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[WTS] Selling my collection. Niche and Designer. Some Brand New in box and some unboxed like new. (Bottle)

2023.05.30 23:19 RoninM00n [WTS] Selling my collection. Niche and Designer. Some Brand New in box and some unboxed like new. (Bottle)

[WTS] Selling my collection. Niche and Designer. Some Brand New in box and some unboxed like new. (Bottle) https://imgur.com/gallery/ZIrmNCu
Only stuff that's new in box or ones I've just kept as backups for my collection and haven't worn. Some of these are discontinued gems and all of them are well reviewed by the community. Any questions or want pics of batch codes, etc, please message me and I'm happy to answer.
If you can find any of these for a lower price I will beat it. I'm trying to sell these for local pickup near Newark, DE but I will drive a reasonable distance for a transaction. I'm willing to ship if the actual shipping cost can be compensated. Shipping would make more sense if someone wanted a lot of these.
++LIST++
100 ml Laolu LTD Edition Man in Black Essence RARE full (Bottle) Bvlgari: $91
100 ml Reflection Man (Bottle) new in box Amouage: $151
100 ml Sculpture Homme (Bottle) Nikos Parfums new in box: $8
100 ml Bright Neroli (Bottle) discontinued! New in box-Ferrari: $48
100 ml Vetiver Essence (Bottle)full- Ferrari: $25
97 ml Reflesso- Trussardi (Bottle): $20
100 ml Reveal for Him (Bottle), new in box- Calvin Klein: $30
98 ml Uomo (Bottle)- Roberto Cavalli $30
100 ml Steel Sugar (Bottle) new in box- Aquolina $9
97 ml Him EDP (Bottle) discontinued! full- Hanae Mori: $90
100 ml Detour Noir (Bottle) new in box- Al Haramain: $25
100 ml Maahir Legacy (Bottle) new in box with carrying bag- Lataffa $27
100 ml Star Men Nebula (Bottle) new in box- Fragrance World: $27
124 ml / 4.2 oz Nuit D'Issey Parfum (Bottle)- Issey Miyaki: $60
95 ml Uomo (Bottle)- Salvatore Ferragamo: $20
99 ml Uomo Signature EDP (Bottle)- Salvatore Ferragamo: $21
100 ml L'homme Ideal EDP (Bottle)- Guerlain $70
100 ml Hawas (Bottle)- Rassas new in box : $30
submitted by RoninM00n to fragranceswap [link] [comments]

2023.05.30 23:19 letstalkaboutbras [SELL][US] Destashing intensifies! More new items from drugstore to high end makeup, skincare, & brushes 👀

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  
Eyeshadow  
 
Face
 
Lips - New
 
Lips - Swatched or Gentle Use
 
Brushes
 
Skincare
 
Fragrance & Body
 
submitted by letstalkaboutbras to makeupexchange [link] [comments]

2023.05.30 19:01 YIzWeDed A PeanutButterZebraHacker Comprehensive Guide for Leveling Uniques.

Preface: While this guide will not include EVERY facet of leveling, it will give a deep dive into unique items for leveling. While some of these may be known, there are others that I hope will change how you level new characters. The focus is on gear sub level 20 that can be used all the way until act 10 or at least until you can get a better replacement unique throughout the leveling process.
Hello, my name is PeanutButterZebraHacker, or Peanut for short, and I love Path of Exile. I find myself playing this game whenever I have free time and with nearly 19k hours in the game, it's something I have loads of experience with. I am making this guide because I always hear about people HATING the leveling experience and for me... well I tend to enjoy it; however, this is because the way I level lets me pick nearly any build I want, something people often feel they cannot do when they make a new character.
This post will be VERY long, I understand that many may not read it, and that my formatting and order for this may need work if I want something more formal; though, for now I will just post how I see fit!
Leveling in PoE is often considered a chore that pigeon holes you into playing the same exact build (Hollow Palm normally, my aim is to change that). This guide will demonstrate every good leveling unique in the game and show how an individual can leverage these unique items to play almost any build they desire.
The bottom of this write-up will have a PoB with my favorite uniques to mess around with and a sample setup to see what you can do with the right gear!
​
Unique Items per slot: My favorite item per slot is in Bold.
Helmets: This slot is flexible for survival, damage, or speed!
  1. Honourhome: This is by far the BEST leveling helmet in the entire game. While +2 may seem like a minor bonus, the fact that it can get TWO +2 implicit corruptions and then also have a level 2 empower socketed allows any skill with the right corruptions to have +9 to gem levels! The mana cost reduction is an additional bonus that shouldn't be forgotten either! It is INSANE when used alone or moreso when combined with the rest of the items on this list.
  2. Thrillsteel: While I only consider this to be a glorified MTX, there is some merit with running this helmet on builds that cannot take advantage of Honourhome. The Onslaught is nice to have while leveling but because they removed its effect from in-town use, it is just that bit worse off.
  3. Goldrim: The CLASSIC leveling helmet. This thing is cheap solid leveling helmet that can easily cap resistances through the acts.
  4. Fairgraves Tricorne: This helmet is old but potentially usable. The "can be touched by tormented spirits" mod provides 50% increased attack, cast, and movement speed as well as 50% increased damage; however, you hardily encounter spirits in acts and will likely be overall less strong than the above.
  5. Crown of Thorns: Really only viable with Ghostwrithe and Energy Blade, otherwise just a solid tanky option when you have nothing else.
  6. Asenath's Mark: While I wouldn't suggest this for a spell casting build as long as Honourhome exists, especially because you give up the potential for two axioms for a bow, this can be solid for auxiliary damage in a bow build or extra curses/utility while leveling with a bow!
Note: The corruptions for helmets are avaliable on all helmets, not just honourhome. If there is a helmet you want to use, always be sure to price it out with the corruptions you want! A +2 Aoe/+2 Aura helmet is still really good for leveling with haste for the extra movement speed!
​
Body Armour: These options each have benefits that can be compared when choosing your build.
  1. Thousand Ribbons: While everyone knows tabula as "the leveling unique", it should always be remembered that Thousand Ribbons exists. ESPECIALLY when corrupted with up to 50% increased damage, Thousand Ribbons provides large flat damage bonus, resistances, and other modifiers that are VERY helpful for leveling. If used with a +4 helmet or Honourhome, the number of sockets doesn't even matter because you will be using the helmet for your links. This thing is INSANE.
  2. Tabula Rasa: The most well known leveling unique in the game, Tabula is a great "generic" item that provides extra damage or utility through extra links. It is advised to get an increased damage corruption for this body armour, though it is important to remember that mana cost may be an issue with 6L skills while leveling.
  3. Ghostwrithe: This is a great item for builds transitioning into CI at some point or builds that want to use Energy Blade to level, otherwise, it is just a solid chest when you have nothing else.
  4. Foxshade: This body armour can provide some solid stats and movement speed while leveling if you can stay at full life! Get yourself a % damage corruption and you have yourself another way to hurt and run!
Note: There are quite a few good corruptions for body armours, +! socketed being one often overlooked at low levels; however, it is often just best to take the increased damage corruption for that small boost while leveling.
​
Gloves: These options all provide an offensive bonus that will help speed up leveling!
  1. Lochtonial Caress: These are a SIGNATURE for leveling form level 1 in any build, try getting a max rolled cast or attack speed for your build and they could last you to act 10 Kitava alone. There are other options to upgrade into after these gloves; however, these are the premium gloves to use when you first start out.
  2. Hrimsorrow: These gloves are perfect for any player that wants to use a physical attack that then gets converted into cold. Otherwise they are just a lump of stats.
  3. Sadima's Touch: The flat damage provided can be largely helpful early game and quant could always be fun to have but I would rate these poorly compared to other options.
  4. Doedre's Tenure: The ULTIMATE spell leveling gloves. Fear not the reduced cast speed; by time you can use these, you can also toss on a pair with cast speed corruption to negate the downside. These gloves provide SO much extra damage while leveling a spell build and should ALWAYS be used on any build that wants to level with spells. Buy these with cast speed corruption and youll be blasting!
  5. Flesh and Spirit: The rampage CAN be nice; though, it isn't often you are stopping to clear entire screens that these will see much use beyond Lightning arrow or other solid clearing skills that would allow you to actually get stacks easily.
  6. Facebreakers: With the existence of Hollow Palm, these gloves have fallen behind. They CAN still be used but the other options are much better.
  7. Ondar's Clasp: These gloves are hard to take advantage of until you can use arrogance to reserve some of your life, otherwise, I wouldn't suggest using them.
Note: The curses or speed corruptions can REALLY round out a pair of leveling gloves and should not be forgotten about if you can get a pair with it!
​
Boots: The options below are chosen to assist with the speed through the acts!
  1. Seven-League Step: These are generally a bit pricey, especially early, but they are easily the BEST leveling boots in the game. When corrupted with increased movement speed, they turn you into a speeding bullet, but even without they are VERY strong.
  2. Abberaths Hooves: A solid leveling alternative that gives good damage and a fun mechanic to mess with to kill monsters. The ignite prolif can add to the fun on ignite builds as well!
  3. Wanderlust: The most budget option, these boots give freeze immunity which is awesome and solid movement speed to run through the acts!
  4. Nomic's Storm: A cheap alternative to Seven-Leagues, these boots can provide a great movement speed buff with some stats; though, it is important to remember you will take a big first hit while wearing these!
  5. Stormcharger: With a good roll on the movement speed, you can get yourself a really fast pair of boots that also scale shock very well for that extra damage!
Note: Always remember to look for cheap pairs with movement speed corruptions! These can really make leveling feel that much better!
​
Shields: Overlooked for higher damage option, shields are great for tankiness in the early levels.
  1. Lycosidae: This shield is great for builds that use attacks but is often looked over because accuracy isn't much of an issue early. Using counter-attacks with this shield can be fun though!
  2. Crest of Perandus: The life given by this shield can really pump up your early game tankiness and the extra stats are nice too. This shield is a comfy "I don't want to die" alternative.
  3. Kaltenhalt: This shield is GREAT for any build that wants to level with a strong physical skill. The gained as can feel great for early game chills/freezes for additional "defense" as well.
  4. Springleaf: Really only used for EARLY EARLY RF leveling, this shield is solid for adding some additonal regen to a build that doesn't die quick but doesn't heal quick either!
Note: Shields are often weak for leveling but it is important to realize they do exist! While it may be better to run a stronger weapon for damage, a shield can make leveling a bit more comfy and open doors for other options.
​
Jewellery: Jewellery has a large list of strong usable items. While there are technically some unique items that can have their level requirement removed via corruption, I will only list the unique items that I find to be genuinely beneficial to use.
Amulets: There is a large list of usable amulets, just remember to pick the one that best fits your build!
  1. Sidhebreath: This amulet is very niche for minion builds and pretty much requires you run added cold with the minions to counter lack of other damage they can no longer deal. If you REALLY want to run this, you're going to notice a drop in damage as your minion gems level up.
  2. Blood of Corruption: Really strong for early game levels but falls behind the Karui setup for benefits. Usable but not strong.
  3. (Replica) Karui Ward: The BEST leveling amulet in the game. This amulet should be purchased with a movement speed corruption if possible to help BLAST through the game. The speed provided by this slot alone is huge and with the right annoint can turn you into a speed demon!
  4. Tear of Purity: The extra resistances and ailment immunity provided by and early game Purity of Elements can feel great while leveling but otherwise isn't that strong.
  5. Xoph's Heart: Now usable at level 5, this amulet and the ash covering ability really add some nice early game damage for leveling if you are using a fire build.
  6. (Replica) Atziri's Foible: If built around, these amulets are easily some of the coolest. The bonuses they provide given the right build are astounding, otherwise its just a filler amulet.
  7. Astramentis: INSANE for leveling because it cuts back your need for stats, Astramentis is always great to have around and can make for some easy gearing without worrying about stats.
Note: Make sure to annoint your amulet! While I always check for a movement speed corruption, the extra tainted oil can make the cost too high so going with an uncorrupted amulet might be the play!
​
Rings: The ring slot options are somehow large and small all at the same time.
  1. Blackheart: The extra chaos damage added can really boost the early game clear, though the flee can be VERY annoying for melee builds.
  2. Doedre's Damning: While additonal curse may seem strong, the lack of curses early makes this ring really just a ball of resistances.
  3. Perandus Signet: My favorite ring to use as it gets me closer to using my full set at level 16, otherwise I run a few other options once I get there.
  4. Berek's Rings: These rings are all solid for leveling assuming your build uses their bonuses correctly, read each of them to see what you might want to use!
  5. Call of the Brotherhood: Great for those early game lightning builds (Spark is a favorite for me). Being able to do cold damage is huge for early game and can feel awesome for defense as well!
  6. Le Heup of All: This ring is a generalist ring that fills the gap you may need for certain stats or resistances. It is always nice to keep a few on hand and use them when you are lacking somewhere!
  7. Mark of Submission: This ring feels REALLY good early game to get extra damage from a curse and if it can be used, should be used! A early curse on hit can add a LOAD of extra damage, much more than most other rings this early into PoE.
  8. Praxis: The reduced mana cost from this ring is a godsend and when used as a pair, your skill will often cost ZERO mana! Just remember, if you use inspiration, you want at least 1 cost for the mana!
  9. Pyre: This ring is CRAZY for ignite builds and can even enable some cold ignite builds early game (just slao some elemental catalysts on it!) The bonus from destroying corpses is also very nice and can cutback on some on death stress effects that occur during the acts!
  10. (Replica) Tasalio's Sign: This ring is GREAT for any build that can apply a chill! The huge added flat can really boost up your leveling speed while slowing down your enemies!
Note: Rings are pretty flexible and it is best to use a pair that best fits your build, though it doesn't hurt to run Perandus Signets until you can toss on two Le Heups!
​
Belt: Belts are a pretty large slot for unique items but like many other slots, there is generally one that is best. (Yes, MB is obviously the best belt BUT this writeup is moreso about uniques that people may not always think about and also ones below level 20, give or take a few items. Anyone WITH MB know they're going to use it and anyone without is either going to buy one or can't afford it)
  1. Darkness Enthroned: This belt is the BEST if you are willing to hunt down good abyss jewels. The fact that you can gain loads of life, movement speed if you haven't been hit recently, and other benefits, really makes this belt take the number 1 spot for early into late leveling stages.
  2. String of Servitude: This belt can have some solid mods; however, it's often lacking in areas that could make it feel good and unless you're going Hollow Palm, the belt is on the sidelines.
  3. Meginord's Girdle: The added flat physical damage can be great for Pillar or Facebreaker builds; otherwise, this is just a filler belt with some stats.
  4. Perandus Blazon: This belt is GREAT for the extra attributes and some quantity, though these stats are either made up elsewhere or generally useless for the acts!
  5. Belt of the Deceiver: This belt can provide some additional damage to attack builds through intimidate as well as some resistances and life, it is still often better to run a Darkness Enthroned to make up for those potential missing stats.
  6. Bated Breath: If you are looking to focus on an ES build or Energy Blade, this belt is just about the best you can go with until later in the game.
  7. (Replica) Prismweave: This belt is INSANELY strong for the added flat it can provide to both attacks and spells and makes for a REALLY good leveling belt if you opt out of the huge added flat from a +9 Honourhome.
Note: While belts are often flexible, it is generally understood to just run with a Darkness Enthroned and search for level 1 jewels that fit your build. Remember that each abyss jewel has different rolls. (Ghastly: Minions, Searching: Bows/wands, Murderous: Melee/Attacks, Hypnotic: Spells)
​
Weapons: Weapons will be classified by their type, though some types may be more popular than others. When it comes to leveling with attacks, its often you will upgrade your weapon with something throughout the acts. Spells don't need much of an upgrade with some of the options below. I will not be listing weapon classes that have mediocre uniques, if a class isn't listed a cheap rare is best (Ex. Daggers have poor options and should instead be a rare if you want to use them.)
Axe: This weapon type is often overlooked for leveling but can be beneficial given some extra "tech".
  1. Screaming Eagle: The movement speed provided makes this axe worth dual-wielding in your offhand to swap to for extra speed!
  2. Limbsplit: While the culling strike isn't neccessary for early-game, having a way to cull early on weapon swap can cut some seconds off of killing some tanky rares! (I am looking at you spinning birdcage skeletons with extra life!)
Notes: Axes are often just kept on weapon swap for their bonus, if you want to use an axe for damage, an axe purchased from a vendor, qualitied, and essenced often do far more damage.
​
Bows: Bows are something I really enjoy leveling with and the options are quite large, below are the some solid choices if you don't want to craft a rare every 5-10 levels!
  1. Silverbranch: This bow is a generic leveling bow that when found early can really assist with early game bow clear.
  2. Widowhail: With the right quiver, this bow is INSANE! It does require further planning but given the right setup, this bow can be used from level 1 to level 100, even being something to build around! If you want to go with stat stacking, remember that 249% is only 2x effect while 250% is 3x effect, so buy a max roll!
  3. Quillrain: The classic leveling bow that can be used from 5 to 100, the speed and mana gained on hit make this bow feel nice and comfy for leveling, though the damage reduction is a bit noticable.
  4. Storm Cloud: This bow does so much for an early game build and should not be forgotten. While the attack speed is much lower than Quill Rain, it does feel very nice to use with LA and other bow skills early.
Note: Bows can be bought with corruptions but it is often easier to just buy high rolls, but never overlook a high roll AND corruption that still retains the low level requirement.
​
Quivers: Using the right quiver can really change the bow leveling experience, though a crafted rare often does the trick too!
  1. Hyrri's Bite: Insane for leveling, this quiver is VERY good with the extra stats it provides, it will really change how your gems level early game!
Note: Quivers are often better if just cheaply essence crafted, otherwise, Hyrri's Bite is the strong go-to quiver.
​
Maces: While the choices are small, it is fun to run a mace with slams early!
  1. Gorebreaker: The damage done by this mace early game is enough to kill most rares in a hit or two; however, it falls off quickly given the slow attack speed.
Note: There are technically more options in the 20s range; though, they are often overshadowed in damage from a crafted rare.
​
Sceptres: This is where the fun weapons begin!
  1. Axiom Perpetuum: This is by far the BEST spell caster leveling unique in the entire game. When combined with other unique items in this list (often the ones I bold), the damage provided is MASSIVE. This is brought up even HIGHER with a cast speed corruption. This sceptre is the BEST spell caster leveling weapon in the entire game and should ALWAYS be kept in pairs of two with cast speed corruptions. The Crit and Cast speed alone turn a boring spell into a KILLING machine.
  2. Brutus Lead Sprinkler: I know this is level 28 but it holds a strong place in my heart. This is one of my favorite items in PoE (I WISH I could get one with a great crucible tree for standard but I don't have the desire to make one right now, maybe later, I REALLY want one!) It is VERY fun to level with for Str stacking and should be remembered if you are looking to try a stat stacking build early.
Note: There really isn't a better caster weapon than Axiom for leveling and really limits the unique items worth using for said builds.
​
Staves: An uncommon leveling piece, staves can see some use but are often outclassed by Axiom or other items:
  1. Fencoil: Great for early damage until you get two axioms but not needed when you can use +1 All X Spell gem magic wands instead.
  2. Replica Bloodthorn: The increased fire damage can feel great for early game Rolling Magma until Axioms; however, it is useless afterwards.
  3. Pillar of the Caged God: This is often used at much higher levels after stats are scaled better but can be used early if you can find some good added flat physical damage and strength while leveling.
Note: It is generally much better to use +1 wands but staves can still make for an easy to store unique weapon to hold until you can use Axioms.
​
Swords: The choice of swords for leveling is pretty open with one clear winner; though, it is often better to use a crafted rare if you want to level with them.
  1. Oni-Goroshi: This sword has so much lore behind it and is very strong to level with. While farming it may not be fun and making sure you get enough ignite chance to trigger the proc may not be fun, it can scale all the way to level 100 if built around and is very solid for leveling with melee weapons.
  2. Redbeak: This is often dropped for a rare the moment you can hit a Thrusting sword with an essence or two, this sword is still strong for early levels if given the chance!
  3. The Princess: I really enjoy dual wielding this sword with another copy when using a physical build, it is still often better to use Axiom or a crafted rare.
  4. Shiversting: When it comes to two hander swords, Shiversting takes the cake for early game damage. Sady it is still outclassed by a crafted rare if you have the essences, otherwise, it can clear early levels easily until you can upgrade.
Note: Like other melee weapons, swords are often better crafted ever 5-10 levels, unless you use Oni.
​
Claws: Claws really only have one option for leveling and it always requires Elemental hit to work.
(Replica) Last Resort: This claw is VERY good when leveling with elemental hit once you can get to low life; however, it is otherwise useless.
Note: If you want claws, use a rare, its really that simple.
​
Wands: While outclassed by Axiom, wands can be used early for an extra damage boots until you can use those sceptres.
  1. Lifesprig: A solid wand to use until you can use Axioms, the life it heals is nice for early sustain.
  2. Abberaths Horn: This wand is useable if you cannot get +1 wands early, is should be dropped as soon as possible. While ignite isn't insanely strong early, the reduced ignite duration can be noticed when it comes to additional damage from fire builds.
  3. Ashcaller: This wand is really strong with SRS from the covered in ash debuff, it is otherwise not that usable.
  4. Poet's Pen: This wand, while not as popular, is a cult classic for leveling. Throw on two with your favorite spells (and make sure to use clarity to counter to trigger costs!) and you can BLAZE through the game using frenzy as your trigger. Poet's Pen builds do require some planning but can be VERY fun for early game.
Note: It is often better to use a magic +1 to all X spell set for leveling. Aside from Poet's Pen, the benefit of using the above wands is worse than a simple +1 wand.
​
Jewels: The number of leveling jewels has dropped drastically after the jewel change but here is a short list of some!
  1. One with Nothing: Your typical "leveling" jewel. This build has been tried and true for years and is always something to look into if you want the generic Hollow Palm leveling experience.
  2. Thread of Hope: A late game found jewel that can be used in early leveling to get some extra passives early in the game (Think about getting two extra projectiles for a bow build early instead of pathing all the way to those nodes).
  3. Watcher's Eye: Another late game found jewel that can add some convivence to an early leveling experience but needs to be built around.
  4. Sublime Vision: The final of my suggest jewels, using the haste version of this can add some extra speed to an otherwise speedy leveling experience!
​
When deciding your build, the most important part is deciding the "prime unique" to build around, when it comes to spells, make sure you can buy the perfect +4 Honourhome helmet and then go from there, a perfect Honourhome is the difference between 6k DPS at level 16 and 800 dps. Build around this helmet and you'll LOVE the spell caster leveling experience, I PROMISE!
​
Build Template(s): I will add more templates if this thread gets some views but otherwise here is my generic "Spark leveling template" that I used. The damage is VERY high for a level 16 and I have personally leveled a character all the way to act 10 with this gear setup without using a SINGLE passive point. (Though I did need to swap in Astramentis and swap rings to make up for lost resistances and stats to level up skill gems.) None of these builds have passive points in, just gear.
Spark: https://pobb.in/7ikhk0q3MVNU
Lightning Arrow: https://pobb.in/hDzo2YyYcOp-
Generic Spell Level 2 Build: https://pobb.in/prpMjcZLrdLG
Freezing Pulse: https://pobb.in/yQc_4q20wMQQ
Ignite Ice Shot with Pyre: https://pobb.in/aqUBF7Vk-OKk
Molten Strike (Cheaply crafted swords): https://pobb.in/B45bzsd9DWF5
​
If you have any questions feel free to ask! I can also make a video guide that is a bit more fleshed out so let me know if you like it!
submitted by YIzWeDed to pathofexile [link] [comments]

2023.05.30 18:00 SpaceGangrel Diablo IV - Review Thread

Game Information

Game Title: Diablo IV
Platforms:
Trailers:
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Review Aggregator:
OpenCritic - 90 average - 98% recommended - 72 reviews

Critic Reviews

Ars Technica - Aaron Zimmerman - Unscored
Each class has a gimmick-or "specialization"-that unlocks as you progress through the game. The Barbarian, for instance, can lug around a huge arsenal of weapons and gains "expertise" with each as you use them, granting buffs and special effects. The Necromancer can choose between different types of minions or sacrifice them to extract their power. The Rogue has three specialization options, one of which is a WoW-like combo-points system. Every class has its own personality and quirks, and they're all a blast to play.
CGMagazine - Brendan Frye - 10 / 10
Diablo IV's dark allure combines ingenious design choices to create an extraordinary Diablo that we couldn't have dreamed possible back in 1997.
Checkpoint Gaming - Elliot Attard - Unscored
Whilst Diablo IV could have done more to advance the genre or perfect its writing and tone across the entire experience, there’s no denying just how impactful this release is, especially for those of us who grew up alongside the series.
ComicBook.com - Adam Barnhardt - 4.5 / 5
Diablo 4 is perfect for both franchise mainstays and newcomers alike. The lore of Sanctuary expands drastically while the game, story and all, is large enough to keep new players busy. The game is built to allow the developers to scale it with ease with battle passes and seasons for a new generation, but it's nowhere close to being empty.
Console Creatures - David Pietrangelo - Recommended
Diablo 4 is an impressive and massive conquest of demons, loot, exploration, and wildly fun mechanics. It's already clear that this game brings tons of new content to the franchise and handles it incredibly well.
Destructoid - Timothy Monbleau - 8 / 10
Impressive efforts with a few noticeable problems holding them back. Won't astound everyone, but is worth your time and cash.
Dexerto - Sam Smith - 5 / 5
Diablo 4 is a mighty sequel, but it can feel more like a grand buffet of tasty demon-slaying treats. It offers something for everyone but misses out on that acquired yet curated taste of the older entries. This doesn't take away from Diablo 4 representing the next evolution in the series. It is a stellar sequel – and one that works hard to appeal to every fan of this beloved franchise.
DualShockers - Emma Ward - 8.5 / 10
Your favorite Action Role Playing Game is back and bloodier than ever. Diablo 4 improves upon nearly every core gameplay mechanic from Diablo 3 while introducing a few great quality-of-life features that make this journey to Sanctuary the best yet. While some of the quest systems seem dated, the main story is delivered beautifully, breathing new life into the series.
Everyeye.it - Antonello Gaeta - Italian - 8.5 / 10
Diablo 4 is a canvas on which developers could, over the next few months, paint a true masterpiece.
Fextralife - Fexelea - 9.3 / 10
Diablo 4 is an excellent game and a fantastic next step for the ARPG genre. Smartly melding Open World and Online elements with traditional dungeon crawling and loot farming, this game will become the favorite time-sink of millions for years to come.
GAMES.CH - Steffen Haubner - German - 89%
The irresistible gloom is now no longer opposed by hurdles in the form of confusing item and skill management. We enthusiastically throw ourselves against Lilith's hordes and once again sink hour after hour into perfecting our character. Overall, however, there could have been a bit more innovation.
GGRecon - Joshua Boyles - 4.5 / 5
Diablo 4 has taken everything that fans love about the ARPG format and elevated it to new heights. With a fascinating world to explore, a strong cast of characters, and purposeful combat, it sets a new standard for the genre.
The wheel hasn’t been reinvented, and is remains to be seen how the series will adapt to a live service model. Nevertheless, anyone picking up Diablo 4 at launch will find themselves playing a very strong package with plenty of promise.
GRYOnline.pl - Hubert Sosnowski - Polish - 9 / 10
What are we getting? An excellent game that reeks of a game-as-a-service, with tons of satisfying content. Diablo 4 looks like the best hack’n’slash on the market. The best h’n’s for me, a guy well versed in three previous Diablos, Divine Divinity and a bit of Grim Dawn.
Game Informer - Marcus Stewart - Unscored
While it remains to be seen how the experience handles the incoming flood of players once the lights are turned on, I think Diablo fans, old and new, are in for a treat.
GamePro - Kevin Itzinger - German - 94 / 100
With Diablo 4, Blizzard has created a genre masterpiece that does almost everything right.
GameSpot - Alessandro Barbosa - 8 / 10
Diablo IV's surprisingly moving and engrossing story encapsulates gameplay systems that have learnt all the right lessons from entries past.
Gameblog - French - 8 / 10
Diablo 4 is extremely generous. A clear evolution of the franchise and a real comeback.
Gamer Guides - Nathan Garvin - 8.5 / 10
With a compelling new antagonist, a serviceable, character-driven story, and a familiarly satisfying gameplay loop with an incredible amount of depth, Diablo 4 is a worthy entry into the franchise that threatens to burn away many hours of your life.
GamesHub - Emily Spindler - 4 / 5
Diablo 4 is a behemoth of a game, boasting a gothic world that goes beyond the engaging hack-and-slash gameplay loop.
GamesRadar+ - Josh West - 5 / 5
"After sacrificing nearly 100 hours of my life to Diablo 4, I've barely scratched the surface of what it has to offer"
GamingTrend - Cassie Peterson, Ron Burke - 100 / 100
Diablo IV represents a massive shift for the series, moving to a more inclusive and open world that is somehow as inviting for new players as returning veterans. Complexity is mixed with flexibility to create a game that is sure to consume you for hundreds if not thousands of hours. Diablo IV is the game we've been waiting for, and a return to form for the Blizzard team.
Geek Culture - Jake Su - 8.6 / 10
The worry remaining is that the balance needs to be struck well in order to maintain Diablo IV as a viable and long-lasting adventure that doesn’t lose its freshness or that the incessant rush to get more powerful gear becomes a chore rather than a thrill. At this juncture, there’s much for players both old and new to dive into, making combat and exploration exciting times, all while pushing the story forward in a new chapter for Sanctuary. The hope is that this will last, and that Blizzard will continue to support the game in all ways. After all, Lilith is coming, and all hail the Mother.
God is a Geek - Mick Fraser - 9 / 10
Diablo 4 may not be the huge leap forward some were hoping for, but it still offers an incredible adventure through a dark, compelling world.
Hardcore Gamer - Chris Shive - 4.5 / 5
Based on the franchise's history, Diablo IV has large boots to fill, but does an admiral job of meeting this longtime fan's expectations.
IGN - Travis Northup - 9 / 10
Diablo 4 is a stunning sequel with near perfect endgame and progression design that makes it absolutely excruciating to put down.
IGN Spain - Álex Pareja - Spanish - 9 / 10
Diablo IV is tremendously addictive, its combat is formidable and the character building is excellent. More MMO than ever in a new path for the saga.
INVEN - Jaihoon Jeong - Korean - 9 / 10
While the fusion of Diablo franchise and the open world sounded rather unfamiliar at first, the game has succeeded in capturing the charm of both. You can't say the game is perfect as of its initial release, Diablo4 still is one of the strongest quarter view action RPGs.
Kakuchopurei - Jonathan Leo - 90 / 100
[Diablo 4] looks and feels great to play, it's full of content without being way too overburdened with systems and age-old mechanics, it's accessible but also gets really hard and challenging for action RPG standards, and it's really great with more people in your party, with a good amount of classes to play around with and tailor to your playstyle. A highly-polished loot-filled gateway drug for newbies and veterans alike; not terribly innovative but incredibly fun to get into.
LevelUp - Luis SĂĄnchez - Spanish - 7 / 10
Diablo IV remained stuck in the past while trying to find innovation without generating friction with fans who have played the franchise for over two decades; It feels like the ghost of Diablo Immortal continues to haunt the halls of Blizzard. The game is more of a reinvention of the classic experience, focusing on a games-as-a-service format to ensure another decade of content for Diablo.
Marooners' Rock - Andrew Peggs - 9.2 / 10
Diablo IV has done a good job of delivering an exciting and enjoyable storyline and providing hours of exciting entertainment, whether playing alone or with companions.
Merlin'in Kazanı - Samet Basri Taşlı - Turkish - 90 / 100
Diablo IV has successfully brought everything we wished to be in the 3rd game and has the potential to be the best game in the series.
Multiplayer First - Vitor Braz - 9.5 / 10
Do yourself a favor: ditch your reservations and step into Sanctuary as soon as you can. It’s likely going to be literal hell during the launch queues, but you’ll have a beautifully grim and visceral adventure ahead, one where every leveling up sound will feel like music to your ears. Enjoy it to the best of your possibilities because an action-RPG of this caliber may only arrive in another decade or so, and missing out on Diablo 4 would be something that may just reserve you a spot in hell.
Niche Gamer - Jonathan White - 9 / 10
It ain’t perfect, but provided they continue the course Diablo IV is currently on, this might be the game that bridges the gap and makes Diablo the most accessible and ultimately the most fun it has ever been to players from any background.
Oyungezer Online - Can ArabacÄą - Turkish - 9.5 / 10
Diablo IV is definitely one of the best games Blizzard has ever made. And possibly the best story they've ever told.
PC Gamer - Tyler Colp - Unscored
An exciting, modern version of Diablo is in here—I can see parts of it poking through the surface—but I'm starting to lose patience waiting for it to show its face.
PCGamesN - Lauren Bergin - 10 / 10
Diablo 4 embodies the essence of what makes Diablo so great, taking the best elements of its predecessors and sewing them together to create an ever-changing, ever-evolving chimera that we can't wait to play for years to come.
PSX Brasil - Paulo Roberto Montanaro - Portuguese - 85 / 100
Diablo IV is, without a doubt, a great success that takes the best of its previous iterations, especially Diablo II, and takes advantage of the potential of an intense open world. With mechanics refined for today, hundreds of hours of gameplay, and the promise of an aggressive post-launch content, this game is the ultimate in the eternal battle between evil and… the other party.
PlayStation Universe - Neil Bolt - 8 / 10
Diablo IV takes the series to new heights, but also spends plenty of time covering familar ground. The compelling rush for loot is as strong as it has ever been, and visually, the game is spectacular. It doesn't exactly feel like a massive leap from Diablo III yet its focus on the series' core strengths ensures that's likely more than enough for long-time fans.
Polygon - Alexis Ong - Unscored
More busywork doesn’t lessen the series-signature lootfest appeal
Press Start - Harry Kalogirou - 9 / 10
Diablo IV is an unquestionable win for Blizzard and one of their foundational franchises when it needed it most. An unrelenting commitment to vision, redefined Sanctuary, never-ending player progression, and excellent boss fights are just a few of the reasons Diablo IV isn't held back by uneven pacing and recycled content.
Prima Games - Daphne Fama - 9 / 10
Diablo IV is a game with a deeply involved combat system, a complex and well-established world, and all the hallmarks of my next gaming obsession.
Pure Xbox - Liam Doolan - 9 / 10
You can see why it's taken Blizzard over six years to get this one out the gate when you look at the end product. Diablo 4 is a natural evolution of the series with its new open-world design and gameplay, enhanced social and multiplayer experience, and a live service that promises to keep players returning to the world of Sanctuary for years to come. These strong foundations and scale of the whole experience, combined with the five unique classes and seemingly limitless customisation options for builds, should keep even the most diehard demon slayers busy for a very long time. With all of this in consideration, Diablo 4 is a must-play if you're a veteran of the series and it's a great starting point for newcomers. We can't wait to jump back in! Now, fingers crossed we just don't have another 'Error 37' at launch.
Push Square - Khayl Adam - 9 / 10
Diablo 4 is the true successor to the bad old days of action RPGs and oozes quality in its frenetic combat and deep, engaging character development. It tells a complex, gritty narrative set in the darkly beautiful world of Sanctuary. Even better, it provides a solid foundation for years of Diablo content to come.
Rectify Gaming - Rebecca Ellis - 9.5 / 10
Diablo IV will usher a new generation of action RPGs into the modern era with its brilliance.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Alice Bell - Unscored
Diablo IV is a beautiful, frictionless grey toybox that puts nothing in the way of you playing it for hours and wondering what you've done with your life.
SIFTER - Adam Christou - Worth your time
Diablo IV offers a strong opening impression. It has a rich, detailed story campaign, filled with spectacle and gore. Its combat and game-feel is so satisfying. The classes feel distinct and play quite differently from each other. It feels so good to burst down screens of demons with spells and swords. Will it live up to other competitors in the ARPG space? It’s too soon to tell, but what’s here so far is extremely promising especially for players looking to enjoy an impressive horror story.
Saudi Gamer - Arabic - 8 / 10
So far, the Diablo 4 experience has been nothing short of very good, the story has been very interesting and it finally returns to what distinguished the series in terms of storytelling before the release of the third installment. The game offered a very solid base of content, activities, addictive gameplay, and a variety of character-building ways that any Action RPG should offer. This is knowing that there are some important issues that appeared at the beginning of the experiment as we mentioned in the full review.
Screen Rant - Carrie Lambertsen - 4.5 / 5
Ultimately, Diablo 4 is a must-play experience for any fan of dungeon-crawler ARPGs.
Seasoned Gaming - Ainsley Bowden - 9.5 / 10
Diablo 4 is a masterpiece. It's the culmination of decades of ARPG refinement and evolution, and it manages to pay homage to the IP's legendary namesake while successfully integrating modern RPG elements.
Shacknews - Josh Broadwell - 8 / 10
Blizzard opts for refinement over innovation with Diablo 4, but it's still a devilishly good time.
Siliconera - Kazuma Hashimoto - 8 / 10
Diablo IV features a compelling antagonist in Lilith, and while it tries to present more interesting ideas into the series by the way of story, it ends up retreading old ground in more ways than one.
Sirus Gaming - Kimberly Mae Go - 9 / 10
Diablo 4 presents an epic and visually stunning adventure, enveloping players in a cinematic journey through its immersive open-world. While some areas, like repetitive dungeons and class imbalances, leave room for improvement; Blizzard has laid a solid groundwork that sparks excitement for further exploration of the vast realm of Sanctuary.
Spaziogames - Marcello Paolillo - Italian - Unscored
Diablo IV is a smooth-running action RPG with a beautiful gothic atmosphere and a fascinating open world, aimed even at those who have never touched a chapter of the Blizzard franchise before.
TechRaptor - Austin Suther - 9.5 / 10
Diablo IV might just go down as one of Blizzard's best games. It delivers exciting and accessible ARPG gameplay, a stunning world and engaging narrative to experience, and so many activities to keep you hooked for hours on end.
TrueGaming - Arabic - 9 / 10
Diablo IV brings you a captivating story, a lot of freedom in your class building and a massive world full of monsters to pulverize and dungeons to explore that will keep you playing for lots of hours to come.
Twinfinite - Zhiqing Wan - 4.5 / 5
An incredible looter experience overall. I cannot overstate just how satisfying it is to play Diablo IV on a moment-to-moment basis, and with so much replay value to be had from its various classes and build possibilities within those classes, Diablo IV feels like a true return to form for the series.
VG247 - Connor Makar - 4 / 5
It's a damn good entry to the series as a whole, and will give the vast majority of its players a bloody good time.
Wccftech - Alessio Palumbo - 8.5 / 10
Diablo IV is a return to form at a much needed time for Blizzard. It delivers incredibly fun hack and slash action combat, a greatly improved skill system, and a ton of things to do, not to mention the best story told in the franchise yet. It also looks awesome, sounds great, and runs well (except for rare instances of traversal stuttering).
We Got This Covered - David Morgan - 4.5 / 5
Diablo IV tows several lines masterfully, be it in its mechanical complexity or the moral ambiguity of its plot. Its greatest achievement, however, is being a great Diablo game.
WellPlayed - Ash Wayling - 8.5 / 10
Diablo IV is a must-play for fans of the series and newcomers alike. It invites you to lose yourself in a world of darkness and embark on a thrilling journey filled with relentless battles, captivating storytelling, and a hauntingly beautiful audio-visual symphony. Just ignore the extraneous limb reaching for your wallet.
Xbox Achievements - Dan Webb - 85%
Diablo IV boasts a new look, with its new open-world and online format, but at its heart, it’s very much a classic Diablo experience. A little old-school still, sure, but the core combat is still as fun and addictive as ever, and there’s RPG mechanics for days to sink your teeth into. What’s not to love?
XboxEra - Jesse Norris - 9.5 / 10
Diablo IV is a triumph. It fulfills its promise, combining the aesthetics and feeling of Diablo II with the fantastic gameplay of III. It is dark and gory, featuring a meaty campaign and endgame that should delight fans of the series for hundreds if not thousands of hours.
ZTGD - Terrence Johnson - 9.5 / 10
Diablo 4 is a massive game dropping in a year chock FULL of massive games. 2023 has already seen Nintendo’s behemoth drop by way of Tears of the Kingdom which has been dominating charts and peoples’ times. Now Diablo 4 is going to come bursting in and demanding that same type of time commitment with a sprawling game world to explore on foot or horseback. Between dungeons, world events, side quests and even the main quests players will never be too far from something interesting to inspect or kill in Sanctuary. Diablo 4 feels like a wonderful homecoming, with its darker tone and sublime cutscenes which Blizzard has always been wonderful at; the whole game just feels like a love letter to us fans who have waited so long to return to Hell and defeat its denizens once more.
submitted by SpaceGangrel to Games [link] [comments]

2023.05.30 16:46 silly-bees my skin keeps getting worse and i don’t know what to do :(

my skin keeps getting worse and i don’t know what to do :(
i’m sorry if this long. i’ve never had terrible skin, for the first 16 years of my life i got away with having little to no skincare routine and my skin was alright, it was always rather dry and i got a few pimples here and there, but aside from that, i didn’t have any major issues. around march 2022 when i was 18, i started getting into a better skincare routine because my skin had started getting worse. i had to wear an n-95 mask for work, and so the acne around my chin was particularity bad. i also worked with a lot of oil sprays, which got onto my face and caused acne all over. my skin was very very dry and flakey as well. i started out using the ordinary niacinamide & zinc as well as the vitamin c in ha spheres, and both of those made an incredible difference. around july, i added the watermelon glow toner from sephora and the ordinarys pycnogenol into my routine. here’s the full routine that i had:
AM: -i don’t cleanse in the morning since my skin isn’t oily, i just wipe it with a cotton pad and micellar water and then rinse with water -watermelon glow toner -vitamin c and pycnogenol -sometimes used the ordinary hyaluronic acid as well -cerave moisturizer -aveeno sunscreen
PM: -cerave hydrating cleanser -niacinamide & zinc -cerave moisturizer
that routine made my skin phenomenal, and so i stuck to that for months. my skin was clear and glowy and i hardly had any breakouts, i would only get some pimples on my chin here and there.
fast forward to december 2022. i noticed i had a lot of clogged pores on my chin. i don’t know what caused them, but i wanted to get rid of them. i started researching what products to get, and read that i should use an oil cleanser before my regular cleanser at night, and i should try retinol. so first i bought palmers cocoa butter oil cleanser. i’m not sure if this is the greatest brand, and i also didn’t realize that it had fragrance in it which i know isn’t good, but i’m a broke college student so it’s all i could afford. i also purchased the cosrx snail mucin essence around the same time because i had heard good things, and about a week after that i got the pyunkang yul calming moisture barrier cream because i was running out of moisturizer and couldn’t afford an expensive one. after using all of these new things for a few weeks, i didn’t notice any difference. i still had all the clogged pores. so then at the beginning of january, i finally started using a retinol. it was just the one from the ordinary, because again, i couldn’t afford anything else. i started with using it 2-3 times a week since it was only 0.2% retinol, and i started breaking out on my chin pretty bad. i knew retinol caused a purge though, so i just pushed through it. after a couple months, things still weren’t getting any better and i was getting acne and tiny bumps on my cheeks too, so i thought maybe i overexfoliated. i stopped using retinol for a few weeks, and then went back to using it 1-2 times a week. my skin still wasn’t getting any better though, in fact it was getting worse. so then i thought maybe retinol just isn’t for me and stopped using it completely. then i bought the paula’s choice exfoliator as well as the haru haru wonder toner. i also bought a new oil cleanser because i didn’t think the palmers one was doing me any favours. so now this is the routine that i had:
AM: -micellar water -haru haru wonder toner -vitamin c and pycnogenol -snail mucin essence -calming moisture barrier cream -aveeno spf
PM: -softymo deep cleansing oil -cerave hydrating cleanser -niacinamide -paula’s choice 2 times a week, i don’t use niacinamide on these nights -the ordinarys azelaic acid 2-3 times a week -eucerin complete repair cream
i stuck with that for a few weeks, but i suddenly got a whole bunch of tiny bumps all over my forehead, which is unusual because i never break out on my forehead. however, i noticed these BEFORE i started using the new products, so i’m not sure what caused them. in the last week, the bumps have been getting worse and are spreading to my cheeks. i also have blackheads on my chin and cheeks. my chin is still my main area of concern. i feel like it never recovered from that first purge. it’s still covered in acne and it’s very red and i still have all those damn clogged pores!!!!
for the last few days, i’ve stopped using the toner and essence, just to see if that’s maybe what’s causing the bumps. i might stop using the paula’s choice stuff too.
i don’t know, i’m just at a loss. i completely ruined my skin and no matter what i do, i just cant get it back to normal. it’s very discouraging and i’ve been extremely insecure about it. any advice would be appreciated
submitted by silly-bees to SkincareAddicts [link] [comments]

2023.05.30 16:30 Memento-Mori-357 Kitchen Remodel & Paying Off A High Interest Loan - Wheres Does The cash Go?

Hey all! I have a question on how to properly use a cash windfall im about to get from my job.
Based on the projected market growth for the rest of the month, I will have a net windfall of roughly $20k coming to me in the shape of selling company stock units. Normally, i'd budget that $ to continue to make sure I have 3-6 months of expenses saved up, maybe buy something little thats nice, and invest the rest in an IRA or my personal portfolio account.
I need to determine the best route for this $20k. For context, here are 2 places I can put the $
  1. In 2020 I had a housing issue where I needed to immediately replace my siding. Not having liquid $23k at the time, I caved to the only financing option at my disposal at the time which was 9.99% through the contractor. I planned on paying it off MUCH earlier than its maturity date. As of this posting I owe roughly $18k on it
  2. My kitchen cabinets are literally falling off the wall. They are from the early 90's, and we noticed most of the cabinets are barely installed into studs. They were slapped up, and when we bought the house, GLUED up in the failing areas to sell the house. One fell off the wall and nearly killed my son. So we HAVE to replace them asap. We are pricing out an ikea cabinet, and are getting estimates for about $15k for the kitchen, counters & installation.
My initial thought was to pay cash for the kitchen. However, the siding loan is my highest interest loan with the 9.99, with my second highest being 4.9 for my camper, otherwise I have no other interest bearing debt (0% on my truck and 0% on my HVAC system).
After some more thought, im thinking of paying off the entirety of the siding which ultimately may save me roughly $11-12k in interest over the remaining 8 years of the loan, and using the Ikea PROJECT card that will give 0% interest for 2 years. In essence, using "their money" to fund my kitchen remodel and cutting the interest off the siding loan with a net return of about $11-12k.
Thoughts?
EDIT: For clarity, its not a kitchen "remodel" its just replacing existing cabinetry & counters with new ones. Im not ripping down walls, doing new lighting, and vanity work. Just necessary stuff. Old ones are falling off the wall, 35 years old and counters (laminate) are dissolving. We've lost a good amount of storage, and some are safety issues. Also not looking for a full financial deep dive, I have a budget, investment plans, etc, just looking to see how you'd use the $.
submitted by Memento-Mori-357 to personalfinance [link] [comments]

2023.05.30 15:03 Thunderclaww Diablo IV Review Megathread

These should be spoiler-free reviews (those go live on June 2nd), but there's no guarantee that every review will be spoiler free. This thread will aim to capture as many reviews as possible. Please feel free to leave comments with any reviews and I will attempt to add them as quickly as I can!

Game Information

Game Title: Diablo IV
Platforms:
Trailers:
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Review Aggregator:
OpenCritic - 90 average - 98% recommended - 72 reviews

Critic Reviews

CGMagazine - Brendan Frye - 10 / 10
Diablo IV's dark allure combines ingenious design choices to create an extraordinary Diablo that we couldn't have dreamed possible back in 1997.
Dexerto - Sam Smith - 5 / 5
Diablo 4 is a mighty sequel, but it can feel more like a grand buffet of tasty demon-slaying treats. It offers something for everyone but misses out on that acquired yet curated taste of the older entries. This doesn't take away from Diablo 4 representing the next evolution in the series. It is a stellar sequel – and one that works hard to appeal to every fan of this beloved franchise.
GameSpew - Richard Seagrave - 10 / 10
We had high expectations for Diablo 4, and we’re so happy to say that Blizzard has smashed them. This is a title that takes Diablo 3’s meaningful quality-of-life improvements and expands upon them with aplomb, while also bringing back the much-loved look and feel of Diablo 2. All the while, it’s not too focused on the past, taking the series into open world territory and making it more story-led than ever before. And what a story it tells: we never expected to be so invested. But more importantly, we can’t wait to start a new character and jump once again into the endgame. Diablo 4 is devilishly good – the best Diablo game yet, in fact – and it only stands to get better.
GamesRadar+ - Josh West - 5 / 5
"After sacrificing nearly 100 hours of my life to Diablo 4, I've barely scratched the surface of what it has to offer"
GamingTrend - Cassie Peterson, Ron Burke - 100 / 100
Diablo IV represents a massive shift for the series, moving to a more inclusive and open world that is somehow as inviting for new players as returning veterans. Complexity is mixed with flexibility to create a game that is sure to consume you for hundreds if not thousands of hours. Diablo IV is the game we've been waiting for, and a return to form for the Blizzard team.
PCGamesN - Lauren Bergin - 10 / 10
Diablo 4 embodies the essence of what makes Diablo so great, taking the best elements of its predecessors and sewing them together to create an ever-changing, ever-evolving chimera that we can't wait to play for years to come.
VGC - Jordan Middler - 5 / 5
Diablo 4's always-online requirement is a shame, and a few of the classes are somewhat slow to kick into high gear, but we're only able to muster minor complaints for what is easily a game-of-the-year frontrunner, and Blizzard’s best game since Diablo 3.
VideoGamer - Ford James - 10 / 10
Diablo 4 feels like the apex of the series, bringing together everything great about the previous entries. It isn't without its minor flaws, and the success of the endgame content is still up in the air, but for once Diablo has a gripping story, phenomenal graphics, and a gameplay loop that doesn't innovate too much but is certainly better than its predecessor.
Windows Central - Jez Corden - 5 / 5
Simply put, Diablo 4 may be Blizzard's best-ever game, and that's a really tough legacy to live up to. Immaculate storytelling meets stunning art, polished, bug-free gameplay, atop endlessly customizable combat with the promise of dozens, maybe hundreds of hours of content — Diablo 4 might be Blizzard's most important, pivotal game since World of Warcraft. Do yourself a favor and go in completely blind. Even if you're not a typical fan of isometric action RPGs, I'm confident that you won't be disappointed.
Multiplayer First - Vitor Braz - 9.5 / 10
Do yourself a favor: ditch your reservations and step into Sanctuary as soon as you can. It’s likely going to be literal hell during the launch queues, but you’ll have a beautifully grim and visceral adventure ahead, one where every leveling up sound will feel like music to your ears. Enjoy it to the best of your possibilities because an action-RPG of this caliber may only arrive in another decade or so, and missing out on Diablo 4 would be something that may just reserve you a spot in hell.
Oyungezer Online - Can ArabacÄą - Turkish - 9.5 / 10
Diablo IV is definitely one of the best games Blizzard has ever made. And possibly the best story they've ever told.
Rectify Gaming - Rebecca Ellis - 9.5 / 10
Diablo IV will usher a new generation of action RPGs into the modern era with its brilliance.
Seasoned Gaming - Ainsley Bowden - 9.5 / 10
Diablo 4 is a masterpiece. It's the culmination of decades of ARPG refinement and evolution, and it manages to pay homage to the IP's legendary namesake while successfully integrating modern RPG elements.
TechRaptor - Austin Suther - 9.5 / 10
Diablo IV might just go down as one of Blizzard's best games. It delivers exciting and accessible ARPG gameplay, a stunning world and engaging narrative to experience, and so many activities to keep you hooked for hours on end.
XboxEra - Jesse Norris - 9.5 / 10
Diablo IV is a triumph. It fulfills its promise, combining the aesthetics and feeling of Diablo II with the fantastic gameplay of III. It is dark and gory, featuring a meaty campaign and endgame that should delight fans of the series for hundreds if not thousands of hours.
ZTGD - Terrence Johnson - 9.5 / 10
Diablo 4 is a massive game dropping in a year chock FULL of massive games. 2023 has already seen Nintendo’s behemoth drop by way of Tears of the Kingdom which has been dominating charts and peoples’ times. Now Diablo 4 is going to come bursting in and demanding that same type of time commitment with a sprawling game world to explore on foot or horseback. Between dungeons, world events, side quests and even the main quests players will never be too far from something interesting to inspect or kill in Sanctuary. Diablo 4 feels like a wonderful homecoming, with its darker tone and sublime cutscenes which Blizzard has always been wonderful at; the whole game just feels like a love letter to us fans who have waited so long to return to Hell and defeat its denizens once more.
COGconnected - Mark Steighner - 94 / 100
Diablo IV is the true successor to the second game, returning the franchise to its dark, gothic roots with a wild, operatic narrative and bold characters. Gameplay is as addictive as ever, and the sprawling campaign is only the start of a massive amount of content to experience. While Blizzard keeps nudging Diablo’s design towards MMORPG-style multiplayer and co-op, there’s no lack of fun for solo players, even if some bosses are better with friends. With off-the-charts production values and compelling characters and combat, Diablo IV is just about as good as the genre can get.
GamePro - Kevin Itzinger - German - 94 / 100
With Diablo 4, Blizzard has created a genre masterpiece that does almost everything right.
Fextralife - Fexelea - 9.3 / 10
Diablo 4 is an excellent game and a fantastic next step for the ARPG genre. Smartly melding Open World and Online elements with traditional dungeon crawling and loot farming, this game will become the favorite time-sink of millions for years to come.
Marooners' Rock - Andrew Peggs - 9.2 / 10
Diablo IV has done a good job of delivering an exciting and enjoyable storyline and providing hours of exciting entertainment, whether playing alone or with companions.
ComicBook.com - Adam Barnhardt - 4.5 / 5
Diablo 4 is perfect for both franchise mainstays and newcomers alike. The lore of Sanctuary expands drastically while the game, story and all, is large enough to keep new players busy. The game is built to allow the developers to scale it with ease with battle passes and seasons for a new generation, but it's nowhere close to being empty.
Forbes - Paul Tassi - 9 / 10
Though in theory, an “endgame” playthrough of Diablo 4 is probably 100-200 hours across a larger span of classes, I feel like I can judge what I’ve seen. My impressions are overwhelmingly positive based on what I’ve experienced so far, from the map to the gameplay to the new systems to even the story, which I was not expecting. Blizzard really seems like they’ve nailed this, and I’m going to say the only way this will be poorly received at launch is if technical issues kill people’s ability to play. But once it gets rolling? Yes, I think you’re going to like Diablo 4.
GGRecon - Joshua Boyles - 4.5 / 5
Diablo 4 has taken everything that fans love about the ARPG format and elevated it to new heights. With a fascinating world to explore, a strong cast of characters, and purposeful combat, it sets a new standard for the genre.
The wheel hasn’t been reinvented, and is remains to be seen how the series will adapt to a live service model. Nevertheless, anyone picking up Diablo 4 at launch will find themselves playing a very strong package with plenty of promise.
GRYOnline.pl - Hubert Sosnowski - Polish - 9 / 10
What are we getting? An excellent game that reeks of a game-as-a-service, with tons of satisfying content. Diablo 4 looks like the best hack’n’slash on the market. The best h’n’s for me, a guy well versed in three previous Diablos, Divine Divinity and a bit of Grim Dawn.
Game Rant - Shane Robert Moyer - 4.5 / 5
Blizzard has taken twenty years of game design lessons and put all of them into Diablo 4. The variety of things to do in the game and the plethora of build choices feel like they come from a company that has experienced the highest highs and lowest lows in game development and taken some of those hard-learned lessons to heart. There is a lot of love built into every aspect of Diablo 4, and users will find it in every system and corner of Sanctuary. With the first simultaneous release on PC and consoles in the series' history, Diablo players are finally getting back into the fight between Heaven and Hell, and they will more than likely still be fighting for many years to come.
God is a Geek - Mick Fraser - 9 / 10
Diablo 4 may not be the huge leap forward some were hoping for, but it still offers an incredible adventure through a dark, compelling world.
Hardcore Gamer - Chris Shive - 4.5 / 5
Based on the franchise's history, Diablo IV has large boots to fill, but does an admiral job of meeting this longtime fan's expectations.
Hobby Consolas - David Rodriguez - Spanish - 90 / 100
Diablo 4 is the triumphant return of the saga. The game manages to bring back the dark style of Diablo II while boasting a good narrative, gameplay as addictive as ever and some interesting novelties. It only remains to be seen how Blizzard will keep the game, but we can say that the time-eater has returned in style.
IGN - Travis Northup - 9 / 10
Diablo 4 is a stunning sequel with near perfect endgame and progression design that makes it absolutely excruciating to put down.
IGN Spain - Álex Pareja - Spanish - 9 / 10
Diablo IV is tremendously addictive, its combat is formidable and the character building is excellent. More MMO than ever in a new path for the saga.
INVEN - Jaihoon Jeong - Korean - 9 / 10
While the fusion of Diablo franchise and the open world sounded rather unfamiliar at first, the game has succeeded in capturing the charm of both. You can't say the game is perfect as of its initial release, Diablo4 still is one of the strongest quarter view action RPGs.
Kakuchopurei - Jonathan Leo - 90 / 100
[Diablo 4] looks and feels great to play, it's full of content without being way too overburdened with systems and age-old mechanics, it's accessible but also gets really hard and challenging for action RPG standards, and it's really great with more people in your party, with a good amount of classes to play around with and tailor to your playstyle. A highly-polished loot-filled gateway drug for newbies and veterans alike; not terribly innovative but incredibly fun to get into.
Merlin'in Kazanı - Samet Basri Taşlı - Turkish - 90 / 100
Diablo IV has successfully brought everything we wished to be in the 3rd game and has the potential to be the best game in the series.
Niche Gamer - Jonathan White - 9 / 10
It ain’t perfect, but provided they continue the course Diablo IV is currently on, this might be the game that bridges the gap and makes Diablo the most accessible and ultimately the most fun it has ever been to players from any background.
Press Start - Harry Kalogirou - 9 / 10
Diablo IV is an unquestionable win for Blizzard and one of their foundational franchises when it needed it most. An unrelenting commitment to vision, redefined Sanctuary, never-ending player progression, and excellent boss fights are just a few of the reasons Diablo IV isn't held back by uneven pacing and recycled content.
Prima Games - Daphne Fama - 9 / 10
Diablo IV is a game with a deeply involved combat system, a complex and well-established world, and all the hallmarks of my next gaming obsession.
Pure Xbox - Liam Doolan - 9 / 10
You can see why it's taken Blizzard over six years to get this one out the gate when you look at the end product. Diablo 4 is a natural evolution of the series with its new open-world design and gameplay, enhanced social and multiplayer experience, and a live service that promises to keep players returning to the world of Sanctuary for years to come. These strong foundations and scale of the whole experience, combined with the five unique classes and seemingly limitless customisation options for builds, should keep even the most diehard demon slayers busy for a very long time. With all of this in consideration, Diablo 4 is a must-play if you're a veteran of the series and it's a great starting point for newcomers. We can't wait to jump back in! Now, fingers crossed we just don't have another 'Error 37' at launch.
Push Square - Khayl Adam - 9 / 10
Diablo 4 is the true successor to the bad old days of action RPGs and oozes quality in its frenetic combat and deep, engaging character development. It tells a complex, gritty narrative set in the darkly beautiful world of Sanctuary. Even better, it provides a solid foundation for years of Diablo content to come.
Screen Rant - Carrie Lambertsen - 4.5 / 5
Ultimately, Diablo 4 is a must-play experience for any fan of dungeon-crawler ARPGs.
Sirus Gaming - Kimberly Mae Go - 9 / 10
Diablo 4 presents an epic and visually stunning adventure, enveloping players in a cinematic journey through its immersive open-world. While some areas, like repetitive dungeons and class imbalances, leave room for improvement; Blizzard has laid a solid groundwork that sparks excitement for further exploration of the vast realm of Sanctuary.
TrueGaming - Arabic - 9 / 10
Diablo IV brings you a captivating story, a lot of freedom in your class building and a massive world full of monsters to pulverize and dungeons to explore that will keep you playing for lots of hours to come.
Twinfinite - Zhiqing Wan - 4.5 / 5
An incredible looter experience overall. I cannot overstate just how satisfying it is to play Diablo IV on a moment-to-moment basis, and with so much replay value to be had from its various classes and build possibilities within those classes, Diablo IV feels like a true return to form for the series.
We Got This Covered - David Morgan - 4.5 / 5
Diablo IV tows several lines masterfully, be it in its mechanical complexity or the moral ambiguity of its plot. Its greatest achievement, however, is being a great Diablo game.
GAMES.CH - Steffen Haubner - German - 89%
The irresistible gloom is now no longer opposed by hurdles in the form of confusing item and skill management. We enthusiastically throw ourselves against Lilith's hordes and once again sink hour after hour into perfecting our character. Overall, however, there could have been a bit more innovation.
Geek Culture - Jake Su - 8.6 / 10
The worry remaining is that the balance needs to be struck well in order to maintain Diablo IV as a viable and long-lasting adventure that doesn’t lose its freshness or that the incessant rush to get more powerful gear becomes a chore rather than a thrill. At this juncture, there’s much for players both old and new to dive into, making combat and exploration exciting times, all while pushing the story forward in a new chapter for Sanctuary. The hope is that this will last, and that Blizzard will continue to support the game in all ways. After all, Lilith is coming, and all hail the Mother.
DualShockers - Emma Ward - 8.5 / 10
Your favorite Action Role Playing Game is back and bloodier than ever. Diablo 4 improves upon nearly every core gameplay mechanic from Diablo 3 while introducing a few great quality-of-life features that make this journey to Sanctuary the best yet. While some of the quest systems seem dated, the main story is delivered beautifully, breathing new life into the series.
Everyeye.it - Antonello Gaeta - Italian - 8.5 / 10
Diablo 4 is a canvas on which developers could, over the next few months, paint a true masterpiece.
Gamer Guides - Nathan Garvin - 8.5 / 10
With a compelling new antagonist, a serviceable, character-driven story, and a familiarly satisfying gameplay loop with an incredible amount of depth, Diablo 4 is a worthy entry into the franchise that threatens to burn away many hours of your life.
PSX Brasil - Paulo Roberto Montanaro - Portuguese - 85 / 100
Diablo IV is, without a doubt, a great success that takes the best of its previous iterations, especially Diablo II, and takes advantage of the potential of an intense open world. With mechanics refined for today, hundreds of hours of gameplay, and the promise of an aggressive post-launch content, this game is the ultimate in the eternal battle between evil and… the other party.
Wccftech - Alessio Palumbo - 8.5 / 10
Diablo IV is a return to form at a much needed time for Blizzard. It delivers incredibly fun hack and slash action combat, a greatly improved skill system, and a ton of things to do, not to mention the best story told in the franchise yet. It also looks awesome, sounds great, and runs well (except for rare instances of traversal stuttering).
WellPlayed - Ash Wayling - 8.5 / 10
Diablo IV is a must-play for fans of the series and newcomers alike. It invites you to lose yourself in a world of darkness and embark on a thrilling journey filled with relentless battles, captivating storytelling, and a hauntingly beautiful audio-visual symphony. Just ignore the extraneous limb reaching for your wallet.
Xbox Achievements - Dan Webb - 85%
Diablo IV boasts a new look, with its new open-world and online format, but at its heart, it’s very much a classic Diablo experience. A little old-school still, sure, but the core combat is still as fun and addictive as ever, and there’s RPG mechanics for days to sink your teeth into. What’s not to love?
Destructoid - Timothy Monbleau - 8 / 10
Impressive efforts with a few noticeable problems holding them back. Won't astound everyone, but is worth your time and cash.
Digital Trends - Gabriel Moss - 4 / 5
Diablo 4's wealth of loot and meaningful customization systems make up for most of its frustrating MMO concessions.
GameSpot - Alessandro Barbosa - 8 / 10
Diablo IV's surprisingly moving and engrossing story encapsulates gameplay systems that have learnt all the right lessons from entries past.
Gameblog - French - 8 / 10
Diablo 4 is extremely generous. A clear evolution of the franchise and a real comeback.
GamesHub - Emily Spindler - 4 / 5
Diablo 4 is a behemoth of a game, boasting a gothic world that goes beyond the engaging hack-and-slash gameplay loop.
PlayStation Universe - Neil Bolt - 8 / 10
Diablo IV takes the series to new heights, but also spends plenty of time covering familar ground. The compelling rush for loot is as strong as it has ever been, and visually, the game is spectacular. It doesn't exactly feel like a massive leap from Diablo III yet its focus on the series' core strengths ensures that's likely more than enough for long-time fans.
Saudi Gamer - Arabic - 8 / 10
So far, the Diablo 4 experience has been nothing short of very good, the story has been very interesting and it finally returns to what distinguished the series in terms of storytelling before the release of the third installment. The game offered a very solid base of content, activities, addictive gameplay, and a variety of character-building ways that any Action RPG should offer. This is knowing that there are some important issues that appeared at the beginning of the experiment as we mentioned in the full review.
Shacknews - Josh Broadwell - 8 / 10
Blizzard opts for refinement over innovation with Diablo 4, but it's still a devilishly good time.
Siliconera - Kazuma Hashimoto - 8 / 10
Diablo IV features a compelling antagonist in Lilith, and while it tries to present more interesting ideas into the series by the way of story, it ends up retreading old ground in more ways than one.
VG247 - Connor Makar - 4 / 5
It's a damn good entry to the series as a whole, and will give the vast majority of its players a bloody good time.
LevelUp - Luis SĂĄnchez - Spanish - 7 / 10
Diablo IV remained stuck in the past while trying to find innovation without generating friction with fans who have played the franchise for over two decades; It feels like the ghost of Diablo Immortal continues to haunt the halls of Blizzard. The game is more of a reinvention of the classic experience, focusing on a games-as-a-service format to ensure another decade of content for Diablo.
Ars Technica - Aaron Zimmerman - Unscored
Each class has a gimmick-or "specialization"-that unlocks as you progress through the game. The Barbarian, for instance, can lug around a huge arsenal of weapons and gains "expertise" with each as you use them, granting buffs and special effects. The Necromancer can choose between different types of minions or sacrifice them to extract their power. The Rogue has three specialization options, one of which is a WoW-like combo-points system. Every class has its own personality and quirks, and they're all a blast to play.
Checkpoint Gaming - Elliot Attard - Unscored
Whilst Diablo IV could have done more to advance the genre or perfect its writing and tone across the entire experience, there’s no denying just how impactful this release is, especially for those of us who grew up alongside the series.
Console Creatures - David Pietrangelo - Recommended
Diablo 4 is an impressive and massive conquest of demons, loot, exploration, and wildly fun mechanics. It's already clear that this game brings tons of new content to the franchise and handles it incredibly well.
Game Informer - Marcus Stewart - Unscored
While it remains to be seen how the experience handles the incoming flood of players once the lights are turned on, I think Diablo fans, old and new, are in for a treat.
PC Gamer - Tyler Colp - Unscored
An exciting, modern version of Diablo is in here—I can see parts of it poking through the surface—but I'm starting to lose patience waiting for it to show its face.
Polygon - Alexis Ong - Unscored
More busywork doesn’t lessen the series-signature lootfest appeal
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Alice Bell - Unscored
Diablo IV is a beautiful, frictionless grey toybox that puts nothing in the way of you playing it for hours and wondering what you've done with your life.
SIFTER - Adam Christou - Worth your time
Diablo IV offers a strong opening impression. It has a rich, detailed story campaign, filled with spectacle and gore. Its combat and game-feel is so satisfying. The classes feel distinct and play quite differently from each other. It feels so good to burst down screens of demons with spells and swords. Will it live up to other competitors in the ARPG space? It’s too soon to tell, but what’s here so far is extremely promising especially for players looking to enjoy an impressive horror story.
Others from comments (may be duplicate)

Gaming Review Sites

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Non-English Reviews

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2023.05.30 11:47 Tomatough A summary of Diablo's lore

A summary of Diablo's lore
I made a comment summarizing Diablo's story for newcomers to the series some time ago. A number of people have since asked me to make a separate post out of it. With the release of Diablo IV just around the corner, I thought now was as good a time as any to do that.
Diablo's lore is extensive. I tried to trim it down as much as possible to hopefully make it understandable and not overwhelming. So, in a (relative) nutshell:
‎

The Eternal Conflict and the creation of Sanctuary

An eternal war rages between Heaven and Hell, consuming all of creation, with neither side being able to gain the upper hand. As products of order and chaos, angels and demons are eternally reborn. Stuck in a stalemate, both sides seek control of the Worldstone, an object of immense power formed from the creation of the universe. It is the cornerstone of all creation, able to alter reality and create life.
​
Angels and demons battle over the Worldstone
Both Heaven and Hell gain control of the stone throughout the ages, forming flawed worlds, all of which eventually whither.
One angel and one demon, Inarius and Lilith (daughter of Mephisto, the Lord of Hatred and one of Hell's three rulers) tire of the eternal conflict and run off together, taking an army of like-minded angels and demons with them. They manage to take the Worldstone and use it to create a world for themselves. This world is Sanctuary, essentially Earth.
The Worldstone becomes the heart of this new world. Inarius makes it so the stone hides Sanctuary from Heaven and Hell, and he draws on the stone's power to make himself more powerful.
In an unprecedented union, Sanctuary's angels and demons eventually have offspring, the nephalem. Half angel and half demon, they are the forebears of humanity, with the potential to be vastly stronger than angel and demonkind.
​
Inarius and Lilith watch over the nephalem
The nephalem's power creates division among Sanctuary's angels and demons. Some accept the nephalem, others fear them or believe their power could give away Sanctuary's location. Some start calling for the eradication of the nephalem.
Inarius sees the nephalem as abominations. Lilith sees them more as her children, but wants to use them as soldiers to end the eternal conflict. Because while Inarius believes escape from the war is enough, Lilith wants to end it. Inarius calls for a moment of reflection to decide on what to do with the nephalem.
Lilith knows she is no match for Inarius' power and can not forcefully keep him from killing the nephalem. Heading off his decision, she murders all the renegade angels and demons on Sanctuary, hoping it will force Inarius to spare the nephalem, as the alternative is to spend eternity alone.
Enraged, but unable to bring himself to to kill her, Inarius banishes Lilith to the void. Rather than kill the nephalem, Inarius attunes the Worldstone to weaken them. Each generation is born weaker, and so humanity is born. Over time the memory of their nephalem ancestry fades away.
Disillusioned, Inarius withdraws from the eyes of humanity.
‎

The Sin War

Eventually humanity harnesses the power of magic and ends up summoning demons, revealing Sanctuary to Hell. Sensing that a world of potentially powerful beings could tip the scales in their favor, Hell attempts to win humanity to its side. Rather than do it by force and risk alerting Heaven, they choose to create a religion, the Triune.
Inarius, though having little love for humanity, fears punishment from Heaven and similarly does not want Sanctuary or himself being discovered. To counter Hell's influence, he creates the Cathedral of Light. He installs himself as its leader in human guise, calling himself the Prophet. This sets in motion a secret war over who can win humanity as their prize, creating a rift within humankind.
Lilith eventually escapes. She returns to Sanctuary to bring the nephalem under her control. She manages to alter the resonance of the Worldstone to grant some of humanity back their nephalem potential. She takes the form of a beautiful noblewoman and tries to manipulate the first person to regain his powers, Uldyssian, to awaken the latent power in others as well.
​
Uldyssian ul-Diomed
Uldyssian is cruelly uprooted from his life as a simple farmer and turned into a reluctant prophet. He and those around him become the target of attacks by both the Triune and Cathedral of Light, the latter by order of an uncaring Inarius himself, leading to the deaths of many of Uldyssian's friends and loved ones.
A broken Uldyssian eventually comes to realize Lilith's deception. As she abandons all pretense, Lilith mockingly tries to shatter Uldyssian's worldview, revealing the true nature of Sanctuary, its religions and the existence of the Worldstone before disappearing.
Uldyssian manages to gain access to the Worldstone and uses it to lift the weakening effect on the nephalem, even empowering them further. Such is his strength that he inadvertently alters part of the stone in the process, something even Inarius could not do or reverse. This causes Sanctuary to become visible to Heaven.
Uldyssian marches on both religions with his awakened followers. They wound Lilith, allowing Inarius to banish her again. They then turn on Inarius, who is seething with rage over an insignificant, unworthy man rising up to threaten him and his perfect world, intent on utterly destroying Uldyssian and his kin.
The battle between Inarius and Uldyssian is one of world-shattering intensity, fueled by the power of the Worldstone. During their fight, Uldyssian wills the Worldstone to sever its link with Inarius. As he is about to strike down Inarius, Heaven descends upon Sanctuary to contain what they see as a threat. The forces of Hell immediately follow. Uldyssian manages to awaken his full power, becoming for all intents and purposes a god. He drives Heaven and Hell off Sanctuary. But the immense surge of power coming from within him threatens to tear the world apart. To save Sanctuary, Uldyssian sacrifices himself, releasing his power and being into creation. The burst of energy floods the Worldstone, resetting it and stripping the nephalem of their power once more.
As the councils of angels and demons convene to decide the fate of Sanctuary, the archangel of Justice, Tyrael, moved by Uldyssian's sacrifice, casts the deciding vote to not destroy Sanctuary, but to erase humanity's memory. A pact is made to keep humanity out of the eternal conflict to develop on their own, allowing them to eventually pick a side themselves.
Mephisto, the Lord of Hatred and one of the three Prime Evils that rule Hell (consisting of the brothers Diablo, Mephisto and Baal), agrees in exchange for Heaven turning over Inarius, who is subsequently tortured and disfigured, remaining a captive of Hell for all eternity.
​
The Prime Evils Diablo, Mephisto and Baal
‎

The Dark Exile

Despite the pact, the Prime Evils still plot to influence humanity to use them in the war against Heaven. Their focus on winning over humanity instead of fighting Heaven directly angers the Lesser Evils, the four other lords of Hell, who believe the Prime Evils have become afraid to continue the war. A civil war erupts, and the Prime Evils are overthrown. They are banished to Sanctuary, bodiless and weakened. The Lesser Evils hope that by unleashing the Prime Evils on Sanctuary, Heaven's focus will shift to Sanctuary, leaving Heaven open for attack.
Even in their weakened state, where they have to possess mortals to gain physical form, the Prime Evils bring chaos and destruction, corrupting and twisting the world. Scores of demons still loyal to them flock to their side.
Upon learning of this, Tyrael intends to imprison the Prime Evils within three soulstones, made from shards of the Worldstone. Despite being forbidden to interfere with Sanctuary, Tyrael forms an order of powerful human mages on Sanctuary called the Horadrim.
After decades of searching and fighting, the Horadrim manage to trap all Prime Evils in the stones. They hide and seal the stones away on Sanctuary, guarding them for all eternity. Mephisto's soulstone is hidden under a temple of the Zakarum religion. Baal's is entombed under the desert sands. And Diablo's soulstone is hidden under a Horadric cathedral.
​
Tyrael holds one of the soulstones
However, all was not as it appeared. Before the Prime Evils were banished to Sanctuary, one of Tyrael's lieutenants, Izual, had been captured during an assault on Hell. He was turned into a servant of Hell, divulging the existence and workings of the soulstones to the Prime Evils. The three allowed themselves to be banished to Sanctuary and captured, planning to corrupt the stones from within and spread their corruption to the Worldstone itself. With this they hoped to enslave humankind and its nephalem potential, using them to retake Hell and fight Heaven.
With the Prime Evils trapped, the Horadrim lost purpose. And with too few sons to replenish their ranks, the order fell apart over generations.
‎

Diablo I

A town eventually forms near the cathedral under which Diablo's soulstone is sealed: Tristram. Unguarded, Diablo is free to corrupt the soulstone and spread his influence to the townsfolk. He manages to corrupt the archbishop Lazarus, who is compelled to descend into the cathedral and shatter Diablo's soulstone. Free, but weakened, Diablo searches for a vessel to take physical form. He attempts to possess the ruler of Tristram, king Leoric, but only drives the king mad in the process.
Eventually Diablo picks an easier target: the king's youngest son, prince Albrecht. The boy is kidnapped by Lazarus and taken into the catacombs beneath the cathedral. There Lazarus inserts the soulstone into the boy's forehead, allowing Diablo to take over his body and twist it into his own demonic form. Diablo starts turning the cathedral into an outpost of Hell, feeding on the terror of the townsfolk to grow stronger.
The king's eldest son, Aidan, descends into the catacombs to find his brother and dispel the evil besetting Tristram. He is aided by the townsfolk and the town elder, Deckard Cain, scholar and last descendant of the Horadrim, though he has little knowledge of them. Though Deckard does not know it yet, his vast knowledge will aid the heroes defending Sanctuary many times throughout the decades.
Aidan eventually finds Diablo and defeats his mortal form, but is shocked when Diablo's body disintegrates, leaving behind the lifeless body of his younger brother.
With Diablo's soulstone broken, Aidan inserts the stone into his forehead, hoping to contain Diablo's essence within himself instead. But he is unable to fight Diablo's will. He is possessed and compelled to seek out Diablo's brothers to free them from their soulstones. Aidan sets out on his journey, becoming known as the Dark Wanderer.
​

Diablo II

Through the Dark Wanderer's actions, the Prime Evils eventually escape the stones, marching on the location of the Worldstone.
This is where the player comes in. The hero(es) defeat the manifestations of the three Evils. But not before Baal, the last Evil to fall, manages to corrupt the Worldstone. Tyrael determines that the only course of action is to destroy the stone, shattering it with his sword and plunging Sanctuary into ruin.
With the heart of the world destroyed, Sanctuary becomes visible and vulnerable to outside forces again. The shards of the corrupted Worldstone, still imbued with the power to shape time and creation, are thrown across Sanctuary, creating demonic corruption and fueling conflict over them. With the Worldstone gone, some people regain their nephalem powers.
​

Diablo III

In Diablo III it is revealed that a member of the original Horadrim went rogue and created a black soulstone in secret, capable of trapping not just a single Prime Evil, but the essence of all Prime and Lesser Evils and even angels. He intended to use it to unlock humankind's full potential as nephalem, ushering in a golden age for humanity. And more importantly, to make himself even more powerful. He was defeated by his former Horadric brethren, but the soulstone remained. Over the course of the three games, all seven Evils fall, and their essence becomes trapped in the black soulstone.
In Heaven, Tyrael is rebuked by the Angelic council for interfering with the mortal world. As the aspect of Justice, Tyrael blames Heaven for hiding behind the pact to not interfere with Sanctuary, leaving humanity to fend for itself.
Imperius, ruler of the council, archangel of Valor and a proponent of destroying Sanctuary, becomes enraged with Tyrael, and the two come to blows. Deciding that he can no longer stand by Heaven's laws, Tyrael tears off his wings and renounces immortality. He is cast out of Heaven, falling to Sanctuary in mortal form, his memory initially gone.
It is also revealed that 20 years earlier, after the events of Diablo I, Diablo had used the body of Aidan to conceive a human daughter, Leah, on Sanctuary in secret. Leah is unaware of who her father is. She is taken in by Deckard Cain, who she comes to regard as her uncle.
​
Deckard Cain and his ward, Leah
Using Leah as his vessel, Diablo is resurrected from within the black soulstone. With the essence of all the other Evils now fused within him, he becomes the sole Prime Evil, the most powerful demon in existence. He assaults the High Heavens, overpowering the angels and their council. In the end, he is defeated by the nephalem player character(s) with the aid of Tyrael, who has regained his memories. Tyrael takes his place in Heaven once more, but now as a mortal, becoming the archangel of Wisdom and vowing to stand with humanity.
However, despite the defeat of Diablo, the black soulstone remains, the essence of the Evils still trapped within it. The stone corrupts Heaven from within. Only Tyrael, now mortal, realizes the corrupting effect, as the angels are too blinded by arrogance to see faults in themselves.
Tyrael seals away the stone on Sanctuary with a newly reformed Horadrim order, but is ambushed by Malthael, the former archangel of Wisdom, who had grown increasingly disturbed and disappeared after Inarius and Lilith stole the Worldstone.
Malthael sees humanity as a product of demonkind; the only weapon Hell still has after the destruction of the Worldstone and the fall of Hell's rulers. He believes that by wiping them out, he can make Heaven victorious in the eternal conflict. He takes the black soulstone and restyles himself as the Angel of Death. He starts purging humanity, destroying most of humankind. He plans to use the stone to capture all demonic essence on Sanctuary, including the part of humanity that is demon, killing everyone.
​
Malthael, the angel of Death
The player nephalem manages to overpower Malthael, causing Malthael to break the black soulstone and absorb the power of the seven Evils. This is still not enough, and Malthael is defeated. His death releases the spirits of the seven Evils once more. Tyrael becomes fearful of the power of the nephalem protagonist, afraid of what might happen should they ever turn evil.
​

Diablo IV

Diablo IV is set fifty years later, in a broken world where much of humanity is gone and Heaven and Hell are licking their wounds. Lilith has been summoned back into Sanctuary, and Inarius has somehow managed to escape Hell, longing to be accepted back into Heaven. How he returned to Sanctuary and why he appears to be fine remains to be seen.
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2023.05.30 05:36 skeriphus On the Nature of Sorcery: Chapter 0.2 — Tea Time.

Motivation — A Close Reading of Tea Time

"I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking: maybe six feet ain't so far down?"
Nimander Golit
Chapter V of Weathered
2002 BS
Click Here for the Introduction to the essay series.

Prelude to the Close Reading

Why, hello there, again. It’s been a few weeks but I promise that this endeavor is still moving forward. For those that don’t know, this essay is a part of a collection I’ll be putting together which investigates the Eleint, their blood, and sorcery within the Malazan shared secondary universe. We’re still laying down our foundations, and today we’ll be covering a sequence of scenes in Chapter 8 of Toll the Hounds.
My intentions were to cover all of the scenes in a single post, but that has proven itself to be difficult. As such, I’ll cover the first scene in this sequence in this post. There’ll be one or two follow-up posts.
There are ten scenes that are in this sequence:
  1. Nimander 1
  2. Desra 1
  3. Desra 2
  4. Skintick 1
  5. Desra 3
  6. Nimander 2
  7. Desra 4
  8. Kedeviss 1
  9. Nimander 3
  10. Kedeviss 2
I’ll be approaching these scenes (including the one discussed today) through a few lenses.

A ringing of bells.

In his musings on writing, Erikson discusses the notion of a bell. I’ll let him speak for himself.
In the scenes we’ll be looking at, some of the bells that I believe are used are (and not all of these are represented in this first particular scene):

Existentialism.

Particularly the genealogy of continental philosophy that led to Sartre’s existentialism and the shared/adapted/bifurcated philosophies of his contemporaries (such as de Beauvoir, Camus, and Merleau-Ponty). This wasn’t my initial intention when I decided to use this sequence of scenes as a launch pad into my collection of essays. However, the beauty of close-reading is that you go into a text with a hypothesis seeking evidence and support, and then end up with new insights.
Some of the concepts that will be brought up are:

Genre conventions as grammar.

Particularly, we’ll look at Erikson’s use of genre conventions from the likes of Gothic literature and Weird Fiction — namely the Sublime, cosmic horror, and the Weird — as the subtle language used to convey tension that is congruent with some of the other subtexts. If these grammars are subverted, we’ll try to point that out too.
We will later delve more into Malazan’s literary genealogy in other essays, but I want this lens to be present during the reading to see how Erikson aligns or subverts these genre conventions.
We’ll be using Professor Michael Moir’s YouTube lectures on Weird Fiction as reference.

What the fuck is happening?

This is a question about plot that I will answer at the end of all of the scenes, but keep it in mind as we go through. It has less to do with existentialism and Gothic literature and more on what Gothos was trying to do during these scenes.

Pre-TtH Context

We first meet Nimander and his siblings (unnamed) in House of Chains on Drift Avalii. By Bonehunters, they had left Drift Avalii and ended up at Malaz City, where they then joined Tavore Paran’s fleet while fleeing Malaz City. In Reaper’s Gale, we find the siblings had been ‘adopted’ by Sandalath while they traveled to Lether with the Malazans. Phaed wanted to kill Sandalath. Nimander stopped Phaed from killing Sandalath. Withal (Sandalath’s husband) throws Phaed out a window. The murder is taken as a suicide. The siblings intern Phaed and then meet Clip, who offers to lead them to Anomander in Black Coral via Kurald Galain.
This gets us to Toll the Hounds, where Nimander is being haunted by Phaed. They’ve left Kurald Galain and are now on Genabackis (but not yet to Black Coral). Nimander fears the future meeting his father and the rest of the Tiste Andii. The siblings and Clip ‘stumble’ on Morsko, where Clip is curious about its cult of the Dying God. A ritual takes place there. Nimander and Skintick are nearly enthralled, but are saved by Aranatha (and thus Mother Dark herself). The group then find Clip, who is in a coma. They collect him, and set off in a wagon to follow the Dying God’s priests to Bastion. Along that journey, the siblings stumble upon the High King, Kallor, who reluctantly chooses to not kill them and instead travels with them.
The sequence of scenes in Chapter 8 that we’ll be discussing follows some time after Kallor joins the siblings.
Now that the administrative stuff is out of the way, let’s dive into the first scene.

Nimander 1

Rum-induced memories.

We start this sequence thrust into Nimander’s introspection on ‘rage’ as a breaking of a vessel, impossible to fix. He recalls Deadsmell’s musings that ‘rage in battle’ was a gift while the two drank rum. Rum that awakened memories once ignored by Nimander.
(Note: in Scene 2, we’ll see Desra’s view of Nimander, and we’ll see that Nimander’s ruminations on rage here are what inform Desra’s view of him, and not in the way that Nimander’s doubt imagines.)
In the previous post, we discussed memories and their decay. So much of this series and the lore surrounding it is driven by the memories of ancient beings. Nimander is younger with respect to ancient beings (but ancient nonetheless), and even he struggles with his memories. Perhaps this is a result of the traumas he’s experienced with respect to his being in diaspora and perceived abandonment by his father (a symmetry itself with Rake’s — and the Tiste Andii as a whole — relationship with Mother Dark).
He recalls the rum lighting “a fire in [his] brain, casting red light on a host of memories gathered ghostly round the unwelcoming heart.” He reminisces on the time after Kurald Galain (but before Drift Avalii) and his father’s emotional indifference. He recalls the pranks him and his kin would pull on Endest Silann; the arrival of Andarist and his arguments with Anomander. It is unclear what the arguments were — if you’ve read Forge of Darkness, you might be able to infer what’s likely, but I’m curious if the argument is Andarist asking to take the siblings and Anomander refusing, or Anomander asking Andarist to take the children and Andarist was reluctant? Was the argument about Anomander thrusting the Hust blade, T’an Aros/K’orladis (i.e., Vengeance / Grief), onto Andarist or did Andarist already possess the blade? We don’t know exactly to my knowledge, but it’s fun to speculate.
Regardless, Nimander recalls, like a certain inscribed hearthstone, there was peace. Andarist was to take them all through a threshold, a portal elsewhere (as mentioned, portals end up being a rung bell, so pay attention). Nimander remembers Endest’s weeping as the children were pulled through a “portalway into an unknown, mysterious new world where anything was possible.”
Andarist raised the Tiste Andii children on that portal’s other side, on Drift Avalii. We know (or can infer) that this was a task to protect the Throne of Shadow, but Nimander and his kin didn’t understand this as children. But Andarist led them with his pragmatism, he ensured they learned how the world was. With our knowledge of Kharkanas, this is so powerful. We know Anomander’s hubris was abused as a motivating factor for Hunn Raal’s despicable acts. We know that Andarist likely lacks children of his own in response to this, and so his taking on guardianship over the children of his brother — that very same brother that rejected Andarist’s grief in favour of vengeance (and materialised in the T’an Aros/K’orladis dichotomy) — is a stark, challenging, and ultimately selfless decision.
But this pragmatism created child soldiers. The collision of reality’s necessity to survive and carry out the duty of protecting the Throne of Shadow came at the expense of what little remaining childhood innocence Rake’s brood still had (even as a people on the run, exiled from their home due to a sociopolitical schism). Andarist became a stern teacher, juxtaposed to the echoes of Endest’s gentleness. “The games ended. The world turned suddenly serious.” Nonetheless, the Tiste Andii siblings grew to love Andarist.
Nimander continues his introspection:
See a bored child with a stick — and see how every beast nearby flees, understanding well what is now possible and, indeed, probable.
This reminds me of a general rule of advice: ‘never fuck around when a child has gun.’ Tiste Andii or not, children can be cruel especially when mixed with unknown doses of trauma and violence. Regardless, I want to call attention here that this notion of children and beasts are each bells rung. To Nimander, Andarist “unleash[ed] them, these children with avid eyes.” He “had made them good soldiers,” ones that know rage.
Vessels broken.
As such, from his own experience, Nimander suspects that the Dying God is a child. He speaks to the dialectic between gods and their worshippers (another bell rung):
The mad priests poured him full, knowing the vessel leaked, and then drank of that puerile seepage. Because he was a child, the Dying God’s thirst and need were without end, never satiated.
The group stumbles on desiccated bodies staked among fields: dried up, tapped of their libations. This speaks to a particular exploitation between mortal and god, symbolised literally as worshippers feeding a god to then become the harvested. This perpetuates the Dying God’s power to accumulate more worshippers via addictive kelyk. The language here shows that the Dying God has stumbled upon a sort of cheat code, an exploitation of the god-mortal dialectic that allows him and his priests to arbitrage power. Like a cancer that, via the law of large numbers, is equipped with the mechanisms to divert a body’s resources to it while it slowly destroys the body.
The scarecrows being in fields is such a perfect choice of this analogy: things to be harvested. A product, a commodity — a thing with both use-value and exchange-value, for our Marxians out there. I believe Erikson has said that he was thinking of oil here, and that is fine by itself, but I do like the mirroring to Eucharistic transubstantiation in Catholicism (due to my being a very-very-lapsed Catholic). Especially with wine, an extremely addictive substance, transcending into God’s blood to cleanse us as cannibalistic sacrament.

Dal Honese burial practices.

Nimander sees these fields as “bizarre cemeteries, where some local aberration of belief insisted that the dead be staked upright, that they ever stand ready for whatever may come." This makes him recall some shipwrecked Dal Honese on Drift Avalii. He thinks on the ancestor cult and burial practices of Dal Hon: literally constructing their homes with their dead in the walls as both material and essence, the building stretching out with additional rooms as time moved on and kin died.
This reminds me of the Neolithic proto-city, Çatalhöyük, found in Anatolia within modern-day Türkiye where ancestors have been found to be buried beneath platforms in living quarters. See: Chapter 6 of The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow.
With or without intention, I like to view this ritual via an existentialist lens, particularly Sartre’s notion of the Look. To Sartre — in contrast to other phenomenologies — being is in flux, some path of a given chaotic double-pendulum switching to and from poles of being-in-itself***\**1* and being-for-itself***\**2*. The Look, to Sartre, is a sort of symmetry breaking — a realisation by being-for-itselves that decentralises it, the sudden awareness of its being an object, an Other, to Other consciousnesses.
A heuristic often used to showcase Sartre’s notion of the Look (or Gaze) is that of a voyeur peeping through a keyhole into someone’s room that hears a noise down the hall. Regardless if that noise is from another person (another being-for-itself) or not (say, the house settling), the subjective voyeur suddenly objectifies themselves, collapsing the chaotic pendulum from being-for-itself (nothingness as "no thing-ness") to their facticity — their being-in-itself, their thing-ness — whose meaning to Other being-for-themselves is relative to a separate centre than the voyeur’s own.
To Sartre, the resulting anxiety experienced snapping from subject to object is a proof against any nihilistic approach to solipsism. The fact that we can Other our own being-for-itself means that we can also recognise being-for-itself external to us since those we Other too can Other us as we Other ourselves. The reflexivity as a result of the Look is evidence against solipsism to Sartre.
As a result, this Dal Honese practice is a cultural self-burdening via Sartre’s Look by literally having your ancestors clay-filled bodies decentralise your subjectivity and externalise you as an object that can be judged by its facticity. This results in a sort of collective Dal Honese being-for-others, Sartre would argue. This isn’t inherently good or bad to existentialists, but it does necessitate a calculus that discerns if the living descendants are authentically expressing their freedom with each moment they accept this practice, or if they are living in bad faith.
Regardless, though, this is a haunting of the Past. This haunting isn’t something that is only important to existentialism or other philosophical traditions (such as post-structuralism — see: Derrida’s hauntology), but to the genre conventions and tropes of Gothic horror and its descendants (such as cosmic horror, weird fiction, and their influences on sword and sorcery, etc.).
There are mappings (some more subtle than others) between the Sublime and the existential anxiety and dread experienced in phenomena similar to the Look. The experience of looking upon the vastness of the sea, of stumbling upon an ancient statue, of learning of the size of the universe — which are described as the Sublime, the Weird, or Eldritch in some literary traditions (e.g., Romantic, Gothic, Horror, the Weird, etc.) — are the same experiences that are often analysed in continental philosophies using words such as angst/anxiety/despaiabsurdity/alienation.
Nimander goes on to further expose the relationship between this Dal Honese ancestor cult and inter-tribal conflicts that lead to deaths and stolen bodies that leave physical voids in Dal Honese architecture. He muses how this physical representation of wounds begets a cycle of vengeance (a cultural tradition, a product of facticity and bad faith): “blood back and forth,” he says. He mentions that this cycle is what pushed the shipwrecked Dal Honese from their homes, an act of revolt and perhaps even authenticity to Sartre. Eventually the Dal Honese recovered and “paddled away — not back home, but to some unknown place, a place devoid of unblinking ghosts staring out from every wall.”
I love that Erikson has this whole little short story in this scene, especially in the contrast of its being some rum-induced reflection by Nimander on his own past’s haunting of him and his siblings. Moreover, these Tiste Andii are travelling with Kallor, the Undying Unascendant: a being-for-itself that literally manifests the past’s haunting on the present — a man cursed, jaded, who carries the past with him wherever he travels. All of these together show that one’s freedom can have one flee (even be redeemed — which balances with other plotlines in TtH), but that doesn’t necessarily — nor sufficiently so — annihilate the past.

Finding a tower.

After this, Nimander’s reminiscing is interrupted by his hearing Kallor nearby (like a footstep in a hallway). Kallor comments on the use of the corpses and notes that the flora “[is] not even native to this world, after all.” Nimander replies that the corpses are being used for saemankelyk. The mention of the plants not being native to this world should orient the reader back to the Weird, especially since it brings upon a sense of unease, an Othering — the house settling that again serves to reduce both Nimander and the readers to our thing-ness
‘The past’ versus ‘the present’ versus ‘the future’ (and their hauntings of one another) bubble up again with some banter between Skintick and Kallor about the state of things. Kallor states ‘nothing changes.’ Skintick counters ‘it keeps getting worse,’ to which Kallor claims is but an illusion.
I find this dialogue to be a comical little conflict between Kallor’s perceived-postmodern, nihilistic judgement of the state of things being inert versus Skintick’s pseudo-Rousseauian, inverted-Hegalian, modernist grand narrative of things getting worse.
Again, it alludes to a haunting of the past on the current generation. Interestingly, this is a trend within the Book of the Fallen in general: not as an espousing of the ‘old vs. young’, but Erikson’s decentering/challenging/deconstruction of that binary. Think of Raest in GotM; Menandore, Sukul and Sheltatha in RG; Karsa in HoC; the Witness trilogy. He does this via a sort of Ancient's Hubris colliding with its differences to the Present’s Ingenuity, and this being dual to the Present’s Naivety colliding with the Ancient Wisdom.
Kallor eventually hits a sore spot with the Tiste: he brings up Rake. Unlike the Dal Honese whose freedom had them flee the cultural practices of letting their ancestors haunt both literally and figuratively, Nimander and his siblings were pulled/pushed away from their father (and people) as children — by what very well could be their father’s request. The Tiste siblings are haunted by Anomander’s active absence. Their continued distance from their father isn’t an act of expressing their freedom against an Ancestor’s Gaze — it isn’t an act of revolution — it is their facticity and a source for their Othering of themselves. We often see this from Nimander’s POVs up to and including this sequence.
Kallor sniffs out this weakness and presses upon the wound. Nimander gets flustered and retorts. To which Kallor responds:
'Anomander Rake is a genius at beginning things. It’s finishing them he has trouble with.'
Damn, Kallor.
Also, I didn’t need my ADHD called out so harshly, dude. What the fuck.
Without diving into what Erikson was dealing with while writing this book, this hits hard for Nimander, and is an interesting commentary nonetheless. His father, Anomander, is the leader of a diasporic people who’ve been without home, without a centre, for 400,000 years. I think Kallor’s words hurt Nimander so much because the Tiste siblings don’t know Anomander’s current plans nor have they experienced the "settling-down" from the unveiling of Kurald Galain in what is now Black Coral. They are unaware of Rake’s teleology for his people, for himself even. Regardless, we see again and again that Kallor isn’t just a strong skirmisher, his words cut nearly as well as his blades.
Kallor goes on to confirm that he knows Rake before the group notices a ruined tower among the alien plants and scarecrows. Kallor says its Jaghut. Kallor trudges forth indifferently, pushing corpses out of his way as he bee-lines it to the ruined tower. I don’t think such a sequence of action has ever described Kallor’s whole raison d’être and modus operandi so well: just a man seemingly indifferent to the corpses in his path as his will pulls him forward.
We get a small interaction between Skintick and Nimander that reveals Skintick’s acuity in reading Kallor’s take on Rake. Kallor sees their father as an equal (it isn’t just the readers that need to be keen to subtext, characters do too).
Skintick offers the idea of sicking Kallor on the Dying God, hoping he “decid[es] to do something for his own reasons, but something that ends up solving our problem.” I like the use of “deciding to do something for his own reasons,” as this aligns so well with authenticity in existentialism (and the absence of some absolute morality for authenticity).
As Nimander approaches the tower behind Kallor, both Nimander and the readers get a great sense of horror, the weird, the uncanny, and the sublime with how Erikson describes the scenery:
Drawing closer to the ruin, they fell silent. Decrepit as it was, the tower was imposing. The air around it seemed grainy, somehow brittle, ominously cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.
The highest of the walls revealed a section of ceiling just below the uppermost set of stones, projecting without any other obvious support to cast a deep shadow upon the ground floor beneath it. The facing wall reached only high enough to encompass a narrow, steeply arched doorway. Just outside this entrance and to one side was a belly-shaped pot in which grew a few straggly plants with drooping flowers, so incongruous amid the air of abandonment that Nimander simply stared down at them, disbelieving.
Nimander notes an incongruity of this place — its aesthetic of abandonment juxtaposed with a curated garden. “The cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.” This evokes a certain unsettledness to Nimander (and thus, the reader). These genre conventions are sources of tension and anxiety, similar to non-diegetic violins building up to a real or false jump-scare in a slasher flick.
Arrogantly, Kallor chooses to go out of his way and insult the presumed Jaghut within the tower. Classic Kallor. The Jaghut replies “nothing changes,” resulting in Kallor shooting Skintick and Nimander a “pleased smirk.”

Tea time, but before falling into a rabbit-hole and not after.

Before Kallor can announce himself, the Jaghut lists off Kallor’s titles, his facticity. Kallor’s reputation precedes him and there’s an asymmetry here in which the Jaghut knows who Kallor is but Kallor doesn’t yet know who the Jaghut is. This is our first hint that this meeting isn’t serendipitous, and is instead an intentional interaction with regards to the plot. And if this Jaghut knows of Kallor, does he know those who Kallor travels with? Who is this Jaghut’s intended audience among those options?
I also like the play here with facticity: the Jaghut lists out things about Kallor, but is Kallor some sum of those thing-nesses? How many are true, how many are manufactured myths? It’s an act by this Jaghut to Gaze upon Kallor, to show to Kallor that he’s being seen. It’s a deliberate tactic to destabilise and decenter Kallor: an offensive.
We as readers are informed of Kallor’s limitations from the Azathanai curses via Draconus, K’rul and Nightchill, but these limitations on Kallor don’t necessarily restrict his freedom until Kallor allows them.
We get a flash of Jaghut humour and guest rites — this ancient dismisses Kallor while inviting everyone in for tea. Interestingly, Erikson has this Jaghut use the proper noun of ‘Others’ which lends me to think that an existentialist lens hasn’t been the worst pick (not that ‘Othering’ is strictly existentialist by any means).
So, we’ve had corpses drained dry for kelyk, alien plant-life, a ruined tower of an unknown age stumbled upon beyond the urban, a preternatural creature to Nimander and his kin (something they’ve maybe only witnessed a handful of times) and then we get this description:
The air of the two-walled chamber was frigid, the stones sheathed in amber-streaked hoarfrost. Where the other two walls should have been rose black, glimmering barriers of some unknown substance, and to look upon them too long was to feel vertiginous — Nimander almost pitched forward, drawn up only by Skintick’s sudden grip, and his friend whispered, ‘Never mind the ice, cousin.’
Ice, yes, it was just that. Astonishingly transparent ice–
I love this. First: “it was just that” screams “no it isn’t” to anyone paying attention to the words Erikson is using to make the reader uncomfortable. We know: Jaghut + Ice = Omtose Phellack. The atmospheric setting here is directly being called out in not just a sublime way, but his description has an added layer of horror to Omtose Phellack.
Erikson uses “vertiginous,” giving both Nimander and us a sense of vertigo, being decentred and unoriented. This isn’t too different from descriptions found in works like Vandermeer’s Annihilation or other New Weird authors. This ice wall calls to Nimander, draws from him feelings of unknown when he’s caught himself staring for too long — emphasis on staring.
For all intents and purposes, this ice wall is a thing, a being-in-itself, neither active nor passive. But its effect on Nimander is similar to the Dal Honese ancestors’ Gaze — this ice wall objectifies him, calls to him, evokes his being-for-others, and emotionally alienates him. The pull Nimander feels is his submitting his being-for-itself with the freedom of those that Gaze upon him. A justification of his facticity, his bad faith. This will be important later.
Eventually we get this awesome line from the Jaghut host:
’Once, long ago, a wolf god came before me. Tell me, Kallor, do you understand the nature of beast gods? Of course not. You are only a beast in the unfairly pejorative sense — unfair to beasts, that is. How is it, then, that the most ancient gods of this world were, one and all, beasts?’
There’s so much going on to unpack in this paragraph.
Later, again, we get this Jaghut saying Others as a proper noun, and then the Others are called Tiste Andii.
‘Ah, and what of the Others with you? Might not they be interested?’
Clearing his throat, Skintick said, ‘Venerable one, we possess nothing of worth to one such as you.’
‘You are too modest, Tiste Andii.’
‘I am?’
'Each creature is born from one not its kind. This is a wonder, a miracle forged in the fires of chaos, for chaos indeed whispers in our blood, no matter its particular hue. If I but scrape your skin, so lightly as to leave but a momentary streak, that which I take from you beneath my nail contains every truth of you, your life, even your death, assuming violence does not claim you. A code, if you will, seemingly precise and so very ordered. Yet chaos churns. For all your similarities to your father, neither you nor the one named Nimander — nor any of your brothers and sisters — is identical to Anomander Dragnipurake. Do you refute this?’
Above, the Jaghut goes on to describe genetics, but also calls out the fact that they are children of Anomander — dude definitely knows more than he’s leading on, that’s for sure, and is winking directly to us readers, seemingly going over the heads of both Kallor and the Tiste. Also, the bit about chaos in blood will come up again and again in later scenes and later essays.
Moreover, we see that the Jaghut says that which he scrapes "contains every truth of you, your life, even your death" — our genetics are facticities, among our thing-nesses. "Yet chaos churns," the Jaghut rebuts. That chaos in our blood is a source of our "no thing-ness," from which we may express our freedom against the determinism of genetics — of facticities — and transcend.
For each kind of beast there is a first such beast, more different from its parents than the rest of its kin, from which a new breed in due course emerges. Is this firstborn then a god?’
I love this for two reasons. One, it speaks to a criticism of the assumption that a prime-mover is necessarily divine. But, through the existentialist lens, it’s a challenge and criticism of the presumed Authority of Genealogy. Jumping back to the early musings on ancestry: if ancestors haunt us and dictate our facticity as a result of suppressing our being-for-itself, then where does that chain of dictating/suppressing end? And is that terminus also an Authority above all generations below it just due to its being something new, something sufficiently different from its own genealogy, its ancestors ‘behind’ it?
I also like the subtext of trauma as hereditary here with the double entendre behind ‘beast’, we can think of this Jaghut as asking if the primordial source of generational trauma has authority over its descendants? What does this dialogue mean for Nimander and his siblings and their place with respect to their father and the rest of the Tiste Andii people? Does this inform an analysis of Nimander’s chaotic double-pendulum between being-in-itself, being-for-itself, and his being-for-others?
A huge thing I would like to point out here, too, is that neither Skintick, Nimander, nor Kallor have used the Tiste Andii’s names, yet this Jaghut knows them by name. Kallor could deduce they were Rake’s children, but he didn’t know their names. Even though Skintick showcased an acuity to subtext when considering Kallor’s opinions of Rake, he doesn’t catch onto this subtlety. This Jaghut not only knows of Kallor, he knows of Nimander and his siblings. The evidence that this meeting isn’t serendipity continues to build.
‘You spoke of a wolf god,’ Skintick said. ‘You began to tell us a story.’
‘So I did. But you must be made to understand. It is a question of essences. To see a wolf and know it as pure, one must possess an image in oneself of a pure wolf, a perfect wolf.’
‘Ridiculous,’ Kallor grunted. ‘See a strange beast and someone tells you it is a wolf — and from this one memory, and perhaps a few more to follow, you have fashioned your image of a wolf. In my empires, philosophers spewed such rubbish for centuries, until, of course, I grew tired of them and had them tortured and executed.’
This sequence of dialogue is fantastic and reminds me of arguments foagainst the strong/weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis/es. We see the Jaghut musing on a seemingly prescriptive Platonic idealism that Kallor interrupts with a more descriptive, pragmatic, empirical framework in which he follows with a jest of torturing and executing philosophers (remind me to never live in the Kallorian Empire).
Kallor speaks as if his words contradict the Jaghut and show the assumed idealism to be wrong. But, by Kallor’s own argument, the Jaghut’s words of ‘pure’ and ‘perfect’ are just as empirically contingent to one’s memories as ‘wolf’ is. The combinations of signs and symbols language users use give flesh to those signs’ and symbols’ own meaning — but bury that meaning beneath the flesh by doing so. The concept of a ‘perfect wolf’ (i.e., ‘perfect’ + ‘wolf’) emerging from one’s own contingency with the notion of ‘perfect’ and ‘wolf’ is entirely possible without that imagined ‘perfect wolf’ being actually some idealisation, i.e., some Platonic Perfect Wolf.
The Jaghut responds with laughter to Kallor’s absurdity: both in his misinterpretation of the Jaghut’s musings as well as the nature of Kallor’s brutal reaction to those that question things he finds to be rubbish. This pairs well with Skintick’s future POV in this sequence, but the contrast between Kallor and this Jaghut is entertaining nonetheless. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish when Kallor is telling the truth about his brutality or if his mutterings are just words congruent to his reputation.
The two then have a pissing contest. We find out the Jaghut was in disguise — I don’t have the evidence or time here to say, but there are ideas that this particular Jaghut is a d'ivers and it is fucking awesome even if untrue. The discussion here points to some T’lan Imass’ Jaghut War. It being the Kron, I’m inclined to wonder if there is a relationship with the bones Karsa stumbles upon in HoC (where he and his war party find Calm).
Skintick squatted to pick up two of the cups, straightening to hand one to Nimander. The steam rising from the tea was heady, hinting of mint and cloves and something else. The taste numbed his tongue.
Don’t take candy from strangers tea from Jaghut, people.
We find out that Raest is this Jaghut’s child. We find out that this Jaghut took on 43 T’lan Imass and a Bonecaster, killing them all. This is a threat rallied back against Kallor’s assertion that he’s killed Jaghut.
Teeth bared, Kallor bent down to retrieve his cup.
The Jaghut’s left hand shot out, closing about Kallor’s wrist. ‘You wounded that wolf god,’ he said.
Oh shit. What follows is one of the first times I can recall that Kallor is scared. Contrast with his earlier treatment of Rake as equal.
'Oh, be quiet, Kallor. This tower was an Azath once. Shall I awaken it for you?’
Wondering, Nimander watched as Kallor backed towards the entrance, eyes wide in that weathered, pallid face, the look of raw recognition dawning. ‘Gothos, what are you doing here?’
‘Where else should I be? Now remain outside — these two Tiste Andii must go away for a while.’
The revelation: the Jaghut is none other than the Lord of Hate himself, Gothos. You can understand why Kallor, always so arrogant, submits to Gothos and listens to his instruction.
Immediately after the reveal, Skintick and Nimander succumb to the effects of whatever extra ingredient Gothos had slipped into their tea. We get this final sequence:
Nimander’s eyes were drawn once more to the walls of ice. Black depths, shapes moving within.
He staggered, reached out his hands–
‘Oh, don’t step in there–’
And then he was falling forward, his hands passing into the wall before him, no resistance at all.
‘Nimander, do not–’
Blackness.
Again, the readers eyes are drawn along with Nimander's to the icy, abyss-like, objectifying, Gazing threshold. Here's where the sublime and the weird really flavour the setting in this scene.
There's a bell’s echo here from the start of this scene: this sequence starts with Nimander discussing the uncertainty related to moving through a portal with Andarist away from the rest of his kin, a breaching. During these final lines of this first scene, we get a tension between us and the unknown, between what has happened and that-which-is-to-come, between what we’ve imagined about Malazan’s cosmos and some contorting of those assumptions. What’s beyond the veil decentres not only Nimander in its draw and pushing him to being-for-others, but it decentres the readers too. Hic sunt dracones, terra incognita, the sublime, the enigmatic, the terror. We’re made to feel small and inconsequential by this icy threshold.
It isn’t mysterious because it evades our Gaze like other fantastical things (e.g., many renditions of some archetypal tricksters found within various folklores), instead it invites our Gaze eventually since It Gazes back (almost Nietzschean).

Thoughts

Calling back to the genre conventions, this extended scene is one that definitely plays with the established conventions of Gothic literature and its descendants. Constantly, Erikson hits us with tension sewn into his choice of words in Nimander’s ruminations, his angst associated to diaspora, the notion of Dal Honese ancestors gazing upon their descendants from clay walls, absent ancestors that too haunt the same, the fields of scarecrows as desiccated (and harvested) bodies of worshippers, the alien plant-life, the ancient Jaghut tower, the ice threshold. Each of these (and those unmentioned) add onto to the dissociation (de-centering) of both Nimander and us, the readers. Each of us seem small and inconsequential to the dynamism of the cosmos: everything we know, including that of what we already know about the Malazan universe (and our own) can be challenged. We’re each just travellers who have stumbled upon a shattered visage in the desert that reads: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
This stands in contrast to — almost a revolution against — the modalities one can garnish from the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment that favour an almost religious rationalism and positivism. This is why I believe (and hope I have shown) that the existentialist (and those schools of thought peripheral to it) lens is apt. The genealogy of Gothic literature serves as a grammatical sandbox that gives way to exploring the things that existentialism tries to frame in its study, such as the dread and anxieties — the nothingness (no thing-ness) — of being.
Not only are the Dal Honese clay-filled ancestors present to alienate the reader by entertaining a certain ‘exoticism’ (by the readers’ juxtaposing such practices against what we consider ‘normal’ — here's where Sartre is applied to White or Male Gazes), but they are there as conduits for understanding how Nimander is affected by Others, by their Looks — his siblings, his absent father, his dead uncle, Kallor, Gothos, and the icy threshold — even if this ‘othering’ is one done only by Nimander onto himself (the house settling perceived as a footfall). This becomes more important in the scenes that follow.
So, how does this relate to the Eleint, dragonblood or sorcery? If you want to know now, please read ahead in the text — i.e., he future scenes in this sequence in Chapter 8 of TtH — you’ll find out. Otherwise, I’ll attempt to provide more clarity in the follow-up post(s). Until then, I just want put forth some questions:
Beyond those questions (which align with my grander narrative shared in this collection of essays) — in regards to the plot, I think it is smart to continue asking, ‘why has Gothos ensured that Anomander’s children and Kallor would stumble upon his tower?’
1 the facticity of what can be understood as objective states ascribed to things, including social constructions — thing-ness — e.g., how things are thrown into the world, a mode of existence that simply is, the contingent being of ordinary things, such the language(s) one speaks, one’s occupation, etc.
2 the mode of existence of consciousness that stands in contrast to being-in-itself, “no thing-ness”, that which negates being-in-itself
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2023.05.30 04:45 xenathechaotic_ [Routine Help] Cosrx Snail Mucin Essence vs Dual Essence

Which one do you prefer?
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2023.05.30 04:12 90dayfianceallday SOS Sick pea puffer - new tank syndrome?

SOS Sick pea puffer - new tank syndrome?
I’ve wonly had my two pea puffers in my 10 gallon for 3 weeks. I planted the tank and filled it 2 weeks before I got fish and tried to cycle it a few days before I added fish with Nutrafin cycle. I’ve done water changes once per week, about 40% of the water. I believe I made a terrible mistake 2 weeks ago when I changed all the filter media at once when I did my water change 🥲.
Both fish were fat and eating super well when I got them. For 1.5 weeks now, Zucchini has had trouble eating. At first he would try to eat and spit out bloodworms, now he tries to eat less and less. I added snails to the tank too last week, but he’s not interested in them at all.
I haven’t treated them for parasites because pet stores legally can’t sell them here, only vets sell them, and no vets near me treat pet fish… but they were healthy at the store for 3 weeks before I bought them, and he was healthy when I got him. If anyone knows websites that will ship to Quebec, let me know 😅, but it may arrive too late. But I’m honestly less sure that that’s my problem.
I should have done a water test way sooner, I did my first one today. My pH is good (7-7.5), ammonia good (0.1), BUT NITRITES VERY HIGH (1.6-3.3). I couldn’t evaluate the nitrates because the high nitrites affect the results. I’ve got new tank syndrome 🥲 I did multiple water changes today until the nitrite test was less high, and I’ll continue with a 20% water change every day until the test comes back ok…
I also noticed today that Zucchini’s left gill is very very inflamed (see photos)… so I guess that’s why he won’t eat ☹️ Can toxic nitrite levels do that? Or did he get a bad wound from being bitten by his tank mate? Has anyone seen their pea puffer like this? Anything else I can do to try to help him? #savezucchini
submitted by 90dayfianceallday to PeaPuffers [link] [comments]

2023.05.30 02:25 ImaginationSea3679 Arxur Nursery Chapter 21

"How could this happen to me? I made my mistakes, got nowhere to run..." - Simple Plan
We return to DRAMA!
I hope you enjoy.
Warning: the horny is present in this chapter.
————————————
Memory Transcription Subject: Odin, Failed Communicator
Date[Standardized Human time]: December 11, 2136
...
...
How could this happen to me?
Not only did I manage to clam up and tell two lies and a truth, rather than two truths and a lie, but my shot at confessing to Yalga had missed.
I had aimed my shot. I took time to steel my nerves. I made my body language very obvious to her, showing her that I was about to reveal something. I balled myself up and looked her in the eyes, giving her as much of a passionate gaze as I could. I then said it with honesty, laying it out as plain and simply as possible to ensure my chances of hitting...

...and it MISSED!!!

How?! How did I miss such a well prepared and precisely aimed shot?!
...
Okay, maybe it's not just me. Maybe Yalga just... wasn't expecting me to be so blunt about it. I hit the ball too hard, in essence. That's fine. I just need to be a bit more subtle next time.
"Hey, ya alraight?"
I turned around to see Rokkan looking at me. He had a mouth deformity, most likely related to his old home life, that distorted his voice. For some reason the "accent" that he had gained was very similar to one of many human accents, and they gave him a hat that was stereotypical of the culture that accent was from.
Why do they call it a ten gallon hat? It's nowhere near big enough to hold ten gallons of... what even is a gallon anyway?
"Yeah, just, uhhh..." I struggled to form a proper response.
"Ya look laike ya've been in quaite the awkward susheation." He spoke.
"That's exactly what I have just gone through." I replied rather bluntly.
"Here you go." I heard a familiar voice say behind me.
It wasn't familiar in a good way.
I turned around to see Baroz holding out a packet of paper. It looked like it was a hand drawn "magazine". It's quality seemed to be surprisingly high.
"I promise that there is no really bad stuff in there. I tried to make it as positive and healthy as possible."
My curiosity go the better of me as I grabbed the paper and skimmed through the pages. I completely ignored the pictures and focused on the dialogue. It seemed like this was a scene between a genuinely loving and wholesome couple.
"Waoh, haow did ya draw so well?" I heard Rokkan say as he looked over my shoulder.
"When you whitness the beauty that I have, it will burn itself in your memory." Baroz spoke.
There is only one way to react to this.
I reached for the No-Horny Bat.
"No, Wait! Please-"
BONK
————————————
Memory Transcription Subject: Captain Olivia Denson, UN Military, American Branch
Date[standardized human time]: December 11, 2136
I smiled watched the almost teenage arxur get bonked after handing Odin that little paper stack.
Odin is such a precious boy. The ladies are going to love him when he grows up.
That thought reminded me of a rumor going around the troop. Apparently I was being shipped by some of the hatchlings.
Specifically, they were trying to pair me up with Oros.
It made sense in hindsight. I was the first human they ever met, Oros was their official caretaker, and we were of opposite genders.
I, however, wasn't exactly interested in arxur. I'm just not that type of gal.
I do know that there are people that would swing that way, and I was tempted to join the hatchlings to that end, but I restrained myself.
I was a captain. I need to be at least somewhat professional.
The jungle heat was getting to me though. I was sweating like crazy as of late. I need a more open set of clothes.
...
I wonder what's going on in Oros' head. He's been quite still for a while now, and he's been right next to me this whole time. He's also red all over.
------------------------
Memory transcription subject: Oros, Arxur defectoteacher
Date[standardized human time]: December 11, 2136
No thoughts.
Head empty.
Must purge the horny.
Must ignore sweet scent.
Must ignore the thickness.
Must not present in public.
First
Previous
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2023.05.30 01:30 roboIndyee Songbird-Chapter 6

Memory transcription subject: Fox Harris, UN Mechanized Infantry
Date[standardized human time] October 8, 2136
I was back.
I remember the Gojid homeworld like the back of my hand. It was honestly beautiful, and I could've seen myself vacationing there if not for the present circumstances. The area of the planet we had landed in reminded me of Italy, the yellow/green flora was bright enough to make my eyes squint, making drop my sun goggles over my face, sitting snugly between the bottom of the helmet's rim and the cheek guards attached to the helmet's built-in comtacs.
I looked to my left and saw SPC. Thomas and CPL. Ramirez, two dudes i had joined the UN with a few years back, they were wearing the same colors I was, albeit with different pouches and gear scattered over their vests, the black NVG/thermal goggles raising off of their helmets made them look like some sort of fucked-up unicorns stomping through the tall grass as we made a patrol around the wall of the city we had just occupied. Thomas kept taking those dumbass pictures on his holopad, claiming what we were doing was a historical event. It certainly didn't feel that way. It felt like a mess. When we arrived at the gate, we were met with carnage unlike anything I had seen before. The Gojids had trampled each other when they heard of our advance, when we had gotten to the gate entrance we saw broken bodies scattered across the town square. I had walked over to one, seeing if there were any signs of life from the motionless alien.
I wish I hadn't.
His face had been kicked in and his body completely trampled. blood pooling near his open mouth and nose as his lifeless eyes gazed forward towards the city gate. I turned away, feeling nauseous. Knowing that that was once a person, a sentient being with a life, maybe a family, it was almost too much at that moment. Ramirez called for me and I walked over briskly, stepping around one of the corpses littering the ground.
"You alright bro?"
"Yeah, Yeah just checking. Thought i saw that one moving."
"You sure you're alright?"
"I will be."
We started a recon of the outer wall, hoping to do a full loop around the city within the hour. My rifle was in the low ready, we hadn't run into much tough opposition, mostly just potshots from treelines or the occasional spray of automatic fire which made all of us hit the dirt and put suppressive fire on the location the whistling projectiles were originating from. Luckily the hedgehogs couldn't shoot for shit for the most part, but they'd been getting closer which was starting to worry me. Usually we'd have been safe, riding around in our armored vehicles but CMD saw fit to dismount us and stick us in the middle of fuckin' nowhere patrolling some random city with nearly no tactical importance. Sounds about right.
I was feeling the most powerful sense of Deja-Vu as I felt something punch me in the gut like a fucking sledgehammer. I fell backwards as I looked at what had hit me.
Blood.
Too much blood.
I touched the wound with both hands and felt nearly my entire stomach missing, torn flesh and ripped clothing were all that met my fingertips as my digits were soaked in my life essence, spurting from the ragged hole. I croaked and spluttered as i felt hands on me, i looked up to see Thomas and Ramirez looking at me with abject horror, their eyes wide in surprise as i felt tears of pain and fear run down my cheeks and soak into my mask, their hands holding me, unable to do anything else but hold me as i was filled with an all-too familiar pain.
nonononononoNONONO
The scream that erupted from my mouth as I shot up out of bed probably startled half the hospital building. I felt my stomach, my fingers dancing over my body. Everything still felt in place. I lifted my gown. The only evidence of anything wrong was a patch over my upper right abdomen. Other than that, not a scratch.
I felt very real tears fall down my face as I rolled onto my good side. I buried my face in the pillow, tucked my legs into my chest and began to sob. I pulled at the covers of my hospital bed, tears and snot streaming from my face as i turned my face into the bed to soften the noises i made, if not for the people in the building around me but for my own sake, to not hear myself sob so loud it would hurt my ears.
I was crying so hard i could feel myself start to get nauseous when I heard the door open as someone entered my room, most likely to make sure everything was alright after my blood-curdling scream. I didn't care, I was a mess. I sucked in a ragged breath and continued to bawl my eyes out as I felt a tiny paw brush my hair and hold my shoulder, a weight sagging the bed beside me. I couldn't tell you how much of a difference that little gesture made. I could feel my heart slow, my breathing became less labored, and though the tears flowed, I became less hysterical, more calm as I slowly drifted back to sleep, the paw still brushing my hair as I slipped back into an uncertain unconsciousness.
(End of chapter)
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2023.05.30 00:23 iamdeletosh Firat Inaugural Address by President Bola Ahmed Timubu

My Fellow Citizens,
I stand before you honoured to assume the sacred mandate you have given me. My love for this nation is abiding. My confidence in its people, unwavering. And my faith in God Almighty, absolute. I know that His hand shall provide the needed moral strength and clarity of purpose in those instances when we seem to have reached the limits of our human capacity.
This day is bold and majestic yet bright and full of spirit, as is our precious nation.
As a nation, we have long ago decided to march beyond the dimness of night into the open day of renewed national hope.
The question we now ask ourselves is whether to remain faithful to the work inherent in building a better society or retreat into the shadows of our unmet potential.
For me, there is but one answer. We are too great a nation and too grounded as a people to rob ourselves of our finest destiny.
This nation’s journey has been shaped by the prayers of millions, and the collective sacrifices of us all.
We have endured hardships that would have made other societies crumble.
Yet, we have shouldered the heavy burden to arrive at this SUBLIME moment where the prospect of a better future merges with our improved capacity to create that future.
To the surprise of many but not to ourselves, we have more firmly established this land as a democracy in both word and deed.
The peaceful transition from one government to another is now our political tradition. This handover symbolizes our trust in God, our enduring faith in representative governance and our belief in our ability to reshape this nation into the society it was always meant to be.
Here, permit me to say a few words to my predecessor, President Muhammadu Buhari. Mr President, you have been an honest, patriotic leader who has done his best for the nation you love. On a more personal note, you are a worthy partner and friend. May History be kind to you.
For many years, Nigeria’s critics have trafficked the rumour that our nation will break apart, even perish.
Yet here we are. We have stumbled at times, but our resilience and diversity have kept us going.
Our burdens may make us bend at times, but they shall never break us.
Instead, we stand forth as Africa’s most populous nation and as the best hope and strongest champion of the Black Race.
As citizens, we declare as one unified people devoted to one unified national cause, that as long as this world exists, NIGERIA SHALL EXIST.
Today, Fate and Destiny join together to place the torch of human progress in our very hands. We dare not let it slip.
We lift high this torch so that it might shine on every household and in every heart that calls itself Nigerian. We hold this beam aloft because it lights our path with compassion, brotherhood, and peace. May this great light never EXTINGUISH.
Our administration shall govern on your behalf but never rule over you. We shall consult and dialogue but never dictate. We shall reach out to all but never put down a single person for holding views contrary to our own.
We are here to further mend and heal this nation, not tear and injure it.
In this vein, may I offer a few comments regarding the election that brought us to this juncture. It was a hard fought contest. And it was also fairly won. Since the advent of the Fourth Republic, Nigeria has not held an election of better quality.
The outcome reflected the will of the people. However, my victory does not render me any more Nigerian than my opponents. Nor does it render them any less patriotic.
They shall forever be my fellow compatriots. And I will treat them as such. They represent important constituencies and concerns that wisdom dare not ignore.
They have taken their concerns to court. Seeking legal redress is their right and I fully defend their exercise of this right. This is the essence of the rule of law.
Over six decades ago, our founding fathers gave bravely of themselves to place Nigeria on the map as an independent nation.
We must never allow the labor of those who came before us to wither in vain but to blossom and bring forth a better reality.
Let us take the next great step in the journey they began and believed in.
Today, let us recommit our very selves to placing Nigeria in our hearts as the indispensable home for each and every one of us regardless of creed, ethnicity, or place of birth.
My supporters, I thank you. To those who voted otherwise, I extend my hand across the political divide. I ask you to grasp it in national affinity and brotherhood. For me, political coloration has faded away. All I see are Nigerians.
May we uphold these fitting and excellent notions as the new Nigerian ideal.
My fellow compatriots,
The Nigerian ideal which I speak of is more than just an improvement in economic and other statistics. These things are important; but they can never convey the fullness of our story.
Our mission is to improve our way of life in a manner that nurtures our humanity, encourages compassion toward one another, and duly rewards our collective effort to resolve the social ills that seek to divide us.
Our constitution and laws give us a nation on paper. We must work harder at bringing these noble documents to life by strengthening the bonds of economic collaboration, social cohesion, and cultural understanding. Let us develop a shared sense of fairness and equity.
The South must not only seek good for itself but must understand that its interests are served when good comes to the North. The North must see the South likewise.
Whether from the winding creeks of the Niger Delta, the vastness of the northern savannah, the boardrooms of Lagos, the bustling capital of Abuja, or the busy markets of Onitsha, you are all my people. As your president, I shall serve with prejudice toward none but compassion and amity towards all.
In the coming days and weeks, my team will publicly detail key aspects of our programme. Today, permit me to outline in broad terms a few initiatives that define our concept of progressive good governance in furtherance of the Nigerian ideal:
The principles that will guide our administration are simple:
Nigeria will be impartially governed according to the constitution and the rule of law. We shall defend the nation from terror and all forms of criminality that threaten the peace and stability of our country and our subregion. We shall remodel our economy to bring about growth and development through job creation, food security and an end of extreme poverty. In our administration, Women and youth will feature prominently. Our government will continue to take proactive steps such as championing a credit culture to discourage corruption while strengthening the effectiveness and efficiency of the various anti-corruption agencies.
SECURITY
Security shall be the top priority of our administration because neither prosperity nor justice can prevail amidst insecurity and violence.
To effectively tackle this menace, we shall reform both our security DOCTRINE and its ARCHITECTURE.
We shall invest more in our security personnel, and this means more than an increase in number. We shall provide, better training, equipment, pay and firepower.
THE ECONOMY
On the economy, we target a higher GDP growth and to significantly reduce unemployment.
We intend to accomplish this by taking the following steps:
First, budgetary reform stimulating the economy without engendering inflation will be instituted.
Second, industrial policy will utilize the full range of fiscal measures to promote domestic manufacturing and lessen import dependency.
Third, electricity will become more accessible and affordable to businesses and homes alike. Power generation should nearly double and transmission and distribution networks improved. We will encourage states to develop local sources as well.
I have a message for our investors, local and foreign: our government shall review all their complaints about multiple taxation and various anti-investment inhibitions.
We shall ensure that investors and foreign businesses repatriate their hard earned dividends and profits home.
JOBS
My administration must create meaningful opportunities for our youth. We shall honour our campaign commitment of one million new jobs in the digital economy.
Our government also shall work with the National Assembly to fashion an omnibus Jobs and Prosperity bill. This bill will give our administration the policy space to embark on labour-intensive infrastructural improvements, encourage light industry and provide improved social services for the poor, elderly and vulnerable.
Agriculture
Rural incomes shall be secured by commodity exchange boards guaranteeing minimal prices for certain crops and animal products. A nationwide programme for storage and other facilities to reduce spoilage and waste will be undertaken.
Agricultural hubs will be created throughout the nation to increase production and engage in value-added processing. The livestock sector will be introduced to best modern practices and steps taken to minimize the perennial conflict over land and water resources in this sector.
Through these actions, food shall be made more abundant yet less costly. Farmers shall earn more while the average Nigerian pays less.
INFRASTRUCTURE
We shall continue the efforts of the Buhari administration on infrastructure. Progress toward national networks of roads, rail and ports shall get priority attention.
FUEL SUBSIDY
We commend the decision of the outgoing administration in phasing out the petrol subsidy regime which has increasingly favoured the rich more than the poor. Subsidy can no longer justify its ever-increasing costs in the wake of drying resources. We shall instead re-channel the funds into better investment in public infrastructure, education, health care and jobs that will materially improve the lives of millions.
MONETARY POLICY
Monetary policy needs thorough housecleaning. The Central Bank must work towards a unified exchange rate. This will direct funds away from arbitrage into meaningful investment in the plant, equipment and jobs that power the real economy.
Interest rates need to be reduced to increase investment and consumer purchasing in ways that sustain the economy at a higher level.
Whatever merits it had in concept, the currency swap was too harshly applied by the CBN given the number of unbanked Nigerians. The policy shall be reviewed. In the meantime, my administration will treat both currencies as legal tender.
FOREIGN POLICY
Given the world in which we reside, please permit a few comments regarding foreign policy.
The crisis in Sudan and the turn from democracy by several nations in our immediate neighbourhood are of pressing concern.
As such, my primary foreign policy objective must be the peace and stability of the West African subregion and the African continent. We shall work with ECOWAS, the AU and willing partners in the international community to end extant conflicts and to resolve new ones.
As we contain threats to peace, we shall also retool our foreign policy to more actively lead the regional and continental quest for collective prosperity.
Conclusion
This is the proudest day of my life. But this day does not belong to me. It belongs to you, the people of Nigeria.
On this day, Nigeria affirms its rightful place among the world’s great democracies. There, Nigeria shall reside forever.
The course of our past and the promise of the future have brought us to this exceptional moment.
In this spirit, I ask you to join me in making Nigeria a more perfect nation and democracy such that the Nigerian ideal becomes and forever remains the Nigerian reality.
With full confidence in our ability, I declare that these things are within our proximate reach because my name is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and I am the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
May God bless you and May He bless our beloved land.
submitted by iamdeletosh to Nigeria [link] [comments]

2023.05.30 00:00 SavingsSpare8104 NAIL WEAKENING AFTER REMOVAL OF GEL POLISH: WHY

NAIL WEAKENING AFTER REMOVAL OF GEL POLISH: WHY
The stability of your nails will be destroyed if you remove gel polish. Naturally, repeated chemical application to your nails tends to cause them to become progressively weaker. Gel nail polish is the same. Even though everyone would wish to maintain stunning, bright nails, neglecting to take proper care of them could endanger your nails.

1. Rushing to remove the gel coating

Nails should be removed with acetone, professional wholesale nail supply which functions like a gel-removal detergent. The majority of women, however, are frequently in a rush to remove the coating and end up opting for quick but risky techniques. Our nails then become even weaker as a result.
You run the risk of accidentally removing the top layer of the nail, weakening the plate, if you choose to remove the coating yourself rather than waiting for the necessary amount of time for gel dissolution. Follow a professional's instructions on how to remove the gel coating if you want to maintain strong, healthy nails.

2. Excessive use of nail polish

Give your nails a short break if you want them to regenerate healthily. Applying one gel polish after another is not recommended. Your nails and cuticles can be barely able to breathe and retain hydration after such a hard routine.
Like plants, nails only grow well when they are regularly hydrated and given oxygen to prevent drying out. Try hydrating them while you're taking a break using an effective hand lotion, an overnight mask, or even just by placing a hot, damp towel over your hand. Your nail layers will eventually become hard enough for another polishing session.
​
wholesale nail supplies for professionals near me

3. A mishandled soaking-off procedure

A foil dipped in acetone can improve nail polish removal. Wrapping the foil around your fingers to remove gel polish causes it to stick firmly to the nail plates over time. To avoid scratching the nail plate, the actual removal of the foil must be done carefully by a specialist, such as a manicurist. If the technique is not followed, it might make your nails brittle and weak, making them more prone to drying out.

4. Long-term use of the gel polish

Even though it seems unlikely, leaving your beloved gel polish on for too long might occasionally backfire. After removing the gel polish, you must give your nails time to recover and breathe.

5. In what ways does it harm your nails?

Consider a nail polish chemical remaining on your nails for an extended period of time and allowing bacteria to flourish as your answer. That's clear? Right! Replace your nail polish every two to three weeks. In essence, if the polish layer is left on for too long, it will start to lift, exposing large gaps for air and moisture to enter. The warmth produced by the coating, when combined, creates ideal circumstances for bacterial development. Your cuticle and the skin around your nails could therefore suffer as a result of this.

Conclusion

Consistent and deliberate nail care professional nail product suppliers is necessary. Depriving your nails of such crucial elements could potentially destroy them permanently. You wouldn't want your nails to become weak and brittle just because you neglected to carefully supervise the removal of your nail polish. The steps leading up to gel polish removal are as important and must be strictly followed. Polished nails are a vital component of attractiveness, and their wellbeing must be carefully monitored at all times. Please read my post on nail polish removers that include acetone and those that don't.
submitted by SavingsSpare8104 to u/SavingsSpare8104 [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 21:43 xXAdventXx Advent's Amazing Advice: A Most Potent Brew, A one-shot fully prepped and ready to go!

Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc. and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!
The Genius Creator of A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wolves of Welton, and To The End of Time is back at it again with another amazing One-Shot! A Most Potent Brew brings together a group of rookie adventurers on a classic adventure; clearing out a cellar from some rats. Things take an unexpected turn though and lead them to their first dungeon! This level-one adventure will take your players into the depths of a brewery, that turns out to be connected to an abandoned mage towers basement. Will your players survive their first adventure slaying giant rats, centipedes, and more?
Coming in at approximately 2 hours of play, this is the perfect one shot to show new players what D&D is all about, without overwhelming them with a 6hr+ sessions!
Thanks to this One-Shot's popularity, countless maps have been made. I took the time to collect the best ones that I could find. My notes currently work best for the original map and Alternate Maps 2 and 4; however if you would like me to adjust the notes to be able to run smoother with the other maps, please let me know in the comments below! If enough people are interested, I'll begin work on those immediately!
\Average Session Length: 1.5 - 2hrs*
Without further ado:
Included in The AAA Collection is:
Index:
Other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and More:
As always, If you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc. please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early feel free to check out my Patreon!
P.S. I just unlocked Yearly Subscriptions! If you'd like to unlock every piece of content I've ever released, get 2 months free, and receive exclusive Annual Member fully prepped One-Shots check this post out!
P.P.S. I've just started releasing my prep work for The next Mini-Campaign Dragons of Stormwreck Isle; by the end of the month, The Lost Mine of Phandelver will be moving from The Adventurer Tier to The Hero Tier on my Patreon. If you're looking to save money and would like to support me, consider subscribing now to receive the entire Lost Mine of Phandelver Prep!
Cheers, Advent
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As required by the subreddit here's the text; however, I highly recommend either using the google doc link or the Word doc in order to get the most up-to-date and properly formatted version including color coding! (Reddit is really weird with formatting and ruins it at certain points) Not only that, but you'll be able to leave comments right next to specific spots and I'll be able to easily update it!
P.S. As of about a month ago I'm no longer able to simply copy and paste my google doc into Reddit with all the formatting included. I have no idea why this has happened, if anyone has any advice please let me know. In the meantime click here for the fully formatted text.
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A Most Potent Brew
A Level 1 Adventure
Play Tavern Ambiance
As you all enjoy a pint of ale with your new found companions, you realize that none of you have properly introduced yourselves just yet.
Why don’t you each describe your characters
Perception Check (Highest Roll)
As you finish up chatting, you see the Bartender head over to the notice board and nail in a new flier
Upon taking a closer look at the flier, it reads: In need of those well-trained with a weapon to exterminate exceedingly large vermin, speak with Glowkindle at the Wizards’ Tower Brewery. 100gp reward (25gp per party member)
If players ask for directions
Persuasion Check DC 10
Advantage if they offer a drink
The Wizards Tower Brewery, oh that’s simple it’s a couple of miles out of town, just follow the dirt road and you’ll pass right by it.
Play Travel Ambiance
You follow the directions you’ve been given, trudging maybe a mile or two out of town along an old dirt road that winds its way up a low hill. As you near the top, a large stone building comes into view, flanked by a couple of barns. By the door is a brightly painted sign that reads ‘The Wizard’s Tower Brewing Co. For the Freshest Pint in the Realm!’
If Players walk right in (Play Alternate Tavern Ambiance)
You enter a building infused with the smell of hops and beer. It’s extremely clean and well-organized. A few humans and Halflings, dressed in white shirts and tight black trousers held up with green suspenders wander about, checking on barrels and vats of bubbling liquid with no sense of urgency.
A fairly young looking Gnome, who sports an impressive beard looks over to you.
GlowKindle: Yes, yes how may I help you? We’re not currently running tours right now.
After a moment of confusion you can see his face turn to a smile.
All those weapons are quite lovely, you don’t happen to be adventurers who saw my job posting do you?
Perfect! Well my name is Glowkindle, why don’t you come in and join me for a drink and I’ll explain everything!
If Players knock
As you knock on the door and wait a few moments, it’s eventually answered by a fairly young looking Gnome, who sports an impressive beard, as well as a white shirt and tight black trousers held up with green suspenders.
GlowKindle: Yes, yes how may I help you? We’re not currently running tours right now.
After a moment of confusion you can see his face turn to a smile.
All those weapons are quite lovely, you don’t happen to be adventurers who saw my job posting do you?
As you follow Glowkindle, you enter a building infused with the smell of hops and beer. It’s extremely clean and well-organized. A few humans and Halflings, dressed much like their boss wander about, checking on barrels and vats of bubbling liquid with no sense of urgency.
(Play Alternate Tavern Ambiance)
You continue your way to a small bar set up in the corner of the brewery where he offers you all a seat and begins to pour drinks for each of you
This is our Tashalar Pale Ale, it’s a nice hoppy summer ale. I hope you enjoy it.
Now onto business. I suppose I should start when this all began. We’ve been doing fairly well for ourselves and were looking to expand our operations. In order to do this, we first needed to expand their beer cellar.
We had some workmen down there, digging out some extra room, when they uncovered an old wall. As far as we could tell it may have been a remnant of some long-forgotten ruin.
Curious, we knocked a hole in the wall, only to be attacked by black rats the size of dogs! Big dogs too, not poodles, you know? Which emerged from the darkness on the other side.
We all managed to escape with nothing worse than a few cuts and bruises, but the cellars are completely unusable. If we have any hope of getting production starting again, we need the giant rat infestation dealt with.
Now that’s where you all come in. I’m not sure where the rats came from, but the brewery took its name from the old Wizard’s Tower that used to be on the site, so it may be something to do with that.
If you find out where they came from, take care of the infestation and make sure we won’t have any surprises like this in the future, I’d be willing to pay each of you 25gp
Players agree
I can’t thank you enough, follow me to the cellars.
Glowkindle leads you to a hatch in the floor of the main brewing area. Lifts it up and peers into the darkness below.
Play Dungeon Ambiance
Beer Cellar
The wooden stairs creak as you descend into the cool, dry air of the cellar, which is infused with the smell of beer and damp fur. Somewhere in the darkness you hear the scrabbling sound of claws on floorboards and a faint squeaking noise.
If players have darkvision or shine light
It’s difficult to make out the entire area at once, the floor is taken up by barrels and casks of beer. The only clear area is towards the far side of the cellar, which has a dirt floor littered with stones and workman’s tools.
You’re actually able to just make out make out the hole in the wall mentioned by Glowkindle as well
Enemies (Play Combat Music 1)
8 x Giant Rats
DC 10 Perception to spot or surprise round
After 5 die the rest will flee
As you tear down yet another vermin, you watch as the rest flee in fear through the hole in the wall…only to be greeted with screeches of pain moments later, followed by complete silence.
Mosaic Corridor
Through the hole in the wall you can see a dusty stone corridor, its floor lying around a foot below that of the cellar where you stand. Over to the left you can see the start of a staircase buried in collapsed masonry, earth and rubble that block the way completely. To the right the passage heads around a corner, but on the wall you can just make out what appears to be writing in a clear gold script.
When player asks about writing
As you make your way to the gold script you can see that the passageway continues to the left and ends with two doorways, one heading left and the other straight on. In front of you is a 20 ft. section of floor covered in a mosaic that depicts a rural scene. It shows the sun, the sky, a hillside, and a river. Each showing the scene at a different time of day. You also notice that two halves of a Giant Rat seemingly cut by a giant blade lie on the river section of the second panel.
The writing on the wall is engraved in a golden script that appears to be shining slightly, even in complete darkness. It’s written in Common and reads:
"Dawn breaks with stirring air, As sun shines down on new day fair
Answer = Air (Sky)
"Midday blaze bakes earth and grass, The farmer waits for heat to pass
Answer = Earth (Hill)
"Evening cool brings water, wine, Drink and laughter passing time
Answer = Water (River)
"Night sees shining, roaring fire, as wood and coals burn on the pyre"
Answer = Fire (Fire)
Players must stand on correct portion of each tile in order to not activate trap
DC 12 Dex Save or
1d10 Slashing damage
Activates each time player steps on wrong panel
Well Room
In the center of the small room ahead of you is a large stone well, topped with a wooden handle and the rotten remnants of a heavily frayed rope that descends into the shaft. In the far right corner, the ceiling has collapsed slightly, and a narrow shaft of weak sunlight shines through a narrow hole. To the far left is a plain wooden table, crusted with dirt and dust and laden with old plates, buckets and other strange pieces of tableware.
DC 12 Perception
You’re able to find that several of the old plates on the tables are made from tarnished silver.
Set of Silver plates – 50gp
If Players aren’t stealthing
3 x Giant Centipedes (Play Combat Music 2)
As you make your way through the room looking about, you begin to hear a scuttling sound from inside the well. In a flash the wood covering the well shatters. The first thing you see is antennas moving frantically from side to side, followed by a massive pincer-like mouth. As it exits you count 2, 4, 6, 10, 20, 50, 100 plus legs skittering all about, excitedly looking for its next meal and these 3 giant centipedes are quite sure they’ve found it.
Will attempt to knock player unconscious and drag them into the well
Well is 50ft deep, with 10ft of water that will break fall
The Lab
The door opens onto what might once have been a lab or workroom. To your left sits a moldering desk and the shattered remnants of alchemical glassware, while the center of the room is dominated by a set of tall bookcases arranged back-to-back. All around, however, are scorch marks and signs of countless small fires. The air is filled with the smell of smoke and burned meat. The wooden furniture is blackened and burned in places, while what may once have been a pile of books has been reduced to ash. Singed traces of what may be webbing hang from the ceiling. As you enter you feel something crunch beneath your feet - glancing down, you realize that it’s the charred hindquarters of a Giant Rat.
1 x Giant Inferno Spider(Adv on Stealth vs player perception) (Play Boss Music)
As you peer around attempting to find what could have caused all this damage, you begin to hear a scuttling sound just above you. You feel something drip on you and burn your skin. You look up to see what and as you do the entirety of the ceiling begins to glow, no…not the ceiling, the creature itself. What appears to be magma like blood courses through its veins of this 8 legged abomination that’s latched onto the ceiling. The tip of its abdomen glows brighter and brighter as it releases an onslaught of burning webs at you.
Roll for initiative
As you lay your final blow into this creature it lets out a screeching hiss, you’re unsure if it comes from the creature's pain or the steam escaping its body. Its legs slowly curl in on itself and all that’s left is the lifeless carcass of this mutated arachnid.
DC 12 Perception Check
Taking a look around you can see that most of the books and equipment are charred and falling apart rendering them completely unusable. However; there is one thing that stands out. A single book atop the bookshelf appears to be completely undamaged.
Spellbook
Contains: Detect Magic, Identify, and Arcane Lock
Storeroom
The rear wall of this small room is lined with sturdy-looking wooden shelves. Clearly these were once laden with bottles and glass vials, but over the years many of these have been reduced to glittering shards of glass on the floor. There’s a flicker of movement among the wreckage and you see a small black rat lapping up the last remnants of liquid left in the shattered remains of a dark blue bottle.
Perception check
Taking a closer look at the broken bottle that the rat is drinking from you notice that it has the torn remains of a white label affixed to it. The writing on it reads ‘-tion of enlargement’.
After one minute rat will turn into a Giant Rat and attack
Giant Rat x 1 (Play Battle Music 4)
You’re also able to find another smashed and empty bottle on the floor with a partial label reading ‘Essence of Fire Ele-’.
Lastly upon looking at the shelves you notice that a few bottles are still fully intact. There’s 3 bottles, each with different colors. One Red, One a clear liquid and finally one containing a greenish liquid.
Potion of Healing
Potion of Invisibility
Potion of Vitality
As you make your way back, following the reverse order on the mosaic tile trap and finally reaching the exit to the cellar, you see the bearded gnome pacing back and forth anxiously. Upon seeing your faces, his eyes immediately light up!
Play Tavern Ambiance
You’ve made it back I see, I heard so much noise down there. I’m so glad you’re all in one piece! Please, please, tell me what you found out. Here follow me I’ll have one of my workers grab us another round of drinks!
Questions he’ll ask if players take a while to recount things or are unsure what to say.
Were you able to clear out all of the vermin?
Do you have any idea what made them so large
Where did the tunnel lead you all?
Thank you all so much for your help, this is truly a day to celebrate! Not only is the cellar cleared, but there’s entire rooms that can be dedicated to storage down there. We’ll be able to expand and become the largest brewery on the Sword Coast!
As promised, here's your reward of 25gp each, I added a little bit extra for your trouble (35gp ea). Also any time you have the urge to wet your whistle feel free to drop on by. With what you were able to accomplish here today, I can tell you have a bright future as adventurers and I’d love to hear those stories!
With your first successful adventure, you all exit the brewery, excited for all that the future may hold. Will you continue on together and make a name for yourselves or was the constant threat of death, dismemberment and nearly being eaten a bit too much for some of you. Only time will tell, but those stories are for another time. For now you head back home a tad bit richer, slightly worse for wear, but with an experience you’ll never forget.
And that is where we’ll end tonight’s session!
Special Thanks
NihilVerum322X
Tim
James
And to all my Patrons!
Without your support, none of this would be possible! Thank you so much!!!
submitted by xXAdventXx to DnDBehindTheScreen [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 21:27 rambowwl 2 months and 4 days on differin!

2 months and 4 days on differin!
Alright so here are some significant progress! Started differin on 25th of march so I'm on month 2 of differin. The purge few days in and I'm still purging a little. The leftover ccs are still becoming pimples but they go quicker and less frequent. My purge was the worst around week 6-7. As stated also I made the mistake of taking a plab B just when I started, which gave me a huge huge hormonal breakout, I already have endometriosis and hormonal imbalances so it was not a good idea. I now use differin without the sandwich method, one day off and one day on so 3 times per week with one night bha . Here's my routine below.
Morning Cerave hydrating cleanser Cerave moisturising lotion( not tub) Inisfree sunstick ( I don't have spf anymore and I'm broke so I use my sun stick)
Differin night Garnier miscellar water Cerave hydrating cleanser Pat dry Apply differin Cerave moisturising lotion
Normal night Garnier miscellar water Cerave hydrating cleanser Cosrx snail mucin - damp face Cosrx propolis serum Cerave moisturising lotion
Exfoliation night Same as normal light but with Cosrx bha power liquid on dry face before the snail mucin.
I wanted to quit many times but kept through. I wanted to reach 3 months to take a decision. Now at month 2 and it's already much better, so keep going. Start slow and have patience. Use hydrating products on normal nights. Know your acne triggers as well. I have not reached 3 months yet, but i wanted to motivate those who are struggling like I was. So keep going, stay strong.
submitted by rambowwl to tretinoin [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 20:41 bobbiewaters [routine help] can someone please help me find balance

Hey guys, I’m 23 and have had acne for the better part of 10 years. When I was younger I was prescribed oral medications for acne, as well as retinoids and benzoyl peroxide washes and creams. About two years ago I started taking birth control, and this MAJORLY helped my hormonal acne.
Right now I feel as if my face will be clear for a few days and then I’ll have the most horrific breakouts for two weeks, rinse repeat. My routine was working for so long but then it slowly stopped working. I started adding all sorts of harsh (and not harsh) products to try and make something stick but I think I’ve made a bigger mess. I’m now getting acne in places I wasn’t getting anything before, and I still never fixed the original problem with my routine. Could anyone take a look at my routine and give me some advice for what to remove or product recommendations? I would appreciate more than anything.
AM - laroche posay hydrating facial cleanser (added 2 weeks ago) - the ordinary salicylic acid (in original routine) - cerave acne control gel (not in original routine) - cosrx snail mucin serum (not in original routine) - the ordinary hyaluronic acid (in original routine) - cerave daily moisturizing lotion (in original routine because cerave’s other moisturizers break me out)
PM - oil based makeup remover - laroche posay hydrating facial cleanser (2 weeks ago) - the ordinary retinol (in original routine) - Paula’s choice 2% BHA liquid exfoliant (added 2 weeks ago) - same serum as AM - same moisturizer as AM
I genuinely feel like this routine makes no sense and probably contributes to my acne, but I don’t know where to go from here. Please help if you can and thank you so much for taking the time to read this.
submitted by bobbiewaters to SkincareAddiction [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 19:49 Dr_Randall_Savage Fun speculation game: GUESS THAT NEXUS EVENT!

We know for sure that the multiverse contains more universes than the 616 universe. So I figured it would be fun to try and figure out how the various cinematic universes (that are now part of the multiverse) branched off from the Sacred Timeline. In essence, what was their nexus event? For example, what happened in the Raimi-verse that resulted in all the differences from the MCU? The best explanations will be the ones whose differences can all be traced back to a single change. I'll start by listing the observable differences from 616 in the various universes.

838 universe:

Raimi-verse:

TASM-verse:

Singer-verse:

Future-Past-verse:

Deadpool-verse:

Venom-verse:

The inversion of red and green in the 838 universe suggests to me that the nexus event occurred before the 20th century.
The difference in how electricity feels in the TASM-verse suggests that either the nexus event took place during the big bang, or else a major event occurred which affected the entire universe. Then again, it's possible that every universe feels different to Electro.
The Raimi-verse shares a bunch of common factors with the TASM-verse that neither one shares with any other branch, suggesting that one is a branch of the Sacred Timeline and the other is a branch of that first branch.
Apocalypse existing in 3600 BC in the Future-Past-verse means he must also be in the Singer-verse since the nexus event was Days of Future Past in 1973 and prior events wouldn't have changed. Aside from these two universes I'm not sure whether Apocalypse exists in other branches; if he doesn't then his existence in these two means that the Singer-verse branched from the Sacred Timeline in 3600 BC or before. It's possible that any ancient Egypt-related differences are a result of inteference by Rama-Tut.
I have frankly no clue how the Deadpool-verse and Venom-verse diverge. The post-credits for Let There Be Carnage suggest that Venom is familiar with Spider-Man but it's unclear how.
I could talk more but this post is already suuuuper long. What do you guys think?
submitted by Dr_Randall_Savage to marvelstudios [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 18:11 InvestigatorHead8853 Sebum build up?

I couldn’t get anything to show up on my skin with my phone camera, so I just googled this one. I have this same sebum build up all over my entire nose and the sides of it, the sides of my mouth, my chin, and between my eyebrows. I’ve been on 80mg of Amnesteem for 18 days now and this build up just started happening 3-4 days ago. It’s really bothering me because it looks horrible, especially since I’m also purging. Is there anything I can do about it, or is something I’m doing causing it? My current skin care routine is snail mucin, cerave moisturize, rosehip oil, and aquaphor. I use sunscreen during the day and I only wash my face at night with an oil cleanser + vanicream face wash
submitted by InvestigatorHead8853 to Accutane [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 16:51 fanficwriter1994 "Champion of Hyrule" Challenge Update

Note: This is an update on my challenge, since I had this idea brought to my attention. It kind of makes sense to me anyway.
You awaken, startled, and find yourself in a strange room with blue water flowing from up high, you standing in the center of a hexagonal platform with six other platforms, adorned each with a different symbol, at each of the points of your platform.
Standing on the platform with the yellow symbol you find a blonde woman who you would recognize to appear much like Princess Zelda from the The Legend of Zelda series, though none of them seem to match her appearance exactly.
"Greetings, traveler from another world." Speaks up the woman, smiling mildly at you. "I am Hylia, goddess of this realm and agent of the GOlden Goddesses who created it. I am sure you wonder how you got here or if this is even real, but I assure you, it is. I have brought you here on recommendation of a certain, impish deity from outside this realm, with a request." Explained Hylia and a lifts a hand to create a ball of light.
"I was granted the ability to host a, as your people call it, Jumpchain, and directed to take you on as a Jumper, as for why I am doing this, well... There hasn't been born a hero in this timeline. Link doesn't exist here." She sighs and shakes her head.
"For that reason, I have called on you, to take the role, so let me get to the actual rules next." She explains.
  1. You must take each Main Series Zelda game jump in chronological Order, as in the timeline chronological order.
I. Skyward Sword
II. Minish Cap
III. Four Swords
IV. Ocarina of Time
V. Majora's Mask
VI. Twilight Princess
VII. Four Swords Adventures
VIII.1 Adult Timeline/Downfall Timeline your choice
VIII.2 Wind WakeA Link to the Past
VIII.3 Phantom Hourglass/Link's Awakening
VIII.4 Spirit Tracks/Oracle of Ages or Seasons
VIII.5 None/Other Oracle game
VIII.6 None/Oracle of Scenario
VIII.7 None/A Link Between Worlds
VIII.8 None/Zelda 1 Gauntlet
VIII.9 None/Zelda 2
IX. Breath of the Wild (Final of this section of the chain)
  1. You may not use the Universal Drawbacks Supplement.
  2. You may only use standard Supplements such as Cosmic Warehouse or it's replacers, Bodymod as well as Housing, Dock and so on Supplements.
  3. You can choose 1 Drawback in a Jump when you make your build, it's negative effects are doubled but you may take it's CP into all other Jumps too, granting that CP the Drawback gave to your starting budget.
  4. CP carried over from Drawbacks are cut in half during Gauntlets.
  5. Companion Purchases and Imports are free of charge.
  6. If you hook up with somebody and have a child, it can become a Companion.
  7. You cannot quit the chain until you're done with all of the above jumps as well as one more additional Jump.
  8. You must take the role of Link and do his job.
  9. As Link, you must be Hylian though in the Adult Timeline you may choose to be one of the other races as that Link wasn't initially chosen but become the hero of his own volition, you carry the race choice into the Spirit Tracks Jump.
  10. Heart Container are a thing here too, but you will start each Zelda Jump with only the starting 3 heart containers. They work as damage sponges, keeping you save and healthy until they run out.
  11. You cannot take the Triforce between the Jumps of this section of the chain, if you as Link would have one of the Triforce aspects, fine, that is just part of the jump. But you cannot rip the Triforce of Power out of Ganondorf's stiff corpse after Twilight Princess and take it into Four Swords Adventures, sorry.
  12. During Gauntlets and Powerloss situations (Item or Perk loss) you may choose 10 Perks and 10 Items from the jumps listed above and take them along into those jumps but they're scaled down to local levels if they're too OP.
She took another breath, smiling a bit. "Naturally I won't demand this without further recompense after you save my world, naturally." She states and takes a last breath before running into the rewards for basically marathoning all of the Zelda Franchise:
  1. You will be known in future Jumps as "The Hero of Light", with all things dark and evil knowing you on sight and knowing that you have faced far worse than them in your time. This grants you the sort of treatment reserved for police officers as these beings know, you are the Immune System against their kind.
  2. You may take Generic First Jump, Generic Virgin and Generic First Gauntlet following this series of jumps. However, Gauntlet rules for powers are in effects in these jumps.
  3. You are granted the Triforce for real this time, though because of divine politics it isn't omnipotent outside the world of Hyrule. Once per year it can be used to grant a wish up to and incuding something on the level of restoring the Lorule Triforce or reviving the dead.
  4. The Triforce grants, for each of it's components, one of the following boons:
I. Power: Grants Immortality up to three times a Jump with only extreme damage from weapons that are explicitly powerful against you working. Also grants a x10 boost to all physical attributes.
II. Wisdom: Grants near limitless magical power, greatly increase intelligence, a x10 multiplier to the speed at which you're learning new information, as well as allowing you to grant your Perks to another person if they agree to it.
III. Courage: Never be frozen in fear, always able to react and act. You also have a strong will, able to withstand incredible hardships, resist attempts to break your will and even resist any and all efforts to possess you. Lastly, no amount of time can rust your blade, your skills will remain as fresh and well oiled as if you had been practicing nonstop for years. Lastly, if you would die for real, another you is born and the plot and your time in a Jump shall not continue until that you is at least 12 years old, which in Zelda terms means they're ready to kick ass and take names.
IV.1 Additionally, the three grant the following spells: Din's Fire: Create a powerful fireblast around you at base, may also be used as Pyrokinesis and heat control.
IV.2 Nayru's Wisdom: Create a bubble shield around you that lasts 3 minutes at base, may also create a panel or large dome shield of up to 50 meters in circumference. Attacks cannot penetrate this shield while it lasts.
IV.3 Farore's Wind: A Teleportation Spell, can bring you to any building you've been to or out of a building you're in, regardless of teleportation restrictions. Has enough range to reach the International Space Station in your world from the Mariana's Trench's deepest point.
  1. All of your Companions, gained here, share a Companion Slot, meaning that for the price of one Companion, all of them can be imported. However, they do not share the same companion stipend, instead each gets their own as separate companions with a +400 CP to any stipend they would get and another +300 CP for Item Sections and any special sections of a jump. Don't want your comrades getting held back, right?
  2. Weapon purchases and upgrades stack, all manual upgrades are also fiat backed. In essence, if you have several purchases of the L2 upgrade applied to, say, the Master Sword, each of them will multiply the power of said weapon.
  3. Fi, Sword of the Hero: The spirit of the Master Sword, Fi, has regained complete self-awareness and may manifest once more in physical form. I have integrated knowledge acquisition abilities into her that will work in all future jumps similar to how it worked in the time of Skyloft. She also imports separate from Companion Slots automatically with 800 general CP and 400 CP as a stipend for Item sections and other sections like that separate from Items or Perks. CP from importing her directly naturally stacks on top of that but not in the way of the other companions. Lastly, she can, like in Hyrule Warriors, assume the form of the Master Sword which she can manipulate telekinetically and has all the same upgrades and powers as your own strongest variant.
  4. The powers of the champions are now your own to command. Mipha's Grace, Daruk's Protection, Urbosa's Fury, Revali's Gale and Link's Time Dilation are all abilities you now possess on the same level as said champions, and yes, the time dilation is an actual ability, not just a game mechanic. However, Daruk's Protection doesn't work against electricity and can be broken through, and Mipha's Grace still takes some time to cast.
  5. Hyrulean Hero: You have earned the loyalty, friendship and in some cases love, of so many people in this world, why should we leave you to on with just a pittance of that? At will you can summon an army of Hyrule's various races of light, from Hylians to Koroks and Kokiri, of all the eras you have visited. They are equipped to the peak of their respective armed forces capabilities, Hylian Knights standing with Goron Warriors, Zora Pikeman flanking Kokiri Bowman and Gerudo Skirmishers preparing to charge in after Rito bombing runs, Sheikah Shinobi preparing to go in with an army of Guardians. Just be careful, this is still a medieval army, Guardians or not.
  6. (NEW) Companions can import into Generic First/Virgin Jump/Gauntlet with 1000 C to use and a Origin of their choice. They will come along with you through the levels of the Jump/Gauntlet, obviously.
Once again she took her time to breath through after the rant, before smiling at you. "So yes, please do your best to be the very spirit of the hero, I will await the day you finish. Ah, another thing: The various actions you can perform and the detriments that are listed, they all apply to jumps after the jumps here in this world, only that you don't need to continue into another Zelda Jump, if there are any left." She explains and smirks a bit.
"Naturally I wouldn't mind having one or more Zeldas coming along with you, I heard it is fairly entertaining when the fate of my world isn't at stake. Hint Hint."
submitted by fanficwriter1994 to JumpChain [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 16:42 littleisland_ [Routine Help] Tropical weather routine

[Routine Help] Tropical weather routine
Hi! I'm 19F with oily skin (mostly oily on the T-zone). I live in the Philippines so the weather is hot all year round.
I have established my own skincare routine and although they were helpful in diminishing my breakouts, I always seem to have 1-2 active pimples on my face (mainly pustules). I also get whiteheads although they go away immediately after a day or so. The rest of my face is smooth I'd say. I'm barely going out since it's school break so I doubt it's pollution.
Here is my daily skincare routine:
  1. KOSE Cleansing oil 🌙
  2. CELETEQUE Hydration facial wash ☀️🌙
  3. COSRX Propolis toner ☀️🌙
  4. COSRX Snail mucin 96 ☀️🌙
  5. ILLIYOON Ceramide ato soothing gel ☀️🌙
  6. BELO Sunsexpert sunscreen SPF40 ☀️
Twice a week, I use:
  1. THE ORDINARY Salicylic acid 2% 🌙 (started using this December 2022)
What do you think should be omitted from or added to my skincare? I was suspecting if the sunscreen could be the cause since it does have oil (but claims to be noncomedogenic), but I'm not sure since I also cleanse it with a cleansing oil at the end of the day. I ordered Good Molecules Retinol (0.1%) as well but I haven't tried it.
https://preview.redd.it/nfs62pwppt2b1.jpg?width=1055&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20a9c84083fdc5fc5deb57b8ab33fee89dbf03b7
submitted by littleisland_ to SkincareAddiction [link] [comments]