldest line of the princes of the Noldor. And Felagund seeing that he was forsaken took from his head the silver crown of Nargothrond and cast it at his feet, saying: ‘Your oaths of faith to me you may break, but I must hold my bond. Yet if there be any on whom the shadow of our curse has not yet fallen, I should find at least a few to follow me, and should not go hence as a beggar that is thrust from the gates.’ There were ten that stood by him; and the chief of them, who was named Edrahil, stooping lifted the crown and asked that it be given to a steward until Felagund's return. ‘For you remain my king, and theirs,’ he said, ‘whatever betide.’ Then Felagund gave the crown of Nargothrond to Orodreth his brother to govern in his stead; and Celegorm and Curufin said nothing, but they smiled and went from the halls.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)
The text explicitly tells us that “they fell from the valour and freedom of the Elves of old, and their land was darkened” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)!
A very short time later, the people of Nargothrond change their minds again: now, they totally had nothing to do with abandoning Finrod, whoever would ever think that?? No, they had always supported Finrod, is the gist of this passage: “There was tumult in Nargothrond. For thither now returned many Elves that had been prisoners in the isle of Sauron; and a clamour arose that no words of Celegorm could still. They lamented bitterly the fall of Felagund their king, saying that a maiden had dared that which the sons of Fëanor had not dared to do; but many perceived that it was treachery rather than fear that had guided Celegorm and Curufin. Therefore the hearts of the people of Nargothrond were released from their dominion, and turned again to the house of Finarfin; and they obeyed Orodreth. But he would not suffer them to slay the brothers, as some desired, for the spilling of kindred blood by kin would bind the curse of Mandos more closely upon them all. Yet neither bread nor rest would he grant to Celegorm and Curufin within his realm, and he swore that there should be little love between Nargothrond and the sons of Feanor thereafter.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)
Also, did the people of Nargothrond try to murder the two Elves who they had let persuade them what appears to be mere months before?
Anyway, despite this change of mind, the people of Nargothrond are still afraid, not going into open battle (including the Fifth Battle—shoutout to brave Gwindor and his people, though!), and instead using, among other things, “venomed dart[s]” (Sil, QS, ch. 19). Note that other Elves would have found this use of poison despicable: “For the Eldar never used any poison, not even against their most cruel enemies, beast, ork, or man; and they were filled with shame and horror that Eöl should have meditated this evil deed.” (HoME XI, p. 330)
The people of Nargothrond only recover their courage when Túrin, a Man in his 20s, shows up and quickly becomes Orodreth’s favourite. Weirdly, it sounds like they liked him because he was young and good-looking: “In the time that followed Túrin grew high in favour with Orodreth, and well-nigh all hearts were turned to him in Nargothrond. For he was young, and only now reached his full manhood; and he was in truth the son of Morwen Eledhwen to look upon: dark-haired and pale-skinned, with grey eyes, and his face more beautiful than any other among mortal Men, in the Elder Days.” (Sil, QS, ch. 21)
Easily swayed, aren’t they? And particularly by beauty. Meanwhile, the people of Nargothrond stop respecting Gwindor, and why? Because he was tortured as a prisoner of war: “Gwindor fell into dishonour, for he was no longer forward in arms, and his strength was small; and the pain of his maimed left arm was often upon him.” (CoH, p. 163)
Túrin convinces Orodreth and the people of Nargothrond to “buil[d] a mighty bridge over the Narog from the Doors of Felagund, for the swifter passage of their arms. Then the servants of Angband were driven out of all the land between Narog and Sirion eastward, and westward to the Nenning and the desolate Falas; and though Gwindor spoke ever against Túrin in the council of the King, holding it an ill policy, he fell into dishonour and none heeded him, for his strength was small and he was no longer forward in arms. Thus Nargothrond was revealed to the wrath and hatred of Morgoth” (Sil, QS, ch. 21).
At this point in the war, building that bridge and engaging in open warfare was obviously a terrible idea for the hidden kingdom of Nargothrond (as ideas originating with the Silmarillion’s Anakin Skywalker tend to be). Even Orodreth realises this: “Orodreth was troubled by the dark words of the messengers, but Túrin would by no means hearken to these counsels, and least of all would he suffer the great bridge to be cast down; for he was become proud and stern, and would order all things as he wished.” (Sil, QS, ch. 21)
So Orodreth basically managed to get deposed too, just like Finrod, by a handsome prince who’s strong and rhetorically persuasive.
So what’s up with the people of Nargothrond? Here’s a list of their allegiances over a period of thirty years: Finrod → Celegorm and Curufin → Orodreth → Túrin. In thirty years!
And the text itself gives us the answer: they’re fickle—“they fell from the valour and freedom of the Elves of old” (Sil, QS, ch. 19).
But why are the people of Nargothrond specifically so fickle, compared to the peoples of Fingolfin and Fingon in the West, and of Maedhros in the East? I think that u/xi-feng has the best answer to this question: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” (G. Michael Hopf) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8751435-hard-times-create-strong-men-strong-men-create-good-times
Finrod, a strong man, created a safe hidden kingdom in the South of Beleriand, far away from the lines of the Siege, which was fought mostly by Fingolfin, Fingon and Maedhros. Nargothrond is safe, and the lives of the people are easy. They become weak, changing allegiance at the drop of a hat, swayed by the strong personalities of Celegorm, Curufin and Túrin (with a short moment of self-reflection upon Finrod’s death that immediately nearly turned into a lynching).
And interestingly, the text hits us over the head with this, telling us that the people of Nargothrond have lost their valour, while highlighting that the peoples of the Northern kingdoms holding the Siege are full of valiant people:

• “But Fingolfin was held overlord of all the Noldor, and Fingon after him, though their own realm was but the northern land of Hithlum; yet their people were the most hardy and valiant, most feared by the Orcs and most hated by Morgoth.” (Sil, QS, ch. 14)
• “Maedhros did deeds of surpassing valour […]. Thus the great fortress upon the Hill of Hirming could not be taken, and many of the most valiant that remained, both of the people of Dorthonion and of the east marches, rallied there to Maedhros.” (Sil, QS, ch. 18)

Sources:
The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien, ed Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins, ebook edition February 2011, version 2019-01-09 [cited as: Sil].
The Lays of Beleriand, JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2015 (softcover) [cited as: HoME III].
The War of the Jewels, JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2015 (softcover) [cited as: HoME XI].
The Children of Húrin, JRR Tolkien, ed Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2014 (softcover) [cited as: CoH].

During my mom’s celebration of life, her family sent me awful messages. I didn’t have my phone on me, and I was kicked out of the group before I could defend myself. We followed my mom’s final wishes and spread her ashes in her gardens around her home. Her family was not there for her until the very end. In fact, there were many times during her chemo when they did not talk to her, nor did they know when she was originally rediagnosed.
I was not perfect—no 15-20 year old is, especially one watching their mother die—but I was there every single day. I drove her to chemo and adjusted my work schedule around her and my dad’s doctor appointments to be able to bring them back and forth. If she wanted to go somewhere at night and didn’t feel comfortable driving, I drove her. When she got sick and couldn’t eat, I made her food that was easy for her to eat and encouraged her that it would get better. I worked out with her when she was better so she could regain strength. I got her clothes when she needed them and picked up whatever she asked for.
There are so many parts of the messages that are NOT true. It is not illegal to scatter ashes on your private property, and you do not have to add it to your deed. In fact, what they wanted to do with her ashes (dump them in the lake) was illegal. At no point did they express concerns over what we were doing being illegal. They did express that they didn’t like it and offered the illegal alternative, but we held firm that final wishes should be followed as they are a person's last request.
Now, every year around the time of her death, I think about what was said in those messages, and they make me question the most basic thing: did my mother love me? If she did, why did her family feel the need to blame me? Despite some of them seemingly coming to my defense in the messages, I do not doubt that they said the same things behind my back. My mom and I did get into a fight the week she died. Emotions and tensions within the house were running high, and you could feel the end was coming. Neither of us handled it well, but it was not a fight that made me deserve this.
Will I ever be able to let go of this? My therapist encouraged me to share, but I’m worried everyone will agree that they are right.
Here are the messages names are changed for privacy the number next to cousin/aunt/uncle shows if they are directly related. There were more people in the group chat who did not talk.
Cousin 1: Hi me (OP). I have just found out that you and your family are intending on burying your Mom in the backyard today. As far as I can see, you and your family (with the exception of your brother) have not felt bad at all that your Mom has suffered with cancer for all of these years. Your posts about your Mom dying have been cold, to say the least. Anyone who leaves a hospital because she told you to get the hell out, you have serious issues. You could have sat in the waiting room. The cancer spread throughout her body, she's going to say things that she really didn't mean. Thank God Aunt 2 & Cousin 2 were able to get up there and she was not alone when she died. From what I understand during the last few days when she couldn't do anything, you were very nasty to her. You are her daughter. You should have been helping her, that's part of being a adult. You told her to get off her ass and get her own drink and refused to do laundry or help her in any way, shape or form. You young lady should be disgusted in yourself in how you treated your mother. Your brother has been the only one to help her. She took all that time off of chemo when she shouldn't have to care for your father during his heart surgery and this is how you all treat her? If she kept going with the chemo during that time, maybe she would be with us. Where is your respect for your mother? YOU DO NOT BURYING YOUR MOTHER IN THE BACKYARD. I have contacted the State Police, Local Police Department, the funeral home and tomorrow I will be contacting the Town Hall. The state law says that you cannot bury someone in an urn on your property without having a permit from the town and it has to be on the deed and plot plan. If you sell the house, you have to take the urn with you. Use your head. Put the urn on the fireplace and honor your mother. Your mother would not want this and this makes me sick that you would do this to your mother and that your father is going along with it. You are burying her like a dead animal. I hope your proud of yourself for what your doing to your mother. The woman who raised you and did everything for you does not deserve this. And this is how you thank her by burying her in the backyard. It doesn't cost a whole lot to get a cemetery plot and have her buried in a proper location. You do have a life insurance which can be used to bury her properly. I am positive that your mother is completely appalled as to what you are doing to her remains. I'm just telling you upfront what I have done. I don't care if you like it or not, but my Aunt does not deserve to be buried in the backyard, it is not something she would want. BTW, there are very serious fines for doing this, up to $10,000.
Uncle 3: Who made you the judge? Is it because of all the time that you spent visiting and talking with my sister that you know what her final wishes were? Did she tell you that she was stopping chemo to care for her husband because me (OP) made her do it? Having visited - and talked with my sister- before her husband went in for surgery, I know that stopping the chemo was her decision. She very much appreciated all that her husband had done for her in these final months. Me (OP) was left with the task of dealing with what needed to be done once she died. Leave the OP’s family alone. If you will not help, go away.
PS Facebook and email are not the way to deal with issues like this. Look the person in the eye and talk to them!
Aunt 2: Thank you Bro for this response. I couldn't have said it better. This was not the time or the place to air this sort of venom.
Cousin 1: It amazes me that everyone was so upset about this yesterday when this was found out and now your not and think this is ok. Not one of her sisters or brother were even invited to this cook-out, that should at the very least upset you. She would not want to be buried in the backyard, she's not an animal. Believe me, if I had enough time to call them I certainly would have, unfortunately I had to get ready for work. And for your information Uncle, I talked to her numerous times. OP’s dad is the husband and he should be doing what needs to be done, not a 20yo girl who doesn't know what to do since she hasn't ever been exposed to something like this.
Cousin 2: First off, Cousin 1, I asked OP’s Dad who said he was going to bury her in the back yard NOT TO. I discussed the legalities involved. I spoke directly to all three of them about her faith and ways to allow people to pay their respects to her. I was kind and forthcoming. It's THEIR decision as to what to do. Am I happy that my Auntie is being buried in the back yard? NO. But it's not my place or my decision. You've handled this situation as a full on attack with all sorts of misinformation. For the record, we WERE invited by OP’s Family today. I appreciated that and decided not to attend. I'm honored to have held my Auntie's hand in her last moments. In fact, I believe she waited for both me and Aunt 2. THAT was supposed to happen and I feel blessed and honored to be loved and cherished by her enough to be given that trust. I understand you're grieving and it hurts like hell but please just take a step back and honor the wishes of Auntie's husband and children. It's not our say ... not our place to judge her final resting place. Auntie's siblings decided to honor their decision yesterday and I stand by them. Please STOP and leave me (OP) and OP’s Family alone.
Cousin 1: Well I guess if you all think this is ok then I guess it's ok. Because once again, when I voice an opinion I'm the bad person but everyone else can say and do whatever they want and it seems to be ok. It's kind of like when Nana was dying and everyone got mad at me because I had a priest give Nana last rights. That's what Nana would have wanted. Then we have the lies that the cemetery wouldn't bury her. That was a bunch of crap. The cemetery buries all year round, I called them and asked. That's what she would have wanted, not to be buried months later when it was convenient for certain people. You all want honesty and think you can speak to me like I'm a child, think again. If everyone thinks it's ok to bury Aunt in the backyard like a dead animal, then so be it. It is barbaric, horrible and shows absolutely no respect for her at all. I am done with this family. I have said how I feel and as Uncle 3 said, go away. So that is exactly what I will do. Please don't contact me at all, any of you. I am done.
Cousin 2: You're acting unreasonably You just disrespected Auntie for wanting the burial in the summer due to the very cancer that took her life. Don't you dare disrespect the brothers and sisters of my mom’s full name. I voiced NOT only my concerns and opinion of NOT OK of being buried in the backyard right to the people who stated their intent ... and tried to offer other ideas. Here is the thing ... I have no say. I'm not next of kin nor is Aunt 2, Uncle 3 or your Mom. We have no say. I'm not OK with their choice. We all understand it's illegal. This is why I chose not to attend. I won't participate because in my heart I know she is gone and I will let go when our side of the family has their own celebration of life and it will have aspects of faith and God. I personally need that for my heart to begin to heal this great loss. If you want out of my life that is your choice. Not mine. I won't stand by and let you bully and hurt people like this. You owe this entire family an apology as well OP’s family. I'm very disappointed in you.
Cousin 1: Excuse me and let's be honest here. The burial was not done because Uncle 3 told everyone that the cemetery doesn't bury when it's cold. They do. At that time, it had nothing to do with Aunt. If it did, that is obviously understandable. I was also told that none of us were invited today. I would not go because of what the intentions are. Calling all of them morons and how stupid they are behind their backs, I guess it boggles my mind how now your all defending them. Personally, if I were to call them at this point, I would tell them that. I am not bullying anyone. I do not owe anyone an apology. If you read Uncle 3's email, he told me to go away and that's exactly what I'm going to do.
Aunt 2 kicked me out of the group chat

Summary: Your last encounter with Captain Kismet was unsettling, but has not put you off your goals or your plans. But the would-be space pirate king/queen is not one to give up, and unfortunately they’ve tracked you down at the worst possible time...
Part 1 Here
Word count: approx 1900
Must give credit, Ok to monetize. If you use this script, leave a link to your fill in the comments!
Feel free to change around suggested SFX, omit, or to create your own soundscape. Always okay to gender swap, change pronouns, change names, etc. Small line adjustments for easier flow are fine, but please no major changes to the story unless you ask first!
__Script begins__
SFX: a dungeon, complete with dripping walls and the occasional rattle of chains. In the distance, an eerie electronic humming/chanting.
SFX: the door swings open. The electronic sound gets louder.
Captain! Fear not - I’ve come to rescue you!
SFX: (alt voice) Get in there, pirate scum!
After one or two small details to work out. Oof!
SFX: a thump of the speaker shoved into a cell
SFX: the CLANG of metal bars slamming shut
My goodness, you hyperdrive cultists really go all out on the atmosphere. Did you import the moisture just to make your cells unpleasantly damp? (calling out after the guard as the guard retreats) My compliments to the Great Ascended Pooh-bah Muckety Muck Whatever!
SFX: the dungeon door swings shut
Whew, I thought that acolyte would never leave. Built like a bunkercraft under the robes, wasn’t he? You’ve got to hand it to the Holy and Agile Order of Interplanetary Paths and Engineering, they must have their followers on a killer work-out routine.
...
Captain? My darling. Speak to me. Are you all right?
...
Are you sure? You’re hitting your head rather rhythmically against that wall.
...
Hm. Think the translator glitched there, I heard that as “what fresh hell is this”? Doubtless some quaint and clever human turn of phrase, meaning ‘what undiluted rivers of joy I feel, now that Captain Kismet has arrived to save me in my hour of need.’
...
Yes, I did notice that I’m in a cell too. Sadly, not in the same cell as you. These cultists really have no sense of the thing. I should be kneeling over you, tenderly wiping your bruises and cuts...
...
They didn’t actually hurt you, did they? Don’t get me wrong, a little roughed up is a nice look on you, but, hm. Which one was it that laid hands on you?
...
Never you mind why I care. Idle curiosity. Which one was it?
...
The one in the robe and the overstylized mask. Hahaha. No matter. Plenty of folk matching that description running around.
...
What am I doing here? I told you, human. I came to rescue you. You hear that outside?
SFX: slight raise on the drone swells
It’s the beginning of the Puissant Calibration, where all four of Kayo’s moons and that one big asteroid will all come into alignment. Every priest, sensei, hieromonk, and intern in this temple are going to have their eyes on the skies. That’s our opportunity to escape - with this.
SFX: rustle of fabric
...
That’s right, Captain. A universal key and galactic lockbreaker combination micro mini multitool. They say only seventeen were ever made. Just four still survive. And this one is mine. You just sit right there, my dear. I’ll have you out in two shakes of a gambada swan’s tail feathers.
SFX: beep beep beep - then a sad ‘game-over’ boooooop.
Huh. That’s... oh, it’s not... Hmm. No wifi down here. Okay. No problem. Let’s try...
SFX: a mechanical whirrr - and a harsh Ka-CHUNK.
Oh, shoot.
...
No! Nothing’s wrong! That’s, ahem. That’s the beauty of the universal key and galactic lockbreaker combo multitool. There’s always another tool to multi. Let’s see, we’ve got the uh...
SFX: clink of the tool
...
The lock is what? ... Just.. an old rusty lock? No electronic component? No clockwork mechanism? No high powered laser booby traps, no crystal rods rigged to explosives?
...
(heavy sigh) No problem. No problem at all! An old fashioned solution for an old fashioned problem. Diamond edged nail file. Coming up.
SFX: Metal sawing as the speaker gets down to it.
...
Yep. Just a little elbow grease here, and we’ll be on our way, Captain.
...
Oh Captain, of course I found you. Our destinies are meant to intertwine, the fates themselves are pulling us into orbit. Also, it was fairly obvious if you were going to break out the prisoners in the slave mines, you’d need a route out of the system. So I asked myself, Kismet, what is the most insane way possible that one could get their hands on the Agile Order’s top secret interstellar telemetry data? And then wouldn’t you know it: here you were. Waiting for me.
...
The lock is coming just fine, thank you.
...
That’s where you’re wrong, my dear. I assure you, I am absolutely used to working with my hands. Once we get out of here, I’d be happy to show just how dextrous I can be.
...
(taken aback) I - I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that. Me? Grow up on the Imperial planet? Please, Captain. I think you have me confused with someone else. The Imperials would shoot me out of the sky if a pirate like me dared to even approach their star system -
...
(suddenly harsh) Don’t speak that name here.
...
Oh, very good. Very clever, Captain. I see you’ve done your research too.
I am not an Imperial. Not... anymore. I never really was, not in any real sense of having any power. Six hundred and seventeenth from the throne doesn’t get you more than a one bedroom apartment, a military commission, and the occasional appearance in the duller celestial tabloid rags.
...
Yes. I suppose that is more than many people get in this galaxy. How did you know?
...
Don’t be coy. No one else has even suspected the circumstances of my origin. You figured it out in weeks. What did I give away?
...
I recognized you as human? How did that...
Oh.
Oh, of course. How else could I so confidently recognize a human unless I was familiar with them. And where else in the galaxy are humans so concentrated except in the Imperial palaces.
...
Don’t be dramatic. “Imperial slaves” is a rather prejudicial descriptor. Humans are highly valued contributors as administrators and teachers and, and...
...
“Pets” is hardly accurate either - Ugh. Why am I defending the Empire to you? You know what? Yes. You are absolutely right. Humans have been treated dreadfully by the Imperial family. Snatched off your home world, forced into service. One of the many sins the Empire has to answer for.
...
I am not trying to force you into the same situation - ! (clears throat, gets ahold of themself). Captain. I left the Imperials because I could no longer sit back casually and watch it happen any longer. The casual cruelty towards anyone who wasn’t us, building a pyramid of our peoples so we could hold the top for ourselves. I came to believe that there could be a different kind of system, one built on freedom and merit. You know how I came to believe in that?
...
Humans.
...
Every human I’ve ever gotten to know, I’ve admired. Even with the might of the Empire on your necks, there’s this unsquashable idealism inside you. This unshakable belief that things could be better. That things should be better. A rather inspiring perspective. One that I’ve taken with me.
...
That’s absolutely right, I take what I want. I’m making my own mark in this galaxy, with a name all my own, a family I choose myself.
Imagine my surprise and delight when I made it out here and found a human with the same ideas, same ideals, just waiting for me.
...
Yes, yes, not literally waiting for me. But - can’t see you see how this is meant to be? For both of us! I’m building the kind of kingdom that a human can be at home in. I’ve longed to see what any one of you would be capable of, if only given the freedom to exercise that intelligence, that passion. Now here’s the best human in the galaxy, right in front of me.
...
Don’t be modest, my dear. You are absolutely the best human I’ve ever met.
...
What’s that supposed to mean, “I think like an Imperial”? My dear Captain, why are you so resistant to this? Can’t you see I’m offering you a place at my side? Help me take this quadrant and we could rule. You would be second only to me! What could possibly be a worthier goal?
...
Ugh. Look, if breaking into the necronium mines means that much to you, I’ll help you.
...
Oh ho. Now I have your attention, don’t I? How very foolish of me not to realize sooner. Of course - my help in liberating the necronium mines: that’s your price.
...
Everyone has a price, human. That’s not thinking like an Imperial. That’s thinking like a pirate.
....
You’re a very strange pirate indeed, Captain. Because you’re not after the necronium or even the equipment and mining stations and spacecraft, are you? You’re out to free the slaves. How deliciously naive.
...
Oh, I believe you can. With the crystal encoded keys and the secret maps of the Holy and Agile Order, you’re most of the way there. The question is - after you liberate the captives, where do you intend to go with them?
...
Don’t turn away from me. I want to know. How will you fit them all into that little minnow ship of yours? Where will you bring all those thousands of half-starved, penniless, desperate fugitives? It seems to me that what you might need, more than anything, is a safe little corner of the galaxy where penniless, desperate fugitives might hide from the long tendrils of Imperial law. Hmmmm. Now I wonder who might be able to offer that to you...
...
...
You know exactly what I want in return.
...
You’re really considering it, aren’t you? You wouldn’t consider coming to my side for yourself, not for power, not for comfort. But for thousands of people you’ve never even met... Oh human. I’m going to such incredible things with you beside me.
...
To have you? Darling, I’d take in millions of refugees in exchange for you. A {king/queen} needs subjects after all. And I wouldn’t mind my own direct source of necronium while I’m at it...
...
No, I’m not going to put different slaves in the mines. We’ll... hire laborers. Hm, maybe some of the slaves would prefer to stay and run it themselves once we take over... Yes, yes, this is going to be quite an operation. But worth it. For you. Lay out your terms. And you’d better hurry, it sounds like the Holy Molys upstairs are hitting the exciting part.
...
Agreed. Safe passage for all to my harbor planet.
...
Oh, you don’t miss a trick, human. Safe and free passage. No debts owed, absolute freedom to stay or leave.
...
Food and housing for one galactic year!? Oh my dear. Don’t play your cards too aggressively.
...
We’ll see what we can do. We have some weeks to plan all this -
...
It can’t wait?
...
In ten days!? Oh my darling. I’m flattered by your confidence in me, but there is no way in the thirteen halls of hell we’re going to take over the largest Imperial prison mine in ten days-
...
Hey, calm down-. ... Lower your voice. Lower your voice! They’ll hear us!
...
I am not - Now, that is just uncalled for. I am making an extremely generous offer. What is your rush? You have a burning need to rescue the slaves that are there right now?
...
You... do. Don’t you? How foolish of me. This is some moral crusade. You’re saving... who? A friend? (building jealousy) A lover?
...
Never you mind why I care. Who is it?
...
A mistake? Oh no, Captain. My dear, dear human. You can’t go back on our deal. Not when we’re starting to get somewhere. You know so much about me. We’re just starting to learn about you - What’s that you’ve got there?
SFX: A rusty key squealing in the lock. The clunk of the lock cracking open.
...
You... had the key all along?! Captain, you -! .... Oh, of course. You knew about the Puissant Calibration. You’ve been waiting, here in the dungeon, to time your escape. You clever little...
...
Darling, surely you’re not going to leave me here?
...
Shades of deja vu. You’re right, I can get myself out of this. But more to the point, can you get yourself away from me?
SFX: a distant explosion. The chanting abruptly cuts off, replaced with distant shouts and screams.
Or to be more specific, you think you can get yourself away from the full might of my pirate armada?
...
That’s right, darling. Never say I don’t learn from my mistakes. The full might of my fleet is here to take this temple, this planet - and the spaceport, where I assume you’ve got that little minnow stashed?
...
(voice starts to fade as the listener runs) Run all you like, human! Even if you get away, I know where you’re going next. And I know where your heart lies. Run! Run faster! You can’t outrun Captain Kismet and your fate! (fading laughter)
__End Script__

I'm at home, pretty bored and looking for interesting people to talk too. I'm happy to talk to anyone just please let me know your age when you message:)
A bit about me: - I live with my mum and twin sister - from UK - I am lesbian - I like swimming
I love answering questions. You can ask me anything, nsfw questions are fine as long as you're respectful
Also open to do games like dares or challenges if you have fun ideas

Hi there!
I'm looking for writing partners interested in setting up some original guy/established woman in pro wrestling roleplays. It'd be great if you're looking to be silly and have a mix of comedy and romance to go along with the action. I want to work on characters and the general story a bit before starting up anything. I'm looking to do the plot below, though I'm open to others:

• I'm a new talent, the son of a Hall of Famer and one of the youngest guys that WWE (or AEW, or another federation) has signed and is using prominently in the modern era. I'm catching on quick with fans and even you've taken notice. It's no surprise that I'm loving the attention, and I've especially been enjoying yours. It's no bother to me, I've seen you giving me some extra attention when I'm cutting a promo or having a match, and I like it. Truth is, I've been watching you and I've been a fan of yours for years. Wanna know a secret? I even have the tiniest bit of a crush on you, but it'll take a bit of convicing for you to get that out of me. The question is are you going to just keep looking at me or will you make a move? If you're not going to, I just might. Is it a whirlwind romance? Or do we start casually and let things grow slowly? Maybe you're just linking yourself to me because I'm popular, maybe you even fall along the way? The posibilities are endless, and I can't wait to see how it cracks out.

I'm around a lot and looking for partners who want to write a lot. Please don't message me if you're just going to reply with "I'm up for anything" or something like that, I want to play with people who are into it! But as long as you're interested in writing and being creative, I want to plot and set something up!
If you're looking for something with shorter replies and or longer waits between them, still feel free to reach out too! Reach out, because I'm looking to write! You can send me a DM, or Chat. Also open to use discord for partners looking for longer & faster RP. Please let me know if you write in third or first person, while I prefer third, I can do either!

My family experienced something I can’t explain, and we’ve stopped talking to each other. I don’t know what to do.
I don't want to sound crazy. We're normal people. If any of this sounds familiar, please reach out to me. I need to know what's happening to my family.
It's hard to know where to begin. I don't know when this all started, but it hasn't stopped.
I live with my wife and two college-aged daughters. I’m a private chef; my wife is a teacher. We live in a suburb outside a coastal US city, in an eighties-era planned community where every house and street feels like a mirror image. Crisp lawns, HOAs, everyone knows everyone. The people are a little bland, but we have a yard and a pool, and we can pay for groceries, and we can (barely) afford to send our kids to college out of state. We were lucky, I thought.
My first experience with the supernatural was last spring.
"Okay, you're really gonna hate this one," Sarah said. It was Monday, my Saturday, and I was grilling vegetables by the pool. My eldest daughter, a born trickster, sat on the least-broken pool chair, bombarding me with the most willfully ignorant pop music she could find, or terrible cooking videos, or clips of classic cars refurbished with electric motors.
Anything to get a reaction out of her poor, Gen X dad.
"Please, no. How about the guy who makes things out of chocolate?" I countered, hoping for a compromise.
"I’m looking for the Kings game you went to in 2006 where they lost 1 to 10." Sarah, jabbed.
"I’m burning your food on purpose.” I quipped.
"Wait." Sarah said, suddenly still.
Whatever this thing is, whatever these things are. My wife and my daughters feel it before I do. I don't know if they're more sensitive to it or what, but they always know something is there before me. Call it women's intuition.
"What's wrong?"
As I said it, I remember it got very quiet. Like the volume for the outside world turned all the way down. The birds, the traffic and the white noise of suburbia went silent. I couldn't even hear the sizzle of the vegetables cooking two feet in front of me.
The lack of sound didn't bother me however, because I saw something in the sky.
A disc.
I didn't want to see a disc. But I saw a disc. It was made of metal, perfectly smooth, no rivets, no seams, no wings, no exhaust. A perfectly formed metal disc, fifteen feet wide, like two contact lenses stuck together just... sitting there.
There were lights, big ones, bright in the sun even in the middle of the day, moving all around it.
I remember thinking... Really? Part of me was exasperated at how, well, dumb it looked. Like an old movie model. Only somehow, I knew it was real. And I was being watched.
And then I felt The Fear.
If you ask me I think the craft makes people feel it. I don't know. I know it sounds crazy. It’s like a madness. It fills you up, cold, just pure terror. As soon as your eyes see a craft, in a few seconds your mind blanks and you feel only fear of the thing in front of you. The disc-shaped ones, and the triangle shaped ones, they always seem to broadcast The Fear.
I’d never felt panic like that. I know how to deal with it a little easier now, but back then I wanted to put my daughter in the car and drive as far away from the thing as possible.
Only I was completely frozen.
I couldn't move, I couldn't speak. I could only move my eyes, and even that took tremendous effort. I struggled to look in my daughter‘s direction and saw she was equally paralyzed. Her pupils turned to me, then back to the craft.
And we did that for a few seconds, trying to process what was happening, looking to the disc, to each other, and back. It was agony.
And then the disc was gone.
I was looking right at it. It didn’t fly away, it didn't zoom off at incredible speeds. It was like it stopped existing while I was staring at it. When it was gone I could move and I could breathe and my daughter started crying, and I comforted her, and we swore and shook.
What the hell was that?
“Are you okay?!”
I remember we both asked that.
I remember reaching for my phone, but it was dead. Sarah’s phone was dead too. We went inside to charge them, still in a daze.
”Your face is really red,” said Sarah, concerned.
I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror. She was right. My face was burned. Like a sunburn. I wear sunblock every day and often work long hours in the sun. I never get sunburned.
“I’ll get you some aloe.” Sarah said, retreating into the downstairs bathroom.
I glanced at the oven clock. It was three hours later than I expected.
"Three hours?" I muttered.
"We were only outside for a few minutes... right?" Sarah's eyes widened in realization.
"What happened to us?" Sarah said softly.
We were missing time. I don’t know where that time went. I don’t know what happened during that time. Time feels weird around these things. It’s hard to describe.
We didn't talk much for a while. We just kind of sat in the living room, scrolling our phones. The evening darkened. I remember thinking I wanted to say something, but I didn't know what.
My wife Lauren and our youngest daughter Dani returning home from work broke us out of our malaise.
"A UFO burned your face?" Lauren said, incredulous. Lauren was always funny, even when she wasn't trying to be.
I won't lie, it sounded dumb. I tried to think of how to word it better.
"I saw it too. It was really weird." Sarah said, seriously.
"You sure you weren't standing too close to the grill again?" Dani teased. Her pants were covered in flour and oil, her hair pulled back. Dani worked at a restaurant, despite my objections.
"You're supposed to make the food in the restaurant, not on your outfit." I teased back. Dani smirked, she liked kitchen talk, she was a lot like me in that way.
"I don't understand, did you provoke them? Why'd they come all the way from space just to burn you?" Lauren asked, spreading student tests on the dining room table.
"Did it look like the ones we saw when we were kids?" Dani asked Sarah.
"No, this one was different. It was a different shape." Sarah said, shaking her head.
"What are you talking about? Which ones?" I asked, confused.
"Do you remember the night we saw the blue elf?" Dani asked.
Memories of Sarah and Dani as kids flooded my brain. One night, a brilliant blue light in the sky. Sarah and Dani ran into our room to hide. The feeling of someone watching. The memory filled me with dread. Feeling uncomfortable, I tried to change the subject.
"I don't want to cook tonight. Let's order out. What should we get?" I said, presenting a distraction.
We ate dinner as a family that night. We talked about normal things. I tried to seem unbothered, but I was obsessively turning over the sighting of the disc in my mind. What was that? Why couldn't we move?
The feeling stayed with me long after the meal had ended and the dishes were done. I remember that was our last normal dinner. I wish I'd made more of an effort that night. We'll never be the same family we were then.
I guess before I tell you about that night, I should explain what an Orb is.
An Orb is a kind of floating sphere. It looks kind of like a blue basketball filled with spaghetti-looking strands of... something. It has a mind, I think. I don't know what these things are. From what I can tell, they are unknowable. They will harm you. If you see an Orb, my advice is to run. They can move through walls.
The first night with the Orbs changed all of our lives forever. We stopped talking after that night.
I don't know if I can write it down in detail, yet. Even this was hard.
I read something recently.
Scientists have communicated with apes via sign language since the 1960’s. In all that time, apes have never asked a question. Maybe they can't conceive of what a question is. Their mind just can't form the reasoning to understand how to think of one.
I think that’s what it’s like when we see these things. These orbs, or discs, or whatever. Like we’re seeing something we can’t comprehend. I don’t think we think about aliens the right way. They’re not from another planet. They’re from somewhere else entirely.
Something has happened to my family. Something happened and we're still dealing with it, and I don't know what to do. I'm afraid to tell people. We're afraid to talk about it with each other.
I'm not even sure if anyone will read this. The world needs to know what's out there, what my family experienced. My family can't be the first. There must be others.
If you're still with me after these ramblings, thank you. The next part will not be easy to write. But you deserve to know the full truth about what the Orbs did to us. What they're capable of.
For now, I present to you this information. I do not think we live in a completely material world. There are supernatural forces all around us, and most of them are unkind. Be careful with how you think, and what you think of.

• Lee

Hey! I found this pasta on the paranormal board of 4chan, thought it was extremely interesting and thought it would be cool to discuss it. There are some mentions about what NHI could be, I highlighted that part:
"All psychic or magical phenomena stem from directed observation. This is because observation collapses quantum probabilities, but it does so in a manner directed by intention. All of it is probability manipulation, it’s the only psychic ability humans have, but it’s probably the most powerful one.
Now, everyone is a little psychic, but to increase your abilities you have to observe faster (with higher frequency, more times per second) and more intensely.
To increase your abilities all you need are headphones and any site or app that lets you put any beat that has a specific frequency, a sound that beeps a specific amount of times per second.
People are usually vision-oriented. When you focus on something in your field of vision, it seems like a continuous movie, but it’s composed of many discrete and distinct “frames”. Humans usually have a visual framerate of 8-13 Hz (8-13 times per second), this is the alpha frequency in human EEG. What you have to do is train your brain to process and observe faster. In order to do this just put on an isochronic tone higher than 13 Hz, I recommend starting with 15-20 Hz. You will then focus on the sound. At first, it will be hard to even distinguish every beat, but you will be able to do it with practice. This is because whatever activates at the same time in your brain inevitably connects. So, if you have a high-frequency stimulus and at the same time you direct your visual direction to something specific, it's easier to accelerate your visual attention because it is connected to an inherently faster stimulus, forcing it to acquire the same frequency.
Once you can do this, focus on any point of your vision and with every beat focus as intensely as you can on your visual point of focus.
This is you, learning to observe.
Some clarifications:
It’s not without risk, and it takes a bit of energy, so be mindful about your health and nutrition. Spiritual or energetic practices are respectable pre-cognitive attempts to explain anomalous effects of cognition. Any esoteric, mystical and magical system is caused by anomalous effects of human cognition.
Your brain is literally a "most manipulable substrate" for probability manipulation. You use "psychic effects" to act and think. Its just that the brain meets the mind halfway. And things that aren't brains don't. That why it's easier to manipulate plants than rocks, they are more brain-like.
Some crystals are extremely manipulable and can enhance effects. This is because for some crystals, the state of every part depends on every other part. This makes crystals something like "maximally observant" of themselves. This is the cause of their anomalous characteristics.
Cats aren't very smart but have a very high perceptual framerate. This is the reason for their crazy fast reflexes. It's also the reason why they were venerated in ancient times. Similar reason why a lot of people who contact "higher intelligencies" feel as if their agency is negated by those beings. Being of higher perceptual frequency.
Another perspective to understand this is though the principles of causality and division. Say there's a cause C; someone with very limited perceiving capability would see it as C and C is bound to lead to E (effect). Fate is determined for this person. Many others with an average perceiving capability might perceive C as made up of c1, c2, c3 with each leading to the corresponding e1, e2, e3 effects. This part of the population has some control over their "fate". Now apply that to (you)rself, a level 30 grand mage from 4chan who can perceive at a very high rate. You can break down any cause into 100 little causes giving you seemingly infinite freedom of choice in any situation. Causality can never be violated, but the causes themselves can be broken down which then open up all sorts of possibilities for you.
Strict meditation is extremely useful if not absolutely necessary. I recommend Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram, it’s free online.
This mechanism basically explains most (if not all psychic phenomena). Think about it this way, when a psychic manifests a ball of energy, he is manipulating probabilities to manifest it. That's why flashy powers are rarely efficient, much less used. You don’t just create the main effect of the ball, but creating its visual effect is partly an independent process that takes effort.
Oh, and higher frequencies are tricky. Make sure you are actually hearing the frequency. An example. Sometimes if you are hearing 20 Hz it might seem you are catching every beat, but if you checked you would realize you are perceiving at 10 Hz and your slow brain is fusing every two beats into the perception of one. Make sure that doesn't happen. You can use any timer to estimate this. The first effect you will feel after a few minutes of practice will be the ability to hear higher frequency things, like the electricity running around you.
“Do I mix this with my visualization practice?” You can, but I recommend using visualization with some precautions. It can be somewhat dangerous. The effect of visualizing and cognitively modeling such as visualizing energy or image streaming is that you are creating positive feedback loops in your brain which will increase cortical excitability, which only increases the speed with which you are cognitively modeling your objective. For example: if you are visualizing healing energies to aid healing you are allowing your visual cortex to add cortical excitability to your objective, which only helps to cognitively model it faster. But cognitive connections are sticky, a lot of people end up with psychosis because they created a bunch of pathological connections in their brain without realizing and that creates aberrant patterns of thought. Usually visualizing the different sensory modalities of a single object is safe, but don’t mix a lot of things, especially if they are emotionally charged things. It's better to learn to increase the speed at will and very specifically in a brain area. That’s what you are doing with my method, learning to do it for the cortical areas responsible for the perception of the sound and your object of visual concentration, then you can use the same principles for anything you want. Pro tip: tobacco makes it easier to accelerate your cognitive processes, that’s why it’s so widely used by shamans, but they don’t know why it works. Now you and I do.
“Why do you think you are closer to the truth than x? Just who the hell are you?” Stop trying to find an objective truth. You can't. Just know thyself and wake up. Any thought is just a tool. Any model is just a tool. Truth is just a tool. At least as far as human capacity goes.
“How does this allow me to peek behind the veil?” You as yourself have never and will never experience the world. You only experience a very complex but imperfect interface between you and the world, this interface is called consciousness. By studying your own consciousness, you get to the deepest truths a human can get. Even if it isn't the ultimate truth. It also helps you know yourself and develop in such a way that you can get closer and closer to an absolute truth.
“What about the risk of psychotic episodes?” Don't use psychedelics while practicing, they can intensify the experience to the point where it's not controllable. Learn to control and see your own cognitive processes, insight meditation is useful for this. Use the book I recommended. And learn to downregulate activation, this is more complex but if you do concentration meditation and use the resource I mentioned you will eventually get it. If you recognize that you are in a psychotic episode (this is often the hardest part), ground yourself in your body and focus less on the experience of psychosis. Things like exercising, cleaning, cooking, etc. It can help a lot. Frame yourself in your ordinary world with your actions. If it's bad enough, a visit to the ER might be needed.
“What do I even use this for? I have no use for psychic powers.” I've got a better question. Who is already using it on you and to which effect?
"What about talking with entities? They seem to have complex intelligences of their own. How is that just probability manipulation?" They're egregores. Independent conscious constructs that are basically a "decentralized" self. They "borrow" processing power from the subconscious cognitive computation of those who think about (cognitively model) them. That's why fear is something that makes these entities stronger. When you fear something and want to get away with it your brain tasks your subconscious mind with cognitively modeling it. Because your mind needs to understand it to be able to get away from it and survive it. But it's also directing all of your subconscious computing power to enhancing the entity. That's how some of these entities "feed off your energy" sometimes. It's also why aliens make encounters as weird as they can sometimes. The weirder, the longer you spend thinking about it trying to make sense of it. The more you think about them.
“Why is your system superior?” Because it explains every other one. When you cognitively model a magic system, you are giving it energy, and it becomes more powerful. Because this system contains every other one, every time anyone has given energy to their system, they are also giving it to this one. It’s, by definition, the broadest, which makes it the most powerful. There are other considerations such a left vs right brain perceiving. But it’s nothing you can’t figure out on the go. Welp, that’s probably as much as it’s ethical to discuss. I will not be answering any questions.
One more important thing. Love is always wise. This is not as much of a statement on the nature of love as it is telling you to use it as a compass."
What do you think? It resonated with me, so I wanted to share it with you. I'm pretty sure they have been posting a weekly thread for some time now. They usually answer questions and add it to the pasta. So there's opportunity to ask them questions.

This isn’t an easy subject to talk about or even think about, but I feel like when it comes to society and their standards it really breaks an individual. I feel like when it comes to pleasing one another it should be less about body parts and more about who you are having the intimate experience with.
I feel like social media and entertainment tells us bigger is better and if you want to impress someone you have to be big in every sense of the word. Big privates, big muscles (which is usually something people want in a men), and being tall. People are taught and conditioned to think that taller, bigger, and flashy things are impressive while shorter, smaller, regular looking things are not.
Since birth we’ve been taught that whether it was through toys like a small teddy bear versus a large teddy bear that you can hold or when you celebrate Christmas and have a tall glowing tree in front of you which would be considered more impressive than a mini tree. People who usually look stronger appearance wise doesn’t really have to do too much work to impress someone nor convince them that they’re strong, yet someone who isn’t as strong needs something to make of for the lack of strength that people see in him.
Society even made bigger penises equal superiority as if you don’t have a bigger penis you need to work harder at pleasing a woman because she’s unimpressed with your size therefore you need to make up for it with your performance. Things that are big are often times respected and those who are intimidated by men or women bigger than them they wouldn’t dare to disrespect. This is even in movies and tv shows no one ever mess with people who are bigger than them most of the time and when they do they need extra assistance which makes the bigger person look stronger and the other person look weaker.
There’s so many correlation to bigger is better in this society. You even got people who make jokes about animals that got big penises like horses, elephants and others. The way men and women are impress with the size of animals penises just shows you how low society has gone. It shows you the body parts are more impressive than who they are attached to. People start to envy other people and in some cases even animals because they feel like they’ll never impress or get the reaction they want out of people, but others can get reactions effortlessly.
Women are often praise for their proportions just as much and often times get surgery done or go to a gym to achieve the body most people desire to have which is really bigger breast and bigger butts, but sometimes they still don’t see themselves as who they desire to be like because truthfully we weren’t meant to be satisfied by our bodies alone. We weren’t meant to compete with others to be the best. All this is nothing more than a depressing cycle of delusion. The idea that’s been embedded in us since we were children is killing us more than anything. We need to just drop it and be impress with what we have. Everyone who has a partner is bigger and better than anyone else physically, emotionally, and mentally because of everything they’re willing to invest in you. I’m certainly not the strongest, biggest, and most impressive person in the world, but I am in my partners world and that’s the world that matters. I’m strong to those who know and love me.
I know not everyone has someone to give them that validation, but I’m telling you that people are desperately wicked and people seem to destroy themselves and others all the time in every aspect. Those who know they are weak and in need of help are those who will go further in life. We need to realize that we are beautifully and wonderfully made. As God has shown us time and time again. Beauty is in humanity because of who created it. We’re beautiful because God is and without him we’re no more than useless sacks of dirt. Hopefully someone was helped by this today. I love you all. God Bless You All. I’ll probably make a video on this soon so your replies and vote matters. Please be honest and respectful. If you DISAGREE tell me why and if you AGREE tell me why.

Hi! I saw these questions in the pinned post and thought I'd answer them. I recently decided to get back into mtg and like lots of people I wondered what color I'd be if I were a card. I'm interested to see what you think!
What do you desire? What is your end goal? I want a fairly peaceful life. I don't want to be famous or extravagantly rich. I want to be comfortable enough to pursue my interests and passions without worrying too much about them interfering with work or my ability to survive. I want a life that affords me the ability to do "nothing" sometimes without feeling guilty about it! I want to be "left alone" -- not like a hermit, but in the sense that I don't love the idea of being tied down by obligation and responsibility all the time. That said - I'm not particularly "adventurous". I like my home and my family and want to spend as much time with them as I can while it lasts.
What means do you use to achieve these ends? I'm not very successful in achieving these ends, to tell you the truth! I picked the career I did (don't want to get specific on reddit) because it's fun and improves my community in a tangible way, but it also comes with a tremendous amount of stress and responsibility. I'm working on remedying that (I applied for a change in position this year to something less stressful - and I got it!) I also set my phone to disable work emails after a certain time in the evening recently because I need it - otherwise I stress myself out and have trouble sleeping. These are little changes, but I'm trying to be committed to keep making them.
What do you care about? What values are important to you? Curiosity is a trait I value a lot. The world is huge and there's so much to learn and experience and each of us has only a small slice of the pie that makes up the human experience. I tend to get interested in new topics often, but I'm fairly unfocused. I'll start studying something independently for a couple of months and then completely switch gears to something totally different. I used to hate this about myself but more recently I've accepted it and now it's one of my favorite things about me! I'm also very interested in protecting animals and the environment (though I still have a lot to learn about environmentalism, admittedly).
What do you despise? What negatively drives you? I'm not sure if this is what the question means, but the most negative driving force in my life is a sense of anxiety and specifically worry. My brain defaults to worrying endlessly about what I can't control, and I've been working very hard for more than a decade on changing that habit. I've made a lot of progress! But I still have a long way to go. Generally, especially lately, when I make changes in my life that promote my inner sense of peace, stability, and authenticity I consider those good choices. When I make choices that increase my workload or attempt to control everything, I consider that to be a backslide.
What ideals do you appreciate but don't get; what values do others hold that you hate? When it comes to spirituality, I've always sort of admired it from the outside. Whenever I've tried to engage in anything religious or spiritual I end up poking holes in it with "logic" or moving on before I've sufficiently understood it due to impatience. But I notice how authentically happy a lot of the spiritual people I know seem, and I envy that a little.
As for values I hate, there are a bunch! People who are fine with greed or exploitation of others get on my nerves, as do status-obsessed people. Everyone is equally important regardless of job/wealth/whatever and it angers me that our society often refuses to recognize that. On a somewhat-related note, pointless formality annoys me, especially when it comes to clothes. What I'm wearing has nothing to do with the quality of my work or ideas. I'm also not sure this is a "value" but a BIG pet peeve of mine is people who pretend everything is an emergency/disaster. It's going to be ok! We don't need to freak out! (Plus, when you freak out, it makes my brain think it's time to freak out and I don't like that.)
What is your greatest strength and biggest weakness? My greatest strength is my ability to make "something out of nothing." Not in a literal, physical sense. But in general I'm very resourceful and can accomplish a lot with a little bit of investment. I think I'm a creative thinker!
My biggest weakness is that I'm disorganized. I lose things often and procrastinate a lot, and it's often difficult for me to focus on one project or priority for long periods of time.

As a former friendly of Adora's who is a part of the Black community. I wanted to make a statement. Due to me not having enough followers to go live, I can only share my sentiments via being a guest on other panels when my social anxiety lets me. However, I did want to share my sentiments in a post here.
Weeks ago I went to a live explaining I had not seen any racial comments from Adora and I would change my stance if I did. I made a comment about the Reddit page (I see it is also recorded). When I first scrolled through the Reddit page (her first accountability live) there were a lot of transphobic comments misgendering, photos and video screenshots discussing looks, etc. which I do and still disagree with. I do not believe calling someone out has to be in the form of disrespecting their gender identity and this goes for EVERYONE in your community. From my time here today, I do see this page has cleaned up a lot since I first joined, and I am glad the advocacy has increased since and you all are calling out harmful people!
I want to say to Adora I am completely disgusted by what you have been doing since having a platform on TikTok. I am completely disgusted by your only friends. I am completely disgusted by your previous racial and misogynist comments. I am completely disgusted that you lacked accountability and gave none of your close paid subs, followers, and friends closure. Instead, you ran away like the coward you have "fought" strongly against for the past few years. I pray the people who defended you including myself find closure and continue the good fight despite your lack of advocacy in the community.
To Andy, Jasmine, Abby, Barbie, etc. I hope you all are surrounded by people who love you and will never put you in a position to host lives, ask questions, and defend them countless times because they knew your heart would be of good use to make themselves look "good". I can't imagine the countless comments you all and more have come across calling you a liar, "hater", and a bad taste for the community that seeks some sort of "revenge". It was complete victim blaming and I am disgusted with myself that I was not a voice from the beginning. I commend you all.
To Steph, AB, mods, and other (current) friends, you all did well hiding your racism and lack of advocacy for months. I am not sure if you all attended an Academic of Arts but the performance was honestly outstanding. What you all do is not a form of activism. Going against another minority community and painting them to be liars to "fight" for the LGBTQIA+ community not only damages the LGBTQIA+ community but it damages the African American community who not only are a part of that community, but the ones like myself who defend daily. If I ever see any of you in a live advocating for LGBTQIA+, I will join as a guest and I will call out the racism you all defend every chance I get until you take accountability for the black fishing, racial bias, etc. you all continue to defend. PERIOD.
To Mel, when you go live I pray to every God one believes in that you do not add a "but" to your apology. Every minority community has had enough of privileged people explaining their harmful ways. You have multiple accounts and you could have went live to address this immediately and tell everyone you will no longer associate with Adora. This gives me a bad feeling that you will continue to be friends with Adora behind closed doors as you still have never cut Hull off completely (we know). I can be wrong, so prove everyone wrong. If that wrong is not proven, please be prepared for your Tik Tok lives to come to an end as well.
As part of a minority community that has looked up to activists such as Marsha P. Johnson who not only were discriminated against and k" lled for the color of their skin, but also for their gender identity and sexuality, I find it my duty to fight for the LGBTQIA+ community. I will continue to do so for every minority community that faces harmful bias daily. I will continue to unlearn the bias I have been taught by the American educational system no matter what. When I become a mother, I will provide my children with what I should have learned as a child. I understand firsthand the fight for people to let you EXIST. The battle for people to RESPECT you. The fight for people to not be AFRAID of you. The struggle for people to ALLOW you to be you. I will never go against a minority community because of people like Adora or others who use activism to fuel their hatred and harmful actions. Negative isms will never be in my vocabulary.
Someone one day asked me to touch gas and I told them I couldn't afford it. Outside is too expensive! So unfortunately you all will still see me throughout people's lives adding my two senses as always with my glass of wine. P.S. apple does not allow me to download the Reddit app because I owe them coins, so I will try to respond to comments if I can throughout the evening if any.
In the words of Malcolm X, "Truth is on the Side of the Oppressed". Continue fighting the good fight (not literally, don't get a black eye or do and sue to pay off them student loans!). Take your meds, drink water, and cut off that toxic relationship!

• Z

While exploring a sprawling Dwarven city, your players learn that two massive monsters have escaped their confines and are hiding within the town’s borders. Can your party track down the reptilian creatures before they wreak havoc on the townsfolk? Or will the beasts run amok?
This quest was designed for a party of 6 level 11 players, but can be easily adapted if your party has a different amount of players or are at a higher or lower level. I ran this at my own table, and then made a few tweaks based on how it went, so I’d love to hear what you think! Without further ado, let’s get started!
Part 1: A Reptilian Caper
You can set this quest in pretty much any city, but I chose to run it in a town named Tinhagen. Built inside the peak of a mountain, the expansive city is the capital of the Dwarven kingdom, lit not by the sun but oil lamps and lava canals. It’s here that your party will come across a very strange group of characters who call themselves the Melted Rock Club.
Wearing orange robes and hats that look a bit like volcanoes, the Club is dedicated to their pseudoscientific, questionably magical studies. Most of their “research” is on things like moon dust in the water supply that turns people into werewolves, or uncovering deep state conspiracies in the Dwarven government. While a lot of it is outright wrong, sometimes they do stumble on an interesting discovery, and in this case, they need your players’ help to contain it.
The Club came across two eggs belonging to draconic creatures known as behir: Long and slender, behir sport 12 legs, sharp teeth and lightning breath to boot. So naturally, the Club thought it best to try and raise the creatures… Only now they’ve escaped, having somehow gotten out of their cage. Their only lead is that the creatures’ caretaker, named Dorda, is missing, too.
Not wanting to involve the local authorities for obvious reasons, the Club will task your players with finding and returning the two behirs - either dead or alive. When I ran this quest, I made the reward information: In exchange for helping out, the Club gave the party the location of a downed astral ship that was crucial to one players’ backstory. Tying this into the party’s own adventures is a great way to get the players interested in the hook. But considering the nature of their studies, it’s not unreasonable that the Club would have a magic item lying around for a reward, or at the very least, money.
No matter the prize, once your players accept the task of finding both lost lizards, you’ve got a quest on your hands!
Part 2: Leads on Lizards
Since their only real clue as to what happened is the behir’s handler is missing, the Club will give your party a few leads they can investigate as to her whereabouts. Dorda enjoys hanging out at a tavern known as the Underkeep, so the patrons there may be able to tell them a bit more about what she’s been up to, but the party will be warned that folks there don’t always take kindly to outsiders. Second, they know Dorda has a home across town. Your players could do some snooping, so long as they don’t get caught breaking and entering by any guards.
Whether your players decide to follow one or both leads, they’ll be able to get the information they need in order to find the missing behir. But I’ll take you through both sides of the quest, until they eventually join back together in the end. Let’s start with a trip to a tavern.
Part 3: In the Underkeep
The Underkeep is in a more residential part of town, away from the main thoroughfares and shopping centers that most visitors to the city would haunt. Outside it doesn’t look like much: it sits between two buildings, and is only a metal hatch in the ground with a sign above that says the tavern name with an arrow pointing down. Opening the gate and climbing a ladder inside, the party will find a small tavern lit by hanging lamps, with a long stone bar and quiet vibe. Unless your party is made entirely of dwarves, they’ll get a lot of dour looks from the bar’s regulars as they enter.
The dwarves in this place aren’t keen to talk to visitors, especially not about their own. So your party will need to find a way to win them over before they’re willing to divulge any information. They could do this in a lot of different ways: Buying drinks for the regulars, striking up some friendly conversation with good Persuasion checks, playing them in games of chance, or simply offering coins in exchange for information. It might even take a combo of all four depending on how they roll and what they’re willing to give up for a good lead. If you have any dwarves in your party - or anyone who speaks Dwarvish - that’ll also make things a little easier.
If they can warm themselves up to the locals, eventually they’ll learn that Dorda was in here just a few days ago. She seemed a bit out of sorts, and was asking the barkeep about their cousin, a butcher named Horrigan who runs a shop in the Sweatstone Terrace - not the city’s nicest district. If they want to keep following the trail, they’ll have to pay him a visit.
Part 4: A Trail of Blood
The Sweatstone Terrace is where the less-fortunate of Tinhagen hang out - sad pubs with only a few patrons, boarded up stores, beggars on every corner. As outsiders, your party will get more than a few glances from the shadier locals who hang out here - and if your players are itching for combat, this could be a good place to throw in some muggers or corrupt town guards looking to make some quick coin off your party. But eventually, they’ll reach Horrigan’s butcher shop.
The small store has hooks hanging out front that skewer various cuts of meat - mountain goat, bats, cave lizards. It mostly looks good - though some may be turning a bit green around the edges - and inside Horrigan is more than happy to try and sell them on any of his products. If they ask about Dorda, he’ll let them know he doesn’t remember anyone coming by with that name, and a successful insight check would show he appears to be telling the truth. But if they push a little further, he will reveal something strange happened recently: While unloading a cart out back, he noticed that some of the meat seemed to disappear between trips to get it into the shop. Thieves taking a little off the top wasn’t uncommon, but he was surprised to see several large cuts of meat go missing.
If they decide to check out back, the party will need to use Survival or Investigation to try and figure out what happened. With a high enough roll - DC 16 to be precise - they’ll notice small drops of blood that lead away from the back of the store to a nearby alley. At the end of the passage is a heavy grate that leads into the sewers below. It seems whoever took the meat escaped underground.
Part 5: Breaking and Entering
That was only one potential path, though! Your party may instead decide to head for Dorda’s home, which is in a neighborhood that’s nicer than the Terrace. While no bandits will accost them, that does mean there are more guards patrolling the streets - so they’ll need to be a little sneakier when they get to her abode.
Her house is a small one, with a small, potted fungal garden out front and only a few rooms. It’s a simple DC 15 check to get into the door or break the latch on a window, but you might want to roll to see if any guards happen by while they’re attempting to get inside. If so, you could have the player with the highest passive perception pick up on their approach, so the party can react accordingly. Similarly, if they fail their check to get in, I’d have some guards pass by regardless, to make sure there’s a small “consequence” for not getting it on the first try.
Once inside - and hopefully not arrested - they’ll find that the home consists of a bedroom, kitchen and small entryway. Here they can make Investigation or Perception checks to try and pick up on any clues as to Dorda’s whereabouts. Depending on how high they roll, they may find a few things: First are books on the shelf that talk about transmutation, illusion and other forms of magic - hints that Dorda might be a bit more competent of a spellcaster than the rest of the Melted Rock Club. Second are clothes piled up in a corner that are stained and smell terrible. Smart players may already begin to suspect she’s been stomping through the sewers below.
Most importantly though, they can find a small note stuffed under her simple mattress. It only has a few words on it, but they’re all in Dwarvish, so your party will need to translate to see what it says. The note reads: “Otug,” which is a dwarven name, and “Court of City Planning.” That’s their next destination.
Part 6: Bribes and Bureaucrats
Leaving Dorda’s home behind, the party will need to head toward the Cut of Courts, a wide street lined on either side with offices where the city’s government runs things. They’ll pass courts that deal with banking, law, mining affairs, housing records - until eventually, they reach the Court of City Planning. Entering inside and asking about Otug, the dwarf will be reluctant to meet with them. But if they bring up Dorda, they’ll be escorted back to his office.
Otug is gruff and abrasive, but also very corrupt. He’ll let the party know that for a simple bribe, he’ll tell them whatever they’d like about Dorda - after all, she bribed him first. If they’re willing to pay, or can come up with some other clever method to get him to talk, Otug will tell them that Dorda had asked for access to the city’s sewer plans. Pay him enough, and he’ll even point out on the map what section of the plumbing she seemed most interested in. No matter which route they chose, your players are heading down below.
Part 7: Behold the Behirs
Once your party knows they need to head into the sewers, they’ll have to navigate the labyrinth of tunnels and spoiled water that stretch underneath Tinhagen. If they talked with Otug and got more precise information, you could give them Advantage on investigation or survival checks made to get through the sewers, whereas if they went to the butcher, you could have them still following the trail of blood to find their way. You could also throw some encounters in there for them to find: Flocks of bat-like monsters called stirges, crazy old men who live underground, rat swarms chewing on old food scraps.
Eventually the party will reach an area where four pipes converge on one central chamber. The water is a bit deeper toward the center, where it pools around an open, rusted pipe that juts up out of the sewage in the middle of the room. If they check out that pipe, they may notice bits of bone contained within, as well as large, reptilian footprints and scratches in the rust that forms on the exterior. It seems they’re in the right place.
After a bit of waiting here, they’ll begin to hear footsteps approaching from one of the pipes. It’s up to them whether or not they want to hide, but if they do, they’ll see a dwarven woman with reddish hair and simple brown robes enter the chamber. That’s Dorda. She carries a sack full of meat shanks over one shoulder, and if the party doesn’t intervene, she’ll empty it into the central pipe. At that point, she’ll begin banging on the rusted metal… And the beasts will approach. The behirs are coming to feed.
From this point, there are several ways this quest can proceed. The first and most straightforward is combat. If your party attacks Dorda or are caught off-guard when she summons her two behirs, which will come bounding down two of the tunnels and into the room, it’ll be time to roll initiative. For Dorda, you can use the Illusionist wizard’s stat block in Monsters of the Multiverse, or just scale back the mage stat block in the monster manual. If you have less players or they’re a lower level, you could also have one behir instead of two. Between a powerful bite, lightning breath, constriction that’ll restrain your players and the ability to swallow a target whole, behirs can be a very tough challenge for your party.
All that said, this quest doesn’t have to end in fighting! If your party decides to confront Dorda verbally instead of going on the attack, or they manage to restrain her before she can summon her monsters, they’ll have the opportunity to talk it out. She speaks Common, and will explain that as the behir’s keeper, she was worried about whatever experiments the Melted Rock Club wanted to do on the creatures. Monsters or not, she believes they deserve better, and so snuck them out by casting Reduce to get them through the door late at night when nobody was around, and down into the sewers below.
She wants to release the creatures into the mountains beyond, and has been keeping them here in the sewers until she can find a way to smuggle them out. She’s finally managed to negotiate a deal with some shadier merchants to have them secretly shipped out of the city, she just needs to wait another day until they’re ready to go.
Now your players have a choice to make. If they let Dorda get the creatures out of the city, then the Melted Rock Club will refuse to give them their reward. Not to mention, these creatures are powerful and dangerous, so releasing them could have consequences for travelers heading to and from Tinhagen. But on the flip side, is it really right to leave these creatures in the hands of weird pseudoscientists who might do all sorts of strange experiments on them?
I’ll leave that decision up to your party. But if they decide to go against Dorda and turn the giant lizards in, then she will fight back with any means necessary - and without her to control them, so will the behirs. Whether they take down Dorda and capture the monsters, or let her save her precious pets, that’ll mark the end of this adventure.
Part 8: Conclusion
If the behirs are returned to the Club, dead or alive, they can claim their prize and be on their way. If they helped Dorda in the end, maybe they could still lie their way to the information or riches they wanted, or take up a different job instead. Maybe there’s even a middle ground they can find between both sides, so everybody ends up happy. Whatever they choose, at least the party can rest easy knowing those beasts won't be stalking the sewers any longer… And the city’s butchers can rest easy knowing their product won’t keep being stolen.
Thanks for reading, and if you end up running this at your table or have suggestions for how to make it even better, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Good luck out there, game masters!

While exploring a sprawling Dwarven city, your players learn that two massive monsters have escaped their confines and are hiding within the town’s borders. Can your party track down the reptilian creatures before they wreak havoc on the townsfolk? Or will the beasts run amok?
This quest was designed for a party of 6 level 11 players, but can be easily adapted if your party has a different amount of players or are at a higher or lower level. I ran this at my own table, and then made a few tweaks based on how it went, so I’d love to hear what you think! Without further ado, let’s get started!
Part 1: A Reptilian Caper
You can set this quest in pretty much any city, but I chose to run it in a town named Tinhagen. Built inside the peak of a mountain, the expansive city is the capital of the Dwarven kingdom, lit not by the sun but oil lamps and lava canals. It’s here that your party will come across a very strange group of characters who call themselves the Melted Rock Club.
Wearing orange robes and hats that look a bit like volcanoes, the Club is dedicated to their pseudoscientific, questionably magical studies. Most of their “research” is on things like moon dust in the water supply that turns people into werewolves, or uncovering deep state conspiracies in the Dwarven government. While a lot of it is outright wrong, sometimes they do stumble on an interesting discovery, and in this case, they need your players’ help to contain it.
The Club came across two eggs belonging to draconic creatures known as behir: Long and slender, behir sport 12 legs, sharp teeth and lightning breath to boot. So naturally, the Club thought it best to try and raise the creatures… Only now they’ve escaped, having somehow gotten out of their cage. Their only lead is that the creatures’ caretaker, named Dorda, is missing, too.
Not wanting to involve the local authorities for obvious reasons, the Club will task your players with finding and returning the two behirs - either dead or alive. When I ran this quest, I made the reward information: In exchange for helping out, the Club gave the party the location of a downed astral ship that was crucial to one players’ backstory. Tying this into the party’s own adventures is a great way to get the players interested in the hook. But considering the nature of their studies, it’s not unreasonable that the Club would have a magic item lying around for a reward, or at the very least, money.
No matter the prize, once your players accept the task of finding both lost lizards, you’ve got a quest on your hands!
Part 2: Leads on Lizards
Since their only real clue as to what happened is the behir’s handler is missing, the Club will give your party a few leads they can investigate as to her whereabouts. Dorda enjoys hanging out at a tavern known as the Underkeep, so the patrons there may be able to tell them a bit more about what she’s been up to, but the party will be warned that folks there don’t always take kindly to outsiders. Second, they know Dorda has a home across town. Your players could do some snooping, so long as they don’t get caught breaking and entering by any guards.
Whether your players decide to follow one or both leads, they’ll be able to get the information they need in order to find the missing behir. But I’ll take you through both sides of the quest, until they eventually join back together in the end. Let’s start with a trip to a tavern.
Part 3: In the Underkeep
The Underkeep is in a more residential part of town, away from the main thoroughfares and shopping centers that most visitors to the city would haunt. Outside it doesn’t look like much: it sits between two buildings, and is only a metal hatch in the ground with a sign above that says the tavern name with an arrow pointing down. Opening the gate and climbing a ladder inside, the party will find a small tavern lit by hanging lamps, with a long stone bar and quiet vibe. Unless your party is made entirely of dwarves, they’ll get a lot of dour looks from the bar’s regulars as they enter.
The dwarves in this place aren’t keen to talk to visitors, especially not about their own. So your party will need to find a way to win them over before they’re willing to divulge any information. They could do this in a lot of different ways: Buying drinks for the regulars, striking up some friendly conversation with good Persuasion checks, playing them in games of chance, or simply offering coins in exchange for information. It might even take a combo of all four depending on how they roll and what they’re willing to give up for a good lead. If you have any dwarves in your party - or anyone who speaks Dwarvish - that’ll also make things a little easier.
If they can warm themselves up to the locals, eventually they’ll learn that Dorda was in here just a few days ago. She seemed a bit out of sorts, and was asking the barkeep about their cousin, a butcher named Horrigan who runs a shop in the Sweatstone Terrace - not the city’s nicest district. If they want to keep following the trail, they’ll have to pay him a visit.
Part 4: A Trail of Blood
The Sweatstone Terrace is where the less-fortunate of Tinhagen hang out - sad pubs with only a few patrons, boarded up stores, beggars on every corner. As outsiders, your party will get more than a few glances from the shadier locals who hang out here - and if your players are itching for combat, this could be a good place to throw in some muggers or corrupt town guards looking to make some quick coin off your party. But eventually, they’ll reach Horrigan’s butcher shop.
The small store has hooks hanging out front that skewer various cuts of meat - mountain goat, bats, cave lizards. It mostly looks good - though some may be turning a bit green around the edges - and inside Horrigan is more than happy to try and sell them on any of his products. If they ask about Dorda, he’ll let them know he doesn’t remember anyone coming by with that name, and a successful insight check would show he appears to be telling the truth. But if they push a little further, he will reveal something strange happened recently: While unloading a cart out back, he noticed that some of the meat seemed to disappear between trips to get it into the shop. Thieves taking a little off the top wasn’t uncommon, but he was surprised to see several large cuts of meat go missing.
If they decide to check out back, the party will need to use Survival or Investigation to try and figure out what happened. With a high enough roll - DC 16 to be precise - they’ll notice small drops of blood that lead away from the back of the store to a nearby alley. At the end of the passage is a heavy grate that leads into the sewers below. It seems whoever took the meat escaped underground.
Part 5: Breaking and Entering
That was only one potential path, though! Your party may instead decide to head for Dorda’s home, which is in a neighborhood that’s nicer than the Terrace. While no bandits will accost them, that does mean there are more guards patrolling the streets - so they’ll need to be a little sneakier when they get to her abode.
Her house is a small one, with a small, potted fungal garden out front and only a few rooms. It’s a simple DC 15 check to get into the door or break the latch on a window, but you might want to roll to see if any guards happen by while they’re attempting to get inside. If so, you could have the player with the highest passive perception pick up on their approach, so the party can react accordingly. Similarly, if they fail their check to get in, I’d have some guards pass by regardless, to make sure there’s a small “consequence” for not getting it on the first try.
Once inside - and hopefully not arrested - they’ll find that the home consists of a bedroom, kitchen and small entryway. Here they can make Investigation or Perception checks to try and pick up on any clues as to Dorda’s whereabouts. Depending on how high they roll, they may find a few things: First are books on the shelf that talk about transmutation, illusion and other forms of magic - hints that Dorda might be a bit more competent of a spellcaster than the rest of the Melted Rock Club. Second are clothes piled up in a corner that are stained and smell terrible. Smart players may already begin to suspect she’s been stomping through the sewers below.
Most importantly though, they can find a small note stuffed under her simple mattress. It only has a few words on it, but they’re all in Dwarvish, so your party will need to translate to see what it says. The note reads: “Otug,” which is a dwarven name, and “Court of City Planning.” That’s their next destination.
Part 6: Bribes and Bureaucrats
Leaving Dorda’s home behind, the party will need to head toward the Cut of Courts, a wide street lined on either side with offices where the city’s government runs things. They’ll pass courts that deal with banking, law, mining affairs, housing records - until eventually, they reach the Court of City Planning. Entering inside and asking about Otug, the dwarf will be reluctant to meet with them. But if they bring up Dorda, they’ll be escorted back to his office.
Otug is gruff and abrasive, but also very corrupt. He’ll let the party know that for a simple bribe, he’ll tell them whatever they’d like about Dorda - after all, she bribed him first. If they’re willing to pay, or can come up with some other clever method to get him to talk, Otug will tell them that Dorda had asked for access to the city’s sewer plans. Pay him enough, and he’ll even point out on the map what section of the plumbing she seemed most interested in. No matter which route they chose, your players are heading down below.
Part 7: Behold the Behirs
Once your party knows they need to head into the sewers, they’ll have to navigate the labyrinth of tunnels and spoiled water that stretch underneath Tinhagen. If they talked with Otug and got more precise information, you could give them Advantage on investigation or survival checks made to get through the sewers, whereas if they went to the butcher, you could have them still following the trail of blood to find their way. You could also throw some encounters in there for them to find: Flocks of bat-like monsters called stirges, crazy old men who live underground, rat swarms chewing on old food scraps.
Eventually the party will reach an area where four pipes converge on one central chamber. The water is a bit deeper toward the center, where it pools around an open, rusted pipe that juts up out of the sewage in the middle of the room. If they check out that pipe, they may notice bits of bone contained within, as well as large, reptilian footprints and scratches in the rust that forms on the exterior. It seems they’re in the right place.
After a bit of waiting here, they’ll begin to hear footsteps approaching from one of the pipes. It’s up to them whether or not they want to hide, but if they do, they’ll see a dwarven woman with reddish hair and simple brown robes enter the chamber. That’s Dorda. She carries a sack full of meat shanks over one shoulder, and if the party doesn’t intervene, she’ll empty it into the central pipe. At that point, she’ll begin banging on the rusted metal… And the beasts will approach. The behirs are coming to feed.
From this point, there are several ways this quest can proceed. The first and most straightforward is combat. If your party attacks Dorda or are caught off-guard when she summons her two behirs, which will come bounding down two of the tunnels and into the room, it’ll be time to roll initiative. For Dorda, you can use the Illusionist wizard’s stat block in Monsters of the Multiverse, or just scale back the mage stat block in the monster manual. If you have less players or they’re a lower level, you could also have one behir instead of two. Between a powerful bite, lightning breath, constriction that’ll restrain your players and the ability to swallow a target whole, behirs can be a very tough challenge for your party.
All that said, this quest doesn’t have to end in fighting! If your party decides to confront Dorda verbally instead of going on the attack, or they manage to restrain her before she can summon her monsters, they’ll have the opportunity to talk it out. She speaks Common, and will explain that as the behir’s keeper, she was worried about whatever experiments the Melted Rock Club wanted to do on the creatures. Monsters or not, she believes they deserve better, and so snuck them out by casting Reduce to get them through the door late at night when nobody was around, and down into the sewers below.
She wants to release the creatures into the mountains beyond, and has been keeping them here in the sewers until she can find a way to smuggle them out. She’s finally managed to negotiate a deal with some shadier merchants to have them secretly shipped out of the city, she just needs to wait another day until they’re ready to go.
Now your players have a choice to make. If they let Dorda get the creatures out of the city, then the Melted Rock Club will refuse to give them their reward. Not to mention, these creatures are powerful and dangerous, so releasing them could have consequences for travelers heading to and from Tinhagen. But on the flip side, is it really right to leave these creatures in the hands of weird pseudoscientists who might do all sorts of strange experiments on them?
I’ll leave that decision up to your party. But if they decide to go against Dorda and turn the giant lizards in, then she will fight back with any means necessary - and without her to control them, so will the behirs. Whether they take down Dorda and capture the monsters, or let her save her precious pets, that’ll mark the end of this adventure.
Part 8: Conclusion
If the behirs are returned to the Club, dead or alive, they can claim their prize and be on their way. If they helped Dorda in the end, maybe they could still lie their way to the information or riches they wanted, or take up a different job instead. Maybe there’s even a middle ground they can find between both sides, so everybody ends up happy. Whatever they choose, at least the party can rest easy knowing those beasts won't be stalking the sewers any longer… And the city’s butchers can rest easy knowing their product won’t keep being stolen.
Thanks for reading, and if you end up running this at your table or have suggestions for how to make it even better, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Good luck out there, game masters!

I'm a part-time Pet Care Specialist. I only onboarded as part-time because I had obligations at the time, but my SL promised I'd be a full time employee when I was able.
Well, the time has come, and I asked my SL about becoming a full-time employee. She says "yeah, unfortunately, no, corporate isn't giving me any hours, so... I can't really do that for you."
She says this while a big drawing screaming "NOW HIRING!!!!" is on the front window of the store. When I questioned this, she said "yeah, corporate wants me to keep hiring, but they won't give me anymore hours." What? That doesn't make any sense to me. Why would you continue to hire, when the employees you already have aren't able to get scheduled because, in her words from an earlier conversation, "labor sucks right now".
I get maybe 5 hours a week. Some weeks, she doesn't schedule me at all. And she doesn't even list my hours in Central Bark like everyone else, I have to call and hope she's available.
On top of this, when I do work, I almost never do Pet Care, it's always Recovery or Register. I don't want to keep working here if this is how it's gonna be, but I just want to know, is she telling me the truth?

First / Previous
​
Suzanne thought it was absolutely brilliant of me to put books on a flash drive for Sun. She explained that Sun wasn’t as sophant (her word, not mine) as she might seem, more of a repository of information, but she was fairly intelligent. It was how she was able to connect Andrew being in pain to the fact that I was friends with Andrew, and that I would want to know that he was in trouble. Apparently some of Sun’s species had given some ‘wisdom’ to others in the past and it had made its way into mythology.
The key fact was that she was not smart enough to protect herself and her kind from the clever, organized poachers. With that information in mind, it was fascinating for me to think of how Sun took in and organized what she learned. It was almost as if she was a walking, talking library.
On the topic of tours, my first one went wonderfully, and I’m almost hoping Suzanne lets me do more of them. I know not all the tourists are going to be as awesome as these people were, but Suzanne gave me a lot of slack when it comes to dealing with them. She actually said that being a smartass is not grounds for dismissal, and that if I’m sarcastic or facetious to guests who are being ‘daft’ and they complain, she really doesn’t care. Is this the perfect job for me or what?
There were four guests in this party, two adults who were sisters and two children of one of the women, brothers aged thirteen and seventeen. The tour was a birthday gift for the older of the boys from his aunt, since apparently he was passionate about animal protection and conservation.
When they arrived at the front gate, I was sitting at Andrew’s desk, going over the booklet of information one last time. When the visitors pressed the button that sounded the alert buzzer, I tucked away in a drawer and let them in. I did have a cheat sheet with information about the animals on my phone just in case, a brief notation of each of them and which enclosure they were in, but I really didn’t need to use it.
Exiting through the front door, I saw them walk up the path toward me. “Hi, I’m Ripley,” I said, holding out a hand toward the woman closest to me.
She shook it firmly. “I’m Denise. This is my sister Carla and my nephews, Wesley and Jason,” she said, motioning to each of them in turn.
“I heard it’s your birthday,” I said to Wesley, giving him a smile. “You’re interested in animal conversation?”
“Back where we live, yeah,” he said, nodding. “The animals that you’ve got here are incredible. I can’t wait to see them.”
“Well, I can’t wait to show them to you,” I said. “Right this way.”
I led them on the path around the building, toward enclosure one. Despite the horrific memories of the animal killing Stanley’s friends, I knew it was just an animal, and I had to push past my feelings on what had happened. Keeping a small smile on my face, I motioned to the enclosure. “Fiercely territorial and amazing hunters, despite their large size, they’re arboreal and known to dart from tree to tree with barely a sound. This is one of only about two thousand left in existence.”
“Two thousand, three hundred and fifty six at last count,” spoke Wesley, his eyes on the trees.
I blinked, surprised and impressed. “Well that was fantastic. Do you plan on stealing my job when you graduate?”
Wesley looked at me with a grin. “Nah, everyone knows Suzanne only offers humans this gig. And I want to help animals like this one get off the endangered species list. The zoos are great for awareness and fundraising, but then the money has to go somewhere. I want to be doing the real work.”
“That’s really great,” I told him. “I wish you all the best in that career path.” At that, we saw the animal climb down from the tree, wandering a few yards from the tree line. This was because 90% of the time, when humans were at their enclosure and making noise, whether it was speaking to each other or calling out to the animal, it was someone bringing them prey to eat. Or, in my case, enrichment toys to play with.
“Whoa,” Wesley whispered.
“How close can we get?” spoke up Jason.
“The warding starts at the fence,” I told him with a small gesture. “So, just there.”
Both boys wandered closer and I glanced at their parents. It seemed that Suzanne’s zoo had a serious reputation for high quality invisible walls, because they didn’t look worried in the slightest about the boys being hurt or killed.
“They prefer dense forest as their home and have been known to make their nests in trees up to twenty meter in the air,” I continued. “And when hunting, they’ve been seen dropping eight meters straight down. They have incredibly dense yet flexible musculature, which allows them to tackle their prey without injuring themselves.”
There was more information about the animal that I continued to rattle off, though Wesley chimed in at certain points with the info I was about to convey. That was highly entertaining and very cool. When I’d been in school, I’d never met anyone who had my level of passion about endangered animals. I wondered if things were better where these folks came from, but realized that considering there were so few of these animals left, I guessed not.
The animal paced a little bit, seemingly waiting to see if we were the kind of humans that came bearing food, before deciding we weren’t and climbing back up into the trees as easily as I would climb some stairs.
As we moved onto enclosure two, Jason spoke up. “Are there any animals here we can touch or feed or something?”
I sighed inwardly before slowing to a stop. “Well, can you show me your hands?” Jason looked bemused, holding out his hands. “I mean…they both look like they’re in great shape. You can stand to lose one.”
The two women chuckled and Wesley smirked as Jason shoved his hands into his pockets. “Very funny.”
Grinning, I started walking again. “The animals here are all carnivores and all predators. You get to see them, but that’s it.”
“Alright.”
When we reached enclosure two, I started on my next spiel. “We’ve got three reanimated dead in this enclosure,” I spoke. They were just coming out from the trees as we arrived, presumably having heard our approach. “Marissa, Connor, and Bradley. They were donated by families who knew where they would be exhibited. Their next of kin, whoever they are, can’t stand the idea of putting them down. But we need to make sure they don’t have access to corpses, because one of them plus one corpse equals two of them.”
“They eat flesh though, don’t they?” Wesley asked.
I nodded. “Oh, yeah, but it’s from bodies that have already been dismembered. There’s no chance of them being affected by the transformation because it’s all parts.”
“Oh, got it.”
The creatures with blueish-white skin had superhuman strength, which is why they qualified for the security of Suzanne’s zoo. They also were likely the source of any Earth tales of people being brought back to life as zombies, specifically draugr, according to my research. They smelled like rotting flesh, so even as I kept talking about them and giving a background to the people they used to be, we were quick to move on once Wesley had gotten a good, long look at them.
“Enclosure four’s animal is a vampiric spirit. He’s a small, hairy humanoid creature with pointed ears. He wears a hat, and if he somehow loses it, he freaks out,” I said.
“They eat horses,” Wesley noted. “Also anything that gives them the chance to sit on it, usually catching them by surprise while they’re sleeping.”
The creature came out from the brush, giving us a suspicious look. He wasn’t in his humanoid form though; for some reason, he’d chosen to shapeshift to a dog.
I nodded. “Yep, indeed. Once the prey is dead, then he’ll eat it, and he has a voracious appetite. We have two wolves and two bears in the forest, which is one of the reasons I’ve got some self-defense items,” I said, patting my belt where my pepper spray (rated for bear) and my taser. “But the wards keep them out of this area of the zoo, so it’s really not much of a worry. It’s also a known shapeshifter, preferring the form of a dog, as you can see, as well as a cat, a snake, or even white butterflies, though the last one is rare.”
“The white butterflies are supposed to be a sign of good luck,” Wesley said, glancing to me. “Too bad we got the dog.”
“Yeah, otherwise you might be able to talk your mom into getting scratch-offs on your way home, huh?”
Wesley smirked at me.
The next enclosure was Spike, and he was waiting for us, dripping wet from having just emerged from the lake. I gave the introductory information about him, which included his propensity for eating animal eyes, nails, and teeth. “Recently, I’ve given him some enrichment activities, and I learned he likes artichokes, pecans, and hazelnuts,” I said, taking a bag out from my cargo shorts. “Wesley, do you want to toss this bag into the enclosure?”
The boy’s eyes widened and he nodded excitedly. He took a look into the paper bag before wrapping down the top to make sure nothing would fly out. Then he chucked it underhand past the fence. It landed a few yards from Spike, who waddled over to it quickly and tearing the bag open, spilling out the prizes inside. As the animal ate the pecans and hazelnuts, Wesley asked, “How’d you figure out he likes those?”
“It’s not all about taste,” I told him. “It’s mainly the difficulty of getting them out of the shells. He’s used to having to work for the parts of his prey he likes the most, so this mimics that activity, and he enjoys the process. I tried a bunch of different foods to find a few he liked.”
“Cool,” Wesley murmured, staring at him.
We watched Spike eat until he’d finished and then he went back into the woods, leaving us to move onto enclosure five. Japanese camellia were plentiful here, a type of pink flower, and that was because they grew anywhere near one of his species made their den. “This girl spends most of her time in the lake also,” I said, as the creature made its way toward the fence separating us from it. “But as you can see, she’s just as curious as the rest about what we’re doing here and whether we have food for her. She eats fish mostly, but she also regularly gets live prey.”
This creature was a spider-like monster, having six legs with long claws on each, and the head of an ox with two sharp horns. She was capable of shapeshifting to look like a human, but I guessed that she wasn’t fond of it, since I hadn’t yet seen her in that form.
“She prefers the easy way of catching prey, so to speak, by hiding in the lake and pouncing when something comes for a drink of water,” I explained. “Apparently humans are some of her favorite prey. She has an advantage of being able to spit poison, which often hits her prey in the eyes. But it’s usually used in defense rather than offense, since it secretes a limited amount.”
“What kind of animal would even go after something like this?” Jason asked, staring at her.
“Never discount one of its own species when you’re thinking about what might attack an animal,” I replied. “There are places that are breeding all of the animals here, but competition for mates is common. That means an advantage in a fight, like poison or venom, can make or break who the winner is.”
“Ah, gotcha.”
“It can’t spit past the warding, right?” Carla suddenly asked.
“Oh, no,” I assured her. “We’re fine. The wards wouldn’t let anything cross over.” She nodded, appeased.
The animal in enclosure six was the ginormous seal-hippo, Fiona, and she was looking at us as if she was imagining sprinkling us with herbs and spices and stuffing us in an oven. “This girl is one animal I’m going to work on enrichment activities for next,” I told them. “She prefers to feed on crayfish, though she’s happy to eat any humans that wander into her territory. She’ll even make a sound like a baby crying to reel us in. I’ve heard it a bunch of times.”
“Can you get her to make the sound?” Jason asked, perking up.
I grinned. “Not on command, sorry.”
“What enrichment are you thinking of trying?” Wesley asked.
“Possibly food placed in puzzle feeders,” I told him, “since she has claws that are pretty dexterous. Maybe a piñata made out of newspaper with flour inside, or a scarecrow that mimics a human.”
“Awesome,” he muttered.
After a little more educational tidbits, we moved onto Yui’s enclosure. “What is that?” Wesley asked, smiling.
“I got Yui the closest thing I could to a ping-pong ball,” I replied. “She quite likes it.”
“That’s so funny,” he said as she came out of the trees in her spider form. “I mean, the idea of her being a bloodthirsty hunter who seduces men to their deaths and eats them alive, but then on the other hand, she likes playing with something like this.”
“It is a little funny,” I agreed. “But when it comes down to it, all the animals here enjoy activities besides hunting.”
“She can shapeshift to look human, right?” asked Jason, trying to be casual about knowing something factual like his nerdy brother.
I nodded. “She looks like a woman from a region of Earth called Japan. And she’ll use strategies like holding out a hand to shake to get you closer. She tried that on me when I first got here but, as you can see,” I said, holding up my hands and waving them, “I didn’t fall for it.”
The boys both laughed as they got closer to the fence, watching her slowly pace near the trees.
Next was Sun, but she didn’t make an appearance as I spoke about her species. “Well…unfortunately we can’t guarantee that every animal comes out to say hi,” I sighed. “But…oh wait, here she is.”
The green lion with several horns and many eyes along her flank came out from the forest. “Hello,” she spoke.
“Hi, Sun,” I replied. “We have visitors.”
“What’s that?” Wesley asked suddenly, pointing at the small plastic bag that was still where I’d left it.
“Oh! That is Sun’s enrichment,” I said with a smile. “I put dozens of books on a flash drive and found that she can read them just like she’d read a shelf of books.”
Wesley’s eyes widened. “Wow. I don’t think I’ve read about anyone trying that before. That’s really cool.”
“The books are new and interesting,” Sun spoke, drawing our attention. “I’m grateful for them.”
I nodded to her. “You’re quite welcome.”
The next animal, unfortunately, wasn’t there, and we waited around for ten minutes as we discussed him. He was large and reptile-like with red eyes, with its hind legs and tail making him look vaguely like a kangaroo. Then, enclosure ten was a terrifyingly disturbing creature, the not-a-centaur with no skin, that I’d only seen a few times while walking my route. It gave a good demonstration of its ferocity, showing its sharp teeth and snapping at us a few times.
“I’m thinking of trying salt licks and other horse enrichment like a big bouncy ball,” I told Wesley, whose eyebrows went up at that. “Maybe give him more things to forage like scattered grains or a box filled with pinecones and seeds. Foraging is a huge part of a horse’s life in the wild, and humans have to do a lot of activities like that to keep pet horses busy. Of course, he also loves the little salt-water lake that was built for him.”
We spent some time looking at the animal before moving past our last stop, the empty enclosure of the animal was stolen. Carla glanced at me with a sad smile, knowing what had happened, it seemed. I gave her a nod as we continued on our way, walking into the office. “So, I hope everyone enjoyed themselves!” I said with a smile.
“That was the coolest birthday present I’ve ever gotten,” Wesley said, looking to Denise. “Thanks so much, seriously.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said with a nod. “I’d never been here before, and knew I’d find it fascinating. Thank you for the educational aspect,” Denise said, glancing at me. “I learned quite a lot.”
“Happy to hear it,” I said, returning the nod.
As I escorted the guests out of the zoo and locked the door behind them, I reflected on how much I’d changed. The first time I’d seen Yui’s tarantula form, I’d nearly passed out from fear. Now here I was, walking tourists around like it was no big deal. Humans really can adapt to anything, it seems.
That afternoon, Suzanne had texted me that she was coming by after my shift, and I met her in Andrew’s office, shutting the door to the security room behind me. “How’s Andrew?” I asked first thing.
“He’s doing well,” she said with a wide smile. “Back on non-hospital food. He’s allowed to order food on his phone, and to hear it from him, that’s the best news he’d received in a long time.”
I chuckled. “I guess some clichés are true for a reason.”
“Indeed.” She took a breath. “All right. Ripley…I would like to discuss something with you.”
My face went slack at the serious tone in her voice. “I’m not… Am I being fired?”
“What? No!” she exclaimed. Then she chuckled softly. “No, it’s nothing like that. Just, here, let’s have a seat.” Suzanne walked over to the couch and sat at one end, and I took the other. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve kept from you, that I wanted to keep from you until you found your sea legs here.”
“Well…I have,” I said with a nod. “So, what is it?”
Suzanne took a breath. “I knew your mother.”
The words hung in the air for a moment before making their way to my ears. It was a perfectly logical sentence, and yet it didn’t make any sense. “What?” I finally managed.
“When you graduated college, I decided to move the zoo from Italy to within driving distance of your home,” she said softly. “Near enough to your town that you’d see the advert. We ignored any other applicants and I hoped you’d apply. Actually, I expected you’d apply. Not just for the money, but considering the field you wanted to go into. As soon as I’d found out your major, I knew.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, holding up a hand. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How do you know Patricia?”
“She owned the zoo before I did,” Susan explained. “Fourteen years ago…she was working to track an injured animal that we could bring into the zoo and she was killed by poachers.”
My heart calcified in my chest and a lump lodged in my throat. As my breaths became shaky, I stared at her in shock. “She…she’s really dead?”
“You suspected?” she asked softly.
“It…” I swallowed hard. “We had her declared legally dead after…I don’t know, seven years I think. My dad wanted to go after her for child support, but the police said…they said they couldn’t find…” Tears came to my eyes and I blinked them back before I met Suzanne’s gaze. “She owned the zoo?”
Suzanne nodded. “It was her baby, you’d say. When Patricia passed, I inherited it, which we’d discussed beforehand, a legal just-in-case that I never expected her to need. I’m under the impression that you were told she went to Africa for her photography career, but she was in fact going to remote areas back in my home world almost every time.”
“But I-I saw the photos,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “You’re telling me she put on a show of getting pictures that someone else took for us to see every time she visited? Did my dad even know?”
“I suppose that’s an accurate way to put it, putting on a show. And no, your father was never told. It’s not the way of things to tell humans unless it’s necessary. I won’t bore you with the details, but us and humans, we’re distant relatives, so we can still have children. But it wasn’t planned. Your mother fell in love with your father despite herself; she hadn’t meant to find love. Then she became pregnant with you and…well, the rest is history.”
“I think she had a different definition of love than the one I have,” I said tightly. “You’d think she’d have put her survival as more of a priority. Put being with the man she ‘loved’ as a priority. Her kids needed her. I needed her. She signed up when she became a mom. She could’ve screwed up all the time but she couldn’t even manage that one job: be there. When I was in the hospital, I kept thinking, ‘Where is she?’ and now you’re telling me that she put these animals above being there for her kids, and this whole time she’s been dead.”
“The hospital?” she asked, furrowing her brows.
“Never mind,” I said tersely, averting my gaze.
Suzanne hesitated before she nodded slowly. “I’m sorry for your loss, and not just for her death, Ripley,” she told me. “Patricia was…well, a ‘free spirit’ would be putting it gently. She always assumed the world would be there for her whenever she needed it.”
Staring at her for a long moment, I shook my head. “Why? Why come here and hire me?”
“I thought that would be obvious,” she said, smiling. “Your mother was so passionate about this place and once I found out your college major, I figured you would be as well.”
“Did you know that I hate her?” At that, Suzanne’s expression froze on the edge of shock. “She…she left us,” I whispered. “Didn’t tell us who she was or what she really did for a living and gave us no closure. And even when she was here, it was just visiting. Her real home was her work. She could give me all the presents she wanted, but even when she was here, half the time she was still on her computer doing work. It’s not like that stereotype of never making it to my tennis practice or something; it’s that it always felt like she was only partially here, even when I was sitting next to her. I don’t even know if I appreciate her turning me into a wildlife fanatic because it…it…makes me feel like I’m close to her in a way that’s just infuriating. She loved the animals more than she loved us.”
“Oh, Ripley-”
“Don’t,” I said, shoving myself to my feet. “Don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said quietly. I pursed my lips. “I was going to say that I’m sorry that was the case. Your mother was…flawed, just like any other person. She had two loves in this world: her family and her work. And often, her work overcame her, her zeal for environmentalism getting in the way of being a good mum. She left your father trying to fill the role of two parents, holding your family together. You and your brother and your father, you all deserved better than that.”
My lower lip quivered but I bit down on it hard. It would’ve been a lot easier for me if she’d been speaking from a place of clueless reassurance about all this. But everything she said was making sense and that meant I didn’t have someone in front of me to be angry with.
“Why didn’t you tell me when Andrew hired me?” I sighed, sitting back down on the couch.
“Well, like I said, I wanted you to find your sea legs,” she said with a small smile. “I didn’t want the truth affecting whether or not you wanted to work here, whether you wanted to stay here after finding out about what the animals are. It would’ve complicated things, the emotions you’ll have to work through now that you know the truth. Whether or not you decide to give another tour, you also know what they’re like. That’s the benchmark I wanted you to reach before you found out about who you are.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Who I-” My face went slack. “Wait.”
Suzanne nodded slowly. “You’re only half human. Your brother too.”
The room seemed to tilt on an axis for a moment. “That means I’m also half…what?”
“We call ourselves Eldritch, these days,” she replied.
My eyes bugged out. “What?” I exclaimed. “So you’re all, like, gods or something?”
Suzanne burst out laughing. “Oh no, goodness, no,” she chuckled. “It’s just a word. We live in a very different world from this one, and a few generations ago we discovered the word and it made its way into our lexicon. But it does mean you can see all the animals. Indeed you did, on the tour you gave.”
“Wait, no, I had the glasses that…” I stopped. “Did those glasses do anything?”
She gave a sly smile and shook her head. “Not a thing. You made incredibly quick progress, and then when it came time for the tour, all you needed was to expect to see the animals, and you did.”
Genetics. That’s what Andrew had said during our interview, that part of how many animals you could see was determined by genetics. I guess having a mother who was originally from the other dimension gave me all the genes I needed to see everything here. “Could I…visit your world?” I asked tentatively. “You said that my mom took photos of the animals there. Could I…” My voice trailed off, not even sure if or how I wanted to finish that sentence.
“Those who are half human, especially those who are raised on Earth, don’t come visit,” she said gently. “I could show you some photos of other animals, and I could loan you as many books as you’d like, but it’s simply not a place where you’d be safe.”
“Oh,” I said, leaning into the couch cushion as I pictured the animals in the zoo. “Yeah, actually that…makes sense.” I paused. “So, what now?”
“It’s up to you,” she said. “I wanted to wait until I was sure you were comfortable with your position here, and then put the ball in your court. And so it is. What do you want to do now?”
What did I want to do? It wasn’t that difficult a question, just a deep, serious one.
I wanted to thrive, as the animals did. This is my enrichment now, working at an incredible, wonderful, terrifying zoo. The experience so far hasn’t been perfect, and I know there are risks, but life isn’t about staying safe. It’s about learning new things and making a difference in the world. And, if you’re lucky, having a job that’s something really special.
​
First / Previous

I'm bored and wanting to spice up my inbox! So lets play a game, SFW or NSFW is fine by me 😁 Would you rather? Truth or dare? Or any other games you can think of!

~First~
HHH/Herbert’s Hundred Harem AND Harriett The Spy
The tunnel of dark blue gel seems to be leading upwards and upwards, the walkway more a chunky stairwell as behind him the masonry sink into the gel and then re-emerge in front of him. He climbs what feels to be several floors before cresting at a carpeted floor where a large polished wooden table is on bricks to bring it up to his elevated level. Opposite of it is an ornate and extremely detailed image of a woman in dark blue gel who wears a dark blue gel gown.
“Please, have a seat.” She says and there’s enough definition in her face for him to clearly make out a smile. Tendrils holding bottles and tins drop down from above and set the table between them with numerous snacks and drinks. “Care for a drink? A snack perhaps?”
“Hmm... you’re certainly prepared for things.” Jurgen notes.
“Her core is... at the edge of the scanning range. But there’s something odd with it. Beyond it’s absolutely titanic size.” His Handler states.
“Are you alright madam?” Jurgen asks.
“Pardon?” She asks and Jurgen taps his glasses.
“There is a tiny speaker whispering into my ear from these, and I have sensors on my belt. My friend on the other side tells me that your core is close, but something is different about it. Are you alright?” He says and all movement in the chamber freezes. The inner light from the gel dims and he can barely make out her silhouette before things start to brighten again as she regains control of herself.
“No. I am not. Which is why you are here.”
“Madam, I am no doctor. In fact, as a soldier I dare say that I’m legally about as far away from a doctor as one can be. Professionally at least.”
“True, but you’re part of an organization with many doctors. Many doctors who can operate in the Null and do not require Axiom to work.” She says.
“Madam, what’s wrong?”
“I... I do not if I can trust you yet. You and yours. I need your measure before I tell you. Your full measure and not just second and third hand accounts.” She says.
“Hence our little party.” Jurgen says.
“Indeed! A pleasant little party where I get to know you, where we become friends and where my every problem may very well be solved without anyone getting hurt! Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”
“It does, but a party with just two is more a date I believe.” Jurgen says as he relaxes into his seat and examines the nearest bottle. “Hmm, this is a Cannidor style wine. Good stuff, if a little on the weak side.”
“Well, with human guests I figured I would need something a little sterner than average.”
“Indeed. So since you want my measure, how do you want to find it? Is there a topic in particular you’re interested in?”
“Why is it that you humans have taken a cultural artifact of The Apuk and reversed it as you have? It’s so odd. Give you a tail and some horns and I would mistake you for a very nervous man and not the downright fearless individual sitting before me.”
“Sitting before you?” Jurgen asks as he looks around and finds dark blue gel in every direction. “If anything I’m sitting within you. You surround me on all sides.”
“The question still stands.”
“It does indeed, I was stilling a bit to find the proper words.”
“Oh? Not having them handed to you?” She asks and after a moment Jurgen takes off his glasses and lays them on the table facing her. “Oh?”
“No, my own words. What I am is a member of Titan Squad as humanity exited Cruel Space all kinds of options became available to us for the first time. And one of the oldest stories, in every human culture is the idea of a giant or an ogre. An enormous human like creature of incredible strength, often with low intelligence, but not always. So the very idea of having someone so large on your side, not to mention the fact that other races are in fact this big, means it’s practical. Because we can have the giant soldiers without all the issues that... well you know... the issues!”
“Very eloquent.” She says with a smile and he shrugs.
“Sorry, it wasn’t something I debated about philosophically. I was asked if I wanted to be the biggest and most powerful I could be and I said yes. Well no, that’s not fully true, I asked if it was going to be some kind of drug that could affect me and I was told it was an Axiom Technique. So I asked if I could back out at any time and if it was reversable. Then I got the full explanation that I could turn back with ease and... I accepted.”
“Rather harder to turn back with numerous chunks of metal and machinery embedded into your spine.” All Lady says with a strange emphasis on her words and Jurgen considers that before leaning forward.
“Ma’am... is something... inside you? The real you and not the extension of your will that is the gel?” He asks and All Lady just stares at him for a bit then the back wall begins to shift. It slowly turns transparent and Jurgen stands up in shock as an enormous pitted sphere floats upwards into view. Then it turns. The back half has a massive crater inside it with numerous black veins all reaching out from a central point.
“Calm calm... must stay calm...” All Lady is whispering to herself all around him. “It feeds on pain and sorrow and misery, control your mind, control your fate.”
Jurgen picks up his glasses and puts them back on. “Dauntless are your reading this?”
“That core is easily twenty times the size of the largest on record!” His Handler states.
“Clearly, zoom in on the heart of that damage. What is it?”
“... What it is is setting off all my alerts and I’m getting a call. Hang on.” His Handler states.
“Are you alright?” Jurgen asks All Lady.
“No. I have not been alright for years.” All Lady says in a haunted tone. “It grows worse if I feel afraid, or angry, or sad or anything that isn’t positive. Joy can push it back, consideration and concern can as well. But any attempt to remove it just makes it worse.”
“I see and you think that you will need Null to stop it from getting worse?”
“Yes, there’s also the fact you’re very new to the galaxy. Whoever, whatever or why this was done to me...” She shakes her head even as she conceals her core again. “Humans had nothing to do with it. You’re not... you didn’t leave some kind of nightmare thing for innocents to be damned with.”
“How long have you been hurt?”
“Years, years now and it... it forces a budding, but doesn’t let me... it won’t let me...” All Lady pauses, all the gel shivers, goes still and she’s once again back to normal. “Needless to say, I want it out. And you Undaunted are the only people that cannot possibly be responsible and the only people guaranteed to have a way to force it out despite all the Axiom weirdness of it. I don’t care if it makes it worse, I want it out. But I need to know, is your reputation truly well earned?”
“I’d like to think it is.” Jurgen says.
“But I need... more. I need to know. I need to truly know your character before I take your word for it. Because my life depends on this.” All Lady says.
“Alright then, let us continue.”
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
Harriett stretches as she’s in a more comfortable outfit after being extracted. Not only had Tiaria been involved in whatever the latest madness was, but her recreational criminal activities were legion enough that they were going to be sitting on her for a while.
“Oh good riddance to bad rubbish. That simpering voice just got more annoying the more I had to hear it.” She says as she passes off her initial report. “Right, now I was promised a debriefing on what the hell is going on.”
“Yeah, and you’re getting it with your favourite coffee blend too.” The high and innocent voice of Herbert says as he passes in front of her with a tray full of hot drinks and donuts over his head. For some reason there’s a butter holster and a small sealed flask. She follows him into a nearby room and bafflers quickly turn on to keep things quiet.
“Well, things are serious if you’re only telling me in person.” She says and he nods.
“Yes ma’am. Check the butter.” Herbert says and she picks up the cover and notes that it’s a trytite and lead lined container to completely cut off whatever is in there. Inside is an odd piece of metal roughly the size of a pea. It’s vaguely reddish but... it’s not the colour of blood, but she can only think about blood and just looking at it makes her feel uncomfortable.
She covers it up again and looks towards Herbert before asking the question. “How bad?”
“Bad enough that the higher ups in the know are in complete agreement about not only keeping things secret as they can be but to also kick every beehive simultaneously.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called Blood Metal.”
“Very imaginative.”
“Yeah. It’s created by a brutal Axiom technique that causes a person’s own Axiom presence to turn on them and torture them to death. That little piece you saw? It takes about twenty people to produce that. All dying horribly.”
“Jesus...”
“We found enough for over fifteen billion people.” He says and she stares at him.
“Yeah, that’d do it.” She says.
“Or at least we thought so.”
“Don’t do the roller coaster thing, just give it all to me.”
“Alright, the bare bones is that we stumbled into an operation that was mass producing blood metal without murder, just owning the stuff without intending to destroy it somehow is illegal. This stuff is so rare no one really knows what it can do and we had evidence to think that there may be other hidden areas with more of it. We were right. But they were weird, acting like antenna.”
“Why would they need antenna?”
“The Mass Production Method requires a seed of blood metal to start, a sort of dirty amniotic fluid that no proper cloner would use outside an emergency and fear.”
“Fear?” She asks.
“Put the blood metal in the flash, it has the fluid in it. Then run some Axiom through it and we both will feel fear on top of the thing getting a little bigger.” He says and she stares at him for a moment before unscrewing the top of the flask and sniffing. It smells... it smells like a dirty hospital. The fluid inside is a piss yellow and has little bits in it. She then uncovers the small pea of blood metal and drops it in. She looks towards Herbert and he nods.
She runs Axiom through and jumps as her everything tightens up and she suddenly has her needler pistol out.
Herbert hasn’t drawn a weapon but he’s holding onto the table and his face is white. She slowly puts the assassination based weapon slowly away as her heart rate slowly returns to a normal pace.
“Well... you certainly said it. Holy god that was awful.” She says before glancing into the flask and finding the fluid gone. “It’s dry?”
“It is.” Herbert says before letting out a sigh and slipping into a seat. “That sensation never gets easier.”
“So we had antennas of blood metal harvesting the fear of... what? Where?”
“Bottom ten on dozens of spires.” Herbert says and she nods.
“That’s do it. If you want to find a paranoid you go down there and that’s fear by the boat load.” She says and then huffs. “At least, the ones that don’t start entire cults and communities around them.”
“Purple Perceivers still a problem?”
“In the sense that the crazy Mrega girl is gathering as many followers as she is crazy conspiracies.” Harriett says.
“Geeze, sorry to hear that. Is there anything else you need to know about things?”
“Hmm... dangerous barely substance was being mass produced using materials all over Centris. It was done in a new method that does not require torture and death, but that was not known at the beginning was it?”
“It was not.”
“Right... Yeah, something like this is a cause for a panic. What have you found so far?”
“So far we found the main mass production area, we think, and the low level employees and drones that maintain it. Tied it’s funding back to a con victim who’s about to get her assets back and who has led us to two other higher members, one an Alfar and one a Tret.”
“And Tiaria is possibly that Alfar. How did you narrow it down?”
“Numerous occasions where our con victim, one Miss Gina Bleat, was in their direct presence. It took a lot of computers a while to narrow down who wasn’t accounted for somewhere on Centris during that time.”
“What are the charges going to be?”
“At this moment there’s definitely a murder charge in there. Even if they started from a single basic seed, it required torturing someone to death to get it. Furthermore there are charges for unlicensed experiments on extremely dangerous substances without a license or proper safety procedures. Of which Blood Metal counts.” Herbert says. “However it’s going on the higher ups. Bleat is a victim, the guards are just rental cops and the janitors and engineers had no idea what they were working with. Blood Metal is rare enough that it’s reasonable to expect that people have no idea what it is when they see it.” Herbert explains and she nods.
“Hmm... so what does it do? If this stuff is so hard to create, then... what’s going on? Why bother making it?”
“It’s almost like combining trytite and khutha. It can hold many kinds of effects, but also tears apart hostile effects. Instead of ignoring them like trytite it’s... hostile to Axiom in a sense, drawing it in and seemingly eating it. Almost like a living thing.”
“Hmm... that’s... disquieting.” Harriett notes.
“It is. We have no idea what this stuff does to people. It devours and remakes Axiom effects constantly and since a good chunk of non-human biology is based in the Axiom itself then there’s not telling what it would do to another species with a piece inside them. To say nothing of the fact that someone figured out a way to mass produce this stuff, we may know the how but the big question of why is still very much in need of an answer.”
“And that’s on top of the more ‘humane’ and ‘safe’ method requires you to feed it fear and amniotic fluid. I mean... seriously, that’s weird.”
“It is.” Herbert says.
“Yes it is kiddo.” She teases.
“Please stop.”
“Then stop playing the part of my little brother or son in infiltration missions.” She answers.
“Would you prefer my desperate spinster aunt?” Herbert mocks.
“It’d be a change of pace.” She says and he snorts in amusement.
~First~ Last

Hello one and all. A heads up for the coming weeks. I will be traveling quite a bit, so I may have days where chapters are delayed. I've done my best to build up a backlog in preparation, but there's always the chance I won't have the time to work on them. That aside, I hope you've all been enjoying the story so far, and look forwards to bringing you more!
[First] [Previous] [Next]
Memory transcription subject: First Officer Recel, Federation Fleet Command Date [standardized human time]: August 2, 2136
[Elapsed Time: 16 minutes, 12 seconds]
My head hurt. My whole body felt heavy and weak. Even the act of awareness was tiring. I could hear noises around me, slowly rousing me from unconsciousness. Despite the weariness, I slowly forced my eyes open. The light in the room was low, reminiscent of twilight. My vision was fuzzy, though I could make out a majority of the room was white. I felt like I was in a bed of some kind with pillows under my head and a soft blanket over me. There was a rhythmic beeping next to me, which I eventually identified as some kind of heart rate monitor. As my vision slowly sharpened, I could see that all around my bed were curtains that blocked my view of anything else in the room. Faint memories of where I was and what happened slowly returned, but I felt so tired that I could hardly feel anything more than deep dread. I was glad that I was alive, but that meant that the predators had reason to not eat me right away. My heart rate monitor started to beep quicker along with my slowly growing feeling of fear.
I must have made enough noise to draw attention to myself. One of the curtains was pulled aside, and the Skalgan in a white coat stepped up to my bedside. “Oh, good. You’re awake. I was a little worried that the bump you took to the head had done serious damage, but the fact that you’ve come around so soon is a good sign.”
I was confused by this prey’s presence. I was surely on a predator ship, if my memory was correct, so why was a prey walking free? Why were they here among a predator crew? My crew. I’d forgotten about them. Were they okay? Did they get killed? I was so drained that the best I could do was weakly speak. “Where is my crew? Did the predators get them?”
The Skalgan huffed. “If you’re referring to the humans, they’re the ones who brought you to the medbay after you passed out. Your crew is getting some time in the brig to cool off while we figure out who you are, what you are, and why you’re here.” She walked over to the monitor next to my bed, taking notes on her holopad. “From what I heard, your subspace trail was traced back to Venlil Prime, so we assumed you were some sort of Venlil operation and knew about the humans already. So color us surprised when out of the ship comes three aliens that immediately start freaking out like the devil was after them.” Her ears flick in annoyance. “Honestly, we were told you Federation folks didn’t like meat eaters, but I never would've believed it was this extreme. Had we known, I’m betting the captain would have sourced a few Skalgan from other ships to make up the welcoming party. There’s not exactly many of us on every ship to begin with.”
Her words brought me a mix of surprise, confusion, and doubt. This was not the way I expected predators to respond to prey walking into their domain. The Arxur would have eaten us or dragged us off to cattle pens. Passing out would have been my death. I couldn’t understand why we were still alive, assuming the Skalgan was being honest. Not only that, but why had the Venlil not said anything if they know about the predators. “...Why are you here? Do the predators keep you here since they don’t know medic-”
“Okay, you need to stop with the ‘predators’ label. It might be my job to make sure you’re healthy, but that doesn’t mean I have to stand for your bigotry.” She huffed, ears pinned back on her head. “First off, humans and skalgan have been living together for centuries, so you can forget any ideas you might have about them eating other sentients. Second, I work here under my own free will. It’s my job to take care of my patients, no matter who or what they are. I trained at the University of Pennsylvania, a human run school. So you can take whatever notions you seem to have about humans being savage, unintelligent, uncaring, or whatever and stamp it out of your consciousness. Yes, they eat meat, but there is no correlation between that and how they behave. Okay?”
I stared at her in shock, taken aback by how certainly she was defending the predators. Clearly she trusted them. Maybe she was a special case and had been hand picked to fill a role outside of the cattle pens, but why would a predator even bother with teaching a prey? Were these predators smart enough to even teach? I was getting left with more and more questions, but I felt like asking more would only invoke the doctor’s ire. “...Okay.”
“Good. Now, we got a couple of things we need to go over. And just so you know, my name is Kirith.” She hopped up and sat down on the edge of my bed. “First off, who and what are you and your crew? Like I said, we’ve never seen aliens like you before.” For a few moments, I thought of lying. I didn’t want to give these people information that could be used against the Federation. If these predators are as smart as the doctor says, then they might know the value in having knowledge of our kind. Yet they were in contact with the Venlil. It wouldn’t be hard for them to check their sources, and any lies I’d say might easily be uncovered. I decided that I’d only give the bare minimum.
“...I’m a Kolshian, the small one of my crew is a Dossur, and the spiny one is a Gojid.” I said. Kirith waited a few moments longer, but after a prolonged silence, took a few notes on her holopad and lightly nodded her head. “Alright, I guess we’ll get names later. Secondly, why are you out here?”
“We’re a survey team that came out here after we heard word that there were potentially habitable planets in the dead zone. Many species are always looking for planets to colonize, and some would pay a good sum for the coordinates of habitable ones. Of course, it’s illegal to fly into restricted space, so we hid as best we could when we came out here. We thought that we could follow the Skalgan ships that came to Venlil Prime towards habitable space, and then from there search outwards.”
The doctor shoots me a judgmental look as she continues typing. “Using us to springboard off of. I don’t think any of us would take kindly to being used.”
“Used? But, isn’t it the duty of all prey to help each other?” I asked. This again seemed to irritate the doctor. “Okay, drop the 'prey' label too. That implies weakness, something many Skalgan would take offense to. Seriously, the more I hear about your beliefs of predators and prey, the more I wonder how your society could have ended up so ethically backwards.”
“W-what?! We’re not! We do what is needed to keep our people safe and alive! What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong is that your mind is so ingrained with these beliefs that when there is living, breath proof to contradict what you believe, you refuse to acknowledge it. Tell me, why do you think humans and Skalgan live together? Be honest.”
With me suddenly being put on the spot, I found myself speaking before I could realize what I was saying. “B-because you’re catt-.” I barely cut myself off before I spoke my mind, but it was to late. The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “...Cattle? Like what those monstrous, children eating, sociopathic, psychopathic Arxur do? That’s what you think humans are?” Her voice was starting to rise in volume, making me shrink back in the bed as she ranted. “The only reason I’m not dragging you off to the brig here and now is because I understand your people have generations of trauma inflicted on you by the Arxur, but the fact that you keep tying physical traits to behavior is straight up wrong. If you talked to a human without ever seeing them, I’m willing to bet that you’d assume they were any other ‘prey’ species. Humans aren’t monsters. Forget about appearances, and perhaps put more stock in what they do, rather than how they look.”
I was again left without words. Yet another passionate defense for the humans, something that no prey would ever dare voice. I tried rationalizing why she would say all of this, tried to think of an explanation. The thought of predator disease came to mind, but that wouldn’t explain the contradictions I’ve seen between how I thought a predator would behave and what’s happened so far. If these humans were like the Arxur, I'd be dead right now or trapped in a cattle pen. Something was going on that I was missing. Something made these predators not act like predators. “...Can… can you tell me about the humans?” I asked.
The doctor blinked, looking a little surprised at first, though eventually relaxed. “If it helps you come to understand them better, I’d be happy to answer any questions you have. But do note that you and your crew will likely be staying here for a while as we figure out what to do with you all. The top brass have been working out how to introduce humans to the galactic community without everyone freaking out, and we don’t want anyone blowing the whistle before we have a chance to speak for ourselves. However, I can promise you that you and your crew will be treated well in your time here.”
Maybe it was because I was desperate to believe her, but hearing we’d be okay put a lot of my worries at ease. It also helped that I was talking to a fellow prey and not one of the predators. If she was willing to talk about the humans, then they must not be trying to hide anything. There was still the matter that humans weren’t brought up during first contact, but considering how the Federation would react, perhaps they wanted to avoid a war breaking out. I didn’t look forward to essentially being a prisoner, but it was better that the fate we would have faced had these humans been like the Arxur.
Despite all the assurances though, I still had my worries that there was a lot being hidden from me. It felt like all I had to do was pull back the curtain and I'd see all the human evil, cruelty, and malice that the Skalgan were trying to hide. If that was the case, they were doing a good job so far keeping it hidden. Maybe it’s because the humans grew up with sentient prey that they were capable of keeping their instincts under control. It would explain why I wasn’t attacked when I passed out. There of course was a lot more I needed to learn. Perhaps I’d learn something that would be of use to the Federation after my release.
If the humans were secretly like the Arxur, than I could bring a vital warning to the Federation. I just had to make sure I didn't ask the wrong questions.
[First] [Previous] [Next]

Episode 5: Chapter 15: Friday the 13th
Friday, June 13th: After the intro, the episode starts off with all of the liars except for Faran in the middle of class. The teacher hands out test papers and puts 30 minutes on the clock. Nia gets a text on her phone. The text says “Some people just can’t keep their lips to themselves. You use yours to kiss, I use mine to tell. 🌹” Noa is visibly bothered and she asks to go to the bathroom. Noa exits the class and Imogen was the only person to notice Noa’s expression. She asks to excuse herself to the bathroom and she exits as well. She follows after Noa. Imogen asks Noa what’s wrong. Noa is getting ready to tell Imogen everything, but she realizes that if she says anything to Imogen that she’ll have to tell her about her kissing Jen, and right now she can’t tell anyone. She says that she got a message about her mom and she just got a little upset, but she’ll be okay. Imogen gives Noa a hug and pats her on the back.
Faran is in her room on her laptop. Since 5 days after her final girl test and lifting that beam then getting attacked exhausted her, we can see bandages on her arm due to her attack. Her dad, Zeke, comes into the room and she immediately closes her laptop. He asks if she needs anything. She tells him that she’s good. He then asks her if she’s telling the truth about what happened. She says that she has no reason to lie. She says that she’s already told him the same thing 10 times. She tells him that she had a little accident and she exhausted herself too much, nothing is going on. He leaves the room. She reopens her laptop and we see that she’s on Spooky Spaghetti. She opens a post from a user named “Anonymouse.” In this post, this user claims to be the first person to have made a post about Bloody Rose, which means that they are the creator of Bloody Rose. This post is adding more and more to the lore of Bloody Rose. Faran calls all of this lore bullshit, but she continues to read. She then gets a knock on her window. She opens it and it’s Henry. She asks why he didn’t just knock on the door. He says that he knows her dad doesn’t want any visitors right now so he had to come to the window. He comes into her room through the window, Billy Loomis style. He then says “We need to talk.”
The guys at the pool are wondering where Faran is at. Ash walks up to all of the guys and tells them that Mouse talked to Faran and Faran had a little mishap and she couldn’t come so she put him in charge for the day.
School is over for the day and the girls exit the school. Imogen teases Tabby and asks how things are going with Christian. Tabby says that things are going good. Imogen asks if that’s all she has to say. Tabby says that she really doesn’t have much to say about Christian and he’s a sweet guy. Tabby asks how things are with Johnny. Imogen says that they’re totally into each other but if Tabby wants to be discreet about Christian, she’ll be the same way with Johnny. They giggle and then Imogen gets a text. The text reads “Mother would’ve liked Johnny. If only she hadn’t ended it all before it even got started. 🌹” Imogen and Tabby see a bright red rental car drive by and they see Bloody Rose driving inside.
3:31PM:
Noa is working her shift at Pinball Pizza. Jen is supposed to be there, but she didn’t show up. Noa tells Benny that she’s going on her break. She goes to the back of the restaurant and she pulls out her phone. We can see that she’s tried calling Jen 12 times already but she hasn’t answered any of the calls. She calls Jen a 13th time but she doesn’t answer. She sends Jen a voicemail saying “Where the fuck are you? You’re supposed to be working right now and Benny didn’t seem too happy either! Do you know how hard I worked to get you a job here? We kiss and you just disappear? That’s fucked up!” She thinks about sending it but she deletes the voicemail and when she turns around, Benny is behind her and it scares her for a moment. He asks if she’s seen Jen. Noa says that she hasn’t seen her since yesterday. Benny says that when Noa sees Jen to tell her that she’s fired. Nia tries to plead with Benny but he says that he’s given her too many chances and he’s given up on her so that’s it.
Henry & Faran are talking in her room. Henry asks why Faran has been avoiding him. She asks him why their relationship has been so traumatizing for him that he tells randos about it. He says that he didn’t mean for her to get offended, but he asked his question first so she has to answer it. Faran says that Henry has been such an asshole recently and she needed space. Henry says that he thinks he’s given her enough space and they should be able to talk things out. Now, let’s cut to Zeke in the living room. He gets a text message. In the message it says “Your daughter’s been a liar. Couldn’t you tell? When Pinochio lies, his nose grows longer, when Faran lies, her spine curves. 🌹”
Mouse is out riding her bike around town with a camera in hand. She rides her bike to Bloody Rose’s cabin. She walks up to the door and begins twisting the knob. It’s open. She walks inside and begins to take pictures of the inside of the cabin. She is excited and freaked out at the same time. She then hears a noise from outside. She sees Bloody Rose walking around outside through the window. Blood Rose opens the door slowly and begins to check around the cabin. She pulls out a phone and sends Mouse a message. Luckily, Mouse’s phone is on silent. The message reads “Come out, come out wherever you are rodent. Looks like you’re back for round 2 of our game.” Bloody Rose continues to search around the cabin so Mouse takes the chance to run out of the cabin and onto her bike.
Imogen is working her shift at Millwood Creamery. Johnny comes up behind her and kisses her on her cheek. She smiles. All of a sudden, a woman walks into the shop shaking. She frantically walks up to the counter. Imogen asks if everything is okay. The woman breathes heavily and begins to talk “Man… chasing me… I need my inhaler.” She drops to the floor and begins heavily breathing. The woman is able to get a couple of words out and she says “PURSE… I NEED INHALER!” Imogen begins frantically searching through the woman’s purse. Johnny grabs the woman and sits her at one of the booths. Imogen finds the woman’s inhaler and hands it to her. The woman thanks Imogen. She continues to heavily breathe but she’s okay now. A man suddenly bursts through the door. The woman yells “THAT MAN! HE TRIED TO RAPE ME!” Imogen stands up and stands in front of the man. He tries to get her to move but she tells him to back off before she has to call the police. The man scoffs at Imogen and says that she won’t do anything. Johnny grabs his phone and dials 911 but doesn’t press the call button. He asks the man if he would like to bet. The man backs up and walks out the door.
Henry & Faran continue their conversation. Their talk turns into an argument about Henry’s recent behavior and Faran constantly wanting nothing to do with Henry. In the middle of that argument, Zeke bursts into the room and he says “Faran, we need to talk!” He & Henry make eye contact. He asks Henry what he thinks he’s doing here. He then kicks Henry out due to his no visitor rule right now. Henry says that he was just leaving. Henry walks out the door and leaves. Faran’s dad shows her the text message and asks what this person means and who it is. Faran gets a message on her phone that says “Don’t tell daddy about our little secret meeting. 🌹” Faran says that she doesn’t know and that person is probably just messing with them.
7PM:
Noa ends her shift at Pinball Pizza. She walks out of the place and she bumps into a woman. Noa recognizes the woman as Jen’s mom and he introduces herself. Noa asks Jen’s mom if she’s seen Jen today since she didn’t show up to her shift. Her mom says that last time she talked to Jen was yesterday when she told her that she would be at her dad’s house to pick up a couple things. Noa thanks her and heads off.
Tabby & Christian are cleaning up at the Orpheum. Tabby reminds Christian that they never got to watch Blacula together. Christian says that they could though. Christian asks when Tabby’s free. Tabby says that she can’t today since her mom wouldn’t be okay with her staying at a boy’s house this late, and tomorrow she plans on laying in bed all day since it’s her day off so maybe some other day this week. Christian says that he’s always available whenever Tabby is. Tabby smiles and they continue cleaning up. All of a sudden, Tabby gets a call. It’s from an unknown number, she’s afraid but a bit excited at the same time since it could be PIFT. It’s PIFT, they call her to let her know that they really did enjoy her film, however, it will not be being screened at the festival. Tabby’s heart is broken but she puts a strong face on. The call ends and Christian asks what happened. Tabby begins to cry and she falls into Christian’s arms. Wes walks in and he asks what happened. Tabby tells them that she the film they made for PIFT isn’t going to be screened at the festival. Christian consoles her then Wes begins to rub Tabby’s back, which makes her feel a bit uncomfortable but he continues to do it.
Mouse is in her room on her computer. She posts the pictures of Bloody Rose’s cabin that she took earlier onto Spooky Spaghetti. Lola walks in and tells Mouse that dinner is ready. Mouse gets up and hugs Lola and thanks her then she leaves the room. Lola sees that Spooky Spaghetti is on Mouse’s screen. Lola takes a seat in Mouse’s chair and she begins to scroll through Mouse’s posts and she’s reading them. We skip to 15 minutes later: Lola is still looking through all of Mouse’s posts then Mouse walks back into the room. Mouse asks what Lola is doing. Lola says that this website is scary and Mouse shouldn’t be on it. She begins to question why Mouse is on it. Mouse says that she enjoys reading posts on there. Lola says that Mouse has also been making her own posts. Lola tells Mouse to stay off of websites like this since these kinds of websites give you viruses. Mouse asks Lola if she’s gonna tell Mouse’s moms. Lola says that she won’t tell them as long as Mouse listens to her. Lola then says that it’ll be their little secret and she does “shhh” while holding her finger up to her mouth and smiling.
Noa shows up to Jen’s dad’s house. However, to her surprise, a husband and wife answer the door. She’s confused. The wife asks if she needs something. Noa asks if Jen is home. The wife says that there’s no Jen living there and that Noa must have the wrong home. Noa looks at the husband and says that he’s Jen’s dad so he should know her. He says that he doesn’t have any daughters, only 2 sons. The wife comes to a realization. The wife says that Noa must be talking about their ex babysitter, Jen. The wife tells Noa that Jen used to babysit their 2 sons, but they caught her stealing expensive items from them so they had to fire her and almost had her arrested. The husband says that Jen came back a couple of days ago and stole a watch from them so they had to have her arrested. Noa apologizes for her mistake and begins walking away while calling Jen a lying bitch. She then gets a notification. It’s a message from the number that texted her in class earlier in the day. The text says “Come to this location if you’re ready to be a final girl. And remember, this stays between you and me or you’ll be hurting the person you love most.” A location is attached along with an image of Jen at a bus stop, the same bus stop that Imogen was at in episode 2. Noa says “Oh shit!” and she begins springing for her car.
Imogen & Johnny finally finish their shift and begin to close up. The woman from earlier says that she should probably go since they’re closing up. Imogen insists that the woman stays. Imogen gets a message from an unknown number. It says “Wow Imogen, good on you for helping out. If only your mom were here to help out with the baby. 🌹” A picture of her baby in her crib is then attached. Imogen begins to panic and Johnny asks what’s wrong. Imogen yells “My baby!” She begins to dial one of Estelle’s dads. He answers. Imogen frantically asks if everything is okay with Estelle. He says yeah and that she’s asleep in her crib. She says that he needs to check on her now. He asks why. She says just do it. He runs upstairs to check on the baby and she’s okay. He says that Imogen almost gave him a heart attack and that wasn’t funny. He asks why she’s acting like this. All she says is “Because Rose…” She stops herself and says that she just had a bad dream about Estelle. He thanks her for caring about Estelle but says that Estelle’s gonna be okay in his household so it’s no need for Imogen to act like this. He says bye and hangs up. The woman at the booth says “I used to know a Rose. Rose Waters..” Imogen’s eyes widen and she asks what Rose was like. The woman tells Imogen to take a seat and she’ll tell her all about Rose. Imogen asks Johnny if he’s okay with this and he says yeah.
Noa arrives at the location. She realizes that it’s Bloody Rose’s cabin that her, Mouse, & Faran were at in episode 1. She takes a deep breath and she walks up to the cabin. There is a note outside of the cabin with a rose next to it. The note says “Don’t be afraid to enter without permission. I’m sure another charge wouldn’t hurt.” Noa rolls her eyes and enters the cabin. She sees a trail of roses on the floor. She follows them to the back of the cabin, where she finds a table. The table has a note, a rose, and a clock on it. She reads the note. It says “Some people’s pasts are better kept hidden, but now you must face yours. No matter how hard you try to forget it, the past always comes back to bite. You’re used to being locked up so embrace it. Escape the cabin by any means necessary. 30 minutes on the clock bitch, don’t let it hit 0 or the ghost of the past comes out to play.”
Back to the Millwood Creamery, we find out many things about Rose Waters. We find out that this woman is Rose Waters’ ex best friend and they just fell out of contact months ago. We find out that when Rose Waters had Angela & Archie, she had bad mental problems. His favorite place to be was the playground so Rose would take him & Angela there everyday. Other kids were scared of him because he would bully them, but Rose refused to believe that her son could be a bully so she convinced herself that other kids were scared of him because he was ugly. Archie wasn’t actually deformed, but Rose made him feel that way and she began to hide him from the public eye and never let him out of the house.
Tabby is waiting outside for her mom to pick her up. She then gets a call from her mom. Her mom tells her that her car engine won’t start so she’s gonna be a little late picking her up. Her mom hangs up and Tabby gets a message. Tabby looks bothered so Wes asks what’s wrong. Tabby says that her moms engine won’t start so she’s gonna be late picking her up. Wes offers to give Tabby a ride and Tabby says sure. She texts her mom telling her that a friend offered to take her home so her mom doesn’t have to worry. Her mom asks what friend and Tabby tells her that Christian is gonna give her a ride. Her mom says okay and Tabby gets a message from someone else. The message says “Wes wants you to ride in his car? I wonder if that’s the only thing that he wants you to ride. 🌹” Tabby obviously seems a bothered by this message but she tries to hide it and gets into Wes’ car.
Noa tries to break the windows of the cabin but she isn’t able to. She starts to get frustrated. She looks for anything to pick the lock with but she doesn’t find anything.
Back to Imogen and the woman at the creamery, they continue their conversation. Johnny tells Imogen that he’s leaving and asks if she’s okay with locking up. She says yeah and he leaves. We find out that as the years went on, Rose’s mental state crumbled even more. Rose moved to Rosewood for a little while last year and she started seeing a therapist named Doctor Sullivan for her hallucinations of Archie, but the pills only made her hallucinations worse. Rose only stayed there for 1 month though and decided to move back to Millwood where she struggled to get on her feet. The therapist, Doctor Sullivan moved to Millwood recently and Rose was supposed to start seeing Doctor Sullivan again, but she no showed the appointment. The woman reveals that she lived in Rosewood too but moved to Millwood to help Rose get back on her feet since Rose was her best friend, but Rose stopped answering her messages and she hasn’t seen her since. Imogen seems overwhelmed by all of this information. She then says that both of them should probably get going. She asks the woman her name. The woman avoids the question and says that she should be going now and she quickly walks out of the door. Imogen runs after the woman but she can’t find her anywhere.
It’s 10 minutes left on the clock for Noa. She begins searching drawers and she finds nothing until she gets to 1 drawer. It’s hard to open but she pulls it hard enough and it finally opens. All it has is a bunch of Redemption House flyers in it. Noa tries various different methods to try and escape but none of them work. She begins trying to ram herself into the window but the windows don’t break.
Wes drops Tabby off at her house. Before Tabby leaves his car, he stares into her eyes and tells her that she has a lot of talent and he knows that one day she’s gonna make it big. She thanks him but she is still weirded out. She gets out of the car and walks to her front door.
Back to Noa, it’s only 30 seconds on the clock. She is using everything that she can find. 30…29…28…27..26… Noa hears the clock ticking and she begins to panic. Nothing that she’s done has worked yet. 5..4..3..2..1. Times up. Noa gets a text, “Tick tock, times up! 🌹” The door begins to open. Bloody Rose is standing at the door. Noa begins to scream as Rose walks towards her. Rose tries to stab Noa but Noa ducks and begins to run out of the cabin. Rose slowly walks after her. Noa falls and gets her foot stuck in between 2 trees so she takes her shoe off. Noa accidentally runs onto some thorns and falls to the floor holding her foot. She tries to get back up but she can’t. She says “STAY AWAY YOU BITCH!” Bloody Rose continues to walk towards Noa. Noa is able to get herself up slowly. She continues to run with blood. She begins patting herself for her car keys but she can’t find them. She can’t get into her car without them so she runs even more. Bloody Rose may be slowly walking, but she’s not far behind. Now eventually comes across a lake and since Bloody Rose is close, this is her only choice. She gets into the lake and begins to swim. We see Bloody Rose in the background still following behind her, but she stops in front of the lake, not willing to get in. Bloody Rose walks away and Noa stays in the lake.
Cut to the Millwood Community Pool. Shawn is leaving place. Heads to the parking lot and he presses the button to find his car. His car beeps, but all of a sudden, a bright red car speeds and hits him in the middle of the parking lot. The episode ends with a shot of Shawn laying on the ground.
This is the episode that I wrote. I may have forgotten some things that have happened in past episodes, so it may not follow everything that the show has told us. Sorry about that. Anyways, I hope you liked it since I’m going to be doing this for every remaining episode of S2 following my universe. I even hope that I can write a season 3 and post it onto here.

i don't know if this is the right flair but i remember reading this webtoon (probably between the years 2016 - 2018) that had a guy with tan skin, black hair in a ponytail, and he had red eyes (also i think i remember him having a scar on the back of his neck by his mother?) and he had a love interest who was a man who had had pale skin, white hair, and blue eyes. this white haired love interest was very ill and i remember one of the early episodes being of them kissing at a fair while fireworks went off. also there was an episode where they went to a pool with some friends and i remember this plus sized girl who had pink leopard print hair but i remember they all played truth or dare in their hotel room and while they were all at the pool i think when the white haired guy was swimming he passed out or drowned and the red eyed guy had to carry him somewhere. this is all i can remember about it and i've looked everywhere i can think of for roof of this webtoons existence because i cannot remember who the creator was or what it was called. if anyone can, please help me!