Krill was mildly uncomfortable, and so was Sunny.
They had all been invited to what the humans described as a "black tie" event on mars, mostly for political delegations, rich sponsors, a couple of famous people, and the occasional member of the UNSC or the GA. Most of the GA reps were Rundi, since they tended to like this political sort of thing.
There was at least one Tesraki, who had made the executive decision to come, since he saw financial opportunity in getting to know some rich humans.
Sunny had been invited to stand in for the Drev counselor, who could not attend due to some issues back on Anum. Dr Krill and Dr. Katie had been invited to attend the event in case medical personnel were required for any reason.
Adam was the only one who had been invited for himself.
The black tie event had been sent by way of a physical letter which Adam had called, "Excessively pretentious." in a day and age where everything was sent electronically.
The fact they had managed to get a letter to him out in the middle of space in the first place was pretty impressive.
Sunny hadn't really known or cared what all of this meant, but Adam had been nervous and very serious about the dress code. Despite thinking the entire thing was pretentious, that didn't stop him from immediately sending away for his mother's help.
Sunny was, of course, encouraged to wear ceremonial formal armor to the event.
Krill was keeping very close track of this odd human behavior, constantly asking questions as Adam was preparing himself.
"Why don't you just wear a regular suit?"
"Because that would be a social faux pas."
"A what?"
He sighed,
"I don't know, it's french or something. I think it's a ballet term. It just means it would be a social screw up and people would totally judge me for it."
"They would judge you for wearing the wrong thing?"
Krill wondered curiously, Adam nodded,
"That is the point of these parties, and has been for the last two and a half thousand years. These parties are honestly just the biggest pissing contests where people try to out dress each other in subtle ways, and the old people who know what they are doing make fun of the new people for having no idea how to do it properly."
Krill looked interested,
"How fascinating. So, it is a way to show your status subtly?”
"Oh yes. Status is a big deal. It started to go out of style for a while, but this whole adherence to dress code has come back with a vengeance in the last few years. The fashion world has seen an upheaval in pretentiousness, and celebrities have been laughed out of parties for trying to be avant-garde."
"To be what?"
"Sorry, pretty sure that's also french too? It means new, interesting, or out of the ordinary usually to make a statement."
Sunny leaned in a little,
"And they expect an air force commander to know how to properly dress for black tie?"
"They don't, which is why they invited me. I am supposed to make others look good by looking bad myself. Of course, I also make them look good by being invited in the first place. Of course, joke's on them because I have a secret weapon on my side..."
He patted the front of his shirt,
"Thank you mother."
"I am now confused."
Adam waved a hand,
"Yeah, I know, It's pretty stupid…”
"I thought you recently decided that you like dressing up?"
The human turned in place a couple of times in front of the mirror, trying to get a better view of himself,
"Correction, I have always enjoyed dressing up – got that from my mom – what I don't enjoy is the pissing contest that comes along with it.”
"What is that?"
"Bow tie."
"You look like someone's Christmas present."
He adjusted the bow tie,
"Well than someone is getting a sexy as fuck Christmas present now aren't they?"
He said and winked at Sunny, while buttoning up the front of the 'waistcoat' and pulling on the jacket.
When he was done, the two aliens had to admit that he really did stand out, all in black, black pants, black tuxedo jacket, cuff links, black tie, black waistcoat, and a purple/blue carnation threaded through the buttonhole on the lapel.
His shoes were almost as reflective as the mirror behind him.
"How do I look?"
"Like a goofy idiot, but the suit wasn't going to change that."
He lifted a finger to flip Sunny off.
"Not very dapper of you."
Katie said from the doorway.
They looked up to see Katie, who had also commissioned a dress from Martha, and honestly made Adam look a little plain.
"Ready to go?”
"As ready as I will ever be."
[…]
Krill kept a shrewd eye on all the strange human protocols.
As far as dressing up went, Krill could immediately see who the “In-crowd” included. Most of those people understood the rules Adam had laid out for him, wearing the proper evening attire, where those not in the “in” wore clothing that approximated the rules, but missed them on several occasions.
The way the evening was set up was a little bit more like a “ball” as Adam described, being announced as they were walked in, and then ordered them to mingle with the crowd. Adam and Katie got a few glances from the “in-group” who seemed surprised that a simple ship captain would know anything about formal evening attire.
Sunny just found the entire thing hilarious.
All of this subtle dressing up to impress each other?
If Drev held balls, instead of dancing they would probably just beat each other to death.
But here, there were a lot of subtle clues and hints that went right over her and the Doctor's heads, while Adam seemed to know what he was doing.
As they walked in waiters offered Adam an alcoholic drink, while Krill received sugared water, and Sunny a rather strange tincture that was generally just water with plant flavoring... It was pretty good though, so she didn't complain.
They were met on arriving by the event coordinator, whose eyes opened wide when she saw Adam, pausing and holding out a hand.
Due to the conflated and rather twisted nature of black tie events in the future, Adam took the hand, and bowed a bit, lowering his head, a strange area between the less formal handshake and the more formal kiss on the hand, which was also not a thing in societies post WWIII
"Commander, I... you look..."
She trailed off, even to Sunny it was clear the woman hadn't expected him to know anything.
He smiled icily at her.
Krill leaned in in fascination.
This was one of the most intriguing parts of humanity. The polite way in which they were totally rude to each other.
"Well thank you. My mother has a Ph.D in the information age and a masters in historical fashion."
That shut the woman up and she politely dismissed herself, walking away with a straight back.
Adam smirked,
"Her dress isn't the right length for an evening event."
"I thought she coordinated the event?"
Sunny muttered,
"She couldn't coordinate herself out of a paper bag."
He winked at Sunny and Krill,
"You can't out-dress the son of a historical fashion expert. Simply not possible, my mother even used the correct materials."
He tugged lightly at his jacket.
Dr. Katie had disappeared on entry, leaving the three of them to wander about the room as Adam pointed out the other important people.
There were a few military commanders, Rundi, and the aforementioned Tesraki.
There were at least five major political leaders, and even larger handful of actors who had their hands in charities or political causes related to the event.
Adam was only halfway through his first drink, when he was waylaid by one of the younger actors.
Even Sunny could tell straight off that he was not dressed appropriately.
He had clearly tried very hard, but his efforts were in vain.
While everything looked alright from a distance, up close something was wrong about everything. The material of his jacket, the style of his shirt, the type of pants, the lapels on the coat, and even the patterned pocket square, which should have been a solid color but wasn't.
He was joined by another group of men, who then began some pretentious conversation about noticing how Adam was new to these sort of events. The way they spoke made it pretty clear they had no idea who he was or what the proper dress code was either.
Adam smiled and didn't say anything.
"And what do you do for a living?"
One of them asked,
"Simply an UNSC representative."
"Ah that explains a lot."
They glanced down at him with pointed looks.
The conversation continued. Sunny wondered why Adam didn't just shut them all up by telling them exactly who he was, but Krill had a theory that Adam was just playing with them as a human way to build up the moment so that he could socially crush them.
As humans do, their conversation wandered until it eventually moved around to the UNSC and other related topics.
One of the men nodded knowingly,
"I am somewhat knowledgeable on the subject myself."
Adam raised an eyebrow.
"Are you?"
"Well yes, I have a brother in law who flies shuttles and planes for the UNSC. Tell me, what is your opinion on the D-4 class engine on a F-90 darkfire. I honestly think they are rather overpowered for what is being asked of them."
Adam frowned,
"The darkfire doesn't have a D-4 engine. That is a warp classification which-"
The man raised a hand,
"No no. I heard my brother in law talking about it. Personally, I think they should have just kept the jet engines they would have been plenty enough power to make it into orbit.”
The commander's face scrunched in confusion as he shook his head,
"No, it's a fusion engine, and the jet engine can't fly in the upper atmosphere because there is no lift-"
"Look, Adam, was that your name? I generally tend to know what I am talking about. The darkfire jet engines would have plenty of power to make it into atmosphere…"
"But it’s a jet engine which implies it is for a plane and not for a rocket-"
The guy cut him off again and continued to ramble onward about how he took some engineering classes in college and would know what he was talking about. Since Adam Joined the UNSC and didn't go to college, that he probably didn't know anything at all, or at least that is what they said in not so many words.
Sunny was getting a bit annoyed and would like to have squished the guy, but Adam just shook his head at her.
She stayed silent and grumpy as the other men continued to correct Adam on knowledge of his own favorite aircraft.
*"My brother owns a spaceship with a class E warp core.”
One of them boasted. Adam rolled his eyes,
"There is no such thing-"
"My brother owns the craft, I am pretty sure I know what I am talking about. It's one of the most powerful cores in the galaxy."
"Um, I don't think…"
"Yes, the E is more powerful than the A. A ship like the Harbinger or the Enterprise would only make it part of the way across the galaxy but the-"
He kept going.
Adam looked like he was dying, but why didn't he say anything?
It was just then that someone appeared from the crowd.
Sunny recognized a political figure they had met at GA summits on occasion.
He raised his glass and stepped into the group,
"Ah commander! I am glad to see you could make it."
The group of men glanced at each other in confusion.
Adam nodded,
"It's good to see you too counselor."
He motioned to the group,
”We were just having a fascinating discussion on warp engines."
"Oh yes?"
He turned to look at the men,
"Than I am sure the commander has also told you about his escapades as a darkfire pilot."
The satisfaction Sunny got from watching their faces was priceless, almost orgasmic.
She could tell from the look on Adam's face that he was feeling similarly,
"Well, no we had not made it to the subject…”
"I was just going to explain to them how the duel E 20 engine has both a jet engine and a fusion engine. The jet engine for flying in atmosphere and the Fusion engine for moving out of atmosphere considering that the jet engine is not powerful enough to lift the craft without air buoyancy."
Sunny was laughing on the inside.
"Ah yes. I seem to recall a discussion along those lines. Tell me commander, what about the Harbinger's engine is it a class A-1."
Adam nodded,
"Could potentially get you to the other side of the universe if you asked her. The classification system is A-D 1-4 on each, so my ship has one of the most powerful engines mankind has ever bothered to build."
He glanced out of the corner of his eye at the other men, who were beginning to slink away.
Sunny chirped in pleasure.
The rep nodded as they left,
"I heard the futility of your conversation from the other side of the room."
"Thanks for the help. I was dying inside."
The two men laughed and took their drinks.
Krill was very pleased with his examination on how humans subtly tried to one up each other with their dress and understanding of certain topics, though it seemed odd to him that someone would claim to be an expert when it was, in fact, their brother or brother in law who knew about the subject and not them.
But he supposed that was the social nature of humanity.
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Something I’ve noticed in the Bible is the regular mentions of Satan having ownership over this world:
John 14:30 I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.
John 12:31-33 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.' This He said, signifying by what death He would die.
Luke 4:5-6 Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, "All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.
1 John 5:18-19 We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.
I have a couple of questions being. When did this ownership began? Why would Satan have legal claim over this earth? What exactly means that he rules the world, that God left him to rule or it was claiming?

(Apologies to anyone who reads this in full. But this joke is hideously long on purpose. It's effects are best if you actually sit someone down and tell it to them. I took up my workmates entire lunch break with this and he hasn't spoken to me all evening.)
There are one hundred priests of an unspecified religion. They have arrived dressed in the symbols of their faith in a new land to spread the word of their 'Superbook'. This could be any land, France, Egypt, Feudal Japan, the Toronto Film Festival, any land. Absolutely any land you can imagine, Gondor, Pangaea, 1992 or your own home and surrounding lands which are unique to you.
Upon arriving in this strange new land they learn that the people here have no knowledge of Superbook. They decide that the best way to spread the word is to construct a building as a symbol of the new faith. So they purchased some basic tools and set to work gathering wood for their shrine. As there were one hundred priests in their prime the shrine was constructed in under a week.
It was a basic thing. The sort of shrine you would look at and say "that's pretty shit. Did children build this? You didn't tell me there were feral children around.". A central trunk with a roughly carved deity symbol nailed to the top stood in a forest clearing. A few rows of log seats encircled it and around the edges stood a few tall torches burning incense.
The priests stood back and looked proud over their creation, happy that they could begin spreading the words and illustrations of Superbook. It was suggested by one of the priests that "Hey we should go for a drink to celebrate our success!" to which exactly half of the priests thought would be a good idea. So fifty of the priests headed down to the local pub where they spent the night drinking whatever beverages Superbook allowed.
Upon returning from their celebrations the priests were greeted by a horrifying sight. "Have I got beverage in my eyes!?" one of the priests was heard to say "or has something destroyed our shrine!?". The priest was correct, before them lay the ruins of their primitive shrine, a tangle of wood and limbs all set ablaze by the incense torches.
How exactly all fifty priests who remained at the shrine managed to perish as the single tall, thin structure collapsed remains a mystery to this day. As the priests stood in shock staring and mourning over their lost friends, one of them turned to notice something that looked out of place. As he squinted he could make out on the horizon a figure all in black, speeding away on an unspecified vehicle. It could be a motorbike, a sports car, a horse and carriage, a horse without a carriage, absolutely any vehicle you can think of, a bicycle, a unicycle, a pangolin, or a petrol powered pangolin.
But it was too late, the man disappeared over the horizon. As the remaining priests gathered their thoughts, one of them suggested that they should not be discouraged, and that their fallen friends would want them to rebuild the shrine in memory of them.
The priests agreed and set about building a new shrine! bigger and better than the first to remember this tragic day. They quarried stones, they cut down trees and they sewed curtains, nice curtains, I mean REALLY nice curtains, with tassels and everything. It took the fifty priests a few weeks to complete but eventually they were able to stand back and admire their new creation.
It was a quaint chapel on the hill. The sort of chapel you would look at and say "hey look at that quaint little chapel, and oh damn check out those nice curtains!". A trodden dirt path led to the entrance of a small stone structure, inside was the picture of simplicity and modesty. A few rows of pews on a polished wooden floor, and an altar stood in front of a patchwork deity symbol.
As the priests admired their new chapel, they remarked that yes, their fallen friends would be happy with this. One of the priests suggested that they visit a local theme park to celebrate this day. Exactly half of the priests agreed, they spent the day riding deity approved rides, gambling deity approved amounts of money and not riding deity condemned rides.
Upon returning from their celebrations the priests were greeted by a horrifying sight. "Have I got deity approved theme park snacks in my eyes!?" one of the priests was heard to say "or has something destroyed our chapel!?". The priest was correct, on the hill lay a pill of stone rubble, limbs and silky smooth curtain tassels.... which was all on fire for some reason.
As the priests stood staring in horror over their lost friends, one of them turned to notice something that, yes, upon the horizon he could just make out the man in black speeding into the distance. But it was too late, he was gone. As the remaining priests took care of the dead in the way decreed by Superbook, one of them suggested that this should not be the end, and that their fallen friends would want them to rebuild the chapel in memory of them.
The priests agreed and set about pillaging neighbouring villages for building supplies. They gathered glass, mixed cement, smelted iron, mined for gold and expanded their quarry. They didn't just rebuild the chapel, they built a fully fledged church! The sort of church that when you refer to it like "Oh it's up by the church", people would know what you are talking about and benefit from your informative directions. It had taken the twenty five priests six months of labour but there it stood. A paved path led through an iron fence, protection against and would-be-church-destroyers and towards an imposing stone structure. Stain glass windows adorned the front complete with deity symbols, the pews could seat a thousand and a golden forged Superbook sat upon the altar.
The twenty five priests patted themselves on the back and said a prayer for the lost friends. One priest suggested that after six months they deserved a celebratory meal to mark the occasion. Twelve priests agreed whilst the rest stayed to rest, content in the safety of their shiny new iron fence. The twelve priests spent the evening at a nearby Italian restaurant, because everyone is allowed to eat Italian food.
After an evening of scoffing increasingly abstract pasta shapes the twelve priests returned to their church. One of the priests was heard to say "Have I got tagliatelle in my eye!? Or has someone knocked down our church!? AGAIN!" The scene that greeted them was one of sorrow and anger. Sorrow for their dead friends, crushed under heaps of stone and glass. Anger at their dead friends, for placing so much faith in an iron fence. Yet more anger at the figure they could see vanishing over the horizon.
At this point you are probably thinking that these priests are idiots, that surely they can understand the pattern by now that building a church plus staying in the church equals death. You would also think that after the previous events they would not believe that the solution would be to build a bigger church.... as this in no way addresses the problem at hand. You may think that surely he can't just keep rambling on like this and that he will wrap this up soon, after all we have figured out the pattern of the joke and we know where it is going anyway.
So one of the priests, suffering from long term memory loss, suggested that to honour their friends they should build a new monument to their faith. The others, after giving him concerned looks, figured they had come this far and, resigned to their fate, they agreed. The priests then spent the next five years ravaging the lands for resources. They felled forests, flattened hills and drove the critically endangered Pentapus to extinction to use their tears for cement (its like an octopus but it only has five arms... and only has five eyes.)
After a further five years of construction, they were finally able to stand back, crane their necks high, and admire their creation. This was a truly great achievement. This was now a cathedral, the sort of cathedral that architecture student congregate around. The sort of structure that everyone for miles around would refer to as "That massive f***ing monstrosity made of tears" and there would be weird rumors like "at night I've heard that you can hear the pentapusses crying from inside the walls". Whether these rumors were true or not, it was an impressive building. The size of an aeroplane hangar. It had an attached aeroplane hangar. It was the first cathedral built with a solid steel support structure and, for added protection, a moat and barbwire fence surrounded it.
The priests had been at the whole 'building monuments for the Superbook' for many years now and were getting old and tired. One of them suggested that they should take a trip to a local spa for a day of relaxation after this great achievement, "after all..." he said "page 69 of Superbook does proclaim in giant text, 'Thou shalt spa'". Five other priests, who probably had better survival instincts, agreed and the six of them took off. Six remained content in their reinforced structure, even taking shifts to keep watch for added security.
The six who left spent the day wallowing in mud, having cucumbers placed on various body parts and being generally as un-energetic as possible. They were also pleasantly surprised to find that their local infamy granted them free access to all the spas facilities. After they had left in their own time and the spa owner barred the doors shut behind them they headed back to their church.
"Have I still got cucumber in my eye!?" one of the six said as their home loomed on the horizon, "or has someone destroyed our church!?"
The priest was correct. As they approached and crossed the moat they found a towering pile of rubble. There was an eerie silence as they glared at the destruction, picturing their dead friends somewhere inside. The silence was only broken by the sound of the man in black speeding off over the horizon and the joyous cries of Pentapus souls being freed.
The sight of the man in black filled one of the priests with rage. He turned to the others and said "Hey I know what we need to do!" ... The others agreed before he had chance to say what it was.
The priests set about gathering more resources. After the ten years it took them to gather this, they were surrounded by a scorched barren earth. They had felled all the trees for twenty miles, flattened the earth, hunted all life to extinction (I mean all life, even worms... they took all the worms and used them to lure down all the birds. Then they trained the birds to help lift heavy objects for them. Then they ate the birds. Then they made a monument to remember the birds. Then they... didn't really put much effort into maintaining it and it ran into disrepair... the end), drained lakes and sucked clouds from the sky somehow.
It took a further ten years for the small group of ageing priests to complete their construction. For the sake of this story four of the priests died during a slave bird rebellion that was later crushed. Mainly because I can't think of many more advancing stages of church besides going into ghost churches or space churches, though those would be awesome.
Their creation could barely be called a church.Yes it was built in the shape of their deity symbol and inside were super mahogany (like regular mahogany only more awesome) pews and a diamond pulpit, but to all other purposes this was a fortress. The entire structure was titanium, standing thirty stories high. It was surrounded with laser fences, laser moats full of lasers, and atop the building were placed a cluster of guns which shot bullets which were also made of lasers. There were immense speaker systems built into the walls which issued threats as well as religious good will messages to all who approached. It was the sort of church that you wouldn't say anything about... because the church would know what you said and rain lasers upon you.
The doom of the man in black was built. But they needed bait. The two old priests drew straws to decide who would stay. The priest who left made it known that he would be leaving for a day on the beach.
He spent his day pretending to sunbathe, pretending to build sandcastles and pretending to dip his toes in the water. Until he heard a commotion in the distance. He raced back towards his fortress with a smile on his face, the sort of smile you would have if the person who has killed ninety eight of your closest ninety nine friends had been killed. When he could peer over the next horizon however, his smile vanished. All he could see in front of him was a smoking heap of titanium and misfiring lasers. As he peered through the smoke he could make out the man in black making his escape.
Something inside him had told him that this would happen and this time he was prepared. He knew there was no sand in his eyes... he had only been pretending to touch the sand. He ran behind a nearby bush and hopped aboard his Super Priesty Priest Scooter and gave chase.
Through the desolate lands he chased the man, gaining ever so slowly until after hours, to the priests surprise, the man had pulled over. The priest pulled up and approached the man, his face red with rage.
"HAVE YOU BEEN KNOCKING DOWN OUR CHURCHES!?" The priest roared.
And the man replied
"...... no....... "

FYI, this is a story COLLECTION. Lots of standalones technically. So, you can basically start to read at any chapter, no pre-read of the other chapters needed technically (other than maybe getting better descriptions of characters than: Adam Vir=human, Krill=antlike alien, Sunny=tall alien, Conn=telepathic alien). The numbers are (mostly) only for organization of posts and continuity.
OC Written by Charlie Stastarrfallknightrise,
Typed up and then posted here by me.
Proofreading and language check for some chapters by u/Finbar9800
Future Lore and fact check done by me.
Gotta love Adams mom being an ace!
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Krill was mildly uncomfortable, and so was Sunny.
They had all been invited to what the humans described as a "black tie" event on mars, mostly for political delegations, rich sponsors, a couple of famous people, and the occasional member of the UNSC or the GA. Most of the GA reps were Rundi, since they tended to like this political sort of thing.
There was at least one Tesraki, who had made the executive decision to come, since he saw financial opportunity in getting to know some rich humans.
Sunny had been invited to stand in for the Drev counselor, who could not attend due to some issues back on Anum. Dr Krill and Dr. Katie had been invited to attend the event in case medical personnel were required for any reason.
Adam was the only one who had been invited for himself.
The black tie event had been sent by way of a physical letter which Adam had called, "Excessively pretentious." in a day and age where everything was sent electronically.
The fact they had managed to get a letter to him out in the middle of space in the first place was pretty impressive.
Sunny hadn't really known or cared what all of this meant, but Adam had been nervous and very serious about the dress code. Despite thinking the entire thing was pretentious, that didn't stop him from immediately sending away for his mother's help.
Sunny was, of course, encouraged to wear ceremonial formal armor to the event.
Krill was keeping very close track of this odd human behavior, constantly asking questions as Adam was preparing himself.
"Why don't you just wear a regular suit?"
"Because that would be a social faux pas."
"A what?"
He sighed,
"I don't know, it's french or something. I think it's a ballet term. It just means it would be a social screw up and people would totally judge me for it."
"They would judge you for wearing the wrong thing?"
Krill wondered curiously, Adam nodded,
"That is the point of these parties, and has been for the last two and a half thousand years. These parties are honestly just the biggest pissing contests where people try to out dress each other in subtle ways, and the old people who know what they are doing make fun of the new people for having no idea how to do it properly."
Krill looked interested,
"How fascinating. So, it is a way to show your status subtly?”
"Oh yes. Status is a big deal. It started to go out of style for a while, but this whole adherence to dress code has come back with a vengeance in the last few years. The fashion world has seen an upheaval in pretentiousness, and celebrities have been laughed out of parties for trying to be avant-garde."
"To be what?"
"Sorry, pretty sure that's also french too? It means new, interesting, or out of the ordinary usually to make a statement."
Sunny leaned in a little,
"And they expect an air force commander to know how to properly dress for black tie?"
"They don't, which is why they invited me. I am supposed to make others look good by looking bad myself. Of course, I also make them look good by being invited in the first place. Of course, joke's on them because I have a secret weapon on my side..."
He patted the front of his shirt,
"Thank you mother."
"I am now confused."
Adam waved a hand,
"Yeah, I know, It's pretty stupid…”
"I thought you recently decided that you like dressing up?"
The human turned in place a couple of times in front of the mirror, trying to get a better view of himself,
"Correction, I have always enjoyed dressing up – got that from my mom – what I don't enjoy is the pissing contest that comes along with it.”
"What is that?"
"Bow tie."
"You look like someone's Christmas present."
He adjusted the bow tie,
"Well than someone is getting a sexy as fuck Christmas present now aren't they?"
He said and winked at Sunny, while buttoning up the front of the 'waistcoat' and pulling on the jacket.
When he was done, the two aliens had to admit that he really did stand out, all in black, black pants, black tuxedo jacket, cuff links, black tie, black waistcoat, and a purple/blue carnation threaded through the buttonhole on the lapel.
His shoes were almost as reflective as the mirror behind him.
"How do I look?"
"Like a goofy idiot, but the suit wasn't going to change that."
He lifted a finger to flip Sunny off.
"Not very dapper of you."
Katie said from the doorway.
They looked up to see Katie, who had also commissioned a dress from Martha, and honestly made Adam look a little plain.
"Ready to go?”
"As ready as I will ever be."
[…]
Krill kept a shrewd eye on all the strange human protocols.
As far as dressing up went, Krill could immediately see who the “In-crowd” included. Most of those people understood the rules Adam had laid out for him, wearing the proper evening attire, where those not in the “in” wore clothing that approximated the rules, but missed them on several occasions.
The way the evening was set up was a little bit more like a “ball” as Adam described, being announced as they were walked in, and then ordered them to mingle with the crowd. Adam and Katie got a few glances from the “in-group” who seemed surprised that a simple ship captain would know anything about formal evening attire.
Sunny just found the entire thing hilarious.
All of this subtle dressing up to impress each other?
If Drev held balls, instead of dancing they would probably just beat each other to death.
But here, there were a lot of subtle clues and hints that went right over her and the Doctor's heads, while Adam seemed to know what he was doing.
As they walked in waiters offered Adam an alcoholic drink, while Krill received sugared water, and Sunny a rather strange tincture that was generally just water with plant flavoring... It was pretty good though, so she didn't complain.
They were met on arriving by the event coordinator, whose eyes opened wide when she saw Adam, pausing and holding out a hand.
Due to the conflated and rather twisted nature of black tie events in the future, Adam took the hand, and bowed a bit, lowering his head, a strange area between the less formal handshake and the more formal kiss on the hand, which was also not a thing in societies post WWIII
"Commander, I... you look..."
She trailed off, even to Sunny it was clear the woman hadn't expected him to know anything.
He smiled icily at her.
Krill leaned in in fascination.
This was one of the most intriguing parts of humanity. The polite way in which they were totally rude to each other.
"Well thank you. My mother has a Ph.D in the information age and a masters in historical fashion."
That shut the woman up and she politely dismissed herself, walking away with a straight back.
Adam smirked,
"Her dress isn't the right length for an evening event."
"I thought she coordinated the event?"
Sunny muttered,
"She couldn't coordinate herself out of a paper bag."
He winked at Sunny and Krill,
"You can't out-dress the son of a historical fashion expert. Simply not possible, my mother even used the correct materials."
He tugged lightly at his jacket.
Dr. Katie had disappeared on entry, leaving the three of them to wander about the room as Adam pointed out the other important people.
There were a few military commanders, Rundi, and the aforementioned Tesraki.
There were at least five major political leaders, and even larger handful of actors who had their hands in charities or political causes related to the event.
Adam was only halfway through his first drink, when he was waylaid by one of the younger actors.
Even Sunny could tell straight off that he was not dressed appropriately.
He had clearly tried very hard, but his efforts were in vain.
While everything looked alright from a distance, up close something was wrong about everything. The material of his jacket, the style of his shirt, the type of pants, the lapels on the coat, and even the patterned pocket square, which should have been a solid color but wasn't.
He was joined by another group of men, who then began some pretentious conversation about noticing how Adam was new to these sort of events. The way they spoke made it pretty clear they had no idea who he was or what the proper dress code was either.
Adam smiled and didn't say anything.
"And what do you do for a living?"
One of them asked,
"Simply an UNSC representative."
"Ah that explains a lot."
They glanced down at him with pointed looks.
The conversation continued. Sunny wondered why Adam didn't just shut them all up by telling them exactly who he was, but Krill had a theory that Adam was just playing with them as a human way to build up the moment so that he could socially crush them.
As humans do, their conversation wandered until it eventually moved around to the UNSC and other related topics.
One of the men nodded knowingly,
"I am somewhat knowledgeable on the subject myself."
Adam raised an eyebrow.
"Are you?"
"Well yes, I have a brother in law who flies shuttles and planes for the UNSC. Tell me, what is your opinion on the D-4 class engine on a F-90 darkfire. I honestly think they are rather overpowered for what is being asked of them."
Adam frowned,
"The darkfire doesn't have a D-4 engine. That is a warp classification which-"
The man raised a hand,
"No no. I heard my brother in law talking about it. Personally, I think they should have just kept the jet engines they would have been plenty enough power to make it into orbit.”
The commander's face scrunched in confusion as he shook his head,
"No, it's a fusion engine, and the jet engine can't fly in the upper atmosphere because there is no lift-"
"Look, Adam, was that your name? I generally tend to know what I am talking about. The darkfire jet engines would have plenty of power to make it into atmosphere…"
"But it’s a jet engine which implies it is for a plane and not for a rocket-"
The guy cut him off again and continued to ramble onward about how he took some engineering classes in college and would know what he was talking about. Since Adam Joined the UNSC and didn't go to college, that he probably didn't know anything at all, or at least that is what they said in not so many words.
Sunny was getting a bit annoyed and would like to have squished the guy, but Adam just shook his head at her.
She stayed silent and grumpy as the other men continued to correct Adam on knowledge of his own favorite aircraft.
*"My brother owns a spaceship with a class E warp core.”
One of them boasted. Adam rolled his eyes,
"There is no such thing-"
"My brother owns the craft, I am pretty sure I know what I am talking about. It's one of the most powerful cores in the galaxy."
"Um, I don't think…"
"Yes, the E is more powerful than the A. A ship like the Harbinger or the Enterprise would only make it part of the way across the galaxy but the-"
He kept going.
Adam looked like he was dying, but why didn't he say anything?
It was just then that someone appeared from the crowd.
Sunny recognized a political figure they had met at GA summits on occasion.
He raised his glass and stepped into the group,
"Ah commander! I am glad to see you could make it."
The group of men glanced at each other in confusion.
Adam nodded,
"It's good to see you too counselor."
He motioned to the group,
”We were just having a fascinating discussion on warp engines."
"Oh yes?"
He turned to look at the men,
"Than I am sure the commander has also told you about his escapades as a darkfire pilot."
The satisfaction Sunny got from watching their faces was priceless, almost orgasmic.
She could tell from the look on Adam's face that he was feeling similarly,
"Well, no we had not made it to the subject…”
"I was just going to explain to them how the duel E 20 engine has both a jet engine and a fusion engine. The jet engine for flying in atmosphere and the Fusion engine for moving out of atmosphere considering that the jet engine is not powerful enough to lift the craft without air buoyancy."
Sunny was laughing on the inside.
"Ah yes. I seem to recall a discussion along those lines. Tell me commander, what about the Harbinger's engine is it a class A-1."
Adam nodded,
"Could potentially get you to the other side of the universe if you asked her. The classification system is A-D 1-4 on each, so my ship has one of the most powerful engines mankind has ever bothered to build."
He glanced out of the corner of his eye at the other men, who were beginning to slink away.
Sunny chirped in pleasure.
The rep nodded as they left,
"I heard the futility of your conversation from the other side of the room."
"Thanks for the help. I was dying inside."
The two men laughed and took their drinks.
Krill was very pleased with his examination on how humans subtly tried to one up each other with their dress and understanding of certain topics, though it seemed odd to him that someone would claim to be an expert when it was, in fact, their brother or brother in law who knew about the subject and not them.
But he supposed that was the social nature of humanity.
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Want to find a specific one, see the whole list or check fanart?
Here is the link to the master-post.
Intro post by me
OC-whole collection
Patreon of the author
Thanks for reading! As you saw in the title, this is a cross posted story written by starrfallknightrise and I'll just upload some of it here for you guys, if you are interested and want to read ahead, the original story-collection can be found on tumblr or wattpad to read for free. (link above this text under "OC:..." ) It is the Empyrean Iris story collection by starfallknightrise. Also, if you want to know more about the story collection i made an intro post about it, so feel free to check that out to see what other great characters to look forward to! (Link also above this text). I have no affiliations to the author; just thought I’d share some of the great stories you might enjoy a lot!
Obviously, I have Charlie’s permission to post this and for the people already knowing the stories, or starting to read them: If you follow the link and check out the story you will see some differences. I made some small (non-artistic) changes, mainly correcting writing mistakes, pronoun correction and some small additional info here and there of things which were not thought of/forgotten or even were added/changed in later stories (like the “USS->UNSC” prefix of Stabby, Chalar=/->Sunny etc). As well as some "biggemajor" changes in descriptions and info’s for the same stringency/continuity reason. That can be explained by the story collection being, well a story collection at the start with many standalone-stories just starring the same people, but later on it gets more to a stringent storyline with backstories and throwbacks. (For example Adam Vir has some HEAVY scars over his body, following his bones, which were not really talked about up till half the collection, where it says it covers his whole body and you find out via backflash that he had them the whole time and how he got them, they just weren't mentioned before. However, I would think a doctor would at least see these scars before that, especially since he gets analyzed, treated and goes shirtless/in T-shirts in some stories). So TLDR: Writing and some descriptions are slightly changed, with full OK from the author, since he himself did not bother to correct these things before.

So.
Mineru and Rauru are supposed to be the last of the Zonai.
Rauru is supposed to be the first King of Hyrule and married Sonia, a Hylian.
The Ancient Hero who fought Calamity Ganon is a Zonai, but has ears like a Hylian and a more noticeable tail.
The implication seems to be that at least some of Rauru and Sonia’s progeny became a new generation of Zonai.
This tracks with how the Zonai are said to have suddenly disappeared a few thousand years ago, which is long after the Calamity tapestry.
Also worth noting that many of the structures in the Zonai Kingdom of Hyrule had yet to become the Sky Islands when Zelda became a dragon.
The implication seems to be that the Sky Islands being raised into the sky + the disappearance of Zonai civilization happened a good while after Rauru’s death.
For that first bit?
I have a sneaking suspicion that the raising of the sky islands happens during the events of the tapestry, and this is the war for the Triforce against Demise.
I think that Demise is potentially ultimately just another “Ganon”, a phantom projection of the Demon King Ganondorf’s malice, acting in his stead while he remains dormant.
A phenomenon that, at the time it happened, may not have been named “Ganon” yet.
The inhabitants of Hyrule get evacuated to what becomes Skyloft while Hylia, the Zonai, and the Sheikah wage war against Demise on the surface with the aid of various tribes.
Eventually the events of Skyward Sword happens, and the Hylians return to the surface to re-establish the Kingdom of Hyrule and form the “modern” Hyrule.
This could also explain the origins of the “dragons” Eldin, Lanaryu, and Faron, as well as why the Silent Realm’s guardians look like Rauru. It’s all Zonai.
As for the second.
It’s worth noting that an in-universe rumor is that the “Barbarians” for the Barbarian set were actually the Zonai. This raises numerous questions.
Why would the descendants of the first king of Hyrule be branded “Barbarians” by the Hylians, and why did they disappear when they had such advanced tech?
I think that a power struggle might have broken out between the Zonai and Hylian descendants of Rauru and Sonia over who gets claim to the surface.
A civil war between the Zonai and the Hylian/Sheikah factions over the Triforce and the claim to the Hyrulean Throne that results in the Zonai losing.
This would explain how the Zonai and their tech lost, as the would have been going up against the equally if not more advanced Sheikah tech.
This would also explain why the royal family ordered the Sheikah to abandon their tech, as the potential of a similar uprising would have been too much of a threat.
A means of proving their loyalty to Hylia’s lineage, and not Rauru’s other descendants. Might have been seen as necessary since the Sheikah seem to have based their mark off of Rauru’s third eye.
Seeing as Zelda was apparently surprised to discover the Zonai lineage of the Hyrulean Royal Family, I think it’s safe to say that the Zonai got mostly scrubbed from history.
Would also explain the heavy emphasis on maternal lineage with the “goddesses” in Hyrulean myth and legend, as the kingdom might have wanted to emphasize Hylian lineage, as a contrast with the Zonai “barbarians”.
In that sense, the discovery of Sheikah tech and Zonai lineage by the current generation of Hyrule would be a rediscovering of lost history, and a major recontextualization of past events both inside and outside of the game.
So then, assuming I’m on the right track, the question is what happened to the Zonai after they lost?
I think they became the Twili.
Calling the Zonai descendants of Rauru interlopers and barbarians would be a great way to delegitimize their history and claim to the throne and scrub it from the books.
This would explain why Twili magic/tech shares so many similarities with the Zonai. Intricate stone structures and complex circuitry patterns with a green glow.
This would also explain why the Zonai suddenly disappeared, as they as “interlopers” would have been banished to an entirely different plane altogether.
It would also bring a new meaning to the title “Twilight Princess” and whatnot. If the Twili are the lost Zonai descendants of Rauru, that would make Midna a princess of a Hyrule and a lineage that has faded into twilight.
TL;DR
I have a sneaking suspicion that TOTK is simultaneously the first and last games in the timeline due to time travel shenanigans, and that either the next game or TOTK’s DLC will go deeper into this stuff.

The writer has made use of many techniques and devices to describe Ugwu's impressions of the city.
Firstly, the author has utilised hyperbolic verbs to describe Ugwu's impressions ofㅓㄷ the city. The author writes, 'too choked with expectation' , 'itched to lay his ch eek.' The use of verbs like 'choked' and 'itched' are used by the author to greatly exaggerate Ugwu’s emotions of ecstasy and excitement, they serve as a method of telling the reader that Ugwu has positive impressions of the city.
Secondly, the author has excluded conjunctions in the first part of the extract. 'Ugwu did not believe…the back of his neck.' The author excluding conjunction[s] creates the impression that Ugwu is so amazed by the city as asyndeton heightens pace and excitement.
Thirdly, the author has made use of parataxis to show Ugwu's positive impressions of the city. 'But he did not mind. He was prepared to walk more in even hotter sun.' The use of short sentences places emphasis on Ugwu’s shock of the conditions of the city.
Finally, the author has made use of similes to convey Ugwu's amazement. The author writes 'like polite well-dressed men' ; ' like tables wrapped with leaves.' The use of similes with positive connotations, 'well-dressed', conveys the idea that Ugwu only has positive thoughts about the city, [this is supported by an absence of information stating otherwise].
_____
0 4
Focus this part of your answer on the second part of the source, from line 20 to the end. A student said, ‘From the moment he arrives at Master’s compound, the writer portrays Ugwu’s feelings of pure excitement, but by the end it seems that he may be very disappointed.’
To what extent do you agree?
In your response, you could:
• consider your own impressions of Ugwu’s feelings
• evaluate how the writer describes Ugwu’s feelings by the end
• support your response with references to the text.
[20 marks]
One way the author has conveyed this impression is through the way they ended the story. At the end of this extract they wrote 'Ugwu stood by the door, waiting,' this contrasts to the previous 'choked with expectations.' In the end it seems Ugwu’s expectations were grossly inflated which may in the end lead to him becoming very disappointed.
On the other hand, there are moments where it is possible that Ugwu may have been emotionally neutral. The author has written quite vaguely, not allowing the reader to truly know whether Ugwu was disappointed or not, however, judging as Ugwu’s expectations are based off of his imagination and greeness, it is likely that he isn't disappointed but instead shocked and as a result putting on a more realistic mindset. Ugwu is constantly amazed, although, his master doesn't seem very welcoming 'faintly distracted expression,' 'oblivious that he had just asked people in.' It has little to no relation to his expectations, ' something sweet,' 'good fortune,' 'like a necklace,''never seen a room so wide.' Ugwu still only being amazed shows that he as a matter of fact isn't disappointed.
Another reason he may not be disappointed is because of the reason for his excitement. Ugwu is excited to to be in a place so different from where he is from ,'thatch roof,', the author has portrayed Ugwu as not excited for for the job or for the master, but, for the new experience, this is evident throughout the extract, 'the lawn glistened,' 'shaped like slender hills,' the use of similes being used to compare the setting places emphasis on the idea that it is not the master or the job that excites Ugwu, meaning that he can't be disappointed with for having a lackluster master[, or for something he doesn't seem very keen on in the first place].
It could also be said however, that Ugwu is disappointed. Whilst this isn't said or *noticed* in the extract it can be inferred from the extract. This inference could be made from Ugwu’s master's response to him which almost demeaned Ugwu, 'the child?,' 'remember something more important.' The use of the comparative 'more important' means that the Master doesn't view Ugwu as anything important, and so the reader infers that in response to that Ugwu feels depressed and slightly disappointed as things might not be as 'sweet' as he had previously thought.
In conclusion, I do agree with the student's statement as the sudden juxtaposition/change in mood has led me to believe that before he was cheery and after he was disappointed or melancholic.
​
---
Q2
If there are few moments in life that come as clear and as pure as ice, when the mountain breathed back at her, Zoe knew that she had trapped one such moment and that it could never be taken away. Everywhere was snow and silence. Snow and silence; the complete arrest of life; a rehearsal and a pre-echo of death. She pointed her skis down the hill. They looked like weird talons of brilliant red and gold in the powder snow as she waited, ready to swoop. I am alive. I am an eagle.
How does the writer use language here to describe Zoe’s feelings?
You could include the writer’s choice of:
• words and phrases
• language features and techniques
• sentence forms.
[8 marks]
The writer to describe Zoe’s feelings has made use of a variety of language devices and techniques. How the author has done so will be explored in this 8 mark question.
Firstly, the author has made use of a perspective switch to describe her feelings. The author writes 'she waited, ready to swoop. I am alive. I am an eagle.' The noun 'eagle' has connotations of of freedom and exhilaration. The author has switched the perspective to place emphasis on these connotations, saying that Zoe feels free and exhilarated,[additionally,] another way emphasis is placed on this is the switch to the first person perspective which personalises Zoe’s situation for the reader making it easy to understand that perhaps Zoe does feel free.
Secondly, the author has described Zoe’s feelings through the use of repetition. The author writes 'every where was snow and silence.' The repetition of 'snow' and 'silence' places emphasis on the idea that snow was all there was for her creating an impression of total serenity, making the reader think that Zoe is at total peace.
Lastly, the author has made use of parataxis and asyndeton. The author writes 'snow and silence; the complete arrest of life; a rehearsal.' The use of asyndeton and parataxis both create excitement and increase the pace of the story which may have been included by the author to replicate Zoe’s feelings, namely that of excitement.

Hey reddit, let me start out with an apology for any errors I make, I'm dyslexic, this is my first time posting here, and I'm still really anxious and upset about everything going on, in particular as I have diagnosed PTSD and G.A.D. It also is probably appropriate to give a trigger warning for just about anything one could be sensitive too, from assault, to cancer, to death, because my life has had it all lately.... This is the very long winded story of how my neighbor couple, who are a toxic combination of entitled and addicted to some kind of uppers, are trying to make my life a living hell, and, how I am not retaliating and it's somehow making them even more hateful...
Relevant backstory about me/my home situation- I (36F) bought my house all by myself (yah!) in 2016 before everything got super expensive. I am a career musician, but because what I make performing in an indie band and in royalties varies WILDLY from year to year, I also am proud to be the primary child care provider for my niece, and three other long time family friend's children who are now between the ages of 5 and 7 but have come to my home for daycare and even over nights and weekends sometimes since they were infants we're all like a little extended family. I live alone other than my little pets and the children who are often here.
In June 2022 I was misdiagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer (most deadly kind of breast cancer) and spent 6 weeks helping my parents and the kids and my friends get ready to help me... then lose me basically, before it was determined it was NOT inflammatory breast cancer (yah!) I just had Regular old precancerous tissue being made to look even worse than it was because the tissue had also developed an antibodic-resistant infection allll over the tissue under my breast. Ultimately good news except the very next day one of the moms in our little childcare group died instead. Like some kind of nasty joke God was making that wasn't funny and I'm still not over. Then, my insurance company decided to fight me over surgery to have the tissue and infection removed while cycling me through endless rounds of antibiotics and more invasive (but cheaper for my insurance) treatments. I did the best I could to keep up with my home and life and still help with the kids but I was *really really* sick until February of this year (2023) when I finally got my surgery, and I'm still really struggling with the lose of my friend both for myself and her son. I also have no money or savings or anything of a safety net left anymore. I had to access it all while I was sick and paying for my surgery/medical care (so you now know I'm American I suppose).
Now, onto the neighbors...
In August 2022, this couple moved in nextdoor and have been single handedly changing the block vibe from "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood where a few of the parents smoke weed here and there" to "Nightmare on Elm Street featuring Crack" and I am not sure that I have ever seen so up close and personal the inner workings of.... sociopaths? Or whatever the correct name for people who are habitual lairs and take pleasure in causing harm to others (and maybe each other?). They are heavy drinkers, heavy cannabis users (no shade, I got my med card before surgery and with edibles I didn't even need other prescription pain meds!! but anything can be a problem for some people), and most unfortunately they do some kind of pills or something that make them very "up". While the wife is typically too "out of it" to maintain work, the husband works from home as some type of an accountant and seems to keep it together, and make just enough money, to maintain their "lifestyle" which basically means they do a lot of drugs and super weird addict things, but with an aura of entitlement. It's a toxic combination.
The couple, who I will call Sackie (44F) and Jam(41M), originally presented themselves as an older couple with Sackie in particular having many health issues.... and I will admit I first mistook her for being older and originally assumed her manner of speaking (a bit low, mumbled and slurred, without a good awareness to social cues or appropriateness, like trying to talk to me about how her brother molested her but her mom payed off the law to make it go away or how later she started a business with said mom, but her mom started having an affair with Jam's boss and that's how they met... in front of the children and/or in maybe my second conversation with her) for some kind of stroke. It was only after many awkward rambling conversations with Sackie that I realized they were actually not much older at all, and her many health issues (more on this later) were fictional or simply from withdrawals/drug use. I did learn, however, that Jam and Sackie have a long, sorted, unpleasant history, with just about everyone they'd ever met... and somehow, it was always they who were the victims.
Now, I try very hard not to victim blame and I know from personal experience that sometimes good people have strings of unfortunate events in their lives-- but Sackie's recounts of events were often hard to understand, or contradictory to previous stories she had told, sometimes even within the same conversation. So I knew almost right away she wasn't a reliable narrator, but, with our houses being located about 12 feet apart, my original misinterpretation of them as an older couple, and with Sackie intentionally lying about some things to get my sympathy.... I had no idea how bad they both really were or what I was in for...
I first spoke with Sackie more than just saying hi in passing sometime around Thanksgiving (American Thanksgiving) when she knocked on my door to ask if she and Jam could give me an extra out door Christmas ornamental they had. I thought they were just being Christmasy and kind. I didn't have the kids at my house that week and Sackie smelled the cannabis I had been enjoying on my couch (a rarity honestly) and said, "oh is that what I think it is?" Paranoid that she was offended I blurted out, "oh yes I have a cannabis prescription, this is probably TMI but if you notice me home and slagging a lot it is because I am waiting for breast surgery."
Sackie's face lite up, "Thats not TMI, I'm waiting for breast surgery too! I had uterine cancer and now I'm waiting for a double mastectomy. And don't worry I'm a medical user too" Now, I have since learned this to be a lie, but at the time it definitely made me feel sorry for her and I was just relieved I hadn't been "caught" by a neighbor who was offended by cannabis.
However, once Sackie learned I had weed.... well, she wanted to be my best friend. In fact, she almost invented a fantasy friendship with me. Asking for my number in case they needed someone to look in on their pets during the holidays to quickly turned to her calling and texting pages and pages of messages-- about how Jam abused her, and was cheating on her, how she had nobody and was so scared approaching her (fake) upcoming double mastectomy, how he'd made sure her name wasn't on the house when they bought it and he'd locked her out of all their money... and could she please have some weed because she was so sick? Oh she had a seizure because she was so sick could she please have some weed?? It went on and on, always about wanting weed, rides places, confusing pages of texts about how she was watching "dead to me" and how it was so unfair she didn't have a friend like those characters?? Could I be that friend??
It was intense. And I didn't handle it well. I did my best to just respond to her slower and slower apart and just be nice but short and say no that I didn't have or couldn't do XYZ for her.
Her begging and neediness intensified rapidly, sometimes she would come to my door and knock and ask for weed and I would feel obligated to give it to her just to get her away. She was always on something a lot more intense than weed when she'd knock. It was scary and sometimes the kids were here. She started texting me asking if I had "anything stronger" than weed and when I was understandablely like "no I don't do those things" she sent me about four pages about how she just meant "xanxa" because she used to have a standing prescription for xanxa and it helped her so much but she had "quit all her medicine except good ol weed and seeing a chiropractor" and was doing oh so much better now but just needed some but it was okay because she found another friend to give it to her.
This was the first time I expressly told her no and not to ask me about that type of thing and where she started to turn her fantasy friendship into me into a fantasy feud.
Shortly after she sent me another page long text saying, "not to be a bitch but I'm done with our one sided friendship." I responded that I understood, at this point it was Dec 22nd (2022) and I was just trying to spend time with my family. I said something like, "I understand, I have some health problems that make it hard for me to make new friends or even keep up with my current friends, but I will see you around as a neighbor." And hoped to never hear from her again.
Oh, how short that hope was. Several days later I started getting pages of frantic apologies, but also trying to make me feel guilty, and more frantic apologies, and letting me know that Jam is not cheating on her and evil and leaving her with nothing, and they're both such great people and always here if I need anything!!!
It's honestly hard to explain how unstable even her "nice" texts would sound and I'm not sure if we can post screen shots in this sub, but trust me, this woman and her husband are just constant, intense, invasive drama. While she and Jam both made me uncomfortable, almost like watching for when I would first let my dogs out in the morning or when a friend left my house and texting me about it... waiting on their front porch chain smoking for me to come outside then rushing over to talk-block me into conversations about other neighbors they hated, Jam's bosses affair with Sackie's mom, to tell me how sick they were, about how Sackie had to quit multiple jobs because her bosses would always sexually harass her... And stupid me would just try to kinda smile and nod and get out of the conversation.
I was so uncomfortable and somewhat scared of them because of the way they would talk about other people and each other and... its hard to describe but if anyone has even been close with someone using something like meth, you know how crazy their behaviors can be, even if they are being "nice." But until April 2023, they were just a bother, not a danger.
April was when Sackie's fantasy friendship with me turned into a full blown fantasy feud...
In early April, I was supposed to be recovered enough from surgery that I could work again so I to started to watch the children every week again, and apply for music gigs again... but unfortunately got a staph infection in my left breasts wound. I ended up being in a lot of pain and back on antibiotics and pretty out of it on my couch for a few days, though I managed not to be hospitalized again (yah!).
During the few days I was pretty much out of it during the infection, Jam and Sackie decided it would be a good time to get really "uppered" to rip up all the ornamental ivy in our shares breezeway (fine) but also OFF THE SIDE OF MY HOUSE AND OUT AROUND MY FRONT PORCH. They pulled down wires on the side of my house and did this during rainy season meaning they exposed my homes foundation to massive amounts of water no longer protected by plants and top soil.
I was in total shock. They hadn't asked permission, or even mentioned disliking the ivy, and they were clearly on something and STILL trying to rip up things around my front porch.
My kind, 70 year old father was over on April 14th, to help me do some weatheseason appropriate yard work I was struggling to do one my own because of the staph infection and we decided we had to try to say something to them about it, because at this point they were out front talking about what they were going to do AROUND MY FRONT PORCH. But again, wanting to keep peace my dad and I went outside and my dad just politely asked Sackie about what they were doing and, said something along the lines of, "well okay, just please don't do anything else on our side because we are going to take care of that ourselves..." and before he could even finish Sackie suddenly, in her slurred speech, yells "Do you think I'm fucking Stupid??" at my dad.
Now, at this point I can't take it anymore. My father thought he was going to have to change my diapers while I DIED this year. He does not deserve to be yelled at by some methed out neighbor. So I said, "Sackie, don't speak to my father that way, he is just looking out for me."
At which point Sackie LOSES IT and starts hollering to Jam and possibly just herself about how my dad and I are "so rude and trashy" and how they can do whatever they want because, they want things to look nice, etc etc, at which point I was just like, "come one dad let's go inside."
My dad and I worked on some chores in the back yard, then he was like, "I know we didn't do anything wrong, but let's go apologize because you don't want to have neighbor issues."
However, when we went back out front Sackie was literally pacing back and forward in the breezeway ranting to herself about how she had every right to do whatever she wanted with what I can only describe as a look of pure and total unhinged insanity. You know how when actors play their first role on screen after doing stage acting for years and so their movements come across as completely over the top? That's a lot how Sackie looked that day stalking up and down alley talking to herself, like a director had just told her, "act really nuts!" Except Sackie wasn't acting. My dad said, "okay, well, we tried, some people just want to be upset," to me, and we went back to working on my house.
Keep in mind, I was still on heavy duty antiboditics and fighting a staph infection at this time, and was trying to get the house in shape for my kiddo who's mom had passed away to be able to sleep over at my house that night to give his dad a little break. I figured Sackie would bitch about me to Jam and whoever else she could get to listen (like how she would speak about others to me) but eventually get over it and go back to trying to have her fantasy friendship with me, because after all, she was able to nag me into giving her free weed occasionally, and all my dad and I had done was ask her not to do anything else on my property, right? How mad could she be?)
Well, apparently, something I have now learned, is when someone addicted to uppers decides you are their fixation, they are as addicted to causing you hell.
The following day Sackie (and Sam according to her texts) sent me pages and pages of texts, again I'm not sure on the character limits or screen shot policy here, but basically she sent me about 10 text pages about how my dad and I were so rude and disgusting and she and Jam had the right to do anything they wanted as the breezeway is "their's " (again, that is their property on that side but only up until a foot and half or so away from my house, and definitely not around my front porch) and how she and Jam have always been so nice to me and I'm just such a terrible person, and "YOU'RE WELCOME " for how that side of my house will look?
She used a lot more curse words and details than that, many of which were not even truthful and were hard to understand, and kept bringing up a Tupperware container and a cloth canvas bag that she had left some kind of soup she made for my friend (my friend who Sackie also made extremely uncomfortable but would try to be polite to her when she was outside smoking) when my friend had to stay with me for a few weeks after she had to get a hysterectomy and needed help recovering, and saying "and just throw out that Tupperware I gave you, you have no idea the kind of niceness I've constantly given to you!" (remember friends, even this major pushover knows-- kindness done with the expectation of something in return is just manipulation) Like, somehow this unwanted soup she'd left my friend when she was recovering here in March 2023, made it okay for her to do whatever she wanted on my property?
This also feels like an appropriate time to add that it was when my friend was recovering at my house that I learned the extent of Sackie's lies about her health. Remember how I said she'd gained my sympathy by pretending she had breast cancer and was waiting on a double mastectomy? Her story was that she had found out she had uterine cancer after a miscarriage and she'd had to have a full hysterectomy and the cancer had spread and so she needed a double mastectomy now but she was having trouble with her insurance and her husband, that is why she wanted to mold me into her "Dead to Me" friend, right?
Nope. Apparently not. As, she told my friend that, "she knew exactly what she was going through because she had just terrible, terrible, periods and has endometriosis too, just like my friend, but she hasn't been able to get the hysterectomy she needed yet because she didn't have a doctor because she didn't do Western Medicine anymore, all she needed was a chiropractor and weed... oh and the hysterectomy for her terrible endometriosis just like my friend." She also said something that implied her husband was getting her a boob job, for cosmetic reasons, and there had never been cancer at all. I have no idea if the miscarriage was a lie too or not, and it isn't really relevant other than to stress, that Sackie and her husband really have a hard time with the truth.
Anyway, after her round of nasty texts after the ivy incident, I sent her back an extremely polite and short text, saying I was sorry she felt so offended by my dad and I asking her not to do anything else on my property, and I was very happy to respect their wishes for us not to communicate and I wished them well.
The next two weeks or so, until April 29th 2023, Sackie and Jam made me uncomfortable but were manageable. They did things like intentionally stacking hay against my fence, talking loudly to each other about how "trashy" I was, and at one point in time even pretending to do yard work but actually just smashing the side of my house with shovels! They even had someone else over at some point they were intentionally loud explaining too about how disgusting the ivy was and what a favor they were doing "cleaning it up".... but honestly I didn't even really care.
My paralegal friend recommended I start documenting things though, because she said some of the worst people she's seen in court are functional, entitled, drug addicts and I should not assume they would return to reason, and that it would be a good idea if I let the Neighborhood Stabilization Officer know what was going on, start documentation, and draft up a cease and desist to send if they did anything else and man, she was right, so right in fact, we didn't even have time to send the cease and desist.
On April 24th, out of nowhere, she sent me another several pages of unhinged texts, once again talking about how I should thank her for ripping up my ivy, throw away her Tupperware, how I was a terrible person and she and her husband and everyone think I'm on the Spectrum (hey man, autism is highly under diagnosed in women and that isn't the insult they think it is, but I could tell she thought she was calling me the R word), and just nasty absurd abusive things.
I sent her a text simply saying "Do not communicate with me or anyone at my house or threaten me or my pets again."
I found that dumb Tupperware and canvas bag she kept bringing up like it was gold, and put them on a porch along with another letter saying the same as in my text.
Jam responded this time, by smashing the Tupperware and leaving it back on my porch....
Now on April 29th, while I was hosting a sleep over for 3 of the children, and, as bad as this couple had been, I honestly believed they weren't bad enough to cause me trouble when the children were here with me. Looking back, I can't tell you why I gave them that kind of credit. Sackie self published a childrens book in her early 30's, and spoke of volunteering at children's libraries, at least according to her, and I suppose I thought that meant she'd have a respect for kids even if they did not have respect for me.... once again, I was wrong.
Around 5 or 6pm, the kids and I went out onto my front porch to bring our pizza inside at the same time as Sackie was getting out of getting out of her drug dealers car with him, she began screaming profanities at me, saying I was disgusting, threatening the pets, and other things I couldn't really understand fully due to her slurred speech once again but verbally assaulting me but this time, in front of the children was the last straw I had.
I quickly got the kids inside, away from her, and served them the pizza. I told them not to worry about the neighbor, that she was a kind of sick that made people yell when they shouldn't sometimes and they should just ignore her. I made sure they were content talking amongst themselves and eating pizza and strawberries- and went to call the police and finally told them about all the ongoing harassment, threats, begging, drug use, and now screaming and profanities in front of the children and asked for help.
Then I got ahold of one of the other moms who came and picked up all three of the kids, and we just pretended that we decided it was a better idea for them have a sleep over at her friend's house than mine. The kids were fine, but as soon as they left I lost it. Just big gut crying. The months of being nagged for weed, rides, and favors, getting passive aggressive texts about not being Sackie's new insta best friend, feeling like I was being watched constantly, worrying about Sackie saying inappropriate things in front of the children, dealing with Jam's creepy stares and used car sales man persona, the past weeks of their new upper fueled obsession with my property line and being the new fixation of their abuse, trying to be kind to them even as I struggled with my breast disease and Sackie trying to me as an emotional punching bag and free weed. I was finally crying so so so hard, my neighbors on my other side (a lovely couple my age) heard and rushed out and had me come wait inside and were so so so nice to me while I looked insane (did I forget to mention I'd let the kids 'do' my make up, meaning they'd painted my whole face with eye shadow including giving me a sparkly beard?) until the police arrived.
Now I live in a really nice neighborhood, but I am in one of the highest crime cities in America and our politicians and police staff are internationally questioned, so I was actually really impressed that the police came, cared, and, that somehow in my state, I *still* apparently looked less insane than Sackie and Jam.
They responded fairly quickly, and patiently looked over the wild texts from Jackie, my accounts of her and Jam passively terrorizing me, and checked out the side of my yard which they had originally ripped up the ivy and started this whole insane fantasy fight with me over.
They very much believed me and said I should have called them sooner, which surprised me. Sackie refused to come out and speak with the police but Jam came out to speak to the police via using his back door so Sackie could keep hiding.
The police came back and let me know that if Jam was the lesser of my two issues that I needed to becareful because they couldn't do anything on "hear say" but that Sackie had refused to speak with them and Jam reeked of alcohol. They said they told them to leave me alone, and that I had already agreed to do the same, and to just leave me alone, but that if they did anything I needed to call them because of how bad Jam, the lesser of the two, looked.
They left, I thanked them and my kind neighbors and felt like, it must be over right? Because if you do things like send pages of rambling violent, threatening texts, destroy property, and take so many drugs that your speech is slurred 24/7, and the cops come and tell you stop bothering your neighbor, you'd be scared right?
Again, I was mistaken to assume that Sackie and Jam's line of thinking would be at all on the side of logic, even in terms of simple self preservation. As soon as the cops left, Sackie and Jam came into my front yard and began to loudly talk about how disgusting I was to each other again. At this point I have both of their numbers blocked on my phone, but Sackie must has used one of those apps that allows you to text people who have blocked you and messaged me... "Have a great weekend"
So I go ahead and call the police who again, I am both pleased, and surprised, and a little scared by how quickly they return because my city is very high crime and for them to pay any attention to my calls means they must have clocked the neighbors as actual threat.
Sackie and Jam did go inside before the police came back though, and this time they both simply refused to open the door to the police. I imagine they had done many more drugs at this point.
The police said that they couldn't do anything since technically nothing had a record yet, but suggested that I file for a restraining order and provided all of the information I needed to do so. I was still sort of wishy washy about having a legal issue with my neighbors, but after talking it over with a few close girlfriends, one of them messaged me passionately outside of our little group chat about how much this couple, Sackie in particular, was behaving like a lot like her mother, a meth addict with a sense of entitlement who made her neighbors and everyone around hers life hell, obsessing over property lines and turned down begging, until eventually went to prison for 13 years for stabbing my friends dad. He lived thankfully.
But she was right, and my earlier mentioned paralegal friend helped me put together my paper work and evidence for a restraining order which we filed that Monday (April 30th).
They were served their papers on May 4th and thankfully, that *did* scare them into leaving me alone. Jam and Sackie would still intentionally talk badly about me to each other outside when they knew I could hear, and I imagine Sackie was trying to tell anyone who would listen what a bitch I was, but as long as myself and the children were unbothered I felt fine.
The court date came and I made the mistake again of assuming court mediation would be enough. Sackie showed up using a cain and pretending to be feeble, sickly and older, like she had done to me when we first met. Jam still looked creepy but wore a suit. My lawyer, who is also my middle school boyfriends father as an aside, was pretty confident I could get a full restraining if we went to court, but they agreed to restraining order terms as long as it stayed off their record for the purposes of background checks.
The way this works in my city is if they violate the terms it then automatically becomes a full order of protection-- but if they don't it gives them a chance to keep their records clean. It also would save me some money, because even though my lawyer was handling things at friend prices he couldn't do it for free. So I agreed to that. They were to stay away from me, my guests, not contact me on any platform, not harm me or my pets, it all seemed pretty fair and reasonable to me.
But alas, Sackie and Jam are not reasonable people. Literally the moment they got home from court Jam began working on some kind of project in his back yard, cursing about me to himself and clearly back on some kind of upper, he assembled and drilled this... strange tarp thing to my fence ???? Yes, my fence, and yes, this is illegal but I didn't have any luck getting the police to come out this time.
It has continued on this way. Them trying to do everything they can to harass me as much as possible without technically violating the order.
They're still trying to make my life hell, and, I am pretty sure my only option is to wait for them to physically harm me, on camera, for anything to happen.
So yes. That is how I kept trying to give my neighbors the benefit of the doubt, and in exchange, they're making my life hell. As I type this now Jam is out in the front yard, hovering on our property line, watering the grass, breathing heavy, grunting, and giving my ring camera dirty looks.
I don't have a good way to wrap this up, but, it felt good writing it all out to share anonymously. Thankyou reddit.
neighborsfromhell

check woomy-arras.xyz
I've been in this community for YEARS and I've seen it's game die time and time again. Those times once made me cry, now they anger me.
Haven't we learned a lesson here? Didn't we notice what were doing?
The brave stand up and try to revive this dead game that we still play for the sake of remembering the old times when it was fresh and living, BUT WE HATE ON THEM? FOR WHAT THEY'VE DONE IN THE PAST?
THE PAST HAS GONE. THERE IS NO LOGIC IN HATING SOMEONE WHO IS TRYING FIX THEIR ERRORS.
WE SHOULD BE ASHAMED!
WHY? WHY SEND FRICKING DEATH THREATS? TO STOP THE DEVELOPMENT? TO KEEP THE GAME DEAD? IT'S JUST A FRICKING GAME!
No I think WE are just stupid, just spoiled KIDS who can't cooperate.
​
-HectorCluster, the once cluster king.

Original post you can find on Wedding Forward
What Do You Need To Have To Get A Marriage License?
There are certain things you need to apply for a marriage license. But before that, let us set some facts straight. If you’re considering getting married somewhere, you should know this. You may not be easily granted a marriage if you’re underage. There can’t be a marriage if you are not legally divorced.
If it’s a place where same-sex marriage isn’t allowed, you won’t get a license. Lastly, you won’t be easily granted a permit in most places, if you’re related by blood.
The best place to do that is the location where you’re getting married. For instance, a marriage license in NYC is best obtained from the county clerk’s office. Other places are the town hall or City Hall. You can also call the local government office or browse the website for information.
Many states have the option of filling out their application online. They can go pick it in person after they submit their documentation.
The things you need include:

1. Photo ID: A driver’s license or passport will do.
2. Proof of residency or citizenship of the country.
3. Birth certificate to find out that you are eligible for marriage age.
4. Death certificate if widowed.
5. Divorce decree if divorced.
6. The court or parental consent in some countries, if underage.

Steps Of Procuring A Marriage License
You cannot get married until 24 hours after the license gets issued. You can only upturn this if you get a waiver from the court. Again, a wedding license lasts for only 60 days, which begins to count, a day after it’s approved. For the military, they have up to 180 days, due to deployments.
You can only marry in the state where you have rightly issued a license. The waiting time before you get a license is 1-6 days. A non-impediment certificate is well required for a destination wedding. This is proof that you have no legal issues in your country. It is valid for 6 months.
Now, the steps:
Go to the town clerk’s office to fill out an application. You and your spouse must be present with the following documents.

• Name.
• Resident address
• State, city, and zip code.
• Country of birth and birth certificate
• Name and country of parents
• Social security number.
• Presentation of Gonorrhea, HIV, and other STI-free certificates. This is against blood tests initially asked for in the United States. You can also fill it online but you will complete the process at the office. This is after presenting your documents.

Pay the marriage application fee of $35. This is how much it costs to get a license in NY. In other places, it goes up to $115. The city clerk only receives either a money order or a credit card.
Receive a marriage license when the application is complete.
Apply for a judicial waiver. This is optional.
Turn it in and register after the wedding.

--- Table of Contents ---
Autumn 4986, 16 Aoimoth
Shon slid down the side of a tree to the ground and watched the tower burn. Ivelm did a circle of it, dousing the surrounding trees with his water wand, while Nangran inspected the few bodies he could reach without burning himself. At one point, he tried to pull a corpse further from the fire only to have its arms snap off at the shoulder, meat pulling away from the bone like a well-cooked turkey.
Somewhere in the back of Shon’s mind, he knew he should be sickened by the sights and smells. When they first stepped through the portal, he‘d had to hold back retching from the scent of smoking hair and cooking flesh. Now he could hardly muster the energy to keep breathing. He took long and slow, but shallow breaths. As if he were about to fall asleep despite the horror before him.
So much death. Shon had never seen a dead person before. Though he wasn’t sure if these still counted, so blackened they could almost be mistaken for macabre statues... if it wasn’t for the smell.
“What was going on here ‘Elm?” Nangran demanded of Ivelm as the mage rounded the other side of the tower and rejoined them.
Ivelm sheathed his water wand, pulling forth the diamond-studded wand again. He didn’t answer.
Nangran growled, grabbing Ivelm's arm as it rose to point the wand toward the forest. The Archmage shook him off and spun, his robes fluttering around him as he gestured angrily at the fire, “I don’t know, Flintchest. This tower was supposed to be empty, abandoned. I’m the only Mage with authorization to set up in this area.” he pointed his wand over Shon’s shoulder and spat something indistinct. A rush of cool air flowed from behind accompanied by shouting and armor clanking. Knights running.
Shon rolled limply to the side, planning to stand but finding his arms shaking as he tried to push himself up. Boots stomped around him as Paladins flooded from the magical gate into the clearing. Shon managed to lift his head, though even his neck seemed to be rebelling against his attempts at holding himself up. His vision swimming, he saw Major General Selibra and Master Daunas step through the portal, their mouths agape.
Shon’s arms gave out from under him, and he fell to the side, hearing as if from a great distance, “Squire! Shon… Shon… Nangran, what happened?” From the ground he could see the girl, now wrapped in Nangran’s cloak, leaning against the side of his tree. When had they brought her there? Why hadn’t he noticed?
“He’s fine.” Ivelm’s voice, Shon couldn’t see anymore, so he closed his eyes, “He’ll wake up in a few days. Hell of a Sorcerer that one…” No… no, no, no... he wasn’t a Sorcerer. He was a Squire. He would be a Paladin… For a brief moment, a flicker of an image played in Shon's mind. He saw himself lying on the muddy ground, Master Daunas knelt by his head, and Ivelm spit off to the side. Then, only the sweet relief of darkness as he passed out.
***
“Any other survivors?” Sir Selibra’s soft voice drifted through the darkness.
“Only the girl,” Daunas whispered from nearby.
“I doubt she’s human,” Ivelm spoke loudly, and Shon flinched, his head pounding as the mage didn’t bother to keep his voice low, “No fire-resist spell should have lasted in that heat. Even fire Sorcerers can't survive melting stone.”
“She looks human.” a fourth voice, the Hamerfoss Cleric. Shon couldn’t move. The light filtering through his eyelids sent stabs of pain into his head, making it hard for him to concentrate. He tried to lift a hand to cover his eyes, but the limb wouldn’t obey his call.
“And a table looks like it’s made of wood but does that mean it’s still a tree?” Ivelm snorted, and something wet splattered on stone.
“Archmage, please, this is an infirmary…” the Cleric said, shocked.
The mage didn’t apologize and continued to speak at full volume, “Whatever was going on out there it wasn’t sanctioned by the Guild, and that girl has most certainly been subject to experimentation. Those scales? That hair?” he spat again.
“Archmage, please…”
“Let’s take this outside, shall we?” Sir Selibra said, and three pairs of boots thumped away, a door swinging open. Sir Selibra’s voice retreated as they left the infirmary still in conversation, “We have sent for the Temple and Guild. They should be here shortly.” The boots left, and the door closed again.
Only one pair of feet remained, shuffling around the room before the rustling of curtains being pulled closed accompanied the sweet relief of darkness. Shon steeled himself and forced his eyes to open just a crack. More pain. He closed them again, his ears ringing. With a slow breath, he tried again, blinking in the weak light filtered through the cloth covering infirmary window.
A groan slipped from his lips, and the Cleric rushed to his bedside, “Don’t try to sit up, Squire. You’re drained, but unhurt,” which seemed a direct contradiction to Shon’s pounding head. The Cleric continued, “After a bit of sleep, you should be fine…” Shon let his head fall to the side, wanting to look away from the window, and saw a second bed, where a girl with golden hair slept.
“It happens to Paladins too, you know. You have to be careful not to expend too much of your own energy when casting magic…” the Cleric continued to talk, busying himself by checking Shon's vitals, “It’s inevitable, but with practice, you can mitigate some of the effects…” She was the only survivor, and she had been experimented on… “After you take your Oath, you'll receive training in divine magic…” even if she was okay physically, would she be alright mentally?... “For now, just rest. You did well. It’s thanks to you the girl got out alive…”
Shon closed his eyes. Thanks to him? Nangran had seen the smoke, Ivelm had taken them there. He… he hadn’t known what to do, had frozen at the sights and smells. He'd formed a path of ice, but the girl hadn’t been burning… Her feet had melted his ice... Shon let himself drift back to sleep. He wasn’t a hero. Not yet.
***
The tower was supposed to be empty. General Rasnah and the Mages Guild had combed through their records finding that the building had been abandoned over fifty years ago; when the old alchemist living there passed away. Archmage Ivelm reported that he'd surveyed the tower twenty years previous, before setting up his lab miles further south.
“Having a tower like that is practically begging for wanna-be-apprentices to come interrupt you. Looking for a teacher and free room.” he'd explained, with obvious disgust at the idea, even spitting on the floor of Sir Selibra’s office.
Sir Rasnah personally led the Temple Paladins and Guild Mages through a gate from Smilnda to Hamerfoss and from there to the ruins of the mysterious tower. Mages and Paladins crawled together over the still-smoking remains, now a mear hill. Trying to break apart the stones that had melted together and find anything that could explain what had happened here. Bodies covered in white cloth lay in lines along the edge of the forest, ten in total, though how many had been trapped in the tower was still unknown.
The Clerics of Lune would identify the bodies, though she wished they could do more than just give names. It would take months, possibly years, to scour the records to determine who these poor souls had been in life. And more years besides to track their movements through the meticulous paperwork kept by the kingdom.
She could practically hear Veon-Zih snickering at her, ‘Silly Ras, you gave up the battlefield of blood and stone for one of words and paper…’ she shook her head, banishing thoughts of the Monk. This work would be just as important. How else would those fighting the physical battles find their enemies without information and resources? And yet… She rested her hand on her sword with a sigh, “Some retirement…”
“Sir Rasnah,” a female Mage with dark hair and tan skin approached from the tower, “We found the basement…” she looked over her slumped shoulders back at the pile of melted rock.
“Not as promising a find as we'd hoped?” Rasnah asked, arching her steely eyebrow at the Mage. What had her name been? Vevi…
To her credit, the woman straightened her shoulders and answered clearly, “Oftentimes, we learn as much from a rejected hypothesis as a failed-to-be-rejected hypothesis.” As Rasnah tried to wrap her mind around what in the hells that meant, the Mage continued, “We had hoped that the basement level would be relatively unscathed as heat should rise to destroy the upper levels and possibly spare the lower…”
Those were words the Paladin understood at least, but they implied bad news, “And that wasn’t the case?”
The Mage sighed, “It was. The fire behaved as fire always does, barring external influence,”
“Mage Vevi, I admire your Guild's desire for specificity, but please, get to the point.”
Vevi blinked then shook herself, saying, “Evidence suggests that the fire started in the basement and that the heat there was far greater than we assumed.” Rasnah arched an eyebrow at the woman again and the Mage threw her hands into the air, “It looks more like a cavern carved by pure magma. Nothing but melted stones remain in the form of caves we can only guess were originally rooms.”
“Damn,” Rasnah gripped her sword and glared past the Mage toward the tower, “So we have no way of knowing what they were doing.” The girl still hadn’t woken up. What were the chances that she had any information of value? Archmage Ivelm was convinced that she'd been the subject of magical experimentation. Would those who had abused her also give her information?
“We have one way,” Vevi interrupted Rasnah’s worries, and the Paladin focused on her again. The Mage turned away, motioning to some of her fellows standing near the bodies. An old man with a bent back and shuffling gait split from the group and approached slowly. Rasnah had to resist the urge to walk to him just to speed up the process.
“Sir Rasnah, this is Archmage Meshed, our divination master.” Vevi introduced the old man while he was still a few steps away, “There is a chance we will be able to obtain some information from the tower remains. Though I’m afraid it might not be as clear and concise as you wish. Divination often creates more questions than answers.”
“I am well acquainted with the frustrations of interpreting symbols and signs…” Rasnah led, unsure of the value in this new idea. Arcane magic didn't get its power from a higher intelligence or any god, it utilized the natural magic and energies running through the world and every object in it, manipulating them with precise words and symbols directed by human will. It was all well over her head.
Meshed’s laugh turned into a dry cough. He cleared his throat, “I think you will find, Mage Vevi, Sir Paladin, that the information I will glean from this place to be far more clear and concise than you are accustomed to. It simply won’t be as complete as you wish.”
With a groan and many popping joints, he sat down on the ground, fishing through his robes and pulling out a small bag. From it, he withdrew a massive tome and a silk cloth that Vevi quickly helped spread on the ground before him. Next came a censor and many jars of herbs and incense, which, after checking his book, he carefully measured before pouring into the censor.
He waved a hand towards the tower without looking up from his work, “Stones, please, Vevi. Choose wisely, I don’t want to do this all day…” Despite being a senior Mage, well on her way to Archmage, Vevi rushed off towards the tower herself and eventually returned with two fist-sized stones.
“One from the upper floors and one from the basement, Meshed,” she explained, handing them to the Divination Master. Meshed pulled a set of brass scales from his small pouch, measuring the stones and muttering to himself as he adjusted the volume of herbs in the censor.
He placed the first stone with the herbs, and his eyes glazed over, “A light if you will.” Vevi performed some complicated motion with her hands, flicking her fingers forward at the end with a muttered word. A spark of flame appeared over the censor, lowering onto the herbs and setting them alight. Smoke billowed in a gray noxious cloud, and Rasnah covered her nose as Meshed began to chant.
He ran his hand through the smoke, which wrapped around his fingers, and continued skyward. “No divine magic was cast here…” he mumbled, moving his hand again. The smoke shifted above his fingers as they passed, creating images of people in robes leaning over books, “Arcane magic…” Obviously. Still, for some reason, his brow furrowed. He passed his hand through again, and the smoke turned nearly black. Before Rasnah could make out any shapes Meshed pulled his hand away and shook it violently before rubbing it on his robe, “Warlocks, Sir Paladin.”
“Damn.” Rasnah smothered more colorful curses and managed a half step closer, “What were they doing, Archmage?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he chanted a new spell, and his hand glowed with a soft red light. Reaching into the censor, he plucked out the stone and replaced it with the second. The smoke again turned gray and rose lazily into the air. Once again, he passed his hand through the flowing tendrils, and once again, they turned black. He shook his head, “Obviously… damnation… what to ask… what to ask…” He seemed to settle on something, muttering, “The fire, tell me about the fire…” he ran his fingers through the smoke. Flames leaped from the censor, the smoke turning red and billowing out before them.
Rasnah stepped back as great smoke wings spread wide, illuminated from below by flames. A horned head atop a sinuous neck stretched for the heavens and Meshed scrambled to his feet. Vevi kicked the censor over, spreading burning debris across the silk to smolder, releasing tiny lines of, blessedly, normal smoke.
“What was that? A wyvern?” Rasnah asked, her heart in her throat.
Meshed coughed his dry cough and shook his head. Vevi stared at the upturned censor with wide eyes. “Much worse, Sir Rasnah,” the Mage whispered, “A dragon.”
“It was dragon fire that destroyed this tower,” Meshed confirmed.
***
--- Part 2/2 ---
--- Table of Contents ---
Thanks for making it this far, you are the real MVP

Hi everyone, I want to share my stories, maybe some of you will find it interesting.
It all began ten years ago when I was diagnosed with EBV through a blood test that showed persistently high levels of IgM for several months. Since then, I have experienced anxiety, depression, widespread pain, nerve pain, brain fog, lack of energy and joint pain all over my body. Before receiving the EBV diagnosis, I had consulted more than 20 doctors, 5 IRM scans, 30+ blood tests, no one having any idea why I'm feeling so bad and telling me is all in my head and to go to therapy. :)
Seven years ago, I relocated to Germany, and although I started feeling somewhat better after a few months, my condition remained challenging. Seeking relief from my symptoms, I visited a doctor who diagnosed me with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and conducted numerous tests. Apart from finding high levels of IgG for EBV, nothing else appeared to be wrong. The doctor prescribed a medication called pancreoflat, suggesting that the lack of enzymes might be contributing to my IBS symptoms. Surprisingly, the IBS symptoms improved significantly, and my pain decreased noticeably. However, after a year, I moved to Spain, and that's when my digestive issues worsened, accompanied by intensified body pain and lack of energy. I visited various doctors and underwent intolerance tests, which revealed positive results for lactose, fructose, and sorbitol. I decided to adopt a meat-only diet, which miraculously alleviated all my pain and resolved the IBS symptoms. Additionally, I supplemented with vitamin D, although I don't believe it was the sole cure.
For four years, I experienced a remission period during which I had energy and could eat a wide range of foods. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic, some family member hospitalisation and deaths, brought back my pain, IBS, debilitating brain fog, and depression. I started to buy supplements, paying thousands of euro....nothing worked. I was reading continuously studies and trying different things..nothing worked.
I consulted several doctors, one of whom was highly recommended in Barcelona. He suggested to try medication for MCAS in the gastrointestinal tract, specifically Sodium Cromoglycate (https://www.immedicohospitalario.es/uploads/2018/04/ultimos_anos_13906_20180425034658.pdf), which I have been taking for over a year along with L-glutamine and quercetin. According to his theory, increased intestinal permeability allows various substances to enter the bloodstream, causing antibodies to trigger pain responses. During this time, I also underwent a colonoscopy, which revealed Helicobacter pylori infection that was treated with antibiotics. Additionally, I visited a rheumatologist who conducted a series of blood tests, all of which showed normal results except for elevated levels of EBV IgG and below-normal levels of serum Immunoglobulin M (IgM). The rheumatologist prescribed sulbutiamine 400 mg per day. https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2021/04/15/thiamine-b-1-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-fibromyalgia/
Throughout the year, while taking sodium cromoglycate, sulbutiamine, and L-glutamine, I gradually experienced a reduction in pain, estimated to be around 20-30%. However, the persistent brain fog remained, and the pain in my leg persisted as the most severe symptom. It was then that I stumbled upon a forum where someone mentioned that high doses of thiamine HCL could alleviate brain fog. I began taking 1500 mg of thiamine HCL instead of sulbutiamine, and my brain fog miraculously disappeared. Moreover, the gastroenterologist prescribed prebiotics (https://www.farma-vazquez.com/cenat-granulado-400-g-578357.html) and probiotics (Symbioflor 2) plus I asked him about metformin. In one of the blood tests my insulin resistance was way of the border and I read about this https://www.reddit.com/cfs/comments/pn018g/my_2_years_of_chronic_fatigue_turned_out_to_be/ . He was ok to prescribe me metformin, laughing and saying people are taking it to become young and why not to take it as it helps also the gut.
Over the past three months, I have experienced significant improvements in my overall well-being, regained energy, and noticed a remarkable reduction in pain.
What I take consciously now:

1. THIAMAX 100mg morning and 100 mg afternoon (previously I was taking 1500 mg of Thiamine HCL)
2. LDN 4.2 mg before bed
3. Metformin 400mg morning, 400 afternoon.
4. 20 drops Symbioflor 2 before bed
5. one spoon of Cenat before bed

I believe Sodium Cromoglycate was the main thing in all this healing process and took a while until did its job.
My theory with CFS/Fibromyalgia: might related to immunity, genetics, something which might be related to your gut. Maybe I have another remission, which I hope not.
I learned MCAS is triggered by food, weather, noise, stress, light, mood etc.
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I hope this information will help some of you. Now I can enjoy the life, the things I love...eat whatever I want except fruits (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5936760/).
TL:DR all goes to mcas and immunity. The worse simptoms like brain fog and nerve pain might go away with thiamine hcl or ttfd. Having a meat diet had the most drastic and good thing I found to eliminate the worst pain. 80% simptoms free in the last 3 months.

This is part of my little series about the adventures of Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick. If you'd like to read previous parts, they're linked below, along with brief summaries in case you prefer to just jump right into the new part:
Part One: Alien learns what "sleep" is and how humans prefer to do it in a comfy bed with blankets and pillows. And they find it utterly adorable.
Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick are sent on a survey mission together. Things go south, Aldrick makes sure they're safe, and then Vr'ocria learns what human sleep is and how vulnerable humans are when they sleep. Vr'ocria's people don't sleep, but enter stasis, a form of rest in which they typically stand, and they are still slightly aware of their surroundings. Vr'ocria finds human sleep utterly adorable, and also decides she will protect Aldrick while he sleeps. And she also develops a massive crush on him. (Her scales turning purple is her version of blushing)
Part Two: An alien + human adventure with such shenanigans as poison drinking, befriending dangerous wildlife, and fighting a space pirate. Oh, and they have a huge crush on each other.
Part Three: When a cold-blooded alien has to cuddle a warm-blooded human for warmth
Part Four: A human leaves a hickey on his alien lover. Her nestmate doesn't understand what a hickey is, and thinks the human injured her
Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick end up assigned to be partners. Vr'ocria is a witness to both human shenanigans as well as human durability, but she also begins to learn about the limits of the human body--they are not invincible.
She and Aldrick begin to fall in love, and they finally confess their feelings for one another when Vr'ocria admits to accidentally forming a mate bond with him. Vr'ocria's nestmate, Galek, is not very happy about her being involved with a human, but begrudgingly respects her decision.
Part Five: Space pirates make the grave mistake of attacking a human's loved one. They very quickly learn what happens when a human is angry and full of adrenaline
Pirates come for Vr'ocria in revenge for her killing one of their own. Aldrick goes beast mode. 'Nuff said.
Now for the new story!
(Some of y'all are already picking up what I put down taps nose...)
"'Bumps and bruises' he says," Vr'ocria muttered. "Bumps and bruises!" She crossed her arms. "Bumps and bruises don't bleed, Aldrick."
They were back on the ship, in the med bay. Aldrick was lying on an examination table, naked except for a blanket pulled up to his hips. He was sedated, so he couldn't hear her anyway, but that didn't stop her from grouching.
As soon as they'd boarded the shop, Aldrick began fading fast. He was suddenly slumped and stumbling, eyes tight with pain, and they had to be beamed directly to the med bay. He'd been covered in so much pirate blood that the blood of his own injuries had gotten lost in the mess. Once the med team got to work cleaning him up, all of the cuts, claw marks, and stab wounds began appearing, and as soon as the orderlies let her, Vr'ocria was rushing back to his side. By now, most of his wounds had been closed up, but she still vividly remembered the bloody, black and blue skin that emerged when they peeled his shirt off.
Dr. Fen continued fussing over Aldrick. She was Lymeran, a species similar to humans, made distinctive by their flat noses and bone ridges that curved around the outer corner of their eyes. She swept her dark ponytail over her shoulder as she reached for a new tool. "He also has several hairline fractures in both arms and three cracked ribs," she reported briskly. "Honestly, these humans are going to be the death of me."
Vr'ocria's spine tightened with worry, her scales flushing red. "How could he go so long without collapsing?" She asked.
"Adrenaline," Dr. Fen explained. "It's a hormone that releases into a human's bloodstream during times of great stress. It makes them faster, stronger, more alert." She placed a small and round boneknit device on one of Aldrick's affected ribs. "But it also makes them immune to pain for a short time. That helps them keep going in a life or death situation, but pain exists for a reason. It alerts the body to injuries, it tells you when something is wrong and where. When you don't feel pain, you don't know when you're hurt, and you don't know when to stop if you're pushing yourself beyond your body's physical limits."
"Moons above," Vr'ocria murmured. She moved closer to the table, reaching out to stroke Aldrick's hair. Under sedation, his face was relaxed and free of lines, and she tried to take some comfort in that. "Will he be alright?"
"Oh, he'll be fine," Dr. Fen chuckled. "I'm good at my job, and humans are sturdy. He just needs to follow my orders for bed rest, so don't let him be an idiot and go running off."
That drew a smile from Vr'ocria.
As Dr. Fen continued bustling around Aldrick, she shot a sideways glance at Vr'ocria, a mischievous look in her eye. "So it's true that you guys are like…a thing? I noticed your scales have pink tips."
Vr'ocria blushed purple.
"Ha!" Dr. Fen smirked. "I knew it!"
"Shut up," Vr'ocria muttered.
"What? It's cute! And totally obvious. The whole ship knows at this point."
"The whole ship?"
Dr. Fen laughed. "Oh come on, it's not like you two are any good at hiding it. Anyone who knows anything about Ethyrian physiology knows what pink scales mean–full pink means you're experiencing strong feelings of love, right? And even when you're not particularly emotional, your neutral green with pink tips indicates you're within proximity of your mate. And the way he looks at you–"
Vr'ocria blushed harder and covered her face. "Oh planets, why are so many people invested in our relationship?"
Dr. Fen shrugged. "Well, historically, Ethyrians don't tend to mate outside of their species. It's not every day you see one mate another species, much less a human."
Vr'ocria couldn't help smiling. "Well, it's his fault for being so cute."
"He sure is," Dr. Fen winked.
"Hey," Vr'ocria jabbed a finger at her, "professionalism."
Dr. Fen raised her hands. "I'm very professional! I also have eyes and can acknowledge that you're a lucky girl, and I hope the two of you will be very happy together."
Vr'ocria kept stroking Aldrick's hair, her scales easing into a strong pink. "Me too."
—
By the next day, Dr. Fen had skillfully mended both skin and bone. She discharged Aldrick and let him return to his living quarters, with the caveat that he rest for at least a week.
He and Vr'ocria walked through the corridors arm in arm as she escorted him back to his quarters. They weren't even pretending anymore, and they drew plenty of stares and whispers as they passed by crew members milling about. There weren't many humans onboard to begin with, so Aldrick already stood out. Walking arm in arm with an Ethyrian must've looked even more bizarre.
Despite all the attention, Vr'ocria decided that she wouldn't be embarrassed anymore. She pulled Aldrick a little closer and held her head high as they passed a group of giggling ensigns. My human. My mate.
Aldrick's quarters, like hers, were small but comfortable. The door opened into the living space. Aldrick had decorated it with various Earth flowers and plants that sat in pots scattered about the room, some hanging from the ceiling. The lush greens, pinks, reds, purples, and yellows, made the place feel warm and inviting. The back wall was almost entirely windows with a plush couch pushed underneath them, so that one could recline and watch the stars fly by.
Vr'ocria ushered Aldrick straight into the bedroom, which was similar to the living area, just smaller and furnished with a bed, a nightstand, and a small armchair. "You're going to bed," she ordered.
"Aw, come on," he whined as she shoved him onto the mattress, bending down to pull his boots off.
"Doctor's orders." She put his boots aside and stood, placing her hands on his shoulders to push him down onto the pillow.
"I'm not tired!"
"Liar." She could see the bags under his eyes that she'd come to learn was a sign of exhaustion, and despite his protests, he didn't try to fight her off as she settled him in and pulled the blankets up to his chin.
He couldn't help chuckling. "I haven't been tucked into bed since I was a kid."
She sat on the edge of the bed with a smile. "Well, that's what I'm here for."
He rolled over onto his side and took her hand, placing a kiss on her knuckles. She squeezed back, and then made to stand to turn the lights off.
"Wait."
She turned back. Aldrick had pushed himself back into a sitting position. "Something's been bothering me."
She frowned. "What is it?"
"How did the Norvidians know you were the one who killed that guy?"
She blinked. "What?"
Aldrick twisted the sheets in his hands. "How did they know it was you? They knew exactly who you were and where to find you. The only people who knew what happened on Theta-7 is our superiors and people in our department."
Vr'ocria sank back down onto the bed. "What are you getting at?" She thought she knew the answer, but she didn't want to say it out loud.
Aldrick met her eye. "What if someone sold you out?"
Her spine grew tight, yellow rippling across her scales. "...No," she whispered. "No, that can't…who would do that?"
He chewed his lip. "I don't know. I hope I'm wrong, I really do…but…" he blew out a frustrated sigh. "I could blame a leak for them knowing you were the one to kill the guy. Someone could've carelessly mentioned something somewhere, I don't know. But there's no way they would've known exactly where to find you unless they were told. That was a brand new mission, no one knew where we were except for Command."
Vr'ocria felt sick. She didn't want to think he was right…but it made too much sense. "What do we do?"
"I don't know," he said with a pained look. "There's no telling who it could be, and if it's one of our superiors, we'd only tip them off if we approached them with this."
It was a conundrum Vr'ocria could hardly believe was real. Sure, she and Aldrick had some basic combat training, but soldiers they were not. They were survey agents, their job was to explore and study, not fight. And she certainly wasn't supposed be the subject of conspiracies and espionage or whatever was happening here.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Let's worry about this later. You need to get some rest."
Aldrick reluctantly laid back down, but blushed when she bent down to press a kiss to his cheek. It was the first time she'd kissed him since Gamma-5. "I could get used to that," he murmured as he snuggled into the pillow.
"You should," Vr'ocria giggled as she rose to her feet. "I'm not going to stop anytime soon." She switched the lights off, then returned to settle into the chair next to the bed, pulling her file pad out of her pocket. The screen's soft glow was the only light in the room. "Now, go to sleep."
"Yes ma'am."
—
Vr'ocria worked quietly on her file pad for the next few hours. Data entry was tedious, but somehow, she found a comfort in doing it while listening to Aldrick's slow, deep breaths.
So she was quick to notice when his breathing pattern changed.
Aldrick groaned and shifted in his sleep, rolling over onto his back. His breath began to quicken, and Vr'ocria lowered her pad to look over at him. By the low light of the pad's screen, she could only see the silhouette of his chest rising and falling, faster and faster.
"Aldrick?" She whispered.
"Nuuh," he moaned, beginning to thrash.
Alarmed, Vr'ocria stood and flicked his nightstand lamp on, dropping the pad on the table. "Aldrick," she said a bit louder.
His eyes were still squeezed shut. He was tossing and turning now, gasping through parted lips. He cried out again, and Vr'ocria felt her blood rushing fast and hard through her veins, her scales rippling between red and yellow. What was going on? Was he still asleep? She'd never seen him like this before, and it frightened her.
Tears were beginning to seep out from under his tightly shut eyelids. "No…no…" His voice rose in volume as he clutched and clawed at the sheets. "Vr'ocria!"
Whatever held Vr'ocria frozen to the spot snapped the second she heard him scream her name like that. She bent forward and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. "Aldrick!" She cried desperately. "Wake up!"
"VR'OCRIA!"
"ALDRICK!"
With a strangled cry, his eyes snapped open. His pupils were blown wide and the whites were bloodshot as he stared at her in shock, still gasping for breath, his hands grasping her arms in an iron grip.
She took his face in her hands. "What's wrong? What's going on?"
He only continued to stare at her, the fog slowly clearing from his eyes.
"Say something!" Vr'ocria demanded, resisting the urge to shake him again. "You're scaring me, what's the matter? Does something hurt?"
Aldrick surged up, throwing his arms around her neck and pulling her down to him. She fell forward with an "oof" as her weight landed on top of him. "Hey," she protested with the side of her face pressed into the pillow, "I can't be laying on you, your ribs–"
"You're alive," he rasped into her ear.
She stopped struggling to get up. "What?"
He was shaking, and it took her a moment to realize he was crying. "You were dead, they killed you–I watched them–God, I watched you die–you weren't moving, your eyes–"
He was babbling almost incoherently, and Vr'ocria was terrified.
She finally managed to push herself off of him, and tugged him up into a sitting position. She pulled him forward into a hug, taking care not to squeeze his ribs. "Calm down," she tried to soothe as he clutched her tight, still shaking. "Just breathe." She didn't know if she was even helping, but she didn't know what else to do.
But it seemed to work. After a few minutes, Aldrick managed to slow his breathing down to a more reasonable pace, and she felt his muscles sag in her arms as the tension drained away.
"I'm sorry," he finally croaked. He pulled away and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…" he struggled to find words. "I'm sorry for making a scene," he finished at last.
Vr'ocria placed one hand on his hip and the other on his knee. "What happened?"
Aldrick wrapped his arms around his middle. "I had a nightmare."
She furrowed her brow. "A night…mare?"
"A nightmare is a bad dream," he explained.
"...I don't understand."
"Sorry, I guess you wouldn't, since you don't sleep…uh…fuck, how do I explain this…" he ran a hand through his tangled hair. "When humans are asleep, even though we're unconscious, our subconscious brain is still pretty active. One thing it does is create dreams. During dreams you can see, hear, feel, smell and taste things that aren't there. Sometimes dreams are pure nonsense, just a mess of sounds and images. Sometimes you might have good dreams–maybe you fly, or go on crazy adventures. But sometimes, you have bad dreams. We call them nightmares."
Nightmare. What an awful word. It sent shivers over Vr'ocria's scales. "So just now, you…"
"I had a bad dream. A very, very bad dream." He dug his fingers into his temples. "When you're dreaming, in most cases, you don't know that you're dreaming. It feels completely real. And bad dreams are usually brought on by stress or fears you have. And my fear–" he broke off.
She squeezed his knee. "It's me dying?" She supplied quietly.
He shut his eyes as if he was in pain. "When I saw what those fucking pirates did to you–I've never felt so much fear in my life. I was so scared they would kill you before I got there, or that I would fail to save you, or–" he covered his face with his hands. "And I dreamed that I did fail. I watched him stab you. I watched you bleed. I held you and you were–your eyes were so blank–"
Vr'ocria didn't want to hear anymore. She yanked him forward, hugging as tight as she dared. "It wasn't real," she whispered. "I'm here. I'm right here."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." His arms still trembled and his voice was thick against her neck.
"Stop apologizing," she said firmly. "You have nothing to apologize for. None of it is your fault, not the attack, not the dream, none of it."
She felt him take a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. "Thank you, my love."
Her spine tingled.
"Come on, lay back down. I'll lay with you." She pulled back the covers and crawled underneath next to him. They settled down into a familiar position–him clutching her to his check, her arms around his waist, their legs tangled together. His heart was still pounding, but she listened as it gradually quieted to a gentler pace. Soon enough, Aldrick was asleep. This time, he slept peacefully through the night.
Nightmares can fuck up your whole night, man. I've had nightmares that were so vivid they stuck with me for days afterwards. Shit sucks, and I wish I had someone to cuddle with afterwards lolol
Thank you for reading! Until next time ;)

I came across Cognition Therapeutics today and they appear to be using a similar approach to what Annovis is doing. Looks like focus is on preventing Synapse loss leading to cell death. Notice how Cognition Therapeutics was able to secure massive amounts of grant money for trials (171M). I wish Annovis could secure more free grant money somehow. FYI I do not own any Cognition Therapeutics but I do own a little Annovis.
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Corporate presentation (note slide 33 - Grant funding: https://ir.cogrx.com/static-files/16bc6d6e-d81d-49b5-b0f6-02a096028948
Pipeline for Cognition https://cogrx.com/pipeline/

(WARNING‼️INTENSE THEORIZING FOR ADVANCED PLAYERS) Now recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the story line and how Update 5 is going to shed some light on a lot of questions we might have but I decided to go back to the beginning and pick out details that I may not have noticed before. Now it all started when the last update was released and Simba and Nala had to join the valley. In addition to them joining many things that have been obvious to the player is now being discussed by the characters in the game. 1 topics in particular, like how on earth is someone like Scar able to skip death and appear in the valley. This isn’t the first time we’ve thought about it, since characters like Ursula and Mother Gothel have been roaming around since the beginning but this is the first time another character mentions it. Whether the characters remembers their death or not is a topic for another day but their presence in the valley is easily explained. They are there simple because we made it so. It’s our imagination so death is not a barrier in the valley but for some reason Memory is.
Now I know the entire game is about the forgetting and whatever we forget is essentially forgotten in the valley but this ISNT TRUE! Now this is where I need the DDLV community detectives to join me on solving this mystery. Now Im assuming there are plenty of things that the characters remember but just haven’t asked us about or haven’t had the other triggering character enter the valley for the memory to appear. With this being said there is still something off, Just how far do the characters memories go? When I say this, I mean do they remember everything that has already happened to them in their original stories? What is considered cannon to the writers of the game and what is not considered to have taken place at all. Characters like Elsa remember events up to Frozen 2 since she mentions how the powers of the forest spirits work, we can assume that much since this knowledge can’t be obtained unless you’ve seen that movie. On the other hand characters like Nala and Simba can’t even remember that they’ve already had a child named Kiara. If you talk to Nala she mentions wanting to name their child by that name, making it obvious that those events haven’t taken place but they are inevitable because these characters already have stories. Part of me believes it is popularity based but if this is true why even mention something that happens in the future if it isn’t relevant. This is the same with characters like Woody and Buzz who remember Bonnie who is fairly new in their story arcs as their new owner after Andy but Ariel and Eric seem to be stuck in the moment after escaping Ursula? They have no hints so far of having memories of a child named Melody or having to fight Ursula’s sister Morgan’s in their second movie arc.
I’ve thought of one explanation and I’ve resulted in their memories being based on how many characters from their respective movies they have in the game. So the more characters they have the more memories. This is partly true since many of the quest have requirements of other characters being in game or have accessed a certain level of memories. Since Frozen and Mickey Mouse has the most characters they should obtain the most memories of their stories but there is one thing that debunks this. The Toy Story characters! There are only two and somehow they remember up to where their movies drop off. This racks my brain so with further investigation I wanted to include you all on what keeps me up at night and see some of your theories as well. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read and think about this🥹

Since I've been actually reading the comic books and having a blast, I'm not actually the biggest fan of the MCU nowerdays and that's because the universe still feels really really small because they didn't have the rights to the X-Men or Fantastic Four or spiderman so everything feels really really cramped.
So I had an idea that would be the best possible idea for the universe's continuity but the least likely idea they'll ever go with. Start the X-Men stuff in Krakoa with someone like David and Franklin Richards bending reality to not notice mutants and they announce their big plan and pull down everyone's pants.
I like this idea because the X-Men are really big and as an audience, we already know a lot about the X-Men because they have the most single movies of any superhero property in the last 25 years so I don't really want a movie explaining all of this all over again and I doubt general audiences do either, jumping head first into the modern era would be a very interesting experience because a lot of the normal X-Men stuff has been done to death, except for one guy, Mr Sinister...
What are your thoughts on this insanely unlikely idea?

I’m going for Leonidas either winning or a tie and these are my reasons
1) As others have already noticed and posted, Leonidas is carrying on the message or “light” that Tesla left in regards to progression. He isn’t wearing his past military clothes, but modern ones. If he loses that would be weird…
2) Just like the gods “took” humanity’s light, Tesla, the same will happen with their light, Apollo. I’ll get more specific here and say this is the Greek gods light. This is Zeus’ last Greek fighter and not only would he be responsible for another loss for the gods but another fellow Greek dying because of his own arrogance in thinking this was just some game. I’ve seen people say that this is a reason why Apollo has to win, but I see it as a reason he has to lose. It’s the last nail in Zeus’ coffin and the Greek pantheon’s reputation in this tournament. And a step towards Brunhilde’s revenge.
3) This is the first time we have a human killing their own god or a god killing their own human (of the same pantheon) . This is Record of Ragnarok more than any other fight. Leonidas is mankind’s rebel and Apollo is the god’s arrogance. For humanity to lose here sends the message that even humanity’s greatest rebel cannot thwart the gods. But if he wins, it means that the gods are backed more into a corner than ever. It gives more hope to the rebellion if he wins. But this point can go both ways of course so it isn’t that strong.
—————-
So basically I don’t see Leonidas losing but winning or a tie. But why a tie? It’s because of the context for this specific round. We are getting closer to the personal reason (probably Siegfried) as to why Brunhilde hates the gods. She’s actually more in tune with Leonidas than most fighters.

• Both despise the gods for their arrogance
  
• Both are going to kill their own gods of their regions (and depending on match ups Brunhilde directly or indirectly)
  

But the biggest comparison

• Both don’t care if they die as long as they win. This is war.

As long as they can screw over the gods it doesn’t matter. As long as the gods don’t win. If that means a tie then a tie.
—————
Is it too early to make a judgement? Yeah and honestly how you see certain points is going to be nuanced depending on how you think or want the story to ultimately go.
I’m going to be honest and say I’m bias towards Leonidas. If he loses then I’ll force myself to draw his death scene.

AO3 Link
Sonic Triple Trouble (I’m mainly using the fan-made 16-bit remake’s story here. If you haven’t played it yet, just ignore this section. It’s better to play the game for yourself, because it’s awesome):
Having seen the true power of the 7 Chaos Emeralds, along with the Master Emerald, Robotnik decides to make a new type of fake emerald after finding the yellow emerald. Along with that, he hires a treasure hunter named Fang The Sniper to search for the other 6 Chaos Emeralds, and he’s finally finished recreating his greatest creation from Little Planet: Metal Sonic 2.0.
However, Metal 2.0 isn’t the same as Metal 1.0. This one doesn’t speak, and while very close in speed, intelligence, and power to the original, it’s still not perfectly accurate. But this model does have a new ability: It can obtain bio-data from other lifeforms on it’s own, and replicate their appearances and abilities.
Regardless, Metal Sonic 2.0 is sent to Angel Island to acquire the Master Emerald’s power, and Knuckles’ bio-data. And while the robotic hedgehog catches the Echidna by surprise and puts up a good fight, it’s unable to secure the massive gemstone, but does gain some of it’s power, along with the guardian’s bio-data, before taking it’s leave.
Understanding Robotnik’s up to something again, Knuckles decides to use the Master Emerald to pinpoint the location of the Chaos Emeralds. And while hesitant to leave his home unguarded, the Echidna decides he has to go find the gemstones, and make sure the doctor doesn’t try anything.
As for Sonic and Tails, they’re just doing some machine tests, only to notice the jewel radar go off, and show that someone is gathering the Chaos Emeralds. While they aren’t sure if it’s Robotnik or not, the two decide to check it out in case it’s something bad, and head off to find the doctor up to his old tricks as expected.
In addition, they also come to clash with Fang, who is pretty sneaky and tries to outsmart the heroes, but often falls short, and ends up running away for the most part. And Sonic and Tails face Metal Sonic 2.0, disguised as Knuckles, which greatly confuses them, considering how things ended with the Echidna before.
Speaking of Knuckles, he’s mainly off doing his own thing, but does encounter the three villains many times, and is able to get his hands on a few Chaos Emeralds. Same with Sonic, Tails, and Fang. Robotnik also manages to create a much better replication of a Chaos Emerald, which he dubs a Dark Emerald.
Eventually, Sonic and Tails find out the Knuckles they were fighting the whole time was Metal Sonic 2.0, and everyone involved in this emerald hunt come together at Robotnik’s Atomic Destroyer base. The heroes defeat the robotic hedgehog, Fang is unable to stop them, and Robotnik ends up retreating, while losing his Dark Emerald.
However, this is when Metal Sonic 2.0 decides to take matters into it’s own hands, and uses the 7 Chaos Emeralds to make 7 more Dark Emeralds, in addition to the one Robotnik has, creating 8 total. And with them, it transforms into Rocket Metal Sonic 2.0, who is more than ready to take out everyone.
But luckily, Sonic is able to use the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Sonic again, and take on his robotic faker in space. It’s a tough fight, but the organic hedgehog is able to win, and everyone escapes the Atomic Destroyer base, which explodes. So, with the Chaos Emeralds scattered again, everyone goes their separate ways…
​
Sonic The Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (Knuckles):
While relaxing at Angel Island one day, Knuckles is caught off-guard by one of Robotnik’s Egg Robo Badniks, which wasn’t destroyed by Sonic and Tails previously. This machine wants to finish what it’s creator started by taking the Master Emerald itself, along with the remaining Badniks and machines left on the island.
Naturally, Knuckles chases after the Egg Robo throughout Angel Island’s many regions, smashing Robotnik’s machines throughout, and collecting the Chaos Emeralds from the Special Zone. Eventually, the two head to Sky Sanctuary, where it’s revealed that Mecha Sonic is still functioning, and was the one behind this plan all along.
So, with the Master Emerald in it’s possession, the mechanical hedgehog not only destroys the Egg Robo, but also uses the massive gemstone’s power to transform into it’s own Super state after studying Super Sonic. Likewise, Knuckles chooses to fight fire with fire, and uses the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Knuckles as well.
The fight is tough, as the two are evenly matched at first. However, Mecha Sonic is unable to sustain it’s power for as long as Knuckles can, and eventually gets put down for good. After that, the Echidna returns to normal, tired, and is about to take the Master Emerald back to the Hidden Palace altar. But then, the area of Sky Sanctuary he’s in starts to break apart from the damage of the fight.
Hence, Knuckles falls from the sky while tightly holding onto the Master Emerald. Only to then be rescued by Sonic in the Tornado, complete with a mechanical claw to hold the Master Emerald. He picked up some strong Chaos Emerald energy on Tails’ jewel radar, and decided to go check it out, leading him to Angel Island again.
Once they get back onto the floating continent, and put the Master Emerald back in the altar to keep it in the air, Knuckles thanks Sonic for the help again, before the latter sets off. So, with everything back to normal, the Echidna returns to his duty of guarding his home and everything on it…
​
Tails’ Sky Patrol:
Around the same time as the Egg Robo’s attempt to steal the Master Emerald on Angel Island, Tails decides to go explore the world in search of his own adventure without Sonic’s company. Though, he just flies aimlessly in the sky, not having a destination in mind. But soon enough, he comes across a small island, and decides to land there.
However, the young fox is surprised to find many of the citizens here turned into crystals, or trapped in crystals, along with a bunch of metal railing plastered around the terrain. Tails doesn’t believe it’s Robotnik’s work, but before he can ponder who it is, he feels a vibration from the ground, and decides to hide in some nearby bushes.
Peeking out from the bushes, Tails sees just who is responsible for this chaos. It’s an evil witch in a cart called Wendy…Witchcart, along with her minions in their respective vehicles. Hocke-Wulf, Bearanger, and Carottia Rabbit. Proclaiming herself as the ruler of this island, the evil witch and her minions head off to do their respective tasks.
Once they’re gone, Tails gets out of the bushes, and while pretty nervous about fighting these guys on his own, the young fox knows he has to stop them and save this island. So, with a device called the Boomering, and his high intellect, Tails flies through the different regions of the island, helping the residents and defeating Witchcart’s minions.
Soon enough, the young fox reaches the evil witch’s Dark Castle, where the two have their final confrontation. And despite his fears, Tails is able to use his best attributes to his advantage, and defeats Wendy Witchcart, saving the entire island. This leads to the baddies getting locked up in jail, and after spending some time with the grateful locals, the young fox heads off again, happy to have saved the day all by himself…
​
Knuckles’ Chaotix:
One day, a strange new island comes out of the sea, which Robotnik discovers and studies. He learns that this continent is covered in small amounts of Chaos Energy, along with the many rings here. In particular, there are 6 colored rings that contain tons of Chaos Energy, which the doctor dubs Chaos Rings, and decides to harness their power for himself.
In a couple of days, Robotnik is able to manufacture dark rings, which have some Chaos Energy, and uses them to power up his Badnik army. In addition, the doctor decided to make a new model in the Metal series based off of Knuckles, after seeing how powerful the Echidna was: Metal Knuckles.
The metallic echidna, while not as fast or intelligent as Metal Sonic 2.0, has much more strength, and can harness Chaos Energy in order to increase it. Overall, this machine is a very useful servant of Robotnik, and the two of them quickly take over much of the isolated island, renaming it the “Newtronic High Zone.”
However, as Robotnik and his army do this, Knuckles is alerted by the Master Emerald about the isolated island, and comes to a conclusion. Due to Angel Island (With the Master Emerald in the altar) making contact with the Earth’s surface beforehand, the energy of the massive gemstone accidentally formed this new continent. Hence, believing this could be a problem, the Echidna heads towards this island in order to stop the doctor.
Once he arrives there, Knuckles comes across a few other people who decided to explore this island for their own reasons, such as Mighty, who doesn’t have Ray with him. They also meet Espio The Chameleon, Charmy Bee, and Vector The Crocodile. In addition, two of Robotnik’s machines, Heavy and Bomb, decide to defect from their creator and join the heroes.
So, the 7 of them form the Chaotix Crew, and they go through the five regions of the Newtronic High Zone in order to collect the Chaos Rings, defeat Robotnik, and destroy all of his machines. Knuckles often runs into Metal Knuckles as well, and the two clash many times, sharing a similar rivalry to Sonic and Metal Sonic.
But eventually, the Chaotix are able to free the five regions from Robotnik’s control, and collect all the Chaos Rings. However, the doctor uses a giant dark ring containing tons of Chaos Energy to empower Metal Knuckles, transforming it into a rampaging Titan. It’s a tough fight for the heroes, but luckily, some last minute help arrives.
Sonic, Tails, and Ray fly over to the isolated island with the Tornado, after hearing about what’s going on. Then, with the power of the Chaos Rings, the 10 heroes are able to destroy Metal Knuckles, send Robotnik into a full retreat, and save the day. Though, all the chaos-powered rings lose their power, and become standard rings.
Recognizing the good work they did together, Vector decides to start the Chaotix Detective Agency in order to solve more mysteries and problems like this (While also getting some good dough). Espio and Charmy end up joining him, but everyone else declines, before they all go their separate ways.
Team Chaotix go off to find a place to rent out and form their agency. Heavy and Bomb explore the world on their own, wanting to live a life free of Robotnik. And Sonic and Tails use the Tornado to fly Knuckles back to Angel Island, before they, Ray, and Mighty head off as well…
​
Sonic The Fighters:
Having built the Death Egg Mk ll, along with fixing up Metal Sonic 2.0, Metal Knuckles, and making a surveillance robot called the Tails Doll in order to keep an eye on Sonic and his friends, Robotnik starts sending out his army of Badniks and machines to take over the world and collect the Chaos Emeralds.
After dealing with Robotnik’s creations, Tails reveals that he’s been working on his own rocket ship to explore space: the Lunar Fox, which has three seats. So, he and Sonic have to find the Chaos Emeralds, recruit a third person to help them out, and then take the fight to the doctor and his metal copies.
First is Knuckles, who initially gets into a bit of a scuffle with Sonic, but Tails calms them both down, as there’s bigger fish to fry. With 1 Chaos Emerald already in their possession, the three heroes head off to find the other 6, leading them to Amy Rose, and her fashion designer friend, Honey The Cat.
While Robotnik’s robots do attack them, the heroes are able to beat them, and they get another Chaos Emerald. Plus, Amy shows Sonic her improved combat abilities with her Piko-Piko Hammer, which he’s impressed with. Now with 2 emeralds, Team Sonic go find the third one, which Espio is in possession of.
The Chameleon managed to take one from Robotnik’s machines with his ninja skills, and is trying to escape them. Luckily, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles help him out, and also get more information on the Death Egg Mk ll from Espio, who was hired to gather intelligence on it from a client. Said client being Tails.
Anyways, Team Sonic has three Chaos Emeralds, and are heading after the fourth one, which appears to be in someone’s possession, and also going for the fifth emerald as well. Once they arrive at their target, the heroic trio come across Fang again, who has some back-up in the form of Bean The Dynamite, and Bark The Polar Bear.
The trio of Hooligans decided to go after a few Chaos Emeralds, hoping to sell them off for a high price. But unfortunately, they end up having to fight against Team Sonic, where they give a good performance, but can’t keep up. However, before the three heroes can get the fourth and fifth emeralds, Metal Sonic 2.0 and Metal Knuckles take them, and are unable to stop them due to the loss of stamina from the battle.
Fang is angry at having lost the Chaos Emeralds, and after discussing what’s going on with the heroes, he and his partners decide to cooperate with them for now in order to stop Robotnik and his creations. So, Team Hooligan and Team Sonic chase after the Metal copies, who are heading for the sixth Chaos Emerald.
As for the Tails Doll, it’s still watching Sonic’s every move, waiting for the right time to strike. But eventually, Team Sonic and Hooligan face off against Metal Sonic 2.0, Metal Knuckles, and a whole bunch of Robotnik’s machines. It’s a tough battle, and while they do manage to destroy most of the robots, Tails Doll knocks out the heroes with the strange energy from it’s gem antenna.
This gives Metal Sonic 2.0 and Metal Knuckles the opportunity to take the three Chaos Emeralds the heroes have, and with 6 out of 7, they and Tails Doll head off to the Death Egg Mk ll. Angered and worried, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles decide to just go grab the last Chaos Emerald, and then head back to the young fox’s workshop to discuss what to do next.
Luckily, Espio and Amy managed to get the last emerald for Team Sonic, which they appreciate, but now they have to figure out what to do to stop the second Death Egg, and get the rest of the gemstones too. Then, once they’re ready, the three heroes board the Lunar Fox, and travel to the orbital space station for the final battle.
Once they step aboard, Team Sonic searches for where the 6 Chaos Emeralds are, and finds where they’re being stored. However, they’re intercepted by Metal Sonic 2.0, Metal Knuckles, Tails Doll, and even Robotnik, who’s piloting his own E-Mech combat suit. It escalates into a 4-on-3 battle. Or rather, just 3-on-3 since Tails Doll can’t do much on it’s own.
Sonic and Knuckles take on their Metal counterparts, and Tails tries to get the Chaos Emeralds while avoiding Robotnik and Tails Doll. Luckily, by outsmarting the doctor, and taking care of his plush copy, along with his gadgets, the young fox is able to get the other gemstones, while also activating the self-destruct sequence on the Death Egg Mk ll.
Then, Tails hands all 7 Chaos Emeralds over to Sonic and Knuckles, turning into their super transformations, and making quick work of their metallic copies, while Robotnik retreats. And once the young fox collects something important, the three of them escape the exploding space station and head back to the planet below.
Once they land, Sonic and Knuckles go back to their base forms, scattering the emeralds again, while Tails lands the Lunar Fox. They come to find that Amy, Espio, and Team Hooligan have been waiting on them, and give their gratitude on a job well done. Each in their own unique way.
That’s when Tails reveals that he actually got a bunch of Robotnik’s money that was stashed in the Death Egg Mk ll, and splits it between both Espio and the Hooligans, which they all appreciate. And so, with the day saved once again, everyone goes their separate ways…
​
Unseen Adventures (Part 3)
Archives
Unseen Adventures (Part 1)

Timestamp

• Please comment and send a DM (not a chat invite) if interested in any item!
• Shipping is $10 (USPS Priority Mail) for normal items, $17 for more oversized items, and $23 for big boxes, and the listed price does not include shipping.
• I will use Paypal to send an invoice.
• I am only shipping in the US.
• I am willing to bundle things together for a discount. In addition, we can negotiate prices. I would prefer these be used by someone than sit in my house!
• I can take more pictures & provide sound tests if requested!

Keyboards

Name	Price	Condition & Contents
Built Green WKL Brutal60	$210 $200	Second owner. Built once. Built with WT60-D Weird Flex PCB, L+F Gateron Milky Blacks on FR4 half-plate, tuned Durock V2 Stabilizers. Will come with Aifei 9009 ABS keycaps as well. It will be shipped in a carrying case. Currently, force-broken and has poly-fill. PM me if you would like a sound test.
Bluish Pink Hand Engineering x Monokei WK Hotswap Kage	$440 $430	First owner. Built once. Comes with hot-swap PCB, PP and PC plate, and tuned Cherry clip-in Stabilizers. It will be shipped in the original Kaban case and include a 30A Graveshift TKL o-ring. Force-broken and has stabilizer pads on the PCB. Minor light streaks on bottom case are not noticeable when built and a small crack in USB-C metal enclosure, but functions properly (aesthetic damage only).
Baby Blue Top & Silver Bottom Kibou Millmaxed (3305-1)	$900	First owner. Built once. Comes with millmaxed PCB (3305-1), PP and Aluminum plate, and tuned Gateron Clear Stabilizers. It will be shipped in the original case. Has force-break applied. Cannot find any flaws or scratches in the board!

PCBs/Plates/Parts/Tools

Name	Price	Description
TGR Tomo PC (Frost White) Plate	$15 $10	Used. It has the usual marks where the top mount screws were. Selling for $30 under MSRP
Ciel65 Aluminum Plate	$15 $10	Never used. Compatible with Bakaneko65.
Maker Milan Aluminum Plate	$25 $20	Never used. Compatible with KBD8X MKII.
75% O-ring	$3 alone or Free with any larger purchase	1x 65A O-ring from Graveshift
TKL O-ring	$3 alone or Free with any larger purchase	1x 30A from Graveshift
x19 KNC Keys Unga Bunga Stems	Free with any purchase	Leftover from the frankenswitches.
4 Plate Forks	Free with any purchase	From P3D
x2 Keycap Pullers, x1 Novelkeys Switch Puller	Free with any purchase	Just looking to give these away to people that need them!

Switches (L+F and some SS)

Name	Price	Modifications
x110 SP-Star Melons	$65 $60	Lubed, filmed, and SS to 62g Durock springs
x68 KNC Keys Red Jackets 2.0	$45 $40	Lubed and no films.
x68 KNC Keys Black Jackets	$85 $80	Lubed and filmed
x110 NyPOM Ungas	$80 $75	MM Switch Nylon Top + MM Switch POM Bottom + KNC Unga Bunga Stems; Lubed, filmed, and SS to Wuque CL635 Springs
x91 NyPOM Ungas	$60 $55	0M Switch Nylon Top + MM Switch POM Bottom + KNC Unga Bunga Stems; Lubed, filmed, and SS to Wuque CL635 Springs
x95 NyPOM Yellows	$65 $60	MM Switch Nylon Top + MM Switch POM Bottom + Gateron Milky Yellow Stems; Lubed, filmed, and SS to Wuque CL635 Springs
x90 NyPOM Yellows	$60 $55	MM Switch Nylon Top + MM Switch POM Bottom + Gateron Milky Yellow Stems; Lubed, filmed, and SS to Wuque CL635 Springs
x39 NyPOM Joes	$15 $10	MM Switch Nylon Top + MM Switch POM Bottom + KNC Average Joe Stems; Lubed, filmed, and SS to Wuque CL635 Springs
5 Packs of x104 3-pin Cherry MX Reds	$95 $90 each	Harvested from Corsair Keyboard. Desoldered cleanly with Hakko FR-301 and confirmed to work in Hotswap PCBs. Lubed, Deskey filmed, and SS to 62g TX XL springs
x104 3-pin Cherry MX Reds RGB	$95 $90	Harvested from Corsair Keyboard. Desoldered cleanly with Hakko FR-301 and confirmed to work in Hotswap PCBs. Lubed, Deskey filmed, and SS to 62g TX XL springs
x87 Greetech x Razer Oranges (Tactile)	$70 $65	Harvested from Razer Keyboard. Desoldered cleanly with Hakko FR-301 and confirmed to work in Hotswap PCBs. Lubed, Deskey filmed, and SS to 62g TX XL springs
x87 Greetech x Razer Yellows (Linear)	$70 $65	Harvested from Razer Keyboard. Desoldered cleanly with Hakko FR-301 and confirmed to work in Hotswap PCBs. Lubed, Deskey filmed, and SS to 62g TX XL springs
x80 Cobalt POM Linears	$65 $60	Desoldered cleanly with Hakko FR-301 and confirmed to work in Hotswap PCBs. Lubed and filmed
x72 43 Studio Obsidian Pro V2s	$55 $50	Lubed and filmed
x72 Glorious Lynx Linears	$70 $65	Lubed and filmed
x72 AEBoards Blaeck Linears	$70 $65	Lubed and filmed

Keycaps

Name	Price	Condition & Contents
DCX Jasmine	$60 $55	Never used; will ship in bags.

Thanks for your time!

First, Next
​
Chun shuffled in her chair, she was only a mortal boar-kin, why did she have the misfortune of taking the hidden master up to his room. Now this Mei of the Iron Paw sect had cornered her in the Inn when she arrived for the morning shift.
Mei shoveled rice into her mouth from an oversized bowl as she spoke, “Tell me exactly what happened last night when you led the hidden master to his room. I want to know everything you know about him.”
Again Chun shuffled, “I actually met him before that, he was alone at the table near the exit. It was odd because everyone tries to move to the kang to keep warm, but this man simply sat at his table as though the cold meant nothing to him.”
Mei stopped eating, “He was here while we were eating? What was he doing?” She demanded.Chun recoiled a bit, “He just seemed to be watching everyone, including your table. When I brought him his food and drink I warned him to stop staring or he would draw someone’s wrath upon him.”
Mei nodded, if she couldn’t sense him, she obviously couldn’t expect a mere mortal to know what they were dealing with. “What did he do after that?”
Chun took a deep breath, “He seemed to just sit there and eat his meal until the warning bell sounded. When you and your sisters left he asked me how much he owed, dropped coins on the table and left the inn. I didn’t see him again until after the battle.”
Mei sat back and thought, “He paid for his meal you say?”
Chun nodded, “He didn’t even complain or haggle, he simply dropped the coins as if they were nothing and walked out. Huang has told me not to accept payment if he asks when he comes down this morning.”
Mei nodded, “A wise choice, now that he is no longer hidden he may decide to toy with you, it is best for you to play along.”
Chun looked around the inn as customers started to come in for breakfast, it was still early, the sun had barely breached the horizon.
Mei sighed, “Bring me another bowl of porridge, I will await the hidden master, his name was Cain, correct.”
Chun stood quickly before bowing, “He stated his name was Victor Cane, Mistress Mei.”
Mei sat back in her chair and shoo’ed the boar-kin mortal away. Her sisters had taken shifts to ensure from a distance the hidden master had not left. More information on this male was needed, and she expected to gather it for her sect.
She would already be renown for the twenty two instinctual cultivators slain here yesterday, particularly as she had only lost 7 sisters. Three to one was not a feat to be trifled with when it came to instinctuals. The problem was, at least ten of those were from this hidden master that she knew next to nothing about.
She would await him here, and eat her fill to replace her spent energies.
_________________________
DAILY MAINTENANCE COMPLETE
ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONAL
SUBSPACE LINK : NO CONNECTION
RADIO LINK : NO CONNECTION
POWER CORE : 100%
CAPACITOR CORE : 100%
TIME 0700
ACTIVATE WAKE UP ALARM
​
Victor slowly regained consciousness after sleeping like the dead. New gene-mod updates, transmat accident, small firefight with ware-wolves and one cute tiger lady had really kicked his ass. “Computer, turn off that damn alarm.”
He opened his helmet as he sat up from the horrible bed. He had never seen a mirror as poorly made as the one in front of him, maybe it was tarnished bronze? He recalled his scout drones and sent them to storage before reaching in and pulling out his overnight bag.
After washing his face in the not-too-clean sink and brushing his teeth he made his way to the chamber pot by the bed. After relieving himself he decided breakfast was in order. He put his overnight bag into dimensional storage and made his way downstairs to the inn proper.
As he slowly walked down the stairs, hoping the wood could hold his three hundred kilo weight a second time he noticed Mei sitting at the same table as the night before. As usual, the patrons around them gave her a wide berth. Well, judging by the way Mei’s eyes never left him he assumed she wanted to talk to him.
“Hello Mei, how are you doing this morning? He asked innocently enough.
She looked at him stone faced, “I spent most of the night burying my sect sisters, then caught a few hours sleep while we waited for you to wake up.” She stated as she crossed her arms.
Well, this was more new information, evidently there was some camaraderie within the sects. He wasn’t sure of that until now. Evidently cultivators do care for each other, if they care little or nothing for the average peasant.
Victor decided it was best to seem the aloof master rather than the bumbling fool he obviously was and change course, “Chun, could you bring me whatever you have for breakfast, oh, and some more of that wine!”
Mei’s eyes flared at Victor, if looks could kill he’d be scorched right now, “Who are you? I just reminded you that 7 of my sect sisters were buried last night and you call to a mortal for food?”
Victor turned back to her, his officer face was back on again, “Is this your first war Mei?”
Mei sat back and batted her cup back and forth in her hands as she looked down at the table, “Yes, while I’m older than some of my sisters, war hasn’t visited the Celestial Empire in decades, if not centuries.”
Victor reached out a hand and placed it over one of Mei’s. She froze at his touch, a male cultivator touched her, a lowly cultivator of the second tier. “This is not mine, I have lost count of the small fire-fights and battles I’ve been a part of of my last twenty years. Or the soldiers I have lost.”
Mei blinked, fire-fights, like what he did last night was considered small, she had never seen creatures burn like that, wait, did he say the last twenty years. She cleared her throat, “Um, please excuse this lower cultivators curiosity, but you have been in battles for the last twenty years? You look no older than I at twenty eight seasons, how is that possible?”
Victor removed his hand as Chun brought him a huge portion of porridge, rice, pork sausage, eggs and wine. He looked up to her as she bowed down, “Thank you Chun, you are dismissed. Yeah, I don’t age like other people. Actually, I don’t age at all.”
Chun turned on her heels and nearly sprinted back to the kitchen. She had gotten a small taste of Mei’s killing intent when she glared at the hidden master, while she nearly dropped to her knees, the master didn’t even seem to notice.
Victor popped one of the sausages into his mouth as he watched Mei nearly drop her jaw in astonishment. Victor pointed to his plate, “Would you like one? They are quite good.”
Mei shook her head, “You’re an immortal and you thanked that peasant? Do you care nothing for face?”
Victor looked back as he chewed, “Chun? Yeah, she works hard, least I can do is thank her for her efforts. Someone should do something about the turnips though, they are horrible.”
Mei crossed her arms, “I cannot tell if you are toying with me or not. You have an Imperial accent, one that requires training from birth, you fight as if you are a divinity, and you show appreciation to mortals?”
Victor shrugged, “I’m not a complicated man, I’m just passing through the Empire looking for a way home. Speaking of which, you mentioned the Eternal Empress, would you say she is the most powerful person in the land?”
Mei uncrossed her arms before leaning in, “You mean to tell me you don’t know about the Eternal Empress yet you are hundreds of li into her Empire?”
Victor mixed his eggs and sausage into his rice bowl and then looked despairingly down at the chop sticks. He reached into his dimensional storage and produced a spoon, which to Mei seemed to appear from nowhere and scooped out a portion before taking a bite and pointing at Mei with his spoon. “Well, it’s not grits, but it will do in a pinch. No, I don’t know about the Empress, that’s why I’m asking you, if anyone knows how to get me home it might be your Eternal Empress, so how do I get an audience with her?”
Mei sat back in her chair once more, holding the hand Victor had recently touched under the table, “That might be easier than you think, but you may not like the outcome. I sent ahead to my sect leader one town over and she will be using a calling stone to reach the Imperial Palace, I’m sure they will have questions about the foreigner who is also a hidden master.”
Victor stopped eating and sat back in his own chair, “Ah, you say I may not like the outcome, why is that?”
Mei shrugged, if he didn’t know how things worked she didn’t see the harm in telling him. “The Eternal Empress has been said to be a bit temperamental, particularly to foreigners entering her lands. Yes, she is said to be the wisest in the land, and many millennia old. Her magic defends this land and its people.”
Victor took another slow bite with his spoon, “So she may know how to get me home, or she may try to have me killed. No way to know until I meet her eh?”
Mei nodded before stopping, “Wait, you said she may try to have you killed, not that she would have you killed or kill you.”
Victor grinned at her, “Well, I’m not about to make it easy on her if she tries. Listen, I’ve got some things to get done, so in the mean time, here.” He then presented her with a silver bauble with a red gem in the center that dropped from nothingness into his hand. “Take this with you, and give it to the Empress, it will allow her to communicate with me no matter where I go.”
Mei stared at the piece of exquisite jewelry, it would be worth many fortunes over in the Celestial city, and he just handed it to her? “Wait, I can’t just let you leave, you are a foreigner in our lands, it is my duty to keep a watchful eye on you.”
Victor walked over to the bar where Huang looked nervous and dropped a large pile of copper coins before walking to the door.
Mei stood, kicking the chair behind her and stomped towards the exit only to see the hidden master take flight again on wings of fire. This time he did not stop at the bell tower, but continued to fly towards the mountains. “Damn that man to the divinities she shouted as even she lost sight of him in the clouds.”
______________________
“Activate camouflage mode.” Victor spoke into his helmet as his armor took on the the colors surrounding him. It wouldn’t fool anyone close up, but from the distance he was from the village now he doubted even the cultivators could make him out from the sky.
With any luck, Mei would get that communicator back to the Empress, who might know how to get him home. In the mean time though, he reached into his dimensional storage and brought out a satellite probe. He had used the full capacitor load on his jump jets and was still eighteen thousand meters up, more than enough for the probe to reach geosynchronous orbit.
After launching it he looked for a good patch of ground to land. He found one at the base of a mountain range, it even came with a mountain stream. Firing his retro-rockets he landed soft enough and sat on a particularly smooth boulder.
His heads up display showed him his probe had reached geosynchronous orbit and was gathering data. “Well, this is going to take some time.” He thought to himself as he ordered his AI to split his armor. To anyone else watching this would have probably been horrifying as the scout armor appeared to break apart and separate into two halves joined together by a hinge.
Victor took a sniff of himself and groaned, “Good thing the suit is sealed, being in that thing for almost two days and I am ripe!” He thought as he found a nice place in the woods to relieve himself in a way he couldn’t with his armor on.
After that he removed the boxers he wore in his scout armor and placed them on the boulder and stepped across the pebbled beach into the stream. He instantly regretted it, gene-mods or not, a mountain stream in the fall is still cold! After washing as best he could he walked back to his armor, reached into his dimensional storage, produced a towel and fresh boxers and dried off while sunning himself on his rock.
His AI sounded in his inner ear. IMMEDIATE AREA SURVEY COMPLETE.
He kicked off his boulder and climbed back into his now somewhat aired out armor and checked out the results. A mountain in this range was nearly perfect for his needs, abundant metal and mineral deposits, and a valley with a small but very useful petroleum reserve, as well as some natural gas deposits, although those were less than 6% on the scan.
Victor checked that his jump jets capacitor were sufficiently charged and set his jump vector for a somewhat flat ridge three quarters of the way up the mountain, just below the snow caps. Four minutes later, he landed, staring at a nearly sheer cliff face that raised up the mountain another 20 meters above him.
He reached into dimensional storage and retrieved a mining laser. These were a bit expensive, but necessary to start any good mining operation. Mining drones were not good at starting a mining shaft. Oh, it could be done, but it was usually done slowly and crudely. Best to set the aperture to four meters square and crank up the power.
The laser had a magazine of some miracle crystal that put out about ten seconds of power before it was exhausted and was then discarded. He squeezed the trigger and watched as the sheer rock face before him seemed to literally disintegrate as the shaft began to deepen to a depth of about four meters in.
The laser chimed and ejected the magazine as the barrel smoked from the immense heat it had just endured. Victor carefully sat down the mining laser and opened his dimensional storage once more to bring out four mining drones, two forge spiders, and four scout drones.
He set the mining drones to work digging into the mine shaft with gusto the seven dwarfs could never match. Then turned his attention to the scout drones, he sent them off in a patrol pattern to watch over the mountain for any sign of trespassers. Then he remembered the satellite and set it to watch over his piece of paradise as well.
He also thought about retracing his helmet but the temperature outside was just above freezing and decided it best to have a seat and wait a bit for the mining drones to get some work done. On a whim he checked his database, yup, there were 86 different versions of Snow White, might as well pick the Disney one from antiquity, he’d never seen it anyways.
One hour and twenty three minutes later the film was over, and his mining drones and forge spiders had deepened the shaft another five meters. A small pile of ingots had been dropped off by the spiders, the air around them giving off a small mirage effect from the heat they radiated.
Computer, have the nano-forge produce proper steel doors, tracts, motors, and security to cover the dimensions of this shaft. The AI took measurements, produced the adjusted prints, sent them to Victor for approval, then started crafting the necessary materials. Then Victor’s stomach growled.
Sighing, he went over to the pile of fresh ingots, some iron, some copper, others tin and silver.
Retracing his helm he found that although the temperature hovered around 2 degrees celsius, near the ingots it was quite a bit warmer, if you didn’t mind the metallic smell, which it didn’t. Reaching into dimensional storage he found his ration stash, while he had hoped this would be what he would use to fashion himself a life after he left the Imperial Guard, there was a chance he would never get home.
“Resources are there to be used.” He quoted to himself as he took a bite from a bar he hoped wasn’t made from corpo-starch, but as it had no ingredient list he had no way of knowing. Finishing his ration bar, the densely caloric and extremely nutrient bar would play havoc with his bowels later. He noted getting living quarters up soon would be a really good idea.
He slid his helm back into place, “Computer, have the mining drones level off and begin to dig a cavern to fit the small hab module in dimensional storage, have them oversize it by a meter on all sides, I want some clearance when I bring this out of storage.”
The AI complied and he watched his mini-map on his hud as the drones turned ninety degrees and started opening up a new cavern. A few minutes later, the computer chimed to let him know the doors were complete and ready for installation.
A good thing he had his scout armor, these doors were five centimeters thick and three meters high and wide. They weighed almost four tons a piece, which was right at the limit of what his power armor was capable of. Pulling out the necessary tools he installed the tracts above and below, then setup the motor controls before pulling the doors out of storage and setting them into the tracks.
After testing and adjustment he was satisfied that not only were they very secure, they even seemed to blend in well with the sheer cliff wall. “Not a bad job if I do say so myself.” Victor said as he began setting up production orders for ventilation, water drainage, and lighting with his AI to start construction while he waited for the chamber to be completed.
A full six hours later and several movies of varying degrees of watchfulness, his computer chimed letting him know the new cavern was complete and the mining drones were continuing their downward path towards the more dense metal reserves deeper in the mountain.
He stood, stretched his back, and ordered the massive steel doors to open, walking the gently sloping shaft down the ten meters to the new cavern. The walls were smooth and the entrance seemed just about right for the habitats air lock door to fit flush with the mining shaft.
A few minutes later and a loud bang as the habitat module appeared from dimensional space and then found that gravity existed again, slamming it the few centimeters to the floor of the cavern. “Oops!” Victor said to himself hoping he didn’t break anything.
Nothing appeared to be damaged, after all, these habs were basically mini-bunkers designed for anything from death worlds to deep space mining. Fifteen meters on each side and four meters high, it gave him an excellent respite from the world around him. Indoor plumbing, central heating and air, entertainment center, kitchen, bath, and a bed.
He entered the habitat and sealed the airlock to the mine shaft. The internal temperature of the hab read twenty one degrees celsius, so he shed his armor, placed it in the airlock rack and connected it to the habitat’s power and computer system before opening the inner airlock.
“Home sweet home, at least until I find a way back." Then he thought about it, would the Guard blame him for the transmat accident? Sure he lied about having anything on him in dimensional storage but he knew guys who smuggled things around all the time and something like this never happened to them. "Hope I don’t look at a court martial if I ever to get back home for going AWOL or some such bullshit.” He muttered as he headed for the shower. That mountain stream was freezing!
______________________
“What to you mean he flew away?” Shihan looked at Mei from across her desk.
Mei shifted uncomfortably in the rickety chair that sat across from the elder cultivator in front of her. The room was also cold, and Shihan had set the desk low so that she could sit on the kang and keep warm while others had to endure. “He said he had important matters to attend to and flew away on wings of fire.”
Shihan shook her head, “Lazy eggs, all of you. We lost seven Iron Paw warriors in your battle three days ago, and probably would have lost you all if not for this hidden master. I have reached out to the the sect mistress who will be informing the royal court at this weeks meeting with the Empress. Do you have anything else to report?”
Mei nodded and set the jeweled bauble on the desk in front of the elder sect leader, “The hidden master, Victor Cane presented me with this. He stated to give it to the Empress and they would be able to communicate no matter the distance.”
The older lady stared at the priceless looking item before slowly looking back up to Mei, “I feel no chi coming from this item, how could it possibly do what he says. Even our best calling stones can barely reach three hundred li, how could this tiny broach communicate anywhere?”
Mei had thought long on this, “I do not know mistress, however, I do know that not once did I feel any chi from this hidden master either. I believe it is his cultivation technique, as he must use near perfect yang energy to power his creations. Can you detect pure yang, head mistress?”
Shihan shook her head, “I cannot my student, for that is only in the realm of the highest levels of male cultivation, and to my knowledge, no male alive can use pure yang energy, hence why they are inherently weaker as they cultivate some yang and some yin, their meridians are out of balance.”
Mei nodded, this was the same conclusion she had reached as well, “I watched him create multiple items from thin air, some for weapons, one was a simple soup spoon, we know most men use their cultivation for crafting, perhaps this hidden master is so adept at it he uses pure yang energy that we simply cannot sense.”
Shihan’s eyes widened with the implications, “That means he would appear as just a normal mortal until he decided to act, just as he did in your report.” She then looked down at the silver jeweled broach that sat on the desk. “The craftsmanship of this object is superb, its gem is absolutely flawless, I have never seen silversmithing so pure. Were this not to be sent to the Empress its sale would keep the Iron Paw clans coffers full for seasons on end.”
She sighed, “No, we cannot abandon our duty, I will send this item to the Empress herself, and as this Victor Cane had entrusted you with it, I feel that you should be the one to deliver it to her yourself.”
Mei gasped before bowing, “I will not fail you head mistress.”
Shihan sat back on her cushions enjoying the warmth of the kang under her, “See to it that you do not, for the Empress does not take kindly to fools who waste her time.”

Link to chapter on RoyalRoad
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📷
“Ahh… That feels good… Right there, right there… Ooh… Thank the Lord…”
“Old man, could you be a bit quieter while I’m doing it?”
It was right after bath time, and Ayomide was busy with drying everybody’s hair as usual. “[Wind], [Wind], [Wind]…” A lack of towels and hairdryers made her magic essential in making sure nobody got a cold. The wind also doubled as a sort of massage, which was why old man Brown was making those odd noises of pleasure as written above.
Tater, who had been the first one to get his hair dried, was watching the two while he himself was trying to light a fire for the night. It wasn’t an easy process, he had to strike a steel kitchen knife to a piece of flint in hopes that the kindling would catch fire, which it sometimes refused to do. “Lady Orange, can’t you cast some fire for poor old me?”
Ayomide answered without thinking. “No, I cannot.”
“Why not? Ain’t you a magician? I thought you could do all kinds of stuff.” Tater had heard tales of magicians comitting many wondrous acts, yet Ayomide’s job of being a glorified drying machine seemed too ordinary.
Tater’s question had ignited Brown’s curiosity as well. “I’ve been wondering the same thing, young lady.”
The old man’s encounter and reckoning with ‘magic’ had not been easy, ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ made it pretty clear what the Lord thought about magicians. However, the ‘magic’ of Gemeinplatz didn’t have much to do with acts of magic mentioned in the Bible. Brown had concluded that this ‘magic’ was most likely a highly malleable, misnamed natural force of some sort (which could be used benevolently or malevolently like any other force) that hadn’t been present back on Earth. Thus, he himself avoided using the word ‘magic’, though he hadn’t yet found any other word to replace it.
“Right… I got taught this stuff by an old lady around ten years ago, so take this with a grain of salt.” She wasn’t exactly the best authority to give the obligatory exposition on magic, but Ayomide would have to give it a shot. “So, the world is apparently made of seven elements. Earth, water, air, fire, aether, light and dark.”
“I know earth, water, air, fire and aether to be elements, young lady, as devised by Aristotle. What might be the other two?” Brown had died around the time when the atomic theory was slowly gaining mainstream acceptance. The four (plus one, aether) elements were the best that Brown, an avid reader of the classics, had in terms of knowledge in physics.
“Right. The names of the other elements explain themselves. Light is, well, light. You know, the stuff that gives life to plants and animals, hence healing stuff is in the domain of light. Like what I did with the old man’s arm. And dark is, dark. The opposite of light. Disease, death, mind control, all that stuff.” Ayomide scratched her head, trying to think of more couth ways to elaborate on the elements. “Well, as I said, I heard about it all when I was a kid. So that’s all I’ve got on the elements.”
Tater seemed unsatisfied. “So, what’s that got to do with you being unable to light a fire?”
“I was getting to that point, kid. So, with this magic stuff, everybody’s attuned to different elements at different levels. That’s why you see different folks casting different things. Far as I’ve seen, I’m attuned to wind and light.”
“Interesting…” Brown’s mind was more at ease. It seemed that this ‘magic’ didn’t have any relation anything ungodly like the Devil himself or any other demons. A question popped up in his relaxed mind. “And why do you have to shout ‘wind’ every time you need to blow wind?”
“You don’t actually have to shout anything. Watch.” Ayomide paused, thinking really hard. Wind, wind, uhh… Let there be wind. Wind, wind, wind… [Wind]! A sudden breeze blew towards Brown’s face. “You need to envision what you want to bring forth. Shouting what you want to do just makes it easier.”
“We have to be careful around people then. Just gagging them might not do the job.” Brown seemed satisfied as he got up. “It’s getting late. You know what they say…”
Tater finished Brown’s sentence. “…early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. We don’t need to hear it for the umpteenth time, captain.”
📷
76th of Spring, 5859 A copper mine atop Mount Curry, Azdavay / Casamonu
Shinasi hadn’t expected to get himself employed again this suddenly and so soon. Of course, he wasn’t going to the copper mine just to get employed, he was under Brown’s orders to scout out the facility and formulate a plan to help the slaves escape with minimal casualties.
He had gotten on the road as soon as he had bid his farewells to the people of the cave. The road from the cave to the copper mine wasn’t too long; it was only around an hour’s walk. Shinasi found himself at the mine before the sun had properly risen.
One of the overseers tipped his hat in greeting. “Good morning, Shinasi was it?”
Shinasi tipped his helmet in return. “Morning. Yes, that’d be me.”
“The boss wants to see you, before you begin working.” The overseer pointed to the biggest building in the area. “He should be in the mansion.”
📷
Shinasi parted ways with this overseer, making his way to the door of the ‘mansion’. It was a pretty small building for a mansion, with only two floors. Guess this is the best you can get in the mountains. The noble who lived here probably wasn’t the richest. Shinasi proceeded to knock on the front door. He was greeted by a maid opening the door.
“I’m the new guard that Sir Algernon’s looking for.” All this formality had already made Shinasi begin to feel sick.
The maid took a disinterested look at Shinasi. “Leave your weapons at the door please.” Shinasi obliged and parted ways with his beloved spear and shield. “Come in.”
Shinasi was greeted by an indoors that, while definitely affluent, wasn’t too rich in decoration. Most of the items were made or decorated with copper, probably with the copper that had been gathered in the mine. There was even a bust of what Shinasi assumed to be the owner, he couldn’t read the inscription below it, of the mansion. The maid opened a door, wherein lay a thirtysomething in a sharp one-piece suit and bearing an even sharper mustache. Shinasi removed his helmet and held it over his chest, which was the standard way to greet a superior in Gemeinplatz. “Greetings, sir.” He even bowed down a bit to add a extra bit of sycophancy.
📷
Sir Algernon looked pleased with the actions of Shinasi. “Welcome, I see that you are a well-bred man Shinasi. It’s rare to find such adventurers.” He gestured towards a seat that sat in front of him. “Here, you may sit down. I am Sir Algernon Satō-Wang of Curry, and this is my wife, Leila. We have two children as well, though they’re currently a bit busy being tutored upstairs.” Shinasi had missed the woman sitting on the other side of the room, he bowed down to her as well.
Leila was fanning her face with a paper fan as she spoke. “I’m happy that he seems to be different compared to the other adventurer we called up, dear.” Shinasi noticed that her abdomen was greatly swollen, signaling that she was pregnant. Her outfit was equally as sharp as Algernon’s.
Algernon nodded his head in agreement. “Indeed, I have high hopes for him.”
📷
That’s a bit too much for a temporary worker, isn’t it… “Sir, please, you do not need to spend so many words of praise someone coming here temporarily.” Showing humility was a great way to warm up with the nobles, or that was what Shinasi had learned anyways.
“Temporary? Right, that’s what was told to you. After seeing you however, I believe you could have permanent employment. It’s hard to get good retainers up in these mountains.” Algernon switched to business mode, extending his hand toward Shinasi for a handshake. “Two libra a day, with accommodation and food taken care of and one day break every decameron?” He was a master at blitzkrieg, his krieg being flattery and business.
Two libra wasn’t bad, it amounted to somewhere around four loaves of bread. Shinasi didn’t think too hard about it while shaking hands with Algernon however, for he wasn’t here for a job. “Thank you so, so much sir.”
“Well, let’s celebrate with something to drink, shall we?” Algernon clapped his hands as loudly as he could muster. “Ekene! Ejike!”
The young maid that had greeted Shinasi at the door returned with a tray with teacups, along with a butler that looked to be her brother who carried a pot of tilia tea. Ekene, the sister, set the teacups while Ejike, the brother, began pouring tea into them without saying a word. While pouring Ejike’s hand slipped and the tea from the pot flew onto Algernon’s oh-so precious suit.
“What the- Damn you, dog!” The calm, businesslike demeanor of Algernon suddenly shifted to that of a savage. He was about to stand up to enact physical punishment, before Leila tugged on his suit. “Dear, be calm.”
Ekene and Ejike were watching their master in fear as he went back to business mode. “Right, I probably shouldn’t damage the slaves too much. But this is the kind of actions these uppity darkskins pull off when you don’t let me tutor them properly, woman. He paused to think of a punishment that wouldn’t make his wife too mad. “No food for you today. Now git!”
The siblings obliged and left the room posthaste. Algernon turned toward Shinasi to address his new employee. “You see, these darkskins are like dogs. You need to use brute force to get them to understand anything, or else they get uppity like they did just now. Don’t hesitate to get physical, as long as you don’t kill or permanently damage them. Got that?”
Shinasi tried his best to keep a poker face. “Yes sir.” He had never seen how masters treated their slaves. Algernon’s behavior seemed no different to how Shinasi had seen lords treat their underlings, to how they had treated his parents. “I’ll be sure to give them a good whack if they step out of line.”
“Good, good. I think we’ll get along well.” Algernon smiled toward Shinasi, with genuine warmth that seemed out of place after what he had just done and ordered to be done to his slaves. He seemed to genuinely value his retainers. “You should report to the head overseer, he’s the one responsible for you.”
“Understood sir. I’ll be taking my leave, then.” Shinasi added a few more words of gratitude and flattery as he got up and left the room. His heart was weighed down by heavy emotions as he did so. He had initially joined Brown mostly on a whim, intending to escape from Azdavay. The words he spent at the night encounter with Ayomide, they were mostly points he had copied over from the captain’s speech without much personal elaboration.
Now, however, Shinasi was slowly beginning to understand why he must do what he’d do. He made his way to the head overseer, with newfound determination slowly budding in his heart.

I already loved BOTW despite making a long whishlist out of it, because what it focused on made it worth coming back for years. I have completed most of TOTK and have let thoughts settle. I think it improves many things over BOTW and adds incredible stuff. Still here I'll focus on what bugged me, because having waited for so long, and having so much to it also means frustrations here and there and a lot of potential for whatever comes next. Hopefully this is constructive.

World & Scope

I expected the sky to be a proper "sky world" but while I love the aesthetic and ambiance, it's mostly small repetitive sky segments. I'm not addressing sky temples here, only the general overworld for casual exploration and discovery. The big structures that gave Wind Waker vibes from afar fall into a few categories of quick challenges, without many unique finds on them. The rest are copy-pasted platforms with slight variations for a shrine, a map, a few resources, a construct or gleeok. I really hoped in the beginning that the Great Sky Island wouldn't be the only ambitious one, and it was by far.
I expected underground to be secondary, maybe with some underwater. We got the "mirror" depths and many caves, which are impressive but daunting and not really varied. To be clear, they're definitely part of my addiction to the game, so they definitely have value. Some amazing spots and intense encounters, exploration in the dark was surprising and awesome. But I'd take a smaller extra map for a few more big unique moments.
Red herrings in marketing can be double-edged. Especially after going through Skyward Sword recently, reminding of its shortcomings for the sky intended as a focus, only to see the most fully realized open world version do little more with most of its real estate. I do enjoy what's there but hype can be a b*tch.
Quick word on underwater, yes we were a lot to expect or wish for it, personally what they decided to focus on is just as interesting, in parts more, it doesn't have to be the obvious choice and it can't be everything. I did find it suspicious (though funny) that one NPC got my hopes up when mentioning a flooded well which was just about waiting for the rain to stop, or when Bolson had underwater exploration as a suggestion for new activities which is of course denied. It could be a big deal but they had great stuff instead so no biggie.

Main challenges

I expected traditional dungeons adapted to the open world, we got... an interesting version of that. The environments and ambiance are unique, the lead-up segments were great but puzzles were oddly trivial with terminals.
To me the Wind Temple is the best of the four big ones. Fairly simple but really fun parkour, epic and ominous ambiance (some of the best music), a mind-blowing moment that perfectly combines the build up, the trampoline mechanic to go above the eye of the storm, and the heavily marketed skydiving mechanic to go through a stunning introduction. The terminal puzzles remain on the weaker side when thinking about "big dungeons" but in this game I liked their integration best. Colgera is great and so is the music once again. The myth about flying boats is properly brought up and ends up happening before our eyes, the most compelling one IMO. Unfortunately that was also the temple teased the most by Nintendo and suggested to be done first.
By contrast the three others were less impressive * For the Fire Temple, we're told about this mysterious ancient city Gorondia, we go up Death Mountain, fight a cool godzilla miniboss, dive through one of the most epic world building reveals. Then it's all about mine carts, like many people I got confused about some "puzzle" parts and rushed with climbing and ascend. The boss was ok but a pretty underwhelming payoff. * For the Water Temple, I don't have anything against it and low gravity is fun. Interesting lead-up and architecture, but the terminals and boss felt underwhelming. * For the Lightning Temple nothing negative either, the boss introduction and fight were more remarkable, the setting was great, but I can't say I remember going through puzzle rooms.
The Spirit Temple is a highlight by how it integrates a cool quest that spans multiple locations, a multi-part puzzle, a unique item / ability / boss / reward and lore.
The Great Deku Tree had a nice integration with the Depths, really cool to realize how deep his roots are. But it's mostly some environmental lore, a reused Phantom Ganon fight and a short memory, then it's Korok Forest as usual. I could see a Forest Temple if other temples had been more consistently fleshed out.

Secondary challenges

As mentioned before, lots of sky islands have the same minimalist repetitive nature. There are a few big vertical ones that still feel limited: short skydiving challenges. Looking at the art and trailers I had come to expect maybe a couple villages, at least occasional unique NPCs, or more unique finds. It gives the impression of bloated structures for the sake of recognizable landmarks, without much to give in the end. There's that one with an obscurity puzzle, despite the same aesthetic as anywhere else it at least stands out. Maybe I'm underplaying the focus on the "journey more than the destination" this time around, while I was all about that in BOTW, maybe I figured out too quickly how to optimize travel and put too much expectation on what I'd find there. But they're really sparse, unlike the surface and depths which could hide something at any corner, so I'm not sure I was in the wrong mindset.
Zonai mazes are pretty fun but yet another type of major landmark with underwhelming payoff. I liked how they address the fact that most BOTW players already completed the surface with in-game explorers leaving a trail. Getting to the sky portion is nice but nothing unique. Once there it's fun to fly around but I didn't feel challenged to reach glowing points on the map. There's one instance where the map isn't enough with walls blocking on all sides, so you have to dive and go back up on the other side. But it doesn't seem like one of those open-ended challenges where you make it as tough as you want. Unless you want to stay blind and bump against every single wall of the maze, you're meant to use the map which makes it trivial. It felt like they had settled to make mazes as landmarks, and added the standard terminal fetch quests as an afterthought. Then the idea of diving back down into the depths is neat, but here again I had mixed feelings with the outcome. It happens three times which seems like a manageable amount for a conclusion specific to these places, so coming across yet another flux construct and BOTW DLC item isn't too exciting.
The fact that they repurpose DLC content for "ancient lore" discovery isn't a big deal and can even be great if well integrated. But a lot of these felt underwhelming, with random placement which emphasizes "repurposed DLC" more than proper "ancient lore", and the fact that many of us have been using these for years now. So instead of feeling like long-lost meaningful items, it feels like accessing parts of your previous save file bit by bit. I don't know what could be in their place, I'm just saying how it felt.

Wildlife

I noticed almost nothing new with animals which were such a novelty for immersion in BOTW. Except the harness and perks at stables, but horses are as stiff as ever and even less valuable now. I doesn't take away what was already in BOTW, but the sky, undergrounds, verticality and vehicles drastically diminish the presence of animals.
I didn't like how some NPCs tease the mysterious creature Zelda was seen with, only to be what dondons turned out to be, some version of what we saw her ride in the first trailer. Nothing special besides feeding them rocks. I can appreciate that the dondons quest is a play on rumors which is a quite nice trope in this game, but there's also a few unique mounts that also start as gossip and turn out to be real, so I did let myself hope it would be more than a cute stationary animal.
Also I understand why we didn't get loftwings but that goes with wanting a grander sky world.

Lore

The lore and presentation are more epic, but we don't really learn anything valuable that isn't reusing previous tropes. I won't bother speculating on the actual meaning of the "kingdom's foundation" or "ancient times" relative to the entire series, it's not the most important and the creators may not have bothered themselves.
This was Ganondorf's best time to shine, writers touch on his origin yet mostly stick to callbacks; vaguely bring up Gerudo males born every 100 years though we don't know more about what that means or how it works; have him express motive and cunningly pledge fealty, without more insight into his past as an individual; show him as a fierce leader and user of dark magic even without god-like powers, without expanding on how he got there, how much of it is actually innate, how it relates to the ancient curse... All cool stuff, I get that a story can remain basic to serve the game, but it could be more thoughtful to engage players in a different way. Some people still prefer WW Ganondorf for this reason, we had a slightly more intimate feeling when he opened up about his past, making his madness and downfall more impactful.
The Zonai are referenced everywhere to the point where I understand why some people feel like it retcons stuff. I think you can always add more layers so I don't mind. But I wish they'd tell us more explicitly what it's meant to be. While I enjoy environmental storytelling and letting players figure it out, it can also come across as "this is the ancient aesthetic, mysterious stuff happened, the Zonai did it". It raises the stakes while none of our BOTW speculations about Zonai ruins have been addressed, to my knowledge. I'm expecting DLC to use more of that trope but hopefully they tie in more unique lore than they did with the Sheikah in BOTW DLC, which was essentially more challenges without telling us anything major. And if they resort to an official artbook to say more that's fine, but I wish they went all the way in the game itself. NPCs, logs and stone tablets can go a long way.

Story delivery

Memories are more captivating than in BOTW but even if non-linearity is intended, it can be counter-productive. I carefully got to tears in order but stumbled upon Mineru's quest in the middle, without a clue that there was an intended way to clear the skies only after the fake Zelda confrontation. Nothing Mineru tells us was completely unfathomable but still, the tension should work better in order. * On one side there are memories. If they tell a linear story, they could play memories in order regardless of which tear you get. Though I'm fine figuring out by myself if they provide an obvious suggestion, they might as well prevent people from being confused just for the sake of calling it "open gameplay". * On the other side for things in the present it's a dilemma, I wish I was told the thunder storm island had late-story reveals, or that it kept locked until enough progression. But going through it blind, following to a temple, solving the puzzle without a clue of where I was going was one of the best moments of the game. The hostile environment didn't feel like a warning, because early on we're taught to find our way through obstacles and obscurity.
Zelda goes through crazy stuff, I liked seeing her experience unfold in the past but with suspense. I already defended the BOTW memories as a nice development of her character, this is taking her faith in Link further while being a story device that feels natural enough. Her transformation is a great twist, though I got very suspicious of that when casually dropping on the Light Dragon, before deciding I wasn't ready for spoilers. This only adds to my point about the linearity compromise. But in the end she's back to normal and it seems she wasn't conscious of the ages passing by. This lack of lasting consequences kinda defeats the purpose, but I should appreciate a simple happy ending that also works. It also convinces me that they're done with this BOTW/TOTK iteration beyond DLC.
When the construct on the sky Temple of Time proposes to share the backstory of the floating island, I postponed until I felt I could be spoiled major stuff. I liked revisiting the island with the bonfires challenge, but it also cemented my concern that the sky overall was under-utilized. As I completed the challenge looking forwards to some exciting lore, the construct simply told me through text that the island floats because... ancient people wanted it to float, so it's safe and the Hero could be there. Ok, thanks, but that delivery buried my sky-related expectations.
The repetition of the ancient sages cutscenes after each temple was ridiculous. None of it is bad, but if they're not going to add something each time, at least have a shorter version. Make a full sequence rewatchable like memories, but keep these moments short so it doesn't turn the initial impact into an expected joke. Secret stone? Demon King?
Finally I had a couple of odd moments when progressing the main quest. * All gathered at Lookout Landing after people saw Zelda at the castle, all the main quest stuff is brought up and my Link eventually decides to update people on the fifth sage, the Master Sword and what happened to Zelda. Nothing about a fake Zelda though, because we need the "twist" we're about to get of course. Purah observes he could have said so earlier about the sword, people are shocked for 5 seconds about Zelda despite the mind-shattering implication for anyone who cares about her, and we move on. This dialogue was extremely weird. * When about to go fight Ganondorf, smart Purah had the most uncharacteristic brain fart, observing he likely wasn't on the surface and nowhere in the depths we explored, wondering where he could be. Hmmm let's see, we met him under the castle, he fell there, where the gloom still comes out and he just tricked us, hmmmm... that's a tough one... So while I'm sure I could have ignored that and gone straight under the castle, for proper completion I "had" to talk to Josha, she essentially put me back on track to find Kohga, in our final encounter he "revealed" that Ganondorf was under Hyrule Castle. Shocker.
These moments yet again showed a contradiction in an open approach to something designed with a specific path in mind, and it felt a bit like the game said "weird choice, but anyway..."

Mechanics

I think every hand ability is more interesting than runes in BOTW, regular items are more useful than ever, crafting is impressive. I already liked shrines in BOTW but the new ones are even more interesting because of that.
However I'm not sold on the sages. When going to a temple I liked that one follows you for tailored segments. In battles though they're too messy, you need them close to activate but it goes against you and them fighting freely. Outside of battle sometimes they get in the way when pressing A, sometimes they just stand far away. I was more comfortable with the ability triggering through Link in BOTW. Given how randomly useful they are, it's also annoying to go to special items to turn on/off. Tulin is really apart with the airborne wind gust, to the point where I had it on for most of my exploration but it was annoying to see him fly around or attack things without me asking. It could have been special Rito feathers for the paraglider or something. I understand they focused on fighting along companions but IMO combat was unnecessary for the sage ghosts. Keep it for the temples with the real sages, it's more unique and enjoyable. Mineru's construct may be the exception.
I'm reserved about some Zonai devices despawning after a while. I get a point of view that wings and ballons shouldn't take you anywhere from the start, but at the same time it's also being able to fly the thing, and it becomes quickly irrelevant anyway as you can find ways around that. Either with rockets or fans (two fans at an angle with a control stick quickly became popular), gliding with more stamina, or inevitable glitches. Nintendo knew how it went with BOTW crafters, it's in good part what encouraged them in that direction. They also knew it was about providing tools for free exploration which they even promote. So I don't know what putting a timer on some base items does, besides unnecessary anxiety to players we don't know any better but enjoy traveling around. Not a huge deal, but I don't really get it.

User interaction

They somehow made the weapon swap menu more sluggish and horizontal menus are a mess when going through many items. For less frequent items I often ended up opening the full menu, obviously a grid cuts down on time to get to the item you need. But you can't do that with arrows, so occasionally I'd spend well over 15 seconds scrolling, sorting clumsily hoping that would help. I get that the horizontal layout may be to keep sight of the action... If they really need to minimize clutter vertically, they could for example spread items in one row per category (zonai devices / food collectibles / minerals / etc), the row in focus is fully visible in the middle like we have now, rows above and below are faded, and you can move up and down to change category. Armchair developer suggestion I know, but surely they can work on something better.
Nintendo love unnecessary prompts in repetitive interactions. In this game we still have Great Fairies armor upgrades happening one by one and telling you what's going on each time, Beedle's casual observations no one reads for the billionth time, stable folks apparently recognizing you but thinking you have the worst memory... It depends on the player I guess, but if there's one they should streamline it's shrine rewards. I think no one intends to watch the whole thing again besides the first and last ones. No one can do anything with the orb as you stand there, there's no relevant information about it. Just say congrats and load me out please.

Design, Art & Tech

The Zelda team are incredibly competent in everything that makes up a game but aren't immune to hardware limitations. BOTW was already an amazing technical feat, they one-upped it despite comments that TOTK "looks the same". It doesn't exactly, it's more ambitious and better optimized. It's still fair to point at frame drops, resolution drops, pop-in. As amazed as I was by the Wind Temple for example, the heavy stutters took me out of it a few times which is a shame. And this isn't lack of time, care or resources, comparing to any AAA is a clear indication that the Zelda devs are masters on this platform. While this is the best we'll see on this console everyone is justified in wanting hardware closer to a modern standard to support the devs' ideal vision.
I'm generally cautious about that argument because "more power" doesn't magically mean "more and better content". In fact restrictions and simplicity can play in favor of a game's qualities, for example not worrying too much about photo-realism and extremely detailed models due to a wonderful art direction. But it's tough to admit when the game is undermined by those restrictions. The under-utilized sky world may be concerned by this, officially they kept it sparse for level design concerns, but I can't help to feel like filling up the sky would also have the Switch struggle much more than it does. I may be biased but of all the islands, I remember the most persistent frame drops when messing around on the Great Sky Island, where there's so much more to see. I can also imagine dark undergrounds partly justified by less detail on display, and caves by much smaller environments.
If you read everything you get a bubbul gem, if not tell me what you thought anyway