See the previous posts: https://www.reddit.com/JurassicPark/comments/1419mpy/jurassic_world_the_hegemony_of_biosyn_dominion/ https://www.reddit.com/JurassicPark/comments/142b35e/jurassic_world_the_hegemony_of_biosyn_jwd_rewrite/

Act III - The Gathering of the Clouds

Mia Everett
Visually confirming Rainn's revelation, Victoria is shown in a cage inside Amelia Everett's lab, within Biosyn's Citadel. Mia does her best to comfort the scared and depressed Achillobator and her motivations are explored shortly after. It's revealed that due to her experience within the team who made the Indominus and the Indoraptor, Biosyn tasked her with reviving InGen's IBRIS program by breeding raptors with high obedience potential. However, none of the achillobators cloned by Biosyn proved to be trainable enough for the program's ambitions (even though they attempted to mimic Owen's experience by having keepers being there at the animals' birth), which displeased Dodgson and the other higher-ups, who are now favouring another research team, who focuses on a more intrusive way of controlling dinosaurs. Basically treated as a second-class researcher amidst a rather toxic work environment, Mia became desperate enough to hire poachers to capture Blue, which she intended to breed with their achillobators in order to finally have trainable individuals. As Victoria is not sexually mature, Mia is in front of a considerable setback and fears that Dodgson will pull the plug due to her lack of results, especially in this troubled period for Biosyn.
The tying noose
The next day, the intel collected by the UN agents (people involved in the Black Market, Biosyn's connections with it) are sent to the nearby countries, including Italy, where an arrest warrant is launched against Kayla.
On his side, Isaac Gibbon is contacted by Bigelow who tells him about the debacle of their mission in Malta, saying that Claire and Owen saved the grey guards from disaster. He orders her to stay in Italy for the moment and wait for new orders. Shortly receives, he receives a candidate for a desk job in the DSD: It's Franklin. Gibbon tells Franklin he heard about his bravery during the 2019 incidents and his past connection with InGen (Before the DPG, Franklin worked for it as an IT Technician), before asking questions about Claire as he is aware that she collaborated with him not only on some occasions in the past few years but also in the 2019 Costa Rican incident, where Franklin was the couple's companion while they were running from InGen's agents and the authorities.
Dubrovnik
The inhabitants and tourists of the Croatian seaside city of Dubrovnik are surprised when a Biosyn Quetzalcoatlus descends upon the old town and starts attacking people. As a joke similar to one in TLW with the Japanese businessman and his reference to Godzilla, some extra could yell in Valyrian "I left Westeros because of this!" or "By the Seven, not again!" (Dubrovnik was one of Game of Thrones' filming location).
Ramsay's email
In a manner similar to the Hawaii attack scene in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla, the Dubrovnik scene cuts just as the Quetzal swoops on the bystanders and we are now in the bar of Biosyn's employee village. Wu is watching the news of the Dubrovnik attack on the TV (there is even a declaration from Zoe Murdoch, in which she denies the pterosaur came from Auronzo's Sanctuary and was probably created by a rival company who somehow put their hands upon Biosyn Quetzalcoatlus DNA. In the bar, someone whisper that one of their Quetzals did escaped from the valley thanks to the temporary deactivation of the invisible fence system and that Dodgson has launched an investigation to know who's responsible) when he receives a mysterious email from Ramsay, which includes the name of some woman. Wu search it on the internet and ends up on IMDB where he discovers that the adult "Charlotte" on the videos is actually an actress who lives in London.
Arrest
In Rome, early in the morning, Kayla is arrested in her flat by the police as she is accused of illegal smuggling.
Viscontini
Following all the incidents in the Alps, the clash in the Sabine Hills and the recent Dubrovnik attack, people gets pissed at Biosyn and protests occur in several locations, including Rome. In the Italian Ministry of the Interior, Viscontini has an argument with Pazzi, declaring that they need to take severe actions against Biosyn but the minister retorts that taking large-scale actions against the corporation might trigger a whole deal of undesirable consequences, including deteriorating US-Italian relations due to the close ties between Biosyn and the US government. He won't risk that just because of some rumours, weak proof and small incidents. Viscontini retorts that soon, Biosyn might have an angry mob showing at its gates with the goal of driving it out of Italy.
Following Vuillier's instructions, Claire, Owen, Nyamu and Dougal leave Malta the same day and fly to the Eternal City, where they have to meet Viscontini in the AISI headquarters. There, they have a video call with Vuillier. He and Viscontini wants to send the trio of WDMC agents to Auronzo Valley so they can infiltrate Biosyn's facility, find compromising information and transmit them to the Italian authorities, hoping to finally convince Pazzi and the rest of the government to take action against Biosyn. However, one of the agents points out that they will need an entrance ticket as one doesn't simply walk into Auronzo, since the borders of Biosyn's lands are guarded and monitored while some people disappeared after going too close from the Sanctuary (anti-Biosyn activists, reckless adventurers, Grendel Corporation's spies, others from the AISI's and Austrian government). Viscontini declare they might have that ticket.
We cut to Kayla in her prison cell. The guard announces she has visit and she is brought to a room where Viscontini and Dougal waits for her. The head of the AISI and the WDMC agent then negotiate with her: In exchange for her freedom, she will bring Dougal, Claire and Owen to Biosyn's Sanctuary. However, Viscontini precise he'll have her hunted down if she ever betrays them.
Kayla raises the fact that she can't show up at Auronzo like this and needs a motive. Viscontini and Dougal then talk about the animals seized in Malta's black market.
Theo's Mission
That day, Wu summons Theo, explain the whole issue with the fake Charlotte and ask him to go to London, find the actress and question her about the videos so they can have proofs to show Maisie, who started to really become insufferable because of Dodgson's bad influence (in that part of the story, one of the few scenes where she's likeable is one where she and Drummond bonds over the common passion for dinosaurs). The ex-mercenary soon leaves Auronzo, taking a bus for Venice in the nearest village while Wu explains to Pellegrino and Dodgson that Theo had urgent family matters to deal with in the UK.
Leaving San Francisco
Desiring to supervise the Dolomites Crisis more closely, Vuillier fly to Italy.
Nine containers
As evidence of Biosyn's possible connections to the Maltese black market has been discussed on the news, Dodgson knows it's a matter of time before Vuillier, the Italians or the Austrians send people in Auronzo and expose Biosyn's misdeeds.
We then follow Pellegrino's POV as she oversees the exit of nine large mysterious containers from the Citadel and their departure from the airstrip just outside the valley. One of her subordinates asks what's inside and she answers that she has no idea, with Dodgson only giving her a series of instructions. They watch the containers being flown abroad.
The following day, Pellegrino speak about it to Wu and other employees with anti-Dodgson sentiments like Drummond. She notices that Wu is uncomfortable as they talk about it and realize he must be hiding something. Ramsay, who just arrived from the US in preparation for a big corporate event in the Citadel, almost surprise their discussion. As they're not sure if they can trust him or not, they pretend it's nothing. Wu then phones Theo and asks him about his secret mission's progress.
London
In London, Theo finds the actress from the videos and initially posing as a reporter, filming her in an interview, he then ask her questions about the videos and after some hesitations, she concedes to give him answers and reveals among other things that the shooting occurred a few months ago in some local warehouse, that the director of those videos is none other than Colin Trevorrow (who, desperate for a job after the debacle of the Jurassic World film, accepted to participate to that project, oblivious that Biosyn was behind it since a dummy company took care of the production).
AISI
Vuillier arrives in Rome and meets with his agents, Nyamu and Viscontini in one of the AISI headquarters' conference rooms, where a map of Auronzo Valley and its surroundings has been laid. Kayla is also there and offscreen, our characters talk about the plan.
At the end of the meeting, everyone but Vuillier and Viscontini leave the room. Both have a secret conversation during which the Italian say that the Grey Guard's Mediterranean Company, supported by the Austrians and secretly by him (as he fears that Biosyn has informers within the Italian government), are deployed in one of the villages near Auronzo, and is supposed to act as a Plan B should the Claire-Owen-Dougal trio fail, by taking a secret path through an old mine and a mountain pass before breaking into Biosyn's citadel. The WDMC agents don't know that and when Vuillier ask why, Viscontini answers that it's better that way (should the agents be captured ant tortured, they won't tell Biosyn that there is a second team) and that the secret path isn't safer as one of his spy was killed by some creature after taking it and arriving in sight of the valley. He thinks that a small dozen of grey guards have better chances surviving the pass' guardian(s) than three civilian agents.
To the Dolomites
The next day, in the middle of the morning, Kayla is preparing her plane in some airstrip near Rome and the seized creature from the black market is loaded in the hold (I have no idea which species to choose). Equipped by the Italians, Claire, Owen and Dougal say farewell to Vuillier, Nyamu and Viscontini. The Frenchman tells Claire that it's time to unleash the She-wolf upon Dodgson but Claire correct him by saying "Not the She-wolf. The Dragon." (in this AU, she has a particular connection with the dragon-like Indominus), implying she'll get the mission done whatever it takes. He and the other two men wish them good luck and the trio of WDMC agents climb aboard the plane. They soon take off.
Biosyn's aerial defense
Kayla's plane arrives in sight of the mountains which delimit Biosyn's Sanctuary. Informed of their mission by Vuillier and Viscontini, one of the grey guards is watching the plane through his binoculars as it passes over the village where they are staying.
Kayla is soon contacted by the Citadel's control room as they detected the aircraft on their radars and they ask her why she's coming. The pilot answer that she collected an animal which might interest them (she told the WDMC agents and the Italians that Biosyn doesn't have this particular species in their Sanctuary) and ask to land on their airstrip. While the Biosyn employees discuss, the plane is about to enter Auronzo Valley by the east, as that part of the sanctuary is the furthest from most of the buildings (while the airstrip is in the northernmost parts of Biosyn's lands, beyond the mountains with the frozen dam lake) and thus where Claire, Owen and Dougal has the best chances of landing unnoticed. The trio of agents take their parachutes and prepare to jump, but at the same time, Dodgson, who heard that Kayla was arrested by the authorities just a few days ago, fears that her plane is a Trojan horse and decides to activate the valley's "aerial defense". On the screen of one of the room's monitors, we see a group of dots heading straight towards the plane. It's actually a group of pteranodons, from the same toothed variant as those who appeared in Jurassic Park 3 (there is even at least one black male identical to the scrapped one from Johnston's film), and they just collide with the plane, crashing against the cockpit and getting turned to shred by the rotors' blades, damaging the plane (the scene is partly inspired by a cutscene from the Ninth Mission of Paraworld's campaign). Owen wonder why those pteranodons behave in a suicidal manner. Suddenly, the pteranodons retreat and as their window is shrinking, the agents know they have to jump now (they've reached the middle of the valley and their trajectory deviated northwards, towards the mountain dam). Claire jumps first but as Owen is about to jump in his turn, the plane is attacked by a Quetzalcoatlus and the Raptor Whisperer sees another and a few pteranodons chasing her fiancée, whose parachute opened. Claire shakes the pterosaurs off by disappearing into the valley's dense forest. As they will be grabbed by the attacking pterosaurs as soon as they leave the aircraft, Owen, Dougal and Kayla stay inside it and brace for the crash. The plane crashes down at the surface of the frozen lake by the mountain dam in the northern part of the valley.
Back in Rome, Vuillier, Nyamu and Viscontini are worried as they heard the agents and the pterosaurs' screams (they had an open channel all that time with Kayla's plane). They hope the agents will survive this ordeal and activate the beacons they were given before their departure.
Note: The fate of the animal they took with them is still unclear for me. It really depends on the chosen species. If it's something large and potentially dangerous, Kayla would probably want to drop it in the valley in order to have a lighter plane and not deal with it after crashing. But if it's a creature about the size of a small dog for example, they could free it as they leave the wreckage.
Gigantoraptor
We then cut to Claire hanging in the trees but instead of a Therizinosaurus (which already appeared in TRQ. Moreover, Claire had a small arc with this species in that story), she is threatened by a Gigantoraptor. The scene plays out much like the Theri scene from Trevorrow's version, with Claire hiding in a pond etc.. Once the Gigantoraptor walks away, Claire gets out of the pond and sees the fumes from the plane's crash in the distance, behind the mountain dam.
The dam lake
Before it sinks in the lake, Owen, Dougal and Kayla leave her plane and step on the ice. Under it, they notice a large shadow and know they better move away from the lake. They notice a ladder by the dam but as they head towards it, a Quetzalcoatlus or a Pteranodon lands on their way. They step back, moving towards an opening on the lake's surface. Suddenly, a giant 9-meters long temnospondyl (based upon an unnamed and fragmentary genus from Lesotho) burst out the water, almost killing one of the characters. Ensue a scene where our three protagonists have to evade both the pterosaur and the amphibian. The pterosaur ends up being dragged underwater by the temnospondyl but other pterosaurs arrive and to escape them, our trio climbs on the dam and rushes to its elevator, going down in the valley. Down at the dam's base, they notice it's dilapidated and Kayla tell her two companions that Biosyn sell some of its power to the nearest villages.
Note: The main doubt I have about this scene is having a temnospondyl living in the icy water of a mountain lake. It might be too much of a stretch so if you think it's not realistic at all, it will be scrapped from the scene (and perhaps be replaced by a juvenile Baryonyx or something like this, an animal which could be also the one our characters brought with them in the plane.
Plan B
Since the agents lost their beacons during the pterosaurs' attack and the crash, they couldn't tell Rome that they were still alive. Vuillier and Viscontini fear the worst and send a message to Laurenzo Cesare.
Droppings
Meanwhile, Claire started walking towards the dam, hoping to find her companions on the way if they made it out alive from the crash. When she hears a racket in the woods, she hides and a Biosyn tyrannosaur arrives. But it's not on a hunting mode and instead, it just leaves some droppings on a log near Claire's hiding place. After the predator leaves, she approaches the log and smears her face with the droppings, remembering her "Walk in the Park" with Owen when they searched her nephews during the Fall of Jurassic World (the droppings hide her smell, dissuading the other animals to investigate her).
Argument
An argument bursts out between Owen, Dougal and Kayla while they're walking south. The first wants to find his fiancée, the second says that their mission is more important, and Kayla is mad at both men since she lost her plane (and livelihood) because of the WDMC's mission. And unsure about her intentions, the two men distrust her but she tries to reassure them by saying that Biosyn can fuck off since they are also responsible for destroying her plane.
However, the Sanctuary's denizens remind them that they better be united or else it will be the failure of their quest.
At some distance, in the middle of the fog, they see the recognizable silhouette of a sauropod, that of an Argentinosaurus (the species was seen in the distance and mentioned earlier in the story. Instead of Argentinosaurus, it could also be another large titanosaur). However, this herbivore has the particularity of having a symbiotic relation with some small carnivore species within Biosyn Sanctuary (I'm more thinking about a pterosaur or a flying/semi-arboreal theropod than a strictly ground-dwelling predator. For now, the baboon-sized Variraptor is my candidate), with the Argentinosaurus letting those carnivores eat its parasites and the insects flying around it while the carnivores will let out an alarm call shall a large predator approach. It could be illustrated in a scene where an Acrocanthosaurus (the one from the Drive-in scene) is spotted by the carnivores as it passes by. The Argentinosaurus turns to face the larger predator, adopt a defensive posture, and as the acro hasn't yet moved, the smaller carnivores take off from the sauropod and flies straight to the acro's head. Harassed by those creatures, the Acrocanthosaurus retreats. Thus, if those small carnivores (which we'll call the Argentinosaurus' suite) are brave enough to attack a megatheropod, our three protagonists know they're not safe and that they better move away.
The Sanctuary's true nature
While still heading north, Claire's path crosses that of a bull Shantungosaurus. She move out of his way and stay still. She and the audience recognize the animal as he was already in the JW rewrite and TRQ (in the first story, he gained some scars after a fight with a few Metriacanthosaurus), where he was a secondary "character" (and a threat in a few scenes). Both have a peaceful scene where they make eye contact but that quiet moment is shattered when a gunshot resounds in the forest and the hadrosaur flees, badly wounded. Claire hides and in the distance, she sees a hunter, accompanied by a couple of Biosyn security guards and another employee which she presume is some sort of supervisohunting guide. Watching how the hunter is dressed and how he behave in the wild, she knows he's not a professional hunter but just a rich hobbyist and then realizes the Sanctuary's true nature: It's a hunting reserve. As the Shantungosaurus escaped them, the hunter express his discontentment at the guide, which promise to find him another quarry. They leave and following the blood trail left by the hadrosaur, Claire finds him by a stream. His wounds are too grievous and he's too weak to lash out at Claire, who kneels by his head, trying to comfort him in his last moments, up until his last breath. Watching another of her former park's animals dying fills Claire with not only grief, but also anger. She change her plans and heads back south instead of continuing northward, following the hunting party's track.
Note: It doesn't necessarily have to be a Shantungosaurus in the role of the animal shot by the hunters, but it have to be a recognizable animal from the previous installments for emotional impact and Claire's development (another candidate could be the Therizinosaurus from TRQ)
She later finds another hunting party. One of its members, a Biosyn guard, pulls out an item she recognize: a raptor resonating chamber. The guard use it like a bird call and soon, an Achillobator, arrive, believing it heard one of its kind. The poor animal is shot by the hunters, who scream in satisfaction before taking a picture with their quarry. They then brings it to the Biosyn vehicle waiting nearby but before they leave (after having a short conversation during they mention that another team captured the rex and is bringing it the paddocks), Claire deliberately attract the attention of one of the guards, the same one which used the resonating chamber, and he say to his companions he won't be long. He move away from the road and deeper in the woods, he fall into Claire's ambush. She kill him, loot some of his equipment (including the resonating chamber), hide his body and leave. Worried for his colleague, the other guard with the hunters orders the guide to drive them back to the lodge, and search his friend. But he too is murdered by Claire, who takes a small metallic box on him. Activating the box, she realize it's a sonic weapon she has seen before, in the hands of InGen Security's elite troops during the fall of Isla Nublar (it's like a weaponized version of the box Dodgson and his companions have in Crichton's TLW). She turns it off, take it with her and follows the hunters vehicle's tracks on the road, towards the lodge.
However, Claire ignores she's being watched, and not by human eyes...
Over hill
Cesare and his men leave their accommodation and head for the frontiers of Biosyn's lands. Leaving their vehicles near a ruined fort, the grey guards start their trek while the sun is setting behind the mountains ahead of them.
A bed in the trees
As walking through the valley at night would be too dangerous, Owen, Dougal and Kayla decide to find a resting place and climb in a tree. From it, they have a panorama on a nearby lake and notice they are approximately halfway between the dam and the Citadel. At this moment, we also have peaceful scenes with the valley's denizens at dusk (Pelecanimimus fishing in the lake, herbivores drinking nearby, the same Spinosaurus from the report at the beginning peacefully sitting on the bank like an oversized duck...).
Theo's peace
In the evening, just a few hours before his flight to Venice, Theo also passes by his former home, which he left years ago before joining Ken Wheatley's mercenary company. His ex-wife still lives here and noticing that she started a new life with another man and seems happy, he walks away in peace, leaving behind him the last picture he had of himself and her (earlier in the story, Theo is seen looking at said picture).
The secret path
Back in Italy, the grey guards find the entrance of an old mine and enter it, taking the path that will allow them to pass under the limits of Biosyn's lands.
Mercenaries
Mercenary troops land in Biosyn's airstrip and their leader is brought to the Citadel. He has a discussion with Dodgson behind closed doors.
Foes... or allies?
A few hours after nightfall, Claire finally finds a large old chalet with typical Tyrolean architecture: The Hunting Lodge (it's implied that it was built way before Biosyn bought those lands, when the area was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before WWI). Claire remarks it's surrounded by an invisible fence (identical to the one from Jurassic World Evolution 2's Biosyn DLC) which prevents the animals from getting too close. Aware that the lodge wouldn't be a shelter for her and that its occupants probably outnumber her, she turns away from it, continuing to wander in the woods. But just a few minutes later, she hears sound in the nearby bushes. Aware she might be hunted, she is ready to use the ultrasound box and fight for her life. A pack of Achillobators shows up, menacingly walking towards her. At the same time, it starts to rain.
Claire first thinks of using the box and running away while the predators would be bothered by the sound but she knows it will be useless in the long run as they could track her all across the Sanctuary. She then remembers the reports she read earlier in the story, and especially that of the 2001 incident on Sorna, where Alan Grant and his companions walked out alive and unharmed from a close encounter with raptors.
In dire straits, she makes up a desperate plan and carefully, she pulls out the resonating chamber she stole from the Biosyn guards. She uses it and due to their bad experience in the sanctuary with the resonating chambers' usual users, the raptors get agitated but their pack leader tells them to calm down as Claire doesn't seem to be a Biosyn guard or a hunter. The pack leader walks alone towards Claire and sniffs the dried blood on her hands and clothes, realizing it belongs to other humans. Nothing happens for a moment and then the pack leader lets out a bark. Behind Claire, two raptors move aside. Slowly walking backwards, watching carefully the raptors' moves, Claire exits the circle made by the surrounding predators and continues doing so until she's at a respectable distance. At the beginning, the raptors just watch her but as she's heading towards the Hunting Lodge, she hears them following her. However, she is aware that they would have already pounced on her if they wanted to eat her and knows that they're more intrigued. Meanwhile, the rain intensifies (there could also be a storm).
Claire reaches the invisible fence, crosses it, and searches for its power source. But as she's sabotaging it, the Lodge caretaker (a gnarly-looking old local man) spots her and frightened by her look, runs away towards the building. She is forced to catch him and, after a short struggle, kill him with her knife before he can raise the alarm. After showing some trouble due to killing a probable innocent, she resumes her sabotage and the fence is deactivated. The raptors cross it and see Claire entering the lodge. Near its entrance, she finds a sword hanging on the wall as a decorative element and noticing it's still sharp, she takes it along with its sheath and heads for the rooms. Behind her, the raptors open the door and silently enter in the lodge. In the hallway which leads to the rooms, Claire stays still when the raptors walk past her as they head to the rooms and grin as her audacious plan is working. Claire enters one of the rooms, raises her sword blade over a sleeping hunter and when the time comes, thrust it into his body. Meanwhile, the raptors open other doors and entering the rooms, they rush on the sleepers. Slaughter ensues and only those who locked up their doors have the time to wake up, grab a weapon and fight for their very survival. Some of the lodge's occupants offer some resistance in the lounge but there, Claire activates the sonic weapon she stole and an ear-piercing sharp sound comes from it. While the raptors back off behind her, their common enemies kneel and scream in pain and Claire (who put on some earplug) slashes their throats, deactivate the weapon, and let the raptors tear the hunters alive while she raids some items (stuff like snacks, water, a first-aid kit, a map...) and leave, disappearing in the woods.
A bit later, she finds a small cave whose entrance is high from the ground and rest in it, sleeping until mid-morning.
The mountain's pass
At the end of their night-long ascent, the grey guards arrive in a pass/cave where they found human bones, which they presume to be those of the AISI's spy Viscontini told them about, and the remains of a Biosyn drone. Soon after, they are attacked by the guardian animal(s) the corporation left there to kill any trespasser coming from that direction. (I haven't chosen any species yet). They manage to defeat it (or them) and dawn break out as they arrive at a vista point which overlooks the valley. The grey guards observe it, the eyes of Cesare stop on the Citadel for a moment, and they retreat back inside the mountain to rest a few hours before descending into the valley. They send a message to Vuillier and Viscontini, telling them that they're inside the Sanctuary.
Traces of a slaughter
During their early morning patrol, a security team discovers that a massacre occurred during the night in the Hunting Lodge. They find clues indicating that someone helped the raptors and participated in the killings. The control room check the Lodge CCTV footage and fear spreads like wildfire among the staff when they discover the culprit is a sinister-looking black-clad hooded woman. Seeing that one of the figure's hand is a prosthesis and that the other wear a silver ring with a red gem, they realize it's Claire and Dodgson pretty much start to crap his pants (partly because one of the hunters was a very wealthy and powerful foreign client whose disappearance won't go unnoticed). Since she made it out alive from the plane's crash, Dodgson fears that the other WDMC agents might have too. When asked about the slaughter itself, Dodgson orders his staff to cover it up for the moment, as he don't want to worry the board of directors who are set to arrive later that day for a big event he planned in the evening.
Theo's return
Theo returns to Auronzo and Wu, who just learned about Claire's presence in the valley, tells him that they must get Maisie out of the facility as soon as possible since disaster tends to follow Claire like a shadow.
Taking the gloves off
However, Maisie has meanwhile discovered that the videos were another lie, by recognizing one of the scientists from the video, who also work at the Citadel (and who didn't aged, even though the adult Charlotte's video was supposed to be taken fourteen years ago). Aware that the gentle method is no longer considerable, Dodgson decides to use the hard one and Doctor Lesser locks Maisie in a cell within her lab, to which Wu can't access. Lesser reveal that it wasn't Wu who told Dodgson that she was a clone but the spy he has among Lockwood Manor's employees, and that the only true part in the video was the one about the genetic disease: Charlotte did had it, just like her mother Elizabeth before that (she died in 1993 and it was because of her Lockwood and Hammond fell out), and had the car accident which took her life didn't happened, the disease would have killed her a few years later. As he wanted Maisie to have a long life, Benjamin Lockwood asked the scientists he hired (there is a whole subplot about what they became in TRQ) to cure it and they did find a way. As the scientists' notes were accidently destroyed, the solution is now within Maisie's body, and Dodgson wants it so he can put new drugs on the market.
Before it's too late, Wu and Theo, with Ramsay's help, start organizing Maisie's evasion. The geneticist mentions a secret trail from WWI in the northeastern mountains: It's their escape route. He then heads for his lab, planning something else.
Tracking Claire
Curious about Biosyn's movements around the Hunting Lodge, Owen, Dougal and Kayla investigate it after the departure of the security troops. They discover evidence of Claire's passage and Owen tries to follow her fiancée's tracks. Kayla and/or Dougal make comments about the slaughter of the hunters.
Bigelow's last chance
Isaac Gibbon gives Jessica Bigelow a new mission: Go to Auronzo and ensure the evacuation of Lewis Dodgson and Biosyn's most important research. The agent ask her boss why and he said that he just received news that Biosyn is compromised. He also precise that it's her last chance after the Malta fiasco. Bigelow leave her safe house in central Italy and goes north.
Shady preparations
Continuing south, Owen, Dougal and Kayla see mercenaries positioning some sort of moveable antenna on a ridge which overlooks the road which connects the Citadel to the valley's northern continue, as finding Claire and entering the Citadel is more urgent.
The gathering of the clouds
One of the control room's employees ask Dodgson to come. He shows him footage from the Biosyn lands's southern gate, near the employee village.
Before the gate, a group of Carabinieri stand, showing to the guards and the security cameras a search warrant: The government finally decided to act against Biosyn. But Dodgson refuses to open the gates for the Carabinieri and orders the mercenaries who arrived during the night to intimidate them. The Carabinieri move away from the gate, with their leader warning against the consequences of such an action. At a respectable distance from the gate, Vuillier, Viscontini and Nyamu watched the scene. Soon, other groups of Carabinieri are deployed along the other entrances to Biosyn's lands. The siege of Auronzo has started.
Hearing about the siege's situation, some employees leave their post and head for the metro (which connects the Citadel to the village. Another loop also connects the Citadel to the various facilities across the Sanctuary, including the seven towers and the dam), in order to go to the village and then hoping to be able to leave Biosyn's lands before things starts to get too ugly but Dodgson's has the metro's station locked and commands them to go back to their posts. Seeing their CEO starting to act like Hitler in his bunker, they are afraid.
​
End of Act III.
See you tomorrow for Act IV

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Bury Me, My Love
Bridge Constructor Portal
Call of Cthulhu
Chasm
CHUCHEL Cherry Edition
Carto
Coffee Talk
Company of Heroes 2 +Pattern Pack
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
Crawl
Crazy Taxi
Cepheus Protocol
Crowntakers
Curious Expedition
Cultist Simulator
Darkside Detective
Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition
Darksiders Warmastered Edition
Death Squared
Drake Hollow
Dirt 5
Deleveled
Deadly Days
Distance
DISTRAINT 2 + Soundtrack
Distrust
Dungreed
Door Kickers: Action Squad
Double Fine Adventure Documentary
Drawful 2
Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
DUCATI - 90th Anniversary
Duck Game
Dungeons 3
Dusty Revenge: Co-Op Edition
The Dwarves
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 + dlc and shit
EarthNight
Elderborn
Eastside Hockey Manager
Elite Dangerous
Ellipsis
Endless Space - Collection
Euro Truck Simulator 2 + Austraila paint dlc
Europa Universalis IV
Encodya
EVERSPACE™
Evergarden
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
Feather
Fibbage XL
Finding Paradise
The First Tree
Fluffy Horde
Framed Collection
Freedom Force
Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich
Frog Detective
FTL
Full Metal Furies
Full Throttle Remastered
GameMaker Studio Pro
The Gardens Between
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
GNOG
God's Trigger
Gonner
GRAV (Early Access)
GRID 2
Guns of Icarus Online
Gunscape
Hacknet + Hacknet Labyrinths DLC
Hand of Fate 2
Hard Reset Redux
Heroes of Hammerwatch
Hello Neighbor Hide and Seek
Hexcells Complete Pack
Hidden Folks
HIVESWAP: Act 1
Hammerting
Hollow Knight
Hyper Light Drifter
I'm not a Monster
In Between
Injustice Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition
I am not a Monster: First Contact
INK Deluxe Edition
Into the Breach
Jackbox Party Pack 4
The Journey Down: Chapter Three
JumpJet Rex
Jurassic World Evolution - Deluxe Dinosaur Pack
Kerbal Space Program
Killing Floor 2
Kingdom Classic
Knights of Pen and Paper 2
Last Oasis
Late Shift
Layers of Fear
LEGO® Batman 2 DC Super Heroes™
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Premium Edition
LEGO DC Super-Villains Deluxe Edition
LEGO® Marvel Super Heroes 2 Deluxe Edition
LEGO Marvel's Avengers
LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game
LEGO® Worlds
Lethal League Blaze
Leviathan Warships
Lostwinds
Lobotomy Corporation Monster Management
Lumino City
Luna's Wandering Stars
Machinarium
Mad Max
Magicka
Majesty 2
Majesty Gold HD
Marooners
Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom
Massive Chalice
Metro Redux Bundle key only
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY
Mini Metro
Minoria
MINIT
MirrorMoon EP
Monster Loves You
Moonlighter
MOTHERGUNSHIP
Mr. Shifty
Mushroom 11
Music Maker EDM Edition + 10 dollar voucher code
My Memory of Us
My Time at Portia
NBA 2K20
No Time to Relax
NIMBATUS - THE SPACE DRONE CONSTRUCTOR
Necronator: Dead Wrong
Neo Cab
Neon Drive (Steam)
Newt One
Niche
Nine Parchments
Ninja Pizza Girl
No Time to Explain Remastered
Not Tonight
>observer_
Offworld Trading Company + Jupiter's Forge
Old Man's Journey
OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood
Operation Flashpoint: Red River
Opus Magnum
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You
Out of the Park Baseball 18
Out There: Ω Edition
Out of Space
Overgrowth (plus a secret link)
Overlord II
PAC-MAN™ CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION 2
Pale Echoes
Paper Fire Rookie
Paperbark
Paradigm
Party Hard
Pesterquest
Pikuniku
Pinstripe
Plague Inc: Evolved
Paradise Killer
Planet of the Eyes
Plunge
Primal Carnage: Extinction
Police Stories
Project Highrise
Project Highrise
Psychonauts
Puzzle Agent
Puzzle Agent 2
Q.U.B.E. 2
Q.U.B.E: Director's Cut
Quest of Dungeons
Quiplash
Rapture Rejects + Safari Outfit DLC
Realpolitiks
Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville
Regency Solitaire
Regions of Ruin
Regular Human Basketball
Remnants of Isolation
Resident Evil Revelations
Retro Game Crunch
Rime
Rise and Shine
Rising Dusk
Rituals
Road to Ballhalla
Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball
Rock of Ages 2: Bigger & Boulder™
Rocket Birds: Hardboiled Chicken
ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS
Rusty Lake Paradise
Sam & Max: Season 1
Sam & Max: Season 2
Satellite Reign
S.W.I.N.E. HD REMASTER
Scribblenauts Unlimited
Secrets of Raetikon
Sigma Theory
Shadows Awakening
Shelter 2
Shenmue I & II
shutshimi
Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
SimplePlanes
SIMULACRA
Slipstream
Sniper Elite
Sniper Elite 3
Sniper Elite V2
Song of Horror
Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing
SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising
SOULCALIBUR VI
Speed Brawl
Spelunky
Spirits
Spyro™ Reignited Trilogy
Squad (Early Access)
StarCrossed
State of Mind
Stealth 2: A Game of Clones
Stick Fight: The Game
SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising
The Stillness of the Wind
Streamline Early Access
Streets of Rage
Stronghold Crusader 2
Subsurface Circular
Sunless Sea
Super Daryl Deluxe
Super Galaxy Squadron EX
Super Hexagon
Super House of Dead Ninjas: True Ninja Pack
Super House of the Dead Ninjas
Super Time Force Ultra
SUPERHOT
Superliminal
Surgeon Simulator + Anniversary Ed. Content
Surviving Mars
Sword Legacy Omen
System Shock 2
System Shock: Enhanced Edition
Tank Mechanic Simulator
Tales of the Neon Sea
Tangledeep + Soundtrack
Team Indie
theHunter: Call of the Wild
Telltale Texas Hold'em
Think of the Children
Thirty Flights of Loving
This is the Police
This War of Mine
Throne of Lies® The Online Game of Deceit
Tilt Brush
TIMEframe
Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
Tokyo 42
Tooth and Tail
Torment: Tides of Numenera
Total Tank Simulator
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
Tower of Guns
Tower Unite
Train Simulator 2017 + Platform Clutter, Town Scenery
Tropico 4
Tropico 6 El Prez Edition
The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Undertale
Unexplored
Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
Vampyr
Verdun
Vertiginous Golf
Vikings - Wolves of Midgard
Void Bastards
Volgarr the Viking
VVVVVV
Waking Mars
Wargroove
Warhammer: Chaosbane
Westerado: Double Barreled
We Were Here Together
Windward
The Witness
Wizard of Legend
World of Goo
Worms Revolution
Yooka-Laylee
YAKUZA 3 REMASTERED
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK HEADRUSH
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK MOVIES
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK SPORTS
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK TELEVISION
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 1 XL
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 2
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 3
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 4: The Ride
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 6 The Lost Gold
Ziggurat
And other shit i probably have from recent bundles
Deck Builder Bundle
Walking Dead 10th Anniversary Bundle
Humble Bundles I have
August 2022 - December 2022
July 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
January 2022
November 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
March 2021
February 2021
Figmint
Vermintide
Darksiders 2: Deathinitive Edition
Sudden Strike 4
The Surge
Pony Island
Little Nightmares
Zombie Night Terror
Screencheat
Freedom Planet
American Truck Simulator
Tales of Berseria
Kingdom: New Lands
KEYS ONLY
PC Building Simulator
The Beast Inside
Children of Morta
Overcooked! 2 + (DLC)
Path of Giants
Pathologic 2
Shining Resonance Refrain
Still There
Struggling
Tabletop Playground
Zwei: The Arges Adventure
Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection
Crying Suns
Darksburg
Darksiders III
Darkwood
Imperator Rome Deluxe Edition
Little Misfortune
Rover Mechanic Simulator
Smile For Me
Townsmen - A Kingdom Rebuilt
Tsioque
Yakuza Kiwami 2
Youropa
Autonauts
Basement
Fae Tactics
Fantasy Blacksmith
Goat of Duty
Iron Danger
Lightmatter
Shadows Awakening
The Suicide of Rachel Foster
Sunless Skies
Tropico 6 El Prez Edition
The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day
A Case of Distrust
American Fugitive
Automachef
Call of Cthulhu
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
Genesis Alpha One Deluxe Edition
Hello Neighbor
Little Big Workshop
Through the Darkest of Times
Vampyr
Wargroove
We Were Here Together
Age of Wonders: Planetfall Deluxe Edition
Basingstoke
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock Season One
Beat Hazard 2
Don't Escape: 4 Days to Survive
Earthlock
Metal Unit
Railway Empire
Sigma Theory
Secret Neightbor
STUBBS THE ZOMBIE IN REBEL WITHOUT A PULSE
WORMS RUMBLE + LEGENDS PACK DLC
Panzer Paladin
MILKY WAY PRINCE - THE VAMPIRE STAR
Desolate
Other Keys
Battleborn Starter Skin Pack
GUNS UP! Starter Pack + TV Head
Mage and Minions - $10 In-Game Currency
Star Trek Online - Humble Trekkie Pack
Shadow Complex Remastered (epic launcher key)
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 1 DLC
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 2 DLC
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 3 DLC
XCOM® 2: Resistance Warrior Pack
XCOM® 2: Reinforcement Pack
Effie
Darksiders Genesis
Hellpoint
Disjunction
Cook Serve Delicious 3
levelhead
Fury Unleashed
Size Matters
Morkredd
Relicta
Retimed
Family Man
Vane
Elex
Kingdom Two Crowns
WWE 2k battlegrounds
Hotshot Racing
Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
Cyber Hook
Pesterquest
Ageless
Boreal blade
Valfaris
Lovecraft's Untold Stories
Iris and the Giant
Boomerang Fu
The Wild Eight
Train Station Renovation
Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince
WEREWOLF: THE APOCALYPSE HEART OF THE FOREST
OUTWARD + THE SOROBOREANS AND OUTWARD SOUNDTRACK
Want:
Offers (Ignore means no)
Oneshot (multiple copies are preferable)
Subnautica (multiple copies are good)
Wandersong
Indivisible
Xcom Chimera Squad
Hollow Knight
Everhood
Wishlist is sparse but im open to any offer
Anything on my wishlist
Feel free to offer any games for one of mine, preferably a list to browse

I do not accept paypal, game trades only
My rep from indiegameswap
Have:
FEBRUARY 2021 HUMBLE CHOICE
MARCH 2021 HUMBLE CHOICE
11-11 Memories Retold
2064: Read Only Memories
20XX
7 Grand Steps
7 Billion Humans
A Good Snowman is Hard to Build
A Hat in Time
A Mortician's Tale
American Fugitive
A New Beginning - Final Cut
Aaero
The Adventure Pals
AER Memories of Old
As Far as the Eye
Age of Wonders: Planetfall Deluxe Edition
Age of Wonders III
Agents of Mayhem
AI War: Fleet Command
Alien Spidy
All You Can Eat
The Ambassador: Fractured Timelines
ADOM (ANCIENT DOMAINS OF MYSTERY
Ancestors: The Humankijnd Odyssey
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
Assassin's Creed® Origins
Assault Android Cactus
Baba Is You
Bridge Constructor Portal
The Ball
Bastion
Batman Arkham Origins
Basement
Battle Chef Brigade
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock Season One
Beat Hazard Ultra
Beholder
BEE SIMULATOR
Bendy and the Ink Machine™
Binary Domain
BioShock™ Remastered
Blazing Beaks
Blue Fire
Biped
Bleed 2
Bone - Episode 1 & Episode 2
Broken Age
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Brutal Legend
Burly Men At Sea
Bury Me, My Love
Bridge Constructor Portal
Call of Cthulhu
Chasm
CHUCHEL Cherry Edition
Carto
Coffee Talk
Company of Heroes 2 +Pattern Pack
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
Crawl
Crazy Taxi
Cepheus Protocol
Crowntakers
Curious Expedition
Cultist Simulator
Darkside Detective
Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition
Darksiders Warmastered Edition
Death Squared
Drake Hollow
Dirt 5
Deleveled
Deadly Days
Distance
DISTRAINT 2 + Soundtrack
Distrust
Dungreed
Door Kickers: Action Squad
Double Fine Adventure Documentary
Drawful 2
Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
DUCATI - 90th Anniversary
Duck Game
Dungeons 3
Dusty Revenge: Co-Op Edition
The Dwarves
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 + dlc and shit
EarthNight
Elderborn
Eastside Hockey Manager
Elite Dangerous
Ellipsis
Endless Space - Collection
Euro Truck Simulator 2 + Austraila paint dlc
Europa Universalis IV
Encodya
EVERSPACE™
Evergarden
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
Feather
Fibbage XL
Finding Paradise
The First Tree
Fluffy Horde
Framed Collection
Freedom Force
Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich
Frog Detective
FTL
Full Metal Furies
Full Throttle Remastered
GameMaker Studio Pro
The Gardens Between
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
GNOG
God's Trigger
Gonner
GRAV (Early Access)
GRID 2
Guns of Icarus Online
Gunscape
Hacknet + Hacknet Labyrinths DLC
Hand of Fate 2
Hard Reset Redux
Heroes of Hammerwatch
Hello Neighbor Hide and Seek
Hexcells Complete Pack
Hidden Folks
HIVESWAP: Act 1
Hammerting
Hollow Knight
Hyper Light Drifter
I'm not a Monster
In Between
Injustice Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition
I am not a Monster: First Contact
INK Deluxe Edition
Into the Breach
Jackbox Party Pack 4
The Journey Down: Chapter Three
JumpJet Rex
Jurassic World Evolution - Deluxe Dinosaur Pack
Kerbal Space Program
Killing Floor 2
Kingdom Classic
Knights of Pen and Paper 2
Last Oasis
Late Shift
Layers of Fear
LEGO® Batman 2 DC Super Heroes™
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Premium Edition
LEGO DC Super-Villains Deluxe Edition
LEGO® Marvel Super Heroes 2 Deluxe Edition
LEGO Marvel's Avengers
LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game
LEGO® Worlds
Lethal League Blaze
Leviathan Warships
Lostwinds
Lobotomy Corporation Monster Management
Lumino City
Luna's Wandering Stars
Machinarium
Mad Max
Magicka
Majesty 2
Majesty Gold HD
Marooners
Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom
Massive Chalice
Metro Redux Bundle key only
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY
Mini Metro
Minoria
MINIT
MirrorMoon EP
Monster Loves You
Moonlighter
MOTHERGUNSHIP
Mr. Shifty
Mushroom 11
Music Maker EDM Edition + 10 dollar voucher code
My Memory of Us
My Time at Portia
NBA 2K20
No Time to Relax
NIMBATUS - THE SPACE DRONE CONSTRUCTOR
Necronator: Dead Wrong
Neo Cab
Neon Drive (Steam)
Newt One
Niche
Nine Parchments
Ninja Pizza Girl
No Time to Explain Remastered
Not Tonight
>observer_
Offworld Trading Company + Jupiter's Forge
Old Man's Journey
OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood
Operation Flashpoint: Red River
Opus Magnum
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You
Out of the Park Baseball 18
Out There: Ω Edition
Out of Space
Overgrowth (plus a secret link)
Overlord II
PAC-MAN™ CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION 2
Pale Echoes
Paper Fire Rookie
Paperbark
Paradigm
Party Hard
Pesterquest
Pikuniku
Pinstripe
Plague Inc: Evolved
Paradise Killer
Planet of the Eyes
Plunge
Primal Carnage: Extinction
Police Stories
Project Highrise
Project Highrise
Psychonauts
Puzzle Agent
Puzzle Agent 2
Q.U.B.E. 2
Q.U.B.E: Director's Cut
Quest of Dungeons
Quiplash
Rapture Rejects + Safari Outfit DLC
Realpolitiks
Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville
Regency Solitaire
Regions of Ruin
Regular Human Basketball
Remnants of Isolation
Resident Evil Revelations
Retro Game Crunch
Rime
Rise and Shine
Rising Dusk
Rituals
Road to Ballhalla
Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball
Rock of Ages 2: Bigger & Boulder™
Rocket Birds: Hardboiled Chicken
ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS
Rusty Lake Paradise
Sam & Max: Season 1
Sam & Max: Season 2
Satellite Reign
S.W.I.N.E. HD REMASTER
Scribblenauts Unlimited
Secrets of Raetikon
Sigma Theory
Shadows Awakening
Shelter 2
Shenmue I & II
shutshimi
Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
SimplePlanes
SIMULACRA
Slipstream
Sniper Elite
Sniper Elite 3
Sniper Elite V2
Song of Horror
Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing
SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising
SOULCALIBUR VI
Speed Brawl
Spelunky
Spirits
Spyro™ Reignited Trilogy
Squad (Early Access)
StarCrossed
State of Mind
Stealth 2: A Game of Clones
Stick Fight: The Game
SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising
The Stillness of the Wind
Streamline Early Access
Streets of Rage
Stronghold Crusader 2
Subsurface Circular
Sunless Sea
Super Daryl Deluxe
Super Galaxy Squadron EX
Super Hexagon
Super House of Dead Ninjas: True Ninja Pack
Super House of the Dead Ninjas
Super Time Force Ultra
SUPERHOT
Superliminal
Surgeon Simulator + Anniversary Ed. Content
Surviving Mars
Sword Legacy Omen
System Shock 2
System Shock: Enhanced Edition
Tank Mechanic Simulator
Tales of the Neon Sea
Tangledeep + Soundtrack
Team Indie
theHunter: Call of the Wild
Telltale Texas Hold'em
Think of the Children
Thirty Flights of Loving
This is the Police
This War of Mine
Throne of Lies® The Online Game of Deceit
Tilt Brush
TIMEframe
Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
Tokyo 42
Tooth and Tail
Torment: Tides of Numenera
Total Tank Simulator
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
Tower of Guns
Tower Unite
Train Simulator 2017 + Platform Clutter, Town Scenery
Tropico 4
Tropico 6 El Prez Edition
The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Undertale
Unexplored
Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
Vampyr
Verdun
Vertiginous Golf
Vikings - Wolves of Midgard
Void Bastards
Volgarr the Viking
VVVVVV
Waking Mars
Wargroove
Warhammer: Chaosbane
Westerado: Double Barreled
We Were Here Together
Windward
The Witness
Wizard of Legend
World of Goo
Worms Revolution
Yooka-Laylee
YAKUZA 3 REMASTERED
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK HEADRUSH
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK MOVIES
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK SPORTS
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK TELEVISION
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 1 XL
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 2
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 3
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 4: The Ride
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 6 The Lost Gold
Ziggurat
And other shit i probably have from recent bundles
Deck Builder Bundle
Walking Dead 10th Anniversary Bundle
Humble Bundles I have
August 2022 - December 2022
July 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
January 2022
November 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
March 2021
February 2021
Figmint
Vermintide
Darksiders 2: Deathinitive Edition
Sudden Strike 4
The Surge
Pony Island
Little Nightmares
Zombie Night Terror
Screencheat
Freedom Planet
American Truck Simulator
Tales of Berseria
Kingdom: New Lands
KEYS ONLY
PC Building Simulator
The Beast Inside
Children of Morta
Overcooked! 2 + (DLC)
Path of Giants
Pathologic 2
Shining Resonance Refrain
Still There
Struggling
Tabletop Playground
Zwei: The Arges Adventure
Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection
Crying Suns
Darksburg
Darksiders III
Darkwood
Imperator Rome Deluxe Edition
Little Misfortune
Rover Mechanic Simulator
Smile For Me
Townsmen - A Kingdom Rebuilt
Tsioque
Yakuza Kiwami 2
Youropa
Autonauts
Basement
Fae Tactics
Fantasy Blacksmith
Goat of Duty
Iron Danger
Lightmatter
Shadows Awakening
The Suicide of Rachel Foster
Sunless Skies
Tropico 6 El Prez Edition
The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day
A Case of Distrust
American Fugitive
Automachef
Call of Cthulhu
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
Genesis Alpha One Deluxe Edition
Hello Neighbor
Little Big Workshop
Through the Darkest of Times
Vampyr
Wargroove
We Were Here Together
Age of Wonders: Planetfall Deluxe Edition
Basingstoke
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock Season One
Beat Hazard 2
Don't Escape: 4 Days to Survive
Earthlock
Metal Unit
Railway Empire
Sigma Theory
Secret Neightbor
STUBBS THE ZOMBIE IN REBEL WITHOUT A PULSE
WORMS RUMBLE + LEGENDS PACK DLC
Panzer Paladin
MILKY WAY PRINCE - THE VAMPIRE STAR
Desolate
Other Keys
Battleborn Starter Skin Pack
GUNS UP! Starter Pack + TV Head
Mage and Minions - $10 In-Game Currency
Star Trek Online - Humble Trekkie Pack
Shadow Complex Remastered (epic launcher key)
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 1 DLC
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 2 DLC
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 3 DLC
XCOM® 2: Resistance Warrior Pack
XCOM® 2: Reinforcement Pack
Effie
Darksiders Genesis
Hellpoint
Disjunction
Cook Serve Delicious 3
levelhead
Fury Unleashed
Size Matters
Morkredd
Relicta
Retimed
Family Man
Vane
Elex
Kingdom Two Crowns
WWE 2k battlegrounds
Hotshot Racing
Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
Cyber Hook
Pesterquest
Ageless
Boreal blade
Valfaris
Lovecraft's Untold Stories
Iris and the Giant
Boomerang Fu
The Wild Eight
Train Station Renovation
Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince
WEREWOLF: THE APOCALYPSE HEART OF THE FOREST
OUTWARD + THE SOROBOREANS AND OUTWARD SOUNDTRACK
Want:
Offers (Ignore means no)
Oneshot (multiple copies are preferable)
Subnautica (multiple copies are good)
Wandersong
Indivisible
Xcom Chimera Squad
Hollow Knight
Everhood
Wishlist is sparse but im open to any offer
Anything on my wishlist
Feel free to offer any games for one of mine, preferably a list to browse

80 days NC and dumper breaks it. He texted and I freaked out. I set my phone down and just ran outside to get some air. While getting air, I see his car coming down the road. In panic, I put my head down. Turns out He was in the neighborhood helping a friend move and I guess he couldn’t take it anymore and reached out. After I saw him drive by my door, that’s when I realized I had to say something back. There were some exchanges and he admitted he had been thinking about me a lot. I told him I had too. He seemed surprised and asked “Really?” I told him yes…then he asks “why?” I kept it cool and told him just some feeling in my gut. (I didn’t want to overdo it).
He hasn’t said anything back and it’s been two days. Maybe he’s processing things. Maybe he’s not. Whatever it is, I’m just here to show you that there’s so much confusion after being contacted. Also, I’m sure he got nervous when he saw me.
I’m sick and hurting because he was literally 8 feet away from me in his car and I put my head down because I was too scared to look up. And he didn’t honk or stop because he was probably too nervous too.
I’ve never been here with someone before. Usually, one person is done and over it and there’s no nerves involved anymore.
Back to NC I go. Pretending nothing happened and it was a dream because even reading this back, it seems like a dream. A dream when you think it’s about to get good but you wake up too soon.

When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
------------------------
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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Spirits are the least conventional lifeforms in Gnosis and the people of its worlds really don't understand what they are or how they function. As they are so highly unconventional, I'm looking for a little feedback on the core concept. I'll keep it as quick as I can, but this is a big complicated topic and spirits are weird so I may need to explain a lot.
From the Outside:
Let's pick a common spirit for an example, in fact the most common spirit species, fey. From the outside, they look like a tiny winged humanoid of some description. We'll go right to the one of the two contenders for least common of four subspecies because they'll require the least explanation, fairies. They basically look like miniature glowing humans with large butterfly wings, coming in every imaginable color for their skin although some are more common for each part than others and that means they're glowing those colors. Fey have some size-changing going on but in their smaller default form fairy women typically range from about 45-50cm and fairy men about 35-40cm in both height and wingspan, and in their larger form they go up to 1.5x scale. Spirits don't need to sleep, can if they want to and there are reasons they might even if usually only for a couple minutes to fix some recent major injury.
Most species of spirits are 75% female and fey are in that group, so let's look a bit closer at a fairy gal. The first thing you'll notice about her is that she is very colorful her surface has zero texture, but you may not notice from a distance because her surface is using artistic tricks to imitate texture without actually having it. Her various features are simplified, yet either exaggerated or understated. Her usually quite a bit of head hair is usually also a pretty loud color but it's also actually just part of her head which is one rigid piece and if this gal has long hair you'll notice it only bends at the top of the neck one time to keep the rest "hanging" where it "should be", and trying to change her hairstyle is painful and fruitless. Her jaw stretches and twists to imitate an actual joint being there but there also clearly isn't one if you look closely. Spirit hands and moreso heads, especially their eyes, are larger while their legs are slightly shorter relative to their height and their feet are tiny, meanwhile secondary and tertiary sexual characteristics are exaggerated overall but with a larger standard deviation from the average in each area between individuals to the point where they still reach 0 if less often. They're not a very convincing imitation, to put it lightly, they should be well on the "less human" side of the uncanny valley.
Spirits are regenerating shapeshifters, in the case of fey it's mostly size-changing, but all spirit sophonts also have the ability to imitate clothing, weapons and equipment even if the imitated gear is not nearly as good as the real thing. It and the body part it's on are not separate and the false gear cannot be taken off or set down except by shapeshifting it out of existence, nor can they imitate chemicals or complex machinery like the magitech in nearly all proper melee weapons, which of course means imitating any sort of ranged weapon or explosive is off the table. It also means they aren't rendering their body underneath the gear, if she's wearing a shapeshifted knee skirt and you were to look up it you'd see an opaque void the same color as the skirt which her knees are sliding freely along the surface of, there's nothing between it and where the shapeshift gear ends, everything from hem to waist currently IS the skirt. (Of course if she's wearing actual clothes this does not apply.) Same if she shapeshifts a sword into her hand, the sword and hand are a single piece so it only looks like she's holding it, like a cheap action figure. It also needn't be a sword, most hand tools can be imitated effectively, from hammers and saws to ladles and spatulas, just note that it's part of her and smacking it on things or getting it too hot will hurt even though shapeshift gear is not very sensitive.
Fey also can control the brightness of their glow or generate spotlights, generate and manipulate magnetic fields, of course fly and pretty quickly, they swim fine too which is extremely odd for fairies given their apparent butterfly wings, and all but pixies have easy if slow contact healing albeit the fairy's healing is stronger and pixies have their own benefits (stealth, sensors and a 3-day forecast). Healing is a fairy's main ability, when in water it's strengthened and in emergencies fairies can massively drain their energy reserves even to the point of depleting them in order to staunch more severe wounds than they would be able to normally, although that's something they can't do more than once or at most twice without a refill and it's still got its limits. "Already dead" is beyond those limits, "decapitated" counts if they're not real quick about it and if somebody's heart got bisected that's somebody they're not fixing, but this burst of frenzied automatic medical treatment is just the thing for some poor sap who's just taken multiple bullets to the chest and head. They're pretty good at self-repair and generally have less downtime than some fey when the poor things get severely injured very easily. (Not because they're little, being a spirit makes that difference often less than it appears, but because they're spirits.) As a side benefit, they can use their healing nodes to sneakily suction out fat deposits on contact, getting a full day's worth of calories overnight.
But what if you touch her? Well, then you'll discover her textureless surface isn't actually a surface at all. You'll start feeling resistance just before you make contact, like trying to touch like poles of two magnets. This is pretty mild, but intensifies as you go on and once your finger passes through her stomach miss fairy will scream and hit you but more importantly you'll contact something solid not far beyond it, many somethings solid spaced apart, teeny-tiny balls and stands. That's odd, so let's put on a mask with goggles and stick our face in this fairy who hopefully agreed to that but it seems unlikely on account of how much this is going to hurt. (Maybe for science. And food. ...And a hug or five or six.)
On the Inside:
What you'll find in the little lady is exactly what it felt like, many less than one millimeter thick strands connecting hundreds of millimeters-wide orb-shaped nodes and thousands more nodes no bigger around than the wires leading to them. Most of the spirit's body is empty space, covered by a gradient forcefield and projected light. These internal structures are brightly colored, in the case of fey blaze orange and notably each part of their facade is most commonly an orange/brown of various hues, brightnesses and saturations (including super dark brown or super pale orange for their pupils and sclera), but if broken open are transparent or translucent white/grey inside. For ages there was no even vaguely comparable material to the unusual lipid-derived organic stuff these nodes are made out of, but the Drachentäller invented a very similar one half a century ago called "plastic" (though only they make it right now so it's still pretty pricey). The nodes have openings on them of different types which differentiate their function, but these aren't well understood, except the biggest ones outside the core that are just storage tanks for slurries of liquid nutrients. The wires feel like normal rubber-insulated wires but super thin, but under a microscope they look to be another bioplastic and if split open will reveal themselves to actually contain both piping for transporting material between nodes and actual copper wire that carries a current too low-gauge to be powering anything so it's speculated to effectively be her nervous system.
This explains her shapeshifting, seeing as her body's not real she just needs to re-arrange her wires and nodes, alter the shape of her outer fields and the image she's projecting. To grow from 50cm to 75, she just increased the distance between her nodes by 50%, her "surface area" by 125% and her "volume" by 237.5%, her mass and weight are completely unchanged. This also explains how such giant variations can exist within one species or even subspecies, they aren't really nearly as big of a change as they externally look to be. Fairies can project light and generate powerful magnetic fields, those are also being done by her nodes, with the very projectors that create her outer fields and holographic "self" which she doesn't know isn't real unless you tell her (she probably won't believe it). It also explains why they feel pain when you attempt to penetrate their fields, for starters they think there's actual physical flesh you're pushing into except for how it visibly doesn't react like it once you've started (and that confusion's only going to make them freak out more), and it makes sense if this imitation is a defense mechanism for a pain response to exist to reduce the odds of you or them discovering what's inside or either of you being able to make sense of what little you do see.
Of course, passing through their fields doesn't always hurt, only if they're expecting it to, the field projectors will even roll inwards to create an opening if one is expected in that spot. IE she bites things by rolling her face fields inwards to "open" her "mouth", then uses them to apply pressure, but as she has no actual teeth this is blunt and often she'll need to yank at it with her entire head, neck and even engage her torso to, for example, tear a chunk off a steak and swallow it. If you were to observe this hunk of steak you'd watch it get passed by repair nodes down into the woodchipper-like opening of one of her digestive nodes in her core, where it will be broken down into proteins and lipids and sent to storage through her piping. We know that because people have in fact stuck periscopes inside spirits to see what goes on inside them. As she uses energy, you may notice a tiny bit of fine dust descending from around her, this is ash and it's all that's left of the nutrients she efficiently consumes in exorbitant amounts to power everything she does. As she repairs damage, her repair nodes can produce the plastic of her tubing her core production nodes print complex components, even required metals coming out of what she eats.
The Core:
The core is the center of a spirit's being, a series of seven dreamcatcher-looking rings large nodes and thicker wire in rings stacked front to back with cross-crossing wires notably devoid of metal instead having silica fibers and flashing lights on each node for signalling between them, making sure every one in each ring is directly connected to each other for redundancy. Here you'll find, in her notably female case, from front to back, half her reproductive system, forward core nutrient storage, forward core cognitive ring (memory and motor control nodes are scattered throughout the body), central digestive and manufacturing ring, aft core cognitive ring, aft core nutrient storage and her other ring of reproductive nodes, and notably there is lots of tubing running between rings 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7. If she was male instead both reproductive rings would be at the back as the purpose of them is different.
In a fey, any humanoid spirit really, this is in the chest where you'd expect the heart to be. Some spirits have two cores, the second will be lower down, in a humanoid it'll be in the pelvis and/or abdomen, as low as it can be at its size and still fit without blocking the leg tendrils. These nodes require more exotic materials less common in food or that are more difficult to work with and even with recycling as much as possible are usually significantly harder to repair and replace. Losing digestive and manufacturing nodes is a big hit to regeneration rate, enough that they usually start by replacing those if at all possible. The way spirits die is by receiving too much core damage, or losing too much mass overall, to the point where they don't have the manufacturing nodes to fix themselves despite all being multiple redundant, or they lack both material in storage and the functionality to go get them. If starved, they will eventually enter an inert state and be left laying as a bundle on the ground until somebody revives them or they decay which takes a very long time even though their plastic is biodegradeable as it is coated in a preservative (in this case orange) chemical that takes years to corrode and is frequently replenished during normal activity. Even then, if you go grab the bundle and drop them into a bunch of loose resources like a bowl of ground beef and fruit preserves that'll solve the lack of resources and if they didn't lose all the required nodes they'll start fixing themselves up.
Damage control and repair:
As mentioned, spirits regenerate. As also mentioned, this is an internal repair system with distinct parts performing distinct tasks, which when they are unconscious gets all of their energy and resources allowing it to work significantly faster, whether they're unconscious because they were nearly destroyed or because they decided to go lie down for a minute because they just saw their wires and nodes for the first time. You may think this could be defeated by severing a part, since they wouldn't be able to reach out and grab it, but what'll actually happen is microwaves will be emitted by the repair nodes on each end of the breach and it'll fly right back into place to get fused back together, and if a node is is destroyed that node'll be replaced a part at a time which will take longer than patching a wire and it won't be working until it's fully reconnected, but the bioplastic that makes up most of it is pretty easy to print and paint if they've got proteins and fats on hand. If she takes too much damage, though, to the point where she's at risk of being destroyed she will involuntarily bail on this entire situation, dropping her outer fields and image, curling her wires into a tight ball, coating herself in a much denser forcefield, rocketing into the distance in a direction with nobody (detected) in it and as clear of a shot as possible. This launch is very forceful, reaching hypersonic speeds in a matter of seconds before the thrust stops and she cruises ballistically to a different post code and at quickly slows to a gentle landing. (Assailants: Brace for the backblast, or it may knock you on your ass.) She is semi-conscious during this process and once she's landed will fully lose consciousness in order to dedicate all her energy to self-repair until she's either back to 100% or as close as she's getting without getting up and finding something to eat. Significant damage to her core, whether it's that "enough core cables are cut to defeat their redundancy" or "a core node is destroyed", will usually result in her blasting off right away, as will her ending up in a situation where destruction otherwise seems unavoidable. Take a moment to absorb the implications of this while you imagine how much worse her being swallowed by a giant frog or something is going to work out for it than her even if she has to clean that mess up. Spirits actually dying due to violence is a rarity because of their remarkable ability to bail in the nick of time, although it does happen. They get hit with a 7-ton naval shell they're absolutely donezo, but dropping them in a volcano won't work because they'll blast off into the sky.
Reproduction and Development:
In her core, this fairy has two rings dedicated to reproduction, one at the very front and one at the very back. These are rings of dedicated manufacturing, wire-printing and assembly nodes, which create and keep in stock a set of redundant nodes, enough to make 1/2 of a new spirit minus their core. If we look in the chest of Sir Mothwing next to her he has none of the assembly or wire-printing nodes but he's got a bunch of dedicated manufacturing nodes in two rings at the back of his core and between them is kept the fruits of their labour: All the nodes for one entire spare core, in addition to half the nodes needed for the rest of a spirit stored stored between the reproductive rings and the back of the spirit which these nodes also manufactured. All they need to do is keep their cores together so a single opening through both their fields can allow them to interact. The actual internal process is unconscious, any activity that'll align their cores and press their bodies together will do the job. They mimic humans generally, but they don't always know how humans do it so this might just be hugging.
The spirit man will pass his spare parts into the spirit woman's chest, one at a time as she needs them, that's his entire job in the actual reproductive process. Granted, those are hard to replace parts, especially all those core cognitive and manufacturing nodes, so he can't do this nearly as often as she can and that puts the bottleneck on the side of the less common sex, giving them a slow reproductive rate. (Then again, they're massive resource hogs for their size, have indefinite lifespans and are hard to kill. Maybe slow reproduction's a good thing long-term.) As for her part she'll be externally paralyzed and unresponsive while her unconscious works as fast as it can making wire and connecting these parts together. In the mean time, he'll be semi-conscious, cuddled as close as humanly possible, only able to move if it's strictly necessary (if a coyote's wondering if they're edible he can go deal with that real quick and come back). The rest of the time while this process is going on, both of them will be tripping balls. No, that's not doing it justice, they're having a life-changing psychedelic experience. Why is unknown, only they're seeing the same things, communicating somehow and by the end they usually claim to "feel" the newborn's presence before they're born, if their estimates are right seemingly a couple hours after the core's done being assembled. Some think it's how the newborn's consciousness is formed, some think it's how all the child's various traits superficial and meaningful alike are determined, some think it's a deep spiritual experience meant to make them reflect on and prepare for the life-changing thing they're doing bringing another tinier person into the world, some think it's just meant to keep their conscious mind entertained while their unconscious does all the actual work. It's also notably intensely euphoric. Regardless, after about one day in 5d technicolor dreamland, the new infant spirit will be assembled and will exit the mother however makes sense to her. They may just pop right out of her chest as a little rolled-up ball, unfurl and form their facade mid-air before any of them wake up, only provided nobody's there to witness it (as far as any of them know).
The even littler one will as usual typically resemble hehis parents in many ways except often with several completely random minor variations like a ginger and a blue-haired parent may have a violet-haired child and have no idea why even if most of the time most of their traits seem to be inherited from their parents. Mutations that large shouldn't be occurring that often with biology as we know it, but this is not biology as we know it. Their sex is determined by how their mother assembles their core, whether they left room and connections at the front and back (female) or all at the back (male), and their facade matches their core in what may be a "natural" metaphor. As the father donates the core nodes the child will always be their father's subspecies, in fact this is how subspecies are classified because it's that reliable. ...And the exception is there are two species of hermaphroditic spirits who all have one male and one female core and each parent provides one of each and this means that if they are of different species you get actual hybrids, for example an ant myrmidon queen and a bee myrmidon queen make a wasp myrmidon queen with one ant core and one bee core. (Myrmidon queens look like little half-meter anthropomorphic insect queens, they make even tinier autonomous frameworks called "workers", "soldiers" and so on who are full-fledged sophonts. They have a limited cast of minions, a bee queen has six workers, four soldiers and two drones whose minds, memories and personalities are backed up every night in the queen's caboose in case they get smashed and they have to print a new copy. They usually don't understand the original is actually permanently dead and has not come back.)
A newborn fairy is already about half the mass of their parents despite looking externally like the infant they are and being the right size relative to them. The extra weight goes into thicker wire and fitting just as many forcefield and repair nodes into the way tinier body. At birth both sexes are always of identical actual mass, even if there's an apparent size difference, and will not appear to age externally despite accumulating actual mass as they go until suddenly overnight they appear to age years all at once complete with a change in their otherwise permanent hairstyle that seems to be subconsciously or even unconsciously decided and only usually has any continuity with the last style. This will first happen at 2, then at 5, then at 10. Their reproductive tract will grow in during their equivalent of puberty, until then there's just empty space, and even once it's there (age 14-16) it'll need just as much time to generate the parts as will be needed between kids later. If the kid's a girl that's only about six weeks, but for boys it's about two years, notably roughly coinciding with one of their overnight metamorphoses episodes when they turn 17, the previous having been at age 10, and they will suddenly go from looking like a kid in their pre or early teens to somebody vaguely in their late teens or early twenties, as they usually appear to be about the middle of the age group they're in, but it is while they are asleep on their exact birthday that these visible changes occur, all at once, exactly at midnight if they're already out. There is no upper limit on their age, after the "adult metamorphoses" at 17 they stop gaining actual mass (except they can always make more storage nodes if they need to) and their final visible change is at 82 at which point they look about a hundred years old indefinitely.
Combat Performance and the Framework:
Spirits aren't very strong, tend to be sent flying to the next county over from the next county over with one swing of a sword and their nutrient stores aren't much for how fast they can burn through them. That itty bitty fairy eats as much as a human toddler who appears to be several times her size and is many times her mass. Most of that normal operating cost is her facade, its fields and holograms are not cheap and she's not nearly as dimly glowly as other spirits even if turns it down as far as it'll go she will illuminate dim surroundings rather than only truly dark ones so that's more energy spent. All of that's coming from food eaten, and although their metabolism is more efficient and only leaves a fine ash she's still eating several times her actual mass on a daily basis. She also only has at most a couple days of nutrients stored, far less than if she spends that time, say, on a battlefield repairing damage to herself and others and shooting electro-lasers out of her wizard's staff in which case she'll be eating nearly as much as a physical folk-sized caster and more than any of the non magic-using soldiers. Thankfully, all spirits are omnivorous and not super picky about what they eat. Fat's got the most calories for them to use, sugar's the quickest to burn, carbs are sugars with extra steps and they need protein for their bioplastics that's most of what they'll need. They need other organic materials and minerals sometimes too, sometimes they'll eat rocks and even they can't have no explanation to give, but anything even vaguely edible to the least discerning and most voracious of goats will work just fine for them and they don't seem to be subject to poison or disease. (Corrosion is a different matter.)
They're really resistant to projectiles, they're mostly empty space after all a bullet could potentially go right through them and hit nothing, their forcefield does well against explosions, heat and corrosion, nor is cold really very effective, but a sword with good edge alignment faces comparatively little resistance from the forcefields and will cut them right in half straight through the core. Also, blunt impacts work fairly well, as although the force transferred through the fields is distributed between multiple projector nodes an impact can still jolt them hard enough to snap the wires they're connected to, it's not like they're spread across the entire facing side of the spirit's body like a blast wave and the forcefield is good at deflective most of the force of a blast wave away. This amounts in total to a significant melee weakness, especially since regeneration takes time and melee combat tends to be more short-lived than ranged combat. Although they are very hard to actually kill and all have interesting abilities, they tend to lose fights with physical sophonts pretty hard and may have issues with creatures that a physical sophont would demolish, since physical sophonts are stronger than they are, are capable of faster reaction times and can dish out a hit after taking one in a way a spirit won't because they'll probably be in the stratosphere. Of course, all of these people are probably wearing armor and that complicates this entire subject considerably, as does the fact that direct one on one duels are not exactly common.
Frameworks are their built-in attempt to make up for this, vaguely resembling a "wicker man" in the shape of one specific form of theirs complete with any and all shapeshifted gear as actual solid pieces. It's actually made bioplastics and glass as usual with them and it's articulated, it's got nutrient storage tanks, more forcefield and motor-function nodes, more holographic nodes too so their appearance gets more detailed (her hair even becomes a seperate piece from her head and flexible along its length) and they generally look more life-like with slightly less exaggerated proportions. Once in a framework, they can't shapeshift until they get back out, but while they're in it they're more protected, faster, stronger and have room for considerably greater reserves. They're both too metabolically expensive to manufacture and take up too much space to keep one of every possible gear variation, and while frameworks can be re-configured this is also metabolically expensive despite recycling as much as possible and being way cheaper than a whole new framework, so usually frameworks use shapeshift gear only if absolutely necessary even though framework gear is much more effective than normal shapeshifted gear between stronger fields and backing them up with various plastic and glass. Instead, spirits who have call for them tend to cap out at one framework for each of their major forms and not waste resources or space making more. Little miss fairy probably has a 50cm and 75cm framework, for example, and if she's not in danger often they'll last her until she outgrows them, and even then she can recycle them to mitigate the cost of the new ones. They last despite being made of bioplastic because thankfully, the framework is coated in a preservative coating just like her insides are that takes anywhere from months to decades to decay and is constantly being replenished when she's in the framework, it'll also take about as long for the bioplastic to degrade, and it can still be saved for a little while because her own repair system can also repair her framework. Of course, when you compare plastic and glass to actual armor and weapons it comes up short, but once forcefields are added to the mix... They still do in the balance, but only because the real armor and weapons can have internal magitech or be a different kind of weapon that couldn't be replicated, the framework weapons and armor tend to directly deal more damage and provide more protection by weight although that's "more protection" compared to lighter armor and "lighter weight" to denser armor.
What the IU Meat-People Think:
As you may have guessed, a common early "hypothesis" was that spirits were ethereal beings and their internals and frameworks were believed to be some sort of congealed ectoplasm and their connection to the corporeal realm. That belief died pretty hard when they were clearly reproducing, except to the kind of religious nutcase to whom reality is always irrelevant. Actual scholars who study things that exist are currently arguing as to whether to settle on "mechanical lifeform", "semi-physical lifeform", "holographic lifeform", or something like that except they all seem to think only their suggested term is acceptable and everybody else is WRONG BECAUSE (17 paragraph diatribe here). Still, they're at least seen by the scientific community as being an extremely bizarre lifeform. You might think they'd have a little issue accepting them as a lifeform because of all the plastic and metal wiring, but there's one important background detail I should mention: Spirits first came from the Otherlands.
In the Otherlands of west Sohei, meat grows on the ground, plants get up and walk around, animals come from spores, giant clonal colonies of sedentary animals grow throughout forests seeping caustic sludge, meteors sometimes fall from the sky followed by crystals that forge themselves mecha made of the ossified remains of what died in the blast, you get in too deep and all electronic sensors are jammed, electroreception is hit with a signal so overwhelming the sense goes completely dead to keep the creature from ripping its sensory organs out, concrete buildings grow on their own by millimeters per day, random paved roads with painted lines exist and change shape so slowly you don't notice until you're hopelessly lost, usually after running into a vertical loop or something unreasonable like that which those among us overly prone to antropomorphising might attribute to spite, sometimes broken glass falls from the sky, you get giant lightning storms where the strikes are so powerful they produce enough ionizing radiation to create a secondary electromagnetic pulse, the wind sounds like an unintelligible modulating electronic tone, people swear the clouds are watching them.... My point; Spirits are only debatably the strangest thing coming out of that place, and they're definitely not the most artificial-seeming thing that seems to be occurring there without outside intervention. At this point the answer to "Could spirits be natural creatures?" is "Uh... Oh I don't know, why the hell not?" or sometimes "Insufficient data; Please define the term 'natural' within the context of The Otherlands.".
But what do YOU meat-people think of them? (And what term would you choose to describe them?)

Pt 1 If you haven't read it.
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Pt 2 If you haven't read it.
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Pt 3 If you haven't read it.
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Hope you enjoy Pt 4 and happy reading!
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*Flick* "Aligning descent profile for re-entry." I had made all the final preparations
*Flick* "Prepare for comms black out in 10" William began the countdown.
"9"
"8"
"7"
"6"
"5- when you get back I absolutely *have* to show you this really old movie, interstellar, its a classic" Will interjected.
"4-Oh my stars we're about to enter the atmosphere of Ix-5 at 7km/s and all you can think about is showing me some old movie when we get back?!"
"3- Fine."
"2"
The plasma had begun to lick around the edges of the heat shield and up onto the windows.
"1"
The comms began to make a static hissing sound.
"Just breathe." Will muttered to himself.
The whole shuttle began to shake violently.
"PASSING MAX-Q" Will had to shout to be heard over all the rattling.
Just like that, it began to quiet down, the fiery inferno of re-entry plasma died down and we began our coast down to find a suitable landing spot. Comms had also returned.
*Click* "I'd just like to let everyone know that we made it through re-entry just fine." Will had radioed back to the ship.
The sound of faint cheers from bridge could be heard.
"Engaging cloaking device" *Flick*
A loud hum could be heard as the cloaking device not only prevented us from being seen by eyes, but also seen by any radar, sonar, or other means of detection spun to life.
"So where should we land?"
"Oh just a few more kilometers to shore, then I'll just find a nice, secluded spot and we'll spend the next couple of days getting to know the locals!" I responded gleefully, as this was my first time with a civilization that didn't just learn how to farm.
After carefully gliding down we landed in a patch of grass-like vegetation. Will pointed out all the leaves were all black, to which I responded by telling him that the vegetation had to adapt to capture more of the light spectrum than the vegetation on Earth, because of the dimmer, red dwarf this planet orbited.
We had set up the basics, communications equipment, synthesizers, and a variety of other scientific tools.
"Hey, remember when you said you wanted to see an example of human food! Because I do!" Will exclaimed giddily.
After plugging in a drive and pressing a few buttons, the machine whirred to action, printing out a most unusual dish.
"So keep in mind this is just one dish out of... out of well I don't really know how many different kinds of dishes we have, all you need to know is that it's a very large number... But here's too hoping you enjoy it!"
What came out were this white, almost sphere like but more so a squat raindrop shaped... things. Will called them "Dumplings", and they smelled delicious, though he had dipped them in this brown liquid he called "Soy Sauce" that I really did not care for as far as smell goes.
I carefully picked one of these dumplings and bit into it.
"Oh my" I said, albeit muffled by the food.
"It's good isn't it! I told you!" Will grinned.
"That's quite the... texture. I don't really know how to process this. It's so soft and yet firm. Nutrient packs are so much easier, they don't make a mess and they're just so efficient, I mean, you could probably play around with the recipe, make them tastier. Right?"
"You just don't get it do you." Will said, shaking his head.
"Oh well, more for me." He grabbed at my half eaten dumpling.
"Hey! That's mine!"
"So you DO like it then!"
"No, just, ugh, leave me and my dumpling alone, I've already had my Nutrient Pack for the day I'm going to hibernate now."
Will rolled his eyes at my response.
"Fine." He said in that same begrudging manner as before.
I walked on over to the hibernation chamber, a circular area just big enough for me with a warm, gentle breeze flowing over. As I was going inside I heard Will behind me closing up the door after bringing everything inside.
"Wait... you were going to tell me about.... sleep..." I muttered out.
"Oh yes so hold one, could you just fully wake up for a little bit so I can explain, so your species, and for that matter every other alien species I've met, sleeps one hemisphere or one part of their brain at a time, but humans sleep the whole brain all at once."
"What's that like?" I replied, still in the grip of hibernation.
"So for starters we are like, FULLY unconscious the whole time, we can be woken up but we have a very, VERY limited understanding of what's going on around us. We also go limp so we don't move around accidentally, we still do. It's not perfect but it works enough to where I can say, "yeah we go limp"."
"But aren't you... what happens... if... someone ambushes you at night?"
"In all likelihood unless we happen to be right next to a weapon or something good enough, we die."
"Oh my. How... how did this not drive your species extinct?"
"I'm left wondering that same question too Tomō."
This might be the first time I've heard about a human ever being truly defenseless. Will had disappeared off into another room to change, returning in only a pair of shorts. Which left me examining his exposed torso. Human skin is wrapped quite tightly around the internal structure, and there seems to be very little, if any, loose skin, it also seemed to only be composed of one layer, most others I've meet without loose skin have special layers that can break off. Perhaps humans might be less sturdy than I had come to expect. No no that can't possibly be true I thought to myself, or as much as I could with half a brain working.
The morning was punctured by this infernal clattering from Will's bed, his arm swung up and smashed down on a small table next to him, causing the sound to stop.
"What was that?! Did someone find us?!"
"No... it was just my [Yawns] Alarm, we need to be startled to wake up and that [Will yawned again] was the startling noise."
Will climbed out of bed, shuffled over to another table (Those humans have a lot of tables) grabbed a fresh change of clothes and made his way over to the bathroom to change.
That's when I heard it, a loud SHHHHH sound from the bathroom, I made my way over to the locked door and shouted:
"EVERYTHING OKAY IN THERE WILL?"
"YEAH, JUST TAKING A SHOWER."
"A WHAT?"
"SHOWER"
"WHAT'S THAT?"
"I DON'T CARE FOR THIS CONVERSATION RIGHT NOW."
"OH OKAY."
I shuffled back over to my hibernation chamber, pulling the divider closed I took in a bath of UV sterilizing light and changed out of yesterday's uniform, and into todays, which on scout missions is always a set of cloths made to imitate the look of whatever cloths are common on whatever world we're scouting. In this case it was a brown turtleneck sweater, some black pants, 6 pairs of gloves as the basic orbital scan of their unencrypted communications revealed they obsess over cleanliness, often sporting multiple pairs of gloves for specific tasks, kept in separate pockets, land lastly, a sort of shawl like piece of fabric, apparently used to protect yourself from the midday dust and wind storms.
The disguise of our more... alien features was provided by some makeup, changing our skin to a sort of pale grey. We also made use of some printed prosthetic noses, wigs, and ears, which made our faces impossible to distinguish from the local inhabitants.
Once I had finished applying all my disguises, I exited my chamber and walked over to where Will was, standing by the synthesizer watching it print up a breakfast.
Will, who hadn't even donned the appropriate clothing at this point (he was wearing a simple outfit of black shorts and a grey t-shirt), was oddly enough, sopping wet. His hair had turned a jet black color due to its saturation of water, releasing its store down his face and his neck, resulting in the back of his shirt, and the front collar turning a visibly darker shade and sticking to his body, at this point I also noticed that his skin was covered in beads of moisture glinting in the sun.
"Why are you so wet?" I asked him.
"It has to do with a shower, I get myself under this sort of, simulated rainfall, only the temperature is nice and hot, and use soap, not the same kind you use to clean your hands, but the function is still the same, I then put some stuff in my hair which gets rid of oily build up, the water rinses everything off, but by the end I'm soaking wet, I will need to dry off properly though before I put on all the disguises."
As he grabbed his tray with his hands, still damp from the shower, and the skin around his fingers was all shriveled up.
"Your fingers look like mine now! See!" I asked, moving right up next to him to better show him my fingers.
"It just increases the surface area so I can grip things better underwater, only happens if they get wet."
"Why wouldn't they be like that all the time?"
"Once again I'm left wondering that question myself."
"So what's on the menu for "break-fast"?" I asked
"Well for starters, it's just one word, breakfast, and secondly, I'm having two slices of buttered toast, an egg, and a black tea. Standard human breakfast, though Coffee is more popular."
"Black tea...?" I had heard of Coffee before and its danger to other species, and was hoping that this tea drink lacked any of this substance known as Caffeine.
"Yeah just a little caffeine to wake me up."
"CAFFEINE?! That's... that's a.... that's a Class IV chemical weapon! They banned that centuries ago! How?! What?! Oh my... Oh my..." I began to hyperventilate.
"Relax! There's only what... 50 milligrams in a cup."
"FIFTY?! FIFTY!?! ONLY FIFTY?!? THAT'S TEN TIMES THE DEADLY DOSE! WHAT ARE YOUR THINKING!" I shrieked, though deep down I did take note of how that was less than that of Coffee.
"Shhh, you'll risk us getting caught, calm down, don't worry I'll have the cup disposed of properly, I've done this every day and so far, no one's gotten hurt." Will said in his standard, nonchalant attitude that has become so typical of him, a tone which did not seem anywhere near appropriate for the situation.
"SO FAR?!" I was not heeding his instructions to calm down, it's typically very hard to do so when faced with something that could lead to a violent death.
"Look, look, it's totally harmless for us humans, besides, the Federation strictly manages our recreational use of substances highly dangerous to other species, such as but not limited too: Caffeine, Capsaicin, and Cocoa. I make one wrong move and my ass is sent to jail."
I was shocked, frozen with shock, at least I wasn't screaming but I felt like I couldn't move a muscle. Capsaicin was last used by the Rx'lac to murder billions, Cocoa I hadn't heard of before so it must have been something unique to Earth, but it terrified me still. In my frozen state I waited for the cup he drank from to be destroyed, and at this moment I began to regain my motor functions.
After rigorously drying himself off with a towel and this awfully loud machine he pointed at his hair, Will began to
"Now, could you help me apply the makeup?"
Human hands, while much sturdier than what most of us use, in the case of Captain Reloxyn, she has 6 tentacles which can vary their diameter, and in the case of Zorxians like myself, we have the two hands attached to their respective arm much like a human, but the geometry of the fingers themselves are different, each finger is made up of 3 fluid filled sacs, attached one after another in segments, each sack is attached to the previous with a variety of muscles, which gives each joint the ability to make movements with a full 120 degree range of motion, in any direction. While this makes them far more fragile, due to the lack of skeletal structure, this makes us quite dextrous.
But yet, I noticed that Will's right hand, arm, and ankle were already painted, which puzzled me, if he could paint his right side, then why couldn't he paint his left?
"Do you really need my help? You did just fine painting the right side of your body."
"Tomō, do you really know so little about humans?"
"You know you're the first human I've met!"
"Humans tend to have what's called a dominant hand, what it means is that there's one hand I am really good at using, and another that I'm not so great at using, I *could* train myself to use both hands equally well, but I never really had a need, and even when it would've come in handy, there's always been someone else who can help me. Like you!"
"Aww, thanks!" I responded.
"In my case, my dominant hand is my left one, fairly uncommon. Only about 10% of people are like that, the rest are right handed, and a very small number are born with both hands being of equal capability."
"But you really should get on it with the whole training your right hand. There won't always be someone to help you."
"And yet there always has." Will responded jokingly.
"We ready?" I asked.
"Just have to get some things ready, hold on, if this society is so obsessed with cleanliness, how come they don't wear face masks? I doubt they've gotten to a point where they've already eradicated all diseases. That should take them at least another century."
"Oh, this is the really cool thing about this planet! So basically, airborne diseases never evolved! They just... don't exist here!"
"Absolutely fascinating." Will responded.
"Everything we need is now in the bag." He pointed to the black bag slung over his shoulder made from the local flora.
"And we should be ready to go!" Will enthusiastically marched over to the shuttle door, opening it at saying;
"After you!" With a look of pride on his face, odd, if anyone should be proud, it should be me, after all, this mission is already off to a good start considering he's a rookie.
The red light of Ix bathed the planet in this warm glow, Ix was rare for a red-dwarf system, as most habitable planets are tidally locked, but we marched through the woods, noting observations of the local ecosystem that we stopped periodically to jot down in our notepad.
About halfway through the forest Will stopped suddenly, turning back to face me.
"You forgot to tell me what bridge came up with for our secret identities? Oh stars, saying it like that makes me feel like some kind of super-spy!"
"Oh yes, I must have gotten distracted..." I reached for my communicator.
"Okay, so we're two hikers, you named Po'ol and I named Gra'aul, and we just finished up a nice long hike and so we're off back to Hl'Ix, population 12.8 million, and about a 2 hour train ride. Oh by the way, I have to share the language file hold on... yup that should do it! Congratulations you are now fluent in Ix!"
A requirement of working for any Federation job was the implantation of a language chip which allowed the user to become fluent in all 608 languages and, what they called "Significant Dialects" spoken in the Federation, though for people working on exploration vessels like me and Will, we had access to a file sharing system so we could download new languages for the planets we visited after the central computer processed them.
"Thanks!" Will responded from a meter or so ahead of me.
We continued our march down to the road, where we walked parallel to it as cars zipped by. Eventually the forest we had landed in cleared way for farmland, which after about 5 kilometers or so more walking, started to turn to houses with expansive yards, which gradually became smaller and smaller as we neared the center of town.
"You getting tired yet?" Will asked me, we had decided it was best for him to walk behind me, so we could make sure we stayed together.
"Yeah, but just a bit longer until we make it into... whatever the name of this town is."
"Alright."
We continued to make our way into the town, named Urup and with a population of about 3 thousand. When we got there it was almost devoid of any activity, and the wind had started to pick up, which carried in dust. Thankfully we anticipated this, having donned contact lenses to keep debris out of our eyes, and using the shawl to cover up our mouth and nose. At this point will stopped to pull out a small, and very thin, weather sheet, which he released into the wind. This device would record the weather conditions as it gets carried by the wind. Just after doing this, he turned to me and said,
"Weather at time of release: Temperature: 10 degrees Celsius. Wind speed: 56 Kph, rising. Feels like: 5.2 Degrees Celsius, falling. It wasn't able to get a good reading on dust concentration because it's rising too fast so that should tell you everything you need to know."
The wind nearly blew Will's shawl off, but he grabbed it just in time, and me, being too focused on Will, had let my own shawl blow away in the wind, and while Will had tried to reach for it, the wind carried it away far too quickly for him to get it in time, only missing his fingers by a handful of centimeters. I quickly covered my mouth with my sweater, though this did leave part of my midsection exposed to the elements, a suboptimal position to be in during a dust storm of this magnitude.
"Dammit! Almost had the blasted thing!" Will shouted, the rush of the wind was beginning to drown out our voices.
He put his hand in one of the many pockets on his pants, that's something everyone can appreciate about Ix fashion, anything below 10 pockets is simply unacceptable. Anyways, Will pulled out a small pair of scissors, and quickly removed his shawl.
"What are you doing you can't remove your shawl in these conditions!" I shouted back at him.
"I'll be quick, don't worry!" Will responded as he cut his cloth in two.
"Here!" He said handing me the now removed half of his shawl, and quickly covering his face with the remaining half.
We continued on, though this time much slower than before, as we didn't want to loose our balance and be toppled by the wind. Never before had I ever had to deal with wind this intense, no wonder they assigned the human.
"Squat down! Boundary layer winds should be slower!" He shouted to me while bending down to waddle his way across the street to the hotel.
Squatting down only provided minimal relief, as I suppose one would have to crawl to truly take advantage of this effect. Slowly but surely we made our way across the road, over to the hotel. Opening the first set of doors we were met with a powerful blast of air, which prevented any dust from getting in. Only until after the doors had closed, and our clothes were sufficiently purged of any particulates that had somehow lodged their way into the remarkably dense fabrics. Eventually though, the blast died down, and the second doors opened automatically.
The doors opened to reveal an interior with a largely brown, beige, and black color pattern. The whole lobby was lit with a quite warm color tone, with the lightbulbs occasionally flickering and all the windows had been sealed off behind steel plates. Eventually Will turned his head to face a desk spanning quite a large distance, located just in front of a large board with all the room numbers located next to a light.
We could vaguely hear someone talking to another person, emanating from behind a door marked "Employees Only", Will glanced at me, pulling my attention to his gloves, which he began to swap out for a new pair. I quickly followed suit. Eventually, just moments after I finished putting on a new pair of gloves, one of the people from behind the door exited.
"Why on Ix would there ever be customers walking in during the middle of the storm! We issued the alert 2 hours ago!" The woman said to the man who stayed in the room as the door closed behind her.
Turning around to face the two of us, and walking over to the main part of the check in desk, she began to speak to us.
"Hi my name us Za'ul!" She said, showing us her name tag.
"Now what can I do for the two of you! Must've been miserable trapped out there in the storm!"
Will began to approach the desk, seeing this I decided to sit down and catch my breath, the 10 kilometer walk had exhausted me, it was remarkable to see Will barley fazed by it.
"Hi my name is Po'ol and this is my hiking buddy Gra'aul, we just finished up the most beautiful of hikes through that nearby forest, so we're on our way back to Hl'ix! I was wondering if you could get us a room please and thank you ma'am." He said in a sort of folksy manner, not too dissimilar from the way Za'ul spoke.
"Alright you want one bed or two?" She responded.
"-Two please." He said, almost cutting Za'ul off.
"All right! You want first floor or second floor?"
"Oh second floor would be lovely."
"Well here's your key and have a lovely stay!"
Will walked over to me.
"Got us a key for room 203, here's your key" Will had switched from his folksy mannerisms to a soft whisper, but I just let the key hit me, I was far to tired to catch it.
"Well I see our hike took quite a bit out of you, so just come up when your ready, I got the bags don't worry."
I nodded my head in silent agreement, I was exhausted, but I knew I should probably go upstairs to the room with him.
"Hold on.." I said, slowly lifting myself up onto my feet and carefully making my way over to the elevator.
Standing in the cramped elevator I noticed Will suddenly had this terrible and persistent oder.
"You okay?" I asked him
"Yeah... why do you ask?"
"It's just... you smell kind of... bad."
"Oh!" He chuckled with that same old chuckle I had heard a million times before.
"Yeah, uh, I'm sure after I explained to you what a shower was you were probably perplexed as to why we don't do the standard UV bath, but basically humans smell bad after a long day, or after a long enough, or intense enough period of physical exertion. Showering gets rid of the smell. I did notice the Ix had only a single layer of skin, and hopefully this means they too have the scent issues that humans have, and thus also make use of showering."
"I see. Can you take another shower when we get to the hotel?"
"Tomō! That's... don't say that to other humans okay, you can be direct with me like that but... a lot of other humans will not take that kindly. Just letting you know that."
ding
The elevator had made its way up to the second floor.
"Let's see, 203... 203... here it is!"
Will unlocked the door and opened it.
"Oh thank the stars they have actual beds and it wasn't just a translational error!" He cried out in relief.
Will ran over to the bathroom.
"And they have showers too! Just Wonderful! Don't worry a shower should adequately clean you too."
"Oh I brought my own portable UV sterilizer, I'll be fine."
"You just relax down I'll take care of the report back to bridge."
I made my way over to the beds and just collapsed into it. Hibernating while laying down was not ideal, but at this point I'd do anything not to be on my feet anymore. Eventually I decided that I didn't care for lying face down, and instead rolled over to face Will, just to make sure he didn't botch the report.
Eventually once he finished his report, he walked over to the rooms corners and placed the sound barriers, which would cancel out our voices making sure nobody heard us. Which he, well, I was supposed to do first thing upon entering, though I was far to tired, and Will must've only just noticed. You know, when he first got here he really just annoyed me to no end, but now, he's really settled in and has gotten really into the hang of things, and sure, he's weird, but you know what, he's a human, he's not weird, just... different.
​
I think I'm going to leave it off here, I know I promised some action but this is just where the story lead me, and it was already getting long. Part 5 will be out tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed reading!

Stats: NC, 3.85 cGPA/3.75 sGPA, 518, Ivy, ORM
Research:
2000 hours Yale Med, 1 poster so far
800 hours Boston Children's, 4 posters (most meaningful)
1000 hours undergrad lab, nothing
Clinical
200 hours CNA (most meaningful)
200 hours general hospital volunteer (walk with patients, turnover rooms, sit with patients, etc)
Non clinical
275 hours childcare
100 hours tutoring the homeless
150 hours writing letters to those with depression (pen pals!) (most meaningful)
Shadowing
125 hours, peds
Leadership
600 hours, president of 2 undergrad clubs for 3 years, TA for a year
School List:
Harvard, Yale, UPenn, Vanderbilt, Sinai, Cornell, Columbia, Northwestern, Duke, NYU LISM
UNC, UMass, Dartmouth, Brown, Emory, USC, UMiami, St Louis, Wake Forest, ECU Brody
Tufts, Tulane, Georgetown, Einstein, USF Morsani, VTech, Sidney Kimmel

Nature of Predators is created by u/SpacePaladin15, whom was willing to let his horde of fans write fanfiction.
I'd like to give my thanks to u/SavingsSyllabub7788, the creator of Death of a Monster, and one of my favorite birbs. for giving me an odd bit of inspiration, and the discord at large for shaping this story with theories and random discussions. This one shot didn't even conceptually exist last week.
Also referenced u/Acceptable_Egg5560's Nature of a Giant in this one.
Tell me how you feel about this story. I'm content with where it ends, but others' insight always helps me figure out my flaws.
.*~*.
Memory Transcription Subject: Barkim, forsaken krakotl veteran.
Date: December 20, 2136
.~*~.
I came before Captain Sovlin and Captain Kalsim. I remember watching Kalsim train. I doubt he remembers me. My career made me into a captain pretty fast. Faster than most. I had repelled five Arxur raids while in control of the bridge. My crew were brave enough to trust me and my insane methods. Letting a colony world fall was unacceptable in my eyes. We were the vigilant, always ready to warp in ten minutes or less. The federation as whole didn't seem to understand how much value a few extra minutes bought for the settlers meant. Even if I had to order a retreat, tens of thousands would survive because they managed to find a place to weather the raid while the Arxur were distracted.
I was a hero.
Rumbling laughter and howls make my slow trod falter, and I look though a window into the recreational room. There's several humans at a table holding scraps of paper and barking in a jovial mood. They're not masked, and my feathers ruffle looking at them. A flicker of movement on the table catches my eye, and I finally spot the Dossur in their midst, almost completely hidden in a bunker of coins.
A Dossur beating an entire group of pack predators by himself. I never would've believed it, but I'm still not surprised it would be Alvin of all people.
That little runt was the only reason I've managed to hold onto my sanity for so long. He was braver than I, and he brought me back even when I was at my worst, again and again and again. He was the first to run to our predatory saviors back at the facility. And he was the last to leave, running back into the fighting and leading a human doctor to me to stop the stray bullet from taking me into Inatala's grace.
I left him to his card game, faintly overhearing one of the humans complain about being a several years running Texas Holdem champion. Alvin's response sounded very much like him, asking if he wanted to bet the actual crown next to add to his growing wealth.
Eventually I found myself in front of a door. Inside was a small room. One wall contained a wooden desk carved with enough craftsmanship to rival old Krakotl wood carvers. The desk was cluttered with cylinders and writing apparatuses, and a primitive writing board resting on the wall above it displayed several print outs of various people. Relatives. Descendants. People that had enough empathy in them to take back the few lucky souls that still had people they could trust. The computer underneath it was not active, but if it where I'd imagine there would be encrypted communication logs trying to reconnect with those few love ones. Plans to reunite them. Promises to protect them under this faction's umbrella.
It was strange, that this group of humans wasn't desired by the rest of their kind. They take more direct, brutal action than their leaders, but they act to save lives.
On the opposite wall was a locker. Inside were several firearms of Human make, and multiple emergency atmospheric suits. Many were for human use, but some were Federation standard. A pair of boots and engineering equipment rested on the floor before it, scuffed and well worn. There's a strange logo of an orange planet on the back of a jacket hanging from a hook nearby, and an even stranger article of cloth called an 'arm band.' The arm band has a large tree sewn into it, flanked by two prey animals and a river. The human I'm visiting was part of that arm band group, named after a tree of all things.
You couldn't get me to harbor a guess as to why they'd name themselves after a tree.
The far wall was rather simple. A faded green paint coat, covered in various anti-predator posters. One was of a human in a blue space suit, the visor open and revealing an endless pit of teeth. Another depicting a feral, over-proportioned human salivating over a dressed, screaming krakotl on a dinner plate. A third poster depicted some venlil collared and chained in place, stuck in some multi-colored wrapping that went up its legs halfway.
There was a mirror beside the posters, and I winced at the terrible shape I was in. I'd abused myself too much after I was freed. Even after stopping, I was still recovering. Looking past the mirror, there is a large banner of a green Terran letter. A few paper photos are plastered around it of smiling humans in strange places, and my eye always lingers over those photos despite the many times I've seen them. Earth looked lovely. I wished Kalsim had called off his mission.
Feeling like an intruder, I turned my attention to the last part of the wall. A set of black out curtains were flush with it, concealing a human roost built into the structure itself. If I was lucky, she would be there.
"Hope?"
Come on, you're better than a chicken.
Carefully, I lifted the curtain. "Hope?"
There she was. The one human I wasn't bothered by on this station. I can hear the music playing now that the curtain is out of the way, and the thick visor over her eyes tells me she's watching a video or simulation of some kind. I hesitate, watching her in her own world. What fur she does have is short and remarkably dense, and she has such a unique coloration that I would swear she was one of a kind if she hadn't mentioned having family. A tan complexion, painted over by splotches and stripes of white and violets that humans can't see with their own eyes. Her face is relaxed, mouth slightly open in wonder.
The human that helped staunch my bleeding, and gently broke the news to me of everything that had happened while I was locked up. The same one that kept me from pulling myself apart immediately after, and tried to find a way to keep me busy as my whole world went up in flames. A stern, capable person that could make decisions under pressure and wanted to save lives. While not a leader, I could see it in her. She had mettle.
She was completely exposed. Had I been the old me and not the one that woke up in a PD cell after a Sillis conference, I might've followed Kalsim's path. A talon in the right spot, and humans die fast.
"Hope?" Even raising my voice, she didn't hear me right in front of her. "Hope!"
As much as I respected her, coming this far in my state was exhausting. I, being a former fleet captain, hero, and outstanding Federation officer, decidedly acted like a child in that moment and pecked her.
"AAAAAAAH!"
"AIIIIIIIIIEEEEE"
I let out the most undignified shriek in my life and fell over backwards, landing on my tail feathers and sending a jolt up my spine. I forgot that since Hope was human, by extension she could be loud. Really, really, unfathomably loud.
There was a blur of limbs and Hope was sitting up, visor wielded as a bludgeon. She made eye contact with me, and I realized all my remaining feathers had poofed up.
"Blu!" She scolded, face curling in frustration. "What in the matter is- Blu?! You're not in your room?"
Shock, this time. I felt some shame in how low my standards had fallen, and smoothed down my feathers properly. My poor heart was already recovering and I stood, puffing out my chest.
"I... I wanted to go for a walk. See what you humans could do with a dated station like this."
"You're in my room."
"That appears to be the case." I pushed a ball of dust across the floor with a talon and regarded it absently, turning my head and keeping an eye on Hope. "It needs cleaning."
With speed I was anticipating, she hurled a pillow at me. I caught the assault and rerouted it, catching her in the face. She leaned back and laughed, a noise that calmed what was left of my quaking heart as I hopped forward. She offered a hand that I accepted, and she helped pull me onto the edge of the bed.
"You offered to show me your skies." I began, feeling uncertain. "Is that possible?"
"Yeah," she said. "Here-"
Grace put a hand on my chest and pushed down. A profound sense of horror washed over me as my back hit the soft bedding. She wouldn't- no. She can't- is it even- when have I last- Inatala please-
I realized with a start that Hope leaned past me, grabbing her pad. She plugged an odd attachment into it and fastened it to the wall by her head, and flopped over beside me. My immediate terror faded into embarrassment, and my face warmed at my own stupidity as she pulled the curtain closed. It became dark, and I felt her shift slightly until the ceiling above us started to slowly glow. Her pad booted up and began to project an image up there, and I felt my initial problems fade as a blue sky opened up before us.
"Oh wow." I breathed, realizing it was a video as a plane flew overhead. I forgot myself for a moment, looking up into an alien sky as clouds blew by at a lazy pace. The jet stream slowly lost its uniformity and stretched out, facing away as other clouds replaced it. I could hear wind and alien birds chirping, and for a long moment I was there. I was really there.
Storm clouds, massive weather fronts, all began drifting by. There was a dull rumble of thunder. I started as a bird flew very close overhead.
"What was that?"
"Woodpecker. Some can get pretty big back home. Not as big as you, Blu."
"Is it really this serene? Where was this taken?"
"My backyard. There was a massive hill out back. I used to lay there for hours when I was younger. Lived at the edge of a village. The only noise back there was the odd combustion engine or farming drone. Sometimes someone firing off a gun or listening to music loudly."
"You lived in the countryside? You're a pilot!"
Hope chuckled softly. "Surprise! There's some pretty sharp people that don't live in the cities, Blu. Especially us humans. My father could repair any farm equipment you threw at him going back a hundred years. Of course, I also have an uncle that thinks the Queen of England doesn't exist, so it probably levels out." She finished, sighing and reaching up. She swiped her finger across the ceiling and suddenly the skies changed.
They were orange now. More clouds. I felt a familiar pang in my chest thinking of a Nishtal sunset, but I kept quiet as the skies gradually changed. I was surprised to see such a vibrant shade of orange, then a sharp streak of violet bleed into it. There was red as well. A lot of red.
"Why red?"
"Oh, that. Massive forest fire in Canada. That's a country above mine. The smoke changed the colors for a little while. It made for a nice view."
That it did. I got lost in the footage, and started losing track of time. Only the occasional creak of the bedding kept me from forgetting where I really was. Hope seemed content watching the skies, and it dawned on me how close I was to her.
I'm acclimating well. Maybe I'll be like Alvin in no time.
When the skies slowly turned to night I was amazed at the stars that came out. Constellations I was unfamiliar with, patterns and swirls of light that could never be seen from a Federation city. I heard Hope inhale and reach out, changing the scene before it could linger anymore. "How about a time lapse. I've got some good ones."
"I don't know what that is."
"Really? Someone sets up a camera in a nice spot and records hours or days of footage. They take everything they've documented and then speed it up to a couple minutes." Hope starts a new video. I'm taken back by it, how a cloud bank flows around a mountain pass like water. It looks like a stream, where the clouds shift with each wind current change, flowing back and forth as minutes are turned into seconds.
It's stunning. Hope switches to another one, and another. I'm struck dumb with wonder, baffled at how not one other creature out of the hundreds of species thought to do anything similar over the course of the Federation. Massive mountain tops, where humans blur through trails like plasma. Prairies with storm cells moving in, lighting and rain sweeping through and giving it new light as the terrain is rapidly drenched. A large road where thousands of human vehicles streak by and leave brief paint trails in their wake.
"Thank you, Hope."
She nods, an odd gesture of acknowledgement, before changing the video back to a more slow paced skyline. After several minutes of silence, I feel a weight forming in my chest. Slowly, my wonder begins to crumble.
"How many confidants were you able to find? For the others?"
Hope shifted to look at me, turning her head and making my feathers tingle slightly at how close her face was to me. She looked back up at the sky. "Seven."
"There were forty that wanted to leave as quickly as they could. What happens to them?"
"We're letting them go. Even if they don't want anything to do with predators, they're going to find out avoiding my species is pretty hard. We're going to give them access to the network anyways, in case they want our help down the road."
"And the rest of us?"
"I'm helping the ones that want to go back to a somewhat normal life find that. There's several planets they can go to, and countless colonies. They'll be placed close to the support network in case there's trouble and they need to come back, or need financial assistance or help integrating."
Hope had mentioned something about 'shelters being a safe place' for us break outs, but had never elaborated on that.
"And what about the others that want to stay?" I noticed Hope scowl at the skies, her face forlorn.
"The ones that want to stay and help us fight are welcome to. It's not all dangerous- being part of the network isn't as risky. Helping the ones that wanted to go back to living, or finding others that got lost or fell through the cracks. It... it feels wrong asking anyone we rescued to fight and die for us. We don't want clouded judgement and people thinking they owe us that. But, there are a lot wanting to join our ranks in more aggressive operations. We're making them combat ready, teaching them how we wage wars so that they don't turn into their overseers."
I lay there for a long moment, staring at the open skies above us. "What about me?" I asked quietly.
"You're not excluded from those choices, Blu."
"You read my file. You know who I was. What I would've done if I didn't end up in that place. You'd really just let me go?"
"If you wanted to go, then yes."
The simple way in which she states it confused me. Like such a choice wouldn't cause issues or risks.
"But, we've been thinking about a better choice for you."
Oh?
"The Mazics are turning into the next Paltan Combine. Their newest influx of refugees were the released Krakotl."
My chest tightens. Nishtal is no more, razed to the bedrock and dead. We had been abandoned by our neighbors, our home slaughtered well before our true nature was revealed. And in the same year, the Federation deploys over forty thousand ships to take back a world that left behind their rule. Billions of loyal citizens captured and destined for a bloody fate were worth less than billions that seceded peacefully.
And then the humans brokered a deal with the Arxur and saved their souls. This was yet another time they did the impossible.
"We were thinking they could use a strong anchor to roost against. Someone that they might remember. A leader that they can trust."
I turned my head to directly face Hope, but she was still looking at the skies.
"I... they hate you humans."
"They do."
"I can't try and lead them, and sell out anyone that still doesn't believe in the UN's cause. I can't betray them." I chirped, dread worming into my gut.
"We wouldn't expect you too. We don't want you too. Blu-" Hope turned her gaze on me, her voice sincere. "We want them to find the right path. They deserve peace and security. They don't deserve to live in fear and rot with hatred. We don't... my group does not want yours to suffer over what your government did, even if the masses supported it at the time. We think you can lead them to a better future, where this hell can have a chance to heal and fade."
She looked back up at the artificial sky above us. "You don't even have to talk to us again if you choose this. If you do your best to ensure your species can coexist with mine, that would be more than we could ever hope to see happen."
"You think that's possible? That I could get that far? It seems so far away."
Hope bared her teeth in a smile. "You're more than capable. You love your people with everything you have, Blu. They'll see that. They'll believe in you. When you stand firm for your people, they'll follow you, too. We'll help where we can- peacefully. This can happen, I know it."
I found myself looking up at Earth's sky once again, apprehensive above this new burden. There was no way I would turn this down. If the Wolverines thought it was possible, then it was possible. A future where my people were both free in body and spirit was one I would fight for until my weary body gave out.
"How do we start?"

I am looking for help with where I should apply this cycle!
cGPA and sGPA as calculated by AMCAS or AACOMAS: cGPA: 3.57 sGPA: 3.34 MCAT score(s) and breakdown: 514 (129/127/129/129) State of residence or country of citizenship (if non-US): NC Ethnicity and/or race: ORM Undergraduate institution or category: T30 State School Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer): 1100 Hours scribing (paid) Research experience and productivity: 800 Hours Completed an honors thesis, one published abstract (4th author), and a presentation at large national conference Shadowing experience and specialties represented: 80 Hours Three different specialities Non-clinical volunteering: Tutored elementary school kid from disadvantaged background, also the secretary (150 hours) Church youth group service events in local community, also the secretary (200 hours) Ambassador for my major's department, responsible for holding tours and hosting events at local museum (75 hours) Other extracurricular activities (including athletics, military service, gap year activities, leadership, teaching, etc: Senior fellow at center dedicated to discussion of ethics (200 hours) President of major's honor society (200 hours) Danced on competitive team, also the treasurer (760 hours) Relevant honors or awards: Graduated with honors (honors thesis) Anything else not listed you think might be important: Will be doing a service term with the National Health Corp during my gap year
Here is my current school list, I am looking to apply to around 30 schools (MD only): UNC Brody (ECU) Wayne State Creighton Oakland MC Wisconsin VCU Western MI EVMS Vermont Quinnipiac Wake Forest NOVA MD TCU Rosalind Franklin George Washington Drexel Temple Jefferson Penn State Hackensack New York Medical College Albany
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

For starters, I (M33) do not believe in the paranormal and I believe everything can be explained through science. That being said, I cant stop thinking about what happened on my wife (Amanda, F34) and I's recent camping trip.
This past Saturday my wife and I decided to get away and go camping with our dogs. We live in Washington state and love spending our free time outdoors hiking and camping. When we camp we avoid camp grounds and people, and we always seek out remote places where we can be alone deep in the wilderness. This weekend we found a spot about 10 miles down an old forest service road on national forest land. On the way to our camping spot, we past some other dispersed campers along the road, but eventually found a nice spot to ourselves without cell phone reception and connection to the civilized world. We went to bed that night around 10pm and tried to stay warm as the temperature dropped from the 70s into the 40s. I am naturally a light sleeper and continously wake up throughout the night on a regular basis and this night was no different. Every little leaf rustle and twig snap was waking me up. It also didnt help that my dogs were constantly wedging themselves between my wife and I, pushing me to the edge of the tent. Eventually morning came and I layed in my sleeping bag listening to the birds chirp as the sun began to brighten the sky. It was about 5am as I layed there listening in the morning chill when I suddenly heard something that made my heart leap out of my chest. I heard a woman's voice, what seemed like maybe 50 ft away from the tent call out "Is Amanda here?" I could barely breathe and my face began to burn with fear. I layed there for what seemed like 10 minutes waiting to hear the voice again or hear someone walking through the forest, but all I heard was the chirps of the early morning birds. I eventually got up and opened the tent and looked around. I didnt see anything out of the ordinary, and definitely didnt see a woman. I began to relax and figured I must have been still going in and out of sleep as I layed in the tent and just dreamt that a woman was calling out to my wife, but I havent been able to stop thinking about it and how vivid and real it was. My wife woke up not long after and I told her about it and she also said that I must have been dreaming. We ended up packing out early that morning so that we could get home and get some weekend chores complete before starting the work week. Its been 3 days and I cant seem to come up with any other explanation other than I was dreaming. Ive tried searching around the internet to see if anyone else has experienced something similar or if there is any old legends or lore of voices calling out your name in the forest, but I havent really found anything.

Unpacking the Light Police. Light Pollution News.
Show Link: https://lightpollutionnews.com/podcast/unpacking-the-light-police/
Subscribe: Apple Podcast Spotify Google Podcast
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Guests:
John Barentine of Dark Sky Consulting, LLC.
Kaitlyn Evans, Conservationist.
Show:
I was busted by the light police. They had a point, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.
Dana Milbank purchased a home in, soon to be not, rural Virginia. At night he kept the formerly vacant property lit to the degree that spurned one commentator to call it “spaceship lighting.”
Milbank recaps being visited by the “light police,” a group of concerned citizens who help educate neighbors and instill a sense of pride in the brilliance of their starry night skies.
At first, he was taken aback, but later, not only did he appreciate their efforts, but he also converted his blinding always on, white light flood lights to warm 2700 Kelvin motion sensing lights.
Per Ruskin Hartley, executive director of the International Dark Sky Association, “for 4.5 billion years there was no artificial light at night. It’s really only in the last five human generations that we transformed that. It’s one of the most profound transformations of our environment.”
Many of you may recall an earlier story, way back in our Hormone of Darkness episode, showcasing concerns by local residents prior to a 760 house (now 761) plus town center development moving into the Culpepper County, VA area. Per the Rappahannock News, this development features “a resort style swimming pool, clubhouse, tot lot, and multiple sports fields and sports courts, all connected by a network of biking and walking trails.”
The forgotten medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’ by Zaria Gorvett of the BBC.
Gorvett opened my eyes to something I never knew about, the medieval custom of two sleeps. For those of you unaware, two sleeps are exactly what it sounds like.
Folks would partake in a communal nap, complete with rigid sleeping arrangement conventions, between 9 – 11pm, then awaken for a few hours to do everything from hang out to brew beer! In fact, the idea of multiple sleeps crossed cultures and was found in places as far from Europe as indigenous South America.
How can one’s circadian rhythm make sense of all of this?!
Well, for starters, until the invention of the alarm clock, which humorously was invented by a clocks salesman so he could wake up and sell more clocks, people had no firm way to wake up at a consistent time. The industrial revolution enforced a new circadian standard.
And there’s some science behind this! In the 1992 study, In Short Photoperiods, human sleep is biphasic, researcher Thomas Wehr found that after four weeks of 10 hour days, his subjects began to engage in this two sleep cycle, involving a one to three hour period for which they became awake and engaged in between.
Want to Learn About Light Pollution? There’s a mini-course for that!, Jennifer Sensiba of Clean Technica.
Quoting Sensiba, “As I got older, I traveled a lot more and saw the problem more for what it is. Not only did I see that in many places there is no refuge from it, but I also saw that it was slowly growing worse. Places that had been dark 30 years ago had more and more light creeping upon the horizon.”
If you’re interested in learning more, or more importantly, know someone who might benefit from learning more, Sensiba links up to an International Dark Sky Mini-Course on light pollution, call it Light Pollution 101!
There’s a Play Date at the National Museum of Natural History: Lights Out exhibit!
But unfortunately, by the time you listen to this, and hell, by the time we talk about this, it has passed.
Ann Arbor named best place for sunrises, sunsets in Michigan. Sarah Parlette for Click on Detroit.
Evidently gambling websites have decided to honor April’s International Dark Sky week in a strange new content marketing campaign, which was to rank the best places in each state to see sunrises and sunsets. My favorite one, “Ann Arbor named best place for sunrises, sunsets in Michigan,” comes from Click on Detroit, whereby a quote “study” examined Michigan’s most populated cities.”
According to Click on Detroit, “to celebrate International Astrology Day on Saturday, staff at Great Lake Stakes, a Michigan online gambling news site, looked at light pollution in the five most populated cities around the Mitten state to determine which offers the best views every morning and evening.”
Star bathing is the new outdoor travel trend we should all be trying for Summer 2023, according to Amy Beecham at Stylist.
Evidently, as an attempt to destress and promote mindfulness, romanticism about sleeping under the stars has birthed a 70% increase in searches for the term ‘star bathing’ on Hipcamp. And to be sure, “Hipcamp recommends checking a stargazing calendar which outlines major astrological events – like supermoons, pink moons, and star showers.”
“Industry Must Face an Inconvenient Truth — Most LED Lights at Night are Unhealthy”
Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, a circadian clock expert, recently published an article in LEDs Magazine chastising the lighting industry for not recognizing and reigning in the negative externalities of its products. Per the piece, such effects are, obesity, diabetes, depression, cancer, and more.
He cites three categories of industry responses, making the correlation that long term Denial or outright Ignorance of the Facts, may result in “asbestos-scale liabilities or draconian regulations.”
Per the piece, a recent survey by the Circadian Light Research Center of 2,697 peer reviewed scientific articles confirmed that human circadian clocks are highly sensitive to blue wavelengths, and that exposure to such wavelengths leads to major health disorders.
Moore-Ede calls for the industry to harvest the “commercial opportunity” to greatly limit future liability by creating and managing its own standards for circadian modulated lighting.
Unpacking the Wallpack, by Dan Weissman in LD+A Magazine.
Weissman, who recently purchased a telescope for his family in Cambridge, MA, discovered that the scope could only afford him views of some solar system objects and a few brightly burning stars.
The ire of Weissman’s pen takes the shape of a rectangular fixtures, be it box like or simply a panel these days, that typically hang off the side of an exterior wall or above an exterior door. “Devoid of aesthetic value” this light is often put up under the “pretense of security and safety” by “recommended practices and adopted municipal codes.”
Weissman recognizes labels that often accompany, what he calls, “Glare bombs,” including “contractor-select,” “energy efficient,” or “light pollution friendly.”
Further, per an earlier LD+A article, such lighting driven by its extreme contrasts is exceedingly common in minority communities where light is weaponized as a tool of power. It becomes a “device of alienation, creating a zone of control and separation.”
Weissman recognizes that the true reason such fixtures are selected often comes down to cost. He recognizes that it may take equally as much cost to persuade building and homeowners away from such lighting into the realm of more responsible, lower lumen, shielded lighting.
Weissman calls for producers of these glare bombs to be labeled as polluters, putting them in line with fossil fuel manufacturers and PFAS makers.
Songbirds, dusk and clear skies: Scientists explore migratory flights, by Erin Blakemore.
Bird migration season is ending here in the Mid-Atlantic. I was lucky enough to catch several Baltimore Orioles and Indigo Buntings last week. Researchers looked at 400 songbirds from 9 major species, “including the yellow-rump warbler, American redstart and Bicknell’s thrush.”
The question they hoped to answer was how are these birds so darn precise in identifying the best time to take off for their nightly migration? Scientists found that 90% of the migrating birds in the study took off within 69 minutes of dusk. A “much narrower takeoff window,” that even shocked the research team!
Per the study, taking off at night is all about maximum flight time. In addition to being able to precisely schedule their take offs, a feat that every airline I’ve flown with over the past few years has proven inept at, birds also are apparently good meteorologists! They often depart when the atmospheric pressure rises over a day’s span. Other factors also trigger migration, including sex, age, and celestial cues.
‘Lights Out’ initiative appears to be saving birds from crashing into Philly buildings by Sophia Schmidt.
Preliminary results indicate that bird death counts are down 70% at one Market Street tower, since it began its participation in Lights Out. As we spoke about on a previous show, birds utilize the stars to navigate, but city lights can disorient the birds. Combine the lights with reflective or transparent glass, and that spells fatal trouble for our migrating warblers!
Per Keith Russell, a program manager for urban conservation with Audubon Mid-Atlantic, “We’ve lost almost a third of our birds – and [collisions] contributing to that. If we’re going to want to preserve the bird populations here in North America, we have to look at these types of problems. And this is a preventable one.”
The Knoxville, TN Zoo is offering up what they call “Twilight Tours” per WVLT 8. Each event will feature a guide to showcase nocturnal critters.
I did something similar in Singapore years ago. The zoo had very dim lights in the exhibits – and they kept those lights dim as you walked so that you didn’t lose your night vision. It was a very different and, might I say, peaceful experience than the typically chaotic daytime zoo.
Flashlights posing major threat to nesting sea turtles. Fox35 Orlando
Apparently, a single flashlight can deter female sea turtles from coming onto a beach and nesting. Florida, as I did not know, is home to 90% of the sea turtle nests across the world, so losing sea turtles can affect the global ecosystem.
One visitor to Cocoa Beach stated, “Just leave them alone. Stand back and look. You don’t need a flashlight.”
Another, “It’s not super surprising because more buildings go up, more technology. As it increases, nature and stuff like that decreases,” said Zoe Jovaag, whose grandfather used to take her on walks to see sea turtles.
Capture the Dark 2023 officially is under way!
The International Dark Sky Association opens up its annual photo contest complete with prizes across eight categories and an additional People’s Choice category. Voting begins on July 3rd, entries must be received by June 30th.
City Tests Traffic Light That Only Turns Green for Drivers Who Obey the Speed Limit. Erin Marquis for Jalopnik.
And hey, you better not speed in Brossard, Quebec….otherwise you may be waiting around for a while. Brossard is testing out a new traffic light that will stay red until it senses oncoming traffic. However, it will only change to green if the car is going the speed limit. Per the Jalopnik article, “FRED [the French acronym for “educational traffic calming light] forces fast drivers to stop and gives them a chance to reconsider their life choices.” Such lights are already used in Europe, but this will be the first for the Great White North.
Why the Greatest Threat to Star-Gazing Isn’t Light Pollution, and this comes to us from Dorin Elin Urrutia at Inverse.
Elin Urrutia writes, in her compelling piece, that the greatest threat to star-gazing is actually the weather. Citing notable examples of the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia (which burnt down due to bushfires) and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (which sustained structural damage following the winds of Hurricane Maria).
While the threat of human-caused climate change has presented new challenges, Elin Urrutia references proactive burns that saved Los Angeles’ Mount Wilson Observatory from flames in 2020.
On a similar note, ABC News (the Australian Broadcasting Company, not to be confused with the American Broadcasting Company), brings us “A World Without Darkness Could Be a Reality within a Few Years.”
Per Carol Redford of Astrotourism Western Australia, “There are some people in the world now who don’t actually experience darkness anymore. They’re in a city like Beijing, Toyoko, or London. In all those big cities, it’s never dark, it’s always light. During the day of course with the sun, but then during the night with all of the artificial light. They’re not experiencing darkness, and definitely not seeing those beautiful stars…”
In the 66 years since the implementation of the UN Convention on the Peaceful Use of Outerspace, around 11,000 satellites orbit the Earth. But it’s about to get wayyy busier. Driven by innovations that have led to dramatic reductions in costs, over the next ten years, Per attorney Steven Freeland, it’s anticipated that somewhere between 100,000 to 500,000 objects will be sent up. Let me pause on that for a second.
On the travel front, we stay in the land down under, “Aussie region determined to keep its darkness is a stargazer’s dream” by Chantelle Francis of News.com.AU.
The town of Swam Reach, population 270, resides in a 3200sq km region of Southern Australia that received its International Dark Sky Reserve status over three years ago. On a scale of darkness between 0 – 22, the River Murray Dark Sky Reserve at Swam Reach, measures in at a whopping 21.9!
Tourism has become a growing business. The reserve hosts numerous telescope pads and offers tours of the night sky. There’s hope that an observatory and/or planetarium may also arrive in due course.
Best smart lights for outdoors in 2023, Brittney Vincent of CBS Essentials.
Oh there’s a lot not to love here, but it does fall in line with last month’s ‘Lumens are Coming’ article.
For those of you who feel the need to light your trees, because for some reason they need light at night I guess…I’ll try and pretend it’s not solely for ostentatious and narcissistic reasons. By the way, does anyone remember when those were negative characteristics?
The article features spotlights that can be programmed to over 16 MILLION colors including…lucky for us, ALL shades of white….which you can also do for a 500 lumen flood light set.
And hey, Ring now has solar path lighting. Don’t worry though, the fixtures themselves put out up to 80 lumens of sideways light.
You know, it’s astounding when you look at some of these pictures. The amount of redundant lighting. It honestly makes no sense to me. You have a porch light, which lights up the path. Path lighting, which lights up the path. And, in the one picture, god awful frontward facing flood lights, which also light up the path. How bright do you need these paths!? I digress. But the lumens are indeed coming.
LDS Church will get to light up its Heber Valley Temple after all, but the faith didn’t get everything it wanted, Blake Apgar of the Salt Lake Tribune.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fought hard to rid itself of any nighttime lighting responsibility by pressuring Wasatch County, Utah officials to approve new lighting rules that would enable the church to light a proposed new temple the same way it does for every other temple.
The Church received permission to uplight the temple, enabling an exception to be made in Wasatch’s rather stringent nighttime lighting rulebook. However, the temple will be restricted by the level of lumens it can use, and it must have exterior lighting turned off an hour after sunset or an hour after normal business hours.
Smart Street Lights Market is Expected to Hit USD 14,751.1 million at a 23.4% CAGR by 2030, Market Research Future Press Release
The pandemic is officially over, smart street lighting is about to boom. Combine the rush to LED fixtures with the Internet of Things, and expect to see street lights moonlighting as traffic and parking monitors, air quality meters, and more. Not to mention, “it is anticipated that camera-connected smart street lighting will increase road safety by lowering the likelihood of accidents and criminality.”
Texas now has 7 dark sky communities for spectacular star gazing, Sana Ameer, MRT.
Let’s cheer on the city of Bee Cave, everyone! Bee Cave joins a growing list of dark sky places already in the Lone Star State, including 2 Dark Sky Sanctuaries, 5 Dark Sky Parks, and 1 Dark Sky Reserve. Nighttime is alive and well in some parts of Texas!
Our Afraid of the Dark article is a bit scary! Hilton Head’s dark roads and pedestrians are deadly combo. What the town is doing about it, Blake Douglas at The Island Packet.
Per the article, 9 pedestrian and cyclist fatalities occurred since 2018, with five occurring after dark. Prior to that period, there were 28 recorded deaths from 2000 – 2016, with 20 of them taking place after dark.
In 2018, an 11 year old resident was struck and killed while walking her dog across an intersection one night. Lighting advocates began taking shape in what otherwise is a very conservation focused island. Hilton Head, SC has a limited number of street lights, priding itself on “avoiding light pollution and blending nature with construction.”
Lighting advocates appear to be, at the very least, asking for flashing crosswalk lights on the island to indicate when an individual is crossing.
It should be noted that the article shows a chart of 9 after-dark-deaths since 2014, only two of them occurred at crosswalks. In fact, during the same time frame, 6 additional deaths occurred at crosswalks during the daytime.
As a whole, the National Safety Council reports that 74.5% of pedestrian deaths occurred at night, whereby 39.1% took place in lit areas and 35.38% took place in unlit areas.
Bryan Bloch, an auto safety expert, surmises that car companies bear some of the blame – producing cheap or ineffectual headlight fixtures, and drivers themselves, who don’t realize that they need to regularly clean their headlight lenses.
Despite opposition from residents, it appears that Hilton Head will be receiving lights at two new intersections and possibly more depending on engineering studies currently in progress.
Is lighting the key variable here? Is more light going to solve pedestrian deaths?
Our featured research article of the month comes to us from Animal Conservation, “Manipulating spectra of artificial light affects movement patterns of bats along ecological corridors.”
Bats are already known to have a wide range of responses to artificial light at night (also known as ALAN). Fast flying species tend to be more opportunistic in the presence of ALAN while slower ones tend to be more light averse. We know that “long wavelengths and reduced intensity” can minimize their environmental effects on bats. It’s not unheard of for bats to travel upwards of “tens of km per night.” Furthermore, bats are very dependent on the landscape and the structures within those landscapes.
Despite the nuances between species, the consensus is that ALAN, especially high intensity ALAN, negatively affects bats. This study attempted to answer what exactly bats do when they encounter ALAN – how do they react depending on different types of ALAN.
The study used three different light fixtures – one green, one red, and one white. The control was devoid of light fixtures. The researchers attempted to ascertain the behavior of bats as they encountered lights adjacent to woody areas. The researchers looked at three different bat groupings based on their foraging-echo location behavior, that being one of open field foraging, forest edge foraging, and narrow space – or more aptly forest foragers.
Researchers found that open and edge foraging bats increased their activity close to white and green lights, and to a lesser extent red lights. However, narrow space bats were more likely to veer away from all colors of lighting. Edge foragers were also less likely to cross a white light.
The positive effects of white and green light on open and edge foraging bats appear to be attributed to the accumulation of insects around light sources containing more blue light.
The nighttime sky over Oahu will be lit up with green lasers in the coming days. Here’s why. Hawaii News Now
Before we close up today, do you live in Hawaii? I know I wish I did!
If so, do you recall seeing green lasers streak across the night sky? Well, the Army Corps of Engineers was using lidar at night to complete a coastal mapping survey.
Why did they survey at night? Specifically, why did they do this between midnight to 5am? Simply b/c the airspace is so busy, that time was the only chance they had to complete the survey. The remaining survey was completed during daytime hours.

Conference play has begun! With the ACC getting the day off, the other five power conferences look to get off to a hot start. A couple of upsets happened, but for the most part teams asserted their dominance. How did the fun begin? Let's check it out.
*****
ACC ALL-STAR SERIES: Charter 118, South 97. One of the great traditions of ACC play on NIBL is the All-Star Series, three games throughout the regular season that showcase the best the ACC has to offer. The start proved to be just what the fans wanted as the back half of the double-header with Charlotte's team.
Michael Jordan scored 33 points as the Charter Stars routed the South Stars 118-97 in a game with an all-star atmosphere.
"It's always fun to play these games," Wake Forest representative Chris Paul said after the game. "You get to mix it up with players of other teams, and you get to play a lot of offense. The atmosphere in the ACC is always fun."
Rick Barry and Stephon Marbury led Team South with 21 points each.
*****
#8 Indiana 84, #19 Illinois 83, OT. A lot of speculation on the Indiana sideline boiled down to who would step up in the clutch. We found someone.
Isiah Thomas hit a three-pointer with 2.1 seconds left in the overtime period as the Hoosiers (11-2, 1-0) knocked off the Fighting Illini (8-5, 0-1) to open Big Ten play for both teams.
"He's our leader," swingman Tom Van Arsdale said after the game. "He calls the shots, and when he calls his own number, we have trust in him to pull it off. That's what happened tonight."
It looked like an upset was on the offering when Meyers Leonard's dunk over Walt Bellamy gave Illinois an 83-81 lead with 11.5 seconds to go. But Thomas brought the ball up-court, got himself around Deron Williams, and stuck the dagger to give the Hoosier faithful something to cheer.
Bellamy led the Hoosiers with 20 points; Red Kerr had 17 for the Illini.
#7 Michigan 87, #7 Michigan State 72. In football, Michigan famously refers to Michigan State as little brother. This won't help.
Chris Webber took over on Kevin Willis underneath, putting up 35 points to lead the Wolverines (10-3, 1-0) over the Spartans (9-4, 0-1) in the Big Ten opener for both teams.
"He had everything going today," guard Jalen Rose said of Webber. "I never doubted him; I could just keep giving him the ball and he'd keep scoring. That's what you want."
"When the other team's best player has a career day, there's not much you can do," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said in the press conference. "This was our chance to make something happen, and it didn't work. We have to recover now to stay in the Big Ten race."
Zach Randolph led Michigan State with 16 points.
#16 Texas 76, #17 Houston 67. Kevin Durant and Clyde Drexler were going to get their points for their respective teams; it would all come down to who else could step up. LaMarcus Aldridge had something to say about that.
Aldridge used his strength inside to muscle past the more slender Houston inside guys, picking up 13 points and 17 rebounds to help the Longhorns (10-3, 1-0) defeat the Cougars (9-4, 0-1) in the Big XII opener for both teams.
"Marc was able to use his size underneath, and that allowed us to hit our shots, and that's how we're gonna win these games," Kevin Durant (19 points) said after the game. "He really won the game for us. We were all in for the ride."
While Hakeem Olajuwon still had a regular day -- 14 points and 10 rebounds -- Aldridge kept Elvin Hayes from contributing, holding him to 4 rebounds for the day. A frustrated Hayes refused to talk to reporters after the game.
#2 Kentucky 92, #25 Auburn 75. Auburn wants to make the NIBL tournament. Kentucky wants to win it. The difference in goals reflects their talent, which was on display here.
Anthony Davis had 16 points and 7 blocks as the Wildcats (12-1, 1-0) bumped off the Tigers (8-5, 0-1) in the conference opener for both teams.
"We knew we couldn't take Auburn lightly; they have a player [Charles Barkley] who can get 20 and 20 on any night," Adolph Rupp told reporters. "So we had to go 100% out there, and that's exactly what we did.
Kentucky went 12 deep in their conference opener, with 9 of the players getting points and 4 getting double-figures. Davis' 16 led the way, but Devin Booker had 15, Jamal Mashburn had 13, and Dan Issel had 11.
Barkley did lead the Tigers with 21 points, but was held to 9 rebounds on the night.
*****
Georgetown 86, #18 DePaul 69. It was a matchup of big men underneath, with George Mikan taking on Patrick Ewing Sr. However, Georgetown had more size, and they used it to their advantage.
Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, and Ewing combined for 51 points and 38 rebounds as the Hoyas (9-4, 1-0) upset the Blue Demons (8-5, 0-1) in the Big East opener for both teams.
"We work from the inside out when we're on our game," Hoyas coach John Thompson II said after the game. "We knew they had a couple good bigs, but they couldn't match our volume. So we focused on getting 1s and 2s tonight."
DePaul looked to help from their outside shooters, but couldn't get any. Wilson Chandler shot 3-13 from beyond the arc, which still meant he led the team with 14 points. Mikan, who found himself double-teamed underneath most of the game, ended on 9 points and 8 rebounds.
"It wasn't my day," Mikan said after the game. "We have things to think about."
Minnesota 86, #13 Maryland 84, OT. Minnesota had a decision to make: how do you guard Len Bias? They went with length, and it worked when they needed it the most.
Kris Humphries blocked Bias' layup attempt with 4.8 seconds left in the extra session as the Golden Gophers (9-4, 1-0) upset the Terrapins (9-4, 0-1) to open Big Ten play for both teams.
"I had a chance to maintain my position when I saw Bias at the three-point line get the ball," Humphries said about the final play. "I knew Archie [Clark] could help over if Lenny spotted up, but I wanted to make sure he didn't send it to a double OT, and I had the position and got all ball."
It was a frustrating end for Bias, who led all scorers with 23 points.
"I thought we had a chance to win this one," Bias said after the game. "Things didn't go our way."
Mychal Thompson Sr led the Gophers with 18 points.
*****
HOW THE TOP 25 FARED

1. UCLA 90, Stanford 60
2. Kentucky 92, 25. Auburn 75
3. North Carolina did not play
4. Kansas 99, Iowa State 62
5. Duke did not play
6. Michigan State 74, 7. Michigan 87
7. Michigan 87, 6. Michigan State 74
8. Indiana 84, 19. Illinois 83, OT
9. Notre Dame did not play
10. Arizona 77, Oregon 75
11. Southern Cal 88, California 52
12. Ohio State 78, Wisconsin 57
13. Maryland 84, Minnesota 86, OT
14. Syracuse did not play
15. Connecticut 80, Providence 52
16. Texas 76, 17. Houston 67
17. Houston 67, 16. Texas 76
18. DePaul 69, Georgetown 86
19. Illinois 83, 8. Indiana 84, OT
20. LSU 83, Mississippi State 53
21. Cincinnati 100, Texas Tech 68
22. Alabama 97, Vanderbilt 73
23. Arkansas 90, Tennessee 76
24. NC State did not play
25. Auburn 75, 2. Kentucky 92

https://imgur.com/a/cdidFl4
Feel Free to dish out some offers as long as they're not lowballs I Want To get rid of Elden ring Collectors edition (NEW) for PS5 to free up some space so ill let it go for $220 Shipped
Game Boy Advance
Dragon Ball: Advance Adventure (CO) https://imgur.com/a/8Xks6xo $100.00
Gameboy Advance Console (Missing Backplate) https://imgur.com/a/yl4jFy6 $55.00
Mario Kart Super Circuit (CO) $20.00
​
Game Boy
Pokemon Blue (CO) https://imgur.com/a/M33bjn6 $50.00
Pokemon Gold (CO) (NO LABEL) https://imgur.com/a/8Xks6xo $35.00
Pokemon Silver (CO) https://imgur.com/a/0Yj7wle $50.00
​
Gamecube
Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventure (DISK ONLY) https://imgur.com/a/LjYStvI $60.00
Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/T5fViX4 $110.00
Mario Kart Double Dash (CIB NO MANUAL) https://imgur.com/a/Znd2CrX $75.00
Mario Party 7 (CIB TEAR ON MANUAL) https://imgur.com/a/p368GaZ $58.00
Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/bXbFudy $115.00
NBA Street (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/pHzQoIL $15.00
Sonic 2 Adventure Battle (DISK ONLY HAS 3 SMALL DENTS SEEN IN PHOTOS, STILL WORKS) https://imgur.com/a/t1CHtJ1 $25.00
Super Mario Sunshine (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/3Pmjhfe $40.00
​
​
Nintendo Switch
2k Battle Grounds (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/hmFkIrI $15.00
Aegis Defenders (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/mLcAvE5 $30.00
AfterParty (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Mk5WzcV $32.00
Atelier DuskTriology Deluxe Pack (CIB) NEW https://imgur.com/a/9SMInnE $100.00
Baldo The Guardian Owls The Three Fairies Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/a35Dv6f $25.00
Baldurs Gate & Baldurs Gate II Enhanced Editions (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/PksoMPb $45.00
The Banner Saga Trilogy (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/HA3o0pS $12.00
Battle Chasers Night War (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/t1HthQz $18.00
Big Brain Academy Brain Vs Brain (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/dHoUKaa $25.00
BloodRayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/GvkLW0K $42.00
The Caligula Effect Overdose (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Ga6JAgV $80.00
Carto (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/0TpJ5y7 $40.00
Cat Quest (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/pPvnxTX $15.00
Cave Story (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/5KNZtk3 $35.00
Celeste (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/3Dx1hBD $85.00
Chasm (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/V5GrCBQ $39.00
Child of Light Ultimate Edition + Valiant Hearts the Great War (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/PX3rrrk $38.00
Children of Morta (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/dbZciM7 $20.00
Citizens Unite (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Uy9Y0UR $35.00
Civilization VI (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/yrsJex8 $11.00
The Classic Collection DOOM (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/kpzFWWD $40.00
Crash Bandicoot 4 Its about Time (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/3XSqbdG $19.00
Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/iwX0RDv $18.00
Creaks (CIB) (SUPER RARE GAME SEAL IS BROKEN) https://imgur.com/a/z94UHI5 $49.00
Crypt of The Necrodancer Switch Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/K0CBQGO $18.00
Darksiders War Mastered Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/nBFuqw9 $23.00
Darksiders: War Mastered Edition (CIB) (BLACK SPINE MISPRINT) https://imgur.com/a/1WYriyB $55.00
Darq Complete edition (CIB) $21.00
Deaths Door (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/oe2xri3 $30.00
Disgaea 5 Complete (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/jDWj9rD $28.00
Disgaea (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/FqIoidp $30.00
Disney Classic Games Collection Aladdin-Lion King (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/2c0Ld8Q $10.00
Divinity II Original Sin Definitive Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/HplD9ST $125.00
DOOM (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9pGCWjh $28.00
DOOM 64 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/pTdw1Tr $32.00
Dragons Dogma Dark Ariser (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/DRciiSv $18.00
Dragon Quest Builders (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/LdD33Us $70.00
Eastward Japanese Version (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/4Tq3ayn $20.00
Eastward (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/8JwoQZ4 $25.00
Fairy Fencer F Advent Dark Force (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Q2FsiAK $40.00
Fifa 18 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/KmTLH6T $10.00
FIST Forged In Shadow Torch (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/VJr4fh5 $25.00
Forager (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/osTqpsA $20.00
For the King (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/gUzijUk $25.00
Forgotten Anne (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/u1YzEKP $45.00
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/gBRi03a $30.00
Game Builder Garage (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/eamEEjr $12.00
Ghostbusters The Video Game Remastered (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/xkg4FR1 $18.00
God Eater 3 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/6LpIT1k $17.00
Hello Neighbor (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/dynNpS8 $10.00
Katamari Damacy Reroll (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/rQs0uQo $10.00
The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/6zbUcAy $8.00
Little Inferno (CIB SEALED IN SUPER RARE PACKAGE) NEW https://imgur.com/a/WZG5nZa $50.00
Maneater (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/r3MuYuZ $18.00
Mary Skelter 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/tsguMcv $50.00
Max the Curse of Brotherhood (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/kihAUGy $20.00
Metro Redux (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/zcMcq16 $18.00
Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/bOkLg3h $55.00
Monster Hunter Rise (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/pWL7AMR $19.00
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/FI9xp55 $20.00
Moving Out (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/HIudHBb $19.00
Mud Runner American Wilds (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/XRhLN9k $20.00
Mutant Year Zero Road to Eden (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/IneqNPO $13.00
My Friend Pedro (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/ZdBwiyI $25.00
My Hero Ones Justice (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/HZinClR $8.00
NBA 2K Playgound 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/vO8XnXI $10.00
NBA 2K18 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/ckD9Rzs $5.00
Neo the World Ends with You (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/cUQtpW7 $19.00
Neon Abyss (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/bfyfLtN $35.00
Nintendo Switch Adjustable Charging Stand (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9RgpFwe $15.00
Nintendo Switch Fortnite Wildcat Bundle NO DLC CODE (Like New CIB) https://imgur.com/a/TbgUlA2 $230.00
Oddworld Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/xsQtT21 $23.00
Overcooked 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/NcAiK3w $12.00
Pathway (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/nfFIXhe $28.00
Planescape:Torment & Icewind Dale:Enhanced Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/ZjHq7ZZ $21.00
Portal Knights (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/7CnsKzt $16.00
Quake (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/4Mi9u5d $29.00
Rayman Legends Definitive Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/GNGdkt1 $17.00
RBI 19 Baseball (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/0QgUJ1Z $18.00
Resident Evil Origins Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/GDJiG2G $21.00
Resident Evil Triple Pack (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/kLVKRvX $31.00
Return of the Obra Dinn (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Gi9OElv $43.00
River City Girls ZERO (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/8hRlS7q $45.00
Ruiner (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Ro0PDev $44.00
Rustler (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/BNanSSh $15.00
Saints Row the Third The Full Package (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/c4k0WI4 $16.00
Samurai Shodown (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/J7mvVLJ $120.00
Sega Genisis Classics (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/LRajpJz $24.00
Scott Pilgrim VS the World: the Game Complete Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/D5wFwgx $24.00
Scribblenauts Mega Pack (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/4DqC5QG $13.00
Scibblenauts Showdown (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/sQ2OcJm $10.00
Shin Megami Tensei V (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/njpBs7W $27.00
Shinning Resonance Refrain Draconic Launch Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/tVMEZbg $40.00
Shiren the Wanderer The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/jxgUi7o $41.00
Shovel Knight Treasure Trove (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Zjum6eB $29.00
Sine Mora FX (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/BYJXW9o $13.00
SnipperClips Plus (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/cwDtIYV $23.00
Snow Runner (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/5xEgVRg $28.00
Sonic Mania Plus (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/SBWJHpe $37.00
Sparklite (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/K06Zow0 $18.00
Splatoon 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/j1QmVRc $15.00
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9vS30oD $15.00
Streets of rage 4 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/cznNyWs $25.00
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/b38hz1H $61.00
Steam World Dig 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/HoCfPSZ $33.00
Story of Season Friends of Mineral Town (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/vhQw7N7 $20.00
Story of Seasons Pioneers of Olive Town (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/VoAcpF8 $22.00
Super DragonBall Heroes: World Mission (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/EVJ2wQs $25.00
Super Mario Party (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9GNQ68N $33.00
Super Meat Boy Forever (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/cXhABWX $28.00
Tactics Ogre Reborn (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/gH8kxoV $33.00
Tails of Iron Crimson Knight Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/cpoMKRe $25.00
The Takeover (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/x2Xf2Yd $33.00
Tiny Barbarian DX (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/mm65oo8 $25.00
Tiny Metal Ultimate (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/xTFXMDi $45.00
Tokyo 2020 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/yYYpTz1 $13.00
Trials Rising Gold Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/KZwA4xz $14.00
Trine Ultimate Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/jscrkZo $19.00
Ultra Street Fighter II The Final Challengers (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/LGvfkL0 $31.00
Undertale (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/8o4D2GL $29.00
Valkyria Chronicles 4 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/FtM6Az2 $28.00
valkyria Chronicles 4 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/TzkD03X $28.00
Windjammers (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/lSngDJo $29.00
WindJammers 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/dlQHJcr $25.00
Wizard of Legend (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/j0xn64y $40.00
WonderBoy the Dragons Trap (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/1oYHdks $29.00
Wonderful 101 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/eFFM0dS $13.00
Yonder The Cloud Catcher Chronicles (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/R7pU8pl $20.00
Zombies Ate my Neighbors + Ghoul Patrol (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/p6nxsYy $42.00
Game & Watch Color Screen The Legend of Zelda (NEW) https://imgur.com/a/TLkOkTU $50.00
Game & Watch Color Screen Super Mario Bros (NEW) https://imgur.com/a/bGDIRhm $50.00
Sega Genesis Mini (NEW) https://imgur.com/a/aC1htyv $120.00
​
SNES
Super Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition (NEW) $150.00
​
​
Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS Console Pink (No stylus comes with charger) https://imgur.com/a/mH0rTZH $45.00
Nintendo DSi XL Dark Red (No Stylus Comes with Charger) https://imgur.com/a/VpnC5sC $80.00
Pokemon Soulsilver (Cartridge Only) https://imgur.com/a/hTfPhZ7 $105.00
Pokemon Platinum (Cartridge Only) https://imgur.com/a/Ox5vump $80.00
​
​
Xbox One
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/h2qZWFp $15.00
Alan Wake Remastered (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/P2mDv2v $15.00
Among Us Crewmate Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/kILJy72 $10.00
Assassins Creed III Remastered (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/0ETrE50 $15.00
Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/f7tYN75 $20.00
Assassins Creed Origins (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/gbvWztt $6.00
Assassins Creed Odyssey (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Y3m8sS4 $15.00
Assassins Creed Rogue Remastered (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/RzEQM7b $25.00
Assasins Creed Valhalla (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/sVcyvfC $20.00
Baldurs Gate & Baldurs Gate II: Enhanced Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/BKUd5qZ $25.00
The Banner Saga Trilogy:Bonus Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/T03LtT6 $12.00
Battle Chasers: Nightwar (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9XS6gcb $5.00
Battlefield 1 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/a87qHTa $5.00
Battlefield 1 Revolution (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/wXSlydj $10.00
Battlefield 4 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/ILycZuA $10.00
Battlefield V (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/wMC2rwe $3.00
Bayonetta and Vanquish 10th Anniversary Bundle (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/dMDh5CN $12.00
Blasphemous (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/RJZvW7C $25.00
BioShock The Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/8wYQcij $15.00
Bloodstained Ritual of the Night (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/e5d4PfI $15.00
Bully Scholarship Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/k2JlYcE $20.00
Cyberpunk 2077 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/osm8Y1o $20.00
Disney Classic Games Collection: The Jungle Book-The Lion King-Aladdin (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/FjD3ZyO $15.00
Disney Classic Games Collection: Aladdin-Lion King (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/VQ9NFQI $10.00
The Division 2 Gold Edition Steelbook (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/a8NtxBS $15.00
Dragon Ball Z Kakarot (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/4SjBLXq $15.00
DRAGON QUEST XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/3Ukz9Q7 $15.00
Desperados III (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/p0vySj0 $10.00
Destroy All Humans! (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Vxhec0r $10.00
Diablo III Eternal Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/R6iOjOp $15.00
DOOM (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/slPQRI3 $5.00
DOOM Slayers Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/3wvTHOE $15.00
The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Anniversary Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/EDHOeDA $25.00
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9UgO2M0 $15.00
The Evil Within 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/nAaIjId $5.00
Fallout 4 Game of the Year Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/cm4i5g4 $12.00
Farcry 4 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/X3du6SM $5.00
Far Cry 5 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/RvEnmbS $10.00
Far Cry Primal (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/quAhrG5 $12.00
FIFA 20 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9bOI7hm $5.00
Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/GmDv43w $25.00
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/SVSfexg $10.00
Football PES 2021 Season Update (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/41yq69p $5.00
Football PES 2020 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/vEWCGsa $5.00
Forza Horizon 3 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/tAQKXOf $12.00
Forza Horizon 4 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/l0OImhr $20.00
Forza Horizon 5 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/425VG1H $42.00
Gears 5 Ultimate (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/tChmYok $35.00
Gears Tactics (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/0smhLOS $10.00
Grand Theft Auto IV (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/ro1TuSV $15.00
Grand Theft Auto V (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/lPgear7 $20.00
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/eg67Hd2 $15.00
Greak: Memories of Azur (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/hcBTifb $5.00
Hades (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/gaelV8D $10.00
Halo: The Master Chief Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Aqrg2sY $20.00
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/F47pyxe $20.00
HITMAN 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/QN8THgW $14.00
The Hunter Call of the Wild (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/98guW0W $30.00
Immortal Fenyx Rising (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/PYUMMNl $5.00
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/AoPaOYU $10.00
Inside + Limbo (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/EhbXNSM $12.00
It Takes Two (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/fOF026t $23.00
John Wick Hex (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/3sCiGwS $12.00
Just Cause 3 (NEW) https://imgur.com/a/WANDo0y $15.00
Just Cause 3 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/LmZqmoY $10.00
Just Cause 4 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/YfSWCIP $10.00
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/PyAErdZ $10.00
Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/dVvDZv2 $10.00
Kingdom Hearts III (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/UKq4CA7 $10.00
The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/mK6sWBY $15.00
Maneater (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/OXi4loK $10.00
Mafia: Definitive Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/55Jitt0 $15.00
Mafia Trilogy (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/zi0yqJu $20.00
Metro Exodus Complete Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/NCKcZJo $15.00
MLB The Show 2021 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/T3pqFxH $5.00
MLB the Show 2022 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/AJossE3 $15.00
Monster Hunter: World Iceborne Master Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/pS0KlSo $16.00
Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/iMcIPMO $22.00
Mortal Kombat XL (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/iE8bRcc $12.00
Mutant Road to Eden Deluxe Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/2d1QWkT $10.00
NBA 2k Playgrounds 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/117I6s2 $5.00
NBA 2K21 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/PsoZLkV $5.00
NBA 2K22 75th Anniversary Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/3Y4I001 $10.00
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/TaNJTeV $15.00
Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/vufFWHl $15.00
Ori and the Will of the Wisps (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/NFJoSiR $15.00
Planescape Torment and Icewind Enhanced Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/gCf7hUn $10.00
Planet Coaster: Console Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/LI4CBXL $15.00
Quantum Break (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/G2AYDGY $5.00
Rare Replay One Epic Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/5ssCc0I $5.00
Rayman Legends (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/DLFWqiJ $12.00
Rise of the Tomb Raider (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Qpc3EWz $10.00
Red Dead Redemtion II (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9X10dKx $20.00
Resident Evil 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/YgmjQB8 $15.00
Resident Evil 3 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Z2Hjcpf $20.00
Resident Evil 4 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/iOQrXKU $20.00
Resident Evil 5 HD (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/UkVLZt8 $15.00
Resident Evil 6 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/PQnX4E0 $20.00
Resident Evil 7 Biohazard (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/hBXZG1D $15.00
Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Gold Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/VBBYsuU $20.00
Resident Evil Village Deluxe Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/29oJxE4 $30.00
Resident Evil Origins Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/RSmAio5 $17.00
Resident Evil Revelation (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9hza08p $15.00
Resident Evil Revelations 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/upQJe9s $12.00
Rustler (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/4A7G0jM $10.00
Saints Row the Third Remastered (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/RYBCUkZ $15.00
Samurai Shodown (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/jr3RjJx $15.00
Scribblenaughts Showdown (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/yoW0HZ2 $8.00
Sekiro Shadows Die Twice (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/ZJ3cVfk $30.00
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/AypqTPk $30.00
Shadow Tactics Blades of the Shogun (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/wY9GxPc $10.00
Shenmue I and II (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/1u7rbRb $12.00
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/XtZdRxF $20.00
Sonic Mania (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/DMSg7OA $15.00
Stardew Valley Collectors Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/zzKFvRP $15.00
Star Wars Battlefront II (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/7EBpN1U $10.00
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/royE9Ki $15.00
Star Wars Squadrons (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/PN2Yfvr $10.00
State of Decay 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/wiHQoAM $10.00
Sunset Overdrive (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/IG19uho $5.00
Tails of Iron (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/fJWxywZ $15.00
Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/CKLm4yU $15.00
Tomb Raider Definitive Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/0AekNeI $15.00
Tony Hawks Pros Skater 1 + 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Fqlh4oh $15.00
Watch Dogs 2 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/oBx28Bb $5.00
Watch Dogs Legion (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/BEq1D24 $10.00
Wasteland 3 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/2XtXMEw $15.00
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt Complete Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/LAs12lr $15.00
WWE 2K Battlegrounds (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/mWYnIFa $5.00
World War Z (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Aq89Kgp $10.00
World War Z Aftermath (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/23o4XBB $15.00
XCOM 2 Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/E1ajIy8 $11.00
Yakuza Like a Dragon Steelbook Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/mVT2xWO $15.00
Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/6X19iKy $10.00
​
PS2
Champions of Norrath (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/uc2MHic $40.00
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/2TJIcym $10.00
Manhunt (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/bVBqfyp $35.00
Okage: Shadow King (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Qg69m6M $30.00
Okami (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/9bdcC3x $20.00
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/TOdjwbi $20.00
Rumble Roses (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/VHXK7xm $35.00
Smack Down Here Comes the Pain! (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/k71BDFO $40.00
​
PS3
Spiderman Web of Shadows (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/ADukeEO $75.00
​
PS4
Batman Arkham City (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Bayonetta/Vanquish (DISK ONLY) $15.00
Bioshock The Collection (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Bloodstain Ritual of the Night (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/Y6BQ6KO $10.00
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/5n4smvu $10.00
Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Cyberpunk (STEELBOOK ONLY) https://imgur.com/a/nygfXJ2 $20.00
Deathloop (STEELBOOK ONLY) https://imgur.com/a/9Am2gSs $20.00
Devil May Cry HD Collection (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Dragon Quest Builders 2 (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Dragon Quest Heroes (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Dragon Quest Heroes II (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Dying Light 2 Collectors Edition (NEW) https://imgur.com/a/1kWv4lg $160.00
The Elder Scrolls Online Tamriel Unlimited (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/L3vnjyG $5.00
The Evil Within 2 (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Ghost Wire Tokyo Steelbook (STEELBOOK ONLY) https://imgur.com/a/tqDNqmR $20.00
Grand Theft Auto 5 (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/PssrEfg $10.00
Judgment (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 Remix (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/c4h0GKH $15.00
Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 Remix (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/c4h0GKH $15.00
Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue Limited Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/QqH1yuz $20.00
Left Alive (DISK ONLY) $5.00
MediEvil (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes + The Phantom Pain (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Mortal Kombat 11 (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Okami HD (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Onimusha Warlords (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Overwatch Legendary Edition (CIB) https://imgur.com/a/zvXlIwa $5.00
Raiden 5 Director's Cut (DISK ONLY) $15.00
Resident Evil Biohazard Gold Edition (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Rise of the Tomb Raider 20 Year Celebration (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Shenmue I & II (DISK ONLY) $15.00
Shenmue III (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Star Ocean Integerity and Faithlessness (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Streets of Rage 4 Anniversary Edition (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Tomb Raider Definitive Edition (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Tomb Raider Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Transformers Devistation (DISK ONLY) $25.00
Valkyria Chronicles Remastered (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Valkyria Chronicles 4 (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Wonderful 101 (DISK ONLY) $10.00
Yakuza 0 (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Yakuza 6 The Song of Life (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Yakuza Kiwami (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Yakuza Like A Dragon (DISK ONLY) $5.00
Yakuza Remastered 3,4,5 (2 DISKS ONLY) $15.00
​
PS5
Elden ring Collectors Edition (NEW) https://imgur.com/a/SykSpIZ $250.00
Final fantasy VII Remake Intergrade ( Gamestop Exclusive Pre-Order STEELBOOK ONLY) https://imgur.com/a/Y5bgEtC $90.00
Gran Turismo 7 25th Anniversary Steelbook Edition (NEW) https://imgur.com/a/wBo6PaK $110.00

While it's not quite the Stanley Cup Playoffs, college baseball's postseason is one hell of a trip with all kinds of twists, turns, and plenty of teams to point and laugh at from the first pitch of each regional to the glories of Omaha. (It's baseball, OF COURSE the crown jewel would be in the middle of... well, not quite nowhere, but close enough. As an LSU fan, it's that proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.)
-Without further adieu, let's cut to the chase with our first batch of eliminations. These teams are like those opening jobbers on Ninja Warrior, the ones who slip off the first obstacle and end up all soaked.
Northeastern, Florida A&M, Arizona, Lipscomb, Tulane, Eastern Illinois, Army, San Jose State, Maine, UNC-Wilmington, Oklahoma State*, Ball State, Auburn*, Wright State, Central Connecticut, and Nicholls State: Pack your shit up, and go home, you are ELIMINATED from the NCAA College Baseball Championship.
Now, why do two of those teams have stars by their name? Because not only did they lose two straight... they did so as the host team! #13 Auburn suffered the indignity of losing to Penn in their opener before getting sent home by Southern Miss. #11 Oklahoma State one-upped them by losing to ORAL ROBERTS... then getting Malcolm X curbstomped by DALLAS BAPTIST 18-4.
-With the jobbers out of the way, this next batch of teams comes up on the chopping block. One win is better than zero, but the end result is the same.
So... Maryland, UConn, Santa Clara, Clemson*, Sam Houston, Vanderbilt*, Oklahoma, Cal State Fullerton, UL-Lafayette, Rider, Washington, West Virginia, Samford, North Carolina, NC State, and Troy, you have been ELIMINATED. Kindly pack your stuff up and return home... unless you have a star by your name, as you're already home. And possibly being lynched by angry fans.
Once more, we get to point and laugh at a pair of teams. #4 Clemson, #6 Vanderbilt, you had visions of hosting Super Regionals dancing in your heads. And then you got concussed by Charlotte and Xavier after understandable losses to Tennessee (now officially Clemson's daddy) and Oregon. Go stand in the LOL corner and think about what you've done.
-Despite Mother Nature taking a piss on several regionals, even more teams have met their 2023 season's final resting place in the regional finals. Considering it takes two wins just to get that far, there's little dishonor in bowing out here. Usually. For this step, we'll give the losers a little extra blurb to honor their achievements this season. And there's still quite a few regionals wrapping up, so some TBDs are sprinkled in, they'll get their own post in the responses once they get their final marching orders.
-George Mason: If only you could have avoided the sudden juggernaut that is #1 Wake Forest. Outscored 27-1 in your two losses to them... but at least you're not Maryland who gave up three TDs in their one brush with death. -TBD 2: Florida survives becoming the top LOL by beating Texas Tech in the return match, today's the rubber decider between the two teams. -TBD 3: TCU holds advantage after beating #3 Arkansas 20-5, the Razorbacks now need to dig deep and win two straight to advance. -Charlotte: A very honorable departure, any time we get to point and laugh at Clemson is a WIN for everyone. Godspeed you crazy bastards, as Tennessee was just better than you. -TBD 5: All the rain in Baton Rouge, we're just getting to the regional final now with #5 LSU holding advantage over Oregon State. Personally: DON'T BLOW IT. I WILL BE MERCILESS IF YOU DO. -Xavier: Another honorable departure as you took #6 Vanderbilt down in dramatic fashion, then just had nothing left in the tank for Oregon. So be it, head home with your heads held high. -East Carolina: Meh. Being down to #7 Virginia was a death sentence, one you couldn't even delay. Oh well. -TBD 8: Another rubber match as #8 Stanford avenges an earlier loss to Texas A&M, forcing the decider back to today. My apologies to the unfortunately named Ty Uber, as your teammates picked up your starting DUD (4 runs, 5 hits, 1 out) with interest. -#9 Miami: LOL. You needed two straight to advance, and started the first game well with a 3-0 lead over Texas. And then the third inning happened. Nine runs given up, and your season is OVER. Go into the LOL Corner for your sins, and tell Clemson and Vanderbilt to stop crying for fuck's sake. -TBD 10: #10 Coastal Carolina beats Duke in their first meeting, forcing a decider this afternoon. Would be one hell of a recovery from losing your opener to winning your home regional, just one win to go. As for Duke... nobody will feel bad for you if you lose. -Dallas Baptist: Helping humiliate #11 Oklahoma State is good, and helping Oral Roberts get the "regional sweep" is even funnier. Have an honorable trip home, don't feel too bad. -TBD 12: #12 Kentucky blows Indiana out 16-6... unfortunately it still only counts as one win, offsetting your earlier 5-3 loss to them. One more game for the regional title... -TBD 13: The two teams that combined to let us all laugh at #13 Auburn once more face off in a decider, Southern Miss with momentum after beating Penn 11-2 yesterday to avoid elimination. -Iowa: Eh, #14 Indiana State had your number both times. At least you did the same to North Carolina, I guess? -Campbell: Avenging your loss to NC State will have to suffice, #15 South Carolina had no interest in losing at home. At least you scored seven? -Boston College: #16 Alabama wasn't losing in Tuscaloosa, carry on. If only Nicholls State had won that opener...
​
-From 64 teams, we're down to 23. Seven more will be sent home... hopefully all today, if Mother Nature can get her irregular bladder under control. Sixteen will move, or have moved, one step closer to Omaha; all that stands between them and the College World Series in Omaha is a simple best of three this coming weekend.
Just remember the most important rule of the college baseball playoffs, same as every other playoff: DON'T! GET! ELIMINATED! Or do, we all need teams to point and laugh at.

I hope this is the right place and someone can tell me what may have been going on in my village. I moved here a few weeks ago. It's a small village in the heart of Russia and my parents and I came here because things start to get really bad in Moscow and my father lost his job. I don't know why we had to move to this isolated village, so far away from civilization. Maybe my parents wanted peace and quiet? To escape the things in that city, the poisoned minds?
The houses here had all been far below average in price. Almost everyone who lives here has moved here recently.
But, there are crazy rumors about this village that people tell each other. It was found abandoned in the mid-nineties. Where everyone went, no one knows. They say that no signs of people were found at all, nothing. But... everywhere in and around the village… strange patches of earth had been discovered, circular and smooth. Not only in the forest or on the road, but also in the dilapidated wooden houses. At our new neighbors' house, one of the mysterious spots had supposedly been found right in the living room floor, where the floorboards had been just cut away.
These rumors scare me. I am afraid of this village. But yesterday... I was redoing the floor in my room with my father and there... I found a notebook under the old boards. I hid it from my father, I don't know why... Someone must have left it there.
Last night... that's when I read it. I read it and now I'm incredibly afraid of this house and this village. Of the fields and the woods that surround me. The notebook apparently belonged to someone called Ilya Vasiliev. I have tried to translate what he wrote, hoping that someone here can help me find an explanation for the rumors. For this uneasy feeling that I have since I moved here...
***********
I am fine. I want that to be clear from the beginning. My story is strange and in huge parts troubling, but I am still in the best state of mental health.
I am fine!
My story begins seven months ago, in December 1979, when deep winter was upon our village. We were preparing for Christmas, the first Christmas to be celebrated publicly throughout the village, after years of having to practice our faith in secret because the Soviet government did not allow religions. Only in the last few years did the Reds' view loosen and they allowed small islands of faith. One of them was my village, which finally dared to celebrate and praise the Lord.
I have been a believer all twenty years of my life, an exemplary Christian, just like my parents. Faith had kept our family line alive in times of terror and misery. Death had always been close to us, as the fields where most of the population of our village had worked for generations had once brought the end of hundreds of people. Many years ago, on those fields, atrocities had occurred that had finally given them their present name: The Fields of Death.
I myself had not been born back then, not by a long shot, but my grandparents had spent their childhood there, a childhood full of hunger and depravity. My grandfather Fomenko often told me and my sister the stories he had experienced and how faith had saved everyone. There had been a long, cold winter and the grain had been confiscated by the government to be taken to the cities for distribution. After all, the grain belonged to all the people, not just those on the farms who planted it, tended to it, and harvested it. And so, the only food of that time left my grandfather's village and never came back. Some of his neighbors had once tried to hold back some grain, to hide some sacks, but when they were caught, a hail of bullets determined their fate. People lived in fear, not daring to stop working, not daring to keep for themselves the food that was destined for the common good. In those days, horrors happened in my village that I cannot truly picture today, not even when I hear my grandfather's usually clear voice begin to tremble. When I see in his eyes that he would rather forget, in order to experience a peaceful sleep once again… someday.
He told us about those horrors to warn us of how quickly life can plunge from safety into infinite terror. Winter had reigned. The grain was being hauled away. They still shot all those who tried to keep back pieces of it, be it a sack or some husks that had fallen from a cart. In time, hunger began to drive people in our village insane. Parents locked up their children so they wouldn't be taken by neighbors to feed their hunger. Friends turned their backs on each other and killed each other in fights for the last livestock that was still breathing. The streets reeked of decay and death, of misery and suffering. One day, my grandfather told us, he had hidden in the back room of his house while his parents dragged themselves, emaciated, to the fields to pick the last scraps of grain from the furrows with their dirty, half-frozen fingers. He had come across a book there, a book that had saved his life.
The word of God. An old Bible.
My grandfather had learned to read at an early age, one of the sad advantages of living in the Soviet Union.
It was in the room I now live in that Grandfather Fomenko had found the dusty book. Actually, he had been looking for something to eat, the days before he had found some sawdust. But despite his hunger and the grumbling in his stomach, eating the book was out of the question. Books were sacred, and no book as sacred as this one. He had begun to read and learned about the greatness of the Lord. Of the miracles his Son had performed. And of the magic of faith. His stomach had growled, but he had ignored it. The words gave him comfort.
The next day he immersed himself in the book again, disappearing into better worlds and times, hearing wisdom and encouragement. But around noon there was a knock at the door. My grandfather emphasized each time that he had not been afraid, that he had known that the Lord would protect him, when the old neighbor gained entrance to our house armed with a cleaver. It was clear what he wanted: Meat. My grandfather told us each time about how the neighbor had looked more undead than human, stinking and with sunken eyes, smelling like death from his mouth, the cleaver trembling in his hand.
"I'm sorry, boy," was all the man could get out.
My grandfather tried to mimic this poor man’s voice at the end of his wits, to express his pain through words so that we understood that poor fellow a little.
The Lord's words had given courage to my grandfather in his most terrible moments. He had stood up and firmly said:
"Away with you, the Lord protects the inhabitants of this house!"
But the intruder did not care, coming closer. And so, my grandfather again sought comfort and prayed. He prayed for mercy and peace and for his life. He would serve the Lord for the rest of his days. Trust Him blindly.
Suddenly, like a gruesome miracle, the famished intruder let out an inhuman groan and collapsed, lifeless and debilitated. There had been no hunger for my grandfather and his family for a week after that. My grandfather had been praying to the Lord since that day, thanking Him for His mercy. The story spread around the village and out of desperation or hope, in the next few days everyone secretly knelt in front of small wooden crosses they had made themselves and prayed to the Lord. A week later, like a miracle, the long-awaited delivery of grain arrived, along with spring. There had not been another bad time since then.
These events are the reason for the faith in our village... and our family. The psalm my grandfather had prayed as the hungry neighbor attacked had become the guiding psalm of our faith. All these years we had not been able to celebrate Christmas with the other families, but since the restrictions on faith communities had been relaxed, we had all finally decided to celebrate the holy festival in the village square. And so, we started the preparations.
There, in those evening hours, my part of the story begins. I and my younger sister Zarina, together with other youths and young adults, were fetching wood for the fire that was to burn in the center of our village. So, we went out into the night, dressed with thick pelts, to fetch logs from the edge of the fields that some men had prepared.
My breath could be seen as an icy breeze in the dawning darkness and I was already looking forward to dancing around the fire with everyone later, drinking good drinks and eating sumptuously. I was glad that we didn't have to walk across the fields themselves, but could stroll along their edge to get the logs.
You can feel death when it has hit a place. I was glad that I didn't have to work the fields myself, and had learned the carpentry trade. Therefore, I was spared from having to wander around there every day, among the echoes of past atrocities and sadness.
We were all in good spirits, strolling over the muddy ground, when all at once Zarina pointed up and into the clear night sky.
"Look, an angel is descending!" she exclaimed excitedly.
We all looked to where her outstretched hand pointed. A round light glowed in the night sky, glaring yellowish and shining strangely cold.
"It's singing! At Christmas! The Lord puts our feast under his sign!" Zarina cried.
We stopped and listened into the silence of the night. At first, I could hear nothing, at first, everything remained quiet, and only the distant beating of axes and the rustling of the wind in the treetops were audible.
But then, there in the wind, I could hear it, briefly but clearly. It was a kind of melodic whisper, joyful, yet also strange and otherworldly. It was heard only very briefly, and soon died away as the glow flew out of sight and disappeared somewhere far away.
"Let's go find the angel! Let's..." Zarina cried, continuing excitedly, but I interrupted her.
"We have to get the wood. We can report back to the village later, if it hasn't already been noticed there too," I said.
"You heard the singing! Surely that was an angel. Shall we leave it there? It may have gotten hurt, it must have hit something!" Sasha murmured.
Sasha was my oldest friend and one of the boys who worked on the fields. He had always been very caring and had always tried to help where he could. His parents were long dead and the old lady who had raised him was no longer around, either. So, he struggled along, working the fields, but the rest of us looked out for him.
"Shouldn't we go and look for it, Ilya?", Sasha continued to urge me anxiously.
We thought about it for a long time but decided to leave the decision to the others in the village. Trusting the Lord to guide our actions, we quickly moved on in the direction of the woodcutters to complete our task.
We were not the only ones who had seen the glow. When we returned to the village square loaded with logs, everyone was in great excitement and full of joy that the Lord had sent us this sign of His greatness. Not everyone agreed whether it was an angel or a return of the poinsettia that had been witnessed, but everyone was sure that the Lord had sent us encouragement. So, we celebrated our first Christmas full of joy and pleasure, with good food, dancing and singing, full of happiness and under the protection of the Almighty Lord. I will always think back to those days, always keep in my heart how I glimpsed a part of the Lord in the sky.
We all talked about the event and even the older people were fascinated and inspired. Even my grandfather and the others who had witnessed the worst death and misery in the world seemed to slowly find a spiritual peace they would never have dreamed of otherwise. They were happy and strengthened in their faith. However, we were not sure if it had really been an angel who had come down and so we hesitated to go and look for the creature of God.
But in the night, after the light had shone in the sky, I was awakened by Zarina crying in her sleep. I straightened up and slowly paced over to her bed, where in the semi-darkness she began to squirm, shaken by spasms.
"No, no, no..." she moaned painfully.
I began to shake her to wake her up. Zarina did not respond to me. Her face was like a distorted mask hiding something bad underneath. Her breathing became shallow, and she began to whimper. I was terrified and began to pray. The Lord had to save her, He just had to save her!
Zarina twitched more and more, started coughing and whimpering louder and louder. Slowly, the rest of the family woke up and my parents and grandfather huddled tightly around her, praying for her to open her eyes.
"Please, don't take our child! She has only been in your world for fourteen years..." my father cried, as panicked and desperate as I had ever seen before.
His thick, black mustache trembled with fear.
Then, abruptly, Zarina stopped convulsing.
For a terrible moment she just lay there, her hair disheveled, her face pale in the glow of the candle my mother held over her.
"Mom, Dad, Ilya, Grandpa... what's wrong?" she suddenly asked sleepily.
For a moment it was as if nothing had happened, as if I hadn't just seen my sister almost die, but then she began to cry.
"What's wrong, dear?" my father asked, just as pale in the face as Zarina.
It took a while before she found some calm and was able to talk to us.
Finally, she croaked:
"I saw the angel. I was with him."
A revelation? Had the Lord touched my sister?
We all said another prayer and finally, filled with awe, I asked:
"Where did you see the angel? Is it here? With us?"
She looked at me briefly, seemed to hesitate for a little moment, and then reported:
"I was with it… in a dream. It was in a white village, a village made of angel dust. I saw it. It didn't have wings and that's why at first I wasn't sure if it was an angel. However, soon it spoke to me."
"What did it say, Zarina?", I asked tensely.
"It said it was not God, but 'the Witness'. It sounded like a man and a woman and a child and a baby and... It felt peaceful. Calm and carefree. Then I woke up."
"An angel. Angels are the witnesses of God, that's how it must be!" my father said enthusiastically.
Suddenly, everyone seemed to be talking at once.
No one knew what Zarina's words meant, but we were sure that they contained something incomprehensible that we, as ordinary people, could not understand. But everyone was delighted. Everyone was caught in a beautiful dream.
The next day, the adults sat together in the large barn near the edge of the village, which was used for community events. Most of them found seats on the lined up wooden benches and the rest stood crowded against the old walls, some of which were already rotten. Dimitri, probably the closest thing to a mayor, sat at a heavy pine table at the end of the room, staring at the crowd, while my parents and Zarina sat on old chairs in front of him. Tensely, the crowd looked at them, waiting for someone to say something. Finally, Dimitri cleared his throat thoughtfully.
"You... all saw or heard about the falling star. It was brighter than the others that keep crossing our sky and much more... melodic. Some even heard the singing. Whoever still doubted that the Lord sent us his messenger... doubts are now useless. Zarina has received a vision. She has seen how the angel, who was sent by God, walked on our earth, and visited a village and consecrated it with its grace. She has seen the angel marching to spread holiness in these lands..."
"Are we sure?"
Mary, the dressmaker, had stood up. She was still young, my age and Sasha's, and she always wore her blond hair carefully braided, her dresses self-made, blood red and flashy, with silver embroidery. As always, she wore makeup - a luxury not many could afford. In other places she would have been considered a lady, but she was also a skeptical person, and I had not liked her very much since childhood, because she often made insinuations that seemed to go against the Lord. Also, she had never played with us outside and had always thought of herself as someone… better. I was shocked that she now so obviously doubted the Lord's actions.
"Mary. Zarina has seen a vision. The Lord spoke to her through her dreams! An angel has joined us. How can you deny it?" my father asked coldly.
"I'm not denying it, I'm just saying, what if there is something dark that the angel was sent to fight? What if it is going into battle against some unknown evil? The angel may be spreading sanctities, but we have no idea if it is trying to redeem us or defend us..."
"It said it was a witness of God," I noted.
"That's what Zarina said when she woke up."
"Then it is benevolent to us! We must find it!" someone shouted from one of the back rows.
An excited murmur began to spread through the room.
"Silence!" Dimitri thundered.
His face looked hard but determined.
"We have to get to it! If it is a message from heaven that the angel wants to bring us, we must hear it! How many can we spare? Who would even want to voluntarily leave the village? We don't know how long the journey will be, and you yourselves know how dangerous this area can be..."
A loud commotion broke out. Everyone shouted at once and volunteered. I also jumped up and loudly offered to go out to look for it.
The angel. The Witness of the Lord.
I imagined meeting it in a clearing, under a full moon. Hearing its bright voice, gaze in awe at its graceful form, and fall to my knees in prayer before it.
"SILENCE!" Dimitri shouted.
"You can't all go. The kids wouldn't make it in the deadly cold out there. Let seven go. Seven is the Lord's number, there must be seven! Seven workers from the fields! We can't spare any more!"
"You can't be serious!" I cried out.
Cold anger boiled up inside me.
"I want to go, too. We all want to. You can't just stand there and make a decision like that!"
Others joined in.
"SILENCE," Alexeij now thundered, the master blacksmith.
"We need you! Daniil, Ilya, Nikita, you have a job to do! We can't get by without you! You can't go, be reasonable!"
"But if the Lord wills it, he will make sure that everything here will work out. That nothing will happen!", I tried to argue, still boiling with anger.
"No. Winter is tugging at our huts, we need you," my father said slowly.
"So do the others. Without you, it's going to be tight. The fields lie under the snow, but everything else will be weakened by time and storms. We can only spare the field hands. Besides, they're the ones most likely to withstand the cold and the wilderness; after all, they're constantly out on the Fields of Death, toiling in the wind and rain. They'll all make the trip!"
I tried to change his mind, and several came to my aid, all those who were also forced to stay.
"You can manage without a dressmaker! I want to go too!" Mary cried defiantly, her cheeks red with anger, her nose wrinkled.
This young woman really believed she deserved the sight of the angel! She really believed her hypocrisies would deceive the Lord, despite her obvious doubts about His divinity!
Others also complained, young and old, many who didn't deserve to go and even those who did.
But it didn't help.
Dimitri was in charge. Everyone knew that. If we started to contradict him, our village would soon end up in chaos. And deep down I knew that I had to stay. That I had to take care of my sister, who would not survive a trip in the snow. That I had to repair the huts that the storms would eat away at.
Sasha was a field worker, he was allowed to go. Sasha and Sofia, Anatoly and old Igor, Ivan and Yulia and Mikhail. When the decision was made, a decision many of us accepted only with heavy hearts and which brought out deep envy in several faces, some of the chosen ones began to cry. They were happy, fulfilled... satisfied. They would see the messenger of the Lord, hear its melodious voice, sing its hymns.
Why wasn't I allowed to go? Why was the world so unfair? I had always believed in the Lord, prayed to Him, been subject to Him and lived according to His will. Why hadn't he chosen me to see his messenger? I had been so proud back when I had been allowed to learn the carpenter's trade and thus had not to go to the Fields of Death to toil there. At that time, I had felt like someone better when I saw Sasha and Sofia setting out early in the morning with all the other workers, with their old-fashioned plows and thick, shabby clothes.
Was this the punishment for my arrogance?
The Lord knew everything. He had seen what repulsive thoughts I had had, how superior I had felt to the others. Perhaps it was my punishment that I was not allowed to go. Perhaps the Lord was no longer favorable to me and I would have to prove myself to Him.
The next day, the seven set out north. They were seen off with singing and dancing; they were the center of the village’s attention. Envy threatened to drown me.
Why not me? Why wasn't I allowed to go? Why did I have to stay here?
And I knew: it was because of these thoughts. I wasn't pure enough. I had to get better, work on myself.
As the others disappeared from sight, as the small group seemed to be swallowed up by a patch of forest between distant trees, an icy chill ran down my spine.
What if they really did encounter evil? What if Mary had been right?
I prayed to the Lord that they would return home safely: Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
He would bring them home safely, our pilgrims. I did not begrudge them their happiness. I was not a selfish person, was not complacent like Mary or some others in the village. I lived by the word of the Lord and I would not begrudge them.
They would all return home safely.
I continued to stare into the distance for a long time as my suppressed envy sought to consume me. But I was winning.
For darkness is as light to you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even though the days and weeks passed, I never forgot to think of all those who had set out to witness the glory of the Lord. The cold winter had passed and frost and cold left the land, so that soon we could begin to prepare the fields for sowing. Since the sighting of the angel had caused us to let some of the farm workers leave, and they stayed away longer than we had expected, I had to join others in helping to plow the Fields of Death. The work was exhausting and made me physically very tired, since I still had to work in the carpenter's shop as well. We could not afford tractors, so we still had to resort to older tools. So, it happened that one day I was driving one of the hand plows through the dirty ground and was lost in my thoughts and full of sweat.
I was quite far away from the village, as the nearby surroundings had been worked shortly after the beginning of the thaw. The fields were extensive, partly reaching further than the eye could see. Only in one direction the dense forest extended, which introduced the beginning of a dark hilly landscape, that finally merged northward into high, alien mountains, whose white peaks rose high into the sky and, like once the tower of Babel, blasphemously tried to penetrate the heavens. But next to these distant giants there was only the plain, the vast plain that had to be tilled.
I hated the field work. And I hated the fields.
Every time I even thought about this piece of hell that had become reality long ago, my stomach turned. All the events that clung to this dark place, all the human lives and suffering that had sown the ground with death and blood here many years ago....
It was even worse when you stood in the fields yourself, truly being there on your own. It was as if I could smell it in the air, the rot of the starving and the hot blood that had watered the soil. It was as if I could still hear in the air the cries and wailing of the people who had met their end here, who had pleaded for their lives and the lives of their children and friends. It was as if I could see them in the early morning fog banks that lay on the Fields of Death, the shadows of people past, crawling and cowering, weak and starved. I had to pull myself together and look away, into the forest. A place does not forget, a place always remembers the days gone by and the cries that had been.
The plow pulled through the ground, ripping a furrow behind it. It was almost a bit comforting to imagine I was gutting this place of horror with my labor, inflicting deep wounds. Hypnotized, I stared down over and over again, watching the ground swirl to one side, smelling the fresh earth being pushed to the surface. But never could I escape my terrible feelings and the forebodings, never could I forget what kind of place I was at.
The few times I looked to the forest beside me, my thoughts wandered enviously to all those who had set out to find the angel. Had they reached it yet? Had they already learned from it what needed to be done for God's power on earth to be strengthened so that false prophets and promises could be swept away? How to drown the selfishness of the state? What needed to be done to serve the Lord?
Oh, how I would have loved to be there! How I would have loved to go with them, but I also understood the decision not to send everyone, and I understood my family's objections. I was needed here. I could serve the Lord here by tilling the fields and taking care of the soil and the sowing. I had to care for my sister.
I had already made several furrows when noon came. The sun was almost not visible, just a murky spot behind the clouds, and the fog had not lifted either. The world looked pale and apathetic. But amongst all the desolation I could suddenly hear something, something that seemed to come out of the forest.
It was at first just like a rustling in the wind that sounded a bit too regular, such that it triggered a natural uneasiness in me. I looked into the forest, but could hardly make out anything through the dense plants and the still lingering fog. That is why it was left to my own thoughts to imagine what was there, what was producing this strange noise.
I could not remember any animal that made similar sounds, was at a loss.
Suddenly, a bang echoed through the forest, accompanied by a panicked scream that broke inhumanly from the trees and spread across the fields.
Then, something new joined the sounds in the air.
The trees and bushes rustled, almost seemed to be torn apart.
Something was running through the forest, something seemed to be... coming right at me.
Was it perhaps a startled bear, an elk, or a wild boar?
Had one of the hunters from the village accidentally startled an animal, scared it in the wrong direction and now wanted to warn us with their cry? But then, why this panicked sound...?
I paused, took my hands off the rusty handles of the plow, and turned toward the forest. Still, I could only see fog, I could only hear rustling, but slowly I could also make out grunts and groans coming to me from the fog. It sounded heavy and panic-stricken.
Was I in danger? I began to pray to the Lord and ask him for assistance. I was not a fighter and so I had to hope that nothing would reach me from the depths between the trees that could easily tear me apart.
Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
My baptismal motto gave me courage. The Lord saw me, even in my darkness, and would be with me.
For darkness is as light to you.
Then, someone burst out of the bushes and the fog and rushed toward me.
It was Sasha.
I almost didn't recognize him. His skin was pale, almost snow-white. His black hair stuck to his sweaty face. His pants and jacket were almost completely torn, so I could see his dirty shirt and his cut and bruised legs through the holes. There were also some small cuts on his face that worried me. Sasha's eyes twitched searchingly, panicked, and in his hand, he held the rifle that he had taken with him when he had once set out. Apparently, he had run through brush and thorns, had gotten scrapes and wounds from stones and branches.
When he saw me and looked at me with his big, panic-filled eyes, I became horridly afraid.
It was as if… behind his eyes there was no Sasha anymore, but only an animal. As if instinct had taken over his thoughts when an unnamable terror had entered his world. An animal inside him, which had enabled him to escape from... something.
Sasha staggered out of the forest, it was almost as if all strength left him now that he was back home. The rifle fell from his hand and dug into the mud beneath his feet. He limped slowly toward me, not taking his eyes off me. Then, suddenly, he wheeled around and looked back into the forest and the mist.
Only for a moment.
Again, he let out a shrill scream and sprinted the last few meters. When I looked into the forest myself, I saw nothing, only the fog.
But, didn't I feel a presence there, in the bushes? Between the trees?
I didn't see anything.
Sasha had reached me and collapsed. I quickly knelt down next to him and called for help. But the other field workers had already rushed over, obviously attracted by the rifle shot. I was in a trance, seeing only Sasha lying there, supporting his head. His eyes were still twitching around and despite my proximity he didn't seem to recognize me. He looked at me, confused.
"Sasha, what happened?", I asked, feeling his forehead.
Despite his paleness, he was uncomfortably hot.
A fever raged in his body. Who knew how long he had been running around there among the trees, his protective, warming jacket torn? With wounds that had not been tended and some of which were still bleeding?
Then another horrible thought occurred to me.
"Sasha, where are the others? Sasha, where are the others?"
This question apparently brought back some clarity that his gaze had not possessed before.
"They... they took them. Took all of them... All of them. All our brothers, all our sisters... all of them," he gurgled.
*********
So, this is the first part of what I found. I will hurry to translate the rest! But I will definitely stay out of the woods for now... They are still as creepy as described by Ilya in this document and fog ist still around every morning... Also, I don't know what to make of Ilya himself as well, is he just a religious nut and that is the explanation? I just don't know...

[←Chapter 56] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 58→]
On the whole, things were actually looking up for Efrain at least as far as he could reckon. It was a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one that Naia had reached out to him. Adding on top of it that at least one of the children had fallen right into his lap, he might come away from this trip with more than near-death experiences.
The trio was sitting on the wooden floor of the waggon, the morning light rapidly brightening. It wouldn’t be long before the paladin’s awoke, by Efrain’s reckoning, so they’d best be quick.
“Well,” Efrain began, “I’ll let you ask three questions. That’s all we have time for today.”
Having a student, a proper student, was a prospect that he enjoyed more than he cared to admit. Aya took her time, drumming her fingers on the floor as she tried to come up with whatever her mind demanded of him.
“What is magic? What’s the difference between magic and miracles? And… what am I?”
Three, concise. Innie stirred at the first two, and Efrai guessed that Aya had already asked them before.
“‘What is magic’ is a matter of some debate. In the most practical sense, it’s a way of manipulating the world. Some have worshipped it as divine or spiritual. Some haven’t,” Efrain answered, “though, if you want my personal opinion, magic is a process of discovery, just as mathematics or philosophy is. It requires skill, or talent, most of all, dedication and practice.”
She nodded, this definition perhaps striking a cord with her.
“The difference between magic and miracles?” he said, “Well, I’m not entirely sure what miracles you’re referring to, but I can certainly attest that there are those that pass off magic as miracles.”
Aya stiffed slightly as it, and Efrain guessed from where the questions had sprung.
“Ah. I would’ve imagined the paladins said something like that. Self-aggrandizing hogwash - they use magic, I use magic. It’s fundamentally the same thing.”
He left out the part about how radically inefficient their methods likely were - that was for a later time.
“But the church says-”
“That magic is a sin. Something used by people in dark places?” snorted Efrain, “Angorrah used to be a centre of magical education, though the church would never admit that. I myself used to dwell there, many years ago.”
“The madame said that you would know about the night of the Burning Tree,” said Aya, looking at the cat, “that you lived through it.”
Efrain, at the usage of the word ‘madame’, also looked at the cat, significantly less impressed than his young charge. He indeed had lived through it, although he couldn’t recall it.
“It was over three centuries ago,” he said, “complete chaos. Partisans from the lands conquered during the Helgacite expansion. Angry youths from the Academies who felt betrayed by the church, mixing with other factions. Worst of all was the portion of the military that wanted to overthrow the ruling authority. The Night of the Burning Tree was a poorly thought out riot.”
Once more, the hypocrisy of the unknown haunted his assertion.
“I left the city not long after,” he said, “the writing was on the wall at that point. The church was preparing for decades to destroy the Academy, and that night was the perfect excuse for them to do so. Sometimes I wonder…”
Aya leaned forwards, clearly interested in this history he recounted.
“But that’s not relevant to your questions, nice try,” he said, leaving his suspicions on who exactly had set fire to the sacred tree to himself, “as for your third question - what are you.”
Out of habit, a long finger reached up to scratch at his temple.
“You are an enigma, a mystery. I don’t think I’ve encountered anything quite like you, and, believe me, between books and my own travels, that is not a low bar. It’s rare to stumble on someone so unique.”
Efrain was conscious of how bright it was beginning to get.
“Perhaps we’ll find some answers as we continue to explore magic together,” he put together quickly, “but alas, that’ll have to wait for another time. Best that you get back to your fellows. Quick now.”
Satisfied, at least for the moment, Aya thanked him, and with a little bow to Innie, quickly got out of the wagon and departed.
“A bow?” he said to his long-time companion.
“I was never going to get it from you,” she said, snorted, “besides, how long will it be before you get her calling you ‘teacher’?”
Efrain decided that was fair and not to press the point.
“I’m going to find Tykhon, I’d rather ride him than be in this rickety thing on a forest path,” he said, “also, have you see Clarallel?”
“She seems to be having a ball,” Innie said, “There’s no shortage of injuries for her to treat.”
“Oh, goodie,” he said, “at least she’s been keeping busy I’m sure.”
Efrain made his way around the camp, not taking long before finding another class taking place. Claralelle was inscribing lines in the dirt with a stick, depicting this muscle and that, while a collection of mostly shirtless men and women stood around her. As she explained its shape and what connected into what, she indicated so on her model - a vaguely embarrassed looking young soldier in the middle.
Efrain leaned against a tree, studying the reactions of the soldiers as Claralle launched into a fairly in depth explanation of the forces involved in a sword swing. To their credit, most of them seemed fascinated, and one was even scribbling hasty notes on a piece of parchment. As the lesson wrapped up, and the soldiers departed speaking in hushed tones, Efrain walked up behind Clara.
“My. Seems you’re gaining a following,” he said.
“Something like that?” she said in her customary joyous tone, “they’re interested. I’m interested. I might as well share!”
“Indeed,” he said, “keep in mind not to complain about the church too heavily, lest you land in hot water with some.”
She gave him a blank look, and it occurred to Efrain that she might not even know the slightest about the church, other than it existed.
“Anyways,” he continued, “I wanted to know what your plans were. Now that we’re out of both frying pan and fire.”
“Oh, I have no idea,” she said.
“...really?”
“I suppose I should go find another flesh lord, and complete my training. Or set up my own practice and… practice. Oh, and I like to read, and there are a lot of books. And there are a lot of people to treat as well!”
“Uh-huh,” Efrain murmured, “well, I don’t know about any others, but I can certainly introduce you to Carnes. Whether or not they’d be willing to take you on as a student is another story.”
“Also, I should find the skull of my master, if it hasn’t been crushed to dust by now,” she said, “we used to joke that I would strip it of the flesh and boil it. Then I’d put a little hat on it, or maybe use it to drink wine from. I don’t entirely remember.”
“They may have been joking.”
“No, I don’t think so. Either way, he’s dead, so he doesn’t have the luxury of choice.”
“Well, then,” Efrain said, clearing his throat to change the subject, “is it on to Angorrah, then? That’s where Carnes is, if you’re interested in meeting them.”
She nodded in a manner that was akin to a shrug, hoisting one of her many tool belts onto her pleated skirts.
“I’ve never been in a big city, I would like to see one,” she said.
“Don’t let me stop you,” he said, deciding not to mention the kind of reception she might receive there.
“Well, then, what about you? Are you going to the city? Seems like as bad an idea for me as it is for you.”
“Granted,” he said, “I’m not sure yet. We’ll be in Karkos in a few days, and we’ll see what happens. By the way, you don’t happen to have a pair of cups that you could spare, do you?”
“You could just take one or two from the ground. They leave them around all the time. I don’t think they’ll notice if they go missing.”
“And you know that because… you’ve done it before,” he said.
She nodded vigorously, before turning and walking away.
Efrain began to walk to the outskirts of the camp, looking for an unaccompanied piece of dishware or two. Clara was soon proven right, as he found that there were quite a few, enough for him to select a set of shallow wooden constructs between a plate and bowl. Perfect for what he was planning, or so he hoped. With his objective secured, he passed between the trees, and once he was a significant distance from the camp, he whistled.
The physical impossibility of the sound amused him, especially since he managed to do it perfectly every time.
Tykhon came through the trees, loping along on his six limbs, swivelling his head this way and that. Efrain wondered if that was for vision, or if he was scenting the air. The mount did not seem worse for ware, despite the danger they’d passed through. Efrain supposed there was no lack of food and water in the woods, and he’d been more than happy to wander along in them.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said, rubbing the creature’s long snout.
The creature nuzzled at him, leaving Efrain to wonder if Carnes had built some fondness for him in the creature’s very blood. He turned back and looked through the trees, seeing the soldiers beginning to pack their tents and tools.
“I don’t entirely know what I’m doing,” he said to his mount, “feels like I might’ve really stepped in it this time, Tykhon. I might end up headless, or with a new friend.”
Tykhon offered no response, other than to lay its massive head on his shoulder.
“Trying to get some blood on me?” he said, noticing the red flecks near the slit of its mouth, “rascal.”
He led Tykhon through the trees and back towards the wagon circle where Innie waited. Oddly enough, the mounts being hitched didn’t bolt or grow agitated at the approach of the much larger creature. Efrain wasn’t sure how Carnes had managed that either, but he supposed it was just another example of the skill of the flesh lord.
Soon, he and Innie were heading to the top of the line, but they stopped before they reached where the men were forming up. Damafelce was washing some clothes in a creek, leaving a trail of red-purple water.
“Don’t you have a page to do that for you?” he said from the back of his mount.
“I do,” she said, “but I prefer to do it myself. It’s what I used to do while my mother composed.”
“A bit of home then?” he said.
She nodded as she withdrew the shirt from the stream, its pale surface still stuffed with a red-brown stain.
“That being said,” she said, “I think this one is beyond my aid. I see you found your mount, lord Efrain. He’d been trailing the caravan for a while, some of the soldiers were getting nervous.”
“Well, I’m glad they didn’t shoot him. I would’ve been quite upset, though I doubt they would’ve harmed him much.”
“What is he exactly?” she said, wringing out the shirt before throwing it over her well muscled shoulder, “I’ve never seen nor heard of a beast like him.”
“A chimera of some description,” Efrain said, “actually I don’t even know if it's a he. It was a gift from a friend.”
“A… what?” Damafelce said, trying to sound out ‘chimera’.
“A mixture of animals, modified and merged. Flesh lords dabble in such things occasionally.”
“And is that… blood around his muzzle?” she said, looking concerned.
“Yes. He’s… well, I think he eats both plants and flesh, given the chance. I’ve seen him eating berries, and also… an eagle. I’m not sure how he managed to catch it,” Efrain said.
Damafelce looked more impressed than frightened, but Efrain noticed how her eyes drifted down to the claws on the forelimbs of the creature.
“He’s not particularly aggressive,” Efrain said, “but I think he can get skittish.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Is there anything you wanted to speak to me about?”
“No, no,” Efrain said, “I just saw you in the clearing and wanted to say hello.”
She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow, clearly doubting him.
“Although, there’s one question I would like to ask if you wouldn’t mind.”
“There it is,” said the captain, “well, then, ask away.”
“This seems like a less than desirable post for you, so far away from home. Why did you come?”
Her eyebrows furrowed at the question, almost as if she was insulted that he’d even asked her.
“I volunteered, we all did. Even the commander. He needed good men, so he had us.”
“Well then, that wraps some lingering questions I had,” Efrain said, nodding, “I’ll see you on the road, captain.”
Now that was interesting, Efrain thought, so was Naia put forward, or did he volunteer on his own?
Efrain rode on to where the men were massing, and waited patiently for the line to form up properly. Tykhon shifted his weight to the side and began to rub himself on the bark of a nearby tree, snuffling and grunting as he did so. Efrain absent-mindedly rubbed behind his ears as he thought about the day’s lesson.
It didn’t take long for the men to get moving along the old road, though it was more a foot path than anything else. Efrain didn’t have much time or desire to speak beyond common courtesy as he and Innie rode alongside the soldiers, and most were too unnerved by Tykhon to press any conversation. They’d made a distance of perhaps twenty or thirty miles before the day had darkened. The trees were beginning to thin out just slightly, and the balance was shifting definitely to deciduous.
As the men broke for camp, Efrain took up a position on a small rise, where a young birch stuck out from the ground. Tykhon had curled up, chewing on some of the fresh grass as he snorted and twitched, Innie asleep on his back. Efrain set out the two bowls before him, filled from a nearby stream, a fresh picked bundle of herbs, and waited.
Innie awoke at one point, flicking one amber eye over to his assembly.
“Getting prepared for your covert lesson?”
Efrain nodded as he sat, leaning against Tykhon's massive flank.
“I could wake you if you’re interested in aiding in my instruction.”
“Correcting your mistakes, you mean,” she said, “no thank you, I’ll be happy to sleep through your instruction.”
“Charming. At least I’ll be among friends,” Efrain said.
“You’re counting the beast-creature?”
“I take what I can get, including mouthy cats.”
That earned him a little laugh from the wisp-mother.
“And what exactly are you planning to do with those bowls, Efrain?”
“I was planning on making tea,” he said, “though it will be exceedingly poor quality with what fare I have.”
Innie’s laugh was not little this time as she rolled over and settled.
“Never change, Efrain,” she said, as she drifted back to sleep.
The moon was well-risen before Aya crept out from between the trees.
“Sorry,” she said, “they were a little more watchful this time. I had to wait until they were by the fire.”
“I have all the time in the world,” Efrain said, “besides, I don’t intend to keep you for very long.”
“They say we’re going to be coming to Karkos soon,” Aya said, “we might see it as early as tomorrow, the commander says.”
“That might be optimistic,” Efrain said, “maybe if we push ourselves, we could get to the hinterlands. As for actually getting into the city, that’s taking a night ride, which I’m not sure the soldiers would be happy about.”
Aya sat and processed the information in silence.
“Well, in any case, we will soon be in Karkos, barring any misfortune on the road. And we both have had quite enough of that, I think.”
The laughter was brittle, but good-natured regardless.
“So, then, magic. I haven’t done this in a very long time,” he said, “teaching, that is. As with anything, it’s best to understand the fundamentals of what we call magic. Under normal circumstances, this would take a few weeks, and we’d have lots of practical examples. Oh well, we’ll have to make do.”
He gestured to the various pieces in front of him.
“I teach in a more specific way than I imagine the paladins would, Three bedrock principles, which, while seemingly simple, take time to truly grasp. Memory, intent, emotion. A goal to find, the method to find it, and something to drive at. Do you understand?”
“I- I guess.”
“They seem a bit abstract, don’t they?” Efrain said, “don’t stress over the literal meanings of the words. They are flexible concepts, meant to capture a larger process. That is, the process of making magic.”
He held up his hand, and tried to envision the sparks of a blacksmith’s hammer. What he found instead, was a different explosion of colour and sound. The memory was surprising, and he couldn’t place it, but he remembered a name.
‘Fireworks’.
From his hand, a little stream of multicoloured tracers and dots of light flowed out into the night, vanishing into the dark. Aya gave a little gasp of delight as they floated above her head. He let his hand fall, pushing a dish of water towards the young girl.
“Do you want to take a guess at what your first actual act of magic will be?”
“Uh…” she said, looking down at the assorted plates and herbs, “are you asking me to make… tea?”
Efrain Belacore, behind his mask, smiled wider than he ever had in death.
[←Chapter 56] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 58→]

The time for figuring out conference strength is over. It's now time to figure out who the best is in each conference. In a way, this is a more important segment of the season, taking up 2/3 of the time and a majority of the games. From the MEAC Celebration Event to the Conference Tournaments, everything is on the line here.
And fortunately, the concentration of the top 25 in six conferences means we've got a lot of important games. We even kick off with a battle between two top 10 teams! Let's get to it.
*****
#6 Michigan State (9-3, 0-0) at #7 Michigan (9-3, 0-0). Michigan's struggle down the stretch, with two consecutive losses, leaves them behind their rival in the current rankings. But right away, they'll get a chance to fix it.
"Little Brother thinks they mean something right now, huh?" Juwan Howard joked. "We're ready for this. Forget about Big Ten, tournament seeding, ranking. We just wanna whup 'em."
Both teams faced off against top competition in the non-conference schedule, but Michigan holds the bigger upset, knocking off Duke in a stunning development. Michigan State, meanwhile, lost one of their three games with a short bench thanks to a brawl against Notre Dame.
"We're not doing that again if that's what you're asking," coach Tom Izzo said. "We're going to prove our might on the court by winning the game."
ROSTERS
​

Michigan State Spartans (9-3, 0-0)	#	Michigan Wolverines (9-3, 0-0)
Miles BRIDGES	0	Trey BURKE
Jamie FEICK	1	Jamal CRAWFORD
Draymond GREEN	2	Rickey GREEN
Johnny GREEN	3	Tim HARDAWAY Jr
Jaren JACKSON Jr	4	Juwan HOWARD
Magic JOHNSON	5	Phil HUBBARD
Morris PETERSON	6	Tim MCCORMICK
Zach RANDOLPH	7	Mike MCGEE
Jason RICHARDSON	8	Glen RICE
Ralph SIMPSON	9	Jalen ROSE
Scott SKILES	10	Campy RUSSELL
Steve SMITH	11	Cazzie RUSSELL
Eric SNOW	12	Roy TARPLEY
Jay VINCENT	13	Rudy TOMJANOVICH
Kevin WILLIS	14	Chris WEBBER

LINE: Michigan by 2
*****
In addition to the conference play, there will be two sets of non-conference games going on during this season. One is a series of exhibitions in the ACC, as the North Division, Charter Division, and South Division All-Stars play a round robin. The North draws from Boston College, Louisville, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse. The Charter draws from Clemson, Duke, NC State, North Carolina, and Wake Forest. The South draws from Florida State, Georgia Tech, Miami of Florida, Virginia, and Virginia Tech. Each squad sends three players to the All-Star showcases.
In addition, the MEAC teams will play an 8-team "in-season tournament" called the Celebration Tournament. Opening matches and positions in the bracket were decided by random draw. Your performance in the tournament is the second tiebreaker (behind in-season head-to-head) for conference standings.
*****
TOP 25 MATCHUPS
#18 DePaul (8-4, 0-0) at Georgetown (8-4, 0-0)
Providence (7-5, 0-0) at #15 Connecticut (9-3, 0-0)
#19 Illinois (8-4, 0-0) at #8 Indiana (10-2, 0-0)
#6 Michigan State (9-3, 0-0) at #7 Michigan (9-3, 0-0)
Minnesota (8-4, 0-0) at #13 Maryland (9-3, 0-0)
Wisconsin (8-4, 0-0) at #12 Ohio State (9-3, 0-0)
#17 Houston (9-3, 0-0) at #16 Texas (9-3, 0-0)
Iowa State (8-4, 0-0) at #4 Kansas (10-2, 0-0)
Texas Tech (8-4, 0-0) at #21 Cincinnati (9-3, 0-0)
California (9-3, 0-0) at #11 Southern Cal (9-3, 0-0)
Oregon (8-4, 0-0) at #10 Arizona (9-3, 0-0)
Stanford (8-4, 0-0) at #1 UCLA (12-0, 0-0)
#2 Kentucky (11-1, 0-0) at #25 Auburn (8-4, 0-0)
Mississippi State (7-5, 0-0) at #20 LSU (9-3, 0-0)
Tennessee (8-4, 0-0) at #23 Arkansas (9-3, 0-0)
Vanderbilt (7-5, 0-0) at #22 Alabama (9-3, 0-0)
ACC ALL-STAR CHALLENGE: Team South vs. Team Charter in Charlotte

Hey all, it’s me Frank Jones again. I wrote that post a while ago about why you shouldn’t be a paranormal investigator and a lot of you liked it. Since settling into my hideaway in the mountains, life has become quiet and I thought about checking in. The plague hit us like nothing and now that everyone is wanting to travel again, I thought to say hi. I want to say thanks to all of you who commented and gave me those weird pointy thingies this social media does. Some of you even figured out my post office box address and sent me letters. I appreciate it (and don’t do it again).
The common strain among your posts was wanting to know if I had ever encountered other things as an auditor. Of course I have but I have been reluctant to tell you because I don’t want to shine some sort of light on all of it or make it sound like some romantic adventure. It’s “pissing yourself” fear all wrapped up in a waking nightmare with a side of gory terror. I am one of the few who actually made it to retirement…if that’s what you could call this life I’m living now.
But, I have nothing else to do really. Carl only visits once in a while when he’s passing through and I cannot risk any other sort of company knowing I’ve pissed off a lot of people…and things. So, I’m back on this internet board and sharing. So many are curious, I thought maybe another story can scare you all straight. This was the first time complacency almost got me and another killed.
This story takes place somewhere in the 90s in a small New England town. It was one of those places nestled along the banks of a serene river, historic brick buildings line the winding streets, their facades adorned with weathered signs that hint at the town's seafaring heritage. A place where everything smelled like either the ocean or decaying fish. I’m not going to specifically name the town to protect the young lady that may still be living there but in the heart of the town, there’s a renowned drawbridge which stands as a testament to the place’s affinity for water. Its ancient mechanisms creak and groan when allowing vessels to pass through the calm waterway. It also had some of the best outdoor markets I had a chance to stop and check out.
I didn’t pass through this part of the country that often as my boss preferred me to do the long hauls across the country but there was a dead haul nobody wanted.I took it cause I wanted a change of scenery. I was already working as an auditor and part of a loose alliance of others who investigated and dealt with any weird things. I actually had a few monsters under my belt. I honestly had the foolhardy idea that I could handle anything out there. God, I was an idiot.
The supernatural never crossed my mind until that evening, stopping to fuel up my red 1992 Peterbilt 379 and paying for the gas with the attendant and restocking up on those beef jerky sticks and coffee.
That was when I noticed her. She was a young woman about in her mid 30s looking like one of the corporate types with the short hair cut and business suit. I would have not paid her any mind if it wasn’t for the touch of apprehension on her face as she talked on one of those new fangled bright yellow Nokia cellphones. Soft strands of chestnut hair framed her face, their gentle sway moving as she glanced around while talking on the phone. As I observed her, I couldn't help but notice the way her fingers trembled slightly, when trying to get money out of her pocket. I’ve seen that type of fear before. So, like a creep, I eavesdropped on her call.
“Yes, it happened again,” she had said as the nickels finally made it to the counter to pay for her snacks. “I could have sworn there was something outside the window near the edge of the forest….no, of course the security cameras didn’t pick up anything. They’re cheap. Ronald was a skinflint when it came to things like this. Hope he’s rotting in hell wherever he is.”
My mind began to drift away, more annoyed I couldn’t get a move on it. It sounded like a problem for the police and if anything, I was gonna tell her that. It was what she said next that made me stop and brought back the reality of the world.
“Yeah. like nine or ten feet tall. I’m thinking kids are playing around with scarecrows or something. Won’t come from the edge of the forest and when I check, I can see foot impressions and stuff. I already put in a call to the cops. They found nothing.“
“Did it sway a bit and its eyes seem to glint like a cats or owl?” I asked without thinking.
The look I got from both her and the gas attendant made me realize what I had done. Well, too late now.
“I’ll call you back,” she said quickly, eyeing me as she hung up the phone and slipped it back into her purse.
“You need me to walk you to your car, ma’am?” the attendant asked, staring at me.
Of course, I forgot that The Truck Stop Killer had only been arrested a few years before.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said, quickly gathering her stuff and making for the door. I slapped the one hundred and seventy bucks on the counter to pay for my diesel guzzler ignoring the change and followed her out but making sure to not move in a way that caused the teenager in the station to call the cops.
“Ma’am,” I called out to her and she turned to me while hurrying up her pace.
“I’ve got pepper spray. Stay away from me.”
“The thing in the woods. You could have sworn you smelled fresh dirt like mulch and it seemed to sway back and forth like it could not keep its balance.” I threw it out there in desperation.
She froze and turned to look at me. Eying me up and down as I kept my distance and angled to head towards my truck.
“How do you know?”
“I…uh…dealt with something like that before. On a job in Canada.”
“Who are you?” she asked, looking at my faded shirt and company logo. “A trucker?”
“I moonlight as a problem solver. Like an auditor of sorts.”
“Who is it?” she demanded, eyes still affixed to me and hand in her purse.
“Better question is ‘what is it?’,” I answered.
I have learned to pick up on the contempt and disbelief from people who hadn’t seen what I have. I was already being dismissed as a whack job.
“You have tracks on your porch you have written off as animals, especially if you own a dog. If you did own a dog, it’s missing. Cops told you it ran away. You got a garden?”
“Yes,” the certainty had started to leave her voice. “A walled garden.”
“And anytime you’re in there, you feel like you’re being watched.”
At that, her hand came out of her purse empty and she approached me with the fear I had seen in her eyes now on her face.
“How did you know?”
“I’d rather not explain out here,” I said sheepishly running my hand through my sandy brown hair that only started getting flecks of gray. “But you got a…pest problem.”
“And you can do something about it? I’ve had exterminators, cops, nature lovers…even a priest.”
“None of those won’t do you any good and I don’t want to scare ya but it’s more active which is not a good sign.”
For a few moments, I could see the indecision in her eyes. The desperate want to dismiss me as a lunatic but whatever she had heard or seen won over.
“Fine. You can follow me to the house.”
“Mind if I hitch a ride?”
The woman started but then looked at my truck. “Promise. I mean you no harm. I really think you’re in danger.”
That was when I found her name was Isabelle Walker.
We left my truck in long-term parking after she told the attendant that I was a long lost relative and that’s why the change of demeanor. I don’t know if he believed her but at that point, I don’t think he cared. I left my truck with its metallic frame standing tall and proud amidst the rows of other vehicles.
I did not realize how desperate this woman was until we got going on the road. I had loaded myself in the passenger seat after pulling out my military backpack from the war which I also used for my auditing services and tried to look as harmless as a man of my stature could.
For the first fifteen minutes of the drive, her focus was on the lonely road, those beautiful eyes darting to me anytime I shifted my weight. I didn’t want to scare her so it was her that spoke first.
“What is it?”
“I really don’t know but the people in my profession call it a Bone Walker.”
The nose crinkled in disbelief.
“Halloween is not for a few more months, Mister…”
“Jones. Frank Jones.”
The James Bond reference caused her to snort in amusement.
“I don’t know what to tell ya, ma’am, except I’ve dealt with some pretty scary things out there. Normally I’m never this forward as most people try to call the cops on me or dismiss me as a lunatic. I mean, I could be a lunatic but I know what I’ve seen.”
“And that is…?”
“You know. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves. They’re real. They’re not common but real nevertheless.”
“Really?”
There was still the disbelief in Isabelle’s voice but I grew to ignore things like this.
“Sure. I mean, think of all the things you experienced and be open to alternate answers.”
Isabelle was quiet for a few minutes and then sighed. “Either you are telling the truth or you're the biggest liar and I’m a fool that’s not going to live through this night.”
“I promise,” I tried to reassure her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
After a few more minutes and off the main highway, we approached her home. The large house stood resolute amidst the dense, ancient forest, its weathered exterior a testament to the passing of time. It was a grand structure, its imposing presence commanding attention. The sprawling estate exuded an air of mystery and faded grandeur, as if it held stories whispered through generations.
As we pulled in, the main house loomed before me, its facade adorned with intricate woodwork and worn stone. Ivy crept along the walls, weaving an emerald tapestry that hinted at the passage of years. The windows, framed by elegant yet slightly cracked panes, stared out into the world with a mixture of curiosity and melancholy.
To the side, a large shed stood detached from the main house, its weathered boards echoing tales of forgotten tools and lost endeavors. The wooden structure sagged under the weight of time, its roof covered in a patchwork quilt of moss. Inside, shadows danced amidst remnants of a bygone era, rusty equipment and dusty shelves attesting to the once-bustling activity that had long since ceased.
Not far from the shed, a family cemetery nestled amongst the ancient trees. Tombstones, adorned with intricate carvings and weathered inscriptions, dotted the landscape. The hallowed ground exuded a solemn tranquility, as if time stood still in reverence for those who rested eternally in its embrace. Wisps of fog clung to the grassy knolls, lending an ethereal quality to the sacred space.
At the far end of the property, an old walled garden stood as a testament to the house's former splendor. Once vibrant and lush, the garden now appeared overgrown and untamed. Stone paths meandered through a sea of tangled foliage, leading to hidden nooks and forgotten corners. Dilapidated stone benches, adorned with intricate carvings, sat scattered throughout the garden, silent witnesses to a time when laughter and conversation filled the air.
As I stood amidst the silence of the forest, the house, shed, cemetery, and walled garden formed a tapestry of history and mystery. They were a testament to the ebb and flow of life, the remnants of a bygone era that clung to the present. Within their weathered walls, secrets whispered and memories danced, waiting to be discovered by those who dared to venture into their enigmatic embrace.
“Great place to be haunted, huh?” she said with sarcasm. “My ex left it to me in the divorce. Was only going to be here long enough to sell it but no one wants it and my job wants me to move to this state anyway.”
“Where are you originally from?”
“California.”
“So, this is definitely a change of scenery for you,”
Isabelle only hummed back at me as she fumbled for her keys in the dying light of evening. I pulled my backpack closer to me as my eyes scanned the treeline where the shadows had begun to deepen. Nothing stood out against the silhouettes of ancient trees which was a good sign. I wasn’t too late.
Stepping through the weathered front door, I entered the interior of the old house, greeted by a mix of nostalgia and faded elegance. The air carried a hint of mustiness, a reminder of the countless years the house had to have witnessed. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering through the stained-glass windows, I could make out the clash between old decor and the modern furniture Isabelle had bought.
The foyer, adorned with a worn, threadbare rug. The walls, once adorned with portraits and intricate wallpaper, now bore the markings of time's passage. The wooden banister of the grand staircase, polished with use, creaked softly under my touch as we made our way towards the living room.
Moving further into the house, I found myself in a spacious living room. Large, ornate windows which would have allowed slivers of daylight to filter through the heavy velvet curtains. The walls were adorned with faded wallpaper. An aged fireplace, its stone mantle adorned with trinkets and old photographs, served as the heart of the room.
“You want some coffee?” Isabelle asked, throwing her keys on to the coffee table. I sat down on her couch and dropped my backpack on it with a clunk.
“Sure.”
“Sugar?”
“A lot.”
The kitchen light clicked on and I heard her moving about setting up the coffee pot. The adrenalin was now pumping through me as my mind raced. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail on what a Bone Walker is but it’s a creature that usually haunts the western coast. It being so far out east was strange. I pulled out my old gun bag and unrolled it. My Stevens Model 520-30 “Trench” shotgun was the first thing I reached for as I popped open the internal pouch holding he high flash shells I was glad I packed. It was the startled sound from Isabelle that made me quickly look up.
She stood there with my coffee, eyes locked on the shotgun in my hand. I slowly held up one of the cartridges I was planning to load.
“Flash powder shotgun shells. No load. Just makes a loud noise and a bright white light. What we’re facing lives in the shadows and hates light…normally,” I had heard stories that they could strike in the day but it was extremely rare. She didn’t need to know that.
“Oh,” was her quiet response. “Do…do I need a gun?”
“You know how to use one?”
“No.”
“Then it’ll do more harm than good. You got any flashlights?”
Isabelle nodded mutely, the gravity of the situation sinking in at the array of weapons and items in my pack laid out in front of her.
“Go get them.”
While she was gone, I quickly unloaded the silver bullets out of my Makarov pistol (a gift from a Viet Cong officer and a story for another time) and placed normal 9mm rounds in the clip. I had it holstered under my jacket with the two back up clips when she returned with three cheap flashlights.
“One in your hand and one in your pocket.”
“Why?”
“In case you drop the one you are holding.”
The woman obeyed silently.
As night fell quickly around us, I slung my shotgun over my shoulder and with Isabelle close, we made our way upstairs. There were tell tale signs I needed to check as the only advantage I had over this thing was the fact it stuck to a pattern. If it was at the stage I thought it was, there would be signs.
“Which room is yours?” I asked.
Isabelle pointed to a door down the hallway across from a large window. Approaching it, I quickly shined my flashlight at the mahogany door frame. It was the glint that caught my eye. Deep gouges in the wood.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Claw marks,” I responded. There was no use sugar coating anything now.
“This thing was in my house?” Isabelle said horrified.
“For the last few weeks now,” I said, my nose picking up the faint odor of dirt and mud.
“Why didn’t it attack me then?”
“It wasn’t time.”
“What?”
Talking was going to be the only thing to keep her focused. I had felt the world shift a bit as night fell and I needed her not to panic.
“Bone Walkers are ritualistic creatures. They are very choosy over their prey. It can take a month or two before they move in. That’s why they are so hard to catch.”
“Criteria? Like what?”
“We don’t know.”
That was the honest truth. The only reason we knew their existence and patterns was thanks to blind luck and people surviving their encounters. I showed my light around looking for other signs. Discolored stains in the corners where shadows would naturally form, healthy moss and mold that shouldn’t be there. I found a patch around her bed. She did not notice and I did not want to tell her that it probably stood over her through the night watching her sleep. The sooner I buried this thing, the better.
“Frank!”
There was a trill of terror in Isabelle’s voice and I immediately looked to where she was. The woman was standing by her bedroom window staring out at something. I quickly moved and spotted what she saw. In the forest, at the edge of the shadow cast by the moonlight was an almost, imperceptible form. It stood nine feet, hunched over like a broken scarecrow, its owl like eyes staring back at us.
“Shit,” I muttered. Thank god we had turned on the lights as we went.
It was the flash of light and the crack of thunder that heralded the arrival of the storm. The lights of this old houses flickered which caused my belly to flop a few times. My brain was on fire as I glanced back from the lightbulb to where the creature was and found it had vanished.
“Where did it go?”
I did not have time to explain as another crack of lightning caused the lights to dim. I grabbed Isabelle roughly by the arm and yanked her back down the hallway towards the living room where I had left my stuff. We barely made it to the living room when the lights dimmed low. I grasped the glow sticks out of the bag, cracked a handful and scattered them about, their bright yellow light beginning to glow. The power then went out bathing us only in the eerie glow of the emergency lighting.
As we waited in breathless anticipation, the storm struck, its wrath manifesting in torrential rain. The mansion seemed to respond, succumbing to a power outage that plunged us into an abyss of blackness only moments before.
A trill of terror coursed through me. I knew this Bone Walker thrived in darkness, using it as a cloak to conceal its malevolence. We auditors were not sure if it actually teleported or it preferred to move in pitch darkness. I just knew that the black was our biggest threat.
For a few moments, we could only hear the ragged breathing of the two of us being drowned out by the pounding rain against shingle and glass. Isabelle had wound her hand into my jacket pocket and was gripping it tightly, I could feel her shaking with terror. I kept my shotgun gripped tightly in my hand listening for the tell tale sound of its arrival.
It was the movement out of the corner of my eye and the fact her grip got tighter on my jacket. I swiftly turned on my high-powered flashlight as I spun around and the brilliant beam pierced the obscure corner of the room. No matter what I had read or seen before did not prepare me for what I saw.
It stood there in the corner, its eight foot height engulfing that section of the house. My eyes strained as it appeared the thing was struggling to stay in focus. Its arms were too long for its body, spindly and almost to the floor while the legs appeared backwards giving it a strange forward leaning look. It wore a hunter’s long coat and trousers but through the rips and tears I could make out something squirming and moving underneath. The air filled with the stench of decaying plants and diseased vegetation. Its face was covered with what looked like the remnants of a cheap bandanna but its owl-like eyes gleaned back with malevolence.
Isabelle whimpered, her fear palpable in the room and the Bone Walker lunged toward us. Even though my fear was ripping through me like an unstoppable train, I had the sense to pull the trigger of my shotgun aimed in its direction. The flash and resounding roar painted the entire room in a brilliant black and white shadow causing every corner and edge to appear thick and vivid. The creature screamed and fell to the side into the shadow not illuminated by the weapon’s fire.
Isabelle had thrown herself on the couch and was huddled there, trembling with terror, while I moved quickly to crack a few more glow sticks and toss them into the dark corners of the room. In one, I saw its foot recoil back into the kitchen where it was darker than night itself. This was quicker than I had anticipated. The plans I had been formulating on the drive were no longer viable. I wanted to lure it to where I controlled the battlefield but that was not an option anymore. This had become a cat and mouse game and I knew this was with a predator I could not even hope to understand and had years to hone.
Out of the kitchen again this thing charged forward, relentless in its pursuit, it was trying to find a way around my light barrier which only appeared to slow it down. With shaking hands, I fired several more rounds, each blast forcing the creature to retreat and the girl to scream in terror. As soon as it retreated to a dark part of the house, I turned to where the woman of the house had been. To my horror, Isabelle's fear had gotten the best of her. In that moment of panic, she darted from the safety of the light, towards the hallway and the door outside.
“Isabelle! Stop!” I yelled trying to command her back with my voice but I doubted she heard me. Between the abject horror and the relentless rain, she was going to take her chance. A chance I knew she did not have.
I only took a step when I sensed it. The musty smell of an organic landfill overwhelmed me as the form silently darted past me, its long arm clobbering me up the side of the head. The world spun as pain burst through my brain. I felt the world tilt and fall heavily to the ground, flashlight and shotgun falling away.
As I slipped in and out of consciousness, I knew I was a sitting duck for this thing. There was no way for me to stop it from ripping me to shreds like some of the corpses I had seen. As I blinked, I came to my senses and realized I was alone. How long I had actually been on the ground, I did not know.
I sat up, my head pounding and I could see the door hanging open, the wind slamming the door on its hinges and the rain soaking the hallway floor. Struggling, I found my flashlight and gun and pulled myself together.
There was a slim chance that Isabelle was still alive. I had to think. Where would it go? I ran all the stories I could think of and then it hit me. The garden. The walled garden.
I charged into the rain-soaked night. I sprinted toward the enclosed garden at the edge of the property. As I grew closer, I saw that the rusted door was open and hope flickered in my soul. As I came to a stop, I brought my flashlight up again with my shotgun and saw it.
This creature stood there in the middle of the overgrown garden, its massive clawed hand wrapped around Isabelle’s chest and holding her up. Out from under its bandanna mask, putrid vines had appeared and led up to Isabelle’s face where they were forcing their way down her throat and up her nose. I could see the wide terror in her eyes as vines were snaking their way around her waist and I did not want to think about what they were planning to do.
I brought up the shotgun again and fired. Knowing that I had distance, the flash of light caught the creature by surprise. It shrieked as it fell back. Trying desperately not to release its prey. I did not hesitate to grab the machete at my side and hack at its arm until Isabelle fell down free of it.
It’s claw swiped at me striking me on the leg and easily tearing through my pants leaving bloody lacerations but I put the weapon point blank and fired another round. I do not know if it was the flash, the combination of the creature, or that the almighty above was looking out for me, but the creature caught ablaze from the spark.
It fell back swinging wildly as the fire spread unnaturally fast catching the plants around it on fire. Within a matter of seconds, the walled garden had become ablaze with the bone walker in the center. As I ripped the vines out of Isabelle’s mouth and dragged her towards the door, I looked up to see those owl-like eyes looking at me with such abject hatred that the look stick with me today.
I honestly don’t know how we survived. I had helped Isabelle to her porch and we both passed out against our will from the sheer terror and exhaustion. We were awoken by the sound of a siren. The lights had come back on sometime in our sleep and the rain had drifted off to a comforting drizzle. The fire was still raging in the garden but contained by the ancient walls. At least two fire trucks, an ambulance and cops were flying up the private road towards us.
This entire hunt had been ill-planned and stupid. I knew it. As the cops approached with their hand on their pistols, I knew that I had allowed my own ego to get in the way. I should have taken Isabelle somewhere else until I had done a proper reconnaissance. I shouldn’t have taken her home where it was waiting. And now, the cops were looking at two thoroughly soaked humans, one a trucker with a wound and a gun and a young lady in distress. I was pretty sure I was going to go to jail.
“Isabelle?” One of the cops and his voice caused her to sit up, relief washing over her.
“Derek!” she wailed. “We were attacked! In the garden!”
Another two cops that had arrived had taken off in that direction while Derek helped the girl up and took her towards the ambulance. The other cop with a comically large mustache looked at me with keen eyes, his hand still on his pistol, sergeant stripes glowing in the light.
“Attacked?”
“Yeah,” I said, sitting up slowly and keeping my hand away from the shotgun and trying not to show the one under my jacket. “Someone came after Mrs. Walker. They were in the garden.”
The cop watched me closely but there seemed to be a recognition in his eyes.
“You by any chance Frank Jones?”
My heart jumped and I must have looked startled as the cop’s face broke into a smile. To my relief, his hand fell away from his holstered sidearm.
“I’ll take that for a yes. My guess is you don’t remember me. Clay Wilson. Santa Fe PD, about six years ago. You helped my partner with a...problem. Nellie Nelson?”
I knew the name but the face escaped me.
“She told me you helped her audit a police union building.”
“Ah, yes,” I said, remembering dealing with the wraith and the twinge in my right arm from it’s bite.
The cop looked towards the fire that was slowly being put out by the fire fighters.
“Any chance this will be one of your audits?”
“Yeah.”
He seemed to think for a few minutes and then nodded.
“Then I think you need to grab that shotgun of yours and hitch a ride with me before too many people ask questions. Whatcha think?”
I nodded. I was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I collected my stuff quickly from the living room and made my way back out where he was waiting. As I limped with the cop to his car, I looked towards Isabelle who was being held by the other. She gave me a look of thankfulness as the cop looked at his partner with confusion.
“Her brother’s got her,” Clay said, opening the back door for me. I was not gonna argue or fight. If he took me to jail or not.
And that was it. My leg was not as bad off as I thought and wrapped it in the back of the police car. Clay only asked where I wanted to go and he took me back to my truck. With that time, I was back on the road with that small town in the rear view mirror.
I never did find out what happened to Isabelle after that, if another creature came looking for her or if she had a chance to live in peace. I just knew that we both barely made it out alive and that was due to my own stupidity. I was furious with myself for weeks after that and told myself I wouldn’t put another person in jeopardy like that again. At least, despite my idiocy, another life was saved and another monster was put in the ground...I hoped. I never did find out if they found a body.

Hey guys! Applying this cycle and just wanted some feedback on my school list. Wondering if I am missing any schools that would be a good fit for me/ any that might outright reject me bc of service requirements etc. that I didn't catch. Thanks a ton!!!
NC Resident, Indian Female, MCAT 510, GPA 3.95
400 Research hours (working in my lab full time this summer to get publication)
400 Clinical Experience hours as an EMT
1000+ hours at other jobs in leadership positions (tour guide, tutor, secretary of research club etc)
~150 hours of volunteering at different community events
no shadowing bc covid :((((((

1. Brody SOM
2. UNC Chapel Hill
3. University of Washington (Parents live in Seattle)
4. Wake Forest
5. East Virginia medical school
6. Albany Medical College
7. University of Arizona - Tucson
8. Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at TCU
9. Geisinger commonwealth SOM
10. George Washington University SOM
11. Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University
12. Pennsylvania State University COM
13. Tulane SOM
14. Oakland University William Beaumont SOM
15. Larner COM Univ of Vermont
16. Univ of Illinois
17. VT Carilion
18. West Virginia SOM
19. Drexel

Is this list completely delusional?
List: Brown, Dartmouth, Boston University, Duke, Wake Forest, UNC, ECU, Harvard, Hopkins, NYU, Mayo Clinic, Northwestern, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, UPenn, Stanford, Vanderbilt, UCSF, WashU, Icahn, UCLA, Case Western, Albert Einstein, Emory
URM African American male
State: NC
College: Average State School
GPA: 3.92
MCAT:515 (129/126/131/129)
No gap Years
Clinical Experience: 180 hours as a CNA
Shadowing: 20 hours shadowing a family medicine doc
Research: About 500 hours in a biochem based lab. Currently in a summer REU program for the same lab(No posters/pubs)
-Crisis Text Line(50 hours)
-Organic Chem TA for 1 semester(100 hours)
-Volunteer for a Nonprofit cleaning and organizing books to be donated(200 hours)
-American Red cross volunteer mainly just checking people in and providing snacks(20 hours)
-Volunteer with nonprofit dedicated to supporting kids fighting cancer as well as their families(16 hours)(Volunteered to play with the kids at a picnic event and did a fundraising event)
-Mission trip to mexico(religious)(1 week)
-Hobbies: Spikeball club, pickup basketball and working out
-As an eagle scout, Volunteered with my old boyscout troop(10 hrs)

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Big thanks to u/Killsode-slugcat and u/cliche_-_bartender for helping me with proofreading and editing.
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SUBJECT-DESIGNATION: Admiral Marcus Miller
LOCATION: Earthen Orbit, Atlantic Citadel
DATE: EARTH-TIME [Wednesday, August 23, 2186]
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I stood above Earth, gazing down upon her bright blue brilliance from the comfort of my personal quarters.
It was odd to think that just five hundred years ago, humanity had been scared of the darkness that lingered at the forest’s edge. I couldn’t imagine that those born during that time could have ever imagined the heights which we would rise to. My only hope was that our vast distance from the ground of primitivity wouldn’t lead to a devastating fall.
Already it felt like a lifetime ago that my crew and I had braved our own dark forest—the endless expanse of space beyond our system’s heliopause. Now we knew of the devils that rested at the edge of those shadows. The fires of Sol and the shield of our Oort cloud were all that now stood between us and them. At least in the process of our journey, we had met another group of weary travelers. We now knew that we were not alone.
The reaction to our discovery of the Khimrox—or perhaps their discovery of us—had actually gone over quite well with the global population, though some fringe groups chose to remain skeptical for reasons I couldn’t fathom.
Following the acceptance of the Khimroxian people as refugees, I was rather quickly promoted to the position of admiral. Despite it being an honorary title for the time-being, it was one that I wore with pride. Besides, considering how things were currently going among the leadership of the UEN, it was my guess that we would soon need all of the fleet commanders we could get.
Being separated from my crew though, it was certainly an ordeal. For over a year, we had trained and prepared for our journey aboard the Challenger, all the while forming a strong bond—the bond of a crew. It was them who had kept my mind from plunging into the hopeless darkness that threatened to envelop my mind back aboard the ruined wreck of our exploratory vessel.
Liz and Garth had been reassigned to finally fulfill their true calling as biologists. Together, they dove head-first into in-depth studies of Khimroxian anatomy and physiology. Sid had opted to assist in the deconstruction of the Ignis, allowing its analysis by a team of scientists that included Lee. As far as I was aware, they had so far produced staggeringly impressive results in regards to potential military applications. Jake was probably the wisest among us, choosing to enter an early retirement, which I quite honestly considered the smartest move. Each member of the Challenger had essentially become an influential celebrity overnight. If any of us chose to, we wouldn’t need to work another day in our lives.
Nia had taken an extended leave of absence following our return and chose to take up temporary residence within the Khimrox colony. Darius was perhaps the only one that had stuck with me. Due to my request, he was to be the chief navigational officer of a brand new fleet that had been promised to me—an experimental UEN fleet by the name of Vengeant Dawn.
Though word hadn’t yet officially been released, some part of me could sense the storm approaching on the horizon. War was coming. The only questions that remained were when and how it would be waged, one of which we were currently working to answer.
Some remained skeptical, but me, I had been waiting since the day I first heard of that wretched name, the one which hid behind a thin and lustrous coat. They would pay in blood for what they had done to our Khimroxian friends and to all of the scion species that they considered beneath them.
Speaking of those pricks… I turned from the window to look back at the objects of interest.
We had already begun to install improvements and replacements for our own technology from what we had researched so far. The holo-table of my room was one such improvement.
Atop it, hovered three ire-inspiring figures—the bastards of the Orion Arm.
One was what looked to be a molluscoid. Twelve long and winding tentacles stretched from its body. The creature’s skin could possess a wide variety of colors, but this one took on a dark shade of blue. Atop its head—or back, I still wasn’t entirely sure—was a large circular shell that spiraled backwards. The shell itself was fairly reminiscent of an ammonite, with the notable exception of its golden sheen. A green pair of eyes with slitted black pupils could be found at either side of its face. At the end of each of its limbs were a strange bunch of contraptions that were barely recognizable as the manipulators they were. To support its spineless body—and perhaps its brazen cowardice—was an exoskeleton which covered the length of its tentacles, allowing it to rise to an ironically respectable height. The Dodektopi.
The second was a shape that made no sense according to what little we apparently knew regarding the formation of life. The figure of flames was somewhat humanoid in shape, but distinct enough to separate it from ourselves. A frenzy of dancing plasma licked across the surface of its shape, occasionally whipping out from its body in flares of solar activity. Centered within the fiery specter’s face was an unfamiliar symbol forged out of a sleek black metal that did not burn with the being’s body. Its hands and feet that connected the body were made of similar steel and seemed to hold the shape together with the help of the head. The Novari.
Last but most certainly not least was a chillingly familiar shape. It was an ancient and terrible legend made manifest. The draconic figure before me bore ebony-black scales. A wicked pair of gold curling horns rose from the tyrant’s skull, covered in rings of that black metal that wrapped around them. Cryptic runes—whose mere existence denoted their ancient nature—were etched into the bone of these very same horns. Surrounding its head were countless quills that reached back behind the skull. From its oddly placed back pair of shoulders sprouted leathery wings that curled around the body, nearly encircling it in a hug. A long tail whose spiked end was covered in yet more of those sleek black rings fell behind them. The creature wore nothing more than a red ornamented kilt, bearing the same symbols as those etched upon its body across the sashes which held it in place. Its imposing physique was proudly put on display and an amber pair of greedy eyes rested behind its black maw of terrible teeth.
At the second and frontward pair of stubby shoulders, a shimmering pair of auric arms, engraved with yet more of those runes. I could have recognized their design anywhere. They bore an uncanny similarity with those utilized by our Khimrox friends. The three primary differences between those of them and those that belong to our friends were the sheer quality of the design, the notable exception of their shimmering sheen and their lethal talons that had been sharpened to a shining point. The Aeryvyn.
The terrible triumvirate mocked me with their mere presence, but I couldn’t tear them away from my sight. It’s fortunate that something else did it for me.
A ping that rained from the speakers in my ceiling heralded the incoming message. “All UEN personnel with alpha clearance please report to the briefing room.” Two more times, the soft and purposefully inoffensive voice repeated itself.
With a sigh, I shut off the display and marched to don the new garb that matched my position. When my door slid open, I saw several others stride through the long hall of yet more doors that matched my own.
The familiar scent of ozone had been a relief following the unnaturally clean air of the Ignis. That ship was no longer the home of the Khimroxian refugees, so I had little care for its continued existence. By now, it was a skeleton of alien alloys.
Our straight, gray walls and steel-vented floors were showered in warm light. Compared to the Ignis where the too-white surface where wall and floor blended together, the scenic viewing ports and recognizable craftsmanship felt like the warm embrace of a long-lost friend.
Speaking of friends, I wonder if I’ll see Saffan. Weeks had passed now since I last saw the captain-ambassador. His new position ensured this was so.
A stream of gray-coated senior staff flowed through the doors to the briefing room. At the entrance, a full complement of soldiers outfitted with Styx suits stood guard. That generation of armor would soon be outdated in comparison to the schematics I had seen prepared.
My heart warmed involuntarily as I entered the room. Saffan’s bright eyes of perpetual wideness stared back at me. I shouldered my way through the convening crowds of admirals. Each spoke with a weight of self-importance that I couldn’t have cared less for.
When I finally reached him he called my name. “Marcus!” The captain extended a hand. Wait, what? I wasn’t sure whether to be more confused by his use of the gesture or his new set of arms. They were admittedly simple compared to the prior pair and they were coated with a blue shine that matched his eyes. The digits no longer took the shape of those reptilian claws, instead forming an approximation of human fingers.
The hands locked perfectly with my own. “Saffan, good to see you again. How are things going?”
“Wonderfully. Though I must say, you humans seem to have more countries than you know what to do with.” Saffan folded his arms. “I’ve visited thirteen nations already and I still have over a hundred that have sent me visitation invitations.”
A scoff escaped my throat. “Yeah, that’s us for you. Needlessly overcomplicated.”
I took a step forward and placed a hand on a brilliant blue arm. “And these! When did you get these?” Saffan practically beamed at my inquiry.
“Elizabeth and Garth actually helped design them! They’re exceptionally lightweight compared to my last pair and they can fold to not hinder flight.” As he said this, the two artificial limbs pressed up against his body as he fully folded his wings in a similar manner. With both arms and wings folded, he would have looked like a great horned owl if not for the obvious discrepancies of his size, his horned head and the swirling patterns that covered his wings.
“That’s enough about me though, how have you been? What have you been up to?”
“Ah, not much,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. “Paid the family a visit a week back for the first time since the Challenger. For the most part though, I've been training on the battle sims these last few weeks. If I’m to be an admiral, may as well try to play the part.” Saffan slowly nodded. I got the feeling that he too sensed the approaching storm.
“This family of yours, I’d love to meet them some time.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’d love to meet you I…”
“Attention!” The stern sound cut me off. The rippling chorus of speech died down almost immediately as the call demanded our undivided focus. I could’ve recognized that voice anywhere.
“Thank you for joining me, my friends.”
“You’re a smart bunch of people, so I’m sure you’ve gotten the sense for what’s been going on by now.” Redd took a deep sigh and looked around the room at the entirety of the UEN navy’s command structure.
“Ever since the Khimroxians arrived, we’ve been faced with a choice—a choice that must not be taken lightly.” The captain turned our way and gave Saffan a nod.
“When the brave souls aboard the Ignis saved the crew of the Challenger, they showed the true character of their people. They were faced with hard decisions—for our people and theirs—but they chose to push forward and in so doing, saved not only the lives of those aboard the Challenger, but all of Earth from falling subject to their lords. After due deliberation with the council-members of the United Earthen Nations, we have decided to follow in the footsteps of our friends and take such a risk.”
“As of right now, we are at war with the Alliance of the Aurum Arm.” The room fell into deafening silence.
“Each member-state of the UEN will alert their people in due time, but for the moment, not a single word heard within this meeting must be uttered outside of this room.”
Admiral Sturm, the very man who had been my commander not all that long ago, spoke up. “With all due respect, Director, we don’t have the means to wage such a conflict.”
“That's why we’ll create the means. For once, I’m glad to say something good came out of the Kuiper War.” This derived a few nervous laughs from the audience. “With the production facilities appropriated from the Aedavis Corporation, and a few adjustments, we have the potential to create the most powerful fleet of human-made ships to ever enter space.”
“Unfortunately however, we do not have the means to reproduce the white hole drives utilized by the Aurum vessels, or even the dark matter used to stabilize the damned things.”
“Saffan, this is where you and your people will come in. If we are to stand a chance of waging war on such a scale, we will need intelligence and lots of it.”
“As difficult as it may be, we need information; without it, we’re dead in the vacuum of space. We will need volunteers to go behind enemy lines and retrieve plans, schematics, layouts, anything that we can get a hold of that may provide us an advantage both strategically and technologically. Would your people be willing to go to such lengths?”
All eyes in the room turned to the ambassador-captain. “I—I don’t know. I will consult with them, but do I have your permission to speak freely about what you have told me?”
The aging man rubbed his orange-brown beard. “Yes. Yes that would probably be for the best wouldn’t it. Very well, just do your best not to allow it to reach other ears.”
“Yes sir.”
“As for the rest of you, allow me to detail the plan we have so far.”
“Though most of the security council members are not tacticians, they have agreed to the plan that I and a few of my most trusted consultants have prepared. Right now, the nearest sector with a habitable planet is known as Mortamis. This was the last jump point for the Ignis before it intercepted our distress signal. The tentative plan is to begin our expansion across their territory with the capture of this world to act as the staging grounds of our forces. However, until we receive more information regarding the exact layout of their defenses, we cannot commit to such an invasion.”
“From there, we will split up the UEN fleets into separate groups across the Orion arm and take out these tyrants by bleeding them of their most precious resource. Scions. Every world we take is an addition to our numbers, our production capacity, and our ability to fight.”
“Our end-goal is to capture the planet-capital of the alliance, Petris, and demand liberation of all species under control of the Aurum Alliance.“
“We do have a few major concerns however. According to the information provided to us by the Khimrox, a majority of Aurum vessels contain some form of scionic crew complement. Under no circumstances unless express consent is given by the command admiral of the fleet are we to attack a vessel with the intent of destroying it. We must first weaken and disable the ship’s defensive systems before boarding and liberating the captives.”
“I know that this flies in the face of all conventional battle tactics, but this is no conventional enemy that we’re fighting here. If we do not adapt, we will fail and all of humanity will be forced into scionship.”
“Keep in mind, this is a very brief version of our prepared plan. Each and every aspect of it is subject to change. We will discuss this in further detail later, but for now, that is all. Any further questions?” Once again, silence. “Very well then. This council session is now adjourned.”
Other than the shuffling of feet exiting, all was silent. We had known it was coming, but to hear it confirmed…
“Marcus.” The director approached, placing a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Go ahead and join Ambassador Aeax, why don’t you? Might help some of those Khimrox to see a human face that they’re familiar with.”
With a snappy salute, I responded with, “Yes sir.” His words were certainly a surprise, but a chance to join the Khimrox that had saved us was not one I would pass up easily. He may as well have just given me a week of leave considering the excitement that bubbled up within me.
Together, I and Saffan made our way to a nearby shuttle bay headed directly to the Khimroxian colony. Surprisingly, I hadn’t yet paid a visit to the settlement placed within the province of Hunan, but I had seen some images on several media platforms.
The trip was a quick one. Our transport plunged into the atmosphere, kicking up flames all around the outside of the cabin. Soon enough though, the flames of our descent died out and were replaced by the darkness of night.
Even with the slight turbulence, Saffan seemed deep in thought as his eyes stared at nothing in particular.
“Hey, you good?”
That seemed to snap him out of it. “Wha—oh yes, sorry.” A look of focus still remained on his face. For a moment, he continued in his silence before posing a question. “What if my people decide not to volunteer? This entire plan could fall through in an instant.”
“You don’t give your people enough credit, my feathered friend.” Saffan gave me a narrow-eyed look before letting out a cluck of a chuckle. “Redd was right in what he said. I’m sure your people will make the best choice for all of us.”
“For both our sakes, I can only hope that you’re right.”
Our Harpy gently sailed over mountains and treetops, slowly sinking to a stop within a secluded area of trees that were foreign to me.
Only I and Saffan left from the Harpy’s bay and stepped off onto the tarmac. Behind us, the cargo-door closed with a hiss. As we stepped out from underneath our cover, light droplets of water pattered against my skin.
Seconds later, the Harpy’s thrusters kicked in and the ship took flight. The heavy hum and glow of burning hydrogen accompanied the bird as it flew away. In mere moments, it was gone, though the distant boom of it breaking the sound barrier was audible enough.
Looking around, I saw a few of my fellow men and women unloading supplies from a parked Harpy onto a militarily designed transport truck. Dimly lit orange lamps shone down and around us, illuminating nearby hangar bays with their closed doors and rounded ceilings of corrugated metal.
“Let’s get going. I’m sure you don’t want to stay in the rain long.” The rain was enough to notice, but it wasn’t unpleasant. I gave a brief nod and we set off on the nearby road.
Though clouds of rain covered us, the light of the moon joined us as we walked to the village. The setup looked pretty standard from what I knew of modular UEN architecture. It was clear however that great care had been put into its construction. The rain kept most of the residents indoors for the time being, but through the windows of nearby buildings, I saw the illuminated interiors of cozy hostels where families and friends gathered together.
We passed another Khimrox while wading through the rain—one who held its head and horns high, walking with a cheery gait despite the gloomy weather. Compared to the stale and oppressive atmosphere aboard the Ignis, the settlement brimmed with life, even amidst the darkness of both night and storms.
Saffan led me forward to a quaint home with a metal awning that covered the railed porch. We walked up the steps and Saffan rapped on the door with his cobalt colored knuckles.
I hoped for Nia’s sake that her time away from the military had treated her well. Lord knows she deserved some respite. The door opened and Nia's face peeked out to greet us. “Saffan! Marcus! What are you two doing here?”
Saffan answered as I silently sat by. “Oh we were just passing through. Thought it might be a good idea to stop and pay you a visit.”
“Well don’t make yourself strangers. Come on in!” Saffan sat behind as I walked forward and gave his whole body a shake. Droplets flew from his body and slid off his slick feathers.
The home was a simple one, consisting of a main living room joined together with a kitchen. In the back of the home was a short hall leading to a middle door that stood between a pair of two others. In the living room, perched Tokieran, the same physician who had plunged into my mind to extract our language.
Immediately, he rose from where he rested and turned to face Saffan, “Captain!”
“Can’t be a captain without a ship, Toki.” The former captain waved away the words with a hand. “Saffan will do.”
“Oh. Uh, well, it's good to see you again, Saffan.”
“Likewise my friend. I’m certain you haven’t seen much of me considering your position during our time on the Ignis. It’s a shame we didn’t brush wings more often. You seem like a fine fellow.”
As the two avians got to talking, Nia gave me a light punch on the shoulder. “So, how’ve things been going for you admiral?” It was at this moment that I realized I was still in full military dress. Rather sheepishly, I pulled the hat from my head.
“Fine.” I muttered “You?”
A smile met her face. “Best I’ve felt since I enlisted.” She gave a look towards the two conversing Khimroxians. “It's still hard to believe any of this is real sometimes, ya know?”
I nodded. “Yeah. The Challenger, the Ignis, all of it. Feels like a dream now.”
Nia’s eyes stayed upon the owl-folk. “One of those dreams you don’t really want to wake up from.”
I gave a grunt of agreement. “I only wish all of the Khimroxians could share it with us.” This turned her towards me. Her smile curved down somewhat and she gave a slight nod.
What the hell. She’s going to learn it soon enough anyways. Rubbing the rim of my hat, I spoke softly. “Maybe soon, that will be possible.”
“What?”
“The council’s declared war.”
Her eyes snapped to mine, the smile fully gone. The room fell silent. I hadn’t hoped the others would hear me, but those Khimrox had an impeccable sense of hearing. I shouldn’t have expected any less from them.
All eyes turned to me. “The Aurum Alliance is a threat to humanity, the Khimrox, and all of the other scions that we haven’t even met yet. I think we both know this was inevitable”
“No, I get it, it's just… Wow.” The woman ran a hand through her black, tied-back hair as she heaved a sigh.
This facade dropped almost immediately and Nia’s mouth turned into a wonderfully devilish grin. After a few light chuckles, she said, “Better late than never I suppose. Those spineless sons-of-alien-bitches’ll never know what hit ‘em!”
The expressions on the faces of both Saffan and Tokieran showed no less resolve. Even the formerly jumpy physician proudly displayed a newfound sense of will. “The triumvirate operates under the expectation that we won’t fight back,” said Toki. “They see us as little more than animals and It's time we took full advantage of that fact.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” remarked Saffan.
If these willing warriors were in any way representative of the entire Human-Khimroxian collective, the battle against these golden tyrants would be over before we knew it.
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