Not all change is bad, but not all change is advantageous either, especially when it involves disfigurations and body part swapping. ‘What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.’ I tend to disagree in certain circumstances. I doubt surviving a train wreck makes you stronger. At this point in my life, I feel as weak as I have ever been. I feel odd and peculiar, a stranger to my own body, a monster to my soul.
Several months ago, as I was lying in bed a wave of red light poured in through my window, accompanied by a hypnotic vibrating purr, that put me in a deep sleep. When I woke up my left hand felt swollen. At first, I thought nothing of it but as I went through my morning routine, things felt different. My grasp wasn’t as strong, but it wasn’t just that, it felt as if I had a different tactile sensation altogether. I finally became conscious of the extent of the difference when I went to brush my teeth.
I grabbed the toothbrush with my right hand and the tube of toothpaste with my left hand. As I tried to line the nozzle to the toothbrush, I noticed that my left hand was slightly bigger than my right hand, and had a darker skin tone. The contrast was striking. I have a very fair skin complexion. My mom always said that I was ‘Irish’ white, that she would lose sight of me walking to the mailbox through a snowstorm.
I dropped the dental toiletries in the sink. I held my hands up in front of my face. I never chewed my nails, but on my left hand, the nails were almost chewed down to the cuticle. I turned my hands over and they were as different as night and day. The left was calloused from hard work and dedicated labor, the other was the pampered hands of a college student. Around the wrist of my new left hand was a bracelet of thick dark stitches, hardly signifying friendship or wealth.
I had to call the police, but when I got my phone, there was a text message:
Don’t go to the police, or we’ll remove your head. No more procedures needed.
I wasn’t too sure what to do at that point. Whoever did this was able to in one night, knock me out, surgically remove my hand and replace with someone else’s hand. If they were able to do that, then I was certain they would be able to get in and do much worse.
Luckily, I was in between semester, no classes to attend, nothing as of yet to explain. Even though it was hot as hell and it was in the middle of Summer, I put on a long sleeve shirt and a pair of gloves. My left glove barely fit, and the phrase ‘If it don’t fit, you must acquit’ popped in my head. I frequented the food truck parked in the convenient store parking lot near my apartment building at least three times a week. They have the best burrito I have ever eaten, bursting with meat and spices, not any of those lean stingy burritos you get at traditional restaurants. But lately, there has been this strange street person hanging out at the corner. He showed up around a month before my ordeal. He was not begging for money but preaching about an invasion. He was always dressed as if it was forty below zero.
Instead of walking along the sidewalk, I decided to climb down the hill from my apartment that led directly to the back of the convenient store. From my deck, I could watch the customers go in and out of the store. The apartment building sat on a high hill overlooking the street below. I could see that the homeless man wasn’t at his usual corner, but I didn’t want to take any chance.
I got down the hill and hopped down from the retaining wall, when all of the sudden he jumped out from behind the dumpster, dressed in a long trench coat, gloves, a ski mask, and a scarf wrapped around his neck.
“They got ya son. They’ve tagged you. I saw the red light. I’ve been tracking them for a while. You ain’t getting away and they ain’t stopping. You need to come with me.”
“Mister, I don’t have any money I can give you.”
“I don’t want your damn money son. I’m here to save your life."
I tried to walk past him, but he blocked my path and pushed me back. As he did so he started unwrapping his scarf and pulling off his ski mask. I resumed my attempt to get to my favorite burrito, but he blocked me again. I was looking down, not paying attention, so I didn’t notice that he was completely unmasked with his trench coat and shirt laying on the ground.
“Look here!”
I looked up to see the most grotesque, confusing human being I had ever perceived. He was a patchwork of different races, different skin tones, and stitched up scars running throughout his body and face like a map of a river and its many tributaries. His nose was completely foreign to his face and both eyes were awkwardly strung together from two different individuals. Worst of all, there was a large scar around his neck, indicating that this head had been removed and reattached.
“They told you that they were done, right?” I nodded my head in agreement. “Well, I’m proof that they are a bunch of damn liars. I hate to tell you this, but your life is over as you know it. You can come with me and stay intact or refuse my help and become what I am today.”
I should have taken his advice, but I wasn’t in a state to comprehend the reality of my situation. I was still unsure of what I had seen this morning. I was trying to convince myself that I had just slept on my hand or had a bad dream and slammed it against the wall. It was just swollen, not someone else’s hand.
“I’m fine man. I just want a burrito. Leave me alone, please.”
“Alright. I’ll still be here when you are ready. There’s a place we like to call the Island of Misfit Toys. You know from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. You’ll be safe there. I promise you, its not going away.”
I started to walk away, determined to ignore him, but then he said something that caught my attention.
“I bet you are O negative blood type. All us misfit toys are O negative. Universal donor baby. Now how did I know that? You still want to turn a blind eye.”
He was correct, but I persisted in my stubbornness and walked away. That day the burrito just didn’t taste as well as it normally did. Was there a new cook? I didn’t notice. Or worse, had they already replaced my tongue with someone else’s, whoever they were?
There weren’t any other occurrences for the next month. I made sure to sleep in the living room on the couch with the television on. Still, Mr. Frankenstein stood on the corner, waiting for me. I didn’t visit the food truck that entire month, didn’t have the usual craving and sure as hell didn’t want to have another confrontation.
The next month was my wake-up call. I was dozing off when the television shut off by itself. I heard that familiar hum and saw the red light moving through the front window. I put my fingers in my ears, closed my eyes and stumbled to the bathroom. I started singing to myself, hoping to drown out the noise and stay conscious. I opened my eyes for a second and saw that the red light was moving under the door, and bending upwards towards my face. I shut my eyes again.
The bathroom door slammed open. I closed my eyes tighter, so much so that I saw twinkling stars and sparks. I felt two hands grasp me by the shoulders and lift me up in the air. I opened my eyes. There standing before me was tall hairless grey being in a long black cloak. The creature had no eyes, small narrow nostrils, but a large gaping mouth, affixed open as if the creature was unable to close it. On his shoulder was a smaller green creature with a bulbous head and large eyes. It was not clothed and would ever so often lay its forehead against the side of the larger creature’s neck. It seemed to be a symbiotic relationship.
The larger creature lifted up his three-fingered hand. Out of the palm of his hand radiated a red light. The smaller creature was somehow making the humming noise, and within a few seconds I lost consciousness.
The next morning, I woke up in my bedroom upstairs. I frantically searched my entire body but saw nothing, but I wasn’t convinced by that cursory search, and sure enough, my suspicions were correct. Staring back at me was a somewhat unfamiliar face. My right eye was now green instead of blue, and the skin tone around it was darker. Even my eyebrow was more pointed. Encircling a wide area of the eye was a ring of stitches. I fell to the floor, exasperated by what I had seen, and what I had become. It was time to visit Mr. Frankenstein.
I didn’t try to hide my eye. I can easily explain it away as corrective surgery, the first of its kind, if anyone was so bold, or rude, to ask. I found him at the corner as expected. He didn’t gloat or say ‘I told you so.’ He was sympathetic.
“I’m sorry man. Come on. Let me take you to your new home.”
“There’s no way to fight them… or stop them?”
“Maybe in time, but all we know how to do right now is hide and keep them from tracking us.”
“How do you keep them from tracking us?” I asked.
“You’re not going to like it, but we got to dig a tracking device from in between you lower ribcage.”
I wasn’t too thrilled about that but then again, I’d rather go through a little suffering on the front end to avoid any more experimental alien body part swapping.
We walked down the main highway to a backroad where there was an old, abandoned warehouse. He gave a coded knock to let him know that it was a friend and then turned to me.
“By the way, what’s your name?”
“Robert, but you can call me Rob.”
“I’m Frank, as in Frankenstein.”
I laughed and explained to him that I had already begun calling him Mr. Frankenstein. I felt a little weird admitting that, so I apologized.
“No need to apologize. I like the name. I honestly don’t know my real name. I just picked that one.”
The door opened and there was a hooded man with his face hidden.
“Welcome home Frank. Got a new one huh?”
“Yep, sure do Phil. Let’s make him feel at home.”
We walked through the door into a small homemade foyer. Some drywall had been thrown up and fortified with wooden pallets and barbed wire. There was yet another door. It was a thick steel door with a peephole. Phil gave another coded knock. A woman armed with a gun slung over her shoulders opened the door. Her face was riddled with scars and one of her eyes were bulging. She had the same mismatched facial features that Frank had.
“Welcome to the Isle of Misfit Toys,” announced Frank.
It was a big open space with many cots strewn about all four walls. As we walked around and toured my new home, Frank introduced me to everyone. It was all the same. The scars and parts were different, but the procedure was recognizable. There were even children, little misshapen research subjects imprisoned in a world devoid of holidays and birthday parties, or at least in the normal sense. This world tries to operate as normal, but in the end, its difficult to be normal when you’re hidden and locked away in a warehouse. We’re all victims traumatized by our encounters with ghastly reminders etched on our bodies and faces. Our minds are no less effected. There’s a big handwritten sign hanging over the entrance door. It reads: No Red Lights.

Not all change is bad, but not all change is advantageous either, especially when it involves disfigurations and body part swapping. ‘What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.’ I tend to disagree in certain circumstances. I doubt surviving a train wreck makes you stronger. At this point in my life, I feel as weak as I have ever been. I feel odd and peculiar, a stranger to my own body, a monster to my soul.
Several months ago, as I was lying in bed a wave of red light poured in through my window, accompanied by a hypnotic vibrating purr, that put me in a deep sleep. When I woke up my left hand felt swollen. At first, I thought nothing of it but as I went through my morning routine, things felt different. My grasp wasn’t as strong, but it wasn’t just that, it felt as if I had a different tactile sensation altogether. I finally became conscious of the extent of the difference when I went to brush my teeth.
I grabbed the toothbrush with my right hand and the tube of toothpaste with my left hand. As I tried to line the nozzle to the toothbrush, I noticed that my left hand was slightly bigger than my right hand, and had a darker skin tone. The contrast was striking. I have a very fair skin complexion. My mom always said that I was ‘Irish’ white, that she would lose sight of me walking to the mailbox through a snowstorm.
I dropped the dental toiletries in the sink. I held my hands up in front of my face. I never chewed my nails, but on my left hand, the nails were almost chewed down to the cuticle. I turned my hands over and they were as different as night and day. The left was calloused from hard work and dedicated labor, the other was the pampered hands of a college student. Around the wrist of my new left hand was a bracelet of thick dark stitches, hardly signifying friendship or wealth.
I had to call the police, but when I got my phone, there was a text message:
Don’t go to the police, or we’ll remove your head. No more procedures needed.
I wasn’t too sure what to do at that point. Whoever did this was able to in one night, knock me out, surgically remove my hand and replace with someone else’s hand. If they were able to do that, then I was certain they would be able to get in and do much worse.
Luckily, I was in between semester, no classes to attend, nothing as of yet to explain. Even though it was hot as hell and it was in the middle of Summer, I put on a long sleeve shirt and a pair of gloves. My left glove barely fit, and the phrase ‘If it don’t fit, you must acquit’ popped in my head. I frequented the food truck parked in the convenient store parking lot near my apartment building at least three times a week. They have the best burrito I have ever eaten, bursting with meat and spices, not any of those lean stingy burritos you get at traditional restaurants. But lately, there has been this strange street person hanging out at the corner. He showed up around a month before my ordeal. He was not begging for money but preaching about an invasion. He was always dressed as if it was forty below zero.
Instead of walking along the sidewalk, I decided to climb down the hill from my apartment that led directly to the back of the convenient store. From my deck, I could watch the customers go in and out of the store. The apartment building sat on a high hill overlooking the street below. I could see that the homeless man wasn’t at his usual corner, but I didn’t want to take any chance.
I got down the hill and hopped down from the retaining wall, when all of the sudden he jumped out from behind the dumpster, dressed in a long trench coat, gloves, a ski mask, and a scarf wrapped around his neck.
“They got ya son. They’ve tagged you. I saw the red light. I’ve been tracking them for a while. You ain’t getting away and they ain’t stopping. You need to come with me.”
“Mister, I don’t have any money I can give you.”
“I don’t want your damn money son. I’m here to save your life."
I tried to walk past him, but he blocked my path and pushed me back. As he did so he started unwrapping his scarf and pulling off his ski mask. I resumed my attempt to get to my favorite burrito, but he blocked me again. I was looking down, not paying attention, so I didn’t notice that he was completely unmasked with his trench coat and shirt laying on the ground.
“Look here!”
I looked up to see the most grotesque, confusing human being I had ever perceived. He was a patchwork of different races, different skin tones, and stitched up scars running throughout his body and face like a map of a river and its many tributaries. His nose was completely foreign to his face and both eyes were awkwardly strung together from two different individuals. Worst of all, there was a large scar around his neck, indicating that this head had been removed and reattached.
“They told you that they were done, right?” I nodded my head in agreement. “Well, I’m proof that they are a bunch of damn liars. I hate to tell you this, but your life is over as you know it. You can come with me and stay intact or refuse my help and become what I am today.”
I should have taken his advice, but I wasn’t in a state to comprehend the reality of my situation. I was still unsure of what I had seen this morning. I was trying to convince myself that I had just slept on my hand or had a bad dream and slammed it against the wall. It was just swollen, not someone else’s hand.
“I’m fine man. I just want a burrito. Leave me alone, please.”
“Alright. I’ll still be here when you are ready. There’s a place we like to call the Island of Misfit Toys. You know from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. You’ll be safe there. I promise you, its not going away.”
I started to walk away, determined to ignore him, but then he said something that caught my attention.
“I bet you are O negative blood type. All us misfit toys are O negative. Universal donor baby. Now how did I know that? You still want to turn a blind eye.”
He was correct, but I persisted in my stubbornness and walked away. That day the burrito just didn’t taste as well as it normally did. Was there a new cook? I didn’t notice. Or worse, had they already replaced my tongue with someone else’s, whoever they were?
There weren’t any other occurrences for the next month. I made sure to sleep in the living room on the couch with the television on. Still, Mr. Frankenstein stood on the corner, waiting for me. I didn’t visit the food truck that entire month, didn’t have the usual craving and sure as hell didn’t want to have another confrontation.
The next month was my wake-up call. I was dozing off when the television shut off by itself. I heard that familiar hum and saw the red light moving through the front window. I put my fingers in my ears, closed my eyes and stumbled to the bathroom. I started singing to myself, hoping to drown out the noise and stay conscious. I opened my eyes for a second and saw that the red light was moving under the door, and bending upwards towards my face. I shut my eyes again.
The bathroom door slammed open. I closed my eyes tighter, so much so that I saw twinkling stars and sparks. I felt two hands grasp me by the shoulders and lift me up in the air. I opened my eyes. There standing before me was tall hairless grey being in a long black cloak. The creature had no eyes, small narrow nostrils, but a large gaping mouth, affixed open as if the creature was unable to close it. On his shoulder was a smaller green creature with a bulbous head and large eyes. It was not clothed and would ever so often lay its forehead against the side of the larger creature’s neck. It seemed to be a symbiotic relationship.
The larger creature lifted up his three-fingered hand. Out of the palm of his hand radiated a red light. The smaller creature was somehow making the humming noise, and within a few seconds I lost consciousness.
The next morning, I woke up in my bedroom upstairs. I frantically searched my entire body but saw nothing, but I wasn’t convinced by that cursory search, and sure enough, my suspicions were correct. Staring back at me was a somewhat unfamiliar face. My right eye was now green instead of blue, and the skin tone around it was darker. Even my eyebrow was more pointed. Encircling a wide area of the eye was a ring of stitches. I fell to the floor, exasperated by what I had seen, and what I had become. It was time to visit Mr. Frankenstein.
I didn’t try to hide my eye. I can easily explain it away as corrective surgery, the first of its kind, if anyone was so bold, or rude, to ask. I found him at the corner as expected. He didn’t gloat or say ‘I told you so.’ He was sympathetic.
“I’m sorry man. Come on. Let me take you to your new home.”
“There’s no way to fight them… or stop them?”
“Maybe in time, but all we know how to do right now is hide and keep them from tracking us.”
“How do you keep them from tracking us?” I asked.
“You’re not going to like it, but we got to dig a tracking device from in between you lower ribcage.”
I wasn’t too thrilled about that but then again, I’d rather go through a little suffering on the front end to avoid any more experimental alien body part swapping.
We walked down the main highway to a backroad where there was an old, abandoned warehouse. He gave a coded knock to let him know that it was a friend and then turned to me.
“By the way, what’s your name?”
“Robert, but you can call me Rob.”
“I’m Frank, as in Frankenstein.”
I laughed and explained to him that I had already begun calling him Mr. Frankenstein. I felt a little weird admitting that, so I apologized.
“No need to apologize. I like the name. I honestly don’t know my real name. I just picked that one.”
The door opened and there was a hooded man with his face hidden.
“Welcome home Frank. Got a new one huh?”
“Yep, sure do Phil. Let’s make him feel at home.”
We walked through the door into a small homemade foyer. Some drywall had been thrown up and fortified with wooden pallets and barbed wire. There was yet another door. It was a thick steel door with a peephole. Phil gave another coded knock. A woman armed with a gun slung over her shoulders opened the door. Her face was riddled with scars and one of her eyes were bulging. She had the same mismatched facial features that Frank had.
“Welcome to the Isle of Misfit Toys,” announced Frank.
It was a big open space with many cots strewn about all four walls. As we walked around and toured my new home, Frank introduced me to everyone. It was all the same. The scars and parts were different, but the procedure was recognizable. There were even children, little misshapen research subjects imprisoned in a world devoid of holidays and birthday parties, or at least in the normal sense. This world tries to operate as normal, but in the end, its difficult to be normal when you’re hidden and locked away in a warehouse. We’re all victims traumatized by our encounters with ghastly reminders etched on our bodies and faces. Our minds are no less effected. There’s a big handwritten sign hanging over the entrance door. It reads: No Red Lights.

Been at this for a bit but I've been working at playing something long term, and what's more long term than Sevtech. So every Age I'm setting myself a list of achievements to complete before I move on to the next Age! I've found it very relaxing to sit back and just take my time with this, and I encourage anyone else with the patience to do this as well, and even add to the list ^^
Age 0
​
Make a farm with every possible crop type

• Wheat
• Pumpkin
• Melon
• Carrot
• Potato
• Beetroot
• Rice
• Canola
• Flax [LOCKED UNTIL ???]
• Coffee
• Hemp
• Barley
• Cotton
• Corn
• Grape
• Chili Pepper
• Tomato [LOCKED UNTIL WOODEN STAKES]
• Wildberry

​
Make a tree farm with every available wood type

• Oak
• Spruce
• Birch
• Jungle
• Acacia
• Dark Oak
• Darklands Oak
• Mulberry
• Sakura (Better with Addons)
• Maple
• Silverbell
• Amaranth
• Tigerwood
• Willow
• Eucalyptus
• Hopseed
• Sakura (Natura)
• Redwood
• Yew
• Olive
• Ironwood
• Red Cedar
• Fir

​
Obtain 100% in all 4 diets, and then all at once

• Fruit
• Grain
• Protein
• Vegetable
• All At Once

​
Build a House

• Build one full floor of a house
• Build a full second floor
• Build a full basement
• Build a full roof
• Build a chimney that wont burn your house down using real fire [MOVED TO AGE 1 FOR BUILDING MATERIALS]

​
Obtain

• Antique Atlas
• Wild Dog Pelt Boots
• A full set of Wolf Pelt Armor
• Bear Claw Paxel
• A full set of Leather Armor
• A Breeding Harness for the memes
• Diamond
• Emerald
• A Lucid Scroll
• A Backpack with a Stone Upgrade
• A Swamp Talisman

​
Fill a 'Shelf' with:

• Bio-Coal or Charcoal in preparation for the Melter
• Plant Twine
• Raw Hide
• Salt
• Ground Resin
• Cobblestone
• Marble
• Yew Sticks
• Yew Arils
• Dirt
• Sand
• Clay
• Gravel
• Thatch
• Sticks
• Worms

​
Get a stack of:

• Shadow Gems
• Bone Arrows
• Flint Arrows
• Leather

​
Build a Totemic area with all totems, large and powerful enough to rival Syrinx, The Sun Dance, and Baykok himself.

• Obtain a Pan's Flute
• Complete the Sun Dance as fast as possible
• Kill Baykok in Age Zero
• Obtain all instruments
• Obtain a Totemic Staff
• Use a Totemic Staff to cancel Totentanz at the very end just because you can

​
Have a flower farm with one two tall flower of each color

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• Green
• Blue
• Purple
• Lime [NO SUCH FLOWER EXISTS]
• Magenta
• Light Blue
• Pink
• Cyan [NO SUCH FLOWER EXISTS]
• Brown
• Gray [NO SUCH FLOWER EXISTS]
• Light Gray
• White
• Black [NO SUCH FLOWER EXISTS]

​
Build

• A Kiln, Smelting, & Smeltery area [MOVED TO AGE 1 FOR BUILDING MATERIALS]
• All automatic horse machines, powered by buffalos within chunk borders to prevent lead breaking
• Bridges for all areas so you never have to swim on base
• Name and label all districts so any guests can't possibly get lost
• A wall for defense, complete with auto killing for any mobs who dare to encroach
• A path from spawn to base which is aesthetically pleasing the entire way
• A shack to show off your first work stump
• A leatherworking area, complete with nearby infinite water, a tall barrel, tons of drying racks, and later on a space to put your wooden cauldrons
• A decorative automated cactus farm
• A house for a snow golem

​
Worship of the Elder Gods

• Build a temple for all of the gods besides Cthulhu, he isn't even a god, just a priest [MOVED TO AGE 1 FOR BUILDING MATERIALS]
• Build a shame hole for Cthulhu and lock his Idols away [MOVED TO AGE 1]
• Empty a Shogoth pit through only combat

​
Complete all Advancements BEFORE moving on to Age 1

I know of some of the obvious ones like in chapter 1 and Zue before rainfall but I didn't know exactly how many you're locked out of getting. I'm following a little guide because while I've 100%'d the game plenty of times, I guess it was more like 95% because I never got all 96 magirock. It's hard to really count that considering you literally get nothing for it which I think is a bit disappointing.
They're sort of like red jewels in Illusion of Gaia but at least those you could buy new powerups and attacks, even a bonus dungeon whereas you just buy magic with magirock and you hardly ever need to use it. Just a little bonus dungeon or an extremely OP weapon, something would've been nice for collecting all of them. I think in general although I think this is an A+ game there isn't a whole lot you get in return for much of what you do like expanding towns and such. It's almost better to only partially expand them in order to save Nirlake later on since people grow critical of technology or become unhappy like Pierre.
My most recent playthrough I think I got 77, I couldn't find any more throughout the world and I know I got all of them in the first 2 chapters. Can think of maybe a few I'd missed but that many I'm not sure how. Played all the minigames, expanded all the towns etc

Hello again!
Payment via PayPal G&S. Shipping starts at $4.50 for a small item depending on zip and increases with weight (USPS). Shipping from the East Coast. $10 min before shipping preferred. All item conditions are noted and pictured best as I can. Most are brand new.
Please don't ghost. It's okay if you change your mind. NIL based on timestamps. Note that I have some of these items listed on other platforms as well and will adjust the availability accordingly.
I'm very careful to keep my makeup clean and protected, keeping original packaging where I can. Smoke- and pet-free home. Always masking. See this wonderful feedback from previous buyer 1, 2 and 3 as references 😊
  Please comment below before sending a Reddit chat since I can't see those on mobile.  
Swaplist:
New only: Dior beige mitzah, Rose Montaigne or Pink Corolle mono eyeshadows. Trestique Summer Glow & Go set from Boxy. Try me on Sephora Lipstories balms (I already have shades 07 and 08 and a couple others), must be sealed.
 
Eyes
Mascara - $10 $9 for all  

• Dior Diorshow Volume Mascara, 1.5ml travel size, BNIB - $5
• MAC Stack Superstack Micro Brush mascara mini, BN - $4
• Tarte Lights Camera Lashes mascara deluxe size, BN, 1 available - $3

Eyeshadow  

• Tarte Chrome Paint Shadow Pot in Martini (bronzed olive), BNIB - $13
• NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Iced Mocha, swatched - $2
• Colourpop Colour Stix eyeshadow stick in Devotion, swatched & sharpened - $3
• Colourpop Colour Stix eyeshadow stick in Hyde, swatched - $3
• Nudestix Magnetic Eye Color in Smoke, FS, BN/sealed - $13
• Revlon So Fierce! Prismatic Shadow Palette, Slight Flex, swatched/light use - $4
• Sephora Collection colorful metal effect eyeshadow in 07 Volcano Land (metallic brown), arrived broken, pushed back into the pan - $1 or free with purchase $10+
• Sephora Collection colorful shimmer eyeshadow in 254 Diving In (blue), very delicately swatched - $3
• Elf Bite Size Mini eyeshadow palette in Rose Water, light usage - $1
• Elf Bite Size Mini eyeshadow palette in Mint to Be, light usage - $1
• Elf No Budge Eyeshadow Stick in Champagne Crystal, used & sharpened 1x - $1
• ArtDeco eyeshadow refill, 218 - soft brown mauve, swatched - FWP
• Phase Zero shimmer eyeshadow in Nude Newbie, usage shown - FWP

 
Face

• bareMinerals Original loose powder foundation SPF 15 in Golden Fair 04, full size, ~80% remaining - $13
• Colourpop Flexitarian Super Shock Cheek highlighter, gentle use shown - $5
• Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin Radiant Concealer sampler card - FWP

 
Lips - New

• Bobbi Brown Crushed Lip Color in Ruby, travel size, BNIB - $8
• Bobbi Brown Luxe Lip Color in Parisian red, travel size, BN - $8
• Hourglass Confession Lipstick in "At Dusk" from the Limited Edition Sculpture Collection. Comes with the Limited Edition refillable holder and At Dusk refill (both never used). Holder fits any Confession lipstick refill (see below for more shades I have for sale). BN - $28
• Clinique Pop Plush Creamy Lip Gloss in 01 Black Honey, BNIB - $16
• Pat McGrath Labs Lust Lip Gloss in Flesh 6, travel size, BN - $5
• Revlon Super Lustrous Glass Shine Lipstick, Cherries in the Snow 004, BN/sealed (discontinued shade) - $10
• Catrice Plumping Lip Liner in 080 Press the Hot Button, BN - $1
• L'Oreal Infallible 8hr Pro Gloss, full size, shade Suede (peachy-pink gold duochrome), full size, BN - $4
• L'Oreal Infallible 8hr Pro Gloss, full size, shade Blush (pink shimmer), full size, BN - $4

 
Lips - Swatched or Gentle Use

• Hourglass Confession lipstick in "I Can't Wait" (refill only, will ship with no cap), swatched - $16
• Hourglass Confession lipstick in "If I Could" (refill only, will ship with no cap), used 1x - $12
• Hourglass Confession lipstick in "When I'm With You" (refill only, will ship with no cap), used 1x - $12
• Or take all 3 Hourglass refills for $35
• Bobbi Brown Crushed Lip Color in Ruby, travel size, gentle use - $4
• NYX Limited Edition Avatar Luminescent Lip Gloss, shade 01 Shimmering Waters, swatched - $5
• Too Faced Sex on the Peach mini lipstick, light usage shown - $1
• BareMinerals BarePro longwear lipstick deluxe mini, Petal, usage shown - FWP
• Tarte travel size busy gal gloss in Run This Town (watermelon with gold shimmer), swatched - $2
• Lipstick Queen Sinner lipstick in Peachy Nude Sinner, FS, very light usage shown - $10
• Urban Decay Vice Lipstick, Limited Edition Born to Run, Shade 66 (Rich Mauve-Nude), Comfort Matte finish, usage shown - $4
• Becca Ultimate Lipstick Love in Maroon, FS, very light usage shown - $5
• Catrice Loves PETA Limited Edition Demi Matt lipstick (similar to MAC powder kiss formula) in C01 Spread Empathy, gentle usage shown- $2
• Catrice Demi Matt Lipstick in 040 Exotic Nude, very light usage shown - $2

 
Brushes

• Real Techniques Brush Crush Vol 2 Limited Edition 301 Foundation Brush in Galaxy; new, washed in unscented cleanser - $15 + free Sigma brush cleanser sample
• Luxie 231 Small Tapered Blender eyeshadow brush, washed once in unscented cleanser - $4
• Ebelin "Sommerblütentraum" Limited Edition dried flower clear handle eye blending brush, BN - $4
• Wet n Wild Pro Line Tapered Highlighting Brush P75, BN - $2
• Wet n Wild Pro Line Fluffly Blending Brush P20, BN - $2
• Wet n Wild Pro Line Dome Pencil Eye Brush, used once, washed in unscented cleanser - $1

 
Skincare

• Peach & Lily Power Calm Hydrating Gel Cleanser travel size 1oz, BN/sealed - $6
• COSRX Acne Hero: Intensive 4-step kit for extra oily skin, BN, exp 2025-01/26. Ships without box to save on postage. Includes: AC Collection Calming Foam Cleanse, 20ml; Calming Liquid Intensive, 30ml; Lightweight Soothing Moisturizer, 20ml; Ultimate Spot Cream, 5g - $16 - willing to split for $4/each
• Farmacy Honey Potion Plus Ceramide Hydration Mask mini, 9g, BN - $5
• Farmacy Green Clean Makeup Removing Cleansing Balm mini, 20 mL, BN - $5
• Sunday Riley Good Genes Lactic Acid Treatment, 5mL, BN - $4
• MAC Hyper Real Serumizer, 4mL, BN - $4
• Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Serum Synchronized Multi-Recovery Complex II, 7ml, BNIB - $10 (one remaining)
• Proactiv Deep Cleansing Face Wash, 2 oz, swatched - $3
• Awake Balance Shot antioxidant concentrate mini, BN - $1
• Tarte Sugar Rush Don't Hate Hydrate oil-free moisturizer, 5mL - $1
• Essence Coffee To Glow undereye treatment with caffeine, new - $2
• Garnier SkinActive micellar water (Waterproof makeup version) 1oz, BN - FWP

 
Fragrance & Body

• Gucci Flora Gorgeous Gardenia EdP sample - FWP $15+
• Sanex Dermo Invisible Deodorant, 50mL, BN (EU item) - $4.25 each (3 listed, 6 total available)

 

Nettie Peterson has known me at my best and at my worst, and after everything that's happened lately, I think I can finally say the same. I'm admittedly not very good at comforting her, though. I haven't had much practice, is all. Historically speaking, she's always been the one to take care of me. My introduction to earth was a confusing, horrifying time for me, and she had dealt with all of it. She'd handled every panic attack, brought me back from every low. When I woke up one night to a drilling pain in my stomach and blood soaking my panties, she managed to keep me calm while explaining that this would now happen every month.
What I'm saying is that the woman is insanely skilled.
Me, not so much. After we had gotten out of the cave, I tried to provide emotional support by petting her hair and talking soothingly. Seeing as I was also distressed, she was doing the same to me, so we were basically sitting on the beach holding each other. To the outside observer, we must have looked rather strange. I was relieved to finally get back to her house. We sat down in front of the TV and ate cupcakes. We have a special system for eating cupcakes. I peel off the frosting and give her rest. It's messy and I have to keep hand wipes nearby everytime, but it's how we do it. We both eat cupcakes whole when we're by ourselves, so it doesn't make much sense either, but when we share, it's always like this.
Once I was sure she was alright, I left her to go off to bed while I made my way back to the hotel, bracing myself for what I expected to be an extremely uncomfortable conversation.
The lobby was dim and quiet. The large, bright ceiling lights had been turned off with only a couple floor lamps illuminating the hall. I walked past the unmanned reception desk and up the stairs, then rapped my knuckles against the door to Frankie's room. After a couple seconds, he opened up. Upon meeting my gaze, he let out a soft gasp, but it wasn't followed by a smile this time. He made way for me to step inside, wordlessly, and I entered without breaking the silence. I sat down on the sofa where he joined me after placing a glass of coconut water in front of me.
For a beat, we both stared at the drink. I didn't take it.
"What you did felt really off earlier," I began. "You were trying to embarrass Nettie. If you were testing your boundaries, if you were trying to see how I'd react, you got your answer. Don't ever make me choose between you two. You'll lose."
"Yes," he said quietly.
"If you don't get along with Nettie, that's one thing. You don't need to. But she was needling you and you made a real effort to be cruel." I paused. "You act so strange sometimes. All bossy and cagey."
"Yes," he repeated, briefly falling silent as he worked away on his gum in slow, contemplative motions. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I did it. I wanted to unsettle her. It's not that I don't like her, she's fine, but at that moment, I simply loathed her. I couldn't tell you why. But I wish I'd kept quiet. I feel gross for spouting off like that."
"Then… why?"
"I don't know! There's this weird feeling, it comes over me and makes me remember stuff that's in the past… Then I get caught up and confused. I run my mouth, but I don't want to make you upset. I swear I won't do it again. I'll rein myself in."
"Will you? This doesn't seem right." I took a deep breath. "Frankie, I have no idea what you are. Even though you know everything about me."
"Not everything," he argued. "You never said a thing about what life was like where you're from. Or who you were before. Yes, that's not what this is about, but I'm just speaking technically."
"You shouldn't have to rely on technicalities to make a point."
"No. Look, I keep wondering what I'm even doing here. I like you a lot. But I haven't thought this through and by now, I'm scared to."
"Stop talking in riddles," I implored him.
He huffed out a chuckle. "I'd have to stop thinking in them first." Before he could add anything else, his phone started vibrating on the TV table. "Oh, dammit," he muttered. Shooting me an uncertain gaze, he reached out for it, his hand hovering above the screen. "Can I?"
"Sure." I let go of a long breath, snatched up the glass and leaned back in my seat as Frankie answered the call. I pick up on a woman's voice talking on the other end.
He kept glancing over at me almost sheepishly as he mumbled words of affirmation into the phone. "Yes… Yeah, I remember… Well, it's not a good time, but I'll do it. Bye." Dropping the device into his lap, he gave me a twist of the mouth. "That was Mae-Lynn. She works at—"
"The diner with you," I cut him off. "I do take note of the other staff there, for your information." I took a sip of my water. "Occasionally."
"I promised to do some shopping for her. She's come down with the flu. Store's closing soon, though, so I'll have to go now."
"Well, that's convenient."
"I was going to ask you to come along."
I agreed. Having lost track of the conversation, the drive was a grim, quiet affair. Frankie took us to one of the more expensive stores in the area, saying that he wanted to treat Mae-Lynn.
"Take a cart," I ordered, and once he had acquired one, I had him hold it still while I climbed inside. He regarded me with a bemused expression but refrained from commenting as he began to roll me down the aisles.
Grocery shopping at night is something else. Eighties music was playing over the radio at a low volume, but the otherwise quiet space made it sound decidedly louder. There was almost the hint of an echo. Safe for two of three singular, tired-looking individuals, Frankie and I were the only people in the store. I had nestled against the back of the cart, my head tipped back to watch Fran's face from below as his eyes roamed the shelves. Occasionally, he'd stop to check the list Mae-Lynn had texted him on his phone.
"If you want anything, speak up," he told me.
"I'm out of cereal," I said, just as we passed the respective aisle. He turned the cart back around, let me pick out a carton of cornflakes and took up walking again. After five minutes of stoically regarding him from my mobile vantage point, I piped up again. "Go back. Wrong ones."
"Well, which ones do you want? I'll get them, it's faster than pushing this thing around."
I shook my head. "No, no, I have to look at them. Go back."
He shook his head to himself but obediently maneuvered the cart back to the shelf with the breakfast items. I took my time picking out a different box, then settled back down.
"Happy?" Fran asked.
"Delighted."
After fifteen minutes, we were getting close to finishing Mae-Lynn's list. Frankie was starting to move towards the cash register, only for me to tug on his arm. "Turn back," I told him, holding up the box. "I don't want them after all. I need different ones."
He stifled a groan. "Sure, Sunshine." I let him roll me all the way back to the cereal aisle where I studied the colorful boxes intensely. "Nevermind," I said, turning back to him. "Let's go."
He started making his way over to the register again when I cleared my throat. "Actually, I think I might have another look."
"Are you kidding me?" he squeaked, only for me to hold his gaze with a smile. "You are," he choked out. "I oughta send you rolling right into that stack of cans."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Is that a challenge?" He glanced about himself, finding that we were alone. Then, he pushed the cart, and it swerved, sliding across the shiny floor. The thrill of the launch washed over me and I started laughing. He lunged for it, grabbing it just in time to prevent the collision.
"Do it again!" I demanded.
He indulged me, sending me swerving and spinning a couple more times. Eventually, he took a running start and pushed me down a long, empty aisle at a breakneck speed. The giggles died in my throat when, seemingly out of thin air, someone appeared at the end of the aisle. My jaw dropped and I reflexively gripped the sides of the cart to protect myself from the impending crash, but the person simply reached out and caught the cart by its edges. Within the blink of an eye, they had managed to steady it. My vehicle had come to a standstill. It all happened incredibly fast, and for a moment, I found myself unable to react. One of the other person's hands had come to rest over mine in the process. Still at a loss for words, I raised my head to meet their gaze.
Those eyes.
My heart, already thundering in my chest, dropped entirely into my stomach. There were pupils filling the void in that formerly uninterrupted pale vastness this time, but I recognized them either way. Seeing them sit in an actual face instead of behind a nondescript black mask was strange, but there was not a doubt in my mind. It was them.
The cultist had jarringly pleasant features that struck me as neither overtly feminine nor masculine. Their tawny skin had an almost bronze sheen to it and short locks of platinum blond hair stuck to their smooth forehead, slick with the same sweat that formed stains beneath the armpits of their light gray t-shirt.
It was like time stood still. The interaction could not have been longer than two seconds in total, but it felt like a full hour. From me staring at our linked hands, to locking eyes with them, to the cold, raw realization, it seemed to me as though forty minutes or more had gone by, followed by another twenty when I watched the crude smile forming on their lips. Their fingers clamped down on my own, and before I knew it, it had happened.
The lights in the store had changed color, taking on a dimmer, sickly green tint. The shelves around us had emptied and the gentle, melodic hum of the radio had been replaced by a deep, droning buzz of static. I was still sitting in the shopping cart, and the cultist was still leaning over me, but their expression had morphed into one of shocked disbelief. Seeing fear on the face of the person who'd stabbed me might have been a great satisfaction to me in any other situation, but right then and there, I was equally as terrified.
I had switched dimensions and was now alone with my attempted murderer.
The thought took a while to sink in, but the clearer it became, the more I felt the need to scream. And yet, not a sound left my lips. My own saliva had turned sour, filling my mouth with an acidic taste. Dread pooled in the pit of my stomach like icy, chilled water and tears were stringing the corners of my eyes. I blinked them away in a hurry, redirecting my gaze at the cultist. They were staring past me in a daze, taking in our changed surroundings before fixing me with a sharp glare.
"Seriously?"
"What?" The word somehow slipped past the lump in my throat.
The cultist made a sweeping gesture at our surroundings. "Where are we? What the hell is this? You don't even have your dimension hopping under control? Not gonna lie, I had higher expectations of you."
"What?" I repeated eloquently.
"You just switched dimensions on my ass. And seeing as you literally crashed into me, I don't think you planned on doing that."
"I didn't," I confirmed.
"That's what I'm talking about."
"You know about dimensions?"
The cultist palmed their face, emitting a deep, low groan. "Clearly."
I scrambled back in the cart, trying to bring some distance between the two of us. I bared my teeth at them, both rows elongating and curving outward. At least I was getting the hang of my physical transformation. "If you come any closer, I'll rip your hand off," I hissed, spittle flying out between my fangs.
"I believe you," they replied, narrowing their eyes at me. "I'm not gonna hurt you."
"That's hard for me to believe."
"Yes, sure. I did and I would again, but not here. Not now. You understand?" they asked pointedly, their voice cutting like a razor blade.
"I'm not sure I do."
"Well, without you, I won't get out of here, and I've stuff to do on the other side." They stepped behind the cart and grabbed onto the handle.
I hastily twisted around to face them. "You know about the finer details of dimension hopping but you can't do it yourself?"
They let out a soft sigh as they began pushing the cart, with me inside, down the empty aisle. "I managed to do it once. Just once. Never again. It's not a great surprise to me that you should be able to switch to the other sides, but I'd thought you'd be able to control it. I think I have your number. I'm pretty sure I know what you are, and we have more in common than you could have probably guessed. That boy you were with on the other hand… I won't lie, he freaks me out. He's got the strangest face and he didn't react to my eyes at all."
"What are you?" I queried, quick to steer him away from the topic of Frankie Preston even though I didn't really expect an honest answer. "How'd you do that the other night? Your… your eye thing?"
"That unsettled you, didn't it? It's not anything I do per se." They shrugged leisurely. "I could just as well ask you where you're hiding your tentacles."
"So you're not human. I didn't think you were," I stated. "What's your business with the Collective? What are you after? Are any of you normal people?"
"As far as I know, I'm the only one who's not." They steered the cart around the corner with a swift, forcible yank and I bumped painfully against the side of the cart. Stifling a yelp, I kept my face straight, looking over the shelves as we passed them. I noticed that some of them weren't entirely empty—there were a couple jars, cans and bags of various goods standing scattered throughout. They looked almost lonely. The cultist, registering my wandering gaze, stopped and grabbed a random plastic jar that looked like it could be containing peanut butter or something of the sort. The label was faded and partially peeled off. They inspected it from all sides before thrusting it into my hands. "Here, open it," they commanded.
"I certainly won't," I replied, a mix of rage and apprehension bubbling in my chest.
"Aren't you curious?"
"No. But if you are, go on and open it yourself."
They grunted, grabbing the jar and unscrewing the red lid. They dropped it to the floor where it bounced off once and rolled away into the darkness. Peering in, their expression remained unchanged. "Nothing. Look." They held it out to me and sure enough, it was empty. I let them hand it to me, intrigue winning me over as I started examining the small container. It was completely unremarkable. I reached two of my fingers inside only for the digits to suddenly be stricken with a searing pain. It flashed through my bones like lightning and I cried out, withdrawing my hand. Suddenly, the floor seemed to quiver. The lights in the store flickered, seeming startlingly bright for a split second only to turn dimly green once more. The cultist let out an involuntary shriek, staggering back before managing to steady themself as everything went back to its former solid state.
"What the fuck was that?" they wheezed.
"An earthquake?" I suggested, not quite knowing what else to say. My pulse was thrumming in my ears, hard enough to split my head in half. It took me a minute to regain a relative state of calm.
"An earthquake? In another dimension? You're messing with me."
"I don't know! Maybe it was… maybe I was nearly jumping back, I have no idea." I shook my head, ignoring the throbbing pain shooting through my temples. "I don't have it all figured out yet, but it's an emotional response. Whenever my flight instinct gets triggered, these dimension switches happen. It was the jar. The jar is painful inside."
"What do you mean?" they asked, eagerly reaching for the jar and sticking their pinky finger into it. They pulled it back out with a howl, letting the jar drop to the floor. "What the hell is up with this place?"
"How would I know?" I argued hotly.
"Yeah, well. Anyways." All of a sudden, their hand was in my hair, tugging on my braid. They yanked my head to the side, and before I could break out my tentacles or try to snap my jaws at them, I could feel their hot breath on my nape. A scream died in my throat, equal parts painful and shocked. My eyes burned, my vision swimming when the cultist dragged their teeth across my skin, leaving a trail of warm saliva. And then, fast and without mercy, they bit down.
The lights turned bright white. The static buzzing that had been hanging in the stale air changed to the familiar eighties music tunes. Squinting into the sudden brightness, the colors of the countless types of packaged products filling the shelves almost seemed to be screaming at me.
We were back.
The cultist disentangled themself, quickly stepping away from me. I looked up, still dazed, to see why. Frankie Preston had come up behind us, snatching the cart away from the other person and pulling it out of their reach. I immediately scrambled up to wrap my arms around him. "That's them," I breathed. "From the Collective."
"I know," he said tonelessly. His eyes, trained on the blonde, spelled murder. "You should get out of here," he added, addressing them. "The shelves here are rickety, they might fall on you."
The cultist's expression was a frozen mix of suppressed uncertainty and confusion. Still, they held the server's gaze. "You should maybe not… do anything stupid," they uttered, their voice almost equally as flat as his.
"I'm all about stupid."
"Then I guess I ought to leave. See you guys soon. It was a pleasure." They threw us a smile that was faker than Frankie's when he waited tables before marching off, leaving the two of us alone in the aisle.
"Are you alright?" Fran asked, running a hand over my mussed braid. "What happened? I'm so… one minute you were here and the next…"
"We switched dimensions."
"I pieced that together. You weren't gone for long… just a couple minutes." He nervously twisted his wet bubble gum around the tip of his finger, drawing nervous strings.
"Were you worried?"
"Out of my mind," he said in a low voice, not meeting my gaze. "I mean, I knew you'd be okay on your own, I wasn't saying that—"
"I wasn't. I'm not," I interrupted him. "I got out alright, sure I did, but I'm not okay right now." I swallowed. My throat was bone dry. "I need to call Mary Markov. She should hear about this."
Frankie nodded along. "Do you want me to do it for you? I'm certain I can give her an accurate description."
I declined and sat back in the cart. Per my request, Fran brought me home after we'd paid for everything. I needed some time alone to relax and pretend everything was normal. I cleaned my room and then looked through job listings, which I admittedly haven't done in a little while. When I couldn't find any other way to procrastinate, I made the call to Mary Markov, which went about as well as could be expected. She wants to see me tomorrow, though. I wish she'd told me about what. For a newsreader, she's really not very forward with her information.
X
1
2: deadbeat roommate
3: creepy crush
4: relocation
5: beach concert
6: First date
7: Temp work
8: roommate talk
9: a dismal worldview
10: warehouse
11: staircase
12: explanation
13: hurt
14: hospital
15: ocean
16: diner
17: government work
18: something in the caves

They were slowly making their descent towards the verdant planet below. Earth, according to their people back home. The long lost home planet of the humans that preceded them in the ancient times. According to the annals it was a planet on the brink of atmospheric collapse, caused by centuries of unmitigated disastrous handling by their ancestors. They had abandoned the place to seek refuge among the stars and, whether they deserved it or not, they had found it. This was the first mission of many that were send to scout the situation on the planet. The dream had always been to one day return. Most of human history here had been lost and what remained was often written in forgotten languages. Yet, to the crew of the ship, it immediately felt like home.
As the landing gear his the soft ground covered by lush green undercover, the crew packed their necessities. They would sleep in the spaceship at night, but venture as far as they could during daylight. Trying to map the ancient cities and industrial complexes, that were pictured in the ancient texts. With a rumble through the metal flooring, they knew they had truly arrived. The hatch opened and provided a path to this forgotten world.
The first thing the crew noted, was the overabundance of forest around them. On the imagery back at home, this world was depicted as largely barren. Here everything was covered in thick layers of overlapping growth. The air buzzing with life that in no way resembled what they were prepared for. No sign of the large geometric skylines of the cities, not the fast gray fields of asphalt. Oxygen meters cited an abundance of oxygen. Which was somewhat remarkable, as ancients legends spoke of a lack of clean air being on of the reasons for the great migration. The party set out on food, through the field of trees and bushes.
Every now and then they’d find an overgrown structure that hinted at ancient settlers. The architecture was brutish, pragmatic, but not dissimilar from the architecture at home. That recognition sparked a sense of belonging inside. This place was strange, but also recognizable. In the same way you would recognize a square shaped out of negative space. There were signs of pre-migration human civilizations to be seen here and it was oddly beautiful.
The crew had wandered further than intended, distracted by the sights. The regional star was dropping below the horizon, casting longer and longer shadows through the already dark forest. The stumbled upon what looked to be a large underground complex. Large steel hatches closed of a concrete structure. It was easy enough to shatter the decayed lock and chain. The loud sound of snapping metal echoing through the eerie silence that had accompanied the departure of light. They had enough supplies to spend the night in this bunker, albeit not ideal. One of the party stepped in first, flashlight held in front of him he slowly stepped down the staircase into the darkness. It was less deep than they had anticipated. After about twenty meters they hit the ground floor. One of them tried the switch, more out of curiosity than expectation, but the lights in the complex turned on, to everyone’s surprise. That must have been some reliable power generator they installed in here.
They strolled across rows and rows of barrels. Steel drums, all yellow in color, positioned carefully. It almost seemed like a piece of art or something. Each of them carrying a label. Yellow with a thick black outline and in the middle a black trefoil made out of triangles. None of the records back at home had carried knowledge of these symbols. But if this place was so well preserved, they must have been important. They decided to roll one of these barrels out of it’s socket and pried open the lid, careful not to damage it. The walls of the thing were much thicker than they had looked from the outside. It was a thin steel sheet bolted to thick lead on the inside. That explained why the things were so heavy. The barrel was filled with a thick resin like substance, carrying pieces of something that radiated a beautiful luminescent green. Out of curiosity they switched of their flashlights and in the dark they could truly admire the artistry of this barrel. It was like looking upon the stars in the sky, but in a barrel. Captured galaxies they would call them.
They'd spend the rest of the night opening more of these containers. Each of them containing more ore less the same. Some in different colors, some with less and some with more of those pretty stars. They had decided to give up on sleep and take the day off tomorrow. This discovery told them something real and unknown about their ancient ancestors. Each of the crew giddy about what the others at home would say to this wonderful discovery. They weren’t exactly getting tired, but carrying those barrels must’ve taken a toll on their bodies. Exhaustion, in the form of a terrible headache and muscle ache set in. It was also deceptively hot in this bunker as some of our crew began to undress to cool down from the intense sweaty fevers they were experiencing. It was when one of them started vomiting that they decided it was time to leave the discovery rest for now and try and get some sleep. They could carry one of those barrels to the ship the next morning and examine it there. They all dozed off, exhausted, in pain and feverish, but at home.

So, a lot of people's hesitation on assuming Shohreh has been cast as Cadsuane seems to be that S3 would be early to introduce her. For me, though, that doesn't feel prohibitive - if you have an actor of that calibre on the hook for a character, you don't wait two years and hope they'll still be available, you find a way to weave them in earlier than planned. But that doesn't have to be in a full-scale main-cast role - you can often bring someone in in a guest role for a short appearance, and then bank them for later, so long as you can give them an introduction worthy of the actor's time. (See, for example, their introduction of Lews Therin - one isolated scene, banking the actor for later.)
Obviously, we don't know where things sit at the end of S2, but we do know they're planning to adapt TSR pretty directly for S3 (from Rafe's comments) and that early in S3, whoever Shohreh's playing is likely in Caemlyn (from WoT Series). I've seen a few people suggest she could have captured Taim, but to flesh that out a bit (to show why that alone might be enough to introduce her and bank Shohreh for later seasons):
Cold open, Siuan is arriving in Caemlyn. Cadsuane has captured Taim, and she has... a lot to say before she hands him over to be brought to Tar Valon. She remembers Siuan as a petulant child, half the time moping for Tear, half the time hanging off Moiraine's skirts. She suggests Moiraine must have been Siuan's backbone - certainly, she's been a useless Amyrlin, hiding away in the Tower waiting for someone to come tear it down. There are Whitecloaks in the Two Rivers, does Siuan propose to leave Morgase to deal with them on her own? The Andoran army's busy enough on the Cairhienin border. Oh, and don't lose this False Dragon, she's heard about what happened with the last one - is Siuan sure there are no more Liandrins in her retinue? Retirement, phaw, clearly, none of them can manage to lace their boots without her. Where's she off to? Oh, Tear or Falme (wherever Rand is), she's heard this one is a firebrand, she's hardly trusting the Reds to handle it after Liandrin. And where's Morgase's advisor, Elaida? Is Siuan fool enough to have left her free to operate unsupervised in the Tower? Best rush home, before someone takes that seat Siuan's clinging to by her fingernails.
Exit Cadsuane, thoroughly introduced as a power to make Amrylins quail and Dragons shiver - and on her way to track Rand down. Set up for Siuan being deposed done in a nice, high-conflict-and-interest way - and doubly likely, if Siuan then procedes to lose Taim between Caemlyn and Tar Valon. Morgase introduced in full regal flight pre-Rahvin, strong-willed enough to hold her own with the Amyrlin and the one woman who makes Amyrlins grovel - so what comes later has all the skin-crawling sense of wrongness it needs. Punchy enough to lock Shohreh in before her calendar gets filled up by projects that are ready to use her sooner. Lots of reasons for the audience to have conflicted feelings about Cadsuane even before she meets Rand.
I don't know what the writers' room has planned, and it may be nothing like this - but it doesn't strike me as difficult to put together a standalone scene or two that lets them lock Shohreh in, without needing even particularly significant revisions to canon (in this case, mostly just relocating Taim to somewhere further south than Saldea, so that it makes sense to bring him via Caemlyn).

Statemeant of, Estella Freeman, regarding her experiences during an audition for a film rendition of Macbeth. Original Statement given on November 21, 2008. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins
I appreciate your discretion. I could tell you recognized me the moment I sat down. I'm sure you can appreciate what an actress of my caliber has to deal with whenever I interact with the public. It can be nauseating, people swooning over you asking for an autograph or a picture or what have you. I’ve been an actress for almost 30 years and I can tell you it's really refreshing whenever I can find a moment to just be with other people and not have to talk about what your next big role is going to be, or how I was able to give such a performance in Destiny Walked North.
You're no doubt acquainted with many of my films, A Passage to Burma,, In Search of Sunrise, and of course everyone's favorite, Destiny Walked North. Oh but you don't want to hear me talk about all that. Sigh,but then I suppose I do have to tell you about the little misunderstanding concerning one of my recent auditions. Look, I'm only agreeing to give this statement because my younger sister, Cathrine, insisted I talk to you and threatened to go to the tabloids if I didn't. It really is all just a bit of unpleasant nonsense I can assure you.
The audition in question was an upcoming film version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by Dexter Banks. Dexter had decided he wanted to do a modern rendition of the play and had asked me to audition for the part of Lady Macbeth. Now I don't normally do Shakespeare. I find it the droll labor of lesser theater actors but Dexters a friend and I always try to help whenever I can so I agreed to the audition.
The scene in question is the well known sleepwalking scene that opens act 5 of the play. In it, Lady Macbeth is seen sleepwalking and delivers a powerful monologue wherein her guilt is laid to bare. The audition itself was done as a series of three takes which were all performed and recorded on a small set built to look like the interior of a modern day estate.
Everything started off fine. I had already delivered two flawless takes but Dexter had been unsatisfied. He said that my guilt did not appear genuine and suggested I try and find a memory to draw from for the final take. Now as I mentioned, I’ve been acting for 30 years and I dont need some director, friend or not, telling me how to get into character. Still, I didn't want to make a big deal about it and acquiesced to trying Dexter's way.
So that's what I did. It took a few moments but I suddenly remembered an incident from my childhood. I was about 10 or 11 at the time. One day while mum was out, I had taken some of her makeup to try on. You have to understand at that age I had started becoming interested in looking and dressing like a real woman and not some little girl. Anyway I knew it would make mum furious were she to catch me. I must have spent an hour meticulously applying the primer then foundation, followed by blush, eyeliner, and of course la touche finale: mums ruby red lipstick. Now at some point during all this I must have lost track of time for no sooner had I finished applying the lipstick when I heard the sound of mum’s fumbling with the front latch. I knew there would be no time to properly put back all the cosmetics and clean my face. I was certain I would be caught when I had the sudden idea. I quickly gathered up all the cosmetics and dumped them into my younger sister Cathrine’s room then locked myself in the privy just as mum entered the house.
Needless to say my little scheme had worked perfectly for it was not but a few minutes more when I could hear mum angrily shouting at Catherine. By the time I had cleaned my face and emerged I found my little sister sobbing in the corner.
Sigh, but of course I could barely go a whole day with all that guilt and I eventually confessed. Mum was…well she was pretty tough and lets just say I got what was coming to me.
And so I concentrated on that moment and when Dexter yelled action I began that final take. I put everything I had into that take. The moment when Lady Macbeth looks at her hands for fear of stained blood, I imagined the red stain of my mother's lipstick and thought about the cries my sister had made when mum had throttled her.
At the scene's culmination I made a spontaneous decision to improvise. The scene normally requires Lady Macbeth to exit the stage but I choose instead to throw myself on the floor in dramatic fashion. And so I screamed “What's done cannot be undone.--To bed, to bed, to bed!” and fell to the floor, eyes closed. I lay there for a few moments waiting for Dexter to yell cut but… there was nothing. At first I thought that perhaps my performance had just stunned him and so I waited for a few more moments but still… nothing. Then I opened my eyes to the horror of an empty room. Dexter, the entire crew, they all were…gone. I was alone. I thought at first perhaps it was a joke, that the crew had somehow snuck away in those moments where I had closed my eyes but then I realized something else: There was no equipment, no cameras, no light fixtures, no director's chair. It was an empty set. Now it's possible that maybe Dexter and the crew could have slipped away while I was preoccupied with my audition, a practical joke while I was lost in the performance as it may. But there's no way they could have just moved all that equipment in the span of a one minute scene. I began to panic, calling out for Dexter, for anyone to answer, hoping that at any moment someone would pop out and I would realize it was all imagined, a hallucination perhaps. But no one popped out. There were no responses. No surprises or jokes. Just the sound of my own voice echoing off the walls.
And then I realized something else, something that truly terrified me: I was no longer standing on a small set but in the actual room itself. What I mean is that, as I said before, the set had been constructed to look like part of a room in a modern day estate, it even had a small fireplace for Lady Macbeth to warm her hands by during the scene. The set had been no more than 8 or 9 meters long at most but this…this was an entire room, not a set at all. What I might have called panic moments before had now coalesced into utter terror. I ran to one of the doors and found it opened into a hallway, one typical of any other house of this type, and like most hallways, I could see it led to other rooms. I moved forward down the corridor carefully. A bathroom on the right, a bedroom on the left, another bedroom, and further down, the hallway led into a formal sitting room. This was a house, just like the setting of Dexter's film. I cried out again, begging for someone, anyone to answer, but still nothing.
Then I heard something: A distinct whistle coming from somewhere not far away. I rushed back down the way I came, this time turning down an adjacent hallway toward the sound and emerged into what was clearly the kitchen. And sure enough there, on the stove, sat a steaming tea kettle over the soft glow of the stove's flame. “I know you're there!”, I called out. Clearly the kettle had been set by someone and whomever they were they were nearby. I could feel it. Like someone nearby was watching. Then suddenly I heard a loud thump, back toward the sitting room I had just left. I ran back and found that a fire now burned in the fireplace: The thump I heard was the sound of a smoldering log that had crumbled.
Now I will admit I am not a brave person, and in this particular set of circumstances to say I was terrified would have been an understatement. All the same, I do not enjoy being played with. Whatever this was, whatever was happening, it was clearly someone's idea of a joke. It must have been right? Bolstered by my anger I set out frantically searching the house, flinging open closet doors, searching under beds, all the while screaming, daring my tormentor to reveal themselves. But it was always the same, I would enter rooms that had clear signs of a recent presence: A lit cigarette in an ashtray, a running faucet. I would return to rooms I had left moments before and find objects had moved. A book lay open on a night stand where it had not been 5 minutes before. I started to think I was losing my sanity.
This went on for what seemed like 30 minutes when suddenly I had an impulse. A horrible dread filled me and I rushed over to a window and drew open the curtains. I don't know exactly how to describe what I saw. It looked like the English countryside, but a countryside that had been burned and ravaged beyond comprehension. What might have once been the rolling green hills of Cornwall or Wiltshire were now blackened monoliths of ashen waste. All across were ember colored cracks scared into the earth, littering the landscape like open sores. And when I looked up into that blood red sky where the sun should have been, I saw instead, a viscous orb of the deepest jet. I stared at it, unable to remove my gaze, watching as it would occasionally writhe and pulsate ever so slightly. And when it did, just for a moment, it looked almost like an eye that had blinked, a wretched sentry keeping watch over its wretched wasteland. I screamed. I mean at that point any shred of hope I had that this might be some elaborate hoax or prank was gone. This was a nightmare. A pure terrible nightmare.
It's hard to remember everything that happened next but I recall running through the house in a panic and somehow ending up back in the original room I had found myself in when all this began, the one that matched the set of the film. And when I looked up I saw that there now stood in the center of the room a loan movie camera, mounted on a tripod. It looked just like the ones the crew had used on the set; only this one was unmanned. It was, however , pointed right at me, and I could tell from the faint hum that it was running. We stared at each other for several moments in silence. I say we because I want to make it very clear that this wasn't just a camera, it was….I dunno, the…thing that had been watching me. I was certain. I can't tell you how I knew it but I just did.
Sigh, and then I did the only thing left I could think to do. I slowly, deliberately, got down on my knees, looked right into that camera, and I begged. I begged it to spare me, to show me mercy. To please take pity and absolve my wretched soul of whatever sins I had committed. To witness all the guilt I could lay to bare. But the camera said nothing. It just sat there silently filming, silently watching. I guess I must have collapsed at that point, probably from exhaustion.
When I regained consciousness I was back on the set of the audition, surrounded by Dexter and the rest of the crew. To my surprise everyone was clapping and Dexter was beaming. I thought perhaps it all had been some strange hallucination or day dream and I vaguely remember trying to compose myself before the sudden feeling of everything slipping away.
I assume I had passed out. At least that's what the nurses told me when I woke up in St. Thomas. Something about stress induced psychosis and how I needed to take it easier from now on, and how i wasnt 25 anymore and blah blah blah. I was there for 2 days I think. It doesn't really matter. And I never did get the part. It went to some up and coming twit, you know the one in all the vampire movies. Dexter didn't even bother to call to tell me. The nerve. You know after 5 films, all I've done for him the least that bastard could do was call to tell me he had decided to give the part to some younger harlot he was probably sleeping with.
I haven't done any more auditions. Haven't really got the stomach for it lately. I mean I know I could still get the parts, it's just ...well…I don’t think I could bear to be in front of the cameras. The way they just stare at you, watching, silently taking it all in. I mean I know it was probably all some sorta of stressed induced hallucination or whatever but deep down I don't think it was. You know lately when I am out walking, I stop and look up at the sky, just to check and make sure the sun is still there where it's supposed to be. Anyway I think that's everything
Statement Ends.
Sigh. There's so many things wrong with this statement. Where do I begin? I think the key words here are hallucinations and psychosis. Neither of which forms the foundation for verifiable fact. Then there is the issue of Ms. Freeman’s reliability. A quick IMDB search indicates that Estella Freeman was indeed an actress who appeared in several films including several by renowned director Dexter Banks. However, she was not, as her statement claims, cast in a lead role in any of them. Almost all of her credits are for minor roles, certainly none that would be considered star billing. According to public records that Sasha dug up, Estella Freeman was the oldest of two children born to Robert and Sally Freeman. She did have a younger sister named Catherine but she apparently passed away in an unspecified domestic accident at the age of 7, roughly the time Estella would have been 10 years old. She is listed as having attended the Croydon School of Acting before appearing in several minor film roles over an approximately 25 year period. On October the 13th, 2008 she was admitted to St. Thomas hospital where she was diagnosed and treated for stress induced fatigue and released on her own recognizance after 48 hours. Clearly Ms. Freeman is either suffering from delusions of grandeur or is a pathological liar, but in either case I think this is another dead end. I seem to recall that Dexter Banks appeared in another statement, but given my predecessor's penchant for disorganization, it may be years before I can track down that statement. Still, I’ve asked Martin to keep an eye out for it.
There is one other additional interesting fact. Tim really came through on this one and managed to obtain a copy of Ms. Freeman’s audition tape from that day. I don't know what guy or girl he had to sleep with to get it and I wont bother to ask. I reviewed the tape and it does indeed show Ms. Freeman performing 3 takes of the scene as she described in her statement. The first 2 are uneventful. However during the 3rd take, just as Ms. Freeman goes down on the floor, the tape cuts out to static. When it continues, it appears to show her acting rather hysterically before being assisted off the set by several crew members. Now what's interesting is that the video time stamps indicate only a few seconds elapsed during the time just before and after the cut out but the static itself plays for over 90 minutes. Still, it's not definitive proof of anything “supernatural”. End Recording.
The Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill, and licensed under a creative commons attribution noncommercial share alike 4.0 international license. All the characters and settings referenced are the property of Rusty Quill in their entirety.
​
https://preview.redd.it/xw2p5t7xh23b1.png?width=313&format=png&auto=webp&s=91cc33ed2dd5e25bc8dcf43ad20787705f7600d2

​
I have in level 2 at the 4 levers in the generator room all deactivated (because I thought the gun then goes offline again)and am then killed by the gun, after the spawn (to the recovery unit) I now can no longer get into the room because the door is locked due to lack of power :(
​
Unfortunately I also have no savegame (except for the autosave at spawn in the recovery unit)
Also the door from the area is locked (including elevator) because the power is missing.
In this area (marking) are the lifts with which one activates the current and in this I died. And here I can no longer get in
https://preview.redd.it/j13jdrrqx03b1.jpg?width=2427&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7a6c3ca4f25da83c5a5b184db4e54173c070720d
Does anyone have an idea how I get back in there :/ ?
The red lines are the doors that are disabled due to the lack of electricity
https://preview.redd.it/i7nck3pzz03b1.jpg?width=2002&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc286e46b53f7bf076bd429e29538540960d099c
Video : From the elevator door of level 1 through various locked doors and at the end in front of the room with the power levers
https://reddit.com/link/13w0nbw/video/uauo3lx8613b1/player

Djamä Sonurupākä-Pēzjeceni stands, looking out over the labour before him. A series of four paddies are being built off of Dogwood-Point. Two of them dig earth from the point to make the paddy, the other two enclose rectangles of the lake with mounds of earth. To his rear, NāpäkoduThonu works on four paddies of their own.
The clans cooperated on the project, building the outer-walls together in the early-days of summer where the lake’s level gets low enough for it to be doable. Now they’re expanding their paddies in one of the biggest projects Konuthomu has ever known.
Sonurupākä’s main role is to direct. And he wears his resplendent cape of feathers to indicate such—even if he also wears the simple quarter-dome hat of a farmer. He sends the young men carrying baskets of earth to the eastern medial causeway. When needed, he steps in and offers aid. But in this moment, he puffs gently on his pipe. Enjoying the heady rush of fresh-air and warm smoke.
Someone calls him over, there’s a section of clay in one of the inner-paddies being excavated.
Screams fill the hall. Senisedjarha, his wife, is in labour. He was rushed away by the duNothudo as they take care of her. He was left mixing ashes for glaze and hearing his love’s cries from across the field.
This is their second child. Their first, a beautiful baby girl, is bouncing on her grandmother’s knee. It’s a good omen to have such a hardy first-born. But it doesn’t ease his anxiety at the second birth.
He mixes in the rotu ash—it should form a grassy green once fired—with the wet clay and stirs it vigorously.
The baby is coming later than expected. The duNothudo assured them that it wouldn’t be a problem, that the best fruit simply take longer to grow. He was supposed to be gone on a trading mission by this point. The canoes are already prepared. But it would be a variation from the kacä to abandon his wife now.
Next he mixes the birch ash—this one forms a creamy white, tinged with yellow. It’s almost a buttery colour.
Senisedjarha is strong though. And while the pregnancy has exhausted her, especially the past moon of it—her belly even more gravid than with the first pregnancy, the stores have been full and the weather kind. She’s been able to rest, drinking broth on their bed of furs.
Now, he mixes red slip with willow ash. This one is far more slip-forward. The ash gives it its sheen and flow, the bursts of colour and shine which makes the glaze all the more vibrant.
He’s to visit the land of the Rhadämā, those strange feather-less folk. Their cargo is wine (mostly maple), jade tools, and the glazed pots his current labour allows.
Finally, he mixes oak ash with bright-red slip. The smooth, green-blue glaze which results is perfect for lining urns. Some things you want to breathe through the unglazed clay, but others you want to keep sealed. It’s a delicate balance.
He pauses, unsure of the change and caught up in his work. The screaming has stopped. He rushes back to the house.
Two rambunctious baby boys. He holds Seni’s hand while holding the first-born of the two. An auspicious sign.
It had been a painful labour, and his wife’s exhausted. Drained. But two healthy baby boys. He can’t believe their luck. Two marriages of equal prestige to bring additional clans onto their path? It’s more than he could have ever hoped.
Knee deep in water, he guides the boat out. Full of pots, the canoes sit low in the lake. Eight men for eight canoes, a sizable contingent. He’s been tasked to bring gifts and trade in hopes of establishing a more permanent relationship with the Rhadämā of Kamābarha.
The Cakäma of DjamäThamä, where his two new sons will be given names, remains three turns away. He prays he’ll be back in time.
Clambering out of the lake, he readies himself to go. Even this early in the morning, he knows the day will be hot and a gentle mist rises with the sun over the lake.
He clasps the hands of the duNothudo in turn, pledging that he will travel honest and true. Laughing at Redotsuko’s quip. He finally reaches his wife, the youngest of the duNothudo, and the one most dear to him.
As they hug, she whispers in his ear: “Return swift and safe, your family waits for you.”
Speeches and recitations and other such fanfare follow, as Sonurupākä climbs into his canoe, and sets off towards the rising sun. His eyes may be wet, but his path is clear. Duties to clan come before all else, even these first few months of his sons’ lives. The paddling becomes rhythmic. There is only one way, and that is forward. He simply hopes, and prays, it leads him back home.
It’s their third day of travel. The weather has remained clear, and bright. Their first two nights they stayed in houses of DjamäThanä. Lovely, low provincial halls—not dissimilar to the one in which Sonurupākä was born and raised. A life a world away now, even if, in factuality, merely feather and name separates that him from the him in the canoe now.
He sips a skin of crabapplecider, and grabs a mouthful of the pickle mix: bison and pawpaw and sumac and blackberry and brire. It’s sour, a little salty. The sweetness and tartness of the berries cut through the rich fat of the bison. He’s dressed in a loincloth, a farmer’s hat (a round, quarter-dome offering shade protection) and has a plain-hemp cape hanging from his shoulders, protecting his back from the sun. It’s a lovely day.
Rowing once more, he thinks about his mission. Kamābarha is not alien to the people of Konuthomu. They may have forgotten their feathers, but they’re skilled craftsmen and produce a lovely nut. Travel is frequent between the villages. And even without feathers, the people govern themselves well. They know of the wisdom of crone’s, and put the vitality of young men to service. Sure, their way of speech may be harsher, atonal in a way. But it’s not that far off from Menidān, and easy to learn. Compare the language of Rhadämā to that of the Jeli—infrequent visitors here, but known further west. Rhadämā is a poem in the wrong meter, Jeli is more similar to the barking of dogs. But what can you expect from people with neither lake nor feathers?
Voyages such as this gives one plenty of time to think. He hopes his aids back home are preparing the pottery well. They’ve expanded the workshop below the Themilanan. Three kilns, a lengthy pottery space, plenty of storage for the clay. Small-folk of DjamäThanä do most of the actual pot construction, but the glazes are kept in the Themilanan. So too is the knowledge of organizing the fire for the kiln to burn properly hot. The duNothudo should assure his Good-Brother does the firing properly. He hopes so, at least.
They practice Rhadämā over dinner, forming the words again and again. Sonurupākä insists: passable is insufficient, his accent must be perfect.
They have easy access to food, with the plentiful waterfowl and fish, but he missed the plentiful wine and pickles of home. Rhadämā wine is tasty from what he remembers though.
After eight days of travel, they approach Kamābarha.

Hello everyone. I recently platinummed the PSVITA version of Sly Cooper 4: Thieves in Time as my 28th platinum. It only took me 10 years, 4 weeks, 22 hours to do it. Did you know this game hides its true ending behind the platinum?
Anyway, I'd like to talk about the experience.
Sly 4 was a bit confusing and inconsistent to platinum. I get the feeling the game wants you to platinum it given how on every loading screen it shows you how much you've completed the trophies and collectibles for the game. And that there no missable trophies. But there are some decisions that don't help with that.
So I'd say there are around 3 groups of Trophies in this game.
The first group are the mandatory story trophies. Not much to say about these. There's nothing missable here and the names are quite cool. I do like looking at the percent completion to see how many players completed the PS VITA version of the game. Did you know that around 73% of players booted this game up and completed the prologue? And only around 25% of players even beat the game. The biggest drop happened around the start of Episode 2 since the completion dropped from around 60%to 48% for some reason.
The second group are the trophies for the collectibles and arcades. I'll talk about these later.
The third and final group of trophies are for miscellaneous challenges. I'll start with these first and highlight some of the notable ones that I missed on my first playthrough.
"Crazed Climber - Scale the dragon lair in under 90 seconds". This was one I missed during my original playthrough of the game. This requires you to climb a giant tower filled with traps in the mission "Mechanical Menace". And this one was really fun even though it took me like 3 attempts. Sly 4's movement and platforming is quite fun so having a mini speedrun challenge using Sir Galleth's moveset was a treat. The one criticism I have here is that the game drops a checkpoint as soon as you get to the top. If you haven't gotten the trophy by then and need to retry, you need to quit to the main menu/hideout and reselect the mission, skip through all the cutscenes and get back there which gets annoying. At least the tower is near the start of the mission.
"Ancient Warfare 3 - Crackshot 10 enemies within 65 seconds. Sly's ancestor, Tennessee "Kid" Cooper" has an ability similar to "Dead Eye" from Red Dead Redemption where he can slow down time, mark enemies and objects and then instantly shoot them dead called "Crackshot". I never got this trophy when I first played the game because there wasn't much opportunity to. There aren't large groups of enemies wandering around that you can casually get 10+ of them line up for you to shoot them. Plus, I was already good at shooting them normally. I tried running around in the open world trying to lure enemies but found it wasn't working. There's a mission in the game called "Blind Date" that throws lots of rabbit enemies that chuck TNT at you that worked better for me.
"Hubba Hubba - Don't miss a beat in the Carmelita dance game." This trophy is, without a doubt, the main reason to platinum this game on VITA instead of the PS3. So nobody can see you play this dumb minigame and call you a Furry. This trophy requires you to complete the minigame where Carmilita needs to disguise herself as a belly dancer and dance to distract guards while the Cooper gang try and open a door. You just need to hit the button prompts perfectly. So you can ignore the times the minigame asks you to shake the VITA from side to side like a champagne bottle to make Carmilita shake her ass (seriously, why does this game sexualize Carmilita so much? None of the past Sly games did it).
"Get To the Chopper - Don't take any damage during Up In Smoke." This one was actually fun. In the mission "Up in Smoke", you have to control an RC Helicopter and drop bombs on turrents while drones and mines chase you down. It was fun dodging and weaving through them. There are 3 phases to this mission and you have a checkpoint in between every phase. So if you mess up, you can just restart the checkpoint to the last phase. You don't need to avoid taking damage the whole way through which is nice.
"Unexpected Package - Place 60 bombs in enemy pockets with Bentley." When I first saw this trophy, I groaned. This would be a massive grind. And I had actually made it harder on myself. You see, normally, when you sneak up behind an enemy as Bentley and hold triangle, Bentley will try to put a bomb in the enemy's pocket. Larger enemies won't notice this but smaller enemies will. But the main issue is that I had previously unlocked the Heat Seeking upgrade for Bentley. Meaning sometimes, the bombs would "miss" and stick to an enemy guard's arms or legs instead. So it was annoying going around the hub world and planting bombs on guards.....until I remembered that I had purchased the upgrade for sleep bombs. My plan now was just to find a lone guard on a rooftop, try and place one sleep bomb into his back pocket and detonate it. He'd then fall asleep. Then I'd go to his sleeping body and try placing 5 sleeping bombs in his pocket and back away (the max you can place at any one time). When he wakes him, I'd detonate all 5 which set him to sleep and then repeat. Even if I'd "miss" a few bombs that would stick to their legs instead, I generally 3 or 4 bombs work perfectly. So it didn't take long to get all 60.
"Apollo Wins - Have the perfect workout during the Training Montage." During the mission "Getting Stronger", you have to do a training montage with Bob where you alternate through 6 minigames as you complete them with the minigames getting harder as you complete them. The trophy requires you to complete 10 randomly selected minigames without making a single mistake. If you mess up, you can restart the checkpoint to the beginning of the montage and have to play through a new set of 10 randomly selected minigames. The Minigames are "Slippery Slope" where you balance an egg on a beam using motion controls while penguins jump around on the floating iceberg you are standing on. "Penguin Popper" where Penguins are diving in front of you and you have to play baseball using them. "Sumo Slap" where you have to perform QTEs to push a giant penguin out of a Sumo Ring. "Duck and Cover" where penguins get launched at you from 4 different directions and you have to move the left stick to dodge them. "Super Sling" which requires you to use a catapult to launch a penguin at a flying pterodactyl. And "Whack a chump" which is Whack a Mole but with penguins. Some of which are fake and you should avoid.
Penguin Popper was easy. Once you get the timing down it's easy to get into a rhythm and hit the penguins since they don't vary when they dive. Whenever this popped into the rotation, I considered it a freebie. Sumo Slap was extremly easy. The button mashing was extremely generous. This was another freebie. Duck and Cover requires a bit more focus because of the timing and inconsistent patterns. It's not too challenging. Interestingly, I noticed that the VITA's speakers would reflect if the penguin was coming from the right or left but not above or below you. I guess headphones would make this easier but I had no need for it. I was generally glad when this popped up in the rotation. Whack a Chump was a bit harder than Penguin Popper because there is no set pattern and the additional challenge of not hitting the fake penguins. But it wasn't too bad. I was glad when this popped up in the rotation.
Super Sling and Slippery Slope were the 2 I dreaded and the ones I messed up the most on. Super Sling doesn't give you much indication of where your sling will go. The Pterodactyls have varied speeds so you can't rely on pattern recolonization and reactions. And there's time pressure as taking too long counts as a miss. And it kept popping up in the rotations for some reason!
Slippery Slope was stressful because of the motion controls and how wild later versions of it were.
"The Cooper Open - Have a 20 hit rally with Bentley in each hideout." There are 6 hideouts in the game. In each hideout there is a table tennis table where you as Sly can play a round of table tennis with Bentley. I question the inclusion of it but I suppose it can be a nice distraction. This trophy requires you get a sequences where both you and Bentley hit the ball back and forth 10 times each (or 20 times overall) without missing. And repeat for each of the 6 tables. I found Bentley kept messing up so I had to intentionally hold back and avoid making good shots and try and hit the ball towards him. The main issue is the fact you have to repeat it 6 times. I feel it would be better off just once and as nothing is really added by doing it 6 times. If anything, it's more annoying given the long load times to switch hideouts and Bentley's random AI.
"Hassan Would Be Proud - Pickpocket a full collection of every item in the game." Each of the 6 or so locations have around 3-4 items that can be pickpocketted from guards. The main issue with this trophy is that it doesn't keep track of which items you have already pickpocketed in any way. The game already tracks how many treasures and masks you've found per general area but not pickpocketted items.
I only got this trophy by planning on systematically going through every location in the game and pickpocketting every enemy item and noting down which ones I found.....only to get it in the first level when I used Murray's shake move on some rat enemies. Enemies that you never encounter or have a reason or opportunity to naturally pickpocket. I guess 2013 me had already gotten 99% of these items previously.
"Navigate Like Drake - Take a look at every map in every episode". I found this trophy really annoying. The way it works is that every location in the game, including linear interiors that are exclusive to missions and even the hideouts, have a map you can look at by pressing SELECT. The game doesn't keep track of which locations you've seen the map of. So I had to systamatically play the game from the first mission and press SELECT whenever I entered a new interior. Then quit out and play the next mission and repeat. It popped for me in Episode 4 so somehow, 2013 me had looked at all the maps in Episode 5 without realizing it.
I don't like this trophy. It doesn't really add anything. The player would already be looking at the maps in the hub worlds where they would be at their most useful since those are open world sections. They have no real reason to use the map in linear interiors. And even less useful in hideouts as these aren't even explorable. They are basically just menus that happen to have a 3D background. I'd be more forgiving of this trophy if the map showed collectibles at least. That way, players have more of a reason to use this feature.
Shout out to the Lazy Trunk Spa & Lounge. A secret area in the game that contains a mask collectible and counts for the trophy with a unique map. No mission ever goes here. So even if you were to play diligently and open the map for every area you encounter, you'd still miss this. I only knew this existed because the trophy guide I looked at told me about it so I decided to tag this area while doing the "Get to the Chopper" trophy.
"Hero Tech - Battle with a secret weapon" Once you collect 50 Sly masks. You unlock Ratchet's wrench from Ratchet and Clank. This weapon even turns the coins you collect into bolts. Collecting 60 Masks unlocks Cole's Amp from inFAMOUS. This can electrocute the enemies you hit. I chose to use Cole's Amp to get the trophy as a tribute to inFAMOUS. Killed by Ghost of Tsumia 😭. May it rest in peace. Gone too soon.
That covers all the miscellaneous trophies. Now for the collectibles and arcades.
Sly 4 has a bunch of different collectibles scattered in each of its 6 episodes.
Bottles: Each hub world contains 30 bottles. Collecting all of them gives you access to unlock a safe hidden somewhere in the hub world. Unlocking that safe rewards you a special treasure. Bottles make a "clinking" sound when you're near them so if you're having a hard time finding them, try going into the game's settings and turning down the music and voice sounds. If you find the safe in Episode 3, the special treasure it gives you will highlight bottles and safes in every other episode on your map which is quite nice. I wish the game did this more often. If it hides collectibles from the player, at least give the player an endgame ability to highlight them. It makes it more feasible and fun to complete these tasks instead of combing every last inch (or looking up a guide).
Treasures: Each hub world has around 11 treasures scattered all around. The gimmick here is that in order to collect them, you first need to find where they are in the hub world. Then once you pick them, you need to race back to your hideout under a certain time limit and without taking any damage. If you mess up, you need to repeat the process. The treasures generally require you to have all of Sly's costumes. And a couple require you to be playing as Sir Galleth because England has increased gravity for some reason. Some of these treasures are really well hidden. Requiring you to go to these holes in the middle of nowhere which then require you to switch between some of Sly's costumes. Like, if you open the map when picking some of these up, you'll find Sly is located beyond the borders of the area.
I found it way more fun to race back to the hideout than actually finding them. It was tedious to find many of them because of how well hidden they are. There is no tool or item in the game that can help mark them on your map. Well, I say that. Supposedly, if you have both the PS3 and VITA versions of the game and play them at the same time, you can use the VITA like a scannebinoculars to locate these treasures. And then use the Cross Save feature to nab them in both versions. I only have the VITA version so no luck for me. Again, I'd argue it would be better if there was an endgame upgrade or tool you could get that would mark the treasures like how the game does it for bottles. There isn't even a "clinking sound" or any help for these.
Anyway, collecting all the treasures for an episode unlocks the arcade machine minigame for that episode.
Also sidenote, but this game has the worst map screen that still somehow can be useful. The map gives a top down view of the area but with a blue filter. This makes it harder and more annoying to navigate and use landmarks for reference. Especially on the VITA with its smaller screen. There are also no icons on the map (aside from bottles, safes and objectives) or the ability to make your own markers. The VITA version makes it worse as you can't even use the buttons to navigate the map. You have to use the touchscreen even though that's not how it is in the PS3 version. But you can still use it to know where you are and where collectibles can be from guides. It's technically readable and useful but just barely. I've never seen a map in a game so perfectly walk the line between useful and annoying.
The next collectible are Sly Masks. There are 60 total and around 11 per Episode. Collecting them unlocks skins and some goodies. But the catch with them is that they can be anywhere. There can be a couple in the hub world. But also couple during select missions and even some in the arcade minigames. There's no way to know where any of them are. They generally tend to be really well hidden even if you are trying to scour every area.
Again, I wish there was a way to highlight them. The game's long load times make it a chore to switch episodes or missions so it's tedious to try searching for them manually.
Now it's time to talk about the arcades. Sly 4 has 3 arcade minigames that are used in both the main missions and have a harder version in the arcades in hideouts. The arcade versions of these minigames are harder, go on for much longer and can have secret paths that lead to portals that reward you with points and some of them even have Sly masks. You need to beat the high scores to get the trophies
The first minigame is "Alter Ego". This has you play this 2D auto scrolling twin stick shooter minigame where you must avoid enemies and collect these "ionic bits". Collecting 5 yellow bits levels you up so your weapons get more powerful. At level 10 you have shoot crazy fast, can launch missiles and have floating drones that can damage enemies around you. But whenever you take damage, you drop an entire level. And you get left behind as the level autoscrolls, you respawn at level 0. You can also collect blue bits which can give you a grenade explosion around you.
Personally, I don't really like this minigame. It's fine when playing casually as a change of pace but grinding the high score isn't great. Since it is an autoscroller it is entirely possible you don't have enough points to match the high score and you won't know until its too late, wasting your time. I also found the hitboxes a bit too small. Making items more annoying to pickup.
The key to success is finding the right balance between collecting yellow bits as they give points and level you up (and how high your level is acts as a multiplier for your score) and killing enemies since they give more points. As well as avoiding taking damage and maintaining level 10 as much as possible and knowing where the secret paths are so you can get more points as well as level up if you have messed up.
The second minigame is "System Cracker". Here, you guide a little space ship looking thing through 2D levels in top down twin stick shooting sections. This isn't an autoscroller. You need to explore levels looking for keys and shooting enemies. There are 3 ships you can switch between by going onto specific coloured pads and each ship has its pros and cons. The green ship you start with does decent damage and has decent health and can carry keys. So it's a jack of all trades master of none kinda ship. The pink ship literally resembles a tank. It fires slower and at a shorter range but does more damage and has more health. It's also necessary for destroying pink crystals to progress. The blue ship has floatier handling and faster speeds. Its shots also bounce off walls and it can draw a line which can activate switches and damage enemies. It is weaker than the green ship though.
I actually really enjoyed this minigame and was happy whenever it comes up. It even feels the most fleshed out of the 3. Like, I feel it could even be released as a small standalone game with some tweaking and expansion. I'd probably play a mobile version of this in my free time.
I like how varied the levels can be. You can have a lot of different threats and mini-puzzles and even scenarios where you have to keep switching between ships on the fly to damage enemies. Like, there's this one enemy that's made up of orange, blue and pink hexagons that require you to switch between all 3 ships and use their abilities to damage it. It's quite fun. Damage one ship takes is "saved" on that ship. So if you take 50% damage with the green ship and switch to the pink one, the pink one will have 100% health. But whenever you switch back to the green one, you will be back at 50% health. So mistakes have consequences requiring you to make decisions accounting for them without being too overbearing.
Beating the high scores for the associated arcades is very easy. For one, there is no time limit or pressure so you’re free to take your time and play carefully. On top of that, the mode is very generous with points. Whereas Alter Ego only gives you points for killing enemies and picking up bits (and you need to get and maintain a multiplier for decent times), System Cracker gives you points even for shooting obstacles and barricades in your way. In Alter Ego, I was scraping for points until the very end. In System Cracker, I had more than enough points by the halfway mark.
I suppose the game could have balanced this by increasing the points threshold and rewarding extra points for taking less time to complete sections but I’m not complaining.
The third and worst minigame is “Spark Chaser”. Here you must guide a little electric ball across these maze like areas with gaps that end your attempt if you fall down them and these pinball like bounce pads that bounce you really far. There’s also a time pressure. You have around 20 seconds to get as far as possible with more time added as you pick up these purple clock icons.
The biggest issue is that it’s entirely controlled by motion controls. And this makes me experience worse on VITA. Seriously, I very nearly quit playing. This post was almost titled “I gave up trying to Platinum Sly 4”.
With the PS3 version, at least titling the remote doesn’t also affect your view of the screen. You can look at the game and play it the same as you normally would. But in the VITA version, the “neutral” position where no input is registered by the system is placing the VITA flat with its screen facing up. The standard “screen facing you” position registers as down.
The end result is a frustrating experience. This minigame requires really fine precision given how easy it is to fall off and the time pressure requires you both be fast and more precise to collect time pickups. On top of that, your view is constantly being messed with due to how much you need to tilt the system from odd angles. Especially how tilting “up” really makes it hard to see. Oh, and the dialogue from Bentley as you bounce gets really annoying and repetitive.
It’s barely tolerable in regular missions since those don’t require as much precision or speed. And even then, the usage there in 2013 was suspect to begin with. I only completed this because there’s a cheese where if you can get enough time early on, you can then keep bouncing on certain pads which give around 20 points per bounce. When I played “normally”, I’d get around 300 points with the high score being 1000 points. Using the cheese, I averaged around 990 points and managed to get lucky to win with 1010 points.
Tangent Time:
I’ve said it before. Motion controls work best when they complement existing controls in an optional way or in more restrained ways. I love it when games have gyro aiming since that can help compensate when aiming with sticks with small fine corrections. It works here because the sticks do most of the work and the gyro sensors work where they are best suited.
Or in many mobile racing games, steering is often done by tilting your phone. I enjoy this because there is only one axis you need to tilt your phone, the screen often rotates in conjunction so your view is preserved and it’s more intuitive to feel the “range” of rotation and how it corresponds to steering.
Hell, even ignoring these approaches, motion can still be used in worthwhile ways. Such as by mapping an extra action that is infrequent if all other buttons are occupied. The Mario games on Wii map a “spin” when you jump and shake the remotes giving Mario a bit of grace allowing him to make slightly further jumps or correct a bad jump. Call of Duty MW1 on Wii allowed you to assign certain commands to custom motions of the controller and nunchuck. So you could map stuff like jumping, moving and shooting to buttons but map reloading to smacking the nunchuck to the Wii Mote or plunge the Wii Mote forward to do a melee attack or tilting the Wii Mote to bring out a grenade or alt fire.
Even Resistance 1: Fall of Man had a neat idea. You could quickly tilt the controller left to bring up the Scoreboard screen without needing to take your thumbs off the sticks or stop moving. The Soulsbourne games allow you to quickly do emotes without needing a menu by holding the interact button and quickly tilting the controller in certain directions.
I bring all this up to highlight how Sly 4’s use of motion controls are a failure on every level. They’re mostly used in place of minigames as the sole method of control. So all the issues of motion controls (such as the lack of broad control and feedback) are front and centre. The only place where the motion controls are understandable is when firing arrows as you can then control the arrow after it’s fired using both the sticks and gyro aiming. But even then, the lack of any ability to tune the gyro sensitivity or even invert the controls hampers any use it could have had.
I don’t mind the idea of Sly 4 having decent motion controls. There are places where I can see it being beneficial. In addition to shooting and guiding arrows, I can see it being useful when you have to use the binoculars. Especially as Bentley as you need to shoot darts precisely.
Or, here’s a gimmicky one: you can bind certain costumes or tools to also be selected by quickly tilting the system. Even though using the D-pad for a quick select would be faster, it would still be a better use of motion controls for Sly 4 than most of what’s currently there.
End Tangent.
Back to getting all the trophies, the final arcade machine, unlocked only when you’ve gotten all the treasures in every other episode, is very easy. It has “3 rooms”, one featuring every minigame thus far. But the high score requirements are really low and rooms aren’t as tough as prior versions. You can easily get the high score in the first area which is the Alter Ego one. Even if you miss it there, the second area is Spark Runner but you can keep reloading the checkpoint to preserve your score. So you can get some time clocks, reload a checkpoint when you’re close to running out of time or about to fall off and repeat until you get the high score.
You do need to get past the Spark Runner section to the 3rd and final section that uses System Cracker's gameplay in order to get a hidden Sly Mask, but it's far easier than the dedicated Spark Runner arcade minigame as the section is shorter, is more generous with Time Pickups, has easier level design and lets you reload a checkpoint if you're about to fail which doesn't end the run.
So yeah, Sly 4 Thieves in Time was....inconsistent game to platinum. I enjoyed the base gameplay, System Cracker, the various challenge trophies and the mini speedruns for collecting treasures. I didn't enjoy finding the collectibles and doing some of the other minigames. I hated Spark Runner.
If the game had more ways of tracking collectibles, fewer minigames and better load times, I'd gladly recommend it as a fun game to platinum.
As for the base game itself, I am mixed on it. The gameplay is arguably the best in the series. Sly's movement and costumes are so fun to play around with. Murray, Bentely and Sly's ancestors are also fun changes of pace during missions.
The story is lacking. My main issue is that it doesn't feel like it realizes its following up Sly 3. The story so casually undoes the ending of Sly 3 to get Sly 4's story going. I get it, that's what a sequel has to do. But the way it does it really undermines Sly 3. It's also much more lighthearted and doesn't have as much of a theme or focal point as its predecessors. Sly 1-3 explored the theme of legacy and the consequences of adhering to it so tightly. A major aspect of Sly 3 was Sly realizing the Cooper Vault wasn't worth dying for. It's what prompts him to fake his amnesia and retire with Carmilita in the end. So for Sly 4 to then have Sly have an itch to steal just for the fun of it, it's sending mixed messages here.
In addition, Sly is really casual about the fact Carmilita now knows about his betrayal and has broken up with him. Seems like that should have been a bigger deal. In fact, that kind of "casual-ness" persists throughout the story. Sly doesn't really have much of an arc or any real heartfelt moments with his ancestors. Nor do they seem to really care their decedent from the future is here with them.
If I could have tweaked the story to address these points, here's what I would have done:
I'd have the story open with Sly, Bentley and Murray enjoying their "retirement" and have no plans of thieving. I'd go so far as to have Sly even scoff at the idea of him ever wanting to be a thief. Then when the pages of the Thievus Racconus are dissapearing, Sly, Bentley and Murray have to reluctantly unretire to try stopping them. There would be dialogue during the opening mission of Sly being worried if they get caught as it would undo their happy ending. And then when Carmilita catches Sly, Sly at first is flustered and tries to explain the situation to Carmilita who isn't having any of Sly's BS. Sly is forcibly extracted by the gang and then they time travel. As they are time travelling. Sly is upset that, in order to go literally defend the Cooper Legacy, he has to give up his happy relationship and can't be repaired now. That even if they fix the problem, they'll be on the run forever now. Murray had to give up his professional career as well.
Already, I feel this introduction has a few things going for it. It respects the ending of Sly 3 and keeps the characters in more character, as well as putting more heat on Le Paradox. Sly 4 had to rip away the happy ending that was Sly 3. The characters know that and aren't happy about it. There is immediate consequences. And that heat can be directed at Le Paradox when he comes later.
I'd also like if all of the ancestors Sly met had different reactions to both him and the Cooper legacy and how it affects Sly's arc.
For example, lets say when he meets Riochi Cooper, Ricohi is initially disappointed in Sly as the future Cooper decendent as Sly doesn't act honourably or respect the legacy or something like this. Something that makes Sly start to question if it's even worth defending the Cooper Legacy. Bentely is the voice of reason here and mediator that gets the gang to work as well as they can.
Then when Sly meets Tennessee Cooper, Sly is initially expecting another traditionalist ancestor that cares a lot about the Cooper Legacy. But Tennessee is kinda the opposite of Riochi in that Tennasee doesn't care about the legacy in the same way. He adds his own spin and contributions but also uses the knowledge from it to do his own thing. Perhaps Tennessee is this Robin-Hood esque figure who uses his heisting skills to steal from the corrupt ruling class and give to the lower class. The point being that through Tennessee, Sly considers another aspect of the Cooper Legacy on how he's not that beholden to it and can potentially make it his own.
Then when Sly meets Bob, part of Bob's training is also from Sly as Sly teaches him some of the Cooper moves he knows. Since Bob is the first Cooper ancestor, he has no bias towards the legacy or any knowledge. So he's far more grateful and begins to use his new skills in helpful ways. Causing Sly to wonder if he could use the Cooper Legacy in more ways.
It's a similar situation for Sir Galleth. And for Selim, perhaps by that point, Sly has a newfound outlook and appreciation for the Cooper Legacy and ways on how he can improve it or make it his own that he encourages Selim not to retire or to retire in such a way where he could help people or something like that.
So yeah, there's this theme now of "Don't let the past define you now. You can make it your own and grow past its flaws". Which I feel would give Sly 4 more of a punch. I am basically copying Metal Gear Solid 4 and Assassin's Creed though.
I also feel it would be better if Penelope wasn't the villain of episode 4. It seems to contradict her character from past games and the explanation given for her heel turn doesn't really hold water. I feel the story would be better if Penelope had the role Dmitri has where she's their help in the present and the Knight was a new character. But if you need to have Penelope as the antagonist, have her be under mind control or something. That way the team has the conflict of how will they stop the plan without hurting their friend. But if you really insist on Penelope being a full on antagonist now by her own choice, perhaps flesh out her motivations more? Maybe something like "she sees how Bentley will never reach his full potential as the Bill Gates of the world because of his criminal past that requires him to lay low and not take public credit for his inventions. So she's trying to erase the Coopers so Bentley will have never met Sly". That would at least be more than "I want money".
Everything else, I feel works more or less.
I will note that the cliffhanger ending was a weird choice given that this game wasn't projected to sell well and kinda pigenholes any story Sly 5 would be going for. Plus, it being locked behind the platinum trophy means only a small portion of the few players that played Sly 4 would even know about it.
So yeah, that's my take on platinumming Sly 4: Thieves in Time. What do y'all think?
Next up for me is platinumming every Spider-Man game on PS VITA. See you then.

I am specifically referring to National Bolshevism as the term was originally coined, rather than any group of people who may have labelled themselves "National Boshelviks" since. The term predates even the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922, let alone any other 20th century regime. The term was originally used by Karl Radek to describe two member he was expelling as "National Boshelviks". What these people wanted to do was align the revolutionary movement in Germany with that in Russia in mutual opposition to both the treaty of Versailles and the treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
I am specifically defending the prospect of this strategy in particular rather than specifically any person who might have been or could have been advocating for it and any ideas they might have had otherwise, not because it is national, or even bolshevik, but rather because I think it conforms with the idea in the Communist Manifesto of the role of Communists in relation to Proletarians where the Communists do not form separate political programs of their own and instead are supposed to align various proletarians movements together across nationality with respect to the current stage than any of those movements may find themselves in.

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

Therefore the irony of this position I am defending is that it was the one advocated for by people labelled National, which would clearly seem to be contrary to being independent of nationality, and Bolshevik who would seem to be sectarians seeking to mold to proletarian movement. The other irony is that for it to have been possible it would have required overcoming proletarian movements in different nationalities operating independent of one another, in addition to overcoming the sectarianism emerging between all the differing "Communist" movements. In other words this is another call in an endless stream of "stop infighting!" coupled with "everyone except for me is wrong" which just contributes to the infighting by creating a new sectarian divergence but there is very little that can be done about that. Mostly this is just an excuse to discuss a particular moment I find interesting and inner contrarian in me just wants to make the seemingly most insane position seem the most reasonable as a challenge.
Lenin was not in favour of this so it was a bit of a non-starter. In "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder he criticizes people who refuse to recognize the treaties, but in addition to the tendencies of so-called National Bolsheviks, he also criticized the Left-Communists that Karl Radek and the other German Revolutionaries were often members. Here we can start to see a problem emerging as you clearly have two different revolutionary movements in two different countries who are having difficulty working with each other (with the problem of the treaties between these countries not even being the main issue they were squabbling over). Indeed while not around long enough to have become officially a Left-Communist herself, Luxembourg is associated with them as her writings are cited as a major influence on the tendency, and she is notable for criticizing Lenin's Bolshevism.
There was a lot of confusion in this period and numerous tendencies diverging from one another, the reason being is that in the wake of the Russian Revolution and the end of the First World War there was a period of revolutionary activity across the entire world. While Russia and Germany are often the most focused upon due to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany being our core 20th century players and many seeing these revolutions as the origin points of these things with a compare and contrast analysis being done to understand while one failed and the other succeeded, in the light of understanding the world revolution as a wave, looking at just these two revolutions becomes parochial, as there was clearly one singular revolution going on across the world in the same way as during the Revolutions of 1848 where the Communist Manifesto was published.
Indeed Marx and Engels viewed that as a singular revolution and would have viewed the similar wave of revolutions that peaked in 1919 but spanned from 1917-1923 as a singular revolution. While differing in severity there was revolutionary activity in numerous countries ranging from the Two Red Years in Italy to the much less impressive sounding Red Week) in the Netherlands. Even as far away as Canada, Australia, and South Africa there were labour revolts in this period. The case of Canada is a bit emblematic of the obscurity of the scale of these events, as while the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 is well known, much like with only Russia and Germany beings discussed, the strike wave nature of the events in Canada just as in the world tends to fall out of discussion, as for instance this wave actually started with a general strike in Vancouver that was crushed by the military.
In the Preface to the 1882 Russian Edition of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels even suggested in the wake of the assassination of the Tsar Liberator that the impending Russian (bourgeois) Revolution would serve as a signal for the Western proletariat to have their Revolution, and that the Russian Revolution could end up being communist alongside the West.

And now Russia! During the Revolution of 1848-9, not only the European princes, but the European bourgeois as well, found their only salvation from the proletariat just beginning to awaken in Russian intervention. The Tsar was proclaimed the chief of European reaction. Today, he is a prisoner of war of the revolution in Gatchina, and Russia forms the vanguard of revolutionary action in Europe.
The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?
The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

Now 1882 didn't turn into a revolution in Russia and there were several false starts like in 1905, but eventually it did finally happen. However seemingly with Lenin's New Economic Policy, both scenarios discussed ended up needing to happen. The Russian Revolution was both Communist and they felt it impossible to transition straight into Communism and thus had to allow some kind of bourgeois property relation to develop, and then later on had to eliminate this thing they created themselves in a rather unfortunate series of events. Additionally while the Russian Revolution did prove to be a signal for the Western proletariat to have their revolution, the proletariat revolution failed. In the spirit of this discussion I'm going to be argue that these were not separate incidents but rather the failure of the western proletariat's revolution is why Lenin implemented the NEP in 1922, in part because of internal rebellions calling for these things and because the international revolution seemingly failed resulting in a loss of hope that the western proletariat would in some way save them, which had to result in some kind of proletarian vanguard party lead bourgeois state emerging on the fly. Stalin would later have to undo this both these consequences in the events he is most criticized for, as in addition to reversing the NEP with collectivization, he undid the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk when as Molotov said "One kick from the German army and another from the Soviet Army put an end to this ugly product of Versailles" in regards to Poland. Polish independence being quite the unfortunate sacrifice here considering how supportive of it Engels was in the 1892 Polish Preface the the Communist Manifesto.

But the rapid development of Polish industry, outstripping that of Russia, is in its turn a new proof of the inexhaustible vitality of the Polish people and a new guarantee of its impending national restoration. And the restoration of an independent and strong Poland is a matter which concerns not only the Poles but all of us. A sincere international collaboration of the European nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully autonomous in its own house. The Revolution of 1848, which under the banner of the proletariat, after all, merely let the proletarian fighters do the work of the bourgeoisie, also secured the independence of Italy, Germany and Hungary through its testamentary executors, Louis Bonaparte and Bismarck; but Poland, which since 1792 had done more for the Revolution than all these three together, was left to its own resources when it succumbed in 1863 to a tenfold greater Russian force. The nobility could neither maintain nor regain Polish independence; today, to the bourgeoisie, this independence is, to say the last, immaterial. Nevertheless, it is a necessity for the harmonious collaboration of the European nations. It can be gained only by the young Polish proletariat, and in its hands it is secure. For the workers of all the rest of Europe need the independence of Poland just as much as the Polish workers themselves.

(The call for "full autonomy in a nations own house" is probably worth explaining. Nations that should be autonomous are nations which can be autonomous all on their own without international meddling. Engels was notoriously against all the south slavs for their pan-slavism because their independence was necessitated by interference from Imperial Russia, in part because he was still mad about the revolutions of 1848 not working out. He was even still mad at them 34 years later when he reaffirmed Polish independence alongside Irish independence as the most crucial national struggles to support. The reason being that Poland rejected pan-Slavism and was instead independently nationalist. That Poland could stand alone (and more importantly that Polish agitation threatened three reactionary imperial monarchies in Germany, Austria, and Russia at the same time. Ireland being important to screw around with the bourgeois British Empire as Marx and Engels increasingly saw the absentee revenues the British ruling class generated for themselves in Ireland as being the key to their parliamentary political dominance in England against both lower class and anti-imperialist challenges which were often the same thing) is why Polish independence was so supported. Standing alone is important because autonomous nations can switch between the rule of various classes without the risk of foreign interference on the part of imperialist reactionaries putting things back the way they were to protect their sphere of influence. The issue is that Polish independence ended up being a thorn in the side of the revolution when Polish independence was granted through Wilsonian liberal internationalism and during the Russian Civil War the Red Army tried and failed to retaliate against Poland when they joined forces with the Entente Liberal Imperialists in the Soviet-Poland War.
For NATO fans the opposition to NATO comes from this concept of being against spheres of influence, with a preference for complete independence. The Soviets or even Russia joining NATO however transform the institution from an American sphere of influence into just some vague "nobody invade anybody else okay guys thanks" treaty which is what it is sold as. So long as Russia is not included in NATO it fails to fulfill its stated purpose, and it must be opposed because it does not protect the independence of the nations within it, rather it makes them subservient to the United States, and the counter-balance of Russia inside the block is sufficient that the nations within it could seamlessly transfer between spheres of influence, or more importantly, not be in anyone's sphere of influence by successfully playing the US and Russia off each other, which puts each nation in a position to pursue development with little risk of the alliance being used to punish them. In fact if say Luxembourg decided to go rogue it could even use the NATO treaty to argue that anyone infringing upon them should be subjected to retaliation by all the other members, and now they have a socialist Luxembourg in the middle of Europe and they can't do anything about it because the treaty guarantees their independence with multiple dozen moving parts so long as Luxembourg doesn't militarily invade anybody. However if the organization is nothing more that an American political block with US bases every where, clearly the US would be able to pressure people into recognizing the socialist Luxembourg as illegitimate in some way and argue it can be invaded without requiring everyone come to its defense. So NATO good if Russia included and US bases removed, an in NATO Russia still isn't a threat to even Estonia if dozens of European countries are required to defend it, and that isn't even considering a late arrival of the US and Canada when they finally cross the Atlantic. The problem with NATO is that it is clearly an unofficial loosely held US empire, it stops being a problem when it is no longer this)
This whole confused mess could have been avoided had the world revolution not failed. This circles back to the Russian and German revolutions and how they were not united. Therefore the position of those labelled Nazbol is attractive merely for the sake that it would have united these two disparate revolutions. The success of either was reliant on the success of the other. The prior Bolshevik position of Peace Without Annexations or Indemnities would permanently lock in the Russian and German revolutions together in a mutual opposition to the bourgeois treaties, a pact of blood to oppose the pacts signed in ink.
Additionally opposition to the indemnity aspect of the treaty of Versailles would have been in fidelity to the revolutionary history of the Paris Commune which inspired the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1871, which was prompted in part by opposition to the burden of the reparation payments imposed on France by Bismark in response to Napolean III's failed invasion being placed on the people of France by the bourgeois government that signed that treaty. On a global scale while the opportunity for revolution by the proletariat refusing to enter World War One was squandered by the Social Democrats granting their permission, the proletariat could instead refuse to exit World War One by not granting their permission for acceptance of the bourgeois treaties just as the Paris Commune refused to accept Bismark's treaty.
Indeed opposition to the bourgeois Treaty of Trianon served as the basis for cooperation between the Nationalists and the Communists in Hungary, who unlike the Luxembourgists in Germany, were internationally aligned with the Boshelviks in Russia with the establishment of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The alliance however broke down with the establishment of the Slovak Soviet Republic as the Hungarian nationalists questioned why they were participating in the Hungarian Red Army if they were just going to be liberating other countries, this ended up not even being that relevant of a dispute seeing as Slovakia was never fully captured and the Czechoslovak army ended up recapturing it in a month and so the issue only lasted from June 1919 to July 1919. However it exposed the core obvious problem with the alliance between nationalists and communists, as the full Petrograd formula was "peace without annexations or indemnities, on the basis of self-determination of the peoples" so the nationalists opposed to treaties were not going to like it when the second part got implemented later.
Lenin and Stalin ran into a similar issue when Stalin opposed Georgian self-determination in 1922 and wanted them to instead join Russia, with the comical situation of Stalin calling the Georgian Mensheviks "nationalist-socialists" and the Russian Lenin accusing the Georgian Stalin of being a Russian nationalist-socialist in response. We can clearly see that there are vastly differing views on the questions of nationality all over the place and there was no one line being taken, with Hungary and Germany taking vastly different views in regards to the treaties and cooperation with nationalists, to their own unique sets of problems later on with them.
The vastly different ways everyone was handling these issues is why I argue that the best principle would have been to have no principles at all. The only communist principle in regards to nationality is international cooperation. Indeed while you had Communist revolutions in German, Hungary, and Russia, the common thread uniting them of opposition to the bourgeois treaties would have also united them with the liberal Kemalist revolution in Turkey, thus completing the alignment of all revolutionaries in the central powers and Imperial Russia against the rest of the entente attempting to impose the bourgeois treaties, in effect adding Russia to the central powers after the imperialist war had turned into a civil war in all four imperial monarchies. That Turkey was in a vastly different stage of revolution than the other three would be irrelevant as these revolutions would still be mutually supporting of each other, and the Communists could rest assured safely knowing that while differing countries might be in different stages of revolution, they had the advantage over all others in knowing the ultimate end result of all their revolutions even if the people operating in them might not know it themselves.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

As such the notion that one needs to be politically Communist to participate in the revolution is false. So long as a state of revolution remained the stages of the revolution could continue moving forward. If Turkey was not materially ready for it, that need not matter so long as the Kemalists were willing to join in an anti-imperialist block in the mean time, which they were willing to do until the Soviets later started looking at the straights with desire which eventually pushed Turkey into the arms of NATO where it remains to this day. However at the time the Soviets and Turkey were quite friendly despite their obvious ideological differences merely based on this mutual geopolitical interest in so-called anti-imperialism. This anti-imperialism was selective however, with the "Mountain Turks" and "Mountain Russians" being sacrificed for it, but the benefits of not having principles means you don't exactly have to care about that. Ataturk can make poutine out of the Kurds all he wants if he remains staunchly anti-imperialist on an international level. This gross cynical realism while obviously questionable is still consistent with Revolutionary History as all prior revolutions do not stand up to moral scrutiny when they are viewed in this way. In fact at the twilight of the 1848 revolutions Engels himself called for the Hungarians to wipeout the "counter-revolutionary" Slavs, while this is obviously not something we should want to have happened, and we definitely should not ever do this if we ever find ourselves in a position to make those decisions, it is important to understand the reasoning behind why he was saying those things, that it is the continuance of the revolution itself is both the most important thing, and something that is largely out of anyone's control in the Hegelian sense of Historicism.

The Magyar cause is not in such a bad way as mercenary black-and-yellow [colours of the Austrian flag] enthusiasm would have us believe. The Magyars are not yet defeated. But if they fall, they will fall gloriously, as the last heroes of the 1848 revolution, and only for a short time. Then for a time the Slav counter-revolution will sweep down on the Austrian monarchy with all its barbarity, and the camarilla will see what sort of allies it has. But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names.
The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.

A key fact you will observe is that they are often quite over eager in announcing the impending revolution. For instance The Magyar Struggle was published in January of 1849 in Marx's Newspaper, and Louis Napoleon was elected President of France in December of 1848. It seems as if they might have thought that this would have been more significant than it actually turned out to be. This kind of made sense though because Louis Napoleon's main opponent in the election was Louis-Eugene Cavagnac who lead the army to suppress a worker's uprising in Paris back in the "June Days" of 1848. Additionally the Hungarians did not do this, instead they adopted cultural assimilation policies called Magyarization, and late in the revolution into 1849 while the Russian and Austria Imperial armies were barring down on them they adopted minority right protections to try to win them back. However they were ultimately unsuccessful in repelling the Russian invasion regardless of any attempts at outreach.
What I find notable about this is that Engels essentially predicted the sides of the "next world war" (albeit there was a world war in between) that would wipeout entire peoples, but somehow ended up reversing the reactionary and revolutionary sides, as an Austrian German and the Hungarians did engage in a war against the Slavs, but because somehow the "poles of revolution" did somehow invert and head outwards from Russia like Engels said the Slavs supposedly wanted, that war was against the revolution instead of for it.

There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples, the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historical development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says, these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution.
Such, in Scotland, are the Gaels, the supporters of the Stuarts from 1640 to 1745.
Such, in France, are the Bretons, the supporters of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800.
Such, in Spain, are the Basques, the supporters of Don Carlos.
Such, in Austria, are the pan-Slavist Southern Slavs, who are nothing but the residual fragment of peoples, resulting from an extremely confused thousand years of development. That this residual fragment, which is likewise extremely confused, sees its salvation only in a reversal of the whole European movement, which in its view ought to go not from west to east, but from east to west, and that for it the instrument of liberation and the bond of unity is the Russian knout — that is the most natural thing in the world.

However a lot can apparently change in almost 100 years. Russia was once seen as the bastion of reaction celebrated by the reactionaries everywhere for having invaded Hungary to put down the 1848-9 revolution, but then became the center of revolution, taking that spot from France which didn't really participate in the Revolutions despite the 1917 mutinies defused in June by Philip Petain by reassuring the soldiers by calling off the offensives that were intended to try to reassure the Provision Russian Government from the February Revolution to stay in the war and who launched the "Kerensky Offensive" in July which prompted the unsuccessful "July Days" Bolshevik uprising before the later successful October Revolution.
The absence of French participation beyond this is remarkable given how much they played a role in other revolutions and also remarkable how it was later Vichy leader Petain himself who basically defused the situation by giving the soldiers what they wanted and ending the suicidal offensives. The difference between Petain and Kerensky here and that the Russian revolution had not yet gone proletariat at this point while France was dealing with its own situation coming up from the soldiers and that the Russian version of this happened only a month afterwards should probably be focused on more here, in addition to how the differing approaches countries took on simultaneous and similar events from 1917-1923 should be analyzed like how I am suggesting (Comprehensive Revolutionary History of World War One when? Honestly I might write it at this point, issue is wikipedia as sources is probably not the greatest, and wikipedia article bouncing is how I'm formulating these connections as it requires an extremely shallow understanding of a lot of things that people with deep understandings of those things would all reject because I'm ignoring intricacies, despite ignoring intricacies being the entire point as intricacies are caused by random eddies and chaotic currents, and so must be ignored if you want to get a sense of the overall direction things are going, although admittedly I feel myself getting a bit schizo when I assert random concepts whole cloth that nobody has ever used by anyone besides me as you will see with the term "global political magnetic field collapse")
Since the Russian Revolution the apparent "pole of reaction" where global reactionaries collect as their refuge that Russia represented seemingly shifted to the United States for the Cold War after the pole reversal and global political magnetic field collapse manifesting in the out of place auroral borealis of the inter-war period and world war 2. It would be reasonable to assume that it would be just as possible for the United States to become a new center of revolution in the way Russia took that position from France despite Russia being the most reactionary power of anyone before that happened.

Look, I'm just a simple Killer in Dead by Daylight. I do my due diligence; patrol generators, set traps, chase survivors, and hoist them onto hooks. It's a tough gig, but someone's got to do it, right? Then came along this absolutely detestable, irritating, maddening, and – dare I say – downright wicked perk: Boil Over.
​
Now let me tell you something. Boil Over. Even the name sounds like some kind of out-of-control crock pot recipe. Or what happens when you don't pay attention to your spaghetti. But no, it's way worse than overcooked pasta or messy kitchen disasters. This "perk" is an affront to hard-working, hook-hanging Killers like me.
​
See, it was a peaceful night in the Fog, or as peaceful as it gets for a Killer. Had just caught myself a sneaky Claudette trying to finish a generator right under my nose. It was hook time, baby! I started walking towards the nearest hook, dreaming of the Entity's pleased hum when... BOOM! It felt like I was trying to wrestle a pack of wild hyenas while skating on a buttered floor.
​
Every step was a struggle, like trying to carry a wailing, flailing sack of cats to a bathtub. Left, right, up, down - I'm supposed to be a horrifying nightmare figure, not a contestant on some macabre version of "Dancing with the Stars"! I was wobbling around like a drunken Hillbilly who just discovered moonshine for the first time.
​
It's as if the Entity suddenly decided to turn the ground into a Slip'N Slide coated in dish soap. The hooks looked like they were actively fleeing from me. And this wasn't some Trapper mind-game or Hag illusion. This was real. This was Boil Over.
​
And let's not even talk about the hooks, okay? I swear, it's like they're playing hide and seek with me. There I am, carrying a fully grown adult on my shoulder who's wriggling around like a fresh catch, and suddenly, every hook in a three-mile radius disappears from sight. What's up with that? Is there some sort of hook union strike I wasn't aware of? Did they all decide to take a vacation in the Upside Down?
​
Now here's the thing. I'm an understanding entity. I get it. As a survivor, your options are limited. The heartbeat, the red stain, the eerie ambiance, it all gets a bit much. But listen, Boil Over is not the answer. It's the equivalent of dealing with stress by banging pots and pans together at 3 a.m. It doesn't solve anything and just gives everyone around you a headache.
​
So, if you're a Survivor reading this, please, I beg you, consider the Killers. We have feelings too, you know. Mostly feelings of bloodlust and sadistic pleasure, but feelings nonetheless. Use Kindred. Use Borrowed Time. Use literally anything else. But please, for the love of the Entity, let's Boil Over this terrible, terrible perk.
​
Sincerely,
A disgruntled Killer who's getting too old for these shenanigans.

The CDC’s and Other Government Health Agencies Skewer the Chronically Ill, Chronic Pain and Disabled Population; A Commentary on The Latest “Guidelines” From The CDC:
(please refer to webinar)
If you don't want to watch this whopping eight minute video about government ran agencies talking about how to run our health care services for those with chronic pain, chronic illness or disabilities. Or, if you have watched it but don't really know what it means, then I will just tell you what this about and what it means. Most of this is in response to taking away or banning in many instances, the use of certain medications used to treat chronic illnesses and chronic pain that has left people disabled. They are admitting the pull out of opioids/opiates as well as their attacks on other medications such as Benzodiazepines, ADHD medications and in some states they have gone as far to reclassify muscle relaxers and Gabapentinoids as scheduled 2 narcotics. The fall out from this has left many chronic pain patients, chronically ill and disabled people without ANY health care, greater mortality rate, higher rate of homelessness, less functionality, poorer quality of life and many doctors that were not pill mills but still locked up in prison for the rest of their lives for running pain treatment centers in rural areas. They also bring up that, curiously, even though opioid/opiate prescribing is lower then it has ever been in US history, they are seeing a steep incline of illicit use of opiates amongst the adolescent demographic, to which they have never seen before. They do not understand this because young folks who have "muscle skeletal" pain are usually prescribed NSAID's or acetaminophen; they just can't figure out why the rate of illicit opiates in this demographic is higher then it has ever been when they are not even being exposed to prescription opiates. That's it they end that issue just sort of scratching their heads. According to their data if some one has not been exposed to prescription opioids/opiates these children shouldn't be doing this. According to their data NSAID's and Tylenol should be efficient enough pain relief for any and all types of muscle skeletal chronic pain conditions. I won't put words in their mouth or give you my opinion on why that is, even though my opinion would be based on some very good data, medical studies and other types of studies that have been conducted over the years. I will say that I think I shouldn't have to give anyone that opinion because I think the answer is obvious; keep in mind these kids are too young to have ever been exposed to opioids/opiate medications or crooked marketing strategies by Perdu. They go on to promote something called "healthy people by 2030" which is a government health based website that advocates for many healthy life practices and choices. One of those things is making sure that the chiropractic's industry stays open for customers, not for free at a charge, to make sure they are accommodating the needs of chronic pain patients. I am not sure why this is said and done because chiropractic treatment has been available and continues to be. They go onto say those with loved ones, friends and family that are chronic pain patients; empathy and sympathy is what is needed most. "Many times chronic pain sufferers will try to pretend they are not in pain. If this is your loved one or a friend or family member, make sure to have plenty of empathy and sympathy. Also pay attention to their body language, if they are rubbing the part of their body that is in pain or making facial expressions it's important to remind them not to over work themselves. That they need to take time to sit and rest; we need to get society to where we are stopping chronic pain at it roots". So what that means is that they expect everyone in society, employers, family, friends, loved ones, complete strangers the entirety of the health community to accommodate any all with chronic pain conditions (disability is not specified just chronic pain period). This is their answer, and the CDC is endorsing this, on how to treat chronic pain, chronic illness and disabilities in the absence of effective treatment (effective treatment being used currently is not discussed but current effective treatment implies without the use of opioid/opiate medications). Ok, so this is really confusing if you have not been keeping up with this stuff so let me fill you in on what this means in a deeper sense. As a person who has chronic pain, chronic illness or a disability. What you are supposed to do is make sure you are regularly attending physical therapy (cost estimate as much as $3,000 a session and as low as $45 for a "wellness" checkup that is only 30 min standard session is 1 hour fees vary depending on insurance, what company or if no insurance at all). Typically they recommend physical therapy once a week or every other week; although many primary and family care physicians understand once a month to be more practical for low or lack of income individuals (the CDC and Medicare almost demand once a week). You are also supposed to attend a gym and have an active membership. You are to seek a psychologist for cognitive behavioral therapy or psycho therapy to deal and manage your pain (costs on this can very widely as well as much as $200 a session). You are to see a psychiatrist to make sure your psychiatric needs are met with medications for mood management. You are also supposed to attend "mindfulness training" once a week; which is a fancy name for meditation. You are also supposed to attend either (and this is the only one they give options on) a chiropractor or get acupuncture done once a week. You are to follow up with your primary or family care physician to stay compliant on your meds (NSAID's, Tylenol, muscle relaxers, and then usually one of the following sometimes combined with one other thing but usually one; Tricyclic, SSRI, SNRI, anti-psychotic or anti-depressant that plays with neuro-nucleotides like Cymbalta, Amitriptyline, Nortriptyline, Effexor, Haldol as some examples, Steroids or Gabapentenoids such as Gabapentin or Pregabalin aka Lyrica). You are also supposed to see a pain management specialist at least once every other week (per CDC) for trigger point injections and nerve blocks or ESI's aka epidural injections (these can cost in a wide range as much as $5,000 for one injection the lowest I have personally seen is $2,000 for one injection to which some report as little as 4 hours of pain relief some injections patients report only 4 days of pain relief we are told these are supposed to relieve pain for as long as several months but really this is dependent on what pain condition you have and what is causing it and what type of injection is received for the injection). On top of all that they want to make sure that as a chronic pain patient, chronically ill or disabled to make sure to keep up with your social life by spending quality time with friends, family and loved ones. To make sure you are financially secure with either a job or disability/retirement benefits for those who apply (job is emphasized over over social programs). Lastly, to make sure you are eating healthy and getting between 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night (this is all per CDC and other government health agencies including CSMS for those whom are on retirement benefits). Now where were we, so essentially they want the entire society to let any one with chronic pain or illness or disabled to be allowed to go at their own pace. Allow for late appointments. Take breaks and rest as needed and avoid doing anything that causes or exacerbates chronic pain or illness and disabilities in the first place. They are not doing this as a policy they are doing this as a guideline so no company, corporation, business or any personnel is held to this by any legal measure. Once again I could insert my own take on this based on pretty solid evidence, but I think this is unnecessary as it should be obvious what the outcome of this will actually look like. I'll just ask this simple question; do you see an employer doing any of this for a customer or employee? Do you see all these different health care agencies accommodating to all their patients being late due to being slow and thus not punctual for this menagerie of different health care specialties the government health agencies want us to attend? The CDC seriously pushes for all, not just a couple, but all listed health specialties; and the other government health care agencies agree without question. They go on to talk about how they think the reason doctors feel so pressure by the CDC, DOJ and DEA in the helping of managing chronic pain or illness and disabilities is nothing more then they have not attended any of the CDC's seminar's; which are being updated for the fourth time in this single year. They say that doctors need to take time to understand and have deep conversations to understand their patients needs. That doctors need to be there for patients when in need of social rehabilitation and assistance such as obtaining a case worker, social worker or disability (which if you've been in this situation you know they will not do due to health insurance regulations, government interference, regulation or policy enforced by the company they work for or affiliated hospital, shortage on doctors due to covid and arresting so many for prescribing meds, health practices and administrations that run health offices running on a profit based model that basically demands that each patient visit only be 15 minutes to maximize the number of patients seen in one hour and legal issues in which many expert witnesses, colleges and other entities have sued doctors over the prospect of money which results in the termination of their job and license). Nope, none of that, it's all because they did not attend the CDC seminars that are continuously out of date and currently being "updated again" to ensure that doctors are staying compliant with the guidelines that are an unreasonable expectation at best and consistently changing. As one of the panelists says "after all these are not policies they are guidelines, and if no one knows how to work within those guidelines because they haven't taken the seminars they won't know how to implement them. We are really struggling with this one because when we passed the opiate prescribing guidelines for 2022 they were very strict and many states independently adopted these guidelines into law and policy that are different from state to state, but pretty much all do the same thing. We never intended them to be laws and policies but merely guidelines. When we released the 2023 opiate prescribing guidelines, we went back to the less strict guidelines resembling that of the 2016 opiate prescribing guidelines where the MME count was at 90MME instead of 50MME...we have seen no change in state accordance". These people act like our social safety nets are as accessible as over the counter Ibuprofen, when in fact they almost as accessible as the opioids/opiates they sought out to completely ban and obliterate out of our society regardless of the consequences is has had on health care providers and the chronic pain or illness and disabled people they were used to give back quality of life, pain relief and functionality. Andrew Klodney (one of the chief panel members that created the 2016 opiate prescribing guidelines) said "an entire generation needs to die in order for people to see my greatness". I don't think he meant to quote Hitler, but that is something Hitler did say; astonishingly Hitler also took opiate pain meds away from the chronically ill or in pain and disabled. Hitler also promoted "euthanasia" as a "humane and ethical way of helping those suffering to die with dignity". It wasn't until later many people found out he wasn't just euthanizing people who were in end of life care (or lack there of due to no opiates given to the general public, and only administered to his inner circle), as a humane and ethical way of dying with dignity; he was just killing anyone who had any kind of chronic pain, chronic illness, disability and that includes mental disabilities as well. Back on topic, the fact of the matter is our social safety nets, social rehabilitative services (SRS) like the SSA , food stamps, financial assistance and on have been slowly having their funding cut and certain facets of it being privatized over the years. The past ten years we have seen the most cuts and privatization of these programs then any other time in US history since their inception by FDR. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has not only been red taped but it is out dated. One of the reasons why you may have had your disability case denied is because the judge that decides on your case confirms the local job market with a job coach or vocational rehab specialist. The judge looks at your limitations and asks "based on this persons limitations, education and experience are their jobs in the local area this person can do and how likely is it that they can get one of these jobs?". The career specialist is financially incentivized to find a reason to deny a disability case for one. Two they do have to go off of what the current job market economy looks like, they only have to go off what it looked like since the ADA was last updated which was back in the 90's. This career specialist is absolutely reciting jobs that no longer exist and haven't existed since the late 90's or early 2000's and completely ignore the fact that things like pre covid door greeters are a thing of the past. They ignore the fact that job codes and other nifty legal loop hole language in job applications specifically designed to get around the ADA exist. They completely ignore that a vast majority of the republican party representatives have deregulated capitalism to the point of crony capitalism in the name of free market capitalism (give the employer the freedom to hire who they want and decide for themselves what is or is not a "reasonable accommodation"). This is so much to the point of government protections, I spoke with a disability discrimination attorney who said "the big corporations have got so much government protection and have been deregulated to the point I cannot even do my job. Many disability discrimination lawyers have changed their title or quit. There is no certainty or guarantee that anyone can hold a company accountable for disability discrimination anymore". To top all that off there are many company owned health care facilities, although this is not federally or state mandatory, have created policies where they are no longer taking private payers; people without health insurance. Some states are requiring each person who is disabled to reapply for disability every year, some states require that a person cannot be on disability for more then five years regardless of their disability statis. The state of Pennsylvania, to my understanding, has moved the retirement age up to 66 and the District of Columbia to age 67 some have considered even higher all the way up to age 71. Many states have cut food stamp spending or almost cut them all together to where many people who have been on food stamps for years have had their food stamps taken away from them entirely. In the state I reside in I was denied Medicaid due to the fact that, while he is my fiancé, we are not legally married and as far as they know he is nothing but a roommate. They denied my Medicaid claim because for a two person household, regardless of the relationship that person holds with you, one cannot make over the amount of $24,000 a year; I guess that is an acceptable amount for two people even when the money being made that is over $24k is not the person claiming Medicaid, but someone else's hard earned money. The mantra of the very conservative and traditionalist government when it comes to our social safety nets is one that would take us all the way back to the 1800's. Absent of major infrastructure where we all lived in small communities and everyone knew each other; they think it is the job of your friends, family and community to take care of you and not the government to which any one who has worked has paid taxes to support. The CDC and other government health agencies have made a catastrophe as the systems they are relying on are out dated, defunded and privatized. It is a system that essentially funnels people into homelessness and is one of the contributing factors as to why our homeless population continues to rise at what should be seen as 'at an alarming rate'. Which has led to outbreaks of diseases we have not seen since the 1800's like tuberculosis and cholera, due to all the human feces on the sidewalks and streets. I have been saying, it is a highly unsustainable system for the democrats to pretend they are the only party, take away pain meds which are the cheapest pain management regiment and most effective with limited risks comparatively, especially for those whom are disabled due to chronic pain and chronic illness and most likely to be unemployed or on disability. To take away opioid/opiate medications, act like they have the power to give all this untreated disabled patients with chronic pain and illness unfettered access to social programs when they do not have the ability to do this as every bill in the senate and congress put forward to do so in blocked, filibustered or expelled by the republican party. Along with that any headway progress that is made is undone on the state level where some states even redirect their social welfare funds to other entities like private home communities and private schools claiming "it stops early pregnancy and facilitates fiscal responsibility which helps homeless rates decline"; even though many chronic pain or chronic illnesses cannot be help or are caused by over working. Then the republican party red taps, defunds and privatizes our social programs. Then the republican party deregulates the market to where you cannot even hold a company accountable to nearly any laws at all. This is a system that is very dysfunctional as one is not guarantied disability income, health care, financial assistance, pain medication, employment and even if you do get employment there is no guarantee they have to do anything to accommodate your disability or health needs aside form allowing a person an inhaler for asthma or to make sure they can take their insulin during lunch. The CDC and the government health agencies that follow them blindly pretend that non of that is even ever an issue. In the webinar they even make claims that suggest if every one just lives as healthy as they possibly can, then no one would ever develop any underlying health conditions. I hate to be the arbiter of truth, but that is simply not true (that's me being nice it's BS with a capital B and we all know it). I don't know how we went from a society that understood snake oil pushers are everywhere to a society that might as well be saying we should live like the boy in the plastic bubble. Bubble or not the reality is as we grow old we fall apart and eventually we will die. You can live your life as healthy as humanly possible, and there is nothing wrong with that, but it will not stop anyone from growing old and dying nor will it stop all chronic pain or illnesses resulting in disability. Many of these things can be obtained genetically, many are from dangerous work environments that are physically intensive manual labor or repetitive and being overworked (70 hour work weeks are becoming the norm). Many times it is a combination of genetics labor. Being as healthy as you can by including (this is a real thing) waring SPF lotion inside can be helpful and lower risks but they are not a deterrent. We are incapable at this time of not only offering a suitable replacement for opioids/opiate medications, but we are also incapable at this point in time of having a society completely free of underlying health conditions such as chronic pain or illness and disability especially one where no one grows old and dies; one could easily argue we may never see such an existence as it may not even be possible. My final thought on all this is that I really don't care what kind of "guidelines" the CDC makes and other health agencies. Even if they make them into policy, how are they going to get an entire society and everything in it to accommodate (not even all) chronic pain or ill disabled people. People you don't even know, with so many conditions that cannot even be seen as they are internal. How is that even possible? Is that even possible or is this nothing more then fantasy or pipe dream? I know many people try their best and most have empathy and sympathy, but we can't even get what we already have to work in the favor of chronic pain or illness and disabilities to work now. Although many full able bodied people have the best intentions they have things going on in their life such as maintaining a sleep cycle, a social life and many of the above mentioned prescriptions given to chronic pain and illness people or those with disabilities by the CDC themselves. As the saying goes, there's only so much time in a day; and well there's only so many years to a life. Let us not deny the cold reality, taking care of a full grown adult with a chronic pain condition, chronic illness and disabilities is very arduous and taxing and most don't have the time or energy to take care of every chronic pain or illness disabled person for the 24/7 needs they may have. Let us also not pretend that every one out there has it in them to be 'the good Samaritan' especially multi-conglomerate corporations who hold a for profit model even if it is at the expense of another's well being or life and in this day age at the cost of our own society. There are many that will not engage with this, cut corners, do the bare minimum or just flat out not do it. They could be doctors, police they could be anyone within this society; ultimately it is a standard that cannot even be enforced and wont and I can pretty much guarantee that. This is the CDC's proposal of what to do since they took our pain meds away and chronic pain patients suicide rates have gone up 400%. They did this with no back up plan and since chronic pain patients and the chronically ill and disabled have had their health care turned into a joke with no resources to help. Taking away pain meds has also not caused a drop in the use and overdose of illicit opiates/opioids, it's gotten worse as many who seek their medical benefits take to the streets and become another number. The CDC members responsible for this just sit around scratching their heads like this couldn't possibly be due to the fact that they took away a safe supply leaving the entire population of society with either an illicit contaminated supply or the worst opioids or opiates possible which is buprenorphine (Suboxone) and Methadone; regardless if one is a recreational user or some one who needs them to function as close to a resemblance of their old life as possible for medical reasons; basically an entire rehash of prohibition and or the lead up to Nazi occupied Germany as if we have collective amnesia and haven't learned anything in the last 100 years at all.

https://www.lotro.com/update-notes/lotro-update-36-release-notes-en
​

Update 36 Release Notes

Here are the release notes for Update 36: Gondor Renewed, released on Wednesday, May 31st, 2023.

Of Special Note:

A New Story Begins in A Renewed King's Gondor!

After the defeat of Sauron, King Elessar and Queen Arwen seek to bring peace to their kingdom, but the danger is not gone and new foes seek to threaten Gondor. Adventure awaits in the new zone of King's Gondor East, set after the War of the Ring when fresh breezes have dispersed the fumes of the Dawnless Day and allowed the sun to shine again! Discover the beginning of a new Epic-style storyline, 'The Song of Waves and Wind,' and team up with Legolas, Gimli, and friends both old and new to investigate the continuing threat of the Heirs of Castamir!
The Song of Waves and Wind
A new story debuts with Gondor Renewed called "The Song of Waves and Wind"! For characters level 140. Start the first chapter by speaking to Glindor in Minas Tirith (Midsummer)! This new story is available to anyone who is VIP, purchases the "Gondor Renewed" quest pack, or who purchases quest packs associated with the story that are released in the future.
King's Gondor Awaits
Gone are the gloomy dark skies, replaced with bright and sunny fields and hills. Players familiar with the original Central and Eastern Gondor regions will be familiar with King's Gondor from a navigation standpoint, but there are new additions, and places players previously could not go are now open to allow for further exploration!
The Quest Pack "Gondor Renewed" unlocks more than 80 quests and Deeds for level 140 characters. Includes King's Gondor East and The Song of Waves and Wind. Free to VIPs!
How do I get to King's Gondor?
Go to Minas Tirith (After Battle) and head South through the Pelennor Fields. Where there once stood an impassable is no more! Questing begins in this area of the Pelennor Fields and in the under-construction version of The Harlond. From there, you can explore Gondor up to Linhir, where the gates are currently closed.​

Landscape Difficulty: The Paths of Valour!

We have reworked the Landscape Difficulty setting system introduced with Treebeard and are now opening it to the general game worlds as an option! Read full details about this new Landscape Difficulty option in the release notes below.​ A new Faction and new rewards are now available by playing these higher difficulties. Activate your difficulty and adjust it in the future by speaking with a Hardened Traveller, which can be found in major hubs and new player zones throughout Middle-earth:
​

• Outside of the Prancing Pony in Bree
• Near the Stable Masters outside of the 21st Hall
• Just inside of the exit of Post-Raid Archet
• Just outside of Mossward
• Along the road Northward out of Celondim
• Just outside the door to Thorin's Hall
• Down the road from the Hobbit starter area exit waypoint

There are titles available for activating a difficulty of 3 or higher and keeping it there from level 10 to level 50, and then to level 130 respectively. The title granted depends on the class you play, but can be used by any character on your account. Make sure to select your Landscape Difficulty prior to achieving level 10 to be eligible for these titles! In order to earn these titles, you must keep the difficulty system active for the entire leveling span from level 10 thru 50/130. Entering areas of the game world where it is temporarily suppressed will not invalidate your title attempt, however turning it down or off via the Hardened Traveller will.

More Delvings!

More Delvings are now available! The Annúminas instances Glinghant, Haudh Valandil, and the Great Barrows instances Sambrog, Thadûr and The Maze have been converted to be playable as Delvings! Find them in the Instance Finder (Control+J by default).​

News and Notes

Classes

​

• Several player stun-removal skills were inappropriately flagged as 'Immediate' causing them to occasionally cancel themselves and fail to free you from stuns. These skills are now correctly 'Fast' rather than 'Immediate' skills.
• High Elf, Beorning, and Stout Axe Dwarf racial recall skills can now be used while mounted on any steed.
• Beorning
  
  • The Beorning Trait "Battle Born" now correctly gives additional critical damage for off-hand weapons.
• Brawler
  
  • The Brawler mounted combat skill "Take Breath" will now properly update the incoming healing rating when active.
  • Innate Strength: Raw Power
    • Fixed description of the trait to state that it grants +2.5/+5/+7.5/+10%.
    • No change was made to the actual bonus granted by the trait, This is purely a tooltip change to have it reflect real values.
  • Tracery Innate Strength: Damage/Threat
    • Skill bonus has been modified [+10%->+5%], but is now added directly to the value of Innate Strength: Raw Power buff, which makes it considerably more effective than it was previously.
• Burglar
  
  • Aim skill now works with 'Throw Knife'.
• Captain
  
  • Fighting Withdrawal can now be used while rooted to free yourself.
  • The class deed "Fear the Darkness" should now properly advance even if "Courageous Convocation" is traited.
  • Captain skill "Defensive Strike" is now properly affected by the tracery "Single Target Attack Damage".
  • The buff from Inspire: Self-motivation should now correctly overwrite itself rather than failing to apply when you still have a few seconds of duration remaining from your previous skill use.
• Champion
  
  • Blood Rage and Continuous Blood Rage are now both correctly labeled Fast, rather than Immediate, skills. This prevents you from accidentally double-clicking the skill and putting it on cooldown without gaining the CC-removal effect.
  • Tracery Swift Strike: Damage & Power Cost
    • Renamed to Swift Strike/Blade: Damage & Power Restore
    • Tracery now increases the Power restored by Swift Strike rather than reducing the (now non-existent) Power cost. Magnitude changed from [-33%->+20%].
• Guardian
  
  • The Cardolan Essence of Retaliation effects' durations no longer benefit from the War-chant duration legacy.
• Lore-master
  
  • Clever Escape is now a Fast skill. This prevents you from accidentally double-clicking the skill and putting it on cooldown without gaining the CC-removal effect.
• Rune-keeper
  
  • The skill "Do Not Fall this Day" no longer breaks the target of the skill out of Stealth.
• Warden
  
  • "Forced March" will no longer be toggled off when you enter combat. It still only applies a bonus to your out of combat Run Speed.
  • Seared Flesh now appropriately benefits from bonuses to your Fire Damage.
  • Readied Blade's buff now provides Disarm Immunity for its duration.
  • The trait 'Movement Training' now correctly increases Mitigation ratings from the Conviction and Dance of War buffs.
  • Damage dealt by the trait 'Taking Advantage' increased.

Crafting

​

• The crafting ingredients "Tuft of Torahammas' Fur", "Great Hoary Aurochs Hide" and "Speckled Shell Fragment" can now all be stored in crafting carryalls.
• Beasts in the Ettenmoors that drop crafting hides will now correctly drop Gundabad Hides instead of Eorlingas Hides.
• Crafters can now make two new tiers of selectable craftable essence boxes.
• Gundabad Skarn Deposits have been renamed to Brilliant Skarn Deposits.
• Frost-rimed Black Ash Branches have been renamed to Heavy Wind-swept Black Ash Branches.

Items & Rewards

​

• The Homestead Steed can now be correctly placed on a hitching post by hobbit, dwarf, and Stout-axe dwarf characters.
• Might-based selection boxes no longer reference or contain medium armour.
• Many medium Might-based armour pieces obtained from quests from levels 1-75 have been updated from medium to heavy armour.
• Enemies in Moria no longer drop obsolete Legendary Item rewards.
• The Distillation set now properly identifies itself as a Distillation set and not a Crock Pot.
• Incomparable Earrings received from the 3-stack instances from Return to Carn Dûm have had the names of their set bonuses changed to reflect the stats given by the items in their groups.
• The "Dwarf-make Helm" cosmetic has been renamed to "Dwarf-make Circlet".
• The Champion Legendary Item Tracery "Brutal Strikes Damage" now only appears in The Berserker barter profiles.
• The decorative band on the Sightseer's Straw Hat will now correctly display dye colors.
• The weapon Candelleth's Hammer is now categorized correctly in the Auction House.
• The Veteran of Helm's Deep Quartermaster now offers items for Beornings and Brawlers.
• The Homestead Steed can now be used in Zirakzigil as well as in Caras Galadhon and other appropriate areas in Lothlórien.

Landscape Difficulty

​

• We have reworked the Landscape Difficulty setting system introduced originally to Treebeard and made it available as an option to the general game worlds!
• We've added a new Faction and reward structure called The Paths of Valour that can be advanced by playing on higher difficulties.
• You can activate your difficulty setting by speaking with the Hardened Traveller that can be found in major hubs and new player zones who will offer you an array of quests representing the different difficulty levels.
  • Upon accepting and completing one of these quests, your challenges on the roads of Middle-earth will increase substantially.
  • The difficulty system turns itself off in group instances (3+), in the Ettenmoors, and any time the Delving system is activated. It will reactivate when you leave any of these areas.
• There are titles available for activating a difficulty of 3 or higher and keeping it there from level 10 to level 50, and then to level 130 respectively. The title granted depends on the class you play through with, but can be used by any character on your account.
  • In order to earn these titles, you must keep the difficulty system active for the entire leveling span from level 10 thru 50/130. Entering areas of the game world where it is temporarily suppressed will not invalidate your title attempt, however turning it down or off via the Hardened Traveller will.
  • Existing characters above level 10 will not be able to earn the titles themselves, but will be able to use those titles if they are earned by another character on your account.
• When playing at Fearless or higher, enemies of your own level or higher may drop Tokens of Heroism.
  • These can be turned in to complete weekly tasks from the Hardened Traveller, which will increase your reputation with the Paths of Valour faction.
  • At Fearless difficulty (3-6), these tokens can drop for up to 3 members in a Fellowship.
  • At Heroic difficulty (7+) they can drop for up to 6 members in a Fellowship.
  • The drop rate of these tokens increases somewhat with higher difficulties.
• The difficulty settings and effects are pretty much the same as they were on Treebeard, though we've changed up the names a bit, and added a few variations to the hotspot effects you can encounter under the Eye of Sauron.
• The Hardened Traveller has a menu of barter rewards that include a small set of Reputation accelerators for the faction and Morale/Power potions. More importantly, he also offers an array of 8 new Epic variations of familiar emotes which you will be able to find on the Collections panel.

General Landscape Changes:

​

• Court of Celeborn now has a map.
• Floating objects in the Allegiance Halls and in Mordor have been grounded.
• Incorrect textures in Minas Tirith has been resolved.

Localization

​

• Stablemaster map text has been updated for the German game client.

Missions and Delvings

​

• Delving Barter Vendors and Mission Givers have also been added to all our Skirmish Camps. We did this to make it easier to turn in delving quests no matter where players are. Delving Mission Givers have also been given that title as a role to make it easy to spot them.
• Created a Selectable Delving Extraordinary Box that only drops in instances at tiers 7+. While still rare, new instances have a significantly higher drop rate for this item.
• The Delving Tracery Archive Travel Skill no longer has any reputation requirements.
• Mission: Jorthkyn and the Hounds
  • The Mission now appropriately identifies that you need to kill 8 wargs along with the 8 Jorthkyn to advance the quest.
  • The Mission had some pesky low-level monsters that really wanted to get in on the fight. They have been reprimanded to stay in their lanes.
• Fixed an issue with the mission "Dangerous Deliveries" where the player would pick the pie up twice upon completing the induction to pick up the pie.
• The bridge in the mission Patrol the Township that was bereft of physics has found its physics and will now support your character as it should.
• Before the Shadow missions that referred to previous mission givers have been updated with references to current mission givers.
• The mission "The Nettinglade" had a single cocoon that decided it didn't want to sparkle. The spider responsible has been admonished and though it pledged to swallow all Light in the world, it relented and allowed it's cocoon to sparkle once again.
• Delving Reward Changes:
  • Delving Selectable Crafting Boxes that drop at tier 7 and above can now be disenchanted instead for 20 Delvings Writs. These boxes now have a six hour expiration timer on them. These changes do not affect existing Crafting Boxes.
  • Changed how many writs completing Delving quests give. Tier 1-3 now give 10 writs, Tier 4-6 give 20 writs, Tier 7-9 give 30 writs and Tier 10-12 give 40 writs.
  • Two new cosmetic pets added to Delving Barter.
  • Delving armour will now be disenchantable for more Delving Writs. Common armour will disenchant for 10 writs, rare armour will disenchant for 20 writs, incomparable armour for 30 writs.
  • Added Tier 1 and Tier 2 Essence Boxes to the Delving Barter for Writs, and removed Tier 0.
  • Added Morale and Power Potions to the Delving Barter for Writs. Morale and Power potions also drop as rewards from high tier instance Delving Chests.
• Delving Mission Givers in Skirmish Camps now give Weekly Delving Quests.
• Mission - Defilers in the Dale - Corrected a visual bug where the cauldron's contents and bubbles could become visibly offset after being destroyed.
• Rewards that drop from Delvings have been updated with new Delving-specific icons.

PvMP

​

• We have adjusted the distribution of Infamy/Renown while grouped. In the past, there was a modifier that increased the value of player kills when more than 6 kill contributors were involved. This resulted in the value of a single kill, while in a raid, to be valued over 2x what the kill should have been worth.
  • We have adjusted this modifier to make these values - in the absence of any other modifiers - equivalent to equal distribution of the infamy value of the kill.
  • We have adjusted the bonus modifier to infamy/renown gains when killing ranked players. This change rewards a higher contribution bonus for killing players of a higher rank.
• The War-spoils Carry-all icons have been updated and no longer display a bottle of liquid
• Lootboxes found by monster players now always drop 3 items from three specific tables:
  • Table 1 includes potions, barter lockboxes, and the potential for 500 commendations with weighting toward the barter box, and then equivalent draws for the remaining items.
  • Table 2 includes an equal chance for random perk items from a pool of 5 items.
  • The 3rd table has an equal chance to drop a single Audacity upgrade scroll, 2 Audacity upgrade scrolls, Lord's Symbols, Captain's Marks, 1k Commendations, 1.5k Commendations or a new Cosmetic Selection Box.
    • The Cosmetic Selection Box contains 2 new skins for each class. Previews are available on NPCs present near the Gramsfoot retreat circle.
    • The Selection Box also contains several new cosmetic weapons: Thrâng's Sword, a silvered scimitar, a spider-clan trident, an off-hand Gundabad mace, a Spider-clan staff, an Easterling Ghost Bow, and a new Dunharrow Shield.
    • The Box also contains a new cosmetic type that can be slotted into appearance Corruptions to change the style of your 'March!' skill emitted effects. These include: a white glow, fire trail, acid trail, and a "blue-foot" trail.
• The eggs around Grodris in the Isendeep Mine will now hatch if disturbed during the battle against the matron.
• Fixed an issue with the first and second marshal rewards not providing keys to the chest. The quests for First and Second marshal now correctly reward the key to the chest.
• Tokens of Valour will now go into the War-spoils Carry-all.
• Updated the new Monster Play tutorial to reference using skills on training dummy Kelsen, Jalessa, or Light training-dummy Orion. If you choose the other training dummies you are locked in combat for the full duration of the spawn - which is five minutes. This is bad. Please use the safety dummies. Use those initial skill training dummy Kelsen, Jalessa, or Light training-dummy Orion.
• First Marshal An and Tyrant Uzulthrang are back in action and ready to rush Tol Ascarnen when the opposition is in control. The rewards on the quests to use these two is increased significantly. Each has also been buffed appropriately.
• All values and costs for Lainedhal's Insignias were reduced. You can now purchase the old versions for nostalgia, but the tier 15 version is available to all rank 1 players and better for 2000 commendations and has a 1m cooldown just as the monster player brand.
• The Rank 9 mount available in monster play now has a full +68% movement bonus because it should have been upgraded along with all other mounts that are this hard to get.
• We adjusted the damage done by Spider Hatchlings to be more in line with creatures that are level 140.
• There was a bug introduced when we lowered the cost of monster play potions where we did not lower the amount purchasable from the barter NPC. This has been corrected and now you can only purchase in stacks of three.
• Mazauk and Old Goldhead have been refreshed and stand ready to help you capture Lugazag or Tirith Rhaw.
• Old U21 gear was using old Audacity values. This has been reduced to 1.
• Freepside Ettenmoors quests now award considerably more IXP when completed.
• The Freepside weekly quest, 'Battle Across the Ettenmoors' now gives slightly improved rewards.
• Many monster player skill power costs have been adjusted. In particular, several healing skills cost substantially more power.
• The base critical heal multiplier for most Creepside heals has been reduced from 1.5 to 1.2.
• Increased damage of ranger session play skills.
• Orc Defiler
  
  • Cooldowns reduced for Fertile Slime and Fungal Spores.
  • Fungal Spores initial heal potency reduced.
  • Enhanced Fungal Spores now rolls for a critical heal on each pulse, rather than following the critical outcome of the initial skill use.
  • Fertile Slime no longer has an initial heal.
  • Healing from Improved Blessing of Darkness now occurs every 1 second, rather than every 2 seconds.
  • Constant Pain now pulses healing every 2 seconds, and will restore some power to the defiler when it does.
• Orc Reaver
  
  • Blade Toss now only applies its slow and/or knockdown effects to targets facing away from you.
• Spider Weaver
  
  • Several spider animations should no longer slow down when you gain attack speed buffs.
  • Trapdoor Sanctuary now lasts 10 seconds; when traited, it will heal 5% of your max health each second.
• New Potions (of Bravery and Essence) are now correctly usable by the Free Peoples.
  
• Insignias now have a 3 minute cooldown and provide 15 seconds of combat state immunity (Tyrant Brands still have a 1 minute cooldown and only provide 5 seconds of immunity for now).
  
• Alwuld the Item Trader now carries the updated Morale and Power potions.
  
• Potions of Essence now correctly restore different amounts of Power, according to their quality and rank requirements.
  

Quests, Deeds and Instances

​

• Tier 4 of Gwathrenost, the Witch-king's Citadel is available.
• All slayer deeds in the Wells of Langflood, will now properly reward players with LOTRO Points.
• Gwathrenost, the Witch-king's Citadel - The final Objective of 'The Storming of Gwathrenost' now functions similarly to 'Into the Hiddenhoard, allowing the Player the choice of whether or not to abandon the quest after completing it. The option to complete the quest via the Quest Actions panel was causing some players to mistakenly erase their progress in a given reset cycle, so this has been removed.
• Azanulbizar - Quest: Death in the Dale - The quest guide for this quest has been corrected to highlight the proper area.
• Azanulbizar - Quest: Elusive Prey - The quest guide now properly highlights the general locations of all the Rare foes in Azanulbizar.
• Sagroth - The Sewer Water debuff that can be applied to players during the Gárvadach encounter now carries the resistance type "disease" instead of "corruption".
• Several fading or overlapping combat music bugs have been fixed in the Race of Man and hobbit tutorials, the Archet raid, and the Trouble at Tuckborough skirmish.

Miscellaneous

​

• The Allegiance panel can now be resized an additional horizontal distance.
• Certain Brawler Belt Buckles were appearing under the Lore-master class in searches in the Auction House. That has been fixed.
• Upgraded the compiler used to compile the 32 bit game client to make it compatible with upgraded OpenAL.
• Clydesdale mounts can now be used in Thorin's Hall and the Hall Under the Mountain
• The Assistant Stable-master at Elrond's Stables in Rivendell douses the horse less frequently.
• Facepaint rewards acquired from Hobnanigans now correctly shows on Human avatars.
• The Draught Horse cosmetic pets received in the Homesteads and Harvests Coffers have been renamed to "Miniature" Draught horses.
• Matching full size Draught horse cosmetic pet tomes have been granted (account-wide) to everyone that purchased the Homesteads and Harvests Coffers.
• The Homestead Steed mount scale has been increased to match the expected size of a draught horse. Many animation issues have been resolved for the Homestead Steed mount as well.
• Updated the icon for the Stoorvales/Clegur Milestone and for the Clegur travel skills.
• Several Run Speed buffs and debuffs were overwriting effects of greater potency. Player-applied Run Speed Effects should now only overwrite effects of the same kind (out of combat speed buff, in combat speed buff, or debuff) and the most potent effect should always be the one which is actively applied.

Known Issues:

​

• In French and German the Tokens of Heroism may display as Tokens of Valour.
• The Stable-master panel in Collections has not been updated to include King's Gondor.
• The Deeds "Boar-slayer of Lower Lebennin" and "Boar-slayer of Lower Lebennin (Advanced)" are not bestowing/advancing properly.

I am a U.S. expat currently living Dubai. I want to continue my credit card strategy but am worried about getting my cards frozen and being unable to meet SUBs.
I currently have 6 cards and am about to be 0/12, 2/24. There are a couple of cards I want to get, but I think it’s smart for me to add the Venture X to my lineup now since approval DPs seem to get very inconsistent for people with too many accounts.
The only problem is, I am not in the states and won’t be back for several months. I also have no relationship with Cap 1. Ideally, I would like to apply for the VX, add it to Apple Pay and use it in Dubai and Europe to meet the SUB. Am I likely to run into trouble doing this? I’m fine with getting a few transactions declined here and there and having to call in to confirm my identity. I just don’t want to get the card completely locked down or trigger a financial review as that would almost certainly result in me missing out on the SUB.
Am I right to be concerned about this? If so, would sticking with issuers that I already have a relationship with be a better idea? Since I’ve been using my Chase and Amex cards and logging into their respective apps from Dubai for several months would this be less likely to raise a red flag with them? If I do decide to go for the VX, should I wait until the physical card gets delivered to my US address and activate it before making any Apple Pay purchases abroad?
If anyone has any personal experience on applying for any US cards while abroad or experience using the VX abroad, please share.
Additionally, any general discussion on applying for or using US cards while abroad is welcome!

https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/13u9t3m/my_father_always_kept_the_shed_locked_today_i/Part 1:
The darkness around us was oppressive, cloying and total. Anywhere we weren’t pointing our flashlights would turn into a solid wall of black, impenetrable shadows. But we could hear something. As we walked further down the hallway, we heard soft footsteps and giggling.
Sometimes, it sounded like it came from directly behind us. At other times, it would come from the rooms all around us, the endless rooms that split off the hallway on both sides. We found some strange things in those rooms as we walked slowly, the gun raised in my hand and the bowie knife raised in my brother’s.
There were corpses in some of the rooms. Many had partially mummified in the dry, chilly air down here. Others were clearly fresher. One woman was hanging from the rafters with a note pinned to her chest. I looked back at Gil when we reached this part of the hall. We had stayed out of the rooms since the incident with the little boy, but some deep innate curiosity needed to know what was on this note. Gil nodded at me, and we walked forward side by side, scanning every corner of the room and looking behind smashed-out fish tanks and torn sofas covered in black mold for any signs that we weren’t alone in here. Once we were both satisfied, we returned to the young woman hanging in the center of the room.
She had somehow climbed up to the ceiling, opened a panel and found a sturdy enough beam or rafter to tie the rope to. Yet there was no ladder or anything remotely tall enough to reach the ceiling nearby. It was somewhat of a mystery. I explained this to Gil, who looked somewhat confused- and alarmed. He clearly hadn’t realized it until I pointed it out to him.
I turned back to the woman’s corpse, picking off the note, which had been stuck into the front of her blouse with a huge wooden splinter. Gil kept a look-out while I read, shining his light back and forth in a circle across the room, holding his ridiculously huge knife in the other hand like some sort of medieval swordsman. I saw with increasing horror that the note appeared to have been written in the woman’s own blood. Looking at her body, I saw a deep slash on her left arm, one that had clotted days ago. I looked back down at the desperate message this dying woman had left for us.
“To anyone who finds this,
“My name is Michaela Mansfield. I came in here by accident through the sewers underneath the town of Caplin. My two friends and I went exploring and got separated after a girl in our group twisted her ankle. I went forward alone to find help while my other friend stayed behind with the injured girl. After perhaps a day of being lost, my flashlight started to die, and I thought I was going to die with it. And then I saw fluorescent lights up ahead. They were flickering and looked like they might sputter out at any moment, but it was the only hope I had. I followed the lights and found myself in this hallway. When I tried to turn around and go back, the entrance to the sewers had disappeared. It was just a hallway that seemed to extend forever, the one that has haunted me for weeks now.
“Please, if you find this note, tell my parents what happened to me. Take my golden locket and return it to my mother and father as proof. I hope you have better luck getting out of here than I did.
“Goodbye, and may God forgive me for what I’m about to do.
“-Michaela.”
I looked up at Gil, with one eyebrow raised. I saw he had been reading the note over my shoulder rather than keeping a look-out. I sighed, deciding not to say anything.
“We can’t take the locket,” I said. Gil shook his head.
“We have to take the locket,” he said.
“They’re going to think we had something to do with this girl’s death if we just show up randomly with a piece of her jewelry. Actually, I think I remember when this girl and her friends went missing. It was on the news. Her parents were pleading for anyone with information to come forward. I think the cops were acting on the suspicion that it was murder or kidnapping or something. But they probably just went exploring without telling anyone and never came back.”
“We’ll wipe it down and send it anonymously through the mail with a note explaining what happened,” he said. I sighed, giving up. He was right. It was the right thing to do. But I’m sure many innocent men have gone to prison over trying to do the right thing. I pointed to the note.
“This doesn’t help us at all,” I said. He shrugged.
“Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. It doesn’t really help us formulate a plan, but it does give us information. For example, now we know that this place probably connects to a lot more places than the shed. We might be able to get out through dozens or hundreds of exits. If it connects to a random sewer over in Caplin, then it could connect to places all over the county.”
“True,” I said, “but what if it connects to some alien world? Or to a black hole? What if it connects to some point in the void between galaxies and we get sucked out to our deaths?” He simply shrugged again, seeming apathetic to these possibilities.
“Well, in that case,” he said smugly, a half-smile forming on his lips, “our deaths would probably be a lot quicker than they would at the hands of these creatures down here.” Then he started laughing. It sounded eerie in this dark, forlorn place, where everything smelled like yeast and the floors were all wet substrates growing strange jungles of alien molds. He reached forward and took the golden locket off of the woman’s neck, placing it carefully in his pocket. We started walking out of the room together.
“Also,” I said, “the note seems to imply that the entrances are temporary. She couldn’t find her way back out after she got in here. What if they’re all like that? What if they’re like… I don’t know, lobster traps, or Venus fly traps, or something? They draw people in here, and then once they’re inside…” I stopped speaking as soon as I realized I heard someone following us.
I heard running footsteps. A high-pitched giggling started, then was cut off. We both stood there in the darkness, our flashlights pointing forward. Then the voice of that demonic little girl started up, high-pitched and somewhat inhuman-sounding. Her words all had a strange hoarseness to them, an uncanny valley sound as if she were only imitating human emotions and human speech.
“Adam’s ‘It’, but he won’t play,” she said sulkily, her voice bouncing off the walls, the rapid beat of the footsteps approaching nearer and nearer. “He says his throat hurts. So I guess I’m ‘It’! You better run!”
“God dammit,” Gil said, swinging his giant knife around from side to side as if he were going to bat a mosquito with it. His light flashed and wavered as he tried to keep a watch on all sides. But I knew she was coming from behind us. I could feel it. I kept my light shining down there, the gun raised, trying to emanate a calm I didn’t feel. Then I saw a flash of blue, zigzagging crazily past a chair leg and the snapped remains of a folding table, tiny legs pumping at a superhuman speed. She looked like little more than an approaching blur.
“Listen to me very carefully,” I said, trying to keep my gun pointed on her. “We need to cut off her head.”
“What?!” Gil said. “Why?”
“Last time, bullets didn’t work on…” I began, but then she was on us, no more than a few feet away, jumping over the discarded junk that intermittently appeared on the sides of the hallway. And then I felt myself knocked over by a tremendous force that took the air right out of my lungs.
I still had my hands crossed in front of me, one holding the gun and the other the flashlight. The skeletal face of the creature was mere inches away from my own, biting and gnashing madly. I could see small muscles in the back of her mouth working furiously. She was pushing down on my arms with all of her strength, which was far more than such a small body seemed to suggest.
The gun was pressed closely to the front of her chest. I was about to pull the trigger when I felt the weight start to lift off of me. I saw Gil behind her, wrapping his arm around her neck and pulling her back. She still gnashed and bit in a mad frenzy, small droplets of blood and saliva dripping off her mouth and into my face. She kicked her body back and forth like an enraged snake, freeing her neck from Gil’s grasp. He went to grab her, and her skeletal face opened up wide, the jaw hanging halfway down her neck.
With the speed of a cat snatching a mouse, she leapt forward, snapping her jaw around some of the fingers on Gil’s left hand. I saw his index and middle finger disappear into her mouth, and he began to scream in agony.
I was scrambling back to my feet by this point. I ran at the girl, using all of my body weight to push her. She went tumbling on the floor, her mouth flying open as she landed hard on the wood. Two mutilated fingers flew out, rolling across the floor and disappearing into a dome of black mold. I was sweating heavily now, drops of perspiration rolling down my forehead and stinging my eyes. I tried to wipe them away, thinking of what to do. My mind screamed at me to shoot, to empty my entire magazine into this little monster, but I knew in my heart that it would just be wasting bullets. Deep down, I knew what I had told Gil earlier was true- we had to cut off her head. Just like in the old myths of vampires or demons, I had a deep instinctual feeling that fire or decapitation would be the only way to deal with her, and as for fire, we had no flamethrowers.
“Gil!” I said. “Get ready!” He was holding his spurting hand tightly against his chest, still grasping the bowie knife in his right. His face was alarmingly pale and white, and I wondered if he might not just pass out right here and doom both of us. But he hadn’t dropped the knife, even while fighting the writhing monster, even while getting his fingers bitten off. He is stronger than he looks, I reassured myself.
A sense of calm and clarity overcame me then, and I saw what I needed to do. The demonic girl was getting up, growling and spitting and laughing. I ran over and stomped on her back, putting my full weight on her body to drive her back down. Then I took the pistol and shot her through the back of the kneecaps, one bullet for each.
She wailed as dark red blood poured out of her small legs, turning her head almost all the way back to try and bite me. Her hands were changing, the small fingers lengthening and darkening into sharp, black claws, and I knew our time was running out.
“Now!” I yelled, and Gil ran forward, using his right hand to swing the bowie knife. I watched it fall in a descending arc, as if in slow motion, watched it approach the spitting skeletal face that looked at us with black eyes and unfathomable hatred. It went clean through, and was so sharp that for a split second, the head stayed there, the face blank, looking like it was still attached to the body. Then it tumbled forward, dark blood spurting out of the neck and staining the white and gold molds underneath with its crimson hue.
Gil fell back against the wall, breathing fast. He dropped the bowie knife on the floor. I saw his flashlight, still on, had rolled against an ancient wheelchair that was probably new back in the 1960s. I stopped and grabbed it, shoving it in my pants belt so it would give me more light to work with. Gil still had his hand clasped to his chest. Slowly, I put my hands forward and grasped his injured hand by the wrist. He inhaled deeply, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes.
“We’re going to need to wrap it in something,” I said. He nodded. I took off my shirt and started ripping long slices from the bottom, then wrapping them around his hand tightly in an attempt to slow the bleeding. When I got to the fingers, he flinched and seemed to waver on his feet. I reached a hand out in case he was about to fall over, but he managed to steady himself. “All done,” I told him as I put my shirt back on, which was missing the bottom third portion now and looked rather absurd, almost as if I was wearing a woman’s crop top.
“It feels like my hand’s on fire,” Gil said in a hoarse whisper. “We’re going to need water, too.” I was feeling the start of dehydration pangs myself.
“That girl, Michaela, her note said she was stuck in here for weeks. That must mean there’s water. Assuming her counting was correct, seeing as there’s no sun or sky to go by. If there was no water, she would have died after a few days, especially being on the move,” I said. I was hoping that we would find food as well, but it wasn’t really life or death. I knew that we could potentially go weeks without food and still live, even though it would feel extremely unpleasant and weaken us physically. I sighed, shining my flashlight at Gil.
“Ready to keep going?” I asked, and then the lights started turning back on. Most of them were still either out or flickering on and off rapidly, but enough of them were lit to see down the hall.
“Oh, thank God,” Gil said. “At least now we’re not walking through this junkyard in the fucking dark.” Up ahead, I saw something new as well. It looked like the hallway forked off. I pointed at it, and Gil’s eyes widened. “Finally, after walking for endless miles, this place does something!” As we neared it, I saw there was even a sign. One pointed left, reading, “To Veriden”. The other pointed right, reading, “To Rusty Township”.
“Hmm…” I said, “I’ve never heard of either of those places. They’re definitely not in the county.” Gil’s dark brown eyes looked past me, into the room behind us, and they widened. I reached for the pistol, turning quickly, but I found nothing but a mostly empty, half-lit room. Against the corner was a vending machine and a soda machine.
“Oh thank God!” I said, running forward, reaching in my pocket for some money. Then I remembered I had left my wallet at home. After all, I thought we were just going into the shed. Gil strode right past me.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said, taking the butt of his bowie knife and smashing the glass of the vending machine. “You don’t need money. Who’s going to call the cops, the walking undead and demons here?” He pulled out brands I had never heard of: Overholser’s Beef Jerky, chocolate bars with caramel and peanuts called Eisenhearts, Took’s salt-water taffy and Riza’s fruit snacks. The other vending machine was no less alien, as I smashed it with the butt of the gun and found Springy’s Lemon-Lime Soda, Kanna-brand cola and Saint Kristoff’s Ginger Ale, among others. Not one of the brands was recognizable from our world.
We tore into the food with ravenous hunger, chugging bottle after bottle of soda. It all tasted similar enough to what we expected, though some of it was rather strange. The ginger ale, for example, had small silver shavings on the bottom of each bottle, their trademark gimmick, and Gil swallowed them and nearly ended up choking. I smacked his back hard, laughing.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to drink those,” I said sarcastically. We were filling up our pockets when the drumming started from down the hall. It was so sudden and loud in the otherwise perfect silence that I jumped nearly a foot, spinning around and taking out the gun. It was becoming second-nature to me by this point, and so much adrenaline was constantly pounding through my body that I was as jumpy as a cat.
The drumming grew louder and fast. It reminded me of the drums some ancient Aztecs must have used when cutting out the hearts of prisoners of war. It had a deep, primal beat to it that would be useful for stirring people up during acts of savagery and violence. It was coming from the direction labeled “Rusty Township”. I could barely hear myself think over the intensity of the drum beats. I tried to motion to Gil that I would go first since I had the gun but that he should stay right behind me, but he looked like he was just smiling and nodding and likely hadn’t understood a bit of what I was trying to communicate. Sighing, I started forward down the corridor.
I peaked my head around the next corner, where a doorway opened up into a huge gymnasium. The ceiling towered over me. I saw dirty, disheveled people standing in a semi-circle around a metal coffin that was stood up on one end against the back wall. Blood was pouring out the bottom, following a river of clotted gore that stretched across the gymnasium and curved off to the right corner. The people surrounding the metal coffin were laughing, clapping their hands and cheering, stomping their feet in time with the beats. I saw scurvy blossoms and festering sores across their faces and exposed skin. And, for the first time since we had gotten lost down here, there were windows around the edge of this massive chamber, windows showing the outside world. I ran over, looking out.
I saw a city on fire, the buildings burning and sending up thick, black plumes of smoke. It reminded me of what Berlin at the end of World War II must have looked like. Fronts of houses had collapsed inwards, the streets were cracked and filled with debris and I saw bodies hanging from lampposts up and down the street. Many of them were so old that the ropes were starting to fray. Some of the bodies had started to mummify, with thin, papery skin clinging tightly to desiccated muscles and hanging jaws.
Around the corners of houses and alleyways, I caught glimpses of strange shapes: crouching half-animal, half-human beings who carried sledgehammers and long knives, robed figures who seemed to float over the devastated and cracked ground, and children with red skin who I saw crawling up walls on all fours like geckos.
The drums stopped as suddenly as they had started. My ears were still ringing. I turned back to the semi-circle of sickly, dirty people. They had stopped their clapping and dancing and cheering, and now just stood like statues, staring at Gil and me with flat, dead eyes.
“You shouldn’t stare into the Township,” a thin woman with filthy black hair said. A strange accent crept into her words, one that I had never heard before. “Strange things live in there, and they come out when the drums stop.” She stepped forward, whispering. “We keep them away by giving a sacrifice every time the drumbeats come. The blood satisfies the ones in the city and the others in the halls. We will all have our turn in the coffin, sure enough.”
Another member of their group stepped forward and opened up the metal coffin. I saw long, thin spikes sliding out of a body, and then a pale form fell out, landing on the dirty floor with a wet smacking sound. The smell of coppery blood in the air was now overwhelming. Gil and I both gasped in unison as we saw this form on the floor was a person, a young woman in fact, almost totally drained of blood. Dozens of puncture marks were sliced into her face, neck, stomach, legs and arms. An expression of pain and horror was frozen onto her dead face, her wide, staring eyes looking up at the ceiling.
“You killed her!” Gil said, aghast, still clutching his mutilated hand close to his body in an unconscious gesture of his anxiety and fear. “Why? Why would you put someone from your own group in an iron maiden?”
“Iron maiden?” the woman with the black hair in front responded. “Aye, that’s as good a name for it as any. We call her the steel mistress in my world, in my time, and the steel mistress sees a lot of use…” She gestured out the window, her face emotionless. “You see my world, after all. It is a place that always reeks of death, and more often than not, reeks of fire too.”
“What part of the United States is this?” Gil asked, gesturing out the window. The woman frowned.
“I do not know these ‘United States’,” she said, shrugging.
“What country are you from?” he asked.
“Why, Victoriat, of course. But Victoriat only has three states. Rusty Township was the capitol, until ‘twas attacked by the Black Hand Allegiance soldiers. We’re all refugees from Rusty here,” she said sadly.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” I said to Gil under my breath. He nodded, sighing.
“Can you tell us how to get back to the stone steps? Big, circular stone steps that go around and around?” Gil asked the woman in one last attempt to get a sensical answer out of her. She nodded her grimy face.
“Aye, in the center of the Undergraves,” she said, pointing past the iron maiden and the dead body on the ground. I realized that there was a sign up on the ceiling in front of the next corridor, one pointing left and saying, “To Rusty Township center” and one pointing right and saying, “To the Undergraves”. The sign was so covered in dust and specks of black mold that it was no wonder I hadn’t seen it.
“Do you have any maps of this place?” I asked the dirty woman and her friends. They all shook their heads.
“There are no maps of the Undergraves, but the stairs be at the center. You just take a right here and follow the path straight. Ignore all forks to the right or left, just keep following it straight…” We were walking away fast now, trying to leave these lunatics behind. “But you’d be mad to go there now after the drums just stopped!” Her voice was fading rapidly as Gil and I ran forward.
“Those people were fucking nuts,” Gil said. “Killing each other just because they think the blood keeps away demons.”
“Brother,” I said through heavy breaths, “if you and I lived down here for a few months, we would be just as crazy as those people.”
As we jogged into the Undergraves, I realized the walls were turning into something organic and pulsating, like being in some huge intestine. Massive forks to the left and right appeared every few hundred feet. From them, dark shapes appeared, stepping forward. They moved shakily, blurring as they stepped to the right or left randomly, their mouths opened wide and seeming to be filled with blackness. Their eyes looked like pure black sockets, and the rest of their body was no more than a shaky silhouette of shadows. When the first few stepped forward, I didn’t know what to do.
I gingerly raised the gun, deciding better safe than sorry. They were coming at me fast, jerking randomly, their skin seeming to writhe and shiver as I stared at it. As they got within ten feet of me, a deep burning heat started to fill my body, as if I were standing in front of an oven. I started shooting, one bullet for each of their center mass, and they dissipated into smoke. I watched the black stuff curl back into the red, pulsating room they had just come out of. The sense of heat dissipated instantly, but my skin still felt warm and strange.
We were running through the Undergraves now. Miles of slick gore covering the floors, strange tissues growing across the rooms and tumor-like sacs covering the fluorescent lights, which even here flickered endlessly across the ceiling.
In many of the rooms, I saw people strung upside down from the ceiling, their ribs sliced open. Strange, hunched figures sliced the meat into strips, preparing it and drying it. One of them looked at me with its pig-like face, its bovine legs walking across the sticky floor, slowly and uncertainly at first, and then running for me. I was running low on ammunition by this point. Gil came from behind and disemboweled the creature as it raised its butcher’s knife. It had been so focused on me that it hadn’t noticed him jogging up with his blood-stained bowie knife in one hand.
“I can’t run much longer,” Gil said, panting. I nodded wearily. Neither could I. “My hand is still on fire, too. I really should have gotten medical attention, like, twelve hours ago…”
Part of me wondered if the stairs were even here, or if we had been lied to, sent into the worst part of this strange hall to become sacrifices to these abominations. We had, after all, put our lives in the hands of a band of lunatics.
But at this point, we had nowhere else to go but forwards.

Platform(s): Commodore 64 or Amiga, small chance of being PC
Genre: Starfighter Combat
Estimated year of release: Early 90s
Graphics/art style: I honestly can't remember details very well, the cockpit was a static bitmap, not 3d modelled.
Notable characters: None
Notable gameplay mechanics:
It had space physics, not airplane physics. If you cut throttle to zero you keep going the the same direction at the same speed. You can spin around 180 deg so you are pointed where you came from, but you were still traveling away from the starting point. You ship had guns and missiles.
There were no WWII style dog fights - you'd start super far away from the other fighters, zoom at each other at huge speeds. You get a missile lock, fire, have maybe 500 milliseconds where the enemy was in gun range, and you'd shoot passed each other and it would take a long time for slow down, turn around, and head back for another attack run. Like space jousting, come to think of it.
The speeds were so fast, and the combat took place at such large distances, I have no recollection of what the spaceships looked like, and if they were polygons or sprites.
There was no 'space dust' streaking by your ship, but you HUD could display a 3d grid of dots that would show you which direction you were going. The dots would start green, and when you passed a certain real velocity where the green dots would become meaningless blurs, the dots would change to yellow and slow down. This would happen again at an even higher velocity and the yellow dots would change to red and slow down again.
Other details: It was a single player campaign with missions (like the original wing commander games). Mission 3 or 4 had the encounter near a black hole, if you got to close you'd get sucked into the hole and die. I never passed this level.

So, here's the fourth chapter. Sorry for releasing it a bit late, I've had some pretty tough finals. The next chapter might be delayed as well but after that I should be able to get back to my normal schedule of once a week or possibly better. And thanks for the support on my last chapter, your upvotes and comments mean the world to me!
Big thanks to u/Rand0mness4 for proofreading my chapter and to u/SpacePaladin15 for creating NoP and its amazing literary universe.
CW: Descriptions of desecrated bodies (just your ordinary sapient cattle farm)
[first] [previous] [next (hopefully out in about a week)]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memory transcription subject: Oscar Williams, UN Marine
Date [standard human time]: December 3, 2136
With the hum of the cars’ engines tapering off, everything turned quiet, far too quiet. The only sound bar my own breathing was the wind making its way through cracks in the building’s metal shell. Gunfire should’ve been raining down on us by now. The building in front of was at least the size of a football field and going by the faint, but disgusting, smell of the poor victims, the place was packed. There was no way only the about two dozen scalies we eliminated worked here.
Where was the fight? Were all of them hiding inside? We couldn’t have gotten all of them before, right? Well, there’s only one way to find out where the fuckers were hiding.
Richards lined us up next to the large pair of doors separating us from the farm and a soldier from another squad grabbed a handheld battering ram. I doubted the door would hold after just a few hits with a rock but speed was of the essence. The faster we cleared out the arxur infestation, the more people would survive. I wasn’t about to let anyone else die in that hell. My grip around my rifle tightened and time almost seemed to slow down when the first hit was winded up.
We were quietly signaled to step back from the door and with just one hit with the battering ram the lock was separated from the rest of the door. The force from the hit slammed the door open and we promptly stormed in through the opening. But no gunfire met us. The inside was just as deserted as the outside had been. We had entered what seemed to be some kind of warehouse, large crates strewn throughout the floor and deep freezers lining the walls. At that moment I desperately wished I was a mouth breather. The stench, that had previously been contained by the sheet metal walls, was now flooding into my nostrils. Manure, unwashed bodies, and rotten meat. I tried my best to focus on anything but the freezers but every single wall was covered with them. Wherever my eyes darted, more proof of the murders appeared. A dried splotch of blood, some tufts of fur, a bloody machete.
They took pride in it. Pride in this… They’re going to pay.
We crept through the wide open space, making our way from cover to cover. The dirt floor muffled any sound our footsteps would’ve made and we were only exposed for brief moments. If any arxur caught us, we wouldn’t be caught like a deer in headlights. After one of our many rushes between covers, I ended up next to one of the many freezers.
Oh god. My poor nostrils.
The smell had grown even stronger and when I glanced at the freezer I quickly realized why. It seemed to have lost power, going by the fact that it wasn't cold, and that the lid was ajar. The remains of a person, a person who had friends and family, were rotting away inside. My knuckles were turning white from how hard I gripped my rifle and my teeth felt like they were going to crack due to my jaw clenching so hard. I was going to repay them in kind. Those motherfuckers, wherever they were.
When I stood up, en route to the next cover, my eyes caught a glimpse of the inside of the freezer. Pieces of mangled body parts filled the bottom of the box and a swarm of insects swarmed around something in the middle and-
Retch
Parts of yesterday’s meal filled my mouth when I realized what was hiding under the swarm. A severed venlil head with empty eye sockets stared back at me. Blood had dripped down from the sockets, painting long streaks of orange in the white fur. The head’s mouth was locked in an expression of terror and pain and the neck looked like it had been ripped off from the venlil’s body. Part of the spine hung limp beneath the neck and, knowing arxur, I doubted the venlil had been dead during the ripping.
As soon as I found out where they were- Where the hell were the arxur?
Realization suddenly flashed through my mind. Of course those cowards had fled. Fled their just punishment that I had sworn to deliver. My grip around my rifle tightened when I thought about the fuckers running this farm. They’d almost certainly escape justice, and there was in all likelihood nothing I could do about it. If only I could convince Olivia to hunt them down like they deserved.
My train of thought was brought to an abrupt end when we reached the other side of the warehouse. The door on this wall was far smaller, clearly just used by personnel. And it didn’t even have a lock. Maybe they decided to take cover behind this smaller choke point. I immediately squashed the idea in my mind as soon as I thought of it. They weren’t disciplined enough to not rush us with nothing but their natural weaponry.
My theory was quickly being proven true when we rushed into the next room. There wasn’t a single arxur in sight, but the sheer amount of victims more than made up for their absence. We had emerged on some kind of raised walkways, overlooking cramped pits filled with aliens sleeping in the most abhorrent conditions. The air reeked of unwashed bodies, feces, and many other disgusting smells I didn’t even recognize. The victims in the pits looked even worse for wear than the rest of this dilapidated building. Several of the harchen in the closest pit were covered in deep gashes and some even missed entire body parts.
Torture, there was no other explanation. Those fucking crocs.
As I looked around at the other pens, it was quickly made evident that the treatment of the harchen was more of a rule than an exception. Over in another pit, several krakotl had been completely plucked, and what I assumed to be words had been branded onto their backs. Despite my deep hatred for most of their governments, I couldn’t find it in myself to be mad at anyone here. They’d more than likely been captured long before they even knew earth was still inhabitable and even if they weren’t, they still didn’t deserve this torture.
This was so much worse than I thought. Of course it would be horrible but this, how-
Nausea quickly filled my thoughts and before I could even bend over, today's lunch spilled out of my mouth, and I wasn’t alone. At least a third of my fellow soldiers had the same reaction as me.
Good to know I’m not the only empathetic person here. Maybe they’ll agree that the arxur deserve to be treated like their prey after this. Oh, what I would do if I caught any of them.
“HELP!”
The krakotl’s hoarse scream sent a shiver down my spine. It sounded like they hadn’t used their voice for years. I hastily pulled up my bandana and checked that my visor blocked my entire face. I didn’t dare think about what would happen if they realized we were predators.
“P- P- Please help us…”
The screaming had quickly woken up the rest of the aliens who were looking at us with a mix of bewilderment, fear and hope. My eyes darted around the pens while my mind prayed that they wouldn’t land on anyone that recognized our ‘arboreal’ eyes. After what felt like the longest five seconds of my life, I finally allowed myself to breathe a sigh of relief. If no one had fainted yet, they probably didn’t know we were human.
“We’ve come to rescue you, you’re going to get out of here. Just stay calm.”
Richards immediately took command of the situation, preventing widespread panic from the aliens.
“T- T- Thank you… Is the f- f- federation winning?”
The brave krakotl who asked us for help clearly thought we were from the federation and I silently thanked god everyone else seemed to believe the same thing. If they didn’t there would be pandemonium. Those poor souls must’ve seen arxur bloodshed every single day. I could barely imagine how terrified they would be if our identity was revealed. In their eyes we would be nothing but another species of predators and this was the worst possible place to try convincing them we weren’t.
“We’re just going to make sure there are no arxur left in the building, then we’re getting you out of there. We’ll be back before you know it.”
Avoiding the question. I really hoped Richards didn’t tip off the aliens about us there. At least she didn’t deny that we were from the feds. As long as we got out of there as quickly as possible, everything would be fine.
“I- I- saw them leaving. They were a- a- angry, and before they l- l- left they- they…”
The krakotl lifted their wing and shakily pointed towards a dark corner of the room as their voice faltered. Some kind of poles with clumps in the middle filled the corner but any more detail was masked under the veil of darkness. Carefully avoiding looking at the flickering lamps filling the building with light, I turned on my night vision goggles and as soon as my brain registered what it was seeing, I wished that I had been born blind. The poles were wooden stakes and the clumps were the mutilated corpses of a dozen aliens. Deep gashes stretched across their abdomen and their intestines were pouring out of the holes. Not even their heads were spared. They were nigh unrecognizable from blunt force trauma and one of the victims still had the hammer buried in their face. Disgust and rage flared up within me, almost stronger than I’d ever felt before. I wanted to vomit and chop arxur into small pieces at the same time.
Why do they fucking exist? Why the fuck do I have to fucking see this. How can someone… do something like this? And why did we let them escape? Wait, the faster I clear this building, the faster we can hunt them down.
“You’re safe now, we’re getting you off this planet. Squad, we’re make sure there are no arxur left on the premises.”
Sergeant Richards’ command immediately pushed me to act. While about half our our force moved to clear out the rest of the building, my squad rushed for the back door at the other end of the cattle pens. We quickly made our way outside into a large yard, the dirt ground stretching several dozen meters from the building before slowly morphing into a field. In the distance, several large piles of timber were piled high next to a large, deforested area. The only feasible place for the arxur to hide on this side of the compound was the shack that stood at the edge of the yard. In contrast to the concentration camp, this building actually looked relatively structurally sound. Thick concrete walls, a door made of something other than sheet metal, and a roof with only a few visible holes. That was incredibly impressive for an arxur.
Just gotta check this shack, then we can start chasing the fuckers.
Following Richards’ directions, we quickly began making our way towards the building. Reminding myself there was no time to spare, I sprinted ahead of the others and squeezed through the slightly ajar door. A loud slam emanated from behind me as the door shut behind me and I emerged into something that almost looked like living quarters. Several bedrolls were laid out on the ground, piles of equipment were scattered across the floor, and a large scaly repti-
SHIT SHIT SHIT!
They hadn’t left. Those fuckers just laid in ambush, waiting for me to let my guard down. Its hideous body sat on one of the bedrolls, radiating bloodlust. I could feel its eyes bore deep into my soul, sending an involuntary shudder down my spine. Every single part of it was tailor made to kill, and nothing else. It could easily rip off my limbs with its massive claws, and then chop them into tiny pieces with its razor sharp teeth if I was careless.
Can’t be careless then. That fucker isn’t going to walk out of here alive. If I’m going down, it’s going down with me.
I instinctively threw myself to the ground, raising my rifle to take out my target. My rifle was aimed directly at the unarmed creature’s head, through the chain-link fence sectioning off the arxur from me. Just before I pulled the trigger, my brain connected the contradictory information, stopping me from firing from sheer bewilderment.
Why the fuck did that thing not have a weapon? And why were they in some kind of improvised prison?
“Hey! Oscar, the door’s locked. What’s your status?”
David’s voice and a loud banging on the door I just passed through snapped me back to reality. I was locked away from my squad in a room full of arxur. The same species that fucking impailed a dozen people out there. And here they were, right in front of me, behind a chain-link fence. Red flashed before my eyes as I realized what was happening.
They were trying to fool us. And those morons thought I wouldn't notice. They put up that barbed wire, trying to exploit our empathy. We’d try to imprison them, and then they’d strike. And they would have succeeded, had I not been alone.
I slowly stood back up, and shuffled backwards until I stood flush against some kind of railing. The multiple arxur that were hiding behind the chain-link looked at me with unreadable expressions but I could noticeably see their eyes widen as I raised my rifle.
Finally realizing the jig is up? They were going to pay for for the people they fucking impailed, for the venlil whose head they fucking ripped of, and for the fucking cradle.
All I had to do was tell the white lie that they attacked me and open fire. Then my squad wouldn’t be murdered and justice would finally be served. The arxur remained quiet as mice as I prepared to enact justice, probably in shock from their stupid ploy being seen through. I was eternally thankful that they were so stupid. The anger that had filled my entire system slowly melted away, being replaced by satisfaction at their imminent demise. Right as I was about to press down on the trigger one of the arxur began speaking but as I looked for the culprit I saw that all their mouths were shut. The voice was high pitched, almost childlike, and it echoed from… below.
What the-
“Hi, what are you? You look really cool!”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is Oscar being a bit delusional? Should he analyze the situation a bit more objectively? Possibly, but where's the fun in having completely sane characters.
Anyways, the two protagonists are about to meet. Will said meeting remain entirely civil or will Oscar "accidentally" drop a grenade into the pit? We'll find out next time.