Shenhe Story Spoilers* for newer players please experience this for yourselves blind!!
Forgot just how good Shenhe's story quest was. Starts with the nostalgic vibe of The Jade Chamber being rebuilt. Then a tense exchange between low end thugs and a mysterious white haired woman.
As the story progresses we learn of the tragedy and eventually binding of a woman who has managed to be made into a local folk tale. We meet Yun Jin and catch up with fan favourites along the way and uncover the truth of a grief stricken fathers deal with a malevolent being.
The chatty bird on the mountain takes our hero in and the adapti suppress her homicidal urges but at what cost?
As we succeed in rebuilding our floaty place and incredible cut scene appears and it genuinely brought a tear to my eye as she strides forward to delete a tsunami in the blink of an eye......
For all the hate it gets, when Genshin is done right it's absolutely top tier 👌

I have been employed at this factory for 2.5 years now (non union). We bring in temps from a staffing agency, then after 90 days we either hire them on or let them go. It is constantly short staffed due to a high turnover rate and just about weekly you see a new face or faces.
A few days ago I had to ask a temp that had been there two weeks, not to take break on the forktruck and to turn the music down. He had connected his phone to the radio in the forktruck and had rap music blaring, sounding like it was about to blow the speakers. In retrospect maybe I should have just let it go, but I use the truck as well as others and don’t want the speakers blown by anyone, much less by a guy who most likely won’t be there very long.
So, I went to the lead who was sitting there. I asked him to go tell the guy who he was training to turn it down. The lead (who isn’t a lead in anything but a title) said no that he wasn’t walking over there. I’ll admit; this temp had a tough look about him. His walk, his face tattoos, his whole demeanor screamed trouble, but I went anyway and asked him to turn it down and explained why. He immediately got mad and said, “Who the F*** are you?? Your not my boss so idgaf.” I replied with something along the lines of, “Is that right? Ok, we’ll see how much of a f you give.” He jumped off the forktruck and got in my face. He was cussing and threatening me and I just kept telling him that I was not going to fight him, especially not at work. I have a family that depends on my income. It wasn’t even an option. So I backed away then turned and went on to break inside.
20 minutes or so had passed and I was thinking he’d calm down and it was over, and I began to heat up my dinner and get my drink, etc. I looked up to see him walking into the break room, he was staring straight at me and then walked right up to my face. He kept saying “do something” and I kept replying thst I wasn’t fighting at work. I made the mistake of turning my back to him to leave the break room. When I did he swung a metal water thermos over his head and cracked the back of my head with it. I was seeing stars. It gashed my ear open so there was a lot of blood (that freaked me out) and left a huge pump knot on my head. He immediately started punching me in the face and head, so I tried to just wrap him up to stop the punches from landing. He ended up on top of me, punching me over and over. What seemed to me like a lifetime later a couple guys tried to drag him off of me, and when they did he kicked me in the nose first and then in the forehead, with steel toe boots. I was far from coherent after that. There were two witnesses in the room when it happened and a handful more when they were pulling him off of me. All wrote statements saying I didn’t fight back.
So they took him somewhere else and sat me down to look at the damage. No hr was there or safety so a supervisor tried to clean my ear with alcohol pad to see the cuts, eventually sending me into the bathroom to wash my face and head off so he could see how bad it was. I had a ton of blood on me. They handed me a pen and had me write what happened, had the witnesses do the same. All the stories said that I was attacked , didn’t fight back or anything. The dept head put a bandaid over my ear to try and stop the bleeding. Pretty much taped my ear. My nose stopped on its own.
Then they sent ME home. I ride a Harley to work. They know that. The next day hr asked me to come in so safety could check my damage and they asked my story again. It was like an interrogation. And no cops were called either, btw. They said they couldn’t tell me if I was fire or if I still had my job until the investigation was over. It has been four days now and they still haven’t told me.
On the second day my migraine got much worse. I called them and told them I needed to go to the dr. The safety person met me at the dr, to do all the workers comp paperwork etc. Dr said concussion. Referred me for a cat scan. Dr there said my brain looked ok and all my facial structure is ok. But is treating me for concussion. The er called the cops to report the assault. Even the cop was shocked by the fact that hr had me suspended pending investigation still. He even said given the evidence I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. He said that to the safety lady from work. So I was sent home again, now with a documented concussion from the incident.
I feel like my job has done me really dirty. It felt like they were just looking for an excuse to blame me for his actions and to fire me as well. I feel like they severely mishandled the situation. They should have called the police when it happened, and they damn sure should have called me an ambulance instead of putting me on my motorcycle and waving bye. I’m scared of losing my income. So I’m wondering what steps I should take if they do fire me, would I have any legal grounds to object on or file on? Please help with advice, I really need it. Thank you all.

🌍✨Are you looking for a Collective Storytelling game using dice? What about a living semi-sandbox world that reacts to the choices and backgrounds of not only you but the group as a whole? Well than apply here: https://forms.gle/DTQibvQMgbNa37NcA.✨🌍
Buuut...if you wanna be sold on it a bit more, keep reading.
Come join me in crafting an incredible adventure where possibilities are infinite with each roll of the dice. As Game Master, I'll personalize the world according to your group's preferences and decisions. Together, you will have to figure out how to move forward through difficult choices and potentially change the setting. There will also be plenty of fun opportunities - combat, puzzles, or just lighthearted banter. Don't worry if you're new - I'm happy to teach and guide you! Come with an adventurous spirit and open mind ready to explore a living world that will treat you like a part of it. So what are you waiting for? Let's go on an adventure!
​
🚩 ((Basic questions and answers)) 🚩
~(what do you mean by personalized?)🎨
During session zero (and to a lesser extent throughout the whole game) I will be discussing with all the players in both groups what sort of campaign/setting that they want to play/explore in. As well as the sort of themes and goals they would enjoy personally as a player.
There will be a Google Form at the bottom of this thing (and at the top) that will have just under a dozen questions that will allow me to match players together that have compatible aspirations and expectations for the game.
~(5$ 3-week trial? Why charge at all?) 🤔
Fair question with two answers. One, people who are willing to jump over even a small monetary hurdle are way less likely to not show up to games regularly or be intentionally disruptive.
Two, it incentivizes me to be best I can be, as I can as well as enabling me to more easily afford things like Dungeondraft or Inkarnate to create custom maps or battles for you guys! Also I kinda need more food money lol.
~(What can I expect when we start?)👀
Well of course there is the aforementioned session zero will be the first order on the docket. Our starting point will be the Pathfinder 2E's Beginner Box. I find the Beginner Box to be a genuinely good way to introduce players to both PF2E and FoundryVTT so im gonna use it as a sorta jumping off point for the homebrew. (it also gives me time to work on the homebrew content since it will be customized to your group specifically)
🚩 ((Basic requirements and social expectations)) 🚩

• Discord will be required for voice chat, and yes voice chat is required.💭
• FoundryVTT is the program we will be using as the games interface. Don't worry if your new to it, we'll figure it out together!🐉
• -Paypal is the payment method 💰.
• -Be kind to your fellow players and me! No bigotry, racism, ect, ect...😱
• -100% LGBT friendly!🏳‍🌈
• -Please remember your fellow players are people too. So don't be disruptive or intentionally mean to another player or I will drop you as a player. 💕

🚩 ((Basic campaign/character info)) 🚩

• Milestone leveling system! (no need to worry about min-maxing exp. Allow for more freeform play where exploration and roleplay can be just as valuable to the group as combat.) ⚔
• We will be using standard Pathfinder gods/monsters/magic (aka Golarion). But my custom world will have minor tweaks to races/basic lore depending on what players are wanting from the campaign/themes of the setting.🌍
• Characters/backgrounds and the overall ideas and themes of the desired feel for the campaign/setting will be discussed as a group during session zero as well as some basic questions in the google form below! 👁
• Other addons like Free Archetype may be discussed at the end of the beginners box if players are interested!🐱‍🏍

🚩 ((Google Application form!)) 🚩
The Form!
This is basically half basic form and half personality quiz with pretty fantasy pictures. Please read anything in bold it's probably important!
Hope to start forming the groups as soon as this weekend and starting session zero next week!

I have been employed at this factory for 2.5 years now (non union). We bring in temps from a staffing agency, then after 90 days we either hire them on or let them go. It is constantly short staffed due to a high turnover rate and just about weekly you see a new face or faces.
A few days ago I had to ask a temp that had been there two weeks, not to take break on the forktruck and to turn the music down. He had connected his phone to the radio in the forktruck and had rap music blaring, sounding like it was about to blow the speakers. In retrospect maybe I should have just let it go, but I use the truck as well as others and don’t want the speakers blown by anyone, much less by a guy who most likely won’t be there very long.
So, I went to the lead who was sitting there. I asked him to go tell the guy who he was training to turn it down. The lead (who isn’t a lead in anything but a title) said no that he wasn’t walking over there. I’ll admit; this temp had a tough look about him. His walk, his face tattoos, his whole demeanor screamed trouble, but I went anyway and asked him to turn it down and explained why. He immediately got mad and said, “Who the F*** are you?? Your not my boss so idgaf.” I replied with something along the lines of, “Is that right? Ok, we’ll see how much of a f you give.” He jumped off the forktruck and got in my face. He was cussing and threatening me and I just kept telling him that I was not going to fight him, especially not at work. I have a family that depends on my income. It wasn’t even an option. So I backed away then turned and went on to break inside.
20 minutes or so had passed and I was thinking he’d calm down and it was over, and I began to heat up my dinner and get my drink, etc. I looked up to see him walking into the break room, he was staring straight at me and then walked right up to my face. He kept saying “do something” and I kept replying thst I wasn’t fighting at work. I made the mistake of turning my back to him to leave the break room. When I did he swung a metal water thermos over his head and cracked the back of my head with it. I was seeing stars. It gashed my ear open so there was a lot of blood (that freaked me out) and left a huge pump knot on my head. He immediately started punching me in the face and head, so I tried to just wrap him up to stop the punches from landing. He ended up on top of me, punching me over and over. What seemed to me like a lifetime later a couple guys tried to drag him off of me, and when they did he kicked me in the nose first and then in the forehead, with steel toe boots. I was far from coherent after that. There were two witnesses in the room when it happened and a handful more when they were pulling him off of me. All wrote statements saying I didn’t fight back.
So they took him somewhere else and sat me down to look at the damage. No hr was there or safety so a supervisor tried to clean my ear with alcohol pad to see the cuts, eventually sending me into the bathroom to wash my face and head off so he could see how bad it was. I had a ton of blood on me. They handed me a pen and had me write what happened, had the witnesses do the same. All the stories said that I was attacked , didn’t fight back or anything. The dept head put a bandaid over my ear to try and stop the bleeding. Pretty much taped my ear. My nose stopped on its own.
Then they sent ME home. I ride a Harley to work. They know that. The next day hr asked me to come in so safety could check my damage and they asked my story again. It was like an interrogation. And no cops were called either, btw. They said they couldn’t tell me if I was fire or if I still had my job until the investigation was over. It has been four days now and they still haven’t told me.
On the second day my migraine got much worse. I called them and told them I needed to go to the dr. The safety person met me at the dr, to do all the workers comp paperwork etc. Dr said concussion. Referred me for a cat scan. Dr there said my brain looked ok and all my facial structure is ok. But is treating me for concussion. The er called the cops to report the assault. Even the cop was shocked by the fact that hr had me suspended pending investigation still. He even said given the evidence I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. He said that to the safety lady from work. So I was sent home again, now with a documented concussion from the incident.
I feel like my job has done me really dirty. It felt like they were just looking for an excuse to blame me for his actions and to fire me as well. I feel like they severely mishandled the situation. They should have called the police when it happened, and they damn sure should have called me an ambulance instead of putting me on my motorcycle and waving bye. I’m scared of losing my income. So I’m wondering what steps I should take if they do fire me, would I have any legal grounds to object on or file on? Please help with advice, I really need it. Thank you all.

Hye everyone I am a student from India planning to apply for masters/phd chemistry programs abroad for fall '24.
Many top US colleges do not offer a direct masters in chemistry, instead offering a PHD. I know PHD is much more about my fit with my potential advisor and the lab I will work in, but I have also seen that prestige and other stuff matter too.
I wish to know if my profile is competitive enough to apply to the top universities for masters/phd in chemistry, I will be applying with a focus on theoretical chemistry and ML/AI.
Here is my profile:
BTech Chemical Science and Technology from IIT Guwahati. CGPA - 9.01/10
Department Rank 1
Branch Representative
Have taken around 15-20 Chem courses with 10/10 grades in all except 2.
Have taken electives like optimization, biotech electives, and CS courses.
Awards: Institute Merit Scholarship where the fee gets refunded to the department rank 1 of that branch.
Research:
2 months in National Chemical Laboratory - Could not get very fruitful work there much as I was still at the end of my 2nd year and had no experience.
6 months under a prof at UNSW. Got 1 ML paper (pending approval at a mid tier journal)
6 Months at Central Food Tech Institute, worked in Computational Biology/Chemistry - Will get 2 papers out in the next 2 months
​
Projects -
Project in DFT/Molecular Mechanics - (Yet to start, will be my final year)
A collaborative project with a huge herbal product manufacturing company near my college. We proposed insights and testing for how to dispose their waste effectively.
2 projects in Optimization - 1 in scheduling algorithms, did not publish a paper, but did enough work for one, other one was in optimization for route delivery systems.
1 project in ML for text summarisation applications
1 project in Game Development where we made a 3D model of the entire campus for players to roam around in and play.
​
GRE: Havent given yet, but am confident that I will get 320+ (plan to give once before the pattern change)
LORs: 1 from prof at UNSW with whom I had 1 paper, 1 from University (Close professor, has helped me connect with professors too), 1 from intern.
I have some strong extracurriculars but they are not related to chem at all.
My main issue is that my profile does not look very chem focused. Please help me and let me know what schools I can aim for, and whether its worth applying to the ivies/any top schools.

--- Table of Contents ---
Autumn 4986, 16 Aoimoth
Shon and Nangran hobbled their horses at the base of a steep hill deep in the woods north of Hamerfoss. They'd left at fourth bell, before any of the other Squires had woken for their morning run, and it had still taken them hours of riding through narrow trails to reach this place. At least they hadn't run into any monsters. The snow that had dusted the landscape during the night lay thick here, crunching underfoot and occasionally flopping noisily to either side as it fell from the tall evergreen branches.
Shon adjusted the strap of his sword across his chest and reached his left hand back to brush shaking fingers over its hilt. He'd been glad when the Paladins insisted he take it with him. To them, it marked Shon as a representative of Hengist and the Temple. To Shon, it was a sign of his hard work and resolve. Having it was a comfort.
Nangran started up the hill, and Shon hurried to follow. The smith hadn’t spoken a word since they set out, not even to try and ease Shon’s anxiety, for which Shon was grateful. Master Daunas had tried to sound confident as Shon saddled his borrowed horse, and The Major General had offered him encouragement as they mounted. Neither realized how much that just drove home the desperation of the situation in Shon’s mind.
The smith pulled his heavy cloak tighter, and Shon looked away. He hadn’t bothered to wear his cloak. He'd never really felt chilled in the winter like others seemed to. Now that he knew why, he wished he had. Cold continued to swirl around him, enhanced by his worries. If he could just block those emotions, the power would never have been a problem to begin with.
The trees thinned the higher they climbed, disappearing almost entirely as they crested the top of the hill. The clearing looked over the treetops, offering an unimpeded view of the horizon. Forest all around, with flatland to the south and rocky mountain peaks to the north. Only a handful of small trees grew in the clearing, and in the middle stood a little ramshackle hut only slightly larger than an outhouse.
Nangran threw his arm out, stopping Shon from walking past him, "Don't touch anything. And don't be surprised if he says no right off."
Shon nodded, trying to swallow down his fear so it wouldn't be seen in his eyes. Dropping his hand, Nangran started forward again, finishing, "Be honest, but not insulting." The instructions, -or perhaps advice?- seemed like common courtesy, which made Shon wonder why quiet Nangran had bothered to say anything.
As they drew closer to the little shack, Shon could make out a sign on the door. He squinted to read it and had just made out 'No Soliciting' when the door swung open, banging against the wall and sending birds into flight. An old man, so thin he looked like a skeleton with yellow skin pulled tight across its bones, stormed out. Wearing nothing but a loincloth, he was shaking a thick stick at them that glinted with red rubies in the low autumn light.
"I already paid my dues for this decade! So you can take your request and shove it-" Shon’s hand instinctively reached for his sword, but Nangran just crossed his arms over his barrel chest. The old -virtually naked- man stopped yelling mid-rant and lifted one shriveled arm to shade his eyes as he squinted at them, "Eh? Flintchest, what’re you doing way out here with a blasted mage in tow?"
Rather than answer, Nangran started forward again, he didn't much care for talking, let alone shouting. Looking from Nangran to the loincloth man, Shon slowly lowered his arm, but still took position to the left and just behind the Smith as they approached the crazy man with the glittering club.
"No mage." Nangran said as he came right up to the strange old man, "Squire." he glanced over his shoulder at Shon and finished, "Sorcerer."
The old man spat on the ground and moved his squint to Shon. Running his eyes from the top of his black head to the tip of his polished boots and back, exaggerating the movement before he stopped at the Squire’s cold blue eyes.
He spat again, then barked "Where's your familiar?" scanning first the ground at Shon's feet then the sky above his head.
Shon blinked at him, furrowing his brow in confusion at the question. The mage snapped his fingers impatiently, "Your familiar! All Sorcerers have a familiar."
Nangran came to his rescue, "Just woke last night," he said shortly.
The mage spat again but didn't argue, "Well, come in then." Shon looked sideways at Nangran, but the Smith had already begun following the skinny old man into the shack. Shon hurried to catch up.
Inside, Shon's eyes were assaulted with a sparkling rainbow of colors. The room they'd entered was considerably larger than the outside would suggest, with plush carpet and a stuffed high-back armchair in front of a blazing fire in the opposite wall. Shelves full of exotic plants, glowing glass jars, and glittering stones filled every available space, reflecting off one another and setting streaks of light to dance on the floor and walls like sun rays through crystal.
There was too much to take in, so Shon focused on their host. The old man was slipping into a thick robe of deep purple velvet. He'd hung the club on the wall beside the door, which looked just as decrepit on this side as it had on the outside.
"Make a habit of greeting visitors half-naked and swinging an old fireball wand?" Nangran asked as he slipped out of his cloak.
"Keeps the conversations short." the old man replied tersely, tying his belt and turning to his guests. With boney knuckles on boney hips and glare firmly planted on his wrinkled face, he snapped, "Don't bother getting comfortable, Flintchest; you'll be leaving soon enough."
The Smith ignored him, hanging his cloak on the hook that had presumably held the mage's robe. "Got a favor to ask," he said, but the old man was already shaking his head,
"More like a favor to cash in. That's the only reason you're in here and not smoking in a hole outside."
Nangran ignored the threat and motioned from Shon to the old man and back. "Archmage Ivelm." The mage looked Shon up and down again as Nangran made the introductions, “Squire Shon.”
"Not much longer, I'd say." Ivelm said to Nangran as he finished his second examination, "It's to the Guild with this one. Too much magic." he turned his head and spat in a brass can by the door. It rang out with a loud ‘ting!' and Ivelm sniffed, looking down at Nangran again, "What do you want, Flintchest?"
"Need a seal. So the boy doesn't freeze Hamerfoss more than it already is." the smith crossed his arms, watching the mage and somehow still seeming completely at ease.
"Eh?!" Ivelm exclaimed, leaning far forward. Shon had to try hard not to crinkle his nose as the old man brought his face close enough that Shon could smell Ivelm's breath. Garlic, the mage ate a lot of garlic…
"So… you don't want to be a mage, do you?" he demanded, glaring down his nose at him. Shon shook his head and would have answered with a 'no ser.' except the mage continued, "Rather swing around some hunk of metal like a brute?"
Shon blinked stupidly, and Nangran cleared his throat, "Watch what you say about my swords, old man."
Ivelm ignored the smith as soundly as Nangran had ignored the Archmage, and continued to Shon, "The powers of the universe are at your fingertips. Blood blessed with the strength of the elements, and you wanna throw it all away," he threw his arms into the air, still uncomfortably close, "And for what? Some illusion of an honorable death by the sword?"
Shon didn't know what to say. He looked past the affronted mage's face, only an inch from his own, to Nangran. But the smith gave no sign he was going to help. Shon’s future depended on convincing this strange old man, this Archmage, to help…
Shon wasn't the type to try and convince anyone of anything, but the least he could do was explain himself. Shon stepped back from the mage to address him from a more comfortable distance. "I chose to dedicate my life to perfecting my art, and my art is martial combat," he said. Ivelm wrinkled his nose, his mouth twisting as if he were going to spit again, but Shon continued, "magic would be better served in the hands of someone who wants it badly enough to work for it. Like I've worked for my martial skills."
Ivelm leaned away from Shon, his eyebrows lifted into his frizzled gray hair. Shon looked to Nangran, hoping for some sign that this was a good response. The smith smiled from behind the mage.
"Soooo…" Ivelm drew the word out, "You think only those who dedicate themselves to strict study and practice should wield the power of the universe?" he leaned forward again, turning his head and fixing one eye on Shon like a bird. As if trying to catch him in a lie.
Shon nodded, confused, then asked, "Isn't that what it takes to effectively wield magic? Focused study?"
Ivelm didn't answer the question, instead turning his face to examine Shon with the other eye, scanning him up and down yet again. The old man had looked him up and down so much Shon wouldn't be surprised if the next question were about his hair or boots.
But Ivelm didn't ask another question. Instead, he stood straight and spat into the brass can with another ringing 'ting!' "I like this one," he said, turning his back on Shon and facing Nangran, "But it's too much." he shook his head, lifting his hands in helpless surrender, "Too much power, and ice at that. Stubborn element that one. And it's so finicky to block just elemental magic..."
Ivelm continued talking but Shon heard very little of it. A hole had opened in his gut, and it felt like his heart was racing his stomach to fall into it. But Nangran just rolled his eyes at the mage, interrupting, "Used to be the name in new magic items... made shackles to hold Archmages." he squinted at Ivelm, who had frozen mid-head shake, "Must've gotten rusty out…"
Ivelm snapped his fingers under the Smith's nose to stop him talking, "The mind does not rust, Flintchest!" he huffed, one bare foot tapping under his robe, "Not like your swords and shriveling muscles." Nangran just stared stubbornly, his thick, muscled arms still crossed over his broad chest.
The mage continued to tap his foot, his nose in the air. But as the silence stretched, Ivelm looked down at the smith, who continued to say nothing. The silent battle of wills ended when Ivelm threw his arms up in disgust and shook a finger under Nangran's nose, nearly hitting it, declaring, "I'll show you. I'll make a gem especially for this lad, and you'll see the mind only continues to grow sharper!"
He spun on his heel back to Shon, who had just made out the smith's returned smile from behind the mage when the old man snapped his fingers in Shon's face, making him jump. "Well, what are you waiting for? Come here so I can take some measurements!" Ivelm swung around again and marched across the room to a large workbench with plants and gems scattered across it. Shon scrambled after him, praying his thanks to Hengist and suddenly feeling light enough to float. His anxieties dropping away and melting like snow in summer.
***
It was already noon, and no one had come to see Her. She jumped up to grab the bars of Her window, pulling Herself up to peak out but seeing nothing but new snow and tree trunks. She was full to bursting with nervous energy, amplifying every sound and sensation. Footsteps sounded outside Her door, and She dropped from the window, sprinting across the room and resting Her ear on the wood.
“Ran, recheck the lab. Brom, with me.” Archmage Morndancer spoke with his strange alternation between draconic and common as he passed Her door without stopping. She could easily make out the swish of their robes on the stone hall leading away. Three people, Brom, Ran, and Archmage Morndancer. And yet the scurrying of too many feet to be only the two apprentices and Archmage Shaloon, sounded from the floor above. There were strangers in her tower again. Many strangers. Something was happening, something big…
She ran to Her window again, just for something to do, seeking some way to burn off some of the anxiety of not knowing what was going on around her.
A roar from down the hall, a roar of pain, sent ice washing through her veins. She slammed into the door at full speed. Pounding on the wood, She called out, “Brom?! Ran?!” Nothing. Then a yip cut short, followed by barking and yowling.
She shook the handle with both hands, rattling the door on its hinges, “BROM! RAN!” Something was happening to Her treasures, something terrible… The door handle began to glow, the metal warping and sagging as it melted. The knowledge that She would be in more trouble than She had ever been in before was nothing compared to Her terror. She wrenched the handle back with all Her might, splashing molten metal across Her bed, lighting fires that flared in her panic, and sending smoke to curl up to the ceiling.
She didn’t care. She shouldered the door open and ran.
“Red?!” She passed the first open door but couldn’t stop as Ran called out to Her. Reaching Her treasures' room, She tried to stop but slipped, slamming into the ground with a sticky splash. A final whining bark started a buzzing in Her ears as She stared, transfixed, at Her hands. They were painted red. Warm and sticky. The overpowering stench of iron nearly made Her gag as She looked up to see Morndancer toss aside a glittering golden wolf pup, the body flopping limply over the corpse of its mother and siblings.
Her world went red.
***
The last sample was taken care of, but something roared with enough ferocity to shatter glass.
Morndancer's head snapped around in time for him to fall back, shielding his face with his hands as the Firewyrm exploded. White-hot fire engulfed Her and spread out to the stone floor and walls. His robes began to smoke, the new fire protection spells woven into them being overpowered by the sheer ferocity of the blaze.
Brom had no such spells, and he had only managed a single step towards the girl before he fell to the ground, writhing for only a moment before lying still. The Archmage heard Ran scream from the hall before the journeyman stumbled past the door, flailing wildly. Barely discernible as human inside the flames.
The Firewyrm moved towards him, stepping through Brom’s head, turned to ash, and blown up to dance in the air on the same heatwaves causing the girl's hair to wave wildly about Her. She didn't seem to notice, Her face was expressionless and her eyes glowed as red as the scales across Her cheek. Morndancer tried to snap his fingers, but the golden collar around Her neck melted, Her clothes burning off and leaving Her naked and terrible in the flames.
His robe was burning now, and only the pain of that could pull his eyes from the Firewyrm as he pointlessly tried to beat the fires off. He fell back, hitting the wall, which drooped, sagging and dripping molten stone onto his head and face. Then he fell further back, into a gate that opened behind him.
Shaloon pulled him through the portal and into the library three stories up. The Firewyrm roared again and the tower walls shook with the force of it. The gate closed, but Morndancer continued to burn. He could hear screaming. Was it him? Was he screaming? Fire burst up the spiral stairs in the middle of the room, and apprentices, both their own and many sent from the central and western Talon, scrambled about in a panic, some even leaping from the windows.
Shaloon cursed, holding out her hand and summoning her sword again. She had to draw the circle five times before a second gate finally formed, and she dove through it, pulling Morndancer along with her as it quickly closed. An apprentice reached through, and his arm fell at Morndancer’s feet, miles away in the sitting room of his manor back in Smildna.
He laughed. Shaloon slapped him, and he laughed. Ronni, his daughter, burst through the door, her own daughter, only a year old, perched on her hip, and still, he laughed. “What’s wrong?! What happened to him?!” he barely registered his daughter's words and continued to laugh, rolling around on the ground in mirthful madness.
“The Firewyrm She…” Shaloon started, but Morndancer yelled over her in draconic,
“She is true! She is pure! She is rage! The children will come and raise the grandchildren! We have only to await the coming of those Chosen!” the room faded around him, becoming washed out and gray then finally black as he continued to laugh and shout, “They take those who slew them and use them to raise themselves anew…”
He couldn’t feel his burns or the hands trying to settle him. He saw only darkness and stars. And the eyes of his Master boring into his soul from the outer planes.
***
Shon couldn't remember ever feeling so drained in his life. He'd been tired before, exhausted even, but it had never felt quite like this. The eccentric Archmage Ivelm had ordered him to 'empty his energy' into stone after stone. Measuring the weight, color, and temperature of each. Making notes in chalk directly on his table and talking to himself. Shon was shocked the first time he saw the smooth rock handed to him change from a translucent white to an onyx as black as his hair, but by the time they'd gone through the twentieth stone, Shon had decided to stop counting.
Ivelm, however, seemed to get more and more excited with each one. Giving Shon reason to suspect the mage may be taking the energy for himself. After what felt like hours, Ivelm finally stoppered the potion he'd mixed with the most recent jewel, glowing a soft pale blue, and stepped back from the workbench, bony hands on bony hips.
"It can be done." Ivelm swiveled to face Nangran, "He's strong, I don’t know how he managed not to manifest until now, but it's all focused in one elemental direction." he rubbed his chin and looked at the ceiling, completely ignoring Shon's arched eyebrow. "It has a bit of divine flavor as well. But I suppose that shouldn't be surprising for a training Paladin." The mage stopped musing and glared down his nose at Nangran, who had made himself comfortable in the oversized wingback chair by the fire, "It will have to be a lot bigger than a piece of jewelry would allow."
The smith just hummed and sipped at his mug. When had he gotten a mug? Shon looked from one old man to the other. It was apparent Ivelm wanted Nangran to ask him for details, but the ever stoic smith said nothing.
Shon was tired. His limbs felt heavy, and the weight of his simple uniform felt more like platemail. He was just about to ask what the Archmage meant, to hurry them along, when Ivelm threw his hands in the air and said, "You'll need to find somewhere to put it. I would recommend that." he pointed at the hilt of Shon's sword over his shoulder, continuing, "If the lad is insisting on swinging a metal stick around instead of harnessing the ultimate powers of the universe then that same stick might as well sap the power literally as well as figuratively." Shon arched an incredulous eyebrow but Ivelm wasn't paying attention, finishing, "I can get it down to about an inch and a half orb. At the smallest. If you want something different, say so now."
Nangran set his mug on the ground and stood with a grunt and a groan. Shon just wanted to go home and sleep for a week, so when the smith reached for the hilt of his sword for a closer look Shon hardly noticed, until the squat smith jerked it down to eye level. Shon swung his arms like a drowning man and stepped wide to prevent himself from falling over.
"Quit wigglin'," Nangran grumbled, studying the sword's pommel with a professional eye. "One and a half'll do, preferably in a tear…"
The mage snorted and continued to ignore the struggling half crouched Shon, his voice dripping sarcasm as he addressed the smith, "Shall I wrap it in silk for you as well?"
"Na." Nangran let go of the sword, and Shon stood straight, lifting his leg to shake out the knee. "Drop it off when you’re done." the Mage snorted again but didn't counter.
None of them were interested in extending the visit, so Nangran grabbed his heavy cloak and shrugged it on while Shon waited by the door. "It will be at least a fortnight," Ivelm called from his position by the workbench, not about to walk them out.
Nangran grunted his confirmation and opened the battered and decrepit door, letting the wind and early autumn snow blow in on their way out. Shon followed numbly, his eyes unfocused as he walked, and ran right into the much shorter man. Nangran hardly moved as Shon bounced off of him. He was squinting into the distance, one large hand shading his eyes. Shon stared at Nangran for a moment before following the direction of his gaze over the tree line.
Smoke. A LOT of smoke. The black clouds billowed violently into the sky, occasionally lit from below by sparks shot high into the air.
"Elm!" Nangran shouted. Shon had never heard the man call so loudly. The Archmage must have also been shocked because the door to his hut swung open and he stuck his head out to look to either side, eyes wide.
"Flintchest, what?" but he soon saw what, "But, that's the old chemist's tower… What?" he stood in shocked confusion for a heartbeat before turning back into the hut. Shon looked from the shack to Nangran, but before he could say anything, the mage was back, struggling with two long rods, one blue with what looked like waves painted all around, the other black and studded with diamonds.
"Don't just stand there!" Ivelm snapped at the two as he finally managed to slip the blue rod into a sheath at his side. He then pointed the diamond rod at the space between two close-growing trees. Shon heard him say something unintelligible, and one of the diamonds shot out of the tip of the rod to hover between the trees before expanding into a portal.
Beyond the magical gate, Shon could hear the fire roar. It sounded how he imagined the burning hells might sound, but as he followed the two men through, he realized his imagination was tame by comparison.
The smell of burning flesh and hair choked him as they stepped clear of the gate's magic. The heat smashed into them like a wall, and all three brought their arms up to shield their faces. Around them were the charred remains of what looked like humans, their faces buried in the mud as if they'd been trying to run from the blaze. Shon had to swallow the bile that rose in his throat and focused instead on the fire Ivelm had said was a tower.
It was completely engulfed in bright flames of all colors. Squinting through the light, he could see the stone walls melting like wax. The arch of the doorway sagged in the middle, and Shon's eyes went wide. Someone was in there.
He would've had to shout over the roar of the flames, but it didn’t matter; Ivelm was already raising the blue wand, jerking his fingers in strange ways and mouthing words impossible to hear. Water shot out the tip of the wand with the force of a ballista and hissed against the glowing stones.
It wasn't possible. It must be a trick of the flickering flames. But the figure turned its face to them, long hair whipping about as it took steps in their direction.
"Don't just stand there, boy!" Ivelm screamed. "They must have a fire-resist spell; those things don't last forever!"
Nangran grabbed Shon’s upper arm, pulling him a step closer to the fire and down so he could shout in his ear, "Freeze a path."
Shon swallowed. He was so tired, literally drained. He didn't know what to do or how to do it. But the figure in the fire reached out to them only to pull away from a drop of molten rock. Shon fell to his knees, placing his hands on the ground and pleading silently to Hengist. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to control the power. He tried picturing a path of snow between himself and the tower base, concentrating on it until the mental image overlaid the real world, as he did when imagining phantom fighters during practice.
Ice snaked its way from Shon's fingers towards the burning tower along his mental path, powered by the fear that he wouldn't be fast enough to save the person inside. The water from Ivelm's wand helped carve the way, and Shon grunted physically as he struggled to push mentally. His breathing came heavy and ragged. He could feel the fire melting the edges of the ice as if it were a part of him. Still, he fought back and forced it to continue to form into solid sheets moving closer and closer to the figure still trapped in the tower.
Wherever the ice formed solid, it stayed. The fire drawing back from it until, finally, it reached the doorway. He urged the ice to climb up the doorframe, to hold it in place and keep it from falling, from moving at all.
Shon was seeing double. He struggled to focus on the figure and flinched as they stepped onto the frozen path. The ice hissed and melted under their bare unsteady feet, he could feel it... feel them, their heat, on his ice.
It was a young woman. Or an older girl. She was naked; her clothes burned away by the fire. Her long hair was being blown forward by the heat of the burning tower, obscuring her face. As she moved closer, Shon could make out strange red stripes snaking around her body, standing in stark relief against her pale skin.
Ivelm stepped in front of him then, throwing Nangran's cloak around her shoulders as she crumpled to the ground. Nangran himself knelt beside Shon, resting one massive hand on the Squire's back. "You can stop, lad…" his voice trailed off, and Shon felt an emptiness open in his chest. No one could have survived that, not if they hadn't already made it to the entrance like the girl. As if to punctuate the thought, Shon managed to focus his eyes only to see the tower's entrance wall fold and collapse in on itself, the stones flowing like soft wax.
--- Table of Contents ---
Sorry for the double post today. I wanted to keep Ch 14 & 15 together.
Thanks for making it this far, you are the real MVP

My love life is a mess and I've never really been able to open up to anyone about my relationship situation and how it's played out, so here it is.
I apologize beforehand for the rambling mess this is going to be. But I so desperately want to get this out into the world and, well, off my chest. Buckle in, it's a long one.
I've(27F) known N(26NB) since high school and always been allured by them, but we were never available at the same time or around each other more than the occasional friendly gathering. I went away to college and had issues with my then BF, N was my confidant in so many ways when I was away and isolated from my family on an internship and N had been keeping in contact better than BF at the time had been. We got too close then, BF at the time became uncomfortable, I had crossed a line with intimate messages. I had no idea at the time how much N felt towards me. Because of my error my college BF banned me from speaking with N or being alone with them. Reasonable, or at least I thought so at the time. Almost two years later I broke up with my college BF, that's when things really started getting complicated.
Because of the previous conflict and other circumstances N wasn't really in my life at the time. I fell in love with G(27m). G and I were and are two peas in a pod. They pushed me to work on my mental health, to chase my career goals, to strive towards a family. G had a son from a previous relationship that led me to tackle my fear of parenting and children and made me realize that I did want a family.
Then G's mother passed. I had never been good with understanding grieving, and G had never had to grieve in that way before. I was raised in a family that had the mentality of "People die, get over it, move on." Words I regretfully told G in one of our final fights as we broke up. See, G's mother was sick and dying when we started dating, her death had been looming on the horizon the entire time I was with G, she got two more years than the doctors predicted. I was by G's side through it all. Stepping up to take care of his son and being the parent I had previously been terrified of being. G saw me struggling and knew they were too emotionally unavailable to make me happy, so they posited that I should get closer with N, whom I had recently reconnected with.
See, over the course of mine and G's four year relationship we had experimented and begun to practice polyamory. It fit well with our lifestyle for the most part, and we had the communication skills to follow through with it. Previous to me seeing N it had been mostly casually dating people for a few months here and there. But this time it was different. See, I had reconnected with N and all of the chemistry we had always had was back full force. We were highschool sweethearts who were caught in a honeymoon phase. G tried to be patient, wait out the honeymoon phase, but they needed me. I was falling deeper and deeper in love with N while G was losing my interest more and more.
For a while things were okay. Communication was good, I spent time with both partners and everyone felt fulfilled, myself included. But as issues arose I was growing further and further from G and I was getting closer and closer to N. Don't get me wrong. G knew where I was and what was going on. He consented to it. I know polyamory gets frowned upon often, but it really did work for us previous to this instance. The difference was N wasn't someone I wanted to put second. I loved them a lot. We had great chemistry, they listened to me when G wouldn't. They hyped up my personal hobbies when G actively told me he didn't care about them. They championed my mental health when G had pushed it aside. G began to resent the time I was spending with N, I began to resent G for not allowing me time with N without calls or texts, or constant badgering on when I'd be home or when was N going to leave. I started lying about how long i'd be, or when i'd be home. I'd stay up late to talk with N as G went to bed alone. I started stonewalling G, distancing myself, sleeping on the couch, pushing them away. I still can't believe the things I did and said to them, someone I loved then and still love now.
A big issue was that I felt like I had the whole world on my shoulders when I came home at night. At age 24 I put a roof over our head, I paid for my own health insurance while he was still getting it for free, I did the cooking, grocery shopping, farmed full time as the manager of a cattle herd that required me to basically be on call 24/7. I was raising a toddler that wasn't mine because he was too exhausted after work. I made less money than G, but paid half the bills and was reprimanded when i had no fun money to go do things with him. He'd often buy himself new tools and accessories for his hobbies, he bought a three wheeler for a large chunk of change and then talked about how he couldn't afford an engagement ring. I felt neglected and taken for granted. Then to top it off I had to step up to be a therapist to my partner who had lost all meaning to his life when his mother died.
G handled me roughly with his words and physicality, told me he didn't know how to be romantic. His pet name for me was "dumb bitch" it started as a joke, I didn't mind at first but then it became the normal. He didn't allow me to have time to myself because he needed me to sit and look at tiktoks with him for an hour, but they couldn't even be bothered to give me a kiss when they got home from work, he just plopped down in his recliner and asked me to take his boots off. I felt like a roommate at the end. Or even worse, a mother. To top it off, G had a 'mommy kink' which I usually wouldn't judge, i've always been extremely open minded in the bedroom but it was fairly jarring considering the circumstances.
I ended up breaking things off with N after a fight between G and I where he threatened to leave me if things didn't change. Our communication was non-existent. We fought all of the time and I resented him. It was harvest season on the farm, a time that comes with massive amounts of stress, and I had no support system. My family had no real idea what was happening because I didn't feel safe talking to them. (Lots of childhood trauma and very judgemental parents that have a bit too much control in my life because they sign my paychecks.) Up to this point my main support had been N and I had pushed them away in a feeble attempt to fix things with G. I knew in the back of my head that things were ending. I was scared of being alone, scared of being financially incapable of taking care of myself. I went through with it though. I told G I was done and wanted him out. He put the thoughts in my head when he gave me the aforementioned ultimatum of "things need to change" it's really when I started losing hope and he's admitted his regret for those words since then as well.
It takes six weeks for him to move out and back in with his father. In the meantime I live in the basement spare bedroom and office. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. Anytime I was caught upstairs in the main living areas hed corner me, try to goad emotional talks out of me, try to beg for attention. I was cold. I was tired. All I had wanted was space and he continued to smother me for his own needs while completely ignoring my own. Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I would've caved and just went to bed with him at night for a week or so. If I wouldn't have stonewalled him. If I would've given him a second chance would he have changed for me? I ask myself that a lot.
After he moved out I started talking to N again. I was bad at being alone, and so was N. They missed me. I tried to keep my distance and stay single, heal, and become a better more independent individual. But in the back of my mind I couldn't help but question if I had left G for myself, or if I had left him for N. I still wonder about it to this day, and I truly don't have an answer.
N and I weren't really officially dating. We acted like partners but we had never really made it public or announced it. Our mutual friends had a rough idea of what was going on. They supported the two of us together, thought we were a perfect match, thought we were great for each other. But it still wasn't official. Mainly because it felt like it was too soon. I thought that N was the one though, that given some time and self improvement we'd be perfect for eachother. A wrench was thrown in that plan when G came back into my life after very little contact. We worked for a seasonal business together, we were civil and professional enough that we didn't think there would be any issues.
At a big seasonal event (a week long business convention) G and I reconnected. We aired out some things needed for closure. We talked through a lot of hurts and how just in a few months we had both grown so much. We had been separated maybe four months at this point. My feelings hit me like a freight train. I carried a lot of guilt for how fast I had moved with N after the breakup, and for the shitty things I had done and said to G during the breakup when I was highly emotional. I realized how quickly I had pushed this person to whom I had wanted to get married and have a family with away. I saw how much better he was doing after some more time to grieve his mother's death and get himself back on his feet. He had changed jobs to something with more manageable hours that still paid well and he had reclaimed some of his hobbies that he had let go to the wayside due to stress and depression. He was doing so good for himself and I suddenly regretted everything. I remember venting to him about all of my insecurities at the time, and my concerns for life, and for a change, he actually listened and comforted me. Something he hadn't done since the first few years of our relationship.
Fast forward to after the business convention, I tell N that I need space. I realize that, as much as I love them, I have a lot to figure out, and honestly I missed G. A lot. I still wasn't over them, and there was a part of me that wanted to be better and try to get them to take me back. G told me that it was a slim chance, a very very slim chance. He told me that even though the odds looked tough, if i needed to hang onto that small chance to challenge myself to be better, then to do it. So I tried. Tried being independant, more social, better at house keeping for myself. I got closer with G again, but still spoke daily with N. There was a lot of emotional turmoil in my life but I had them both in my daily life again, and I was so happy for it. I got physical with G a few times in the span of a couple weeks. We weren't serious, it was more-so that we missed each others intimacy. I enjoyed the way they taunted me, and the things they did to me, it was like the beginning of our relationship again. But better because we knew each other better.
It didn't last long. G started talking to another girl, we stayed close friends, but he started making attempts at moving on. It hurt like hell. I made myself be okay with it though, and I made friends with the new girl because I didn't want to lose him again. I went back to N at that point. I was lonely, and i missed their uplifting affection. Things got more and more serious and G got more serious with his partner as well. Soon enough N and I were officially dating.
Honestly, at this point, life was great. N and I had so much chemistry physically, there were some things I missed about G and certain aspects of my previously polyamorous lifestyle, but I gained a lot of new things with N. They were so much more caring and thoughtful and gentle. They could satisfy me better. Almost a full year went by, N was basically living with me, I had some hiccups where I needed space, but we worked through them. But, then it started happening again. G came back. He was struggling with his relationship and venting to me about it. I hurt for him, I knew he deserved better. I wanted to be that for him despite my own relationship. I told myself that G and I couldn't work out, I told everyone that would listen that we were like oil and water. All the while we were each-others confidants. I lied to myself even. Tried to convince myself that I didn't have feelings like that for him anymore.
I began having issues of discontentment with my relationship with N. I craved a partner with the independence and social extroversion that G had grown to have, meanwhile N was very dependant on me for many things, and was extremely introverted. I truly did love them how they were, but the grass is always greener I guess. I hate myself even now for the things I thought and the way I felt about it all. I tried my best to communicate my problems, even going as far as admitting to N that I was still in love with G. It hurt them, but it wasn't a surprise. G and I had been hanging out as friends more and more, he had left his gf and was now single. N let me spend time with G with no fuss, they didn't want to deprive me of someone they knew I cared about. But being around G made me start to lose patience with N. It was history repeating itself opposite. N saw it happening, they started to get clingier, they were insecure. I can't blame them. They'd been on the opposite side of the situation before. They knew how I could be emotionally.
A giant moment was when G was telling me about his vasectomy consultation. As he was describing the process and how it would go I started tearing up out of nowhere. I didn't know why, it was then that I realized I wanted a family. Up until this point N had been very adamant about being child free. G had been the only person i'd ever considered having kids with, and that was about to be gone completely. G point blank asked me if I wanted him to freeze some, just in case the future went that way. That he didn't have to tell anyone and it would be our secret. It sent me into sobs. I didn't realize how strongly I had felt about it until then. At this point things just kept getting more complicated.
I tried to stay invested in my relationship with N. But it was getting more and more difficult. We had some trips planned, we had conversations about wanting a family, and our future. Possible career changes for them, they wanted to face some of their big anxieties so that they could be more independent. They even discussed the idea of having a kid someday and why they had been averse to it previously and how they felt it might be different with me. They constantly showed that they wanted to be a better person for me and were willing to put in the work.
I sit here typing this, knowing I still love them, knowing they were doing so much for me, and I wish I wouldn't have been so blind to it then. Instead of embracing their betterment, I told them I wanted to be single again. That I wanted to try to better myself alone and find my independence, the same things I told G when I left him. See, I had convinced myself that I wanted to get G back. That he was the person I was meant to be with. But every passing day my resolve waned. A week and a half after the breakup I ended up in G's bed again. He's confessed his feelings for me, how he wants to hash out old wounds and try again. At first I was all in. But now I just feel hollow. To top it off, I've kept in contact with N as well and we've been intimate since the break up. I have such strong feelings for the both of them and I don't know what to do about it. I could continue to try and go back to G, but he's dubious about having another kid, and marriage and all of the things that are important to me. I don't blame him. I broke his trust the first time we were together and I left him. I never gave him a chance to get better and I often feel genuinely evil for the way I acted while he was mourning the death of his mother. I was selfish and narrow minded.
But on the flip side, N is still right here comforting me, encouraging me, wanting me to succeed and be happy in life even without them, even though i know it kills them to see me go off and do things by myself or with G. It weighs on my mind all the time, the way they've professed undying love to me and told me that there is no one else for them. Because of their history and personality, it's hard not to believe it. They've always been so purely honest with me. I know that they'd take me back in a heartbeat, I don't feel worthy of their love.
What hurts the most and makes myself question everything is that through all this turmoil, being able to physically and emotionally interact with both of them at once is when I'm at my happiest and most fulfilled, but that's an impossible option. The idea of moving on from both and finding someone new is also an impossible option. They're both so much a part of me, and I live a lifestyle with a fair amount of isolation. I don't meet new people often at all, and I live a lifestyle that would require a partner to give up their life to join me, which means the older I get the less likely I am to find someone who is willing to do that. I don't think I can handle being alone forever and all I want is to move on to the next stage of my life. I'm pushing 30 and I feel like a 19 year old all over again.
This has been long and rambling and might not make much sense. To those who stuck through it and read it, thank you. To anyone who wants to weigh in, be it comments, advice, or criticism, I'll gladly accept it.
So Tl;Dr: I'm deeply in love with two people, have broken up with both of them seperate times to go to the other, but now I'm with neither and I question which one is the one for me or if I should just give up and be alone, knowing that one of the two will never move on from me and that I may never find as compatible partners because of my lifestyle.

Gotta give credit to the writers/animation team for this one. The story is absolutely incredible. The last “end part” of the story was about 2+ hours to play through and the story and cutscenes were just absolutely top notch. I was in shock of how well they executed this.

I had this idea of game mechanism: you play with a virtual player, and force their play by giving them cards you want them to play. I got Exploding Kitties deck and started to play with with this idea. I came up with some rules for a quite simple single player game. I played dozens of time to balance the rules and now I want to share it with you.

Game overview:

In this game you play with an imaginary friend. They are not very smart: they pay attention only to the newest card they got. Luckily you know their cards so you might sometimes force them to do smart things by giving them cards they need. You will win if there are no more cards in the draw deck at the beginning of the turn. You will lose if you finish your turn with 5 or more cards on your hand, or if you die in the kitten explosion. But don't worry about an imaginary friend: if they died in the kitten explosion, you can always imagine another one.

Setup

1. Separate all four Exploding Kitties and one Nope card from the rest of the deck and create external deck from those cards. Order doesn't matter: at some point you may need to shuffle them to the draw deck.
2. Shuffle the rest of the cards and create a draw deck. All cards excluding the top one should be faced down. The top card should be faced up. In this game the top card of the draw deck will always be faced up: every time you get the card from the deck, flip the top card face up.
3. Make place for Discard pile.
4. Make place for imaginary friend hand. The imaginary friend can have as many cards in the hand as they want. You will keep them all faced up and in order.
5. Make place for your hand. You can keep your cards in your hand of course, but since this is a single player game, you can also keep them on the table. You can have as many cards as you want, but at the end of your turn, you should have less than 5 cards, or you lose the game.

Rules:

1. You and imaginary friend play your turns one by one. The imaginary friend starts.
2. At the beginning the imaginary friend has an empty hand, but it will change very quickly. Keep the hand of the imaginary friend faced up. Spread them in a way that you see all the cards and keep them in the order: always put new cards on the right of the spread.
3. The imaginary friend turn:
   1. They play the rightmost card (the newest) from their hand if possible (at the first turn they cannot play any card, because they have an empty hand, but even if their hand is not empty the rightmost card might be not playable for different reasons).
   2. They repeat playing the rightmost card as long as possible.
   3. If they cannot play the rightmost card (even if they might play some other card in their hand) they pass: they take the top card from the draw deck and the turn ends.
4. It's your turn. You can do any number of those actions in any order, until you pass:
   1. You can play a card from your hand and resolve the effect
   2. You can draw: take the top most card from the draw deck
   3. Finally, you can pass: take the top most card from the draw deck and the turn ends. If you have 5 or more cards in your hand: you lose! Don't cheat: you need to make the decision if you draw or pass before you see the next card!
5. It's imaginary friend's turn again. Repeat until you win or lose. You win, if the draw deck is empty at the beginning of any turn (your or imaginary friend's).

​

Some cards act differently than in original game:

Favor:
If imaginary friend plays this card, YOU choose the card they will get: put any of your cards on the right of their hand: they will play it now if it's possible!
This card cannot be played if the opponent has no cards in their hand.
Pairs of cats:
The player can play pair of the same cats to get the card from the opponent. The imaginary friend plays the pair of cats if one of those cards is the rightmost card, and the other is anywhere in their hand (you choose if they even have more of those cards). Do not randomize card you or imaginary friend get: YOU decide instead.
Pair of cats cannot be played if the opponent has no cards in their hand.
Nope:
The imaginary friend will play Nope if this is the rightmost card in their hand when you played any card, to cancel the effect of this card. Of course you can play this card to cancel the effect of cards played by imaginary friend. Keep in mind, that Defuse is not played so they (or you) cannot Nope the Defuse.
Shuffle:
Combine external deck and the draw deck and shuffle them. Yes: all Exploding kittens go back to the game!
See the future:
Reveal the top 3 cards of the draw deck (you will learn about two cards, because the top card is always faced up anyway). Do it even if the imaginary friend played this card.
Exploding kitties and Defuse:
On your turn, if the top card on the draw deck is Exploding kitten, you cannot draw. After you pass, exile Defuse from your hand or lose the game. After defusing put the Exploding kitten back into the external deck.
If the Exploding kitten is on the top of draw deck when imaginary friend pass, check if the Defuse is the rightmost card in their hand. If yes: exile the Defuse and put the Exploding kitten back into the external deck. Otherwise, the imaginary friend exploded (even if they have Defuse but it's not the rightmost card)!
If imaginary friend exploded exile all cards from their hand (put them on the discard pile) and put the Exploding kitten into the external deck. Create new imaginary friend with no cards in their hand. They start the next turn.
Remember: Exploding kitten always go back to the external deck and never to the discard pile. They might go back to the game when next Shuffle is played.
Attack and Skip works as in the original game and always can be played. Don't draw a card after playing those cards.
​

Strategy tips (don't read if you want to discover it by yourself):

Try to keep control of what the imaginary friend will do. It's easy to get rid of some cards from your hand, but some cards can be really difficult to play. If you can, force the imaginary friend to take those cards. See the future is very powerful because it's easy to play and it lets you plan a few turns ahead.
Usually you know in advance if the imaginary friend will take a card from you. Sometimes it's good to draw a bad card only to let them take it.
Count shuffles. It's good to count other cards as well, but shuffles are the most important.
The right moment to play shuffle might be the most important decision. It's possible to never shuffle external deck into draw deck. This is nice strategy, because you don't need to care about the Defuse cards but it's the risky one! If not succeeded and the last shuffle is played at the very end of the game, all unused Defuse might explode in the imaginary friend's hand!
It might seem like a good idea to explode the imaginary friend but keep in mind that it's sometimes difficult to get rid of your cards if the imaginary friend has an empty hand.
From time to time you lose because of bad luck. It happens.

When André Lotterer made his Le Mans debut in 2009 he was one of six German racers in the premier class that year, in 2015 with the presence of two German factory teams that number surged to nine. This year even though he is the senior hand and Porsche is fielding three works 963s, he doesn’t have a single compatriot in the top class with him, rather than at the sharp end of the prototype field hugely experienced Mike Rockenfeller will instead be running in a touring car thirty laps down. Why weren’t young talents David Beckmann, Laurents Hörr or Jonas Ried given an opportunity, the unfortunate demise of the Audi Sport GT program will at least release several rapid drivers to hopefully move up into the prototype ranks. We’re still very early in the convergence era with a lot more teams coming in, but still the lack of German racers in the field is very weird especially compared to the recent past.

This one will make you laugh.
Preface: I’m currently managing two departments after moving across from another division and have turned them both into top performing departments, stopped the mass exodus of staff and several people retracting their notices or taking pay cuts / demotions to either stay in the team or transferring in from other teams.
Story time…
I was called into a meeting by my VP, who informed me that another department was severely underperforming which was affecting sales, project deadlines were being missed etc. and for that their manager would be going on a PIP. I was asked to ‘support’ this other manager and help with best practices and what not. ‘Fine’, I thought, always happy to help a colleague.
Now, I speak to this other manager regularly and have a good understanding of why they are underperforming. In essence, the company took on 7+ new contracts in the span of a couple of months and the team simply does not have the headcount to cope with the workload, even with daily overtime and working weekends.
The manager of the ‘underperforming’ department was called in to a meeting at head office. Seeing the writing on the wall, the manager put in their resignation at the end of the working day, stating in no uncertain terms that they find it impossible to work under this level of pressure and with the limited resources available.
Shortly after receiving the resignation, my VP phoned me and said “change of plans, we need you to fly out next week and begin transition for the department to report to you”. ‘Fine’, I thought, I’ve spent a lot of time making the other departments stable and can afford to take on this project until they backfill the managers role. In the meantime, I just need my salary adjusted to cover the (not insignificant) additional work I’ll have to take on. Knowing that it usually takes 3-6 months to hire or transfer managers for that level, I’m sure that’s a reasonable ask.
How wrong was I. When I asked my VP to update my job description (in my company, job description determine salary), they not only stated that the company will not be backfilling the role and I would permanently have to oversee the new department on top of my existing workload, they also stated that there would be no option of salary increasing and to “not ask for more money”.
The role I am covering is a +$90k role, meaning they were just going to have me absorb that work for no additional compensation. I am handing in my resignation next week.
TL:DR Company refuse salary increase after not backfilling a role and dumping the workload on me.

--- Table of Contents ---
Autumn 4986, 15 Aoimoth
“Slow down, Squire!” Master Daunas walked around the sixteen Squires. They were all going through the basic motions of knife fighting together, but Shon knew the Weaponsmaster was talking to him specifically. He'd fallen into the rhythm of steel clanging off steel as the eight pairs of Squires went through the practiced strikes of a rehearsed fight. His partner was keeping up, but just barely. If Shon sped up, the boy would fumble, and Shon could disarm him. But that wasn’t the point of this exercise. It wasn’t a sparring match; it was a two man kata. Shon let out a long exhale and slowed down, matching his partner’s pace.
“Sorry,” Kefir, muttered to Shon, “You should try and get Zihler next time. He won’t slow you down.”
Shon arched an eyebrow at Kefir as the two pivoted in unison, spinning but staying together, so they switched places and continued without breaking rhythm. Or that was what was supposed to happen. Kefir stumbled just a little. He still wasn’t very good at quick pivots like that, and knife forms were full of them. Shon slowed down to wait for him to recover, matching his thrust with a counter as rehearsed.
“Don’t give me that look. I know you want to go faster. Zihler’s the most likely to keep... up...” Kefir had to space the last two words as they dodged each other again. More twists and turns he tended to overshoot.
He wasn’t wrong. Shon did want to go faster, wanted to push himself to his limits, and always just a little beyond, but “Speed isn’t the point of this exercise.” Shon said, and Kefir’s brow furrowed. Though if concentrating on Shon’s words or the continued form Shon didn’t know, “It's precision and practice. Keep partnering with Rerves, who's even worse, and you won't improve.”
They slammed together, the hilts of their daggers locking together as they sidestepped in tight circles. Shon could see at least ten different ways he could end a match right here. His left hand was free, as this was a single dagger exercise, and his opponents hardly ever paid attention to his feet. But that wasn’t the point, and Kefir would learn nothing from Shon downing him now, even if it was.
“Thanks,” Kefir spat sarcastically. Shon gave him a purposefully deadpan look in response, and he continued, “You’re the same, though. You won’t get better if you pick the weakest partners.” the two disengaged, jumping back and falling into a ready stance in one motion. Kefir took a heartbeat longer than some of the other boys but didn’t stumble at this speed as he had the last three times they went through the drill.
“I’m better than Zihler…” Shon said, not in pride or arrogance but in truth. When they had first started knife fighting weeks ago, he had partnered with those who seemed to be at the same level as himself or higher. Pushing himself to reach their level and surpass it. Add to that the fact that he often used his free time for more practice, and Shon had jumped to the top of the class as usual only a week into this new weapon.
Shon brought the topic back around to his point, “Practice is practice no matter how fast I go, as long as I have precision.” and, as if to prove his point, the form reached the culminating move, where Shon and Kefir needed to thrust at each other while turning just enough for the blade to pass by their chests. Shon slowed his thrust only at the end, just enough for Kefir to finish his dodge. Adjusting speed in the middle of a strike without pulling it completely wasn't easy, and they both knew it.
That was the end of the kata, and they both stepped back. Kefir looked down at his knife, sighing, “I suck at this, give me a shield or a hammer, and you wouldn’t have to hold yourself back.” he glanced up at Shon and forced a smile he obviously didn’t feel, “Then maybe I could teach you a thing or two…”
Shon nodded, perfectly serious, and when Kefir didn’t seem to understand, he added, “Exactly.”
The bell rang and the other Squires started heading for the weapons rack to return their knives, but Shon held Kefir in place with his eyes. He looked confused, his expression asking the question before his words could, so Shon explained, “You're better at armor and shields than me.”
That actually got a genuine smile from Kefir, “Everyone is better with armor and shields than you, Shon.” Shon humphed but couldn't argue, and Kefir laughed, “You know, if you spent your extra time actually practicing with the stuff you need practice in, instead of the things you're already the best at, you would get better.”
Shon ran his fingers through sweaty hair. It was only two finger widths long but still needed to be cut. He wanted to argue that practicing with the heavy weapons without armor in his free time was the only reason he was still the top in those as well. But instead, he nodded in acquiescence to Kefir’s observation.
“Hey,” Kefir stepped forward and poked Shon with the hilt of his dagger. Even with his thicker winter uniform on, they avoided touching him, “I get what you’re saying. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses. Thank you for trying to help me with mine.” The thanks was genuine this time, now that the frustration of the practice was over, and Shon nodded. Kefir continued, “Why don’t we make a deal? I’ll let you help me catch up to you in this if you let me help you with armor work. Master Daunas wants to get you in plate, but if you can’t even move in banded mail, you’ll never make it in the heavier stuff.”
Shon let his head fall back in frustration but nodded. Kefir laughed and the two returned their daggers without further words. Shon split from the rest of the stragglers in the courtyard, moving towards the bench beside the wall and the barrel for catching rainwater beside it. This deep into autumn, the water was sometimes frozen in the mornings, but Shon preferred it that way. Reaching in, he splashed handfuls of it on the back of his neck. The others would be heading for the hot showers, but with sixteen of them and only ten shower heads, Shon would wait until they were all done before washing properly.
“I’ll meet you after study time!” Kefir called as he walked by to try and reach the showers with the first group. Shon waved without turning around. He knew Kefir was right. He should focus his extra time on improving his weaknesses. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
***
The mess hall where they had their meals had one long table set in the middle with enough space for fifteen Squires on each side. Around it were set smaller circular tables for the Paladins stationed in Hamerfoss and one larger near the door for the officers. Against one wall was another long table with plates, bowls, and food where they would each gather their meal before finding their seats.
The seats weren’t assigned, but Shon always sat at the farthest end of the Squire’s table, with his left facing the walkway so he wouldn’t bump anyone with his elbow as he ate. No one ever took the spot. It was an unspoken consensus amongst the Squires that that was Shon’s seat. The rest tended to congregate in the middle, talking and poking friendly fun at each other, extending their break into the dinner meal.
Shon took his place and started eating without joining in. They didn’t try to include him most of the time, and he was content to just listen. “Hey, Shon,” Rerves called from down the table, and Shon looked up from his plate to show he was listening, “I hear Kefir’s going to help you with armor tonight. Can I come?” Shon shrugged, turning back to his meal. Rerves went back to his conversation, and dinner continued as usual. The Squires ignoring Shon.
They filtered out of the mess hall as they each finished their dinner at their own pace, some heading to the chapel for prayer and others to the library for study. Shon made his way to the library, pausing in the doorway and debating with himself. If he joined the others at the larger table, they would try and talk to him. They seemed to think it was their duty to include him if he was there. But if he sat alone at the two-man table by the window, they would leave him alone. It meant he wouldn’t be able to ask them questions if one came up, but it also meant they wouldn’t bother him with pointless asides…
Tonight, he joined the study group. The subject they'd started a few weeks ago wasn’t one he had taken to easily, an in-depth history of Gasha province, so he wanted to be able to talk when needed.
It started as soon as he finished the first page, “So Shon, when do you think Master Veon-Zih will be back?”
“Winter Solstice,” Shon answered shortly, rereading the sentence. The others whispered around him about Master Veon-Zih, something about if he would dance with the pretty baker again this year…
“Hey Shon, do you know if Monks train in dancing too?”
Shon placed his finger over the paragraph he'd reached, knowing he would have to reread it after the interruption. He shook his head. When they continued to look at him, he sighed, glaring up at them. This was supposed to be study time… “He learned how after he left the Monastery.”
He reread his paragraph and managed to finish the chapter before running his hand through his hair in frustration at the text. Looking up, he said, “We’ve read about the war between Gasha and Swailand, but this doesn’t say anything about why they went to war in the first place.”
“Fishing rights, I think?” Thom answered, flipping through his own book, “Knowing those Horsa Bast…” he cut off before finishing the curse, glancing at the Paladin acting as librarian, before continuing, “I bet they wanted to extend their fishing to the area around Gasha, and they are just as likely to fight each other as us.”
Rehlien slid a new book Shon’s way, “Here, read this one next. It gets into the justification a little more than that one.” Shon nodded his thanks, taking the book and placing it under the one he was still finishing.
But his question had opened the door to more derailing chatter, “You really like to know the why of things, don’t you, Shon?”
Shon nodded, hoping this talk would at least be relevant, but “You’re like that in etiquette too. That’s probably why you struggle so much.” Shon shrugged. Etiquette didn’t seem to have a point, but that wasn’t what they were supposed to be studying now, “I find some things ‘just are’ because of tradition…” the boy trailed off as Shon glared at him, his words freezing in his throat. When silence had returned, Shon went back to his book. He should've just sat alone.
***
Kefir and Rerves were already waiting in the sparring ring by the time Shon showed up dressed in his banded mail. The armor rubbed uncomfortably around his neck and the thick gambeson underneath bunched at his joints, limiting his range of motion by at least a few inches. It also weighed him down, which he'd managed to convince himself was good for strength training, but was incredibly frustrated by for sparring.
Kefir already had his sword and shield and held an extra bastard sword for him, so Shon went right for the ring, stifling a frustrated sigh as he took the proffered weapon.
Rerves grinned at the look on Shon’s face, saying, “We figured you'd be miserable enough in the armor alone, that we should channel some of Soleil's compassion and let you use your best weapon instead of the hammer.” to which Shon was grateful. Making him practice in the armor with a weapon he still hadn’t mastered would've been adding salt to the wound.
“Let’s do some stretches and warm-ups first.” Kefir started, “Your problem isn’t being afraid to take a hit with the armor,” Rerves laughed out loud, but Kefir continued with only a grin, “It’s in having to adjust your mobility. So let's re-imprint that before we try any sparring.”
They went through stretches, the two of them seeming to match Shon in flexibility only because he was hampered by the armor, then moved on to solo sword forms. Even though the armor was only about thirty-five pounds evenly distributed, Shon still felt sluggish. When they moved on to sparring, Rerves beat him soundly while Kefir watched, tilting his head back and forth like Master Daunas and trying to give advice that didn’t help. Shon could fight, he knew the proper blocks and parries better than they did, but too often he would either not make up for his lack of speed or would overcompensate and swing too hard.
Kefir took his turn, lifting his shield and watching Shon raise his sword to the ready, “Honestly, Shon, I don’t know what to do besides have you practice more and just get used to it.”
“Sometimes that’s all you can do,” Rerves said from the side as he slipped off his helmet. Shon knew they were right in some regards but couldn’t entirely dismiss his frustration at the thought that he was missing something that he needed to learn and not just have beaten into him. He was grateful for his companion’s help but annoyed at their inability to teach.
Rerves gave the order to "Lay on!" and Shon and Kefir engaged. Shon could predict Kefir's moves, could practically see them in his mind's eye, but barely reacted in time, his arm not bending as far or fast as he wanted it to. He gritted his teeth, glaring at the other Squire, trying to sidestep around but moving too slow compared to Kefir, who just needed to turn in place. Shon took a step back and planted his feet. If he could force Kefir to make the larger motions, then perhaps he could focus on redirecting the boy’s attacks.
Kefir hesitated. Shon was most dangerous when he stood his ground, and they both knew it. The hesitation just gave Shon more time to try and strategize. Not that it had helped at all before. Maybe if he could somehow slow Kefir down, or focus on trapping his weapon, then it wouldn’t matter that Shon wasn’t as fast as he would be without the damn armor. Kefir tested Shon’s guard with a few half-hearted attacks that Shon deflected, waiting. When the other Squire finally committed fully, Shon let go of his sword with his left hand, twisted to dodge, and grabbed Kefir’s sword arm.
Just stop. Stop long enough for me to hit you… Kefir tried to pull away but couldn’t. Despite the poor grip Shon had with the thick gloves that were part of the armor, the two Squires seemed lashed together. Kefir twisted his shoulders so he could lift his shield to deflect Shon’s oncoming attack, but his feet didn’t move. His eyes went wide, and his shield came up barely in time to hit Shon’s sword, the tip still reaching over to clang off Kefir’s helm with a glancing blow.
Kefir fell backward and Shon, still clinging to his arm, was pulled on top of him. The boy yelled, and Shon rolled, letting go of Kefir and hearing something like glass breaking over the clanging of armor and screaming of his fellow. Shon rolled to absorb the shock of the fall and twisted to find Kefir on his back, his knees still straight and his boots stuck to the ground. Encased in ice.
The ice climbed up his boots to his shins, but Kefir was gripping his arm, trying to pull more ice from where Shon had been holding him. It continued to grow, soon encasing his hand and sword hilt. Rerves rushed forward, trying to help pry the sword free while the ice on his legs grew past his boots and under his greaves. Kefir screamed again, in pain and fear.
The Paladins on the wall began yelling, their leader taking command, sending some to help the boys and others to run for the fortress. Shon watched in horror as Kefir’s legs and arm were slowly encased in ice, his lips trembling and turning blue. He would be covered soon, Shon knew it, could picture it happening, like a waking nightmare. It would trap his brother Squire and anyone else touching it…
The ice started clawing at Rerves fingers, trying to gain hold and freeze him too.
“What in all the hells?!” Master Daunas showed up with a gaggle of Paladins and the Cleric, who all fell around the boys. Some took out their belt knives and tried to break the ice apart; others began to chant spells to either melt the ice or keep Kefir warm.
Master Daunas searched above the throng for answers and, finding Shon, cursed. He ran around the larger group, grabbing Shon by the arm and wrenching him away, practically dragging him across the courtyard towards the fortress proper. Someone called out in triumph as Shon reached the fortress door and Daunas forced him through it.
What had happened? Had they freed Kefir? Would he be alright? What happened?!
Daunas was still cursing as he slammed the door and spun on Shon, who stared blankly through the Weaponmaster. Panic, he was trying so hard not to panic. Was trying to figure out what had happened, trying to play through the entire thing again, picturing it from outside his body. Was the ice what had allowed him to hold on to Kefir? Was it still climbing up Kefir's legs? Was that why the older Squire wasn’t able to pull back and block properly? Had Shon...
“Calm down, boy.” Daunas reached for Shon’s shoulders but pulled back a moment later, shaking his hands and cursing as they reddened from the cold, “Breathe, boy. Look at me, think warm thoughts.”
Think warm thoughts? What did that even mean? Shon found Daunas’s eyes and saw the Weaponmaster scared for the first time, “Breathe, slow and steady, like old man V taught you. You need to control your energy…” his lips were pale and trembling, his breath coming out in a cloud before him. had it been that cold outside? Shon couldn’t feel it...
Shon closed his eyes and breathed. Control his energy… He pulled himself in, finding his center and gathering around it, “That’s it, boy, like that.” Shon breathed in his energy, his ki, holding it in his gut, storing it for later when he could use it to focus a strike and give it more power, just like Master Veon-Zih had taught him. And just like Master had taught him, he tried to let go of his worries, to clear his mind, if only for now.
Kefir would be alright, almost every adult here could cast healing spells, and at least half of them were with him now. It was okay. Shon could relax, let go, calm down… Suddenly exhausted, Shon nearly collapsed right there in the hallway. Daunas caught him, slowly lowering him to the stones.
Shon could feel himself slipping into unconsciousness, but not fast enough to miss Master Daunas’s last curse, “Damn it, boy, why did you have to be a Sorcerer?”
***
“He has to go to the Mages Guild.” Major General Davies Selibra, Paladin head of Hamerfoss, stated to those gathered in his office. It was a simple room containing two sets of closed cabinets on either side of a large desk facing the door with two seats positioned in front of it. Shon sat in one of those seats, his head hanging and fists clenched tightly in his lap.
Master Daunas slammed his palm down on the desk. He seemed too agitated to sit, or perhaps he just didn’t want to sit next to Shon, who was radiating cold like a fire radiated heat, “We can’t, Selibra! He’s the most promising fighter I’ve ever trained. He’ll lose too much time.” the Weaponmaster's words puffed out as white fog from his lips.
Major General Selibra sat behind his desk and rubbed his temples, “It’s the law Daunas, he either needs to get a clearance or be sealed.”
“Can’t be a Paladin with the tattoo…” Smith Nangran muttered from his position leaning on the door. Shon was too focused on his predicament to wonder why the Smith was even here. A thin layer of ice began to form at his feet.
“It’s the law…” Selibra said again, weary, “If he had awakened sooner, he might have been able to get his clearance before training, but…”
Daunas threw his hands into the air, bellowing, “It takes years to get a clearance. If they even let him. Those Mages would rather just mark the boy up and be done with it!”
A sealing tattoo. They would want to block the magic. Seal it away in his body where it couldn’t hurt anyone. Kefir had suffered severe frostbite as well as a broken ankle. Lucky for him, he was surrounded by divine conduits and was fine, but what if Shon lost control again? Who would the ice entomb? Master Veon-Zih? Innocent citizens he was supposed to protect? Shon’s nails dug furrows into his palms as he clenched his fists tighter. The ice crawled up the legs of his chair and crystalized on the backs of his hands.
The adults continued to talk around him, “The law is clear, Daunas. The magic either needs to be trained or sealed. There are no exceptions.” The law never made exceptions. It’s what kept everything running at top proficiency. Shon admired that… and understood it, as even now he couldn't control the sorcerous ice.
Shon tried to slow his breathing, relax his hands. The ice cracked over his fingers as he forced them out of their fists. It was responding to his emotions, his fear, and horror at what he'd done. What he was. If he could just pull it in, stifle the emotions feeding it, then the magic wouldn't be able to control him…
Ice continued to inch up the chair, and Selibra rubbed his hands together to warm them. They'd been pointedly and purposely ignoring the winter-like cold since bringing Shon to the office.
“Tattoos aren’t the only way to seal magic…” Nangran stated from the door. Daunas and Selibra stopped arguing, and Shon’s head shot up. He turned slowly to watch the Smith who combed absently at his beard, “Law says sorcerer magic needs to be trained or sealed, doesn’t say how.”
“I know the law Nangran,” Selibra still sounded defeated. “A council of Mages, including one of the rank Archmage, must determine if a Sorcerer is capable of controlling his or her power. If they determine the power is too great a risk to the kingdom, then said power will be made unable to manifest. Sealed.” the Major General recited, most likely for Shon’s benefit. Shon's heart pounded in his chest, and the fires that lit the room dimmed.
“What are you suggesting?” Daunas asked Nangran curiously. The smith only talked when necessary, using grunts and nods instead of words whenever possible. That was probably why Shon liked him so much. It also meant he wouldn’t have contradicted Selibra unless he had a reason.
“Know a guy. Used to make sealing items for the guild…” Nangran said with a shrug, as though Shon’s future didn’t hinge on his point, “Owes me a favor…”
“You’re not talking about that mad hermit who comes barging in here once or twice a year, are you?” Daunas asked, looking stunned.
Nangran nodded with a confirming hum. “Still Archmage in good standing…”
The Weaponmaster looked ecstatic, shouting, “Nangran, you’re a genius!” he slammed his hands down on the desk again, breath puffing out in thick clouds as his excitement grew. Nangran grunted.
Daunas turned back to the Major General, who actually looked intrigued. Shon’s heart tried to beat its way out of his chest. “This is it, Selibra! This Archmage can make the boy a sealing item. I’m sure the Temple will vouch for him. He’s our top Squire.” Shon was still too terrified to feel proud of the compliment and watched Major General Selibra with wide desperate eyes. Ice started forming on his hands again, looking like clawed talons.
“The Mages Guild hasn’t given out sealing stones for generations…” Selibra hummed, and Shon barely stopped the desperate whine before it could escape, his fingernails drawing blood on his palms as he balled them into fists again, breaking the ice claws. “but we can at least try.” Selibra finished, focusing on Shon, his brown eyes still looking sad, “Are you sure you want this, Shon? As a Paladin, you won’t be able to train with your elemental magic unti-”
“Yes, Sir!” Shon shouted, leaning forward in his seat and breaking the ice off its legs. He fell back a moment later, embarrassed by his outburst. More quietly, he said again, “Yes, Sir. I don’t want this magic. I want to be a Paladin.” more than anything in his entire life, he'd wanted to be a Paladin…
“Very well,” Major General Selibra stood, resting his fingertips on his desk. Speaking as if to himself, he muttered, “Perhaps this is a sign from Hengist.” looking up, he addressed Nangran, “Tomorrow you will take Squire Shon to this Archmage friend of yours. Gods willing, he will be able to seal the sorcerer magic without hindering his divine capabilities.” he failed to hide a shiver from the cold.
***
Her candles burned hot and bright, flickering wildly as She paced around Her little room. Something was happening in Her tower. There were far too many people with strangers' voices out Her window and beyond Her door.
Brom and Ran continued to visit, but they wouldn’t answer Her questions, wouldn’t take Her for samples, or to see Her treasures. The first made Her angry, the second gave Her energy, and the last scared Her enough to stop asking questions. What if they took Her books again? They hadn’t given Her a reason She couldn’t see Her treasures, so maybe they would soon… maybe tomorrow...
***
“Tomorrow,” Morndancer stated as Shaloon let herself into his room. The transfer preparations had taken months. MONTHS! They were Mages. No. Greater than Mages. They were Warlocks. And yet, everything still took far too long. They could instantly communicate with allies across the kingdom but still had to spend time making the proper arrangements. They could travel miles in a blink but still had to painstakingly pack every book and file, disassemble and disenchant the golems guarding the tower over days and even weeks. If it had been a true emergency -if they'd been found- they could've destroyed everything, vanishing all evidence of their presence and research. But the Master Archmages had forbidden it in this case.
“The western Talon is ready to receive us,” Shaloon confirmed, “What of the subjects? Archmage Yarna has no interest in animal husbandry..."
“The Firewyrm is all she is interested in. It is the only reason she agreed to take us.” Morndancer sat on his bed and stared at the pseudodragon perched on his desk, its leathery wings half furled and its tail twitching over the side of the desk, “I will handle the animal subjects tomorrow. Just make sure you are ready to open the portal out when I am done.” she could only open one portal a day, sometimes two but it would leave her incapacitated for at least a day after.
“Tomorrow then,” Shaloon confirmed, leaving him alone with his running mind and the little pretend dragon, that seemed to stare through his skin and into his soul.
***
Shon couldn’t sleep. Once again, his entire future hung on what would happen tomorrow. And just like the divine test and the road to Hamerfoss, there was nothing he could do to speed up the process. It was out of his hands. Out of his control. Just like the ice now clouding the window and the frost freezing the blankets to the mattress.
He tapped the blank page of his open journal with his pencil. The images running through his mind were the last he wanted to solidify on paper. He tried drawing something else… Kefir smiling warmly at him for the second thank you. Rerves leaning forward and shouting to him across the dinner table. The study group conversing in whispers instead of studying…
He wrote about it all between the drawings but everything that happened after pushed at his mind, the scenes forming in his vision. Shon drew Kefir again, lying on his back and tugging at the ice forming on his sword arm. Then a group scene with the Paladins falling around him, their faces focused, and hands glowing with spells to try and save him… Master Daunas’s scared eyes as he ordered Shon to ‘think warm thoughts...'
With two pages full of various sketches and commentary, Shon dropped his pencil and rested his head on his desk. Why? Was this why he was so cold to the touch? Sorcerers were rare; those with ice power were the rarest even amongst them. Should they have noticed something was wrong sooner? Would Hengist really accept someone like him? Chose a Sorcerer to be one of his extensions in Daanlin?
Shon closed his eyes, breathing slowly and trying not to cry. If they forced him to go to the Mages Guild, he would never be able to fight again. He was sure of it. All his hard work and dedication. All those years of disciplined practice, gone in one instance where he lost control. Where he almost killed a friend.
Everything he was, everything he would be, hinged on the following day. “Tomorrow…” Shon whispered into the dark, his candle finally flickering to die in the cold.
--- Table of Contents ---
Thanks for making it this far, you are the real MVP

I have been employed at this factory for 2.5 years now (non union). We bring in temps from a staffing agency, then after 90 days we either hire them on or let them go. It is constantly short staffed due to a high turnover rate and just about weekly you see a new face or faces.
A few days ago I had to ask a temp that had been there two weeks, not to take break on the forktruck and to turn the music down. He had connected his phone to the radio in the forktruck and had rap music blaring, sounding like it was about to blow the speakers. In retrospect maybe I should have just let it go, but I use the truck as well as others and don’t want the speakers blown by anyone, much less by a guy who most likely won’t be there very long.
So, I went to the lead who was sitting there. I asked him to go tell the guy who he was training to turn it down. The lead (who isn’t a lead in anything but a title) said no that he wasn’t walking over there. I’ll admit; this temp had a tough look about him. His walk, his face tattoos, his whole demeanor screamed trouble, but I went anyway and asked him to turn it down and explained why. He immediately got mad and said, “Who the F*** are you?? Your not my boss so idgaf.” I replied with something along the lines of, “Is that right? Ok, we’ll see how much of a f you give.” He jumped off the forktruck and got in my face. He was cussing and threatening me and I just kept telling him that I was not going to fight him, especially not at work. I have a family that depends on my income. It wasn’t even an option. So I backed away then turned and went on to break inside.
20 minutes or so had passed and I was thinking he’d calm down and it was over, and I began to heat up my dinner and get my drink, etc. I looked up to see him walking into the break room, he was staring straight at me and then walked right up to my face. He kept saying “do something” and I kept replying thst I wasn’t fighting at work. I made the mistake of turning my back to him to leave the break room. When I did he swung a metal water thermos over his head and cracked the back of my head with it. I was seeing stars. It gashed my ear open so there was a lot of blood (that freaked me out) and left a huge pump knot on my head. He immediately started punching me in the face and head, so I tried to just wrap him up to stop the punches from landing. He ended up on top of me, punching me over and over. What seemed to me like a lifetime later a couple guys tried to drag him off of me, and when they did he kicked me in the nose first and then in the forehead, with steel toe boots. I was far from coherent after that. There were two witnesses in the room when it happened and a handful more when they were pulling him off of me. All wrote statements saying I didn’t fight back.
they took him somewhere else and sat me down to look at the damage. No hr was there or safety so a supervisor tried to clean my ear with alcohol pad to see the cuts, eventually sending me into the bathroom to wash my face and head off so he could see how bad it was. I had a ton of blood on me. They handed me a pen and had me write what happened, had the witnesses do the same. All the stories said that I was attacked , didn’t fight back or anything. The dept head put a bandaid over my ear to try and stop the bleeding. Pretty much taped my ear. My nose stopped on its own.
Then they sent ME home. I ride a Harley to work. They know that. The next day hr asked me to come in so safety could check my damage and they asked my story again. It was like an interrogation. And no cops were called either, btw. They said they couldn’t tell me if I was fire or if I still had my job until the investigation was over. It has been four days now and they still haven’t told me.
On the second day my migraine got much worse. I called them and told them I needed to go to the dr. The safety person met me at the dr, to do all the workers comp paperwork etc. Dr said concussion. Referred me for a cat scan. Dr there said my brain looked ok and all my facial structure is ok. But is treating me for concussion (my understanding is that the brain can be okay without damage and still be concussed). The er called the cops to report the assault. Even the cop was shocked by the fact that hr had me suspended pending investigation still. He even said given the evidence I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. He said that to the safety lady from work. So I was sent home again, now with a documented concussion from the incident.
I feel like my job has done me really dirty. It felt shady the way they were questioning me, looking for an “aha” moment or an inconsistency in my story. Even if I had said something inappropriate or argued, that shouldn’t make it okay to be assaulted with a weapon and then stomped out on company property. But It felt like they were just looking for an excuse to blame me for his actions and to fire me as well. I feel like they severely mishandled the situation. And I’m scared of losing my income. So I’m wondering what steps I should take if they do fire me, would I have any legal grounds to object on or file on? Please help with advice, I really need it. Thank you all.

Ended up heading up to NYC from DC for part of the day today at the last minute for an event. My megabus drops me off at 3pm. The event starts at 7:30pm and like the megabus stop it is in midtown, will walk there if time allows otherwise taxi. After the event I'll be taking a taxi straight back to the megabus dropoff/pickup point to take a late bus back home.
I went to NYC for a few days when I was in middle school. We did not see the empire state building (did top of the rock instead), can't remember whether we went to central park, spent a whole day in natural history. Those are the only things I remember as being midtown-ish. No interest in times square. I'm big time into history, old architecture is cool, museums are cool if they are really good (and different than what I can see at the smithsonian, I live in northern Virginia), don't care much about Broadway or bars, generic touristy stuff not in these categories is probably at least worth a mention. Willing to spend up to $100 as long as I get my money's worth. Any recommendations? Keeping in mind this should be stuff that if it requires tickets, I can get them at the absolute last minute or just by walking in.

Masters of Arena - 7 by JonSlow is starting from 2023-06-05. The tournament is using an interesting drafting system where a bunch of civs are banned randomly at the start (eg. 27 bans for a bo5). For the most part, if there are several S, A, B-tier civs available after the bans, things might even out for both, the higher seed as well as the lower seed players. It seems that at least 1 scenario (Scenario 4 below) might lead to an imbalanced draft. For these scenarios, I'm assuming that several trash arena civs are getting through along with n number of S-tier arena civs, starting with 1, 2, 3 and so on. After the random bans, the first player (A) bans 1 civ, then the second player (B) bans 1 civ, followed by civ picks in the order: A, B, B, A, A, B, B and so on.
Scenario 1: 1 S-tier civ available- A will not ban the S-tier civ and B will have to ban it as A has first pick. A has slight advantage in that they are getting a ban whereas B is not getting a ban truly speaking.
Scenario 2: 2 S-tier civs available- A may or may not choose to ban one of them. If A bans an S-tier civ, B must also ban the other one and its an even playing field. If A does not ban an S-tier civ, B will also not ban any and both get 1 true ban and 1 true S-tier civ pick.
Scenario 3: 3 S-tier civs available- If A does not ban one of them, B won't ban any of them either in which case A will end up with 1 S-tier civ whereas B will end up with 2. Hence, A must ban 1 of them. B will not ban any of them and both will end up with 1 S-tier civ each. Contrary to Scenario 1, B now has a true ban whereas A has to waste a ban on one of the S-tier civs, although its not as wasteful as it was for B in Scenario 1 as they still get to choose which of the 3 S-tier civs they want to ban.
Scenario 4: 4 S-tier civs available- If A does not ban one of them, B will ban one of them and they end up with 1 and 2 S-tier civs respectively. If A bans one of them, B will not ban any of them and again, they end up with 1 and 2 S-tier civs, respectively. Hence, when 4 S-tier Arena Civs are getting through the Random Bans, Player B (the second picker) has an undeniable advantage!
Table below shows how likely it is for this scenario to happen after the random bans. The number of S-tier civs is subjective. I'll show the probability for different cases (4 to 10) of 'number of S-tier civs' depending upon a player's estimate. The draft considers 42 civs (Romans not included). For a bo5 draft, 27 civs are randomly banned, 2 are banned by players, 6 each are picked by the players and 1 civ is left at the end. The following probabilities are calculated by dividing the number of ways 4 S-tier civs go through the random bans by the total number of ways in which 27 civs get banned. Total ways = nC4 x (42-n)C23.

No. of S-tier (n)	nC4	(42-n)C23	Total ways	Probability
4	1	15471286560	15471286560	15.7%
5	5	6107086800	30535434000	30.1%
6	15	2310789600	34661844000	35.1%
7	35	834451800	29205813000	29.6%
8	70	286097760	20026843200	20.3%
9	126	92561040	11662691040	11.8%
10	210	28048800	5890248000	6.0%

As shown, if the number of S-tier civs are perhaps 4-8, the probability of Scenario 4 to occur is quite significant, with a max of 35% at n = 6. To Be Fair, it may happen so that Player B has the extra S-tier civ but Player A then ends up with 2 A-tier civs when there are only 2 A-tier civs available and the draft turns out to be less imbalanced. However, according to a top player, the number of S tier civs is 4-5 and then there are many A tier civs, so its unlikely that if there's the imbalance in S-tier civs, it'll get mitigated by counter distribution of A tier civs. Unfortunately, its rather difficult to compute all those scenarios as it'll run into a lot of speculation regarding how many A-tier civs are there. But I still feel that the number of S-tier civs is infact up for speculation. Maybe in the early stages or the qualifiers, its okay for the lower seed to have a 15-35% chance to get a major advantage out of the draft (an extra S-tier civ). But as the tournament proceeds, one could argue that the players in semis and finals are close enough and having an extra S tier civ could affect the outcome of the whole tournament.

Bought a new car and never feel like taking it out for a ride because there is ridiculous traffic everywhere and people are so rude. I live in West Delhi and it sucks so much.
The roads: imagine a normal service lane but on top of incoming traffic on both sides, there’s also two and four wheelers parked on both sides so the area gets even narrower. Even the thought of coming back to my neighbourhood feels me with anxiety and despair.
Plus there are goddamn potholes/other unevenness everywhere because they keep digging up the roads and occasionally drill them to set up tents for religious events like what?? It’s ruining my new nice car and I can’t do anything about it
The people: got cussed out for driving a little bit slow in a narrow residential area by a middle aged man :) I don’t have a lot of experience in driving and i stalled and was driving extra slow that I don’t hit anything on my left side. There was a literal traffic line in those 2 seconds. I mean, it makes a little bit anxious when people are moving in giant SuVs and they can see the road better than me but they end up covering the entire road.
No parking ever: not just in the markets or anywhere you want to go out but people bicker in my society and I can’t even get decent parking space because everyone wants to park their car in front of the house.
Idk I bought my car with a lot of hopes and I really enjoy driving on empty roads and highways but I just hate where I live and I’m thinking about selling my car till I move somewhere else :/
Sorry for the rant and I’m gonna delete this post soon.

This hobby has a learning curve but I think I'm getting the hang of it! A few things I have learned for any other newbies just getting started:

1. Mix your resin properly! The instructions said "stir for at least 4 or 5 minutes" but stupid me thought nahhhhh, it HAS to be fully mixed after a couple of minutes tops, they're just saying that. Of course it is NOT properly mixed after a couple of minutes and I ended up with a bunch of dice that have never fully hardened. Started following instructions and what do you know? The resin cures as it should!
   
2. Use the working time of your resin. I was impatient to begin with and poured too early and colours blended completely and glitters sank. If you wait until your resin is in that "honey" state it's a lot more likely your colours will stay separate and your glitters, etc won't all settle to the bottom. Be patient!
   
3. Pressure pots work. You can luck out and get pretty decent results without one, but more often than not you'll have lots of bubbles and voids no matter what else you do.
   
4. It's expensive to start. Your only real "big ticket item" will be the pressure pot and compressor if you don't already have one, but all the little things add up. Good molds are NOT cheap, then the resin, the inks, the mica powders, the glitters, the stir sticks, the measuring and mixing cups, the disposable gloves, zona papers, polishing compound, etc... Impossible to put an exact dollar amount as it will vary on where you live, what brands you buy, etc but I think to be pretty well set up you're looking at bare minimum several hundred dollars, closer to $1000 or more if you buy a pressure pot.
   

Just wanted to share as a post like this would have saved me some time and failed sets if I had read it before I dove in head first. Hope it helps someone!

My Xbox name is Moosedaddy1. I am tired of getting paired with lone wolves most every match, and when I do end up on a good squad, we all get sent different ways the next match.
I 've played as Engineer most of my time, but am starting to enjoy Support, usually tops in either Heals or Supplies or both most matches.
BTW, I'm 62 and have been playing BF on and off since it started. If there's a regular squad or clan open to join, let me know. Thanks. My
PS - in Florida. EST
Will be adding all usernames today and will search you out. Will be great to squad up.

This is not a political position, but a thermodynamic one. The world is heading from a time of excess to a time of scarcity. With more people enjoying fewer comforts, humanity is faced with the direction it takes for the rest of our species' future on this planet and others: we can't fight each other for what's left or we can share with each other what we need.
This isn't - or has never before been - a serious question because this world has never felt universal hardship before. In the past, when any major scarcity was faced (with the exception of 536) there was always a neighboring ally to buffer the loss or an enemy to subjugate; until now, there has always been more. Climate change is a global pressure on a globalized economy. There are no external economies that are thriving to prop up the luxuries we've come to feel entitled to. When that luxury can no longer be provided, people are trained to blame each other and ask for the boss to complain about our level of service.
This is the attitude fueling the shift to the right "all this liberal 'science' bullshit has turned my country into a place i dont recognize. Time to get my country in order!", but like how the long term side effects of COVID will be blamed on the vaccine rather than the virus, humans are apparently hardwired to look for a person or institution that's responsible for their problems, because they live in a world that's manifestly run by humanity. Politicians don't help with this because they promise change that a large bureaucracy isn't capable of... every time they step in front of a mic. Politicians feed the sense that the world is divided into teams and the team that's running things is doing harm. They are the anti-vax evangelists of a world simply running out of good time as a result of spending all the good time since the end of WWII.
Humanity cannot fly. That shouldn't be arguable. It's a fundamental limit of our physiology that cannot be overcome without shedding everything about us that makes us human; brains are heavy. When we get on a plane, we are not 'flying', we are taking a bus full of people, strapping a rocket engine to it, and firing it in a ballistic trajectory toward our destination. For all the celebration of progress in the tech age, we still can't figure out how to move something forward without throwing something out the back. That's not just why planes are absurd but why they cannot continue to be considered a good invention. Think of how much fuel would need to be burned to rocket yourself across a lawn, let alone through the sky; it's an insane amount of fuel and an absurd justification for burning it, especially virtually all domestic travel can be accomplished by rail or bus... which also use the same principle of throwing out enough exhaust gasses out the back to displace the weight of the thing that's burning the fuel. When this thing is on the ground, it burns much less fuel than pushing it through the sky.
Humanity assumes novelty is benign. Im not sure if this is one of the hidden rules about capitalism that we all follow as a culture "have you seen the new x!? It's amazing and works way better than x-1!", or if we're evolutionarily programmed to assume new is good and the direction we should be heading in. In either case, it has allowed us to adopt planetary destruction as a necessary aspect of each of our lives. It isn't anything we do consciously, it is the background of our lives that feeds big industry and steals time from the future. It's our commute, our food, our total acceptance that running a furnace is fine despite getting all worked up about oil spills and fires when we see them uncontained. The maze we all run was designed to have as much distance as possible between you and the cheese at the end so you would spend half or more of your cheese burning calories to get from the start to the finish and repeat all over. It is why people feel the problem is too big for them: there is nothing one person can change in the part of the life they control that will redirect the planetary system away from collapse because it is the pattern of our lives that is the destructive part.
Since our shared pattern is so destructive, it is self limiting. We are feeling the effects of that now with COVID (forests being pushed toward ecological breakdown leads animals to look for new territory and new food, leading to conflict with species already there and malnutrition from food with an incomplete nutrient balance), extreme weather doing damage to vital infrastructure and shipping losses.
Which brings us back to Ukraine. The world needs a beacon. A Western country with the courage to model a sustainable lifestyle through active change. I assumed that would have been Canada but I was wrong. Instead, with Ukraine being forced to rebuild in a time where supplies have never been more expensive, and in a state where its people have gotten used to living without luxury, it can either be an incubator for redesigning human life to restore the environment rather than destroy it.
There is no stronger people to take on such a challenge and the world that has been paying for weapons to defend. If we can send explosives to break, we must send hands, tools, and materials to rebuild. If we rebuild the same way, the world will fall into war since the causal push of all existing conflict is space and resources or their control, and we will continue to pretend that individual human choices are to blame for war. We will continue to refuse to look deeper and will soon find ourselves in a position where taking up arms seems like the only solution left to us. If, on the other hand, the rest of us find the courage to look one step deeper and ask "why is the world falling to war? What is driving conflict?", we will see it is the same thing driving our thirst for more luxury and, hopefully, realize that the only survivable path to the future is one where we change our behavior to relieve the force that's pushing us in that direction.
When more is never enough, less is a horrifying concept. Without a model for how to happily live as a human in a self sufficient community, there will be no "green transition", there will only be more disease, more scarcity, and more conflict on the edge of that scarcity. The more each of us takes, the more we contribute to conflict around the world.
There is no way to make a car "green", just like there is no way to make a compostable battery. The problem isnt the means of conveyance, it is the distance we need to cover to survive. Whether or not we change our habits to adapt to this reality is inconsequential to its eventuality, it just seems absurd to ignore the reality of hardship until you're being strangled by it simply to "enjoy the time you have left".
If the war in Ukraine ends and the world moves in to turn it into the first net zero country, there is hope for a future for our species. If we act like everything was fine until a mad man decided to invade a sovereign country, war will spread like a fog descending on the world. Demands will be met by force as a result of people pushing for impossibly cheap access to resources. Slavery will return as the foundation of the global economy and, in all this horror, we will be hastening and worsening our own conditions.
Like a train whose tracks go over the grand canyon, humanity needs one last train stop to see what it looks like to live somewhere other than a train at constantly increasing speed. We need a model for a future that is too nebulous to explain: it must be seen and experienced, how much living can be done as humans on and with the land. If nothing else but to illustrate that a train going over a cliff was not a predetermined consequence of "human progress", and that a choice has been made to define that progress with the inventions of a few men, all of which run by stealing energy from the past and stability from the future. It would allow us to see the train from the outside and force us to question the value of a murder-suicide pact.
For the demonstration to be compelling, there can be no or very little carbon footprint for the country. Structures must be built from salvaged (cheap) material, focusing on isolated but functional communities.
We have already lost the battle to save most of what we recognize in our world but we don't need to continue to burn it all down. Since there is no more track for this paradigm, there is no consequence for trying something new and certain death and misery by doing the same. This message can be shared in every possible way, but without a demonstration of what it looks like on a cultural level, we will never have the discussion that leads to the choice to keep going or get off the death train.
We are not the creations or technology we obsess over, we are an ape descended species on a planet we're stuck with and have killed 80% of in 50 years. We cannot survive on a lifeless world because we are alive and life feeds on life to survive. I have a hard time getting people to relate to the rest of the living world as a branch of the same tree we belong to because of how separated we are from other life. The more life that's lost, the less we'll care about it being gone and the more committed we will be to our preoccupations to avoid having to face reality.
The cowardice ive encountered when it comes to facing reality has been incredibly disappointing and disturbing. We will pass laws in our country to prevent poaching and hunting in other countries where our emissions and lifestyle -guided by our laws- are pushing the same animals to total extinction. We will talk about this from a position of moral superiority, only, and will take no responsibility for the conditions our behavior has already created. There is no "border crisis", there are people being pushed out of their homes by new weather that has made those homes incompatible with survival. I've heard lots of Americans talking about moving north in response to climate shifts as if that is something completely different from what is happening on their southern border or in Europe. No one leaves their ancestral home to cause problems in another country, but if that country is responsible for the force that pushed them out, they should either stop pushing people out of their homes or open their borders. To refuse either is to accept that you live a life of evil and as the person that will one day deny you shelter to protect what they have.
These a new times with new stakes and new bad guys. The only good thing about being the bad guy is you can choose to stop, while your victims can only beg you to stop and, eventually, resist/insist on a different course. It is up to each and all of us how the future plays out. The party is over. No one gets to sit this out.