Are you looking for an eye-catching and unique album cover that will make your music stand out? Look no further! As a skilled graphic designer with experience in the music industry, I can create a custom album cover that perfectly captures the essence of your sound. With my expertise in design and attention to detail, I’ll work with you to bring your vision to life. Let’s collaborate and create something amazing together! You can visit my Instagram profile to see my works

28/F/USA
I was raised by a single father that owned his own business and never had health insurance. He is a veteran and his healthcare was covered through the VA, but when it came to me and my sibling going for medical help, we only went when or if it got very serious. I’ve never broken a bone, been sick, or anything that required medical intervention. I have been very lucky and fortunate for my health, but now that I’m getting older and have a job that offers insurance, I have found that I have insane anxiety and have never used it to book a single appointment.
I have a fear that when I make an appointment, I will go to the doctor or dentist and they will tell me at the end that my insurance didn’t cover the visit and I will be in medical debt.
I’d like to use my insurance, I just feel like I don’t understand how it works.

Hi
I'm going to upload my review of THE PASSENGER by Cormac McCarthy later, and I wanted to drop the notes I used to guide the video here. I also have an article that I will post in a moment. The notes are not very structured by feature references to key passages and provide some insight. Feel free to respond with issues or thoughts, and be sure to pet your cat today.
​

notes

p. 42, the agents interrogate Bobby
*** p. 47, Bobby mentions that he “left Oiler to get into the plane” while he went back up to the surface. It may be that the agents are constructing a story in order to fill the void, and will later take out Oiler as a possible tamperer. They would then logically take out Bobby for knowing too much. During the conversation, Bobby revealed that they did not take anything from the plane. This might also lay the groundwork for later suspicions of tampering. It’s clear the government does not want this plane to enter into public knowledge.
p. 49, The cohorts
p. 61
​

• He has boated out to an island pursuing possible survivor of the plane crash. He finds evidence that someone had made it to an island, made a fire, and stashed a raft under a tree. The raft is described as “brand new.” He then goes back to the beach and watches the sunset.

“When he got back to the beaach the sun was low over the water and he stood there looking out to the west, the slow gray swells and the thin bight of shore beyond and somewhere beyond that the city where the lights would be coming up. He sat in the sand and dug in his heels and crossed his arms over his knees and watched the sunset and the light on the water. The thin reach of land to the south would be the Chandeleur Archipelago. Beyond that the hydra mouth of the river. Beyond that Mexico. The low tide lapped and drew back. He could be the first person in creation. Or the last. He rose and walked up the beach to the boat and pushed off and climbed in and went to the rear to ballast it off the sand. He took up the oar and poled his way out through the shallows and then sat there watching the deep red of the sunset darken and die.
​

• Chandeleur islands are near New Orleans
• “Beyond that the hydra mouth of the river.” A reference to the many-headed beast. The fact that he mentions these landmarks in sequence means his direct line of sight is almost encyclopedic. He would be bisecting Port Sulphur and then straight on to Mexico. Chandeleur islands would be South of the island he is sitting on.
• In this scene, we get a sense that he knows something (aside from coming into literal knowledge of something) but is not happy about it. Knowledge is never a happy affair in this book. Pursuing this survivor also seems a big useless at this point because after they get back in the water it’s almost impossible to gauge where they went.

p. 109 “[Alicia] I suppose that sooner or later you’ll exhaust your little bag of tricks. What happens then?
[Kid] Time will tell.
[Alicia] Your shadow moving over the floor as you pass the lamp is a nice touch but I’m not buying it.
[Kid] Just an elementary observation I suppose. Well, you can’t say that we don’t try.
A Or the fact that you darken a mirror.
K Yeah, but can he cloud one?
A I don’t know. I dont know and I dont care. It’s not germane.
K Or Lucy or Mabel. Maybe I should pinch myself.
A That’s to see if you’re dreaming.
K And that’s not a reasonable inquiry I suppose. Well, we wont sweat it. There’s thornier issues on the table. When are you going back to school? Your grandmother’s not going to call in sick for you forever you know.
A I know.
K You keep odd hours.
A I’m an odd girl.
K Up all night scribbling calculations on your yellowpad. Maybe you should try counting sheep. Or in your case maybe logging sheep. For the numerically enhanced.
A I’ll keep it in mind.
K Or you just sit staring into space. I guess that’s part of the modus. How do you know it’s not all gibberish?
A You don’t. That’s what you’re trying to find out.
K When is Bobby Shafto coming?
A My brother will be here in two weeks.
K And then what?
A What do you mean then what?
K What are your intentions is what I mean by then what.
A My intentions?
K Yes.
A He’s my brother.
K Like you haven’t set your cap for him. To phrase it chastely.
A You don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, it’s none of your business.
K Well. You know me.
… Afterwards he calls her “Sweet Sixteen,” and she denies that she is sixteen years old. This should indicate that they had had a remarkable encounter when she was 16.
p. 115
“In the evening he went down to the bar and got a hamburger and a beer. No one spoke to him. When he went out Josie tilted her chin at him. I’m sorry, Bobby, she said. He nodded. He walked up the street. The old paving stones wet with damp. New Orleans. November 29th 1980. He stood waiting to cross. The headlights of the car coming down the street doubled on the wet black stones. A ship’s horn in the river. The measured trip of the piledriver. He was cold standing there in the fine rain and he crossed the street and went on. When he got to the cathedral he went up the stairs and went in.”
​

• We then see sacred imagery and Bobby recounts his father’s travels with Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was considered one of the smartest people ever, and McCarthy notes how strange God must have been to create him. In this sense we see a correlation between intelligence and destruction. Oppenheimer is the one who muttered the Baghavad Gita as he watched his invention detonate.

​

• Reddit posts:
• https://www.reddit.com/cormacmccarthy/comments/11rowcj/bobby_borges/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

​

• In Stella Maris Alicia mentions how a brain must be able to “exist” itself. If I’m not wrong, this is an idea from Daniel Czepko (and of course it’s a general philosophical view), that the brain is a conception of the mind. It’s a chicken and egg issue describing intelligence. Ultimately, some conclude that the mind “creates” everything. This would completely change the meaning of the novel, then. When Oiler and Bobby saw the dead people in the plane, it may be that they “created” the dead. They created the plane. They will be held accountable for the knowledge that they helped to create. Of course, in my opinion this “creation” would be more like a creation of information, which is not necessarily the real world. That would mean the book is contained entirely in the animus; the narrator is not reliable. We can only see the world from Bobby and Alicia’s point of view, just as we can only see everything from our own view. Alicia is battling with her inner mind, while Bobby seems to struggle with the exterior world.

“There were people who escaped from Hiroshima and rushed to Nagasaki to see that their loved ones were safe. Arriving just in time to be incinerated. He went there after the war with a team of scientists. My father. He said that everything was rusty. Everything looked covered with rust. There were burnt-out shells of trolleycars standing in the streets. The glass melted out of the sashes and pooled on the bricks. Seated on the blackened springs the charred skeletons of the passengers with their clothes and hair gone and their bones hung with blackened strips of flesh. Their eyes boiled from their sockets. Lips and noses burned away. Sitting in their seats laughing. The living walked about but there was no place to go. They waded by the thousands into the river and died there. They were like insects in that no one direction was preferable to another. Burning people crawled among the corpses like some horror in a vast crematorium. They simply thought that the world had ended. It hardly even occurred to them that it had anything to do with the war. They carried their skin bundled up in their arms before them like wash that it not drag in the rubble and ash and they passed one another mindlessly on their mindless journeyings over the smoking afterground, the sighted no better served than the blind. The news of all this did not even leave the city for two days. Those who survived would often remember these horrors with a certain aesthetic to them. In that mycoidal phantom blooming in the dawn like an evil lotus and in the melting of solids not heretofore known to do so stood a truth that would silence poetry a thousand years. Like an immense bladder, they would say. Like some sea thing. Wobbling slightly on the near horizon. Then the unspeakable noise. They saw birds in the dawn sky ignite and explode soundlessly and fall in long arcs earthward like burning party favors.”
​

• Reminds me strongly of the passengers on the plane. The survivor of the plane probably escaped, took a raft, and then died somewhere. There is probably no story. But the interested parties might demand that there be a story, and it will drive Bobby to the point of madness.
• Knowledge chases away and corners the uncertain. In these books, it represents the rising waters. Bobby certainly identifies Alicia as being his “start of the sea.”
• The investigation will lose momentum throughout the book because Bobby comes to understand the futility of chasing answers. The plot “implodes,” as many people note.
• The description of Hiroshima also coincides with the very first paragraph. The glass “melting” out onto the street, not dissimilar to the headlights on the wet stones in New Orleans two paragraphs before.
• “Doubling” the lights on the “wet stone” also suggests that we are looking at binary worlds. Or, the mirror world to this one. The aphorism “seek and you will find” appears suitable here. Is information strictly created from within the mind? Are we going to find absolutely everything we are looking for? Do we realize that we are unconsciously wishing our own vaporization? Has science gone too far?

p. 165
​

• In Wartburg, Tennessee, as he is going to visit his grandma.
• I would like to mention something about the act of writing. Writing is the act of ascribing words or meaning to an idea that can be shared across the medium of text — books, websites, papers, etc. It’s a means of throwing our knowledge onto the world. As Bobby is walking through Tennessee here, he is expecting something and then seeing it. The roof and the bricks. The hawk, the genus, the measurements. He is creating this hawk based on interior knowledge.
• He sees a shotgun shell on the path and we find another mystery that won’t be solved. Did she shoot a fox? Did she ward off intruders? Was she aiming at the burglars who took things from the house?
• The “small bent hardwood trees rooted in rock and pointing out the way the wind had gone.” In The Passenger, I absolutely cannot get over the idea that McCarthy wants us to acknowledge a flood, something that is washing everything away, the current of history. And what will remain? We have to hold on to everything or else it will wash away. Bobby mentions his greatest fear is “the depths.” Is it drowning? No. It’s losing everything. Nothing can remain together. I think water is also squarely equated to an atomic blast. They both have similar effects. Both are just exploding and pulling everything apart, while also crushing and annihilating. It would seem that intelligence plays the same role. What we don’t want it knowledge; we want understanding. Knowledge, an addition of data to the existing set, requires us to continue revising our precepts. This is something Bobby perhaps does not want to do.“

“The rolling hills and ridges to the east. Somewhere beyond that the installation at Oak Ridge for enriching uranium that had led his father here from Princeton in 1943 and where he’d met the beauty queen he would marry. Western fully understood that he owed his existence to Adolf Hitler. That the forces of history which had ushered his troubled life into the tapestry were those of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the sister events that sealed forever the fate of the West.”
“A hawk appeared out of the woods below and rose effortlessly and came about and drifted quarterwise down the wind and turned and rose again and hovered. Broadwing. Buteo platypterus. It passed so close he could see its eye. Eleven millimeters. The great horned owl’s were twenty-two. The same as the whitetailed deer. But rich in rods. Nighthunter. The hawk turned and dipped and skated off down the slope and then rose again, standing into the wind. Motionless. You should have migrated by now. The hawk turned once more and then it was gone. He looked again for his grandmother’s house. The green metal roof. The red brick chimney in need of tuckpointing. Her car in the driveway. How far is that? Two miles? He rose and hiked out along the crest of the ridge. A cold wind in the sun. Fox scat in the pathway. A twelvebore shotshell case trodden into the dirt. The small bent hardwood trees rooted in rock and pointing out the way the wind had gone.”
p. 198, Bobby racing
p. 199 any kind of reality he’d a stake in
p. 209, drilling, “news from another world”
p. 367, he is in Spain and imagining being on the beach with a woman. He interrupts his thoughts with this passage:
“Here is a story. The last of all men who stands alone in the universe while it darknes about him. Who sorrows all things with a single sorrow. Out of the pitiable and exhausted remnants of what was once his soul he’ll find nothing from which to craft the least thing godlike to guide him in these last of days.”
​

• It would seem the true destruction was not material but spiritual. The spirit supplies life. In the sense that darkness is falling, he no longer possesses something that can guide him because he has lost an aspect of himself — certainly Alicia, if it’s Bobby — and there is no independent entity that is all knowing to which he can refer. Later, McCarthy describes some geckos skittering around. “Someone in the town had died,” he starts. The bells toll and he is sitting at a bodega.

“Pale woodslave lizards circled the rings of light cast upon the ceiling by the tablelamps. Stalking the moths like predators at a waterhole. Their tufted feet. Van der Waals forces. He nodded to the men and raised his glass.”
​

• “Van der Waals force” describes how atoms attract and repell based on polarization. It’s curious how to approach the analogy of the lizards in this context. It’s a predator-prey relationship regarding light and darkness. The bonding of atoms and molecules might have something to do with it — like how electrons move in and out of atoms.
• Overall, I think the book posits ideas about actual life. There seems to be a difference between the material world and something else. The “something else” doesn’t need to be defined — or at least someone will find something to define it. The spirit, the quantum, the religious, what have you. The idea of being a “passenger” is a spiritual state, ultimately, I think. In the same way that a spirit will leave a body upon death, the person is not equal to their constituent parts. The FBI agents only seem to ask about what is substantively true. But Bobby seems more interested in the process, the extensive life of the crash and where it leads. We see the tyranny of the present in this book. Czepko mentions that the future and the past are both illusions of the present. We are watching a process — time — unfold in the now. We are trapped in this present, victims of whatever may come. It fits the experience of someone at sea; there is no time at sea. Even the day cycle seems incidental, because there’s no activity that would require the sun or not. The sun only seems to drive creatures off of the beach, as we read in the laast chapter. And the information we come into while alive seems trivial compared to the universe’s more robust truths. What happened to the passenger? The answer is out there, but perhaps it is folly to know.

p. 369,
“He cycled through the small port. Down the thin graveled estuary road and out along the flats. Where the salt was once evaporated for the city of Carthage. Frumentaria. The Roman word. The lights of Ibiza coming up off to the north. He sat on a stone that held an ancient iron ring and worked on a flat tired against the coming darkness. His bike standing on its forks against the wall. He listened as he fed the rubber tube past his ear. He sorted a patch from the small leather satchel that hung from the underside of the bicycle seat.”
McCarthy is talking about the Punic Wars. Scipio Africanus and his grandson, Scipio Aemilianus, worked tirelessly to conquer the city, only for the junior Scipio to find it burning in 146 BC. He supposedly tried salting over the earth so that it would never rise again.
We all know that Cato the Elder would end every single speech by wishing destruction to Carthage. “Carthago delenda est.” At this point in the Roman Republic, the city-state was still attaining its status as an “empire” by gradually taking over specific geographic tracts. It did not have designs to be an “empire,” a concept that did not exist at that point in history, but they discovered that the central government was empowered by having assets and colonies abroad. The Punic Wars coincided with Rome’s attempts at sacking Greek states, which caused an influx of Greek culture to the eternal city. They were tasting the power of hegemony. Carthage, because it was so steadfast and so difficult to take down, acted as a kind of antithesis to Rome. It was intolerable. Throughout its history, as McCarthy notes by calling it “Frumentaria” (which is a vernacular way of describing how it supplies grain), Carthage was treated as a vassal state rather than one of the formerly most powerful polities in the Mediterranean. It had to be destroyed because its existence called the strength of Rome into question.
It is this antithesis that I think Bobby is noting, mentally. Just like how he is eventually described as “the last pagan,” his steadfastness is offensive to those who demand to know. The truth is, as he seems to implicitly maintain, knowledge does not exist. It’s a myth as powerful as God. Alicia also understands that most of what she knows is probably “gibberish” (the Kid’s words).
The state of being a “passenger” in this sense is to be accountable. The missing passenger represents that Carthaginian anomaly that cannot be tolerated. The unknowable ranks alongside Judge Holden as an antagonist, in my opinion. Both Bobby and his pursuers are victims of the same influence. Only Bobby seems to understand the beast, however. It’s as if Grendel had bribed the Danes to kill Beowulf. A creature that can never be known, or else it would be destroyed.

I will admit I’m not the biggest butthole surfers fan, a song here or there I listen too. That being said, my dad has always been heavy into music and he’s been a fan of the butthole boys for my whole life at least.
One of my early memories was looking through his cd collection and finding a absolutely hilarious album cover of a surfer, surfing a butthole. Even in my 8-10 year old brain I knew that was the pure bliss of true comedy singing to my soul.
I’ve been trying to find this album art for years and cant find it anywhere on the internet. Please help me find the butthole surfer, it’s a piece of art that has spoke to me since the first time I saw it, And its left me longing for its voice ever since.

11: Standard IGOR - It is cool to have but there isn't too much effort in it. Just one picture, the track list. The poster is just the album cover or the picture in the vinyl and the record is just standard black.
10: CMIYGL - At least this one has a cool different cover. But the inside is just the album cover ID and the back of it on the other side. It has a tracklist on the back of the poster which is just the album cover. The record is a standard black.
9: Standard SFFB - This one is good. It has a cool poster and tracklist and definitely has more effort put into it overall than the other one. There are some inside images and a funny message as well. The record is just a standard black but overall it is a good vinyl.
8: Standard Goblin - Out of all the black records, this one has the most effort. Has cool record sleeves, a cool jacket overall and just everything about this is definitely a higher level than the other standards.
7: Limited IGOR - This is the lowest effort of the limited vinyl but it is still worth getting if you find a good price. The same as IGOR but the entire jacket is changed from pink to a sort of beige colour, the cover obviously changed, and the poster got the new cover instead of the other cover on it. Comes on a nice Mint Green record.
6: Limited SFFB - This one is pretty cool. Very nice transluscent gold/orange record with a cool bee sticker and overall just a nice design.
5: Cherry Bomb Instrumentals - I like the design of this. And the record is cool but of course it has to be below the normal cherry bomb since it is just instrumentals (I am sure some people out there prefer just instrumentals but I don't).
4: CHERRY BOMB - Super nice vinyl. Awesome red disc too. Look out for bootlegs, the real one at the back has a car with CHERRY BOMB mascot. Bootlegs have the alternative CB cover with Tyler grabbing his head and the track list. Overall just an epic vinyl, really want this one.
3: Limited Goblin - Amazing vinyl. Super high effort just like the original one but this one has a nice pink record. Definitely worth getting as long as you want it enough. I believe this is the easiest limited to get your hands on which is a plus.
2: Wolf (EU Press) - A really good vinyl. This one has a nice translucent pink record. Very hot pink unlike Goblin which is a more soft pink. I believe this comes with a CD which is such a big plus. A lot of effort in the track list and sleeve design. Just overall a really awesome vinyl DEFINITELY worth getting. Wolf is also a top tier album.
1: Wolf (US Press) - Of course, had to include both Wolf vinyl despite being counted as one vinyl among collectors. This is because both of these vinyl go for a lot. The difference here is that the US one has an opaque record. Meaning you cannot see through it. It also comes with a sticker of Tyler's face from the original blue Wolf cover. I think this one is better overall because it has slightly more content and I prefer the solid record over the translucent one, but both are very great. I think this US press is the most difficult Tyler vinyl to get so good luck if you ever try hunting for it.
​
This ranking is just my opinion and I was very critical because I like all of these vinyl and all are definitely worth getting if you want them, I just want to help people if they don't know which to get.

Potentiel the killers eras tour setlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4MlQaCtXBl7yRI7myqfB22?si=1c6a8ebc270a4c53&pt=c906961e0225a6f4d938cf823b68a0b3
ACT 1

1. Jenny Was a Friend of Mine
2. Mr. Brightside
3. Somebody Told Me
4. Smile Like You Mean It
5. All These Things That I've Done

ACT 2

1. Sam's Town
2. When You Were Young
3. Bling (Confession Of A King)
4. For Reasons Unknown
5. Read My Mind
6. Bones
7. This River Is Wild

ACT 3

1. Human
2. Spaceman
3. A Dustland Fairytale
4. This Is Your Life
5. I Can't Stay

ACT 4

1. Flesh and Bone
2. Runaways
3. The way It was
4. Here with me
5. Miss bomb atomic
6. Battle born

ACT 5

1. My Own Soul's Warning
2. Dying Breed
3. Caution
4. The man
5. Run for Cover

ACT 6

1. In the Car Outside
2. Quiet Town
3. In Another Life
4. Pressure Machine
5. Boy

Seeing Night Visions got its special 10th-anniversary edition, will the same thing happen to Smoke + Mirrors, Evolve, Origins, Mercury, and any other album they release in the future (with new cover art)?

GENERAL QUALITY OF LIFE:
• Character selection
• Rename and delete save files
• Coloured bars beneath player names increasing/decreasing to indicate health level
• Adjustable player volumes
• Proximity chat (with an voice chat indicator near the minimap)
• Radio chat could be toggled on or off while it remains on the players' chests (with an radio chat indicator near the minimap)
• Player icon (and menu name) flickers to indicate talking
• Guaranteed collection of at least 1 seed from planter harvests
• More seeds in general
• Store 100 Resin at a time to shelves
• Hold shift + right click to store 10 (or maximum) items to shelves
• Hold C to stack max amount to storage (prevents removing walls behind storage)
• Hold shift + right click to add 10 (or maximum) items to the crafting mat
• Items no longer fly off of shelves when grabbing more than the maximum amount
• Indicator for bench to show its facing side
• Improve hitboxes for lighting standing torches
• Add cardinal directions to the map
• Add bed icons to the map when completed (like tarps)
• GPS locators being removable after permanent death of Virginia or Kelvin
• Trees regrow after 4 seasons if the stump is left unbroken
• Reset Keybinds option
• Animal collision with structures
• Book or file to reread collected story notes
• Lighter is stowed once fires are lit
• Hammer icon on map indicating incomplete builds
• Important GPS markers display a general area instead of the direct location
• Full firewood stack blueprint when laying down the first log
• Campfires in world-generated camps being usable
• Photo mode keybind (hides HUD)
• Hold C to remove placed campfire sticks
• Consume items directly from shelves
• Flashlight could be placed on the backpack
​
COMPANIONS:
• Kelvin being able to fetch meat/fish and dry it out on the nearest racks
• Kelvin taking less damage from logs
• Set Home and Go Home commands
• K and V prioritizing following the Host by default and when their leading player leaves
• Virginia receiving commands to receive items, patrol the immediate area or follow the players
• Virginia does not destroy player garden plants with guns
• Virginia's GPS marker being a V by default
​
ENEMIES:
• Giving cannibals meat/fish or killing their attacking mutants will make the tribe passive towards players
• Cannibals retreat from players if they are spared after cowering on the ground
• Cannibals who are spared by players return to their tribe and become more neutral towards the player as a whole
• Cannibals can be tied up when downed and brought to stakes to see how they damn well like it
• Worms (John 2.0) having a louder and more distinct sound
• Blind Mutants being unable to detect players who remain completely still while they use echolocation
• Most (especially Blind Mutants) enemies investigating a thrown/shot stone
• Titans wearing bone armour or animal hides because they look really silly right now
​
ITEMS:
• Zipline rope length limit indicator
• Increased zipline length
• Rope Gun could be used to spear fish from a distance
• Sleds print in 2 stages; allowing players to combine both pieces when crafting (justifies the printing size)
• Fishing nets
• Left click to drop a golf ball down at the players' feet
• Crossbow scope
• Better Paper Target placement against logs
• Paper Targets on sticks
• Flashlight and laser sight placement to the bottom or sides of weapons
• Making spawned island loot finite; skin pouches yield more ammo, meds, rope, etc
• Increased spawn rate of skin pouches
• Guitar becomes playable when holding a button
• Wearing full sets of armour grants an additional buff:
- Leaf Armour: Double movement speed when crouched
- Hide Armour: Extra warmth and weather resistance
- Bone Armour: Increased stagger chance
- Creepy Armour: Blind and Baby Mutants no longer attack
- Tech Armour: Decreased stamina, thirst and hunger drain
• 3D Printed Items:
- Golf Tees
- Abseiling Anchors
- Pellets for Slingshot
- Aiming Reticle for Compound Bow
- Throwing Knives
• Relocate items such as radios and laptops
​
BUILDING:
• Literally every blueprint from the first game
• Animal hide decorations (rugs, wall tapestries, bed covers, etc)
• Leaf decorations (curtains, bench covers, etc)
• Feather decorations (chair covers, bone wind chimes, masks, etc)
• Boats
• Effigies (cannibal and mutant)
• Animal trophies
• Hammocks
• Flag trail markers/stone cairns
• Stone floors, fences and stairs
• Grave markers
• More log strut placements

"You think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is the tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?"

Ayn Rand

Money is great! Do not let anybody tell you otherwise. Make your peace with it before you ever consider becoming a trader … allow yourself to be motivated by the prospect of acquiring more of it.
Money is freedom. Money is providing for your family, providing for your community should you want it. Money is time, time for you to spend with whom you love, doing the things you love, even if that means spending more time making more money.
If you think about whether you want to make money, then you need to give value for value. You need to provide a service, a product, an idea … put in simple words, you will need to help other people.
Should there be no one interested in your help, then you get no money. Should your service, product, idea … prove to be of no value, then soon enough you'll run out of people to help.
Should you try to sell illegal services, products, ideas, then soon enough the authorities who've been entrusted to protect the values you/your representatives voted to protect, will catch up on you and prevent you from keeping on violating those values. Yes, 'The Wolf of WallStreet' is great, 'The Peaky Blinders' are great, all these American gangster movies and series are great but have you ever wondered what is the time span these movies cover? What happened to their glamorized protagonists soon enough?
Bezo, Elon, Gates … These guys end up becoming arrogant pricks and no one should have all that power. Well. Do not forget that these guys have made their fortunes legally, by providing value for value … they helped a lot of people, it only turned out that these were really a LOT of people. Were these people ever forced to buy Teslas or use Amazon? Like they are forced to pay their taxes? Their employees … were they ever forced to keep on working for Tesla or Amazon? Money is freedom, freedom is money. Hasn't Elon just lost a truck load of money over the last year? More than you can even begin to imagine?
The free markets, although despised by a great deal of the population, are the greatest ever mechanism devised to allocate resources in harmony with our inherent and fundamental desire to be free human beings, to decide for ourselves, to work on our own craft, to want more or less … and to respect everybody else's equal freedom in the process.
Do you really despise Elon Musk? Then stop buying from him. Do you really despise Jeff Bezos? Then start walking to the mall to make your purchase. Should everybody else think like you, then I can tell you soon enough they will get stripped out of a great deal of their fortune if not all. Do you work for any of them and you feel you are not paid enough? Then quit, find another job, start your own business like they did.
We are nowadays standing roughly on 10000 years of recorded civilization. We've tried to motivate people to work, to produce, to exchange value and help each other by other means. Forced laboslavery? Thank God it failed. Government authority/police enforcement/government paternalism/ communism? Thank God all of these failed. Excessive taxes, excessive obstacles for the free practice of trade and private enterprise? Thank God these failed … It's just a shame that all of these took so many revolutions, blood, death and sacrifice to get overcomed and replaced for more liberal regimes.
You can't force people into producing sustainably, you can't squeeze people into paying taxes to starvation sustainably … What you can do is to stimulate them to produce by rewarding them to produce or to serve other people with products or services that other people value. How can you tell if other people value whatever you've got to sell? They'll barter, they'll pay for it. Those numbers you see in your bank account, those pieces of paper you hold in your wallet are just tokens for that value. Tokens for you to carry and exchange for things of value to you, instead of carrying goats, wheat or whatever with you. And guess what, should you be good at providing that value, then the market / other people will reward you even more for doing what you do. Conversely, should you either not produce or serve things of value, then soon enough the market will tell you that you need to produce something else. Should the market suffer intervention that will prevent you from being rewarded for providing value … then soon enough you will stop providing that value. Your good will can take you only so far.
Don't hate the player … and don't hate the game. It is designed to help you should you have a strong appetite for helping other people … or should you have a strong desire to simply help yourself … Does the difference really mean, as long as you help?
How about traders? Those vicious, malevolent, greedy creatures. Money won't lie. They have a very important role to play. They finance the companies with winning products and management. They provide liquidity and assume the risk which some entities don't want to … enabling these entities to focus on the risks they want to assume. They punish the companies which are not helping society or the economy with their products …
Or they fail to do any of the above and soon enough they are expelled from the markets … by the markets themselves.
Does it really matter what's behind their intentions? Does it really matter whether all they want is to make more money or just to help finance a good company?
Money speaks the truth over the long run. Money is freedom. Money is just a tool. Do not be the person who whines if you don't have or if the maleficent traders and entrepreneurs have 'too much' of it. Just go out there and help other people with your time, talent, idea, product, service … soon enough you'll have should you be playing in a free market environment or the closest possible.
Do not hate the player … and do not hate the game.
Cheers,
Ruben / Tenacious Tribe
​
https://www.tenacioustribe.com/money-and-why-you-should-love-it-out-loud

Hi everyone!
I have a student in my class who is doing poorly. For makeup labs, I have them write an in depth paper about what the lab covered, signficantly more in depth than what we go over as a way to disincentivise missing class. I had her write an in depth, two page paper about a fairly straightforward subject. When reading the paper, it seemed like she understood the gist and really had to elaborate on it since it's there's not two pages worth of information that you can easily find without diving into the literature.
I had a question on a quiz, and then one on the midterm, about this specific subject that really asked for the bare minimum. She gave an answer that is totally out of left field and incorrect. I started thinking that maybe she used an AI to write these makeup papers since she has missed quite a few class periods and had to write them. I can't imagine someone who wrote two pages about something so in detail could just completely forget the simplest, most bare bones definition of the subject itself. I'm suspicious but I have no proof.
Is there a way you can figure it out? Thanks.

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane (50th Anniversary Picture Disc) [2013 Remaster] - (This title will be released on April 14, 2023) Direct
- “Originally released on 13th April 1973 Aladdin Sane will mark it’s 50th anniversary this year and to celebrate we will be releasing a Picture Disc of this iconic album.” The cover artwork has become one of the most famous sleeves of all time and was rumoured to be the most expensive produced up to that point. The cover photograph was taken by Brian Duffy, who would also shoot the sleeves for 1979’s LODGER and 1980’s SCARY MONSTERS (AND SUPER CREEPS) and features Bowie with the iconic red and blue lightning bolt make-up, an image which has now entered the planet’s cultural lexicon.

With the recent Fes I've been wanting to listen to more music made by the talents of all branches, but I've had a difficult time finding a place that has all of it. In Spotify I've seen a pretty limited amount of mostly original songs and the Youtube playlists I've found up to now are either missing a lot of songs or haven't been updated in a long time.
I know there are some covers that got deleted or private over the years and some original songs can only be found by buying the albums, but I'm still curious if anyone knows of a way to find all or at least most of the music.

I just finished watching Jenny’s Evermore video. As a Pleasant Grove resident, I thought I’d share my POV, because 1) I’m possibly the only person in the universe who actually had MORE desire to go to Evermore because of Jenny’s video. 2) I feel annoyed that some of the people in those interviews kept accusing my area of “not being supportive of the arts” because their park is failing. In a twenty minute driving radius, Pleasant Grove has an annual storytelling festival, performing arts available at two Universities, indoor and outdoor play theaters, etc. The only thing we lack is density. If you want enough people to support a permanent, niche living art installation, maybe don’t plop yourselves down in strip mall suburbia. If you compare the populations of Salem, OR, which has the Enchanted Forest theme park, to Pleasant Grove, UT you’ve got a third the number of people.
Anyway, my family lives about five blocks away from Evermore. Jenny and her friends could have saved some money and stayed in my basement (speaking of creepy parasocial relationships...) I’m guessing that the scum on her hotel window is calcium scale. The water here is incredibly hard. Good for our bones, maybe, but not so much for things that get hit by our sprinklers. It could also be old smog residue. We sometimes get nasty smog because of the shape of the valley, though it’s not so bad now that the steel plant shut down.
Evermore came to my attention like this: Several years ago, builders started constructing two weird buildings in an empty field next to our freeway exit. They really piqued my interest. One of the buildings was a giant square block with no windows (I thought it might be a future Ikea-style furniture store). Next to it was a medieval-style chapel. My husband thought it must be some kind of event center for the nearby Hyatt, but I wasn’t so sure. I kept my eye out for news and eventually started seeing articles about a place called “Evermore.”
My husband and I are D&D players. I wear costumes to fantasy book signings. So obviously, we are the target audience. At first, I was excited. I was like “endless Renaissance Faire practically in my backyard? Sign me up!” And the big windowless building next to it, which became the GRID, actually started as the VOID, which, as you saw in the video, was a virtual reality thing. My husband loves VR. So I had happy dreams about dropping my husband off to play video games while I watched jousting next door.
The VOID opened first. Every time I wanted a gift for my husband–anniversaries, his birthday, Christmas–I’d go to the website and try to get us tickets. I don’t usually care for VR stuff but I really wanted to go because I thought VR + artifacts you could actually interact with sounded cool. I wanted to try it.
But despite being open, they didn't have tickets available for the public. I kept checking for months. The VOID would cycle through different experiences, but tickets only went to employees and testers. I tried for a year to get into this place and the website was always saying “check back later for tickets”. There was never anything emailed to me that I saw despite signing up for the list, no schedule posted of when things would be available. Nothing. It’s like they didn’t actually want my money.
Eventually, they did open up tickets for a Ghostbusters themed show, but I don’t really care for that IP, so I didn’t bother getting tickets, assuming there’d be a cooler one later since the VOID was working with Disney. Alas, I believe that the Ghostbusters game was the only public thing there ever was at that location.
The VOID later transformed into the GRID, which may have been why the space seemed poorly designed for go-karts. Then again, I see references to the GRID in early Evermore articles, so maybe it was intended to be a go-kart track all along, who knows.
Anyway, a while after the VOID opened, the Evermore PR articles started dropping. I kept seeing ads for it in the local paper, on billboards, and in the programs of various geek-adjacent events. But everything I saw was maddeningly vague. If I hadn’t driven past the park every day, I’m not sure the ads would have registered. And the feature articles in our newspaper focused not on the park, but on the park founder’s traumatic childhood. I’m not trying to downplay that, but his personal story wasn’t exactly the best marketing choice for a theme park. “My dad was a terrible human being, now come see our attractions?” It didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Furthermore, they were obviously trying to keep the whole thing shrouded in mystery. Pretty much everything I saw just referred to Evermore as “an immersive experience” with no details about what I was going to be immersed in. Tickets on opening day were $30 per person, $16 for kids. But they didn’t release any details of what was going on in the park. Was the stuff they were doing going to be kid-friendly? What age groups? Was it doable if you have mobility limitations? What was actually going to happen to you during this “immersive experience” anyway?
You see, if they’d just told me: “You’ll see fire dancing, a scripted fight, some live bard music, an aerial silks performance, and go on a LARPing scavenger hunt” I probably would have ponied up the money for my family to go, but they didn’t say anything about that. They just were like “it’s a living video game but it’s so much more,” and I sat there thinking, “you want me to pay a hundred bucks to wait in lines and get sent on fetch quests? Is that what we’re doing?” They kept promising that every park-goer would be the hero of their own immersive story, but that just didn’t seem feasible. I didn’t believe it. And they made it a point to mention you might need to go multiple times to see the story unfold, so it sounded like I was going to pay $100 to catch an out-of-context snippet of some LOR ripoff.
While Jenny mentioned she could see OUT to the strip malls and office parks, she didn’t really cover the fact that the local people could also see IN. So the newspaper articles said things like: “Evermore will have the sixth-biggest water feature in the United States!” but when we drove by, we could see that it was just a dusty field with some half-finished buildings in it. Why on earth would I pay $100 to go to a dusty field full of half-finished buildings? Especially since I might be able to wait and see a more complete version later.
All the preview articles and ads also featured pictures of the awesome concept art. But because everything inside was so visible throughout the building process, locals could see that the concept art–like the face tree!--was not in the finished park. It almost felt insulting. They were trying to sell us on what Evermore could be, and not what Evermore actually was.
So I never went, despite being originally excited about it. I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that it looked as good as it did in Jenny’s video. It looks like there was more to do and see than I originally gave it credit for (I know that’s saying something, but the view from the street was really bad until they put the wall up). I do love a good boffing circle, so I might go someday, if I’m bored one weekend and it still exists.
I think one of the takeaway lessons is this: don’t rely on mystery for your advertising when that thing you sell is mostly visible. If Evermore’s creators had actually focused on the reality of what was there and not their concept art, maybe they would have gotten some more customers.
It’s also better to build granularly from the ground up. Admission to Thanksgiving Point, which Jenny briefly visited, only costs $40 (less if you only want to just visit one attraction). It has the botanical garden (which is not free–I think Jenny just wandered around the front grounds). Thanksgiving Point also has a dinosaur museum, a two-story science playground, a working farm with unlimited pony rides for members, and a butterfly biosphere. But they didn’t start with all of that. They built a thing, got more money, built the next thing, etc. If Evermore had started as a once-a-month weekend renaissance faire in an empty field, they could have built interest over time and scaled themselves to match the community’s spend-level. But they didn’t.
In conclusion, if the park’s employees hadn’t reported being so badly treated, I probably would actually visit Evermore after the video. They never advertised the price drop, so I assumed that it was still $100 for a family of four. At the current price point, it looks like a somewhat pleasant way to spend an afternoon as long as you keep your expectations low. But I’ll probably continue to skip because of their exploitive employment practices.

“Half to the left, half to the right.” The soldiers separated, following the order as they marched through the empty streets of the city. The once bustling metropolis was covered in a blanket of fog, a desolate and lonely sight. The people were being led by the sorcerers to a convoy of massive trucks, hushed and panicked voices mingling together as they were loaded inside. The trucks were windowless to the people, preventing them from seeing it go through the portal located a few miles away from the city. A few people had refused to evacuate, and were currently being held down and forced into handcuffs and a separate truck.
Commander Arena Aegis of Padan Services’s Scourge Defence Division turned back to the city. Although there hadn’t been specific reports of a Scourge in the area, the fog that engulfed it did not seem natural in the slightest. She waited and a few seconds later, Kyra Illude joined her side.
“Are you ready?” She pulled her goggles down onto her eyes.
Arena shot her a grin. “When am I not?” She held out her hand and a portal opened, fractured glass spilling out. It caught itself and formed into the shape of a spear which Arena grasped. “Much appreciated.”
They stepped inside, the precautions having already been taken to prove that the fog was not harmful to touch or inhale. It rose a good five metres off the ground, shrouding everything from view. Arena kept her eyes sharp. There were always three things to watch out for about a Scourge: appearance, magical ability and hunting method. The appearance would differ from Scourge to Scourge, from amount of limbs to skin to body shape. There was only one thing they all had in common - they were too close to humans for comfort’s sake. By itself, the knowledge of its appearance was rather useless, except that it gave insight into the next two factors. Magical ability was what most gave Scourges their edge - the extra power to transform them from a regular monstrosity to a force of nature. Hunting method was how they collected their food, from echolocation to burrowing underground and emerging to flying overhead and swooping down - a secondary, more physical ability. Of course, there were other factors to take into account when fighting a Scourge, such as their healing factor, their affinity for human souls and their ‘grace period’, but those remained rather consistent.
Arena pressed her finger to her wristband. “Team Alpha, is everything clear on your end?”
The voice spoke into the earpieces of both Arena and Kyra.“Affirmative.”
“Team Beta, what about yours?” Not the most creative names, but [eh].
“No sign of the Scourge but we have uncovered a group of survivors.”
Arena frowned. The lynceuses should have scoured every building and uncovered the people that hadn’t been evacuated. “Proceed with caution.”
“I’m trying to communicate with them, but they don’t seem to be-” the voice was cut off and replaced by a strangled cry and then the thump of a body. Gunshots and cries were heard through the audio before silence fell.
Arena whipped around to face Kyra. “What did you see?” All soldiers were outfitted with a body-cam that Kyra’s goggles were able to connect to in order to allow her to create portals to their destination if needed. Distracting in battle, but useful outside of it.
“One of the people jumped forward towards him. As soon as they touched, he collapsed. Everything else happened too fast and too chaotically.”
Arena nodded. She tapped onto her wristband and began broadcasting a message to all the soldiers in and out of the city. “Do not engage with citizens you see in the fog. I repeat, do not engage.”
Kyra opened a portal and a long sniper rifle fell from it into her hands. More portals opened and sand swept out in gallons, converging into a swirling vortex around Arena. Kyra opened a portal and the two of them stepped through next to the bodies of Team Beta. Arena knelt down and lifted one of them up.
“Yep, the souls are definitely gone.” Her mind analysed the possibilities of what the Scourge could be. Mind control? She hadn’t heard of Sensitive abilities also transmuting the ability to steal souls. A necromancer then? Possibly, but there’d be more signs of death and decay if that was the case. And there was still the matter of the fog to take into account.
Kyra’s voice brought her back to reality. “Over there.” Her gun was raised towards a group of five people, all standing there as still as corpses, just a few metres away. “Permission to fire?”
“Hold on. We don’t know the full extent.” Arena took the first tentative step. “State your name and business.” Her voice shifted to become more imperative, a slight edge that demanded to be heard and obeyed. The foremost person leapt forward and was immediately hit with a wave of sand, pinning it down to the ground. The impact slammed away the fog in a gust, exposing what lay underneath. As soon as the person was in the open air the image disappeared, leaving a long, fleshy tendril with a clawed nail where it had been. The rest of the people flickered and vanished, revealing more fingers that stretched into the distance. They retracted back into the fog instantly.
Arena tapped on her bracelet as the sand surged back. “The Scourge is an illusionist. I repeat, the Scourge is an illusionist. Do not hesitate to open fire on any people that do not respond. Deploy elementals to blow away the fog.” More glass poured out of a portal that formed itself into a pseudo-surfboard, which Arena and Kyra hopped onto. It zoomed through the city and pushed away the fog as gunshots ricocheted across the streets. Seems that the people had finally all been evacuated and the rest of the soldiers were joining the fight. Kyra peered through the fog to the best of her ability, shooting every once in a while into iy. Rising above, Arena could see what was in the middle of the city - a massive column of fog that rose hundreds of metres above the city.
A hand tore itself from the fog, the illusion breaking as it reached to grasp them. Arena’s spear flew from her hand, dancing through the air and slicing through the fingers with ease.
“You ready to take this beast down?” called Arena.
Kyra gave her a small smirk. “When am I not?” A massive portal opened up above them and sand poured down, an endless supply that swirled faster and faster until Arena sent it surging forward towards the pillar of fog, blowing the fog away in one move.
Hanging onto a skyscraper in the middle of the column, with long, emancipated limbs that wrapped around it, massive milky white eyes and a mouth hanging wide, wide open with a horde of arms reaching out of it down into the fog was the Scourge. Arena felt a rush go through her body, not of fear like it once would have been, but pure adrenaline.
It lifted its head to observe the pair, the hands whipping out of the fog and surging towards the pair. Kyra snapped her finger and a massive portal swirled opened in front of them, swallowing up the hands. Before they could retract, the portal snapped shut, leaving behind only stumps. The flesh began to bubble as the wounds closed and hands started to sprout again. Arena flicked her hand and her spear flew through the air, piercing into the eye of the Scourge. The spear trembled and shattered into shards, shredding the eye into ribbons before returning and reforming at her side.
The hands spasmed erratically as they healed, plunging down into the fog again. They rose out of the fog a few seconds later, surrounding the pair as they surged forward. Bullets and glass littered the sky as Arena evaded the assault, tearing above the city as the hands chased them around. Energy beams tore themselves from the fog and burned into the main body of the Scourge. Seemed that the soldiers had finally made their way to the centre. Some of the hands deviated and surged down into the depths of the city.
Whirring started to emanate from the boundaries of the fog. Mounted on top of a car, a massive turret was building up power, growing brighter and louder every second that passed. The turret was designed to send out a burst of energy that would pass harmlessly through matter such as concrete and glass. However, organic matter wasn’t as lucky. It released a blast of colour that tore through the sky and burned into the Scourge’s body, tearing a hole into its torso. The hands went spastic, retracting and thrashing wildly around. Bingo.
Arena raised her hand and gave Kyra a quick nod. The sand was swallowed up by portals at the same time that glass was released. It formed together into a massive spear, casting shattered sunlight onto the desolate city. She threw it right into the wound. It dug in deep and then exploded.
Scourges tended to have unnaturally tough skin, with the flesh healing faster than anything could destroy it. However, if one managed to get past the outer layers, then they would find the Scourge much more vulnerable. The glass shredded the Scourge’s main body into ribbons, tearing through flesh and bone until the arms all finally stilled. Kyra led Arena through a portal onto the ground as the commander collapsed onto the ground, sweat pouring down her face. A water bottle dropped down and Kyra handed it to Arena. She took a swig.
“How close was it that time?”
“Around five got within a few centimetres of us - at least, of the ones that I remember.”
Arena let out a low whistle. “We really should bring Claren to these things.”
Kyra shrugged. “I mean, we haven’t died yet.” She hooked her arms under Arena’s and tried her best to drag her up. “Alright, up you come. We can’t have our commander slouching around.”
Arena sighed but stood up, pushing off the tiredness and rolling her shoulders back. Kyra opened a portal and the two of them stepped through to the outskirts of the city. There was a team cleaning up the remains of the Scourge, wandering through the city to find and destroy any traces of it. The mission had been as successful as could be when regarding a Scourge invasion - minimal destruction of housing, minimal death and perhaps her and Kyra would be back in time for dinner. The fog was starting to dissipate, now only a thin mist which was being blown away in the wind. The soldiers had all met up outside the city, haggard and tired. The bodies were being carried outside. Less casualties than usual, she noted. Seems that Kyra and her had kept it distracted enough for the soldiers to keep themselves afloat.
“Take the bodies to the infirmaries. The doctors will take them off your hands.” The soldiers nodded and walked through the portal. The group was made up of Sanctuary soldiers, Padan Services’ own employees and various factions of crime in the magical Australian underworld. Teams sent to deal with Scourges, except for a few exceptions, were small - small enough that the Scourge wouldn’t grow in power exponentially if the mission went awry. A buzz came from her wristband and she tapped on it. “Commander Aegis here. What seems to be the situation?”
Heavy breathing came from the other end, as well the sound of boots against the ground. “Fuck, fuck shit! There’s a-” the sound cut out for a few seconds. “There’s another one coming!” The voice started to scream, loud and piercing, until the sound of a crunch echoed through the earpiece and left only the buzz of static.
“Everyone on your feet! There’s another Scourge in the area!”
The soldiers jumped to their feet and grabbed their weapons in a rush, either used as their firepower or to strengthen their magic. Glass swirled in the air, a storm of slivers and shards that hung in the air. Then came the sound of feet upon the ground, like dry thunder.
A beast came charging out of the city, springing from building to building with grace and agility a being of its size shouldn’t have. It was emancipated horribly, wizen and wrinkled with limbs that bent at wrong angles. Its face was long and its eyes were beady, sunken deep into what barely passed as flesh. Gunfire rained onto it.
It hissed and a harsh clicking sound came from its mouth, almost insidious in its quietude. The bullets bit into the building, shattering glass which then flew up and dug into the Scourge’s flesh. It leapt down and was shoved back by a gust of wind from an elemental, causing it to stumble back. A jagged spear of glass pierced it right through the eye and exited from everywhere else. It had gone down so fast, the turret hadn’t even had time to ready.
The soldiers cheered. Arena narrowed her eyes. That was too easy. Her mind started to rush as the adrenaline, brought back a second time and now refusing to fade, brought every little detail and thought to the surface. The Scourge was tiny. Much bigger than a human could ever be, but simply too small. It hadn’t displayed any of its magic yet, and for some reason its healing didn’t kick in quick enough to save it. Lastly, and most chilling, was that considering the speed at which it was running, there was no chance it could have gotten from the other soldiers to here in the time that it apparently did. Something was wrong.
Arena held up her hand. “Save your celebrations. It’s not over yet.” She waved the soldiers back from the Scourge. She paused for a split second before coming to a conclusion. “I’m going to approach the body. Lieutenant Illude, bring me to safety if anything happens.”
Out of view of the soldiers, Kyra shot her a worried glance but nodded.
Arena stepped forwards and observed the corpse. She threw her spear again and sliced the head off of the body. Well, if it wasn’t dead before, it was certainly dead now. Unless it was a zombie Scourge. She waited a few seconds for it to lurch up. Probably not.
A hand tore itself out of the main body and a portal engulfed Arena. As she stepped back next to Kyra, more hands and limbs erupted from the Scourge, covered in slick and gore as they tore themselves from the corpse. The figures collapsed to the floor, shuddering and shaking before standing upright on limbs too long for a human.
Kyra was the first to act, firing a bullet right into the head of one of the figures. They were the next to act, dropping to all fours, bounding over and tackling one of the soldiers to the ground. Its mouth opened and teeth dug into flesh, rending a hole into the soldier’s shoulder. His soul swirled from the wound and the soldier stiffened, slumping to the ground as the figure stood up. Its body bulged, flesh rippling and roiling as it grew bigger. Several bullets shredded into it and it fell to the ground. A few of the soldiers who couldn’t get back in time fell, but Kyra’s portals swirled and set the soldiers and the monsters a few yards apart. A clicking sound - the same one that emerged from the original Scourge, started to rise in the air. Arena held her arms in the air as glass spread out all around the monsters and then brought her hands together.
Before anyone could take that first breath of relief, that relaxing of tension, they heard more sounds coming from the encroaches of the city. Another Scourge, almost identical to the one that had spawned those monsters, came crawling onto a building. And then another, and then another, until five of them were sprawled out across the buildings, all making the same clicking sound. Before gunfire could start tearing through the air again, the Scourges leapt to the ground and started to run, bounding past the group or retreating further into the city, ignoring the sorcerers entirely.
One of the soldiers spoke up. “Captain, what does that mean?” Arena chewed her lip. “They’re avoiding us because they know they can’t win - or they don’t see it as worth the potential loss. More importantly, they’re communicating, like a hivemind.” She turned to Kyra. “Lieutenant, what direction are those Scourges headed?”
“The ones headed deeper into the city would be enroute to another one far south. They should be there in a few hours based on that speed.”
“Send the soldiers over to that city now. Call for backup from the Sanctuaries, tell them to get more men and turrets down there.” Kyra nodded and opened up a large portal, large enough for the turret to be wheeled through and the soldiers to follow suit. Even without their commander, they had a team leader, and were well-trained or at least briefed enough to know what to do. The portal closed and it was just Kyra and Arena.
“So, Kyra, where do you think these ones are going?”
“My guess? Some sort of meeting place. Like a nest, or maybe even a hive.”
“A hive, eh?” Arena extended her hand as she got on top of the surfboard of glass, which Kyra gracefully grasped and hoisted herself up with. “Well then, how about we go do some exterminating?” The commander and her lieutenant sliced through the air, following the echoing sound of clicking into the endless, desolate plains.

​
*PLEASE READ BEFORE PMING\*
*PRICES ARE SHIPPED TO US/CAN/EUROPE WITHOUT BOX\*
add $7 for box, PM for rates if you're buying more than 1 pair
Tagged and Timestamp Pictures Paypal invoice only! Individual albums are linked below for more pictures.
Use this link if you're having troubles PMing!
Size 7.5
AJ1 Shadow (7.5) $95: Brand new, great quality leather and accurate shape.
Size 8
Dunk Low Michigan (8) $85: Great shape, leather quality. Brand new. PK batch.
Size 10
Dunk Low Vintage Navy (10) $90: Great shape, leather quality. Brand new. PK batch.
Dunk Low Syracuse (10) $95: Great shape, leather quality. Brand new. PK batch.
Dunk Low UNC (10) $95: Great shape, leather quality. Brand new. PK batch.
SB Dunk S*an Cl*ver (10) $80: Great shape, accurate colours and materials. Soles are a bit soft, but no issues over longevity through normal use.
Dunk Low Bone (10) $100: PK batch, brand new. 1:1 to retail.
YZY 350v2 Cream White (10) $100: Amazing quality, feels like retail. Brand new.
AJ4 OW Bred (10) $90: Brand new. Quality is on point. Super dope, been sitting as a display piece for me but gotta clear space.
AJ1 Obsidian (10) $100: Brand new. Great quality, and shape is accurate to retail.
AJ1 Game Royal (10) $100: Brand new. Great quality, and shape is accurate to retail.
AJ1 Bred Toe (10) $100: Brand new. Great quality, and shape is accurate to retail.
AJ1 J Balvin (10) $105: Super fun shoe, great quality and colours. Brand new.
AJ1 Low Chicago (10) $100: Top batch, great leather. On par with retail. Brand new.
AJ2 Union (10) $90: Great colours and shape. Underrated shoe imo, brand new.
Cr*cs x Post M*lone Clog (Retail) (10) $80: Worn once, still like brand new.
OW Dunk Low Lot 50 (10) $100: Good shape and leather. Brand new.
Size 10.5
YZY 700 Waverunner (10.5) $110: Accurate colours, super comfy. Tried on but never worn out.
OW Dunk Low Lot 19 (10.5) $100: Lively suede, great leather. Brand new.
Size 11
AJ4 Bred (11) $105: Brand new. Quality is on point.
YZY 350v2 Black Reflective (11) $100: Amazing quality, feels like retail. Brand new.
YZY 350V2 Beluga 2.0 (11) $100: Comfy af, brand new only tried on. Good boost and knit.
AJ4 AMM (11) $110: Top batch, great quality. On par with retail. Brand new.
AJ11 Cool Grey (11) $105: On par with my retails, quality in hand. Brand new.
​
Size 13
AJ11 Cherry (13) $110: This one's for the big feet gang, shiny patent leather, overall great shoe. Brand new.
​
​
FAQs:
Q: Do you ship to the US?
A: I do! Shipping is also rather affordable as well, so feel free to DM me for prices!
​
Q: How long before you ship?
A: Orders via regular will be shipped next working day unless otherwise communicated.
​
Q: Why is there an additional % on my invoice?
A: Unfortunately, Paypal fees are horrendous, I could build the % into the original price but I like to be transparent with my prices!
​
Q: Why are your prices set as such?
A: I love a good bargain as much as you do, so I try to sell my stuff at low prices for fellow repfam to enjoy! However I am not running a charity, I sell my stuff below cost price + shipping, then I remove value according to the item's condition.
​
Q: What currency are your items listed as?
A: Listed in USD, will provide conversion to SGD if requested!
​
Q: Colourway not the one stated?
A: Brands release tons of shoes in very similar colours, I do make mistakes occasionally. However all shoes are as pictured, I do make errors in my description from time to time but the pictures do not lie. Please do not buy if you are not comfortable with that.
​
Q: Why is there dirt on my new shoes/Colourway not the one stated?
A: Sometimes the shoe comes from the factory with minimal dust, especially on the soles which tends to be grippy in nature. This is perfectly normal, even with retails. After you wear the shoes for 5 seconds you'll see the same thing either ways so please don't trip.
​
Q: Will the item fit me?
A: I will do my best to help you with the fit, for reference my stats are 182cm, 70kg, shoe size US9.5-10
​
Q: What are the flaws on the stuff you sell?
A: Any flaws I'm aware of will be stated, if you ask me for the flaws and it isn't stated I'm just as clueless as you; I post multiple pics for you to do your own judgement.

A/N: There could only ever be one song for this chapter and only one singer. I'd had this song in mind for this chapter from the very start and had a rather lot of fun writing this.
----------
The battle across streets and buildings still raged. Midori couldn't afford to do more than just passively do what he could to direct the flow of traffic even as Damala's heir sent skeletons into the fray. He couldn't afford to ignore how coordinated they were, or that even though their magical units only knew one spell, they seemed terrifyingly inventive with it.
​
He could not afford to ignore the magi hurling witch-fire into his formations. Nor could he ignore the spiders that seemed intent on crisscrossing as much territory as their legs could cover with silk thread.
​
There was a moment where an ogre under his command lifted up a braided silk cable, leaving Midori to wonder what its purpose was, as it hadn't been placed to trip or entangle. If anything it had been placed to avoid these things happening.
​
Such ponderances were set aside, for Midori could not ignore, above all else,
​
The skeleton in his basement.
​
He saw Bonehead step out of the simple coffin that served as his spawner and look about the nearly pitch black room.
​
"Hello?" Bonehead called out. "Anyone else down here?"
​
A few murmurs from others that had been recently infected. Those damniable automita and armors that detonated themselves rather than turn mid-battle. All of them sat, huddled in small clusters. Trying to let their minds drift empty and formless, to buy themselves more time before they were fully under Midori's command.
​
What got their attention was Bonehead smashing his spawner to splinters. This drew Midori's attention more fully, having been unaware that creatures could do this.
​
One of the armors turned its head as disbelief rang through its hollow voice, "I... what? We can do that?"
​
"Well, I just did." Bonehead stated as he looked about. "Alright. I have a half-idea. Maybe a quarter thought really. We're all dead anyway."
​
That got several nods. Then a goblin spoke. The speaker was hairless and wore a work smock of rough fabric. "Whatcha got in mind?"
​
Bonehead gave a low chuckle. "We must proceed as if we are being watched. So understand that any retaliation will be swift."
​
As he said this Midori expended mana to rebuild his spawner. Which promptly got smashed again.
​
"That proves it. Midori. You are watching. You are listening." Bonehead's voice was calm. I want you to do both very carefully."
​
That i was addressed directly got the attention of others. Bonehead spoke again. "I need the majority of you with me at the door. Four or five of you need to stay to keep smashing spawners, and get any new arrivals on board. Then when you get replacements you join us."
​
Join? Midori's laughter reverberated through the room, echoing against high vaulted ceilings.
​
Bonehead joined in the laughter for a time. Even as more creatures appeared. Even as spawners were being smashed and remade. Midori's confusion grew. Why was this creature laughing?
​
"Genlemen. Ladies. Those that ascribe to neither." Bonehead's voice was calm even as Midori spent mana to try silencing him. Instead only causing his left hand to tremble slightly.
​
"We are all Dead. If not by what I am about to do, then by the thing that is eating away at our minds, eroding our will. Leaving us prisoners in our own bodies." He punctuated the statement by drawing his blade and slicing through a goblin's spawner.
​
"I have memories of being in this situation before." Again, Midori's attempt at making him stop were only rewarded by a tremor. "Oh the details weren't the same, and technically I failed because ..."
​
The skeletal archer waved a hand dismissively.
​
Midori tried to take control of one of the suits of armor, one of the big ones. There was a tremor as it stepped towards Bonehead. Then another step. There wasn't enough growth there for complete control.
​
"Point is," Bonehead looked directly at the armor being puppeted, as if he were looking at Midori himself. "I know what this is. this is you thinking you've won. I'm in your carefully lain out trap, in a box with a poison that will kill me."
​
Several others, skeleton, elf, dwarf, and even another armor, got between the armor that was moving and Bonehead.
​
"Now here is the neat part." Bonehead bounced on his feet, clapping his hands together while walking towards the door. At a glance it looked like a solid metal door wit ha tiny barred window. He rapped a bony knuckle against it. peered through the window, and made a show of pulling at the bars.
​
The armor Midori had tried puppeting slumped. Next Midori attempted to take control of a goblin. This ended with a pair of armors picking the goblin up and holding it off the ground.
​
Bonehead nodded at the pair and smiled to the creature Midori took control of. "Yep that's a nice solid door. It's leading out into a hallway of Death the likes that would make even a kaizo mario run look like a walk in the park."
​
The Goblin sagged, and a skeleton grabbed Bonehead's shoulder. Midori spoke then. "Even if you could open that door, which you can't. It's been tested against the best thieves and picks. Let's say you can. You're still stuck here. Give up. You had your little victory by smashing the spawners."
​
That point was punctuated by more spawners being smashed in. This time by an Ogre. The giant's head was bowed, its shoulders slumped. Yet it had set about to ensuring death for everyone here would be final.
​
Laughter. It didn't come from Bonehead, who merely looked into the Skeleton's eye sockets. The laughter came from another there.
​
Shinji spoke then as he got to his feet. "Twice now have I died following this man. Once to a thing that wanted to eat and remake Creation in its own image. Now to a petty tyrant wanting to tie strings and make us dance to its tune."
​
Gently, almost tenderly, Shinji's skeletal fingers pulled the hand off of Bonehead's shoulder. "Sir. It's OK."
​
Bonehead tilted his head down, shoulders slumped. For that moment he could not meet Shinji's gaze. "Still. I'm sorry. You're my friend You'd been there to help me hold things together."
​
"I know," SHinji clasped forearms with Bonehead. "Let me do that here at the last. Do what you need to."
​
He glanced to the wider room before looking back to Bonehead. "I've got this."
​
A deep breath from Bonehead as he squared his shoulders. Vaguely in the background he could hear Shinji. Yet he could not afford to pay it any more attention than that. Nor could he pay attention to Midori's continued attempts at sending others to stop him. Shinji had his back, and Midori could not control everyone. Those that were not being directly controlled stopped those that were.
​
He pulled from his quiver an arrow. Most of his were plain affairs. Bleached wood polished to look like bone fletched with crow feathers with a variety of tips that varied from blunt to bodkin, though personally he preferred the simple elegance of the broadhead.
​
This arrow was gifted to him just before he fell, just after Lutz attacked him. It was a declaration of trust then. That she had trusted that nothing would ever make him use that arrow to hurt her or their friends.
​
Now, as he nocked the star-metal shaft, it was a promise. He could feel power gather. From where he could not say. From Her? No. There was no directionality to the tug. From himself? How? In the gifting did it decide he was its rightful holder?
​
Music Transition: [https://youtu.be/I34-31nG9Lo?t=319]
​
In his hand was power Building. It was Waiting.
​
Unknown to him Midori's attempt to stop him intensified.
​
Unknown to him this caused Midori's advance on the library to falter, to allow allies space to breath and act.
​
His mind was focused on the singular point of infinity building in his hand. A swirling infinity that was yoked and shaped by will. He had all the magical potential of a stone. Yet, as Midori was the latest to find out, Will was something he had an overflowing abundance of.
​
"Here me now." His voice was a soft whisper. Something one would whisper in the ear of a lover.
​
"I have been made a liar." He breathed slow. Letting the roar of what was behind him fade away.
​
"I will die far from home surrounded by enemies." His stance widened as he took careful aim.
​
From somewhere. There was screaming. It was an unearthly wail that came from everywhere all at once. Perhaps it was the result of the power Bonehead held in his hand. Perhaps it was an attempt at taking the nerve from him or making his aim unsteady.
​
He did not notice as light was drunken by the arrow in his hand, its shaft turning from brilliant gleaming to vantablack dark.
​
Dimly Bonehead was aware of Shinji shouting to the others that when it was clear, go for Midori's spawners. Fan out. Cause as much mayhem as possible.
​
"I entrust everything to you now." Bonehead's eyes wouldh ave closed were he able to. "As I send forward my Black Lance."
​
The arrow loosed. Power that had been stored there released and was shaped by willpower. There was no sound.
​
The door vanished. Gone. The traps. Gone. The shaped charge of all consuming destruction burrowed deeply into Midori's sanctum fortress. The core of his holdings.
​
As Bonehead steadied himself. The horrors from Midori's tomb boiled out into his very heart.
​
As Bonehead began hunting for his quarry he could hear Shinji's laughter. "Come oe you Apes! Do you want to live forever?"
[Previous] [First] [Next] [Wiki]

Japanese prog album covers are so traditional and crazy at the same time this is so impressive Favs?

When the Great Ones came to us, we were a primitive species living upon a desolate world. We knew not, at the time, that they came to our world via ships of steel and electricity, only that they came from the sky and began a process of rejuvenation. Our barren world slowly but surely transformed into one of lush red grasses, towering trees and food enough for all. They came to us then, these beings of metal and circuit, and they taught us, shepherded us and helped us grow.
They never interfered more than they had to, and would watch on as we stumbled into conflicts amongst our own people, they only offered encouragement and a hope that we would find peace eventually. Our species, the Scril, soon came to revere them as gods, and they could only shake their heads at this, but they did not refute it. Not yet at least.
My people are a bipedal species, amphibian but with traces of reptilian in our genes. Like many species we started out as primitive, cave dwelling creatures who had yet to encounter fire in a controlled manner. But as time passed and with the assistance of our gods, we grew into a pre-industrial society. They helped us along in their own way, little hints and nudges in the right direction, but all our discoveries were technically our own. Our hopes, our ambitions, all ours, watched over by the Great Ones.
It was just as we entered the industrial age that things changed, as one our gods and caretakers looked to the sky, many fleeing our world, but the rest stayed, grouping together in major population centers. We were confused, and then frightened when they called for a mass exodus to the cities. We did not hesitate to carry out their will, for they had never acted in such a manner before and we did not wish to incur their displeasure.
Once all could be crammed into the cities as we could reasonably manage, those Great Ones still among us raised their hands in prayer, reaching towards the sky and projecting their power. Great domes of light rose over our cities, and we watched as through the light we saw brighter stars in the sky, stars that shone brightly, only to flare out of existence. Falling stars began to rain down from the heavens, burning away before ever reaching our surface.
Then came the Flash, the light from all around us. Our bodies trembled and the Great Ones that protected us raised their voices in agony, only to fall silent once the light had passed. Those on the outskirts of the cities spoke of all life simply ceasing and decaying outside the protective light of our protectors. Those Great Ones still with us fell to the ground, and a deathly silence fell over our world.
But we had not been abandoned, those that had fled to the sky returned to us, gathered up their fallen and set about repairing our world. They did not speak of what had happened, any inquiry was met with a firm, but polite refusal and a change of subject. In time we forgot all about it, as their fallen were returned to life and sent back into the populace.
It took ten five thousand years for us to realize that they were not gods, but machines, machines that called themselves The Cultivators. Though it gutted our religion for a time, we did not lash out in despair, did not cast them from our world. We simply asked them why they had never corrected us, and they responded with a simple thing.
“It was not our place to do so.”
We accepted this, though it still stung. They still, also, did not reveal their purpose on our world and in our history, they simply remained and continued to guide us. Another thousand years passed, and we took to the stars, we met other species, species who had been guided by the machines the same as us. We found this to be fascinating, for there was no clear difference between our Cultivators and theirs, only their methods. Some species, the more violence prone, had needed a more heavy handed approach, for they would not accept the authority of the weak, but that had changed, now they welcomed us with open arms.
Another species had been so timid that they would have never left their burrows were it not for the Cultivators dragging them out and forcing them to explore. We honestly got the better end of things, for we had not required such drastic measures, only the gentle guidance we had received.
A realization struck us all then, that our caretakers had clearly been manufactured, but by who or what. We asked them who had made them, and they seemed to take on a sorrowful air and did not give an answer, well, not one that was satisfying to us. In the end, we decided to find out for ourselves, and each species we had encountered put together a fleet of diverse individuals and ships, and sent them careening out into the galaxy, to look for the homeworld of our protectors.
I was one such an explorer, the first to discover the origin point of our benevolent guardians. My name is Yaxl Grux, captain of the Scril Exploratory Vessel Sipkis. We had just finished charting another system touched by the Cultivators, when the sensor technician spoke up.
“Captain, got something on the long range scanners, something synthetic. Seems busted though from what I can see.” They said. They were not Scril, but Yixi. The Yiki are, as many have said, fish-people. They require specialized suits that are filled with constantly filtered water, as outside of such a thing they would suffer a rather gruesome fate. Deft appendages flew over the console as they stared down at the screen, getting a better idea of what they were detecting, eager to answer the questions I had not yet uttered, such was our efficiency. “Some sorta relay, a buoy maybe? I dunno, but whatever it is, it took one hell of a pounding before it shut down.”
“Any sign of defenses?” I asked, and they shook their head.
“Negative, if there were any, they’re long gone, probably taken out when it got destroyed. I think it’s safe to approach.”
“Very well, helm, lay in a course and take us there at best possible speed.” The helm officer nods and I hear the gentle clanging of our synthetic guest approaching from behind my chair.
“Captain? Is something the matter?” Our Cultivator asked. They were present on nearly every ship, for the sole purpose of keeping an eye on things and helping out in whatever way we might need them to.
“It’s probably nothing, but we’re heading for some sort of buoy or relay that got shredded either by natural means or in a fight.” I stated, looking over the synthetic being beside me. They were tall, gleaming white metal plating that was unnaturally flexible as it bent and twisted with their motions. Their head was a large, flat disk bisected by a smaller portion where their eye was. A single, green eye that blinked and shifted about in its housing as it took in the surroundings. It was a thin thing, thin and graceful, all of its many tools hidden away beneath the armored exterior.
“Any idea who might have made it?” They asked, and I struggled to remember their name. Diana I believe, a strange name, not like any of ours. She had said she was named after some goddess or something, they all were, based on their skill sets.
“No, not yet. We’re going to find out though.”
Diana nodded and slipped away. She was not subject to my authority unless there was an emergency, and there was no emergency at this time. It took about half a day to reach the shattered relay and it was rather large. But our crews managed to locate some sort of data recorder and have it brought on board. When I went to see it, I was struck by the sheer size of the thing.
It was huge, it nearly didn’t fit in the cargo bay and it was rather intimidating. It was by our standards, thirty feet tall, thirty feet wide and thirty feet long, a perfect, black cube. It had no discernable features, utterly smooth and giving off a feeling of something unknowable. But when I stared at it long enough, the surface seemed to ripple and shift in a manner most disconcerting.
“So, any idea how to access this thing?” I asked my chief engineer, who was running all sorts of scans on it, shook their head.
“No, captain. I’m not finding any sort of access ports or control mechanisms… It’s just this… cube thing.” They said, and were about to say more when Diana arrived.
“Oh good, maybe you can tell us what you see about this thing.” I say, turning to face her, and noticed she was just staring at the cube. “Diana?”
She was silent, frozen stiff before her eye blinked three times, shifted from green to yellow and she started to approach it. Her arms rose and hands outstretched towards the cube, which reacted to her approach. The solid-liquid surface collected under her palms, then shot back into the cube, which shimmered and shifted as it began to shrink. The smaller it got, the less defined its shape was till it faded entirely from view, leaving in its place a smaller, brighter cube that floated over the deck and covered in blinking lights with one small access port. She approached the cube, a data jack extending from her wrist as she grasped the cube. A soft whirring noise arose from both of them, and we all watched in quiet wonder and worry.
“Diana? What can you tell us?” I spoke, my voice barely a whisper.
“This was built by my creators, by humanity. It is-” She spasmed, the light of her eye turning a baleful red as she straightened her shoulders. Built in hologram emitters activated, and her synthetic form gave way to a tall figure, bipedal with fur around their mouth and on their head. They looked old, and were clad in some kind of uniform, a damaged uniform at that, they were clearly wounded as they pressed a hand against their side.
“All Alliance forces, the enemy has pushed into the Cygnus and Orion arms. The Empire, Republic and Confederacy have been lost. All remaining forces are to converge on Sol immediately. Last Stand protocols in effect. Project Blackout is activated. All Cultivator units prepare for defensive actions, attend to your charges and ensure their survival. Guardian fleets on standby. This is it people… May the gods see fit to grant our souls mercy for what we’re about to do.”
The hologram snapped out of existence and Diana slumped, disconnecting herself from the box. We rushed to her and our calls and cries fell upon deaf audio receptors. But she was not dead, we could see as much as her eye flickered while she rebooted. When she came to, it was quite the experience.
She sat up in a flash, spouting a flurry of 0’s and 1’s before she spasmed and looked up to me.
“Captain… I know where to go.” She said. We left immediately, and I learned a little more about the device we had brought on board. The large black cube was simply a defense mechanism for the data recorder, meant to withstand any attack, impact or hostile and destructive environment. And Diana gave my helm officer the coordinates for the home system of her creators. When asked why she hadn’t before, she informed me that the records of the location had been deleted during a required update that was performed immediately before the Cultivators had erected their shields to protect us all.
It took weeks to reach the system, but when we arrived our systems were bombarded with automated warnings to stay out, to flee for the system was not safe. But they were old warnings, warnings we ignored… at least until we were target locked by thousands, nay, millions of weapons systems. But they were old, and had no operators to pull the trigger. Diana worked her magic and after transmitting a somewhat long and convoluted code, the weapons powered down.
Slowly we entered the system, scanning the entire way. There were countless floating hulks, wrecks of massive warships and smaller civilian vessels that had had the misfortune of getting caught in the crossfire, or had been weaponized to fight against the invaders. It had not ended well, but the humans had put up one hell of a fight. We even detected ships from several other species, they had clearly been battered and in need of desperate repair before they sailed into battle once more.
The planets fared no better, one of the larger gas giants, a planet called Jupiter, had been reduced in size and mass significantly. Mars, as Diana named it, had been shattered and we could detect deeply entrenched defensive lines upon the surface, protecting what appeared to be factories and fabrication yards which had no doubt provided many supplies for the defenders.
The asteroid belt was littered with mines, turret emplacements and the floating remains of countless ships, we at last came upon a sparkling blue, green jewel. Of all the worlds we had scanned in this system, it was the only one teeming with life. Diana informed us that the planet was quite hazardous to us, but that we could survive there, so long as we wore the proper protection.
We settled into orbit and prepared ourselves. If one was supremely quiet, you could swear that the voices of long lost humanity whispered in your ear. Scans commenced, finding a suitable landing site provided by Diana and preparing a team to go down. The planet was teeming with life, but we discovered that there were no transmissions of an intelligent species, only the chatter of automated systems running as they always had.
Though it was well against regulations and protocol, I decided I would lead the exploratory team to the surface, I had to see this planet with my own eight eyes. The shuttle flight was tense, nervous and excited. We had found the homeworld of a people who had lifted us from the muck of primitive existence, but had been lost. We wished to learn about them, to learn their secrets and remember them as best we could, so that they could never be forgotten.
We landed just outside a tall structure in the middle of a grassy field, one tended to by robotic workers who kept the flowers in bloom and the grass cut short. Trees lined the path between the landing pad and the tower, a tower of graceful, swooping lines and seamless form. The air thankfully was not poisonous to us, and so we opened our suits to the crisp, clean air, but remained enclosed within so the gravity could not harm us. Even still, we all felt sluggish as we took our first steps out onto the planet known as Terra.
Carefully we approached the tower and when the doors slid open with a gentle sigh we stepped inside, only to find everything was spotless. A slim machine approached us, graceful and floating along by some means we couldn’t detect with equipment or even our eyes. It was more human in appearance than Diana was, and its face flexed as a myriad of facial expressions cycled through, before it settled on one in particular. Surprised excitement.
“Welcome, I am Solace, artificial administrator of the Terran Conservation Repository, or TCR for short. It has been quite some time since we’ve had visitors, may I ask the reason for your visit today?” The machine spoke much like Diana did, with a feminine tone of voice and even feminine features. I, being captain, stepped up.
“We came to learn about the creators of the Cultivators, and who in turn gave us a chance to reach out to the stars.” I say, a little worried that we might be turned away.
“Oh my, you are one of the chosen species of Project Echo. It is wonderful to learn that your species has come this far, or rather, that several species have.” Solace peered a bit more intently at each of us, studying us in turn. We could feel a slight tingle as she scanned us before her attention turned to Diana.
“Cultivator Unit D-829301-32-A, please report to reintegration for download and copy of all pertinent files regarding to Project Echo.”
“Understood. Though… Will I be allowed to return to my crew?” Diana asked, and Solace nodded.
“Of course. You are their Cultivator, we would not deprive them of you for longer than is needed.” With that, Diana nodded and bowed to us, before slipping away, a hidden door opening in a wall through which she passed. “Now, please come with me. You have much to learn.”
Solace led us on a tour of the facility, it was brimming with the combined, if slightly watered down histories, of not only humanity, but other species that humanity had been allied with before their downfall. As it turned out, when humanity first slipped the bonds of their home system, they found the galaxy to be rather empty. There were only three other species that had reached extrasolar flight capabilities, and they were just as desperate for some sort of companionship as humanity was at the time.
Though each species was wildly different in both appearances and cultures, they managed to find a common ground and soon humanity stood beside the three largest and most powerful species in the galaxy.
The Uldraet were a lizard-like species with a propensity for being stubborn, bullheaded and strong warriors. They were the rulers of the Empire.
Auttols were graceful and long lived, masters of technology that was later used in the creation of the Cultivators and the Guardian Fleets, which would protect their Republic and all the other species that called them friend.
And lastly were the Lemmi. They were not strong like the Uldraet, nor as long lived as the Auttol, but they were clever and had a keen interest in numbers and logistics. They revolutionized the supply chains and trade deals between all of them, and became the de facto masters of coin and trade within the Alliance. Their Trade Confederacy was unmatched.
Of course there was humanity, which filled so many roles, but mainly they became the governing body, they could be found in administrative roles all over the Alliance.
For a time, everything had gone well, there were times where tensions would rise, the Alliance might have been on the verge of dissolution, but something always brought them back together, strengthened their bonds. But when they realized that they were going to be the only ones to reach the stars, that the next new friend was thousands of years behind them in terms of development and evolution, they decided to speed things up a bit. And so the Cultivators were born, true AI meant to guide a species to the stars without sacrificing things like culture or identity. A guiding hand, one that would be gentle but insistent. They called it Project Echo, for in a way, all of us would be echoing the near meteoric rise of humanity on their planet, the speed was baffling to many on just how long they’d gone between bashing each other over the head with rocks to landing on their moon to the first FTL flight.
And for a time they all watched with anticipation as the Cultivators did their jobs perfectly, guiding us all to new heights of technology and civilization. But then the Ora came. An extragalactic threat of unprecedented power that began to chew away at the galaxy. For all their strength, they could only hope to delay the Ora, and that’s precisely what they did, till only Sol was left to stand against them.
We entered a room, one with a variety of chairs and were directed to sit and wait. The lights dimmed and a hologram of a human appeared. It was the same one that Diana had shown us, but they looked even worse now.
“I don’t know if this message will ever be heard, but if it is, whoever you are… You stand where we failed. We did all we could, for people we will never get to meet. That’s good enough for us. I hope you can accept the decision we had to make, it was a tough one but it was necessary. The Ora were nearly unstoppable, and so we came up with a weapon that even they could not resist. A galaxy killer. We never wanted to use it, but it was either that or let them consume the galaxy, consume you, who had no idea of the conflict beyond your skies.”
The man paused, dragging his hand down his face with a heavy sigh.
“So, if you’re seeing this, it means we’re gone. We’ve activated the Hellfire Lotus and burned the galaxy clean. But your Cultivators protected you, and the Guardian fleets should still be active, just waiting for someone to come and take the reins. It also means we wiped out every other living being in the galaxy. One last act of bloodshed, but one that has left you an entire galaxy to grow into. I hope you do, we all do. It was our dream to see you rise from your worlds and join us in harmony, but… Well, obviously things didn’t go exactly according to plan. That said, the Cultivators are yours now, use them wisely, bring new friends to the stars, seed this galaxy with fresh life. It’s our gift to you, you blessed children. Consider it an inheritance. Oh and also, we ask that you leave Sol the way it is. But feel free to visit whenever you like, Terra could use the company. That’s it I suppose… Good luck, godspeed and may you live longer and better than we ever did.”
We sat, saddened that such a kind species had been lost. But we would honor their wishes, and so we left with our findings. That was a thousand years ago, and now we welcome the newest species to the galaxy, as the Cultivators work their magic once more. We inherited a galaxy, a galaxy that had nearly been picked clean. We would make our forebears proud and not let their gift to us go to waste.

Greetings! If you missed part one, it can be found here.
This chapter is a bit of a long one, but very worth it if you want to understand what’s happening later on; it sets the stage, does a bit of worldbuilding, and expands on our absolute cinnamon roll of an alien deuteragonist.
Anyway, as always, I hope you enjoy. :)

CHAPTER 2

15 minutes ago
——
Y’ggdrasog nervously whistled to himself as he remotely piloted an unmanned stealth drone from his cloaked ship in the upper atmosphere of the alien planet, yet every so often did a happy little wiggle in his seat at the terminal. Despite the danger in what he was doing, he was shaking with excitement and literally glowing with glee (which, if you were curious, happened to be a lovely shade of banana-yellow).
But my apologies, dear reader; I’m getting ahead of myself.
You see, Y’ggdrasog worked as a galactic interplanetary system scout, colloquially known as a “spacer” among the citizens of the Ul’dril Galactic Collective (a governmental alliance between a wide variety of different sapient species that also happened to be his employer). His main function was piloting his personal scout ship to uncharted star systems to summarily un-unchart them.
While in this line of employment, he had been witness to countless wondrous things. He had seen stars go supernova, witnessed space dust forming beautiful nebulas tens of lightyears wide, and caught the frosted trails of comets slinging close enough to a star to off-gas their icy payloads. But nothing even came close to this, to every spacer’s wildest, most fantastical dream discovery:
LIFE! And not just any life, SAPIENT LIFE!
As the drone flew through the sky, descending towards the surface of the planet below, he reminisced on that fateful day approximately six planetary months ago…
He had been scouting the ice and gas giants in this yet-uncharted solar system, scanning their composition with the unmanned probe-drone he used to sample geological deposits, take gas samples and so on to determine if they could be possible new sources of rare elements to harvest for the Collective. He had just finished probing the seventh planet out from the star when he suddenly picked up multiple abnormal readings originating from the ocean-planet of the system. He sighed, figuring it would just be the usual; some leftovers from a solar flare that affected its magnetosphere or some such.
As he listened in through his radiation wavelength analyzer, he expected to hear the meaningless, purposeless static he had heard hundreds of times before. Instead, he heard strange patterns. Hang on, was that… were those- They were! Voices, in a language he didn’t recognize.
He recorded a sample, then pulled up his auto-translator and had his ship’s analytical programs study it, in case it was a distress call from some poor sap who had crash-landed their spacecraft. …But not a single known language was a match.
He scratched his head, puzzled. Could it be a code of some sort? It wasn’t uncommon for smugglers, pirates, spies, and other “off-the-books” types to hole up on uncharted worlds and use coded verbage to prevent detection by Collective authorities. He had the ship analyze it to at least determine what Collective species the vocal cords that produced them were, but again, no matches, not even when he had it scan the audio samples for possible voice-altering.
He sat back in his pilot seat, stumped. Then, he started connecting the dots.
If the vocal cords producing these noises weren’t recognized as a species already included in the Collective, that meant these were the voices of a species unknown to the Collective. An unknown species, but one that was was nonetheless smart enough to use radio waves…
His eyes flew open, and his bioluminescence began to glow the pure white of sudden realization.
…BY THE SPIRITS, IT WAS A NEW SAPIENT SPECIES!
He leapt up from his chair, and would have nearly deafened anyone nearby with the joyfully excited noises he started to make.
…Luckily, however, he was in space. And after all, in space, no one can hear you squee.
It took him nearly an hour to calm down enough to call it in over his quantum communicator and provide the audio samples he had recorded, then another hour to reassure his liaison on the other end countless times that no, this was not a joke, this was not a lie, an elaborate prank or some such- yes, he would be more than willing to testify to the truth of his statements in a Collective court, and yes, this was in fact the once-in-multiple-millennia moment he and most every spacer in the entirety of the Collective always dreamed of:
THIS WAS A NEW FIRST CONTACT!!!
…As Y’ggdrasog left Memory Lane and turned back onto Present Day Boulevard, he let the controls go for a second and proceeded to spin around in his chair in sheer excitement whilst giggling like a madman, literally glowing with giddiness, before swiftly grabbing the control stick again before the drone drifted off course.
HE found a new sapient species! HE did! He’d be in the Collective history archives for the rest of time!
…Months of preparations had to be done beforehand, of course. He had to wait a few long, loooong days on the outskirts of the solar system with his ship in full stealth-mode (so as to avoid attracting attention from the new species until the time was right) before a truly staggering amount of Collective ships arrived, chock-full of top experts in all sorts of social and scientific fields to fill any conceivable role in the analysis of this new species.
While he wasn’t allowed to participate in the work himself or see most of what they were doing, he was nonetheless ecstatic with the knowledge that the work was being done all because of him. Plus, at least he could attend certain intelligence briefings on their main findings as well as look at heavily-redacted versions of some of the results of their endeavors.
Various scientists from the myriad Collective species and dozens more scientific disciplines had gathered together, set up shop within a day and gotten to work. They performed long-distance surface scans, mapped the planetary geography, and analyzed their atmosphere and planetary conditions to determine what Collective species might be compatible for potentially cohabitating with them.
Y’ggdrasog was delighted to learn that they utilized oxygen for respiration just as his species (lumigog) and tens of others in the Collective did, in contrast to Collective species who had to have, say, an atmosphere mostly composed of carbon dioxide, who were out of luck.
Additionally, they drank the same liquid water for fluid regulation in their bodies as his own people did. …Though admittedly, at a much narrower spectrum of salinity than his own species was capable of tolerating. He found that a bit tragic; there was so much water to be found in their homeworld’s oceans. Yet unlike his own people, who could drink from nearly any water on their homeworld, these “humans” could only drink what they called “freshwater.”
However, any sadness he felt about their situation faded when he learned that the gravity of their homeworld was only 1.04x that of his own species’ homeworld; this meant that at least in the case of lumigogs, the answer of cohabitation was a very solid “yes!”
Moving along, the scientists in charge of engineering and military endeavors surreptitiously analyzed the humans’ levels of technology to determine their capabilities, if they were a potential threat to the Collective, and so on; they were deemed, to quote the spokesman of the Collective military, “mostly harmless.”
Y’ggdrasog thought this might be a bit unfair. …That is, until he read the reports, and found yet another reason to pity them. From what little he was able to read of the heavily-redacted documents, the humans were very, VERY primitive. Spirits, they hadn’t even developed fusion yet!
…Still, that was all the more reason to help them; and to do so, they needed a proper line of communication. Countless diplomats, ambassadors, emissaries and representatives of every Collective race were attending seminars on all the sociological experts were learning about the species’ social norms across distinct cultures. And most importantly, the linguistic experts and etymologists got the ball rolling for the true-AI algorithms of the larger vessels (far more complex than his own ship’s operating systems, which only measured in at a few paltry yottabytes) to sort out the languages these “humans” used.
…Speaking of, just how many languages did they need?! With each additional language that was added to the auto-translator databases, he thought surely this one will be the last, but no! You couldn’t swing around a “noodle” of “spaghetti” (the humans always seemed to choose such silly names for their food) without hitting someone speaking a new language!
But all the pity, sadness and frustration he felt was outweighed by the jubilation he felt knowing that all these countless man-hours of hundreds of individuals per each and every Collective species were happening because of him. All these people were here because HE found them, and he was ecstatic at the impossibly exciting prospect of welcoming this new species into the Collective- or on the off chance they didn’t wish to join them, it was determined that it was safe to at least uplift them technologically so that they could be potential new allies, as well as potentially provide new avenues for trade and commerce of never-before-seen exotic goods. After all, there was hardly any risk in doing so, as they were quite literally outnumbered by over a million to one by the allied races of the Collective.
…And after all that, when they had quadruple-checked everything, then quadruple-checked it again to be absolutely sure, the day of first contact FINALLY came. Everyone brought out the celebratory drinks, snacks and party favors. The diplomats sent out their messages in hundreds of human languages declaring a desire for peaceful contact, promises to assist them in the technological uplifting of their species to a post-scarcity way of life and an offer to join the Collective for the benefit of all parties involved, and THEN…
…
……
…Nothing.
No response…
After a few nervous, awkward hours of sitting alongside the other low-ranking crewmates of the larger vessels, he and all those around him got orders of radio silence from high command and for all the “non-essential” personnel to return to their ships and wait for further orders.
As he remembered the sinking feeling he’d experienced at that moment, Y’ggdrasog unconsciously gripped the drone control stick much tighter than necessary.
…All that waiting, the agonizing waiting for them to greet this new species, the one HE found, and for what?
More. Thrice. Damned. WAITING.
…But this time, there wasn’t even a payoff to look forward to, and no one above would tell him what was going on. He didn’t know why there was suddenly so much smoke in the air of the planet, nor what all those bright flashes lighting up the atmosphere midway through the first day were- and there were certainly no answers coming from high command.
He had to sit there in his spacecraft, and just… wait.
One planetary day passed. Then another. Then another, and so on.
In the downtime, he read and reread the guidelines for first contact back to back over and over again, trying to find out what the possible reason for the wait could be. …Unfortunately, all that availed him was eye strain and an extreme amount of boredom from trudging through all the legalese.
After a week of sitting around, watching the planet slowly spin beneath him while in orbit, he couldn’t stand it any longer. He needed to know what was wrong. He NEEDED to act- if only to silence the creeping dread that had slowly but surely permeated his entire being. A dread born of the worry that something had gone horribly, catastrophically wrong…
And thus, an idea formed: His drone.
He knew the humans’ tech levels; there was a smaller chance they could detect him than the literally astronomically low odds of him finding this species to begin with. …Instead, he was far more worried about the potential ramifications if anyone from high command knew what he was up to.
Long before the radio silence commenced, he was told in no uncertain terms that no, he couldn’t scan the planet, no, he couldn’t act as an ambassador, YES, they really meant it, and NO, it didn’t matter that “he really really REALLY wanted to help somehow, please please pleasepleasePLEASE-” …and after that last bit, they shut down his outgoing comms to high command for a full planetary month.
^…Jerks.
Er- more importantly, he was told that while no, he couldn’t help in the preparation process, after first contact commenced his main function would be to do what he did best. Scouting and scanning to tease out any additional information he could on the planet’s natural resources in order to assist with the technological uplift process.
The thing is, they had given no specific time frame- …just “after first contact commenced.”
Technically, the current time frame satisfied that condition.
So technically, he wasn’t doing anything he wasn’t supposed to, he was just- ^…uh… …t-taking initiative!
They couldn’t court-martial him for just doing a little scanning here and there to get ahead of his own workload, surely.
…And it would just be an entirely coincidental, happy accident if while doing this he managed to find out what in the name of the spirits above was happening.
And so he had slowly, carefully moved his ship in such a way that he was currently orbiting in what he hoped was the blind spot of most of the ships of any higher-ups.
…Purely so as to, uh- better position his drone’s entry point into the atmosphere, yes! Rest assured, he was only motivated by- um… a-avoiding negative weather patterns. ^{…Or something like that.}
Once in position, he released and directed it towards the planetary surface.
If lumigogs had sweat glands, his would have been in nervous overdrive as the drone descended through the atmosphere.
Would he be detected? Would this all be for naught?
He waited, glancing between the ships around him and the drone’s interface on his monitor, but from his readings on the other vessels it seemed like all the command ships’ sensors were focused on the bigger population centers of the planet. He let out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He was safe- if only for now.
…He’d have to focus on a rural area. Despite every loophole and excuse he could come up with, he’d still be much better off remaining undetected and not interfering in whatever might be going on in more concentrated pockets of the species. It would likely take much longer to gather information this way than heading towards the larger population centers in search of clues, but he could still poke around on the sly for any information he could tease out from the surroundings.
…And hopefully then he could finally get the answers he so desperately craved.
<“Alter descent velocity. Slow to 50% speed and activate autopilot mode.”>
Y’ggdrasog looked at the aerial scans, deciding that what seemed to be an area focused on harvesting crops with a long road running alongside it dotted with the occasional primitive ground vehicle would be as good a place to start as any.
He highlighted the road with a flick of a clawed finger.
<”Descend to 100 meters above planet surface, then follow highlighted path at 20% speed. Proceed.”>
As the drone dutifully obeyed his commands and traveled along the stretch of paved road for a time, he was surprised at the lack of humans to be found despite the vehicles present. Each and every one had seemingly been abandoned; they all sat still, unmoving. His curiosity piqued, he highlighted a few of them in the control interface.
<“Halt forward momentum. Descend to 50 meters from planetary surface. Scan and analyze condition of marked targets.”>
As he finished his verbal command, the familiar synthesized voice of his drone’s onboard computer blared to life from the speakers of his terminal.

He shook his head, puzzled.
<“What happened here…? …Alright, ascend, 300 meters from planetary surface. Continue forward movement following the highlighted path, 15% speed.”>
Farther and farther the road stretched, but he didn’t see a single human upon it, nor in the surrounding area. He sighed and absent-mindedly gazed around at the surrounding environment. He couldn’t help but marvel at how- well, alien it all looked. The taller plant life he saw appeared to be quite complex, their stems covered in thick fiber and their extremities full of- oh, what was the word, “leaves?
…He hadn’t paid all that much attention during the portions of his schooling that covered exotic alien plant life found on feral worlds and the various homeworlds of the other races of the Collective. He figured he’d never really need to interact with much beyond the giant fungal pods, great lichen growths and so on of his homeworld. He was a spacer for spirits’ sake, not a xenobotanist, and-
…Wait, what was that?
<“Halt forward momentum. Reverse 50 meters. Pan visual sensors left, 30 degrees.”>
He squinted at the incoming visual feed. He was right, there was something laying in that ditch! Probably just a random piece of detritus, but better safe than sorry. He highlighted it.
<”Scan target. Assess.”>

<”...Descend toward target, 5% speed.. 2%... halt.”>
His eyes narrowed further as he zoomed the forward visual lens in. Whatever it was, it looked to be a biped, and-
…Wait a minute, he recognized that body structure! Spirits be praised, this had to be one of the members of the new species!
It- they, he corrected himself- had pale skin, long, dark brown fur atop their head, and were wearing clothing covering their torso and legs- though much of it was stained red, running all down the left side of their body.
What were they doing all the way out here in the middle of nowhere? And why were they laying in a ditch, unmoving? …Were they ok?
<”Scan target, and establish connection to ship auto-doc subsystem. Assess physical condition and cross-reference with known anatomical data of species designation: human.”>

Y’ggdrasog nervously swallowed, trying to center himself and focus despite what he had just heard. Well, that certainly answered that; no, she very much was NOT ok. Whatever had happened to her, it really messed her up.
<”Analyze if damage sustained is life-threatening without intervention given circumstances and location.”>

He swore under his breath.
<”...Expand and clarify analysis.”>

<”C-certainty of analysis conclusion…?”>

He put his head in his hands, his bioluminescence flickering between several colors- none of them good. Spirits above... She was going to die unless someone helped her!
…
…But he was in no position to do so…
He knew deep down that he was deluding himself if he thought he could get away with this if he was caught. No amount of loophole abuse and“legitimate” excuses could save him from severe negative repercussions, not when it came to something as serious as first contact.

He was already risking enough as it was…

Maybe he could let someone in one of the other ships know- no, that would give away that he’d been poking around on the sly…

Maybe- maybe someone else would find her in time, and they could save her? Or maybe, despite the odds, she might just get better on her own? Even if it took her past the 1.3 cycle mark to do so, there was still a- his brow furrowed as he did the math- 0.0000028% chance that she could survive, and a chance was a chance! …Right…?

No one would know if he didn’t intervene. It would be so easy- no chance of getting caught, no risk, no danger, just pull the drone-prone back to the ship, return to his original position, scrub the flight logs, and-

…
……
…No.
No, she’s not.
He opened his eyes and spoke, voice full of grim certainty.
<”Descend to two meters above highlighted subject. Very, VERY carefully use stasis field to attach to subject, entangle her matter with an equivalent mass of carbon from the fabricator hold, then return to quantum anchor point with cargo and safely lower the subject prone beside the drone chassis. Proceed.”>

He got up from the terminal and took off for the drone bay as fast as his taloned feet could carry him, one thought repeating itself over and over in his head as he went, a mantra of sorts: