Dating hamlet
Cairo, NY
2019.04.14 17:49 Cairo, NY
Cairo is a town, which contains a hamlet also named Cairo, in the county of Greene in the state of New York. There are numerous communities within Cairo, such as Gayhead, Round Top, Acra, and Woodstock. Cairo is home to the oldest geologic site in the world, with evidence of a prehistoric forest dating back roughly 387 million years.
2024.05.16 23:11 Weathers_Writing They call Silicon Valley the tech capitol of the world. They're wrong
I won't disclose its actual location, so if that's why you're here, sorry to disappoint. It's not time for that yet. However, I do think it's time to start getting the word out. I've noticed an increase in what I'll call "Antennas" lately, or people who can detect cross-planar phase shifts. Without getting into all the math (some of which I don't even know), this is basically a phenomenon which refers to entropy seeping into our universe from other realms or universes or whatever you want to call it. Simply put, people think our universe is a closed system to entropy, meaning that the disorder of any variable in our universe can only increase or decrease in direct proportion to other variables in that same system (the universe). Under this precept, we can establish rules like the Laws of Thermodynamics, and for most people, they're effective. But not for Antennas.
Put another way, if you throw a bunch of bouncy balls into a box, there are a number of different configurations that the balls could take on, with different speeds and magnitudes. You can calculate all of those if you have the right numbers. Now let's say you throw in another set of balls that you don't consider in your calculations of the initial set. Well, then you're not going to get an accurate picture of what's happening. Most people only see the first set and calculate based on that, but some people can see two, three, four or more sets.
You'll understand the concept better when I tell you the story, but I wanted to give you a primer on an important concept that will help you understand why this place, which I'll call "Area X", exists, and what the goals of the people who work there are.
Also note that I'm going to be using the alias "Trent" moving forward. Please refer to me as such in any direct messages.
***
Eighteen years ago I started working as an independent Home Inspector. I dropped out of community college after my first semester (not because I didn't find some of the subjects interesting, but because deference to a man or woman has never been my style) and started working some odd jobs. I did construction work for a couple years, then plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for six months. I've always found pleasure in using my hands, and getting dirty was never a problem for me. Still, having a boss really dragged ass, so I spent my free time working on creating my own business. It took a few years and lots of savings, but I finally managed to get basic set of Home Inspection equipment: Tyvek coveralls, a cheap half-face respirator, voltage & AFCI/GFCI testers, CO2 and radon monitors, an IR camera, and telescoping mirrors in addition to the boots, safety glasses, electric gloves, ladder, and toolkits I already had on hand.
My buddy at the time was in the business, but he was moving off to the coast, so he helped me get set up and even introduced me to some of his clients. Of course, by that time I had already gotten my State license, but I still was a bit apprehensive to work with insurance agencies. I thought I could make a living working independently, inspecting for mold or sizing up a house for a prospective buyer. Eventually, though, I realized I should probably take every job available to me.
Easing into the business went about as well as it could have. The clients my friend referred to me were very satisfied with my work, and I was able to retain them. Then, in order to increase my reach, I hired someone on Fiverr to build a website for my company which led to a marked increase in traffic and conversions. About six months through, I began to get on a first-name basis with the boys and girls down down at Allstate and Progressive, and they fed me some of the bigger cases. In fact, I got so booked by year's end that I had to hire someone to help manage my schedule and the Excel spreadsheet with all my finances. I capped off a successful year with a 5-star Google rating and a trip to Ireland to visit some family and friends and get piss drunk. When I got back, it was the grindstone all over again, until the summer when I discovered… well, you'll see.
First off, I want to say that I was never one to believe in the paranormal. I grew up watching the movies and hearing the ghost stories round the campfire like every other kid, but it never struck a chord with me. If I can't touch it or see it or hear it, does it really exist? Probably not. So don't go thinking this was a scared man seeing his own shadow. That being said, I had this sense that something was off about this house when I parked along the curb and looked through a large window, perhaps two times the size of my van, to a dingy, dark foyer.
The entire neighborhood was stacked with upper-middle class domiciles, though it seemed like only two thirds of them were occupied, mostly by professionals who commuted to the City every weekday, and the rest were empty. As a man who understands real estate, to say this was strange would be an understatement. Still, I had no problem appraising the mini-mansion for a couple of newlyweds looking to enter the community. I did some research on the property ahead of time, and it seems that it was owned by a couple of old timers who had gone off the grid some time ago. The water and electric bill were both unpaid dating back to 2004 (it was June of '06 now). The bank had repo'd the house (which only had about 100k left on it) and held it for a year and a half before putting it back on the market. I tried to find out more about the old couple who vanished, but there was nothing in the news.
I stepped out of the van in my coveralls and grabbed my suitcase which had my mask, gloves, and eye protection in it. I liked to do a preliminary survey first, running an eye test on the exterior then interior before bringing out the big guns (that way I could identify the areas where I think there could be problems instead of running a metal detector over the whole damn ocean seaboard). I was about to do just that when the window caught my eye again. It felt uncharacteristic of me to be so occupied with this window, but I detoured to the front porch and peeked inside anyway.
Most of the furniture had already been moved out, meaning all that was left was a single three-seater couch, a couple candlesticks on the fireplace mantle, a pristine chandelier overtop a dining room table, and the kitchenware: an oven, gas stovetop, marble countertops, and an island. I could see into the living room very clearly with the afternoon light, but the dining room was dim enough that there were a few structures I couldn't quite make out in the distance. One of them appeared to be some kind of china cabinet or bookshelf—I figured it was the former considering where it was located. The other shadow looked kind of like a grandfather clock. Or at least that's what I thought until it moved.
When I say it "moved", I don't mean to say that it picked up and walked away. If you're not familiar with the Necker Cube, I suggest you search it up, because that kind of illusion is the best way to describe what I saw. At first I was seeing the grandfather clock in a certain way—pushed into the corner of the room—and the next second my vision "corrected" and it was maybe five feet to the left of its former position. I shook my head and looked again and saw the grandfather clock in its second orientation, standing in the center of the room against the wall. I figured I was just seeing things, but even so I spent a little extra time dawdling around the Egress window, taking notes, and delaying the interior inspection.
When I finally grew a pair and went inside, I walked straight to the dining room. Sure enough, the grandfather clock was stowed away in the corner of the room. I spent a couple minutes watching it with my pencil and travel notebook out. I'm the kind of guy that likes to collect hard data when the chips are down. Unfortunately, the clock apparently already had enough fun and was content with sweating me. Oh, well.
I fitted my pencil behind my ear and pocketed my travel notebook, then flipped the rest of the first floor lights on and completed my prelim. I concluded that everything was pretty standard. If anything, the house was in better shape than I'd expect considering it presumably hasn't been lived in for a couple years. I say "presumably" because one can never count out squatters, even during those times. Mainly I was expecting more dust build up and cobwebs than there were. Perhaps someone from the department had come by recently. It's unlikely, but possible.
I did the same check upstairs and it came back mostly clean. There was a bit of staining near the attic I wanted to check for mold. Based on its color, it was probably just a minor case of Aspergillus, but better safe than sorry. Then I got to the basement, and, well, let's just count out the idea of anyone dropping by. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I found.
The first thing that caught my eye was the long, slender body of a birch tree lying pale and dead across a large portion of the even larger unfinished basement's cement flooring. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but, yep, there it was. Its crown was sealed up in the wall with only its trunk hanging out, which made me think of those medieval pillory devices which locked up people's heads and arms. Then confetti-scattered around the tree and all over the basement floor was a minefield of broken glass and ceramic tangled up with a set of random objects. And when I say random, I mean random. There was an unfurled Somali flag (the blue one with a single star in the center), some packaged drinks and condiments branded with all sorts of different languages (I could only make out Gaelic and Chinese or Japanese, I couldn't quite tell), a broken dome-shaped security camera, an otoscope (the thing the doc uses to check your ears), Hot Wheels cars (okay that one isn't so strange), and the list goes on.
At that moment, I wasn't freaked out or disgusted. I was more or less just confused. I started walking through the rubble, trying to avoid the sharp fragments but pretty confident that my steel toed boots would crush most the pieces anyway, when I heard a clink just up ahead. I was able to spot the coin in time, just before it jingled to a halt atop an old Life magazine. I picked it up and noted right away its oval shape and bronze color—clearly not American made. I tried reading it, but not only was the language not English, it appeared to be so old that most of the lettering had been filed down. I looked up at the ceiling to see if it dropped from a shelf, but there was nothing that could have been holding the coin. I considered for a moment, looking around at the other junk, and had the crazy idea that maybe all this stuff just appeared here. I popped the coin in my pocket and headed back to the van when I stopped by the tree and realized something. It wasn't a birch tree—it was a palm tree. I just didn't realize because of how ashy and decayed the bark was.
Now at this point you might think I've been acting a little nonchalant for such a strange occurrence, and I don't blame you, but if you're gonna stick around with me that's just something you're gonna have to get used to. I guess I was just born with a screw loose, but I really don't scare easily, and I tend to look at everything pragmatically. If you dig deep enough, you'll always find another plausible explanation. That being said, I do want to get to the part about Area X, so let me give you the rundown on what I learned about this basement.
I ended up trekking back to the van and picking up my gear. I was no longer running the routine inspection, obviously, but I figured I might as well throw 30 thousand dollars of scanning equipment at whatever the fuck anamoly existed in that basement. Most of it came back negative. There was a bit higher-than-usual EM interference as picked up on the voltmeters, but nothing that screamed danger close. Still, it was enough for me to set up my volt testers and IR camera while muddling through the rest of the junk. I won't bore you with another list of items, but I did find one thing of value: a diamond necklace. And not just any diamond necklace, it was one of those Queen-wearing, multi-row, big-jeweled necklaces like out of some Historical Fiction movie from the thirties. I almost didn't pocket it because I'm used to expensive items being owned by someone… someone who might want it back. But I figured if there was ever a place the finder's keeper's rule applied, it was probably in this Quantum graveyard.
7 O'clock rolled around and I hadn't eaten. I'm a pretty bulky guy, carrying my share of both muscle and fat, and most people think that means I need to eat a ton but that's really not the case. Mostly I just get dehydrated easily, especially in the summer. That said, I was bordering on famished territory and considered heading out for a bite when I heard another sound. The first thing I did was check my scanners, and sure enough the voltage needle was fully spun to the right side of the dial. EM interference. Then I went to see what had dropped. I was able to pick the object out pretty quickly since I had spent the last 6 hours staring at the mosaic of a basement floor. It was a silver briefcase, like one of those out of a crime novel, and it was cracked open.
I had this sense then that I was standing at a precipice, and if I opened the briefcase and looked inside, I wouldn't be able to stop whatever would come afterwards. Part of me deep down knew that I was just that type of guy that had to know, and maybe this was my Hamlet moment where it would be a trait gone a step too far. But then again I didn't really believe in any of that sentimental bullshit, so I opened the briefcase.
The gun surprised me a little, but not as much as the piece of paper laid atop a case file reading in large black font, "FIND ME". I expected the envelope to have some missing person file in it, but instead there were all these schematics and blueprints for some kind of device. Whatever it was, it was pretty massive. Some of the lengths were hundreds of meters long. And what's more strange is based on the blueprint's locale, it appeared to be underground. I looked back through the pages a couple times, then checked the note—nothing strange there. The gun appeared to be a simple glock. I was no gun expert, but I had been to the range pretty regularly with my construction buddies, so I got used to the feel of a pistol and rifle and some of the different names; however, I realized pretty quickly it wasn't your standard glock when I couldn't find mag-release. That's when I noticed how light the gun felt. I tried to chamber a round, but again, there was no hammer. What the hell kind of gun was this?
I ended up throwing everything back in the briefcase, including the necklace, coin, and a few Koozies I found that were branded with one of my favorite sports teams (never let an opportunity go to waste). I put up all my shit back in the van and spun over to a local burger joint, got my fill, and went home. I made sure to draft an email to the prospective buyers, telling them the house had several patches of black mold and a bit of a rat problem before drifting off to sleep. Although I really didn't do much of that.
When I woke up, I took a cold shower and downed a can of Reign, then commuted to my gym and got a lift and some sauna time in before making the trip back to the house. I brought some extra supplies with me for some experiments I cooked up while not sleeping the previous night.
First, I had two camcorders set up on a couple tripods in either corner of the basement. I wanted clear footage of these mystery objects spawning in. Then I set up a voltmeter in a similar fashion, but I had a wire extending out of it on a circuit which fed to an alarm that would blare when the reading was over 250 volts. Upstairs, I rearranged some of the furniture so that the small number of tables, chairs, clock, cabinets, and other little pillows or vases I could find were scattered across the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Then I pulled up a lawn chair to the front porch window and waited.
I didn't have to wait long though. In about a minute, I started to notice some of the objects moving. It was strange. When a few of them would shift simultaneously, it was like looking at a holographic card that would change shape depending on where your eyes were in relation to the image. Every time I saw a shift, I felt an awkward feeling in my eyes. They went blurry for a fraction of a second, then there was a twinge of pain, as if my brain couldn't handle the contradictory stimulus. It didn't get more crazy than that though—until the alarm went off.
I had cracked open the small rectangular window in the basement to the side of the house so I would hear it. It took four hours and several strange stares from passersby walking their dogs before it rang, so I was a bit lost in my thoughts, but when I heard the beep I perked up fast. It lasted for maybe 5 seconds total, but what I saw was truly miraculous. The best way I can describe it is a pool of silver or gray or translucent light emerging in the foreground between me and the objects in the different rooms. A series of twisting tentacles sprouted from the gray octopus-like head and spun in a way that reminded me of that little kids ride at the amusement parks. Then the objects started to "heat up" is the way I describe it. Their position became relative, meaning they were here one second, there another, then they popped out of existence entirely. Suddenly the rooms were all empty, then they were full of things I had never seen before. Then five seconds passed and the octopus vanished and it was back to the same old objects in their usual places.
It took a few minutes to process what I saw, and even then I wasn't sure I really saw it. I went inside and looked around at my distribution of the house's furnishings. They were all there, intact. Then I went downstairs to check the cams. I rewinded a couple minutes and played it back, but there was no flying object to be found. Instead, there was some gray static that lasted half a second and then the object, a kid's treasure chest toy, was there on the ground. But you want to know the really strange part? I rewinded the tape again, and when I watched the footage back, the treasure chest was always there.
I later came to understand that these poppings in-and-out of our reality are only conceivable to a conscious mind that can track the interference patterns—not rote computational instruments. In fact, even most people can't do it (although everyone has at least a slight awareness of it, even if only subconsciously). Plus, locations like the basement of this house are very rare and kept under tight lock. That became obvious to me two days later when, after my normal morning routine, I pulled up to a driveway and curbside filled with unmarked government vehicles. Either bravely or stupidly, I pulled up to a few officers (they were wearing suits in 85 degree weather, so I assumed…) who were idling by the large fence of crime scene tape and asked them what the score was.
"There was a crime," said the short man with a unibrow.
"Oh, is that right? Damn shame. Someone break in? I have a niece who lives nearby, so…"
The man looked at his two compatriots, both of whom were wearing sunglasses and a "get this civilian fuck out of here" expressions. "Oh, yeah," he started in a reassuring tone that was so condescending it would have annoyed anyone except me, "we found a body. We think it was a homicide. Best to keep your kids away from here for a while."
I thumbed the stubble on my chin, my other hand outstretched on the wheel, and considered moving on, but my mouth had other ideas. "That right? But uh, isn't this house vacant? I mean, I don't remember no one living in it."
The short man, now tall with temper, said, "Yeah, some squatters. We think there was a dispute over some drug money. Nothing for you to worry about though, we got it under control. Now if you wouldn't mind moving along, we have a lot of work to do."
Oh, I'm sure you do, I thought, but only said, "Of course, sir, sorry for keeping you from your job." Then I rolled up the window and cruised on, keeping my eyes on the house which slowly diminished in the side-view mirror.
Luckily I had been smart enough to break down my camp and lug home all my equipment each night, so I didn't leave anything incriminating. I didn't move the furniture back, so maybe that would come back to haunt me, but considering the kind of shit going down in that house, I didn't think they would notice.
For any of you wondering about the conclusion of the house story, I went back a couple weeks later after the suits had left and the tape was taken down and confirmed that not only was the basement entirely cleaned out, but it was no longer exhibiting any strange properties. I looked for a story related to the house, maybe a made up murder of some kind, but there was nothing. That bastard lied to me and didn't even bother to cover his story up.
Now, in the aftermath of an event such as this, I really only had one of two options. I could forget it, move on, continue living life. The necklace was surely worth a fortune. I could sell it and have enough to retire, or at least hire enough people and expand my business large enough to retire within ten or so years. Or I could take all that money and invest it in my own PI business with only a single objective: finding out what those people knew, and why they were hiding it.
I think you know me well enough by now to guess which line of reasoning appealed more to me.
***
For the sake of brevity, I'm going to omit most of my encounters along the journey to discovering Area X. There's a lot to tell, and if it appeals to you perhaps I'd be willing to share at a later date, but for now I want to get this part of the story, the more proximal part, out in the open.
Three years ago, I discovered the source of what I'll call "The Receiver". This is the device that was schematized in the documents that I found in the briefcase. What it does is a complex answer, and how it does it is pretty much all speculation, but here's what I've been able to find out: this universe we live in is a node in a network of many other spaces. These spaces exist in higher dimensions that we cannot directly perceive, but using a conceivable analogy, just think about a flower with petals. The petals are these other dimensions which bleed into our world, which is at the center. However, it's not that pretty. We see the physical world through the lens of spacetime: sizes, speeds, etc. These other dimensions don't necessarily have space or time. In fact, what actually exists there, I couldn't say. The only data I have on them is from two sources: correspondence information and server data from the secret agency (which I'll call "the Organization") that keeps this under wraps, and first-hand experience with realms from these other entities, either directly (I experience it) or through the eyes of someone else with the same or greater abilities than I possess.
I referred to these people with abilities earlier as "Antennas", and I will continue to use the term. Antennas really come in three flavors, marked by the strength of their ability: weak Antennas, like me, are able to observe spontaneous interactions between our universe and other dimensions (phase shifts) when there is a strong force of collision like existed in the basement; moderate Antennas may see phase shifts occur at any point, and they usually are able to retain memories from across the different transformations; strong Antennas, and I don't know if they exist yet, but they are able to consciously interact with these other realms and cause phase shifts to occur.
I mentioned that moderate Antennas are able to retain memories from before and after a phase shift. Technically, all Antennas have this ability, but it's about degree. I can recall only very specific instances and without much detail. Moderates are usually able to pick out much more nuanced minutiae. At the lower end of moderate scale, most of those details fade or get fuzzy over time, but for the very strong Antennas, they hold onto almost everything. One other property that scales with strength is interaction with other conscious entities. Only a small percentage of moderates are able to do this. What's interesting is that these entities can possess (yes, like ghosts) people who aren't even antennas, but no one is aware of such possession at this deep of a level. I have several companions now, and only two have had interactions with these otherworldly beings. Not all of them are malevolent, some of them are whimsical or kind, but there are a fair share of demons out there.
Getting back to the point, Area X started as a government funded project in the 70's. At that time, they were focused on a few subjects: Artificial Intelligence, DNA sequencing, and psychedelics. Yes, they were part of the infamous LSD experiments. But they looked at these subjects through a common lens—there was something that the burgeoning tech industry, fueled by the advent of a commercial computer market, was missing. As the tech giants rose in the early 2000's and began to collect mass amounts of data, this other agency was decades ahead in a different metric, although it was completely (and still is) hidden from the public. Their efforts to understand psychedelic experiences led to a formalized method of understanding interactions between multiple realities. They built certain scanning equipment to detect anomalies like the one I found in the basement; although their tools were much more sophisticated and didn't utilize voltage readings. Then they ran tests in these areas. One area in particular is a hot-bed of phase shift interactions. That's where Area X is located (and the Receiver).
The Receiver is a giant electromagnetic orb that has trapped the kind of multi-dimensional energy that causes the phase shifts; since the Organization seized control of the lab, it's effectively become a map of the Earth in relation to these other worlds. For the past twenty or so years, the Organization has been studying this map, using the data big Tech companies have collected to essentially develop a Rosetta Stone for interpreting the meaning of the fluctuations in their scanning equipment. Recently, the public, though going the long way round, was actually pretty close to a breakthrough in this same department until recently when ultra-powerful LLMs surfaced, and the whole world began going down what I'd argue is the wrong rabbit hole of language processing. But I digress.
Area X is essentially a private military base built for defending the most impactful piece of technology ever invented. With the Receiver, the Organization now has the power to essentially predict any and all future outcomes, the only thing holding them back is the limitations of their own scanning equipment which will get better with time. To put it into perspective, the Organization has access to a kind of data allocation tool which in one day can produce over ten thousand times that the Big Data companies combined would be able to filter through in the next decade. You might think, then, that the problem is merely asymmetric power, and that is certainly a concern, but it isn't the main concern. The main issue is that this organization is actively recruiting (and kidnapping) Antennas from around the world in an effort to find or make one of them into a strong Antenna. In other words, they want a subject who is able not only to see the future, but to manipulate it at will.
balance to the world. I've been working on amassing resources, capital, and building my own team, and now I'm ready. You might ask why I'm posting this here. Wouldn't it be better to keep all this secret? Well, yes, it would be. But that's the problem. Nothing is secret anymore. They know about me and the others, and if I don't make a move, they will. In a way, this is a letter directly to the organization that I know, and I'm coming.
In a different way, I wanted to release this information to the public. There are lots of people out there waking up and realizing that the world they experience is not the one others experience. If you think you might be an Antenna, don't be afraid—you have a special gift that can be controlled. If you want more details on how to control it, or if you're interested in my mission, don't be afraid to reach out. This hasn't always been my life's work, but it is now.
At least until I die.
submitted by Weathers_Writing to weatherswriting [link] [comments]
Put another way, if you throw a bunch of bouncy balls into a box, there are a number of different configurations that the balls could take on, with different speeds and magnitudes. You can calculate all of those if you have the right numbers. Now let's say you throw in another set of balls that you don't consider in your calculations of the initial set. Well, then you're not going to get an accurate picture of what's happening. Most people only see the first set and calculate based on that, but some people can see two, three, four or more sets.
You'll understand the concept better when I tell you the story, but I wanted to give you a primer on an important concept that will help you understand why this place, which I'll call "Area X", exists, and what the goals of the people who work there are.
Also note that I'm going to be using the alias "Trent" moving forward. Please refer to me as such in any direct messages.
***
Eighteen years ago I started working as an independent Home Inspector. I dropped out of community college after my first semester (not because I didn't find some of the subjects interesting, but because deference to a man or woman has never been my style) and started working some odd jobs. I did construction work for a couple years, then plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for six months. I've always found pleasure in using my hands, and getting dirty was never a problem for me. Still, having a boss really dragged ass, so I spent my free time working on creating my own business. It took a few years and lots of savings, but I finally managed to get basic set of Home Inspection equipment: Tyvek coveralls, a cheap half-face respirator, voltage & AFCI/GFCI testers, CO2 and radon monitors, an IR camera, and telescoping mirrors in addition to the boots, safety glasses, electric gloves, ladder, and toolkits I already had on hand.
My buddy at the time was in the business, but he was moving off to the coast, so he helped me get set up and even introduced me to some of his clients. Of course, by that time I had already gotten my State license, but I still was a bit apprehensive to work with insurance agencies. I thought I could make a living working independently, inspecting for mold or sizing up a house for a prospective buyer. Eventually, though, I realized I should probably take every job available to me.
Easing into the business went about as well as it could have. The clients my friend referred to me were very satisfied with my work, and I was able to retain them. Then, in order to increase my reach, I hired someone on Fiverr to build a website for my company which led to a marked increase in traffic and conversions. About six months through, I began to get on a first-name basis with the boys and girls down down at Allstate and Progressive, and they fed me some of the bigger cases. In fact, I got so booked by year's end that I had to hire someone to help manage my schedule and the Excel spreadsheet with all my finances. I capped off a successful year with a 5-star Google rating and a trip to Ireland to visit some family and friends and get piss drunk. When I got back, it was the grindstone all over again, until the summer when I discovered… well, you'll see.
First off, I want to say that I was never one to believe in the paranormal. I grew up watching the movies and hearing the ghost stories round the campfire like every other kid, but it never struck a chord with me. If I can't touch it or see it or hear it, does it really exist? Probably not. So don't go thinking this was a scared man seeing his own shadow. That being said, I had this sense that something was off about this house when I parked along the curb and looked through a large window, perhaps two times the size of my van, to a dingy, dark foyer.
The entire neighborhood was stacked with upper-middle class domiciles, though it seemed like only two thirds of them were occupied, mostly by professionals who commuted to the City every weekday, and the rest were empty. As a man who understands real estate, to say this was strange would be an understatement. Still, I had no problem appraising the mini-mansion for a couple of newlyweds looking to enter the community. I did some research on the property ahead of time, and it seems that it was owned by a couple of old timers who had gone off the grid some time ago. The water and electric bill were both unpaid dating back to 2004 (it was June of '06 now). The bank had repo'd the house (which only had about 100k left on it) and held it for a year and a half before putting it back on the market. I tried to find out more about the old couple who vanished, but there was nothing in the news.
I stepped out of the van in my coveralls and grabbed my suitcase which had my mask, gloves, and eye protection in it. I liked to do a preliminary survey first, running an eye test on the exterior then interior before bringing out the big guns (that way I could identify the areas where I think there could be problems instead of running a metal detector over the whole damn ocean seaboard). I was about to do just that when the window caught my eye again. It felt uncharacteristic of me to be so occupied with this window, but I detoured to the front porch and peeked inside anyway.
Most of the furniture had already been moved out, meaning all that was left was a single three-seater couch, a couple candlesticks on the fireplace mantle, a pristine chandelier overtop a dining room table, and the kitchenware: an oven, gas stovetop, marble countertops, and an island. I could see into the living room very clearly with the afternoon light, but the dining room was dim enough that there were a few structures I couldn't quite make out in the distance. One of them appeared to be some kind of china cabinet or bookshelf—I figured it was the former considering where it was located. The other shadow looked kind of like a grandfather clock. Or at least that's what I thought until it moved.
When I say it "moved", I don't mean to say that it picked up and walked away. If you're not familiar with the Necker Cube, I suggest you search it up, because that kind of illusion is the best way to describe what I saw. At first I was seeing the grandfather clock in a certain way—pushed into the corner of the room—and the next second my vision "corrected" and it was maybe five feet to the left of its former position. I shook my head and looked again and saw the grandfather clock in its second orientation, standing in the center of the room against the wall. I figured I was just seeing things, but even so I spent a little extra time dawdling around the Egress window, taking notes, and delaying the interior inspection.
When I finally grew a pair and went inside, I walked straight to the dining room. Sure enough, the grandfather clock was stowed away in the corner of the room. I spent a couple minutes watching it with my pencil and travel notebook out. I'm the kind of guy that likes to collect hard data when the chips are down. Unfortunately, the clock apparently already had enough fun and was content with sweating me. Oh, well.
I fitted my pencil behind my ear and pocketed my travel notebook, then flipped the rest of the first floor lights on and completed my prelim. I concluded that everything was pretty standard. If anything, the house was in better shape than I'd expect considering it presumably hasn't been lived in for a couple years. I say "presumably" because one can never count out squatters, even during those times. Mainly I was expecting more dust build up and cobwebs than there were. Perhaps someone from the department had come by recently. It's unlikely, but possible.
I did the same check upstairs and it came back mostly clean. There was a bit of staining near the attic I wanted to check for mold. Based on its color, it was probably just a minor case of Aspergillus, but better safe than sorry. Then I got to the basement, and, well, let's just count out the idea of anyone dropping by. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I found.
The first thing that caught my eye was the long, slender body of a birch tree lying pale and dead across a large portion of the even larger unfinished basement's cement flooring. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but, yep, there it was. Its crown was sealed up in the wall with only its trunk hanging out, which made me think of those medieval pillory devices which locked up people's heads and arms. Then confetti-scattered around the tree and all over the basement floor was a minefield of broken glass and ceramic tangled up with a set of random objects. And when I say random, I mean random. There was an unfurled Somali flag (the blue one with a single star in the center), some packaged drinks and condiments branded with all sorts of different languages (I could only make out Gaelic and Chinese or Japanese, I couldn't quite tell), a broken dome-shaped security camera, an otoscope (the thing the doc uses to check your ears), Hot Wheels cars (okay that one isn't so strange), and the list goes on.
At that moment, I wasn't freaked out or disgusted. I was more or less just confused. I started walking through the rubble, trying to avoid the sharp fragments but pretty confident that my steel toed boots would crush most the pieces anyway, when I heard a clink just up ahead. I was able to spot the coin in time, just before it jingled to a halt atop an old Life magazine. I picked it up and noted right away its oval shape and bronze color—clearly not American made. I tried reading it, but not only was the language not English, it appeared to be so old that most of the lettering had been filed down. I looked up at the ceiling to see if it dropped from a shelf, but there was nothing that could have been holding the coin. I considered for a moment, looking around at the other junk, and had the crazy idea that maybe all this stuff just appeared here. I popped the coin in my pocket and headed back to the van when I stopped by the tree and realized something. It wasn't a birch tree—it was a palm tree. I just didn't realize because of how ashy and decayed the bark was.
Now at this point you might think I've been acting a little nonchalant for such a strange occurrence, and I don't blame you, but if you're gonna stick around with me that's just something you're gonna have to get used to. I guess I was just born with a screw loose, but I really don't scare easily, and I tend to look at everything pragmatically. If you dig deep enough, you'll always find another plausible explanation. That being said, I do want to get to the part about Area X, so let me give you the rundown on what I learned about this basement.
I ended up trekking back to the van and picking up my gear. I was no longer running the routine inspection, obviously, but I figured I might as well throw 30 thousand dollars of scanning equipment at whatever the fuck anamoly existed in that basement. Most of it came back negative. There was a bit higher-than-usual EM interference as picked up on the voltmeters, but nothing that screamed danger close. Still, it was enough for me to set up my volt testers and IR camera while muddling through the rest of the junk. I won't bore you with another list of items, but I did find one thing of value: a diamond necklace. And not just any diamond necklace, it was one of those Queen-wearing, multi-row, big-jeweled necklaces like out of some Historical Fiction movie from the thirties. I almost didn't pocket it because I'm used to expensive items being owned by someone… someone who might want it back. But I figured if there was ever a place the finder's keeper's rule applied, it was probably in this Quantum graveyard.
7 O'clock rolled around and I hadn't eaten. I'm a pretty bulky guy, carrying my share of both muscle and fat, and most people think that means I need to eat a ton but that's really not the case. Mostly I just get dehydrated easily, especially in the summer. That said, I was bordering on famished territory and considered heading out for a bite when I heard another sound. The first thing I did was check my scanners, and sure enough the voltage needle was fully spun to the right side of the dial. EM interference. Then I went to see what had dropped. I was able to pick the object out pretty quickly since I had spent the last 6 hours staring at the mosaic of a basement floor. It was a silver briefcase, like one of those out of a crime novel, and it was cracked open.
I had this sense then that I was standing at a precipice, and if I opened the briefcase and looked inside, I wouldn't be able to stop whatever would come afterwards. Part of me deep down knew that I was just that type of guy that had to know, and maybe this was my Hamlet moment where it would be a trait gone a step too far. But then again I didn't really believe in any of that sentimental bullshit, so I opened the briefcase.
The gun surprised me a little, but not as much as the piece of paper laid atop a case file reading in large black font, "FIND ME". I expected the envelope to have some missing person file in it, but instead there were all these schematics and blueprints for some kind of device. Whatever it was, it was pretty massive. Some of the lengths were hundreds of meters long. And what's more strange is based on the blueprint's locale, it appeared to be underground. I looked back through the pages a couple times, then checked the note—nothing strange there. The gun appeared to be a simple glock. I was no gun expert, but I had been to the range pretty regularly with my construction buddies, so I got used to the feel of a pistol and rifle and some of the different names; however, I realized pretty quickly it wasn't your standard glock when I couldn't find mag-release. That's when I noticed how light the gun felt. I tried to chamber a round, but again, there was no hammer. What the hell kind of gun was this?
I ended up throwing everything back in the briefcase, including the necklace, coin, and a few Koozies I found that were branded with one of my favorite sports teams (never let an opportunity go to waste). I put up all my shit back in the van and spun over to a local burger joint, got my fill, and went home. I made sure to draft an email to the prospective buyers, telling them the house had several patches of black mold and a bit of a rat problem before drifting off to sleep. Although I really didn't do much of that.
When I woke up, I took a cold shower and downed a can of Reign, then commuted to my gym and got a lift and some sauna time in before making the trip back to the house. I brought some extra supplies with me for some experiments I cooked up while not sleeping the previous night.
First, I had two camcorders set up on a couple tripods in either corner of the basement. I wanted clear footage of these mystery objects spawning in. Then I set up a voltmeter in a similar fashion, but I had a wire extending out of it on a circuit which fed to an alarm that would blare when the reading was over 250 volts. Upstairs, I rearranged some of the furniture so that the small number of tables, chairs, clock, cabinets, and other little pillows or vases I could find were scattered across the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Then I pulled up a lawn chair to the front porch window and waited.
I didn't have to wait long though. In about a minute, I started to notice some of the objects moving. It was strange. When a few of them would shift simultaneously, it was like looking at a holographic card that would change shape depending on where your eyes were in relation to the image. Every time I saw a shift, I felt an awkward feeling in my eyes. They went blurry for a fraction of a second, then there was a twinge of pain, as if my brain couldn't handle the contradictory stimulus. It didn't get more crazy than that though—until the alarm went off.
I had cracked open the small rectangular window in the basement to the side of the house so I would hear it. It took four hours and several strange stares from passersby walking their dogs before it rang, so I was a bit lost in my thoughts, but when I heard the beep I perked up fast. It lasted for maybe 5 seconds total, but what I saw was truly miraculous. The best way I can describe it is a pool of silver or gray or translucent light emerging in the foreground between me and the objects in the different rooms. A series of twisting tentacles sprouted from the gray octopus-like head and spun in a way that reminded me of that little kids ride at the amusement parks. Then the objects started to "heat up" is the way I describe it. Their position became relative, meaning they were here one second, there another, then they popped out of existence entirely. Suddenly the rooms were all empty, then they were full of things I had never seen before. Then five seconds passed and the octopus vanished and it was back to the same old objects in their usual places.
It took a few minutes to process what I saw, and even then I wasn't sure I really saw it. I went inside and looked around at my distribution of the house's furnishings. They were all there, intact. Then I went downstairs to check the cams. I rewinded a couple minutes and played it back, but there was no flying object to be found. Instead, there was some gray static that lasted half a second and then the object, a kid's treasure chest toy, was there on the ground. But you want to know the really strange part? I rewinded the tape again, and when I watched the footage back, the treasure chest was always there.
I later came to understand that these poppings in-and-out of our reality are only conceivable to a conscious mind that can track the interference patterns—not rote computational instruments. In fact, even most people can't do it (although everyone has at least a slight awareness of it, even if only subconsciously). Plus, locations like the basement of this house are very rare and kept under tight lock. That became obvious to me two days later when, after my normal morning routine, I pulled up to a driveway and curbside filled with unmarked government vehicles. Either bravely or stupidly, I pulled up to a few officers (they were wearing suits in 85 degree weather, so I assumed…) who were idling by the large fence of crime scene tape and asked them what the score was.
"There was a crime," said the short man with a unibrow.
"Oh, is that right? Damn shame. Someone break in? I have a niece who lives nearby, so…"
The man looked at his two compatriots, both of whom were wearing sunglasses and a "get this civilian fuck out of here" expressions. "Oh, yeah," he started in a reassuring tone that was so condescending it would have annoyed anyone except me, "we found a body. We think it was a homicide. Best to keep your kids away from here for a while."
I thumbed the stubble on my chin, my other hand outstretched on the wheel, and considered moving on, but my mouth had other ideas. "That right? But uh, isn't this house vacant? I mean, I don't remember no one living in it."
The short man, now tall with temper, said, "Yeah, some squatters. We think there was a dispute over some drug money. Nothing for you to worry about though, we got it under control. Now if you wouldn't mind moving along, we have a lot of work to do."
Oh, I'm sure you do, I thought, but only said, "Of course, sir, sorry for keeping you from your job." Then I rolled up the window and cruised on, keeping my eyes on the house which slowly diminished in the side-view mirror.
Luckily I had been smart enough to break down my camp and lug home all my equipment each night, so I didn't leave anything incriminating. I didn't move the furniture back, so maybe that would come back to haunt me, but considering the kind of shit going down in that house, I didn't think they would notice.
For any of you wondering about the conclusion of the house story, I went back a couple weeks later after the suits had left and the tape was taken down and confirmed that not only was the basement entirely cleaned out, but it was no longer exhibiting any strange properties. I looked for a story related to the house, maybe a made up murder of some kind, but there was nothing. That bastard lied to me and didn't even bother to cover his story up.
Now, in the aftermath of an event such as this, I really only had one of two options. I could forget it, move on, continue living life. The necklace was surely worth a fortune. I could sell it and have enough to retire, or at least hire enough people and expand my business large enough to retire within ten or so years. Or I could take all that money and invest it in my own PI business with only a single objective: finding out what those people knew, and why they were hiding it.
I think you know me well enough by now to guess which line of reasoning appealed more to me.
***
For the sake of brevity, I'm going to omit most of my encounters along the journey to discovering Area X. There's a lot to tell, and if it appeals to you perhaps I'd be willing to share at a later date, but for now I want to get this part of the story, the more proximal part, out in the open.
Three years ago, I discovered the source of what I'll call "The Receiver". This is the device that was schematized in the documents that I found in the briefcase. What it does is a complex answer, and how it does it is pretty much all speculation, but here's what I've been able to find out: this universe we live in is a node in a network of many other spaces. These spaces exist in higher dimensions that we cannot directly perceive, but using a conceivable analogy, just think about a flower with petals. The petals are these other dimensions which bleed into our world, which is at the center. However, it's not that pretty. We see the physical world through the lens of spacetime: sizes, speeds, etc. These other dimensions don't necessarily have space or time. In fact, what actually exists there, I couldn't say. The only data I have on them is from two sources: correspondence information and server data from the secret agency (which I'll call "the Organization") that keeps this under wraps, and first-hand experience with realms from these other entities, either directly (I experience it) or through the eyes of someone else with the same or greater abilities than I possess.
I referred to these people with abilities earlier as "Antennas", and I will continue to use the term. Antennas really come in three flavors, marked by the strength of their ability: weak Antennas, like me, are able to observe spontaneous interactions between our universe and other dimensions (phase shifts) when there is a strong force of collision like existed in the basement; moderate Antennas may see phase shifts occur at any point, and they usually are able to retain memories from across the different transformations; strong Antennas, and I don't know if they exist yet, but they are able to consciously interact with these other realms and cause phase shifts to occur.
I mentioned that moderate Antennas are able to retain memories from before and after a phase shift. Technically, all Antennas have this ability, but it's about degree. I can recall only very specific instances and without much detail. Moderates are usually able to pick out much more nuanced minutiae. At the lower end of moderate scale, most of those details fade or get fuzzy over time, but for the very strong Antennas, they hold onto almost everything. One other property that scales with strength is interaction with other conscious entities. Only a small percentage of moderates are able to do this. What's interesting is that these entities can possess (yes, like ghosts) people who aren't even antennas, but no one is aware of such possession at this deep of a level. I have several companions now, and only two have had interactions with these otherworldly beings. Not all of them are malevolent, some of them are whimsical or kind, but there are a fair share of demons out there.
Getting back to the point, Area X started as a government funded project in the 70's. At that time, they were focused on a few subjects: Artificial Intelligence, DNA sequencing, and psychedelics. Yes, they were part of the infamous LSD experiments. But they looked at these subjects through a common lens—there was something that the burgeoning tech industry, fueled by the advent of a commercial computer market, was missing. As the tech giants rose in the early 2000's and began to collect mass amounts of data, this other agency was decades ahead in a different metric, although it was completely (and still is) hidden from the public. Their efforts to understand psychedelic experiences led to a formalized method of understanding interactions between multiple realities. They built certain scanning equipment to detect anomalies like the one I found in the basement; although their tools were much more sophisticated and didn't utilize voltage readings. Then they ran tests in these areas. One area in particular is a hot-bed of phase shift interactions. That's where Area X is located (and the Receiver).
The Receiver is a giant electromagnetic orb that has trapped the kind of multi-dimensional energy that causes the phase shifts; since the Organization seized control of the lab, it's effectively become a map of the Earth in relation to these other worlds. For the past twenty or so years, the Organization has been studying this map, using the data big Tech companies have collected to essentially develop a Rosetta Stone for interpreting the meaning of the fluctuations in their scanning equipment. Recently, the public, though going the long way round, was actually pretty close to a breakthrough in this same department until recently when ultra-powerful LLMs surfaced, and the whole world began going down what I'd argue is the wrong rabbit hole of language processing. But I digress.
Area X is essentially a private military base built for defending the most impactful piece of technology ever invented. With the Receiver, the Organization now has the power to essentially predict any and all future outcomes, the only thing holding them back is the limitations of their own scanning equipment which will get better with time. To put it into perspective, the Organization has access to a kind of data allocation tool which in one day can produce over ten thousand times that the Big Data companies combined would be able to filter through in the next decade. You might think, then, that the problem is merely asymmetric power, and that is certainly a concern, but it isn't the main concern. The main issue is that this organization is actively recruiting (and kidnapping) Antennas from around the world in an effort to find or make one of them into a strong Antenna. In other words, they want a subject who is able not only to see the future, but to manipulate it at will.
balance to the world. I've been working on amassing resources, capital, and building my own team, and now I'm ready. You might ask why I'm posting this here. Wouldn't it be better to keep all this secret? Well, yes, it would be. But that's the problem. Nothing is secret anymore. They know about me and the others, and if I don't make a move, they will. In a way, this is a letter directly to the organization that I know, and I'm coming.
In a different way, I wanted to release this information to the public. There are lots of people out there waking up and realizing that the world they experience is not the one others experience. If you think you might be an Antenna, don't be afraid—you have a special gift that can be controlled. If you want more details on how to control it, or if you're interested in my mission, don't be afraid to reach out. This hasn't always been my life's work, but it is now.
At least until I die.
2024.05.16 23:10 Weathers_Writing They call Silicon Valley the tech capitol of the world. They're wrong
I won't disclose its actual location, so if that's why you're here, sorry to disappoint. It's not time for that yet. However, I do think it's time to start getting the word out. I've noticed an increase in what I'll call "Antennas" lately, or people who can detect cross-planar phase shifts. Without getting into all the math (some of which I don't even know), this is basically a phenomenon which refers to entropy seeping into our universe from other realms or universes or whatever you want to call it. Simply put, people think our universe is a closed system to entropy, meaning that the disorder of any variable in our universe can only increase or decrease in direct proportion to other variables in that same system (the universe). Under this precept, we can establish rules like the Laws of Thermodynamics, and for most people, they're effective. But not for Antennas.
Put another way, if you throw a bunch of bouncy balls into a box, there are a number of different configurations that the balls could take on, with different speeds and magnitudes. You can calculate all of those if you have the right numbers. Now let's say you throw in another set of balls that you don't consider in your calculations of the initial set. Well, then you're not going to get an accurate picture of what's happening. Most people only see the first set and calculate based on that, but some people can see two, three, four or more sets.
You'll understand the concept better when I tell you the story, but I wanted to give you a primer on an important concept that will help you understand why this place, which I'll call "Area X", exists, and what the goals of the people who work there are.
Also note that I'm going to be using the alias "Trent" moving forward. Please refer to me as such in any direct messages.
***
Eighteen years ago I started working as an independent Home Inspector. I dropped out of community college after my first semester (not because I didn't find some of the subjects interesting, but because deference to a man or woman has never been my style) and started working some odd jobs. I did construction work for a couple years, then plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for six months. I've always found pleasure in using my hands, and getting dirty was never a problem for me. Still, having a boss really dragged ass, so I spent my free time working on creating my own business. It took a few years and lots of savings, but I finally managed to get basic set of Home Inspection equipment: Tyvek coveralls, a cheap half-face respirator, voltage & AFCI/GFCI testers, CO2 and radon monitors, an IR camera, and telescoping mirrors in addition to the boots, safety glasses, electric gloves, ladder, and toolkits I already had on hand.
My buddy at the time was in the business, but he was moving off to the coast, so he helped me get set up and even introduced me to some of his clients. Of course, by that time I had already gotten my State license, but I still was a bit apprehensive to work with insurance agencies. I thought I could make a living working independently, inspecting for mold or sizing up a house for a prospective buyer. Eventually, though, I realized I should probably take every job available to me.
Easing into the business went about as well as it could have. The clients my friend referred to me were very satisfied with my work, and I was able to retain them. Then, in order to increase my reach, I hired someone on Fiverr to build a website for my company which led to a marked increase in traffic and conversions. About six months through, I began to get on a first-name basis with the boys and girls down down at Allstate and Progressive, and they fed me some of the bigger cases. In fact, I got so booked by year's end that I had to hire someone to help manage my schedule and the Excel spreadsheet with all my finances. I capped off a successful year with a 5-star Google rating and a trip to Ireland to visit some family and friends and get piss drunk. When I got back, it was the grindstone all over again, until the summer when I discovered… well, you'll see.
First off, I want to say that I was never one to believe in the paranormal. I grew up watching the movies and hearing the ghost stories round the campfire like every other kid, but it never struck a chord with me. If I can't touch it or see it or hear it, does it really exist? Probably not. So don't go thinking this was a scared man seeing his own shadow. That being said, I had this sense that something was off about this house when I parked along the curb and looked through a large window, perhaps two times the size of my van, to a dingy, dark foyer.
The entire neighborhood was stacked with upper-middle class domiciles, though it seemed like only two thirds of them were occupied, mostly by professionals who commuted to the City every weekday, and the rest were empty. As a man who understands real estate, to say this was strange would be an understatement. Still, I had no problem appraising the mini-mansion for a couple of newlyweds looking to enter the community. I did some research on the property ahead of time, and it seems that it was owned by a couple of old timers who had gone off the grid some time ago. The water and electric bill were both unpaid dating back to 2004 (it was June of '06 now). The bank had repo'd the house (which only had about 100k left on it) and held it for a year and a half before putting it back on the market. I tried to find out more about the old couple who vanished, but there was nothing in the news.
I stepped out of the van in my coveralls and grabbed my suitcase which had my mask, gloves, and eye protection in it. I liked to do a preliminary survey first, running an eye test on the exterior then interior before bringing out the big guns (that way I could identify the areas where I think there could be problems instead of running a metal detector over the whole damn ocean seaboard). I was about to do just that when the window caught my eye again. It felt uncharacteristic of me to be so occupied with this window, but I detoured to the front porch and peeked inside anyway.
Most of the furniture had already been moved out, meaning all that was left was a single three-seater couch, a couple candlesticks on the fireplace mantle, a pristine chandelier overtop a dining room table, and the kitchenware: an oven, gas stovetop, marble countertops, and an island. I could see into the living room very clearly with the afternoon light, but the dining room was dim enough that there were a few structures I couldn't quite make out in the distance. One of them appeared to be some kind of china cabinet or bookshelf—I figured it was the former considering where it was located. The other shadow looked kind of like a grandfather clock. Or at least that's what I thought until it moved.
When I say it "moved", I don't mean to say that it picked up and walked away. If you're not familiar with the Necker Cube, I suggest you search it up, because that kind of illusion is the best way to describe what I saw. At first I was seeing the grandfather clock in a certain way—pushed into the corner of the room—and the next second my vision "corrected" and it was maybe five feet to the left of its former position. I shook my head and looked again and saw the grandfather clock in its second orientation, standing in the center of the room against the wall. I figured I was just seeing things, but even so I spent a little extra time dawdling around the Egress window, taking notes, and delaying the interior inspection.
When I finally grew a pair and went inside, I walked straight to the dining room. Sure enough, the grandfather clock was stowed away in the corner of the room. I spent a couple minutes watching it with my pencil and travel notebook out. I'm the kind of guy that likes to collect hard data when the chips are down. Unfortunately, the clock apparently already had enough fun and was content with sweating me. Oh, well.
I fitted my pencil behind my ear and pocketed my travel notebook, then flipped the rest of the first floor lights on and completed my prelim. I concluded that everything was pretty standard. If anything, the house was in better shape than I'd expect considering it presumably hasn't been lived in for a couple years. I say "presumably" because one can never count out squatters, even during those times. Mainly I was expecting more dust build up and cobwebs than there were. Perhaps someone from the department had come by recently. It's unlikely, but possible.
I did the same check upstairs and it came back mostly clean. There was a bit of staining near the attic I wanted to check for mold. Based on its color, it was probably just a minor case of Aspergillus, but better safe than sorry. Then I got to the basement, and, well, let's just count out the idea of anyone dropping by. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I found.
The first thing that caught my eye was the long, slender body of a birch tree lying pale and dead across a large portion of the even larger unfinished basement's cement flooring. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but, yep, there it was. Its crown was sealed up in the wall with only its trunk hanging out, which made me think of those medieval pillory devices which locked up people's heads and arms. Then confetti-scattered around the tree and all over the basement floor was a minefield of broken glass and ceramic tangled up with a set of random objects. And when I say random, I mean random. There was an unfurled Somali flag (the blue one with a single star in the center), some packaged drinks and condiments branded with all sorts of different languages (I could only make out Gaelic and Chinese or Japanese, I couldn't quite tell), a broken dome-shaped security camera, an otoscope (the thing the doc uses to check your ears), Hot Wheels cars (okay that one isn't so strange), and the list goes on.
At that moment, I wasn't freaked out or disgusted. I was more or less just confused. I started walking through the rubble, trying to avoid the sharp fragments but pretty confident that my steel toed boots would crush most the pieces anyway, when I heard a clink just up ahead. I was able to spot the coin in time, just before it jingled to a halt atop an old Life magazine. I picked it up and noted right away its oval shape and bronze color—clearly not American made. I tried reading it, but not only was the language not English, it appeared to be so old that most of the lettering had been filed down. I looked up at the ceiling to see if it dropped from a shelf, but there was nothing that could have been holding the coin. I considered for a moment, looking around at the other junk, and had the crazy idea that maybe all this stuff just appeared here. I popped the coin in my pocket and headed back to the van when I stopped by the tree and realized something. It wasn't a birch tree—it was a palm tree. I just didn't realize because of how ashy and decayed the bark was.
Now at this point you might think I've been acting a little nonchalant for such a strange occurrence, and I don't blame you, but if you're gonna stick around with me that's just something you're gonna have to get used to. I guess I was just born with a screw loose, but I really don't scare easily, and I tend to look at everything pragmatically. If you dig deep enough, you'll always find another plausible explanation. That being said, I do want to get to the part about Area X, so let me give you the rundown on what I learned about this basement.
I ended up trekking back to the van and picking up my gear. I was no longer running the routine inspection, obviously, but I figured I might as well throw 30 thousand dollars of scanning equipment at whatever the fuck anamoly existed in that basement. Most of it came back negative. There was a bit higher-than-usual EM interference as picked up on the voltmeters, but nothing that screamed danger close. Still, it was enough for me to set up my volt testers and IR camera while muddling through the rest of the junk. I won't bore you with another list of items, but I did find one thing of value: a diamond necklace. And not just any diamond necklace, it was one of those Queen-wearing, multi-row, big-jeweled necklaces like out of some Historical Fiction movie from the thirties. I almost didn't pocket it because I'm used to expensive items being owned by someone… someone who might want it back. But I figured if there was ever a place the finder's keeper's rule applied, it was probably in this Quantum graveyard.
7 O'clock rolled around and I hadn't eaten. I'm a pretty bulky guy, carrying my share of both muscle and fat, and most people think that means I need to eat a ton but that's really not the case. Mostly I just get dehydrated easily, especially in the summer. That said, I was bordering on famished territory and considered heading out for a bite when I heard another sound. The first thing I did was check my scanners, and sure enough the voltage needle was fully spun to the right side of the dial. EM interference. Then I went to see what had dropped. I was able to pick the object out pretty quickly since I had spent the last 6 hours staring at the mosaic of a basement floor. It was a silver briefcase, like one of those out of a crime novel, and it was cracked open.
I had this sense then that I was standing at a precipice, and if I opened the briefcase and looked inside, I wouldn't be able to stop whatever would come afterwards. Part of me deep down knew that I was just that type of guy that had to know, and maybe this was my Hamlet moment where it would be a trait gone a step too far. But then again I didn't really believe in any of that sentimental bullshit, so I opened the briefcase.
The gun surprised me a little, but not as much as the piece of paper laid atop a case file reading in large black font, "FIND ME". I expected the envelope to have some missing person file in it, but instead there were all these schematics and blueprints for some kind of device. Whatever it was, it was pretty massive. Some of the lengths were hundreds of meters long. And what's more strange is based on the blueprint's locale, it appeared to be underground. I looked back through the pages a couple times, then checked the note—nothing strange there. The gun appeared to be a simple glock. I was no gun expert, but I had been to the range pretty regularly with my construction buddies, so I got used to the feel of a pistol and rifle and some of the different names; however, I realized pretty quickly it wasn't your standard glock when I couldn't find mag-release. That's when I noticed how light the gun felt. I tried to chamber a round, but again, there was no hammer. What the hell kind of gun was this?
I ended up throwing everything back in the briefcase, including the necklace, coin, and a few Koozies I found that were branded with one of my favorite sports teams (never let an opportunity go to waste). I put up all my shit back in the van and spun over to a local burger joint, got my fill, and went home. I made sure to draft an email to the prospective buyers, telling them the house had several patches of black mold and a bit of a rat problem before drifting off to sleep. Although I really didn't do much of that.
When I woke up, I took a cold shower and downed a can of Reign, then commuted to my gym and got a lift and some sauna time in before making the trip back to the house. I brought some extra supplies with me for some experiments I cooked up while not sleeping the previous night.
First, I had two camcorders set up on a couple tripods in either corner of the basement. I wanted clear footage of these mystery objects spawning in. Then I set up a voltmeter in a similar fashion, but I had a wire extending out of it on a circuit which fed to an alarm that would blare when the reading was over 250 volts. Upstairs, I rearranged some of the furniture so that the small number of tables, chairs, clock, cabinets, and other little pillows or vases I could find were scattered across the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Then I pulled up a lawn chair to the front porch window and waited.
I didn't have to wait long though. In about a minute, I started to notice some of the objects moving. It was strange. When a few of them would shift simultaneously, it was like looking at a holographic card that would change shape depending on where your eyes were in relation to the image. Every time I saw a shift, I felt an awkward feeling in my eyes. They went blurry for a fraction of a second, then there was a twinge of pain, as if my brain couldn't handle the contradictory stimulus. It didn't get more crazy than that though—until the alarm went off.
I had cracked open the small rectangular window in the basement to the side of the house so I would hear it. It took four hours and several strange stares from passersby walking their dogs before it rang, so I was a bit lost in my thoughts, but when I heard the beep I perked up fast. It lasted for maybe 5 seconds total, but what I saw was truly miraculous. The best way I can describe it is a pool of silver or gray or translucent light emerging in the foreground between me and the objects in the different rooms. A series of twisting tentacles sprouted from the gray octopus-like head and spun in a way that reminded me of that little kids ride at the amusement parks. Then the objects started to "heat up" is the way I describe it. Their position became relative, meaning they were here one second, there another, then they popped out of existence entirely. Suddenly the rooms were all empty, then they were full of things I had never seen before. Then five seconds passed and the octopus vanished and it was back to the same old objects in their usual places.
It took a few minutes to process what I saw, and even then I wasn't sure I really saw it. I went inside and looked around at my distribution of the house's furnishings. They were all there, intact. Then I went downstairs to check the cams. I rewinded a couple minutes and played it back, but there was no flying object to be found. Instead, there was some gray static that lasted half a second and then the object, a kid's treasure chest toy, was there on the ground. But you want to know the really strange part? I rewinded the tape again, and when I watched the footage back, the treasure chest was always there.
I later came to understand that these poppings in-and-out of our reality are only conceivable to a conscious mind that can track the interference patterns—not rote computational instruments. In fact, even most people can't do it (although everyone has at least a slight awareness of it, even if only subconsciously). Plus, locations like the basement of this house are very rare and kept under tight lock. That became obvious to me two days later when, after my normal morning routine, I pulled up to a driveway and curbside filled with unmarked government vehicles. Either bravely or stupidly, I pulled up to a few officers (they were wearing suits in 85 degree weather, so I assumed…) who were idling by the large fence of crime scene tape and asked them what the score was.
"There was a crime," said the short man with a unibrow.
"Oh, is that right? Damn shame. Someone break in? I have a niece who lives nearby, so…"
The man looked at his two compatriots, both of whom were wearing sunglasses and a "get this civilian fuck out of here" expressions. "Oh, yeah," he started in a reassuring tone that was so condescending it would have annoyed anyone except me, "we found a body. We think it was a homicide. Best to keep your kids away from here for a while."
I thumbed the stubble on my chin, my other hand outstretched on the wheel, and considered moving on, but my mouth had other ideas. "That right? But uh, isn't this house vacant? I mean, I don't remember no one living in it."
The short man, now tall with temper, said, "Yeah, some squatters. We think there was a dispute over some drug money. Nothing for you to worry about though, we got it under control. Now if you wouldn't mind moving along, we have a lot of work to do."
Oh, I'm sure you do, I thought, but only said, "Of course, sir, sorry for keeping you from your job." Then I rolled up the window and cruised on, keeping my eyes on the house which slowly diminished in the side-view mirror.
Luckily I had been smart enough to break down my camp and lug home all my equipment each night, so I didn't leave anything incriminating. I didn't move the furniture back, so maybe that would come back to haunt me, but considering the kind of shit going down in that house, I didn't think they would notice.
For any of you wondering about the conclusion of the house story, I went back a couple weeks later after the suits had left and the tape was taken down and confirmed that not only was the basement entirely cleaned out, but it was no longer exhibiting any strange properties. I looked for a story related to the house, maybe a made up murder of some kind, but there was nothing. That bastard lied to me and didn't even bother to cover his story up.
Now, in the aftermath of an event such as this, I really only had one of two options. I could forget it, move on, continue living life. The necklace was surely worth a fortune. I could sell it and have enough to retire, or at least hire enough people and expand my business large enough to retire within ten or so years. Or I could take all that money and invest it in my own PI business with only a single objective: finding out what those people knew, and why they were hiding it.
I think you know me well enough by now to guess which line of reasoning appealed more to me.
***
For the sake of brevity, I'm going to omit most of my encounters along the journey to discovering Area X. There's a lot to tell, and if it appeals to you perhaps I'd be willing to share at a later date, but for now I want to get this part of the story, the more proximal part, out in the open.
Three years ago, I discovered the source of what I'll call "The Receiver". This is the device that was schematized in the documents that I found in the briefcase. What it does is a complex answer, and how it does it is pretty much all speculation, but here's what I've been able to find out: this universe we live in is a node in a network of many other spaces. These spaces exist in higher dimensions that we cannot directly perceive, but using a conceivable analogy, just think about a flower with petals. The petals are these other dimensions which bleed into our world, which is at the center. However, it's not that pretty. We see the physical world through the lens of spacetime: sizes, speeds, etc. These other dimensions don't necessarily have space or time. In fact, what actually exists there, I couldn't say. The only data I have on them is from two sources: correspondence information and server data from the secret agency (which I'll call "the Organization") that keeps this under wraps, and first-hand experience with realms from these other entities, either directly (I experience it) or through the eyes of someone else with the same or greater abilities than I possess.
I referred to these people with abilities earlier as "Antennas", and I will continue to use the term. Antennas really come in three flavors, marked by the strength of their ability: weak Antennas, like me, are able to observe spontaneous interactions between our universe and other dimensions (phase shifts) when there is a strong force of collision like existed in the basement; moderate Antennas may see phase shifts occur at any point, and they usually are able to retain memories from across the different transformations; strong Antennas, and I don't know if they exist yet, but they are able to consciously interact with these other realms and cause phase shifts to occur.
I mentioned that moderate Antennas are able to retain memories from before and after a phase shift. Technically, all Antennas have this ability, but it's about degree. I can recall only very specific instances and without much detail. Moderates are usually able to pick out much more nuanced minutiae. At the lower end of moderate scale, most of those details fade or get fuzzy over time, but for the very strong Antennas, they hold onto almost everything. One other property that scales with strength is interaction with other conscious entities. Only a small percentage of moderates are able to do this. What's interesting is that these entities can possess (yes, like ghosts) people who aren't even antennas, but no one is aware of such possession at this deep of a level. I have several companions now, and only two have had interactions with these otherworldly beings. Not all of them are malevolent, some of them are whimsical or kind, but there are a fair share of demons out there.
Getting back to the point, Area X started as a government funded project in the 70's. At that time, they were focused on a few subjects: Artificial Intelligence, DNA sequencing, and psychedelics. Yes, they were part of the infamous LSD experiments. But they looked at these subjects through a common lens—there was something that the burgeoning tech industry, fueled by the advent of a commercial computer market, was missing. As the tech giants rose in the early 2000's and began to collect mass amounts of data, this other agency was decades ahead in a different metric, although it was completely (and still is) hidden from the public. Their efforts to understand psychedelic experiences led to a formalized method of understanding interactions between multiple realities. They built certain scanning equipment to detect anomalies like the one I found in the basement; although their tools were much more sophisticated and didn't utilize voltage readings. Then they ran tests in these areas. One area in particular is a hot-bed of phase shift interactions. That's where Area X is located (and the Receiver).
The Receiver is a giant electromagnetic orb that has trapped the kind of multi-dimensional energy that causes the phase shifts; since the Organization seized control of the lab, it's effectively become a map of the Earth in relation to these other worlds. For the past twenty or so years, the Organization has been studying this map, using the data big Tech companies have collected to essentially develop a Rosetta Stone for interpreting the meaning of the fluctuations in their scanning equipment. Recently, the public, though going the long way round, was actually pretty close to a breakthrough in this same department until recently when ultra-powerful LLMs surfaced, and the whole world began going down what I'd argue is the wrong rabbit hole of language processing. But I digress.
Area X is essentially a private military base built for defending the most impactful piece of technology ever invented. With the Receiver, the Organization now has the power to essentially predict any and all future outcomes, the only thing holding them back is the limitations of their own scanning equipment which will get better with time. To put it into perspective, the Organization has access to a kind of data allocation tool which in one day can produce over ten thousand times that the Big Data companies combined would be able to filter through in the next decade. You might think, then, that the problem is merely asymmetric power, and that is certainly a concern, but it isn't the main concern. The main issue is that this organization is actively recruiting (and kidnapping) Antennas from around the world in an effort to find or make one of them into a strong Antenna. In other words, they want a subject who is able not only to see the future, but to manipulate it at will.
balance to the world. I've been working on amassing resources, capital, and building my own team, and now I'm ready. You might ask why I'm posting this here. Wouldn't it be better to keep all this secret? Well, yes, it would be. But that's the problem. Nothing is secret anymore. They know about me and the others, and if I don't make a move, they will. In a way, this is a letter directly to the organization that I know, and I'm coming.
In a different way, I wanted to release this information to the public. There are lots of people out there waking up and realizing that the world they experience is not the one others experience. If you think you might be an Antenna, don't be afraid—you have a special gift that can be controlled. If you want more details on how to control it, or if you're interested in my mission, don't be afraid to reach out. This hasn't always been my life's work, but it is now.
At least until I die.
submitted by Weathers_Writing to nosleep [link] [comments]
Put another way, if you throw a bunch of bouncy balls into a box, there are a number of different configurations that the balls could take on, with different speeds and magnitudes. You can calculate all of those if you have the right numbers. Now let's say you throw in another set of balls that you don't consider in your calculations of the initial set. Well, then you're not going to get an accurate picture of what's happening. Most people only see the first set and calculate based on that, but some people can see two, three, four or more sets.
You'll understand the concept better when I tell you the story, but I wanted to give you a primer on an important concept that will help you understand why this place, which I'll call "Area X", exists, and what the goals of the people who work there are.
Also note that I'm going to be using the alias "Trent" moving forward. Please refer to me as such in any direct messages.
***
Eighteen years ago I started working as an independent Home Inspector. I dropped out of community college after my first semester (not because I didn't find some of the subjects interesting, but because deference to a man or woman has never been my style) and started working some odd jobs. I did construction work for a couple years, then plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for six months. I've always found pleasure in using my hands, and getting dirty was never a problem for me. Still, having a boss really dragged ass, so I spent my free time working on creating my own business. It took a few years and lots of savings, but I finally managed to get basic set of Home Inspection equipment: Tyvek coveralls, a cheap half-face respirator, voltage & AFCI/GFCI testers, CO2 and radon monitors, an IR camera, and telescoping mirrors in addition to the boots, safety glasses, electric gloves, ladder, and toolkits I already had on hand.
My buddy at the time was in the business, but he was moving off to the coast, so he helped me get set up and even introduced me to some of his clients. Of course, by that time I had already gotten my State license, but I still was a bit apprehensive to work with insurance agencies. I thought I could make a living working independently, inspecting for mold or sizing up a house for a prospective buyer. Eventually, though, I realized I should probably take every job available to me.
Easing into the business went about as well as it could have. The clients my friend referred to me were very satisfied with my work, and I was able to retain them. Then, in order to increase my reach, I hired someone on Fiverr to build a website for my company which led to a marked increase in traffic and conversions. About six months through, I began to get on a first-name basis with the boys and girls down down at Allstate and Progressive, and they fed me some of the bigger cases. In fact, I got so booked by year's end that I had to hire someone to help manage my schedule and the Excel spreadsheet with all my finances. I capped off a successful year with a 5-star Google rating and a trip to Ireland to visit some family and friends and get piss drunk. When I got back, it was the grindstone all over again, until the summer when I discovered… well, you'll see.
First off, I want to say that I was never one to believe in the paranormal. I grew up watching the movies and hearing the ghost stories round the campfire like every other kid, but it never struck a chord with me. If I can't touch it or see it or hear it, does it really exist? Probably not. So don't go thinking this was a scared man seeing his own shadow. That being said, I had this sense that something was off about this house when I parked along the curb and looked through a large window, perhaps two times the size of my van, to a dingy, dark foyer.
The entire neighborhood was stacked with upper-middle class domiciles, though it seemed like only two thirds of them were occupied, mostly by professionals who commuted to the City every weekday, and the rest were empty. As a man who understands real estate, to say this was strange would be an understatement. Still, I had no problem appraising the mini-mansion for a couple of newlyweds looking to enter the community. I did some research on the property ahead of time, and it seems that it was owned by a couple of old timers who had gone off the grid some time ago. The water and electric bill were both unpaid dating back to 2004 (it was June of '06 now). The bank had repo'd the house (which only had about 100k left on it) and held it for a year and a half before putting it back on the market. I tried to find out more about the old couple who vanished, but there was nothing in the news.
I stepped out of the van in my coveralls and grabbed my suitcase which had my mask, gloves, and eye protection in it. I liked to do a preliminary survey first, running an eye test on the exterior then interior before bringing out the big guns (that way I could identify the areas where I think there could be problems instead of running a metal detector over the whole damn ocean seaboard). I was about to do just that when the window caught my eye again. It felt uncharacteristic of me to be so occupied with this window, but I detoured to the front porch and peeked inside anyway.
Most of the furniture had already been moved out, meaning all that was left was a single three-seater couch, a couple candlesticks on the fireplace mantle, a pristine chandelier overtop a dining room table, and the kitchenware: an oven, gas stovetop, marble countertops, and an island. I could see into the living room very clearly with the afternoon light, but the dining room was dim enough that there were a few structures I couldn't quite make out in the distance. One of them appeared to be some kind of china cabinet or bookshelf—I figured it was the former considering where it was located. The other shadow looked kind of like a grandfather clock. Or at least that's what I thought until it moved.
When I say it "moved", I don't mean to say that it picked up and walked away. If you're not familiar with the Necker Cube, I suggest you search it up, because that kind of illusion is the best way to describe what I saw. At first I was seeing the grandfather clock in a certain way—pushed into the corner of the room—and the next second my vision "corrected" and it was maybe five feet to the left of its former position. I shook my head and looked again and saw the grandfather clock in its second orientation, standing in the center of the room against the wall. I figured I was just seeing things, but even so I spent a little extra time dawdling around the Egress window, taking notes, and delaying the interior inspection.
When I finally grew a pair and went inside, I walked straight to the dining room. Sure enough, the grandfather clock was stowed away in the corner of the room. I spent a couple minutes watching it with my pencil and travel notebook out. I'm the kind of guy that likes to collect hard data when the chips are down. Unfortunately, the clock apparently already had enough fun and was content with sweating me. Oh, well.
I fitted my pencil behind my ear and pocketed my travel notebook, then flipped the rest of the first floor lights on and completed my prelim. I concluded that everything was pretty standard. If anything, the house was in better shape than I'd expect considering it presumably hasn't been lived in for a couple years. I say "presumably" because one can never count out squatters, even during those times. Mainly I was expecting more dust build up and cobwebs than there were. Perhaps someone from the department had come by recently. It's unlikely, but possible.
I did the same check upstairs and it came back mostly clean. There was a bit of staining near the attic I wanted to check for mold. Based on its color, it was probably just a minor case of Aspergillus, but better safe than sorry. Then I got to the basement, and, well, let's just count out the idea of anyone dropping by. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I found.
The first thing that caught my eye was the long, slender body of a birch tree lying pale and dead across a large portion of the even larger unfinished basement's cement flooring. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but, yep, there it was. Its crown was sealed up in the wall with only its trunk hanging out, which made me think of those medieval pillory devices which locked up people's heads and arms. Then confetti-scattered around the tree and all over the basement floor was a minefield of broken glass and ceramic tangled up with a set of random objects. And when I say random, I mean random. There was an unfurled Somali flag (the blue one with a single star in the center), some packaged drinks and condiments branded with all sorts of different languages (I could only make out Gaelic and Chinese or Japanese, I couldn't quite tell), a broken dome-shaped security camera, an otoscope (the thing the doc uses to check your ears), Hot Wheels cars (okay that one isn't so strange), and the list goes on.
At that moment, I wasn't freaked out or disgusted. I was more or less just confused. I started walking through the rubble, trying to avoid the sharp fragments but pretty confident that my steel toed boots would crush most the pieces anyway, when I heard a clink just up ahead. I was able to spot the coin in time, just before it jingled to a halt atop an old Life magazine. I picked it up and noted right away its oval shape and bronze color—clearly not American made. I tried reading it, but not only was the language not English, it appeared to be so old that most of the lettering had been filed down. I looked up at the ceiling to see if it dropped from a shelf, but there was nothing that could have been holding the coin. I considered for a moment, looking around at the other junk, and had the crazy idea that maybe all this stuff just appeared here. I popped the coin in my pocket and headed back to the van when I stopped by the tree and realized something. It wasn't a birch tree—it was a palm tree. I just didn't realize because of how ashy and decayed the bark was.
Now at this point you might think I've been acting a little nonchalant for such a strange occurrence, and I don't blame you, but if you're gonna stick around with me that's just something you're gonna have to get used to. I guess I was just born with a screw loose, but I really don't scare easily, and I tend to look at everything pragmatically. If you dig deep enough, you'll always find another plausible explanation. That being said, I do want to get to the part about Area X, so let me give you the rundown on what I learned about this basement.
I ended up trekking back to the van and picking up my gear. I was no longer running the routine inspection, obviously, but I figured I might as well throw 30 thousand dollars of scanning equipment at whatever the fuck anamoly existed in that basement. Most of it came back negative. There was a bit higher-than-usual EM interference as picked up on the voltmeters, but nothing that screamed danger close. Still, it was enough for me to set up my volt testers and IR camera while muddling through the rest of the junk. I won't bore you with another list of items, but I did find one thing of value: a diamond necklace. And not just any diamond necklace, it was one of those Queen-wearing, multi-row, big-jeweled necklaces like out of some Historical Fiction movie from the thirties. I almost didn't pocket it because I'm used to expensive items being owned by someone… someone who might want it back. But I figured if there was ever a place the finder's keeper's rule applied, it was probably in this Quantum graveyard.
7 O'clock rolled around and I hadn't eaten. I'm a pretty bulky guy, carrying my share of both muscle and fat, and most people think that means I need to eat a ton but that's really not the case. Mostly I just get dehydrated easily, especially in the summer. That said, I was bordering on famished territory and considered heading out for a bite when I heard another sound. The first thing I did was check my scanners, and sure enough the voltage needle was fully spun to the right side of the dial. EM interference. Then I went to see what had dropped. I was able to pick the object out pretty quickly since I had spent the last 6 hours staring at the mosaic of a basement floor. It was a silver briefcase, like one of those out of a crime novel, and it was cracked open.
I had this sense then that I was standing at a precipice, and if I opened the briefcase and looked inside, I wouldn't be able to stop whatever would come afterwards. Part of me deep down knew that I was just that type of guy that had to know, and maybe this was my Hamlet moment where it would be a trait gone a step too far. But then again I didn't really believe in any of that sentimental bullshit, so I opened the briefcase.
The gun surprised me a little, but not as much as the piece of paper laid atop a case file reading in large black font, "FIND ME". I expected the envelope to have some missing person file in it, but instead there were all these schematics and blueprints for some kind of device. Whatever it was, it was pretty massive. Some of the lengths were hundreds of meters long. And what's more strange is based on the blueprint's locale, it appeared to be underground. I looked back through the pages a couple times, then checked the note—nothing strange there. The gun appeared to be a simple glock. I was no gun expert, but I had been to the range pretty regularly with my construction buddies, so I got used to the feel of a pistol and rifle and some of the different names; however, I realized pretty quickly it wasn't your standard glock when I couldn't find mag-release. That's when I noticed how light the gun felt. I tried to chamber a round, but again, there was no hammer. What the hell kind of gun was this?
I ended up throwing everything back in the briefcase, including the necklace, coin, and a few Koozies I found that were branded with one of my favorite sports teams (never let an opportunity go to waste). I put up all my shit back in the van and spun over to a local burger joint, got my fill, and went home. I made sure to draft an email to the prospective buyers, telling them the house had several patches of black mold and a bit of a rat problem before drifting off to sleep. Although I really didn't do much of that.
When I woke up, I took a cold shower and downed a can of Reign, then commuted to my gym and got a lift and some sauna time in before making the trip back to the house. I brought some extra supplies with me for some experiments I cooked up while not sleeping the previous night.
First, I had two camcorders set up on a couple tripods in either corner of the basement. I wanted clear footage of these mystery objects spawning in. Then I set up a voltmeter in a similar fashion, but I had a wire extending out of it on a circuit which fed to an alarm that would blare when the reading was over 250 volts. Upstairs, I rearranged some of the furniture so that the small number of tables, chairs, clock, cabinets, and other little pillows or vases I could find were scattered across the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Then I pulled up a lawn chair to the front porch window and waited.
I didn't have to wait long though. In about a minute, I started to notice some of the objects moving. It was strange. When a few of them would shift simultaneously, it was like looking at a holographic card that would change shape depending on where your eyes were in relation to the image. Every time I saw a shift, I felt an awkward feeling in my eyes. They went blurry for a fraction of a second, then there was a twinge of pain, as if my brain couldn't handle the contradictory stimulus. It didn't get more crazy than that though—until the alarm went off.
I had cracked open the small rectangular window in the basement to the side of the house so I would hear it. It took four hours and several strange stares from passersby walking their dogs before it rang, so I was a bit lost in my thoughts, but when I heard the beep I perked up fast. It lasted for maybe 5 seconds total, but what I saw was truly miraculous. The best way I can describe it is a pool of silver or gray or translucent light emerging in the foreground between me and the objects in the different rooms. A series of twisting tentacles sprouted from the gray octopus-like head and spun in a way that reminded me of that little kids ride at the amusement parks. Then the objects started to "heat up" is the way I describe it. Their position became relative, meaning they were here one second, there another, then they popped out of existence entirely. Suddenly the rooms were all empty, then they were full of things I had never seen before. Then five seconds passed and the octopus vanished and it was back to the same old objects in their usual places.
It took a few minutes to process what I saw, and even then I wasn't sure I really saw it. I went inside and looked around at my distribution of the house's furnishings. They were all there, intact. Then I went downstairs to check the cams. I rewinded a couple minutes and played it back, but there was no flying object to be found. Instead, there was some gray static that lasted half a second and then the object, a kid's treasure chest toy, was there on the ground. But you want to know the really strange part? I rewinded the tape again, and when I watched the footage back, the treasure chest was always there.
I later came to understand that these poppings in-and-out of our reality are only conceivable to a conscious mind that can track the interference patterns—not rote computational instruments. In fact, even most people can't do it (although everyone has at least a slight awareness of it, even if only subconsciously). Plus, locations like the basement of this house are very rare and kept under tight lock. That became obvious to me two days later when, after my normal morning routine, I pulled up to a driveway and curbside filled with unmarked government vehicles. Either bravely or stupidly, I pulled up to a few officers (they were wearing suits in 85 degree weather, so I assumed…) who were idling by the large fence of crime scene tape and asked them what the score was.
"There was a crime," said the short man with a unibrow.
"Oh, is that right? Damn shame. Someone break in? I have a niece who lives nearby, so…"
The man looked at his two compatriots, both of whom were wearing sunglasses and a "get this civilian fuck out of here" expressions. "Oh, yeah," he started in a reassuring tone that was so condescending it would have annoyed anyone except me, "we found a body. We think it was a homicide. Best to keep your kids away from here for a while."
I thumbed the stubble on my chin, my other hand outstretched on the wheel, and considered moving on, but my mouth had other ideas. "That right? But uh, isn't this house vacant? I mean, I don't remember no one living in it."
The short man, now tall with temper, said, "Yeah, some squatters. We think there was a dispute over some drug money. Nothing for you to worry about though, we got it under control. Now if you wouldn't mind moving along, we have a lot of work to do."
Oh, I'm sure you do, I thought, but only said, "Of course, sir, sorry for keeping you from your job." Then I rolled up the window and cruised on, keeping my eyes on the house which slowly diminished in the side-view mirror.
Luckily I had been smart enough to break down my camp and lug home all my equipment each night, so I didn't leave anything incriminating. I didn't move the furniture back, so maybe that would come back to haunt me, but considering the kind of shit going down in that house, I didn't think they would notice.
For any of you wondering about the conclusion of the house story, I went back a couple weeks later after the suits had left and the tape was taken down and confirmed that not only was the basement entirely cleaned out, but it was no longer exhibiting any strange properties. I looked for a story related to the house, maybe a made up murder of some kind, but there was nothing. That bastard lied to me and didn't even bother to cover his story up.
Now, in the aftermath of an event such as this, I really only had one of two options. I could forget it, move on, continue living life. The necklace was surely worth a fortune. I could sell it and have enough to retire, or at least hire enough people and expand my business large enough to retire within ten or so years. Or I could take all that money and invest it in my own PI business with only a single objective: finding out what those people knew, and why they were hiding it.
I think you know me well enough by now to guess which line of reasoning appealed more to me.
***
For the sake of brevity, I'm going to omit most of my encounters along the journey to discovering Area X. There's a lot to tell, and if it appeals to you perhaps I'd be willing to share at a later date, but for now I want to get this part of the story, the more proximal part, out in the open.
Three years ago, I discovered the source of what I'll call "The Receiver". This is the device that was schematized in the documents that I found in the briefcase. What it does is a complex answer, and how it does it is pretty much all speculation, but here's what I've been able to find out: this universe we live in is a node in a network of many other spaces. These spaces exist in higher dimensions that we cannot directly perceive, but using a conceivable analogy, just think about a flower with petals. The petals are these other dimensions which bleed into our world, which is at the center. However, it's not that pretty. We see the physical world through the lens of spacetime: sizes, speeds, etc. These other dimensions don't necessarily have space or time. In fact, what actually exists there, I couldn't say. The only data I have on them is from two sources: correspondence information and server data from the secret agency (which I'll call "the Organization") that keeps this under wraps, and first-hand experience with realms from these other entities, either directly (I experience it) or through the eyes of someone else with the same or greater abilities than I possess.
I referred to these people with abilities earlier as "Antennas", and I will continue to use the term. Antennas really come in three flavors, marked by the strength of their ability: weak Antennas, like me, are able to observe spontaneous interactions between our universe and other dimensions (phase shifts) when there is a strong force of collision like existed in the basement; moderate Antennas may see phase shifts occur at any point, and they usually are able to retain memories from across the different transformations; strong Antennas, and I don't know if they exist yet, but they are able to consciously interact with these other realms and cause phase shifts to occur.
I mentioned that moderate Antennas are able to retain memories from before and after a phase shift. Technically, all Antennas have this ability, but it's about degree. I can recall only very specific instances and without much detail. Moderates are usually able to pick out much more nuanced minutiae. At the lower end of moderate scale, most of those details fade or get fuzzy over time, but for the very strong Antennas, they hold onto almost everything. One other property that scales with strength is interaction with other conscious entities. Only a small percentage of moderates are able to do this. What's interesting is that these entities can possess (yes, like ghosts) people who aren't even antennas, but no one is aware of such possession at this deep of a level. I have several companions now, and only two have had interactions with these otherworldly beings. Not all of them are malevolent, some of them are whimsical or kind, but there are a fair share of demons out there.
Getting back to the point, Area X started as a government funded project in the 70's. At that time, they were focused on a few subjects: Artificial Intelligence, DNA sequencing, and psychedelics. Yes, they were part of the infamous LSD experiments. But they looked at these subjects through a common lens—there was something that the burgeoning tech industry, fueled by the advent of a commercial computer market, was missing. As the tech giants rose in the early 2000's and began to collect mass amounts of data, this other agency was decades ahead in a different metric, although it was completely (and still is) hidden from the public. Their efforts to understand psychedelic experiences led to a formalized method of understanding interactions between multiple realities. They built certain scanning equipment to detect anomalies like the one I found in the basement; although their tools were much more sophisticated and didn't utilize voltage readings. Then they ran tests in these areas. One area in particular is a hot-bed of phase shift interactions. That's where Area X is located (and the Receiver).
The Receiver is a giant electromagnetic orb that has trapped the kind of multi-dimensional energy that causes the phase shifts; since the Organization seized control of the lab, it's effectively become a map of the Earth in relation to these other worlds. For the past twenty or so years, the Organization has been studying this map, using the data big Tech companies have collected to essentially develop a Rosetta Stone for interpreting the meaning of the fluctuations in their scanning equipment. Recently, the public, though going the long way round, was actually pretty close to a breakthrough in this same department until recently when ultra-powerful LLMs surfaced, and the whole world began going down what I'd argue is the wrong rabbit hole of language processing. But I digress.
Area X is essentially a private military base built for defending the most impactful piece of technology ever invented. With the Receiver, the Organization now has the power to essentially predict any and all future outcomes, the only thing holding them back is the limitations of their own scanning equipment which will get better with time. To put it into perspective, the Organization has access to a kind of data allocation tool which in one day can produce over ten thousand times that the Big Data companies combined would be able to filter through in the next decade. You might think, then, that the problem is merely asymmetric power, and that is certainly a concern, but it isn't the main concern. The main issue is that this organization is actively recruiting (and kidnapping) Antennas from around the world in an effort to find or make one of them into a strong Antenna. In other words, they want a subject who is able not only to see the future, but to manipulate it at will.
balance to the world. I've been working on amassing resources, capital, and building my own team, and now I'm ready. You might ask why I'm posting this here. Wouldn't it be better to keep all this secret? Well, yes, it would be. But that's the problem. Nothing is secret anymore. They know about me and the others, and if I don't make a move, they will. In a way, this is a letter directly to the organization that I know, and I'm coming.
In a different way, I wanted to release this information to the public. There are lots of people out there waking up and realizing that the world they experience is not the one others experience. If you think you might be an Antenna, don't be afraid—you have a special gift that can be controlled. If you want more details on how to control it, or if you're interested in my mission, don't be afraid to reach out. This hasn't always been my life's work, but it is now.
At least until I die.
2024.05.16 09:34 oxdart Applying for ILR from Skilled Worker Visa: How many months of bank statements? Proof of continuous residence other than Council Tax? Proof of current address other than tenancy agreement? Please help.
Hi: I am applying for ILR after 5 years on a Skilled Worker Visa and had three questions:
submitted by oxdart to ukvisa [link] [comments]
- Ho many months of bank statements does the application require? My understanding is that one month dated within the last calendar month but I keep seeing people say 3 or even 6 so I am a bit confused.
- I don't have access to all my council tax bills--I lived for one year in Twer Hamlets and paid my taxes there but the account is no longer accessible and I tried calling and asking for help but they don't seem to know how I can access that year's bill again. I do have access to the other four years. What are some other documents I can use to prove continuous residence?
- I live in a flat owned by my brother who lives in Australia at the moment. I pay him every month to help with his mortgage but we obviously don't have a formal rental contact. What other document can I use to prove my current address? I have the council tax bill, I have utilities in my name and I also have my UK driving license with my home address listed. Can I use these instead?
2024.05.14 00:00 ClaimSalt1697 A MASTER LIST of real world tie-ins to ACOTAR: Part 2—World Map, Items, Terms & Other ✨🌙
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Part 1: Characters and Courts
Part 2: World Map, Items, Terms & Other - YOU ARE HERE
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https://preview.redd.it/tblspn7am90d1.png?width=832&format=png&auto=webp&s=0e1c5d11b53736e3ac49b29e6734dba821f44e4e
Artist of Prythian map: P-dulcis on redbubble
https://preview.redd.it/jxxgjkfim90d1.png?width=842&format=png&auto=webp&s=00944156c7edd485265a4cad7f66c5ac8e41b31d
THE CAULDRON
https://preview.redd.it/pjo213ymm90d1.png?width=840&format=png&auto=webp&s=de57f0ba269bd4b48b2782eb380da90a8ba2d6eb
DAEMATI
To revisit Part 1: Characters & Courts, click HERE
submitted by ClaimSalt1697 to acotar [link] [comments]
⚠️ WARNING: Maasverse Spoilers—Proceed with Caution ⚠️
-----------------Part 1: Characters and Courts
Part 2: World Map, Items, Terms & Other - YOU ARE HERE
-----------------
If this is the first post you've landed on, see Part 1 above for an introductory explanation to this two part post.
https://preview.redd.it/tblspn7am90d1.png?width=832&format=png&auto=webp&s=0e1c5d11b53736e3ac49b29e6734dba821f44e4e
UK + IRELAND
PRYTHIANA combination of Prydain, the old Welsh name for Britain, and Brython, which translates to “Ancient Britons” from Welsh.HYBERN
A riff of Hibernia, the Classical Latin name for Ireland.
Artist of Prythian map: P-dulcis on redbubble
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN-PARALLEL LOCATIONS
ILLYRIAThe Ancient Greeks used the term Illyria to define a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. The numerous peoples who populated those areas were known collectively as the Illyrians. The region itself is quite mountainous.THE MIDDLE
May refer to the Midlands, the central part of England, though geographically the Prythian map places the Middle central to Prythian, not central to England; with the Prythian inclusion of Scotland, the Middle on Prythian maps is located further north than the actual Midlands of England.UNDER THE MOUNTAIN
A potential nod to the Schiehallion, a cone-shaped mountain often referred to as the center of Scotland. It's name comes from the Gaelic Sìth Chailleann, meaning "fairy hill of the Caledonians." On the southwestern side of the mountain is said to lie the well-concealed Uamh Tom a' Mhòr-fhir, a cave serving as an entrance to the underworld.THE WESTERN ISLES
Note: As the Schiehallion lies in the middle of Scotland (the Night Court) and not the middle of mainland UK (Prythian), the Sciehallion could instead be representative of Ramiel.
May refer to the Outer Hebrides, also known as the Western Isles, which is an island chain off the west coast of mainland Scotland. They are also sometimes known as Innse Gall, a Gaelic term meaning "islands of the foreigners/strangers" which was originally used by mainland Highlanders when the islands were ruled by the Norse.THE PRISON
ACOTAR role: The Prison is located in the Western Isles.
Though located in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland rather than the Outer, the Prison may be a nod to Beinn Shiantaidh, which is Scottish Gaelic for "holy mountain." It is located on the western side of the Island of Jura and is the second highest peak of the Paps of Jura.VALLAHAN
Fun fact: Pap is of Old Norse origin and means breast.
Valhalla is the hall of slain warriors in Norse mythology, located in Asgard, where those who die in combat live in peace under the leadership of the god, Odin. They are said to dwell in Valhalla until the events of Ragnarök, where they will then march out to fight in aid of Odin against the jötnar, a type of being in Germanic mythology.ADRIATA
ACOTAR role: A faerie territory located in the northwest portion of the Continent.
The Adriatic Sea is located in Southern Europe and separates the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan Peninsula. It contains more than 1,300 islands.BOG OF OORID
The Oorid Lough is a freshwater lake in the west of Ireland.CRETEA
Crete is the largest and southernmost island in Greece.LAPPLUND
ACOTAR role: Where Miryam and Drakon's people lived following the War.
Lapland is a geographic region in Northern Fennoscandia which covers much of the Nordic countries. It is also a province of Sweden and the largest region of Finland.ITICA
ACOTAR role: Where the Cauldron was hidden.
Ithaca is an island featured in the Odyssey and was the island home of Odysseus. It is also a real island in Greece. The Kathara Monastery is located in Ithaca.MONTESERE
ACOTAR role: Itica is one of three temples where the feet of the Cauldron were hidden.
Montserrat is a mountain range near Barcelona.RAVENNIA
ACOTAR role: Montesere is a fae territory located in the Continent's NW and is considered generally wealthy. They allied with the loyalists in the War.
Ravenna is located in Northern Italy and was the capital of the Western Roman Empire.DUNMERE
ACOTAR role: Ravenna is a fae territory on the Continent and allied with the Loyalists during the War.
Dunmere is a hamlet in Cornwall, England.NEVA
ACOTAR role: Dunmere is a town located within the Night Court, between Velaris and the sea.
The Neva is the fourth-largest river in Europe and is located in northwestern Russia.SCYTHIA
ACOTAR role: One of the largest human cities on the Continent and is where the Archeron sisters' father travels to trade.
The Scythians were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people who migrated from Central Asia to the steppes of modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia.ROSEHALL
ACOTAR role: One of the territories of the human lands on the Continent, ruled by Queen Vassa. They are said to be a horse loving people.
Rosehall is the name of a remote hamlet in the Scottish Highlands.
Fun fact: The 2nd Duke of Westminster acquired the Rosehall estate and his mistress at the time, Coco Chanel, redecorated the interior to her own liking. Winston Churchill, a close friend of the Duke, also visited the estate.
ACOTAR role: Mentioned in ACOFAS and is theorized to be the place where Azriel's mother resides.
AFRICA-PARALLEL LOCATIONS
THE BLACK LANDBlack Land translates from Kemet, a popular ancient name for Egypt, which is derived from the color of the fertile black soil along the cultivated area of the Nile valley.THE ERYTHRIAN SEA
ACOTAR role: A region of the continent where human slaves were ruled over by a High Fae queen. Miryam and Drakon joined the mortals in the War and freed Miryam's people by crossing the desert and eventually the sea.
The Erythraean Sea, originally an Ancient Greek geographical designation, has been used as a name for the Red Sea which lies between Africa and Asia.
ACOTAR role: Drakon used his magic to split the Erythian Sea.
ASIA-PARALLEL LOCATIONS
XIANXi'an is the the most populous city in Northwest China snd the second most popular tourist destination in China.BHARAT
ACOTAR role: A Fae territory on the Continent that allied with the Loyalists during the War. A large majority of the Dawn Court is made of Fae from Xian, including Thesan's mother. Feyre remarks that Amren may have molded her mortal body after their peoples.
Bhārat is one of the two principal official short names for the Republic of India.RASK
ACOTAR role: The Archerons lost their fortune when their father's ships sank on the way to Bharat.
May refer to Rask, a city in Iran, that serves as both capital of its county and district.
ACOTAR role: A Fae territory on the Continent and allied with the Loyalists during the War.
ADDITIONAL LOCATIONS
VELARISPossibly derived from the Latin vēlo, meaning "to veil, cover, wrap" along with "to hide, conceal" and "to clothe in." Could also derive from the Latin vēlum, meaning "to veil, curtain" and also indicates a tarpaulin acting as cover for outdoor spaces.THE WALL
No singular reference, but the presence of a wall separating one race from another, often humans from mythical beings, is rife throughout history, mythology, and fantasy.THE MOONSTONE PALACE
One from each category that has loose ties to ACOTAR: (1) Hadrian's Wall, ie the Roman Wall, a defensive fortification of the Roman province of Britannia. It spanned from coast to coast, cutting across the entire width of Northern England. (2) In Norse mythology, the Master Builder asking for the hand of the goddess Freyja as payment for constructing a wall around Asgard to defend the gods. (3) The English village of Wall in Neil Gaiman's Stardust, named after the wall separating the land of Faerie from the mortal realm, highly guarded and cautioned against for mortals seeking to pass through.
Romans linked moonstone to the moon goddess Diana (goddess of wild animals and the hunt) and Ancient Greeks linked it to their lunar deities Artemis, Hecate, and Selene.SIDRA RIVER
Sidra is a name of Latin origin and means "Goddess of the stars" or "like a star."RAMIEL
Ramiel is a fallen Watcher, a type of Biblical angel, one of the 20 Watchers that rebelled against God by mating with mortal women, therefore creating the Nephilim (Shadowhunters, anyone?). Ramiel means "God has thundered." Ramiel is sometimes conflated with Remiel, also known as Jeremiel, meaning "God shall have mercy," as is listed as one of the seven Holy Angels. He is the archangel of hope and is responsible for divine visions and guiding the souls of the faithful into Heaven.POOL OF STARLIGHT
No plausible connection found, though there is a famous pool in Greek mythology—a pool Mnemosyne presided over in Hades, counterpart to the river Lethe. Dead souls would drink from Lethe to wipe their past lives from remembrance when reincarnated. Those who drank from Mnemosyne's pool remembered and halted their transmigration of the soul.ATHELWOOD
Ethel (also aethel) is an Old English word meaning "noble." Athelwood can mean "noblewood."GOLLIAN MOUNTAINS
ACOTAR role: Morrigan's estate located in the Night Court.
Göll is one of the named Valkyries from Norse mythology. Her name means "tumult," or "noise, battle."MYRMIDONS
ACOTAR role: Where the Valkyries were slain during the War.
In Ancient Greek mythology, the Myrmidons were an Ancient Greek tribe. In the Iliad, they are the soldiers commanded by Achilles. Myrmidon has also come to mean "a follower or subordinate of a powerful person, typically one who is unscrupulous or carries out orders unquestioningly."CESERA
ACOTAR role: A set of mountains serving as the border between the Day Court and the Night Court from which the Illyrians migrated.
No direct reference found, but may allude to Caesarea, the name of numerous cities and locations throughout the Roman Empire.SANGRAVAH
ACOTAR role: One of three temples where the feet of the Cauldron were hidden.
No direct reference found (and I lost my mind searching for one). Closest I came to was the similarly sounding Angharad, a feminine Welsh name, long associated with Welsh royalty, history, and myth, including Arthurian legend.GREENFIELD VILLAGE
ACOTAR role: One of three temples where the feet of the Cauldron were hidden.
No direct connection found, though Greenfield is the name of several villages of England.WINDHAVEN CAMP
ACOTAR role: A neighboring village to where Feyre grew up and where Isaac Hale's wife is from.
No connection found, though a separate Windhaven also appears in Tower of Dawn in the TOG series. Altun—Windhaven being the rough translation—is located in a three-peaked mountain range and is the home of Sartaq's hearth-mother and family.THE WOLF'S DEN
Fun fact: Windhaven is the name of a science-fiction novel by George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle following a group of humans who crash-landed on a foreign planet and learned to craft their own wings out of the spaceship wreckage.
No connection found, BUT fun fact: there is a named Wolf's Den castle in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones) that now serves as a prison. "All the days were much the same inside the Wolf's Den, and any change was usually for the worse." A Dance with Dragons, Ch 29SILVERSPRING CREEK
ACOTAR role: The name of the worst tavern in Velaris that Nesta is known to frequent.
No plausible connection found, BUT fun fact: "Silver Springs" is a song written by Stevie Nicks, performed by Fleetwood Mac, and is so strongly ACOTAR-coded even my non-loving playlist-to-book self can't deny it. If you want more bread crumbles that SJM is a Stevie Nicks fan, "Rhiannon" and it's lyric origins have potential ties to the Rhiannon of TOG.STRYGA'S CASTLE
You could be my silver spring
Blue-green colors flashin'
I would be your only dream
Your shinin' autumn ocean crashin'
Time cas t a spell on you,
but you won't forget me
I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me
ACOTAR role: Silverspring Creek is a stream running through Feyre's human village, near where she hunted rabbits.
No direct reference found, but due to Stryga/the Weaver resembling a female demon akin to a vampire in Slavic mythology (see the Monster section above), it is possible Stryga's former home, before she was confined to her cottage, is reminiscent of Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula and the Transylvanian Castle complete with three vampiric sister brides who entice men with their beauty and charm before proceeding to feed upon them.
The Night Sky
ARKTOSArktos, also written Arctus, means "bear" in Ancient Greek. Arktos was a centaur who fought against the Lapith spearmen. The Arktos Megale (aka Ursa Major, the Great Bear) is one of the original 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy who drew on earlier works by Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian astronomers.CARYNTH
ACOTAR role: One of the three regarded holy stars (the furthest left star) of the Illyrians and serves as part of the symbol for the Night Court. The echelon of Arktosian is reserved for Illyrians who survive the Blood Right but fail to reach Ramiel.
May refer to Corinth, an ancient city that was one of the largest and most important of Greece, or Carinthia, the southernmost Austrian state in the Eastern Alps, noted for its mountains and lakes.ORISTES
ACOTAR role: One of the three regarded holy stars (the middle star) of the Illyrians and serves as part of the symbol for the Night Court. The echelon of Carynthian is reserved for Illyrians who scale the summit of Ramiel during the Blood Rite and are considered elite warriors.
Orestes (also spelled Orestes) means "stands on a mountain" and he is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and myths concerning his madness and purification.Locations not listed: A slew of various more minor locations have not been listed, including the Four Market Squares of Velaris, certain cottages and houses, and even the Ironcrest Illyrian war-camp.
ACOTAR role: One of the three regarded holy stars (the furthest right star) of the Illyrians and serves as part of the symbol for the Night Court. The echelon of Oristian is reserved for Illyrians who make it to the Ramiel during the Blood Rite but don't reach the top.
https://preview.redd.it/jxxgjkfim90d1.png?width=842&format=png&auto=webp&s=00944156c7edd485265a4cad7f66c5ac8e41b31d
THE CAULDRON
There are many magical cauldrons present in various mythologies, one being the Pair Dadeni in Welsh mythology, a magical cauldron able to resurrect the dead, and the coire ansic of Irish mythology, the cauldron of the chief god of the Tuatha Dé Danann, which never ran empty.TRUTH-TELLER
Possibly inspired by Fragarach, an Irish mythological sword known as "The Whisperer" or "The Answerer." It was the sword of Nuada, the first high king; it was said that no one could tell a lie with Fragarach at their throat and that the sword inflicting wounds from which no one could recover.THE HARP
May refer to the uaithne, the magical harp of the Dagda, the chief god of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish mythology. It could control men's emotions and change the seasons.THE MASK
In Egyptian culture, death masks were designed to guide the spirits of those mummified into the next world.THE UNKNOWN 4th TROVE ITEM
Seen in a vision by Nesta via Lathys, which we now know to be the Horn, and may refer to the Gjallarhorn of Norse mythology, the sound of which is said to herald the beginning of Ragnarok.ATARAXIA
Ataraxia, in Ancient Greek philosophy, was a state of calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet, ie tranquility of the mind. It was considered the ideal mental state for soldiers entering battle.GWYDION
ACOTAR Role: Nesta's Made sword.
Gwydion is a name meaning "born of the trees" and is the given name of Gwydion fab Dôn, a magician, hero, and trickster of Welsh mythology. Caer Wydion, the castle of Gwydion, was the traditional Welsh name for the Milky Way.NARBEN
ACOTAR role: The Starsword and twin to Truth-Teller.
No direct reference found, though narben in German means "scar."OUROBOROS MIRROR
ACOTAR role: A lost sword from the Dread Trove.
The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a serpent or a dragon eating its own tale, first present in ancient Egyptian iconography and the Greek magical tradition, the term itself deriving from Ancient Greek. It has been used frequently and extensively throughout fantasy literature. It often symbolizes the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.BOOK OF BREATHINGS
The Books of Breathing are a set of ancient Egyptian funerary texts that are intended to enable those deceased to continue their existence in the afterlife. It is a simplified form of the Book of the Dead.VERITAS ORB
Veritas is of Latin origin meaning "truth." It is the name for the Roman virtue of truthfulness and in Roman mythology, Veritas is the Goddess of Truth. Universities and colleges such as Harvard use the term veritas as their motto.SYMPHONIA
Symphonia is Greek in origin and was used to denote a variety of musical instruments.AMARANTHA'S NECKLACE AND RING (JURIAN'S FINGER AND EYE)
Jurian's finger bone and eye, kept by Amarantha, are reminiscent of relics and reliquaries, often religious in nature. Relics typically consist of the physical remains or personal affects of a saint and the reliquary is the container that holds them.FAEBANE
Possibly inspired by wolfsbane (aka aconite or monkshood), a poisonous flower ancient Greeks would poison arrows and bait with to hunt wolves. It is lethal and often fatal and is an oft-used plant and poison within the fantasy genre.
Fun fact: In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet himself was killed with an aconite-laced blade.
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DAEMATI
Potentially a combination of the Greek word dae (to give) and the concept of mati, labeled as "the evil eye" in Greek classical antiquity. Daemati may effectively mean "to give the evil eye."THE WEAVER'S SONG
The Weaver's song, sung when Feyre was stealing Rhysand's ring from her cottage, is similar to "The Twa Sisters," a traditional murder ballad dating back to mid 17th century England. It tells of two sisters who travel down to a body of water where the older one pushes the younger one in. A harp or a fiddle is then made out of the murdered sister's body, which plays itself and sings about her murder.-----------------
To revisit Part 1: Characters & Courts, click HERE
2024.05.13 11:44 canary2147 Which a better, more stable employer, Toyota or VinFast? And why VinFast will struggle find workers in North Carolina
Big question is IF VinFast ever build factory in North Carolina, USA. I think they not ever build due lack of funds to build and slowest progress with no building and many design changes. But if VinFast do build factory can they find people to work it?
I think they have big challenge with Toyota building seven factory on one site in Liberty, North Carolina. It a $13.9 investment, bigger then all VinFast combined. And it suppose to employ 5,000 people at Toyota with production start in early 2025. Toyota and VinFast only 39 minute apart, which is small drive in America standards. Can VinFast fill 7,500 job even if they moonshot happen?
Toyota already hiring now. If person apply, they take tests and find out in half day if they get hired. They already get best talents in area.
If you looking for manufacture job, you choose Toyota or you choosing VinFast??? Here an article in Automotive News with background on Toyota plans. What you think?
Automotive News. 12. May 2024
LIBERTY, N.C. — Some of Toyota's sharpest environmental critics attack the world's largest automaker for not having done enough to enable a transition to electric vehicles.
A huge hole here — and the bustle of activity taking place within and around it — is the Japanese automaker's $13.9 billion argument otherwise.
Here in this hamlet of about 2,100 residents, just over 20 miles from downtown Greensboro, N.C., thousands of construction workers from around the country are building a vast, self-contained industrial park dedicated to the single mission of building batteries for the automaker's future EVs, plug-in hybrids and traditional hybrids.
It's a massive undertaking, Toyota's largest investment in one location, with multiple buildings in various stages of completion — most of which will eventually boast a half-million or a million square feet under its roof.
Seven buildings in all are dedicated to making batteries, with two production lines planned for each: 10 lines will build battery packs for future EVs and plug-in hybrids; four will build battery packs for hybrids.
An on-site supplier building, Fuji Springs, will make the "cans" of each battery cell and other components. A full-time fire department with three drive-thru bays and other ancillary support structures are also being built.
The phased project, which began removing more than 25 million cubic yards of earth in late 2022, is scheduled to begin producing its first salable batteries in the first quarter of 2025 for a three-row EV that will be assembled in Georgetown, Ky. It will remain under construction until at least late 2027 or early 2028, said Sean Suggs, president of the Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina complex.
"Things are progressing really, really nicely," Suggs said. "We're in the heat of trial activity as we speak, doing trial activity in our first building. We've got about 300 team members that are on-site each day; the rest of them [around 500] are in our headquarters location in Greensboro." There are 1,000 in the queue waiting on a start date, he added.
At full capacity, the completed complex will be able to produce up to 30 gigawatt-hours of batteries per year and will employ about 5,100 people.
Power intensive
On an exclusive tour of the facility last week with Automotive News, Suggs — a veteran Toyota and Nissan manufacturing executive whose last post was heading Toyota's Mississippi plant, where the Corolla is made — talked about the intensity of manufacturing batteries compared with vehicles. The facility "will use six times the electricity of a normal manufacturing plant, because of what we have to do to produce the batteries," Suggs said.
Unlike traditional auto manufacturing, which relies on moving assembly lines to piece together larger components from smaller parts, the process for building batteries and battery packs means the complex will operate much more like a specialty supplier.
Raw materials — lithium, cobalt, magnesium and other vital minerals — will arrive by truck after being shipped from mines around the world and delivered to east coast ports about three hours away. The bulk minerals will be stored outside each battery manufacturing building and piped inside to be mixed into a purple-grayish proprietary slurry.
The slurry gets spread across an ultrathin ribbon of copper, dried, rolled and folded along with an equally thin plastic film separator into a cellphone-sized rectangle, crushed together and placed in a thin metal can along with electrolyte, then welded shut with exposed poles, forming each individual prismatic cell. The entirety of the cell production is done primarily by machine in clean rooms, with workers monitoring and directing the process in protective clothing from head to toe and subjected to air showers upon entering to remove any potential outside contaminants that could bespoil the battery.
The sealed lithium ion battery cells are then assembled into battery packs of various sizes based on the need of the product being produced. Once assembled, they are charged, tested and then allowed to "rest" for a period before being tested again, to make sure that each battery is both fully functional and able to hold and maintain a charge. Only then will the finished battery pack be shipped to one of Toyota's manufacturing plants, Suggs said.
Energy challenges
In the construction process, Toyota has been able to improve how each successive piece of the complex is built, Suggs said, allowing later buildings to be put up faster than earlier ones. Toyota also found other ways to save, including building its own on-site cement plant using limestone extracted as part of the initial earthworks process as source material for the concrete.
Roughly 1,000 of the 1,800 acres on the megasite is being developed, while about 300 acres is taken up by Dodsons Lake and nearby shoreland. Suggs said the lake area, named after the land's previous owner, will be developed into an environmental education center for primary and secondary students that is being designed by college students from North Carolina A&T, a historically black land grant research university in Greensboro.
Yet while construction crews and Toyota have been able to "kaizen" their process, the site's eventual operation looks destined to be less than optimally efficient, at least from an environmental standpoint. For example, even though there's a rail line adjacent to the site, and its existence was touted by Toyota in its initial announcement, neither the raw materials coming in from ocean ports or finished battery packs heading for assembly plants will be delivered via rail, Suggs said. Instead, both will be delivered to and from the rural site by truck, which is much less efficient than rail.
Another example is that at least a portion of the electricity powering the complex comes from Duke Energy's four-unit, 2,462-megawatt coal-fired Roxboro Plant about 60 miles northeast on the North Carolina-Virginia border, a Toyota spokesperson said. The utility would not provide a breakdown of the sourcing of the electricity being used for Toyota's development, pointing only to its owned-generation mix from 2023 across its six-state service area: 55 percent nuclear, 32 percent natural gas, 11 percent coal, and the remaining a mix of solar and hydro.
The Roxboro plant — which opened in 1966 and is one of the largest remaining coal-fired power plants in the nation according to Duke Energy — isn't scheduled to be retired until 2035, when it is to be replaced by a pair of power plants burning somewhat cleaner natural gas, the utility said.
On the Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina website, the company says it is "committed to using 100% renewable energy at this new facility to produce its batteries" as part of the automaker's pledge to be carbon neutral for its vehicles and operations by 2050. A spokesperson said Toyota "is buying energy credits from a wind farm, so we will operate at 100 percent renewable energy when we start production next year."
Hiring underway
Toyota opened a hiring and training center in Greensboro where prospective applicants can come in, be tested and find out within about half a day whether or not they'll be offered a job. Once they get an offer and a start date, they'll go through about 10 weeks of training before beginning work in one of the buildings, said April Mason, plant services general manager at the complex. For Suggs, the steady stream of applicants has been a welcome surprise.
"I've been doing this a long time and a lot of different sites, and I'll tell you that for the first time in my career, I'm not losing my mind or hair over hiring," he said. "It's a weird feeling."
Toyota's $13.9 billion N.C. battery complex juiced for production Automotive News (autonews.com)
submitted by canary2147 to VinFastComm [link] [comments]
I think they have big challenge with Toyota building seven factory on one site in Liberty, North Carolina. It a $13.9 investment, bigger then all VinFast combined. And it suppose to employ 5,000 people at Toyota with production start in early 2025. Toyota and VinFast only 39 minute apart, which is small drive in America standards. Can VinFast fill 7,500 job even if they moonshot happen?
Toyota already hiring now. If person apply, they take tests and find out in half day if they get hired. They already get best talents in area.
If you looking for manufacture job, you choose Toyota or you choosing VinFast??? Here an article in Automotive News with background on Toyota plans. What you think?
Toyota's massive $13.9B battery complex prepping to start production next year to power hybrids, EVs
When the complex is finished in 2028, it will employ 5,100 people and produce 30 GWh of batteries each year. The first EV batteries are due in 2025.Automotive News. 12. May 2024
LIBERTY, N.C. — Some of Toyota's sharpest environmental critics attack the world's largest automaker for not having done enough to enable a transition to electric vehicles.
A huge hole here — and the bustle of activity taking place within and around it — is the Japanese automaker's $13.9 billion argument otherwise.
Here in this hamlet of about 2,100 residents, just over 20 miles from downtown Greensboro, N.C., thousands of construction workers from around the country are building a vast, self-contained industrial park dedicated to the single mission of building batteries for the automaker's future EVs, plug-in hybrids and traditional hybrids.
It's a massive undertaking, Toyota's largest investment in one location, with multiple buildings in various stages of completion — most of which will eventually boast a half-million or a million square feet under its roof.
Seven buildings in all are dedicated to making batteries, with two production lines planned for each: 10 lines will build battery packs for future EVs and plug-in hybrids; four will build battery packs for hybrids.
An on-site supplier building, Fuji Springs, will make the "cans" of each battery cell and other components. A full-time fire department with three drive-thru bays and other ancillary support structures are also being built.
The phased project, which began removing more than 25 million cubic yards of earth in late 2022, is scheduled to begin producing its first salable batteries in the first quarter of 2025 for a three-row EV that will be assembled in Georgetown, Ky. It will remain under construction until at least late 2027 or early 2028, said Sean Suggs, president of the Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina complex.
"Things are progressing really, really nicely," Suggs said. "We're in the heat of trial activity as we speak, doing trial activity in our first building. We've got about 300 team members that are on-site each day; the rest of them [around 500] are in our headquarters location in Greensboro." There are 1,000 in the queue waiting on a start date, he added.
At full capacity, the completed complex will be able to produce up to 30 gigawatt-hours of batteries per year and will employ about 5,100 people.
Power intensive
On an exclusive tour of the facility last week with Automotive News, Suggs — a veteran Toyota and Nissan manufacturing executive whose last post was heading Toyota's Mississippi plant, where the Corolla is made — talked about the intensity of manufacturing batteries compared with vehicles. The facility "will use six times the electricity of a normal manufacturing plant, because of what we have to do to produce the batteries," Suggs said.
Unlike traditional auto manufacturing, which relies on moving assembly lines to piece together larger components from smaller parts, the process for building batteries and battery packs means the complex will operate much more like a specialty supplier.
Raw materials — lithium, cobalt, magnesium and other vital minerals — will arrive by truck after being shipped from mines around the world and delivered to east coast ports about three hours away. The bulk minerals will be stored outside each battery manufacturing building and piped inside to be mixed into a purple-grayish proprietary slurry.
The slurry gets spread across an ultrathin ribbon of copper, dried, rolled and folded along with an equally thin plastic film separator into a cellphone-sized rectangle, crushed together and placed in a thin metal can along with electrolyte, then welded shut with exposed poles, forming each individual prismatic cell. The entirety of the cell production is done primarily by machine in clean rooms, with workers monitoring and directing the process in protective clothing from head to toe and subjected to air showers upon entering to remove any potential outside contaminants that could bespoil the battery.
The sealed lithium ion battery cells are then assembled into battery packs of various sizes based on the need of the product being produced. Once assembled, they are charged, tested and then allowed to "rest" for a period before being tested again, to make sure that each battery is both fully functional and able to hold and maintain a charge. Only then will the finished battery pack be shipped to one of Toyota's manufacturing plants, Suggs said.
Energy challenges
In the construction process, Toyota has been able to improve how each successive piece of the complex is built, Suggs said, allowing later buildings to be put up faster than earlier ones. Toyota also found other ways to save, including building its own on-site cement plant using limestone extracted as part of the initial earthworks process as source material for the concrete.
Roughly 1,000 of the 1,800 acres on the megasite is being developed, while about 300 acres is taken up by Dodsons Lake and nearby shoreland. Suggs said the lake area, named after the land's previous owner, will be developed into an environmental education center for primary and secondary students that is being designed by college students from North Carolina A&T, a historically black land grant research university in Greensboro.
Yet while construction crews and Toyota have been able to "kaizen" their process, the site's eventual operation looks destined to be less than optimally efficient, at least from an environmental standpoint. For example, even though there's a rail line adjacent to the site, and its existence was touted by Toyota in its initial announcement, neither the raw materials coming in from ocean ports or finished battery packs heading for assembly plants will be delivered via rail, Suggs said. Instead, both will be delivered to and from the rural site by truck, which is much less efficient than rail.
Another example is that at least a portion of the electricity powering the complex comes from Duke Energy's four-unit, 2,462-megawatt coal-fired Roxboro Plant about 60 miles northeast on the North Carolina-Virginia border, a Toyota spokesperson said. The utility would not provide a breakdown of the sourcing of the electricity being used for Toyota's development, pointing only to its owned-generation mix from 2023 across its six-state service area: 55 percent nuclear, 32 percent natural gas, 11 percent coal, and the remaining a mix of solar and hydro.
The Roxboro plant — which opened in 1966 and is one of the largest remaining coal-fired power plants in the nation according to Duke Energy — isn't scheduled to be retired until 2035, when it is to be replaced by a pair of power plants burning somewhat cleaner natural gas, the utility said.
On the Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina website, the company says it is "committed to using 100% renewable energy at this new facility to produce its batteries" as part of the automaker's pledge to be carbon neutral for its vehicles and operations by 2050. A spokesperson said Toyota "is buying energy credits from a wind farm, so we will operate at 100 percent renewable energy when we start production next year."
Hiring underway
Toyota opened a hiring and training center in Greensboro where prospective applicants can come in, be tested and find out within about half a day whether or not they'll be offered a job. Once they get an offer and a start date, they'll go through about 10 weeks of training before beginning work in one of the buildings, said April Mason, plant services general manager at the complex. For Suggs, the steady stream of applicants has been a welcome surprise.
"I've been doing this a long time and a lot of different sites, and I'll tell you that for the first time in my career, I'm not losing my mind or hair over hiring," he said. "It's a weird feeling."
Toyota's $13.9 billion N.C. battery complex juiced for production Automotive News (autonews.com)
2024.05.12 20:25 AdhesivenessNo8495 This is what he really wanted all the subathon cash for
submitted by AdhesivenessNo8495 to Farfa [link] [comments]2024.05.12 16:36 DPVaughan List of Settlements on Nirm
I've made a chronological list of all the settlements mentioned on Nirn if you're interested in having a look.
Some notes:
It's after midnight in my timezone, so if I don't reply to comments (assuming there are any!) it's because I've gone to sleep and I'll check back when I'm awake. :)
(Also, I'm making adjustments as people make good points)
MERETHIC ERA
submitted by DPVaughan to teslore [link] [comments]
Some notes:
- I've used the modern name and where each settlement is situated within modern borders
- I've noted the earliest attested date of the settlement
- I've noted the race who founded it (as per the earliest date known)
- I've noted dates where known, or inferred estimates (some very approximate)
- I've typically only included forts and strongholds where there is a signicant accompanying civilian population (Orc Strongholds are an exception because they're a way of life, not solely military in nature)
- Most ruins I've only included if they were known to have had a civilian population, with the exception of Dwemer and Ayleid ruins which are all included
- I've taken the information from The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Wiki.
It's after midnight in my timezone, so if I don't reply to comments (assuming there are any!) it's because I've gone to sleep and I'll check back when I'm awake. :)
(Also, I'm making adjustments as people make good points)
MERETHIC ERA
- Halls of Colossus [Ehlnofey?], Elsweyr, ME? (u/DrkvnKavod pointed out that dating of settlements prior to Adamantium Tower is problematic, so moving it from "Dawn Era?")
- Alabaster [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Bruk'ra [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Corinthe [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Dune [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Helkarn [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Orcrest [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Rawl'kha [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Rimmen [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Senchal [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Torval [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Verkarth [Khajiit], Elsweyr, ME
- Firsthold [Aldmer], Summerset Isles, mid-early ME
- Bal Fell [Aldmer], Morrowind, ME
- Imperial City [Aldmer], Cyrodiil, mid-ME
- Alinor [Altmer], Summerset Isles, ME
- Cloudrest [Altmer], Summerset Isles, ME
- Shimmerene [Altmer], Summerset Isles, ME
- Sunhold [Altmer], Summerset Isles, ME
- Karndar Watch [Altmer], Summerset Isles, ME (before ME 1100)
- Abagarlas [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, ME
- Anga [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, ME
- Arpenia [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, ME
- Atatar [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, ME
- Ceyatatar [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, ME
- Fanacasecul [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, ME
- Belarata [Ayleid], Valenwood, ME
- Ilayas [Ayleid], Valenwood, ME
- Salas En [Ayleid], Hammerfell, ME
- Falinesti [Bosmer], Valenwood, ME
- Haven [Bosmer], Valenwood, ME
- Laidal [Falmer], Skyrim, ME
- Nchuand-Zel [Dwemer], Skyrim, ME
- Reinhold's Retreat [Nede], Hammerfell, ME
- Chorrol [Nede], Cyrodiil, ME
- Jylkurfyk [Atmoran], Atmora, ME
- Skywatch [Altmer], Summerset Isles, mid-ME
- Saarthal [Atmoran], Skyrim, mid-ME
- Tel Aruhn [Aldmer], Morrowind, mid-ME
- Ald Redaynia [Adlmer], Morrowind, mid-ME
- Narsis [Chimer], Morrowind, late-middle ME
- Heimlyn Keep [Chimer], Morrowind, late-middle ME or early 1E
- Narfinsel [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before late ME
- Sercen [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before late ME
- Riverhold [Khajiit], Elsweyr, late ME
- Ninendava [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, late ME
- Vilverin [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, late ME
- Cormount [Bosmer], Valenwood, late ME
- Gnisis [Chimer], Morrowind, late ME
- Necrom [Chimer], Morrowind, late ME
- Windhelm [Atmoran], Skyrim, late ME
- Bromjunaar [Atmoran], Skyrim, ME
- Granitehall [Atmoran], Skyrim, ME
- Whiterun [Atmoran], Skyrim, late ME
- Elden Root [Bosmer], Valenwood, before 1E 0
- Gil-Var-Delle [Bosmer], Valenwood, after 1E 0
- Delodiil [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before early 1E
- Winterhold [Atomran], Skyrim, before early 1E
- Fort Sungard [Atmoran], Skyrim, before early 1E
- Ald Sotha [Chimer], Morrowind, before early 1E
- Old Hroldan [Reachmen], Skyrim, before early 1E
- Phaer [Altmer], Skyrim, early 1E
- Vulkhel Guard [Altmer], Summerset Isles, early 1E
- Ald'ruhn [Chimer], Morrowind, early 1E (centuries before 1E 700)
- Senie [Chimer], Morrowind, early 1E
- Blacklight [Chimer], Morrowind, early 1E
- Kragenmoor [Chimer], Morrowind, early 1E
- Davon's Watch [Chimer], Morrowind, early 1E
- Hatching Pools [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, early 1E?
- Blackrose [Lilmothiit], Black Marsh, early E1?
- Hissmir [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, early 1E?
- Glenbridge [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, early 1E?
- Ixtaxh-Thitithil-Meht [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, early 1E?
- Rockgrove [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, early 1E?
- Xinchei-Konu [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, early 1E?
- Bogmother [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, early 1E?
- Stillrise Village [Kothringi], Black Marsh, early 1E?
- Greenheart [Bosmer], Valenwood, early 1E
- Cragwallow [Atmoran], Skyrim, early 1E
- Volunruud [Atmoran], Skyrim, early 1E
- Korvanjund [Atmoran], Skyrim, early 1E
- Anvil [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, early 1E
- Vundeheim [Atmoran], Skyrim, after 1E 140?
- Solitude [Atmoran], Sykrim, before 1E 143
- Bright-Throat Tribe Village [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, before 1E 198
- Twyllbek [Ayleid], Black Marsh, after 1E 198
- Silyanorn [Ayleid], Black Marsh, after 1E 198
- Gandranen [Ayleid], Black Marsh, after 1E 198
- Fanacas [Nede], Cyrodiil, before 1E 200
- Raldbthar [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 240
- Ebonheart [Chimer], Morrowind, before 1E 240
- Mournhold [Chimer], Morrowind, before 1E 240
- Garlas Malatar [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Lindai [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Lipsand Tarn [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Mackamentain [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Malada [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Miscarcand [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Morahame [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Nenalata [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Nenyond Twyll [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Nonungalo [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Sardavar Leed [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Sedor [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Silorn [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Vahtacen [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Vanua [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Varlaisvea [Ayleid], Hammerfell, before 1E 242
- Varondo [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Varsa Baalim [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Vindasel [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Welke [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Wendir [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Nornalhorst [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 242
- Kagrenzel [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 243 (u/Minor_Edits pointed out that this settlement existed earlier than my "before 1E 700" date)
- Mzulft [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 243 (u/Minor_Edits pointed out that I'd missed this settlement)
- Culotte [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 243
- Elenglynn [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 243
- Thormar [Ayleid], Valenwood, before 1E 243
- Leyawiin [Nibenese], Cyrodiil, before 1E 243
- Anutwyll [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 243
- Talwinque [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 243
- Telepe [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 243
- Rulanyil's Fall [Ayleid], Valenwood, before 1E 243
- Abamath [Orsimer], Valenwood, 1E 243
- Hectahame [Ayleid], Valenwood, after 1E 243
- Marbruk [Ayleid], Valenwood, after 1E 243
- Erokii [Ayleid], High Rock, after 1E 243 (u/Atharaon pointed out the the founding after the Alessian Rebellion, so my previous date of ME is incorrect)
- Daggerfall [proto-Breton], High Rock, 1E 246
- Gladesong Arboretum [proto-Breton], The Systres, circa 1E 330
- Glimmertarn [proto-Breton], The Systres, after 1E 330
- Tuinh [proto-Breton], The Systres, after 1E 330
- Kemen [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 1E 361
- Sariellen's Sword [Ayleid], Black Marsh, before 1E 361
- Kvatch [Nede], Cyrodiil, before 1E 361
- Silaseli [Ayleid], High Rock, after 1E 361
- Eyearata [Ayleid], High Rock, after 1E 361?
- Moriseli [Ayleid], High Rock, after 1E 361?
- Anticlere [Nord], High Rock, before 1E 369 (formerly known as Reich Gradkeep)
- Arenthia [Bosmer], Valenwood, before 1E 400
- Kemel-Ze [Dwemer], Morrowind, before 1E 416
- Bisnensel [Ayleid], High Rock, between 1E 375 and 1E 452
- Coral Cliffs [proto-Breton], The Systres, between 1E 330 and 1E 660
- Skingrad [Colovian], Cyrodiil, before 1E 468
- Lillandril [Altmer], Summerset Isles, before 1E 470
- Volenfell [Dwemer], Hammerfell, between 1E 240 and 1E 700
- Shornhelm [proto-Breton], High Rock, before 1E 480
- Jehanna [proto-Breton], High Rock, by 1E 498
- Arkngthamz [Dwemer], Skyrim, after 1E 420
- Arkngthamz-Pghng [Dwemer], Hammerfell, after 1E 420
- Nchardak [Dwemer], Morrowind, before 1E 668
- Alftand [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 700
- Avanchnzel [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 700
- Darkhollow [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 700
- Bthuand [Dwemer], Morrowind, before 1E 700
- Bthzark [Dwemer], Hammerfell, before 1E 700
- Ragnthar [Dwemer], Hammerfell, before 1E 700
- Santaki [Dwemer], Hammerfell, before 1E 700
- Deeping Drome [Dwemer], High Rock, before E1 700
- Infernium Forge [Dwemer], Tamriel, before 1E 700
- Irkngthand [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 700
- Mudan [Dwemer], Morrowind, before 1E 700
- Mzahnch [Dwemer], Morrowind, before 1E 700
- Mzund [Dwemer], Tamriel, before 1E 700
- Nchuleft [Dwemer], Morrowind, before 1E 700
- Bamz-Amschend [Dwemer], Morrowind, before 1E 700
- Rkugamz [Dwemer], Morrowind, before 1E 700
- Nchuleftingth [Dwemer], Morrowind, before 1E 700
- Vardnknd [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 700
- Reich Parkeep [Chimer], Morrowind, before 1E 700
- Bthardamz [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 700
- Bthar-Zel [Dwemer], Skyrim, before 1E 700
- Vos [Chimer], before 1E 700
- Raven Spring [Breton], High Rock, before 1E 700
- Elinhir [Nede], Hammerfell, before 1E 800
- Wayrest [Breton], High Rock, 1E 800
- Hegathe [Yokudan], Hammerfell, 1E 808
- Abah's Landing [Yokudan], Hammerfell, circa 1E 808
- Lainlyn [Yokudan], Hammerfell, before 1E 808 (formerly known as Tava's Blessing)
- Old Totambu [Yokudan], Yokuda, before 1E 808
- Rihad [Yokudan], Hammerfell, circa 1E 808
- Sentinel [Yokudan], Hammerfell, circa 1E 808
- Taneth [Yokudan], Hammerfell, circa 1E 808
- Bergama [Yokudan], Hammerfell, 1E 800s after 1E 808
- Northpoint [Breton], High Rock, 1E 800s
- Aswala Stables [Yokudan], Hammerfell, after 1E 808
- Belkarth [Yokudan], Hammerfell, after 1E 808
- Gilane [Yokudan], Hammerfell, after 1E 808
- Totambu [Yokudan], Hammerfell, after 1E 808
- Markarth [Reachmen], Skyrim, before 1E 930
- Orsinium [Orsimer], Tamriel, before 1E 900s
- Kynesgrove [Nord], Skyrim, before 1E 970
- Evermore [Breton], High Rock, 1E 983
- Soulrest [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, 1E 1033
- Stormhold [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, after 1E 1033
- Suran [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 1E 1056
- Bravil [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, 1E 1152
- Ivarstead [Nord], Skyrim, early to mid 1E
- Bruma [Nord], Cyrodiil, 1E 1167
- Tear [Dunmer], Morrowind, before mid-1E
- Thorn [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, before mid-1E
- Skaven [Yokudan], Hammerfell, early-mid 1E
- Hallin's Stand [Yokudan], Hammerfell, mid-1E (formerly called Ojwambu)
- Thorstad Place [Yokudan], Hammerfell, mid-1E
- Jode's Light [Khajiit], Elsweyr, mid-1E
- Mathiisen [Altmer], Summerset Isles, 1E
- Alcaire [Breton], High Rock, 1E
- Labyrinthian [Nord], Skyrim, 1E
- Sutch [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, 1E
- Mir Corrup [Nibenese], Cyrodiil, before late 1E
- Tel Aruhn [Dunmer], Morrowind, circa 1E 1600
- Wind Keep [Breton], High Rock, mid-late 1E
- The Stitches [Khajitt], Elsweyr, after 1E 2200
- Corgrad [Altmer], Summerset Isles, 1E 2200s
- Alten Corimont [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, before 1E 2260
- Vastyr [Breton], The Systres, before 1E 2260
- Cheydinhal [Nede], Cyrodiil, 1E 2300s
- Dwynnen [Breton], High Rock, late 1E
- Gideon [Cyrodiil], Black Marsh, late 1E
- Southpoint [Cyrodiil], Valenwood, 1E 2729
- Sundercliff [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, between 1E2703 and 1E 2920
- Woodhearth [Cyrodiil], Valenwood, between 1E 2703 and 1E 2920
- Helstrom [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, by 1E 2811
- Archon [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, by 1E 2811
- Guis [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil?, before 1E 2820
- Elinhir [Nede], Hammerfell, before 1E 2820
- Lilmoth [Lilmothiit], Black Marsh, before 1E 2833
- White Rose [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, before 1E 2877
- Silvenar [Bosmer], Valenwood, before 1E 2920
- Dawnstar [Nord], Skyrim, before 1E 2920
- Farrun [Breton], High Rock, before 1E 2920
- Sancre Tor [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 1E 2920
- Caer Suvio [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 1E 2920
- Zuuk [Kothringi], Black Marsh, circa 1E 2920
- Vivec City [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 100
- Amenos Station [Breton], The Systres, early 2E
- Westtry [Breton], High Rock, before 2E 220
- Azra's Crossing [Redguard], Hammerfell, after 2E 230
- Moonguard [Breton], High Rock, after 2E 230?
- Raven Spring, Tamriel, before 2E 243
- Bardmont [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 283
- Root Sunder [Altmer], Valenwood, 2E 291
- Jallenheim [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 358
- Rorikstead [Nord], Sykrim, before 2E 373
- Velyn Harbor [Altmer], Valenwood, before 2E 382
- Mazzatun [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, before 2E 382
- Gnaar Mok [Dunmer], Morrowind, between 2E 582 and 3E 410
- Brackenleaf [Bosmer], Valenwood, between 1E 2714 and 2E 430
- Firewatch [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 430
- Hakoshae [Tsaesci], Elsweyr, between 2E 430 and 2E 533 (also known as Valley Guard)
- Balmora [Dunmer], Morrowind, between 2E 430 and 2E 582
- Deepwoods [Bosmer], Valenwood, before mid-2E
- Sadrith Mora [Dunmer], Morrowind, before mid-2E
- Alten Meerhleel [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, mid-2E
- Dagon Fel [Dunmer], Morrowind, mid-2E
- Oleer Mar [Dunmer], Morrowind, 2E
- Riften [Nord], Skyrim, 2E
- Olenveld [Nord], Skyrim, 2E
- Dushnikh Yal [Orsimer], Skyrim, 2E
- Murcien's Hamlet [Reachmen], High Rock, before 2E 541
- South Guard [Khajiit], Elsweyr, before 2E 560
- Trumbe [Ayleid], Cyrodiil, before 2E 576
- Morthal [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 577
- Darkwater Crossing [Saxhleel], Skyrim, 2E 572
- Dhalmora [Saxhleel], Morrowind, between 2E 572-582
- Karthwatch [Nord], Skyrim, after 2E 577
- Vulkwasten [Bosmer], Valenwood, before 2E 578
- Seyda Neen [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 580
- Brindle Home [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 2E 580
- Whisper Grove [Bosmer], Valenwood, after 2E 579
- Tanzelwil [Altmer], Summerset Isles, before 2E 582
- Dawnbreak [Altmer], Summerset Isles, before 2E 582
- Shattered Grove [Altmer], Summerset Isles, before 2E 582
- Weye [Altmer], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Silsailen [Altmer], Summerset Isles, before 2E 582
- Rellenthil [Altmer], Summerset Isles, before 2E 582
- Alavelis [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 582
- Ald Velothi [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 582
- Serkamora [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 582
- Silent Mire [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 582
- Tel Fyr [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 582
- Tel Mora [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 582
- Applewatch [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Borderwatch [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Cropsford [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Vlastarus [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Drakelowe [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Harlun's Watch [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Greenhill [Cyrodiil], Valenwood, before 2E 582 (formerly called Thibault's Rest)
- Hackdirt [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Pell's Gate [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Black Heights [Khajiit], Elsweyr, before 2E 582
- Mistral [Khajiit], Elsweyr, before 2E 582
- Bleaker's Way [Nord], Cyrodiil, before 2E 582
- Dragon Bridge [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 582
- Falkreath [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 582
- Riverwood [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 582
- Dragonstar [Nord], Hammerfell, before 2E 582
- Shor's Stone [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 582
- Nimalten [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 582
- Fort Amol [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 582
- Bleakrock Village [Nord], Skyrim, before 2E 582
- Vullain [Bosmer], Valenwood, before 2E 582
- Ebon Ro [Bosmer], Valenwood, before 2E 582
- Longhaven [Bosmer], Valenwood, before 2E 582
- Eagle's Brook [Breton], High Rock, before 2E 582
- Aldcroft [Breton], High Rock, before 2E 582
- Grezogbur [Orsimer], Skyrim, before 2E 582
- Karthwasten [Reachmen], Skyrim, before 2E 582
- Kozanset [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 582
- Port Hunding [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 582
- Saintsport [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 582
- Satakalaam [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 582
- Stonewastes [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, before 2E 582
- Dusktown [Nord], Skyrim, 2E 582
- Belport Run [Altmer], Summerset Isles, between 2E 582 and 2E 864
- Ylliolos [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil?, before 2E 835
- Silgrad Tower [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 854
- Tagon [Yokudan], Yokuda, before late 2E
- Taleskan [Yokudan], Yokuda, before late 2E
- Yul [Yokudan], Yokuda, before late 2E
- Lumut [Yokudan], Yokuda, before late 2E
- Makan [Yokudan], Yokuda, before late 2E
- Diss [Bosmer], Valenwood, before late 2E
- Helland [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 862
- Riverpoint [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 862
- Stonemoor [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 862
- Cliff Keep [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 862
- Chaseguard [Redguard], Hammerfell, 2E 862
- Ebon Wastes [Breton], High Rock, before 2E 864
- Noota Nara [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, before 2E 864
- Cormaris View [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 2E 896
- Roseguard [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 896
- Shady Grove [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 2E 896
- Glenpoint [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 120
- Rockpark [Saxhleel], Black March, before 3E 145
- Skaal Village [Nord], Morrowind, before 3E 200
- Black Harbour, Esroniet, before 3E 282
- Dunbarrow [Nord], Skyrim, before 3E 286
- Septimia [Tsaesci], Akavir, before 3E 288
- Ionith [Tsaesci], Akavir, before 3E 288
- Water's Edge [Breton], Cyrodiil, before 3E 333
- Ein Meirvale [Khajitt], Elsweyr, before 3E 389
- Rockguard [Saxhleel], Black Marsh, before 3E 389
- Lynpar March [Bosmer], Valenwood, before 3E 389
- Wasten Brukbrook [Bosmer], Valenwood, before 3E 389
- Corkarth Run [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 389
- Helnim Wall [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 389
- Karththor Dale [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 389
- Maar Gan [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 389
- Old Run [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 389
- Riverbridge [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 389
- Sailen Vulgate [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 389
- Silnim Dale [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 389
- Velothis Haven [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 389
- Dunstad Grove [Nord], Skyrim, before 3E 389
- Heljarchen [Nord], Skyrim, before 3E 389
- Laintar Dale [Nord], Skyrim, before 3E 389
- Neugrad Watch [Nord], Skyrim, 3E 389
- North Keep [Nord], Skyrim, before 3E 389
- Snowhawk [Nord], Skyrim, before 3E 389
- Stonehills [Nord], Skyrim, before 3E 389
- Dunlain Falls [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 389
- Meir Darguard [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 389
- Normar Heights [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 389
- Norvulk Hills [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 389
- Portdun Creek [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 389 (formerly known as Portdun Watch)
- Tethis [Breton], High Rock?, before 3E 389
- Dusk [Altmer], Summerset Isles, before 3E 389
- Snowline [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 3E 397
- Alik'ra [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 3E 405
- Antyphyllos [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 3E 405
- Daenia [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 405
- Greenheights [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 417
- Dragon Glade [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 417
- Abibon-gora [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 3E 417
- Tigonus [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 3E 417
- Mournoth [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 3E 417
- Santaki [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 3E 417
- Pothago [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 3E 417
- Kairou [Redguard], Hammerfell, before 3E 417
- Tulune [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Bhoriane [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Glenumbra [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Mara [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Glenumbra [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Mara [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Ilessan Hills [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Shalgora [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Phrygias [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Urvaius [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Ykalon [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Wrothgaria [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Betony [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Chestercester [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Warborne [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Westbury [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Westtale [Breton], High Rock, before 3E 417
- Tel Vos [Dunmer], Morrowind, between 3E 414 and 3E 427
- Pelagiad [Imperial], Morrowind, between 3E 414 and 3E 427
- Hla Oad [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 427
- Khuul [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 427
- Port Telvannis [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 427
- Tel Branora [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 3E 427
- Caldera [Imperial], Morrowind, before 3E 427
- Raven Rock [Imperial], Morrowind, 3E 427
- Ione [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, 3E 433
- Aleswell [Cyrodiil], Cyrodiil, before 3E 433
- Tel Mithryn [Dunmer], Morrowind, before 4E 5
- Blackridge [Orsimer], Cyrodiil, early 4E (130?)
- Helgen [Nord], Skyrim, before 4E 180
- Mor Khazgur [Orsimer], Skyrim, before 4E 201
2024.05.11 15:43 Starlit_pies Festivals of the Greater Wrothgar and Karth: The Queens' Day
Once a great city of the north, Solitude is now a shadow of itself. The harbor rarely sees a trading ship, and even then its most often a smaller shallow-keeled boat from Blacklight or Windhelm, or even Jehanna. The royal palace doesn't get many visitors either - for all the pretense of the royal family to greatness and the legacy of the great Kings, Queens and Emperors of the mankind, they are largely irrelevant even in their own kingdom. Only the Divines' Temple is always busy, and in the last decades had spread out to occupy the whole Castle Dour. It now houses the biggest Seminary of the kingdom, where the wandering priests of the northern version of the creed are taught.
There is one day each year, however, when the city becomes the capital it once was. On 16th of Sun's Dawn the Unified Kingdom of Haafingar, Rivenspire, Karthald, Wrothgar, Falkreath and Hjaalmarch, or 'Greater Wrothgar and Karth' in common parlance, celebrates the anniversary of its founding. Serious historians may argue about the importance of other events - the delegation of power to the thane-barons, the formal appointment of a single Heir, the signing of the Act of the Union - but for the common folk, it all began with the marriage of Queen Elisif of Solitude and Queen Gwynienne of Northpoint. That the date coincides with the traditional holiday of the Heart's Day doesn't hurt either.
Editorial Note:
The marriage itself should be put into the proper historical perspective to understand its importance. While permitted religiously under Mara's laws, and grudgingly accepted among the commoners, the marriages of such sort were looked down upon by the lineage-obsessed nobility of the fading Empire. And for all their claims to the opposite, the Nord nobility had taken up the Imperial ways. If not for the chaos of the subsequent events, the Queens' Heirs would have hard time defending their claim at Jarls' Moot.
The commoners from the most remote villages and mountain hamlets come in what can only be describes as a pilgrimage, and the festival celebration includes one of the biggest fairs of the year. The itinerant priests of the Eight Divines flock back to the great cathedral. By the evening, with its stained windows illuminated from inside and singing voices raised in chorus, it makes one feel as if transported back in time to the height of the Septim Empire.
The parade of the thane-barons in the archaic armors of their Legionnaire ancestors tries to reinforce that impression, although everyone is aware it is mere costumery. The traditions of the Legions have died out more than century ago. The small leaders who were nothing but tax-gatherers appointed from the Legion veterans by the start of the Fourth Era - thanes, barons, chieftains - were granted the ultimate power over their small domains in the times of the Plague. Their descendants now are the actual rulers of the kingdom, each one of them holding his tiny court in his restored hilltop fort.
The policies they support serve to keep the Kingdom hamstrung, with its glory returning back only during the yearly festival - the disconnected self-sufficient thane-baronies have little interest in trade. The lack of communication and organization between their tiny domains, the complicated structure of obligations and vassalage, makes the Western Kingdom even more fragmented and disorganized than rule-by-mob of the Eastern 'Commonwealth'. The predominantly agrarian population is largely uneducated, and lives from harvest to harvest, and thanes are glad to keep it so.
YgM: For all I dislike that 'rulership by the virtue of owning the only sword in the village' stuff, you can't deny that their isolationism works for Wrothgarians. One of my drinking buddies from the Cheydinhal Academy had a whole set of numbers about the Plague, its strains, mortality, all that. GW&K got through it with the least loss of population, it seems.
submitted by Starlit_pies to PGE_4 [link] [comments]
There is one day each year, however, when the city becomes the capital it once was. On 16th of Sun's Dawn the Unified Kingdom of Haafingar, Rivenspire, Karthald, Wrothgar, Falkreath and Hjaalmarch, or 'Greater Wrothgar and Karth' in common parlance, celebrates the anniversary of its founding. Serious historians may argue about the importance of other events - the delegation of power to the thane-barons, the formal appointment of a single Heir, the signing of the Act of the Union - but for the common folk, it all began with the marriage of Queen Elisif of Solitude and Queen Gwynienne of Northpoint. That the date coincides with the traditional holiday of the Heart's Day doesn't hurt either.
Editorial Note:
The marriage itself should be put into the proper historical perspective to understand its importance. While permitted religiously under Mara's laws, and grudgingly accepted among the commoners, the marriages of such sort were looked down upon by the lineage-obsessed nobility of the fading Empire. And for all their claims to the opposite, the Nord nobility had taken up the Imperial ways. If not for the chaos of the subsequent events, the Queens' Heirs would have hard time defending their claim at Jarls' Moot.
The commoners from the most remote villages and mountain hamlets come in what can only be describes as a pilgrimage, and the festival celebration includes one of the biggest fairs of the year. The itinerant priests of the Eight Divines flock back to the great cathedral. By the evening, with its stained windows illuminated from inside and singing voices raised in chorus, it makes one feel as if transported back in time to the height of the Septim Empire.
The parade of the thane-barons in the archaic armors of their Legionnaire ancestors tries to reinforce that impression, although everyone is aware it is mere costumery. The traditions of the Legions have died out more than century ago. The small leaders who were nothing but tax-gatherers appointed from the Legion veterans by the start of the Fourth Era - thanes, barons, chieftains - were granted the ultimate power over their small domains in the times of the Plague. Their descendants now are the actual rulers of the kingdom, each one of them holding his tiny court in his restored hilltop fort.
The policies they support serve to keep the Kingdom hamstrung, with its glory returning back only during the yearly festival - the disconnected self-sufficient thane-baronies have little interest in trade. The lack of communication and organization between their tiny domains, the complicated structure of obligations and vassalage, makes the Western Kingdom even more fragmented and disorganized than rule-by-mob of the Eastern 'Commonwealth'. The predominantly agrarian population is largely uneducated, and lives from harvest to harvest, and thanes are glad to keep it so.
YgM: For all I dislike that 'rulership by the virtue of owning the only sword in the village' stuff, you can't deny that their isolationism works for Wrothgarians. One of my drinking buddies from the Cheydinhal Academy had a whole set of numbers about the Plague, its strains, mortality, all that. GW&K got through it with the least loss of population, it seems.
2024.05.10 19:12 tegan_willow Some years ago, I noticed that a certain kind of school Admin has begun questioning whether English classes would be better off reading short excerpts instead of entire novels. I (ironically) present an excerpt that shows where that leads us-- from Ray Bradbury's stage adaptation of Fahrenheit 451:
MONTAG. I never thought…
BEATTY. Don’t even try. Let me think for you. If you have only a few people in the world, books can afford to be individual, different, eh? But cram your world with overpopulations, and how can you possibly write individual books for each, eh? No, no. Can’t be. So you write a few books for all, eh? That’s what you do. On top of which you leave the cart and horse of the 19th century and jump pell-mell into and out of elevators, airships, trains, cars, jets, eh? Jump, push, run, shove. “I’m late, I’m late, for a most important date!” you cry, White Rabbiting along, eh, eh?
MONTAG. I’m a bit foggy on history…
BEATTY. Let me cut the fog. Jump! Push! Run, jump, no time, rush hour all day, rush dreams by night. No time to read, no time to even live. Run, run, what happens next, Montag?
MONTAG (guessing). Books become… shorter?
BEATTY. Bullseye! Bravo. Condense everything, cut everything, make midgets of giants, make pismire ants of midgets, make mountains into molehills! (Pacing.) Condensations, digests, tabloids, everything boiled down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fifteen minute radio explosions, cut again to fit a two minute book column. Speed up the film, shorten the news. Give us magazines like: CLICK, PIC, LOOK, EYE. NOW, FLICK, SWIFT, PACE, UP, DOWN. IN, OUT, BANG! SMACK! WALLOP! BOOM! Politics? one sentence. Hell, no, a headline. Never mind the story, give us the POW! Spin the centrifuge, fling off the thought. And in mid—air, mankind's thought vanishes up his own backside. Shorten school. Drop discipline. Kill Latin. Poison English. Give hemlock to philosophy. Damn grammar. Forget spelling. Destroy all buttons. Replace with zippers. You don't want a man standing around at dawn, buttoning himself, with time to think, do you?
MONTAG. No.
BEATTY (circling). No! So...Empty the theatres. Shut the cinemas. Why? Don't want folks talking to each other on the way out of plays, films, do you? Do you?! No! No! So glass wall the homes. TV the walls. Dolby Sound the ceilings. Keep folks apart. Kill Hamlet! What next?
__________________________________________________
NOW ME (OP):
So what comes next? Well, if you know the story, the next step is censorship and then the outright burning of the books. It's not fantasy, it is a warning every bit as relevant today as on the day it was written.
When it comes to an important work like this, you can read an excerpt of the story to pass the quiz. BUT if you read the ENTIRE story, you'll walk away with a firmer understanding of the fascist playbook. In addition to that, you'll also begin to conceptualize what's at stake when we outsource decisions regarding our very ability to think.
submitted by tegan_willow to Teachers [link] [comments]
BEATTY. Don’t even try. Let me think for you. If you have only a few people in the world, books can afford to be individual, different, eh? But cram your world with overpopulations, and how can you possibly write individual books for each, eh? No, no. Can’t be. So you write a few books for all, eh? That’s what you do. On top of which you leave the cart and horse of the 19th century and jump pell-mell into and out of elevators, airships, trains, cars, jets, eh? Jump, push, run, shove. “I’m late, I’m late, for a most important date!” you cry, White Rabbiting along, eh, eh?
MONTAG. I’m a bit foggy on history…
BEATTY. Let me cut the fog. Jump! Push! Run, jump, no time, rush hour all day, rush dreams by night. No time to read, no time to even live. Run, run, what happens next, Montag?
MONTAG (guessing). Books become… shorter?
BEATTY. Bullseye! Bravo. Condense everything, cut everything, make midgets of giants, make pismire ants of midgets, make mountains into molehills! (Pacing.) Condensations, digests, tabloids, everything boiled down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fifteen minute radio explosions, cut again to fit a two minute book column. Speed up the film, shorten the news. Give us magazines like: CLICK, PIC, LOOK, EYE. NOW, FLICK, SWIFT, PACE, UP, DOWN. IN, OUT, BANG! SMACK! WALLOP! BOOM! Politics? one sentence. Hell, no, a headline. Never mind the story, give us the POW! Spin the centrifuge, fling off the thought. And in mid—air, mankind's thought vanishes up his own backside. Shorten school. Drop discipline. Kill Latin. Poison English. Give hemlock to philosophy. Damn grammar. Forget spelling. Destroy all buttons. Replace with zippers. You don't want a man standing around at dawn, buttoning himself, with time to think, do you?
MONTAG. No.
BEATTY (circling). No! So...Empty the theatres. Shut the cinemas. Why? Don't want folks talking to each other on the way out of plays, films, do you? Do you?! No! No! So glass wall the homes. TV the walls. Dolby Sound the ceilings. Keep folks apart. Kill Hamlet! What next?
__________________________________________________
NOW ME (OP):
So what comes next? Well, if you know the story, the next step is censorship and then the outright burning of the books. It's not fantasy, it is a warning every bit as relevant today as on the day it was written.
When it comes to an important work like this, you can read an excerpt of the story to pass the quiz. BUT if you read the ENTIRE story, you'll walk away with a firmer understanding of the fascist playbook. In addition to that, you'll also begin to conceptualize what's at stake when we outsource decisions regarding our very ability to think.
2024.05.05 08:55 Cassius_O 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA —>> help.. Shiki, Klew, & Hamlet
 | 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA submitted by Cassius_O to HelpMeowtShelterCats [link] [comments] Would you consider fostering? It doesn’t have to be permanent. You can be anywhere in Southern California. Rescues need fosters in order to save a shelter pet. SHIKI #A797531 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Found in the 15000 block of Pine Ave in Fontana SHIKI: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797531 KLEW #A797543 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Trapped near Franfort & Grace in Bloomington KLEW: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797543 HAMLET #A797609 2-year-old male Intake date 5/3/24 Available for adoption starting 5/8/24 Trapped near Frankfurt & Marigold in Bloomington HAMLET: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797609 DEVORE ANIMAL SHELTER 19777 SHELTER WAY SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92407 (909)386-9820 - press 2 for Devore Shelter, then press 3 to speak with a shelter agent (rescues press 1 to speak with a rescue coordinator) cat #rescueme #devoreanimalshelteradoptme #kitty #kittycat |
2024.05.05 08:53 Cassius_O 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA —>> help.. Shiki, Klew, & Hamlet
 | 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA submitted by Cassius_O to PetEuthanasiaList [link] [comments] Would you consider fostering? It doesn’t have to be permanent. You can be anywhere in Southern California. Rescues need fosters in order to save a shelter pet. SHIKI #A797531 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Found in the 15000 block of Pine Ave in Fontana SHIKI: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797531 KLEW #A797543 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Trapped near Franfort & Grace in Bloomington KLEW: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797543 HAMLET #A797609 2-year-old male Intake date 5/3/24 Available for adoption starting 5/8/24 Trapped near Frankfurt & Marigold in Bloomington HAMLET: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797609 DEVORE ANIMAL SHELTER 19777 SHELTER WAY SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92407 (909)386-9820 - press 2 for Devore Shelter, then press 3 to speak with a shelter agent (rescues press 1 to speak with a rescue coordinator) cat #rescueme #devoreanimalshelteradoptme #kitty #kittycat |
2024.05.05 08:52 Cassius_O 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA —>> help.. Shiki, Klew, & Hamlet
 | 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA submitted by Cassius_O to National_Pet_Adoption [link] [comments] Would you consider fostering? It doesn’t have to be permanent. You can be anywhere in Southern California. Rescues need fosters in order to save a shelter pet. SHIKI #A797531 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Found in the 15000 block of Pine Ave in Fontana SHIKI: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797531 KLEW #A797543 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Trapped near Franfort & Grace in Bloomington KLEW: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797543 HAMLET #A797609 2-year-old male Intake date 5/3/24 Available for adoption starting 5/8/24 Trapped near Frankfurt & Marigold in Bloomington HAMLET: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797609 DEVORE ANIMAL SHELTER 19777 SHELTER WAY SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92407 (909)386-9820 - press 2 for Devore Shelter, then press 3 to speak with a shelter agent (rescues press 1 to speak with a rescue coordinator) cat #rescueme #devoreanimalshelteradoptme #kitty #kittycat |
2024.05.05 08:51 Cassius_O 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA —>> help.. Shiki, Klew, & Hamlet
 | 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA submitted by Cassius_O to rescuecats [link] [comments] Would you consider fostering? It doesn’t have to be permanent. You can be anywhere in Southern California. Rescues need fosters in order to save a shelter pet. SHIKI #A797531 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Found in the 15000 block of Pine Ave in Fontana SHIKI: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797531 KLEW #A797543 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Trapped near Franfort & Grace in Bloomington KLEW: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797543 HAMLET #A797609 2-year-old male Intake date 5/3/24 Available for adoption starting 5/8/24 Trapped near Frankfurt & Marigold in Bloomington HAMLET: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797609 DEVORE ANIMAL SHELTER 19777 SHELTER WAY SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92407 (909)386-9820 - press 2 for Devore Shelter, then press 3 to speak with a shelter agent (rescues press 1 to speak with a rescue coordinator) cat #rescueme #devoreanimalshelteradoptme #kitty #kittycat |
2024.05.05 08:50 Cassius_O 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA —>> help.. Shiki, Klew, & Hamlet
 | 💕Come Save A Life💕 foster a cat from Devore Animal Shelter, San Bernardino County CA submitted by Cassius_O to cats [link] [comments] Would you consider fostering? It doesn’t have to be permanent. You can be anywhere in Southern California. Rescues need fosters in order to save a shelter pet. SHIKI #A797531 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Found in the 15000 block of Pine Ave in Fontana SHIKI: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797531 KLEW #A797543 Unknown age unknown gender Intake date 5/2/24 Available for rescue starting 5/7/24 Trapped near Franfort & Grace in Bloomington KLEW: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797543 HAMLET #A797609 2-year-old male Intake date 5/3/24 Available for adoption starting 5/8/24 Trapped near Frankfurt & Marigold in Bloomington HAMLET: https://24Petconnect.com/DetailsMain/SBCO1/A797609 DEVORE ANIMAL SHELTER 19777 SHELTER WAY SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92407 (909)386-9820 - press 2 for Devore Shelter, then press 3 to speak with a shelter agent (rescues press 1 to speak with a rescue coordinator) cat #rescueme #devoreanimalshelteradoptme #kitty #kittycat |
2024.05.05 00:07 BigYellowPraxis One Man’s 20-Year Anti-Stratfordian Obsession
Brief note: I will be linking to relevant articles and sources throughout this *long* effort post, some of which will take you to McCarthy’s own webpage, some of which might be behind paywalls - depending on how interesting you find all this, you might like to follow these links to get a glimpse of the ‘primary texts’ themselves!
Sooo: take a seat - get some snacks - and get ready. This is the story of one man’s obsessive 20-year quest to convince the world that the ‘real genius’ behind Shakespeare’s plays was an Elizabethan translator called Sir Thomas North.
First things first! I studied literature for my undergraduate degree, and I have a master’s degree in the history and philosophy of science: basically, my interests intersect perfectly with the ‘Shakespeare Authorship Question’, given that it is a) all about *probably* the greatest literary figure in English, maybe western, art, and b) it is of course a realm full of spurious thinking, logical fallacies and grasping at radical conclusions without any evidence.
I’ve been interested in the topic since before my undergrad degree over a decade ago, and have read all the arguments about all the usual suspects: from Edward de Vere (he of little poetic talent), to Christopher Marlowe (he at least could write well); all the way to Sir Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh. Honestly, it sometimes seems like everybody in 16th century England has been put forward as the playwright by someone at some point.
But the subject of this post is one Dennis McCarthy, an American independent researcher who has previously published papers on biology, and since the late 00s, almost exclusively (when journals will accept his papers that is…) on Shakespeare. In some ways McCarthy is clearly a tier above the usual conspiracy theorist/anti-Stratfordian (don't bother clicking this link - it's just an example of craziness). He’s not just looking at a random line in a sonnet, and extrapolating that into a huge, elaborate story about how ‘Shax-pere’ (as these sorts love to pointedly call Will) was actually a front for the Earl of Oxford’s plays, and he does do some research that takes him out of his house and off the internet; but he still ends up falling prey to the same old problems all anti-Stratfordians fall into, which I will get to below.
Now, if anti-Stratfordians were capable of thinking critically, the failure of McCarthy to convince anyone should really be the end of their mind-numbing nonsense - but of course it won’t be. My point being, that even the best intentioned, and most ingenious anti-Stratfordians eventually have to contend with reality: and it is at that point they fall flat on their face.
So, what makes this story any different? And why should anyone be interested in another pretender to the throne? Honestly, it’s mostly because my aunt bought me his book (Thomas North: The Original Author of Shakespeare's Plays) for Christmas, knowing my interest in the topic. Since I’ve recently finished it, I thought you should all go through what I went through 🙂
But McCarthy’s story is also interesting in and of itself. As far as I see it, it is an almost Shakespearean (or should that be ‘Northern’...?) tale of hubris. Full of intellectual arrogance, confirmation bias on a grand scale, and (independent) scholarly folly of grand proportions.
I think it’s also just genuinely interesting to see Thomas North of all people put forward as ‘the real Shakespeare’, because he is not at all a mainstream contender - whatever one might like to say about McCarthy, he certainly hasn’t made this easy on himself. And given the short shrift he’s been getting on the fringes of social media that pay attention to him, it’s fair to say he’s not a people pleaser. I almost admire his tenacity chasing this lost cause.
You see, Thomas North is seemingly the last literate male in Elizabethan England to be put forward as the ‘real’ playwright. Even some Italian and French writers were suggested decades before poor Thomas North was. Given that this translator, soldier, lawyer and son-of-Henry-VIII’s-main-man-when-it-came-to-the-dissolution-of-the-monasteries did actually have a real link with Shakespeare’s plays, it’s genuinely amazing that he’s only just now been put forwards: you see, it was his translation of Plutarch’s Lives (1590) that Shakespeare used as the source for his 3 Roman Plays. Those are Corialanus, Antony and Cleopatra, and Julius Caesar.
Now, anyone who knows anything about Shakespeare’s sources will know what I’m about to say, and it has been known by critics since at least the late 18th century. North’s Plutarch is not only one of Shakespeare’s most important sources, up there with Holinshed’s Chronicles and Ovid, it is the only one of Shakespeare’s sources that the Bard seemed to think didn’t need that much work to get good enough for the Elizabethan stage. You can check out Dennis’ webpage to see the common language between, say, Antony and Cleopatra, and North’s translation.
Worth pointing out here that McCarthy’s actually completely right on this point, but it’s a rather trivial point that everyone already agrees with: it’s with his novel arguments where he falters.
So with that, let’s get back to Dennis, and his story. His first venture into the world of literature was nearly 20 years ago - and here comes the hubris bit: like all STEM-lords he wanted to apply ideas and methodologies from the sciences to the arts. And, as he writes in the opening chapter to his self-published book, he started this part of his journey by asking himself: ‘what’s the single greatest, most important literary work in the western canon?’. This led him to think about Hamlet as not just a work of imagination and creativity, but as something that evolved into its final state that we all know today.
This is not, of course, completely insane - in fact, this is precisely what academics have done already. We know that the ultimate source of Hamlet is a Danish myth, that - over the course of a few hundred years - migrated to Elizabethan England via a French translation. McCarthy, undaunted by the fact that better minds have already worked out all there is to know about this, set himself the task of answering it his own way.
So he started by looking at contemporary references to Hamlet and Shakespeare. As any student of Elizabethan literature is likely to already know, the earliest reference to Hamlet can be found in Thomas Nashe’s preface to Greene’s translation of Menaphon, 13 years before the earliest publication of Shakespeare’s play. Nashe writes of someone who, ‘if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches’. Given that Nashe then says that his followers are like the ‘Kid’ in Aesop, it is often assumed that Nashe is implying Thomas Kyd wrote this early Hamlet.
But we don’t really know who wrote this early Hamlet, often known as the 'ur-Hamlet': some suggest it may have simply been Shakespeare himself rather than Kyd, and it was merely an early iteration of the play he went on to perfect over the coming decade. McCarthy, always dissenting, reckons Nashe was referring to Thomas North as the author (of course!).
Now, to be fair to McCarthy - and this is as fair to him as I will ever be - this bit isn’t the whacky part, at least prima facie. After all, given that we don’t really know who Nashe was obliquely implying was the author, and the scant details in the text could be interpreted any number of different ways, McCarthy’s suggestion that it might have been North is in and of itself OK.
It’s more the fact that this one little inference became the basis of his multi-decade obsession with his North-Shakespeare hypothesis.
You see, what followed that first supposition was a classic case of confirmation bias. I say a classic case, but actually it is of course a rather extreme case. McCarthy has since published articles on:
Thomas North and Titus Andronicus
Ben Jonson’s Satires (and how they supposedly point to North as the writer of Shakespeare’s plays)
The claimed linguistic parallels between Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy and North’s first translation, the Diall of Princes
He’s also managed to unearth, and sometimes successfully publish books and/or articles on: Thomas’ handwritten marginalia in his personal books, that he thinks are connected to Shakespeare’s works; an unpublished travel journal, again by Thomas North, again thought by McCarthy to be connected to the plays; a copy of a book on politics, by George North, presumed to be Thomas’ cousin and yet again argued be the basis of certain scenes and phrases in the plays; payments that are assumed to be for putting on plays or revels, in the North family accounts; and finally, numerous (but of course coincidental) biographical connections between Thomas and Shakespeare’s plays (you'd have to read his book for those details).
Anyway, some of McCarthy’s discoveries are genuinely interesting in and of themselves, and certainly of historical interest to anyone who is a nerd for Elizabethan stuff, but where McCarthy sees endless corroboration and proof for his conclusions, I see confirmation biases on a scale rarely seen outside of QANON forums.
After all, where Dennis is likely to ask ‘what are the chances that everything Thomas North is known to have written and done can be directly linked to the Bard’s plays?’, I am inclined to answer ‘very likely, if that is what you’re looking for’. It’s just typical conspiracy thinking, isn’t it?
Let’s look at some specific examples of his arguments and so-called ‘evidence’, if you’re not too queasy-stomached with this journey so far.
At some point over the last decade, McCarthy has managed to get journalist Michael Blanding, and (presumably formerly) respected Shakespearean June Schlueter on board with his silliness, and together they’ve unearthed books from the North family library, some of which has marginalia in what they reckon is Thomas North’s handwriting (mentioned above).
You can click here to read a bit about it if you like (honestly, don’t bother), but the gist is simple: McCarthy thinks that North’s marginalia shows North’s process of writing some of the plays, and points in particular to his underlining of supposed ‘key plot points’ in Cymbeline, such as giving tribute to Rome, the slaying of a certain king, and the Roman invasion of Britain. He also loves to bang on about the fact that Shakespeare and North seemingly misspell a character’s name the same way, which he repeatedly asserts in his book is ‘highly unlikely’.
The main problem here is that we already know that Shakespeare used Fabyan’s chronicles as a source, so it’s hard to work out what these marginalia are meant to prove: the connection is already known. The fact that Shakespeare and North misspell ‘Cassibellan’ in the same way (‘Cassibulan’) means little when you remember that publishers would have the final say in how word were spelled, rather than working precisely to what was written in the manuscript: why assume it was Shakespeare who was misspelling the Roman name the same way as North? Clearly another reach by McCarthy, but of course he sees nothing but further confirmation of his theory.
And the fact that North underlined many of the ‘salient’ plot points and bits of phrasing that appear in Cymbeline needn’t suggest anything more than the translator saw Shakespeare’s play (or had a physical copy) and underlined those passages based on that. And that’s only one of any number of possible alternatives!
Anyway, in the early 2010s, he got his hands on some plagiarism software - WCopyfind - and of course applied his newest toy to his singular obsession. His findings from using the tool comprise the bulk of his book’s argument. It will surprise none of you, I’m sure, to hear that - shock, horror - he found exactly what he was looking for. I’m not going to go into detail here about all of the collocations he thinks he’s found, just check out his website for a run down, if you’re really that much of a masochist. (There are times looking into all of this that I’ve had to question both his and my soundness of mind…)
So, I’ll just stick to one example, possibly the single biggest reach I think I found in all his work:the claimed commonalities between Shakespeare’s writing, North, and North’s sources, and the argument that these are evidence for North’s authorship of the plays. For example, he reckons bits of King Lear are taken from one of Thom’s translations. I can happily accept that these connections might be real, to be fair, and that Shakespeare may have read North more widely than Plutarch’s Lives, but McCarthy of course has to go one step further: he asserts that the playwright must also have read North’s non-English source (one Simon Goulart), because EdgaPoor Tom uses the word ‘esperance’, which appears in Goulart’s French text in the same passage McCarthy thinks King Lear is borrowing from, via North.
Exhausting isn’t it?
His argument isn’t just that Shakespeare is borrowing from both North’s translation, and Goulart’s original, of course, but that North wrote King Lear and at some point sold the play to Shakespeare, and so he would have had access to his own translation and the original already when he was writing the play. Just read his webpage for a full breakdown of his warped thought process. As far as I’m concerned, this actually proves nothing. After all, 'esperance' was already an extant word in English by the late 16th century, being first recorded in 1430, so there’s no reason to assume Shakespeare got it from Goulart. And after all, coincidences do happen, but try convincing a conspiracy theorist of that.
It’s also not impossible - if we want to give McCarthy some leeway with his ideas - to believe that Shakespeare may have read both Goulart and North in parallel while writing King Lear. There’s good reason to believe he spoke French quite well, and it’s certainly not unheard of to work this way, even today. But McCarthy of course sees literally everything as confirmation of his theories.
Ultimately, it’s a shame that he had to wrap his research and discoveries up in this anti-Stratfordian nonsense. Had he simply stuck to the more reasonable and conventional view, that mainstream academia has accepted for hundreds of year - i.e. that actually, yes, the Man from Stratford wrote the plays we think he wrote - he could have contributed something useful to the field of Shakespeare’s sources or Elizabethan literature and history more broadly.
By all accounts, this Thomas North chap clearly led an interesting life. He certainly had some influence on Shakespeare’s writing, at least when it came to the three Roman Plays. And you know what, he may even have been used as a source for more of the canon than we had previously thought, if the collocations McCarthy talks about are anything to go by! But because McCarthy is far too fast to assume that nothing could be coincidental, or trivial - when in fact, actually, many things are - he’s put himself in a position where his work will forever be relegated to the fringes of academic study.
Elizabethan manuscript culture is well attested to and well discussed in the literature, and there’s no reason to think that Shakespeare couldn’t have read North’s unpublished journal, probably McCarthy’s favourite widdlle discoveries that he’s endlessly blathering about. Why should we assume that every single verbal parallel found between Shakespeare’s plays and North’s translations means Shakespeare must have been using the older writer as a direct source? And Just because Thomas North was Alice Arden’s half-sister (something else he goes on about a lot!), doesn’t mean he must have written Arden of Feversham, part of the ‘Shakespeare Apocrypha’. After all, we know that William himself had a distant relative on his mother’s side called ‘Thomas Arden’: does that not also, taking this line of argument, corroborate the Shakespeare-as-author case?
Well, there’s good reason to believe that Shakespeare did co-write at least some of Arden, based on robust stylometric analyses, so that is something of a rhetorical question. The point is, again, that McCarthy unfortunately sees everything as evidence for North’s authorship of the canon, and seems to think that because he can link every known biographical tidbit about Thomas North with Shakespeare’s plays, and because he squints his eyes and sees verbal parallels everywhere, and because North’s marginalia happens to misspell something the same way as Cymbeline - and honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg… well, this is the very definition of delusional monomania, right?
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little portrait of a man besotted by his own theories, and you’ve not simply spent the time reading it groaning in agony and despair over the fact that it’s 2024, and these baseless ideas keep popping up. I find something fascinating in all this, even if I also find it all a bit crazy.
Citations - I've tried to link to anything I really need to cite, but I also read/consulted
Shapiro, James - Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, 2011
Blanding, Michael - In Shakespeare's Shadow: A Rogue Scholar's Quest to Reveal the True Source Behind the World's Greatest Plays, 2022
My go to version of Shakespeare's works is The Arden Shakespeare, which also includes lots of notes on specific plays, and their sources, dates etc. I also use The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works
submitted by BigYellowPraxis to badhistory [link] [comments]
Sooo: take a seat - get some snacks - and get ready. This is the story of one man’s obsessive 20-year quest to convince the world that the ‘real genius’ behind Shakespeare’s plays was an Elizabethan translator called Sir Thomas North.
First things first! I studied literature for my undergraduate degree, and I have a master’s degree in the history and philosophy of science: basically, my interests intersect perfectly with the ‘Shakespeare Authorship Question’, given that it is a) all about *probably* the greatest literary figure in English, maybe western, art, and b) it is of course a realm full of spurious thinking, logical fallacies and grasping at radical conclusions without any evidence.
I’ve been interested in the topic since before my undergrad degree over a decade ago, and have read all the arguments about all the usual suspects: from Edward de Vere (he of little poetic talent), to Christopher Marlowe (he at least could write well); all the way to Sir Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh. Honestly, it sometimes seems like everybody in 16th century England has been put forward as the playwright by someone at some point.
But the subject of this post is one Dennis McCarthy, an American independent researcher who has previously published papers on biology, and since the late 00s, almost exclusively (when journals will accept his papers that is…) on Shakespeare. In some ways McCarthy is clearly a tier above the usual conspiracy theorist/anti-Stratfordian (don't bother clicking this link - it's just an example of craziness). He’s not just looking at a random line in a sonnet, and extrapolating that into a huge, elaborate story about how ‘Shax-pere’ (as these sorts love to pointedly call Will) was actually a front for the Earl of Oxford’s plays, and he does do some research that takes him out of his house and off the internet; but he still ends up falling prey to the same old problems all anti-Stratfordians fall into, which I will get to below.
Now, if anti-Stratfordians were capable of thinking critically, the failure of McCarthy to convince anyone should really be the end of their mind-numbing nonsense - but of course it won’t be. My point being, that even the best intentioned, and most ingenious anti-Stratfordians eventually have to contend with reality: and it is at that point they fall flat on their face.
So, what makes this story any different? And why should anyone be interested in another pretender to the throne? Honestly, it’s mostly because my aunt bought me his book (Thomas North: The Original Author of Shakespeare's Plays) for Christmas, knowing my interest in the topic. Since I’ve recently finished it, I thought you should all go through what I went through 🙂
But McCarthy’s story is also interesting in and of itself. As far as I see it, it is an almost Shakespearean (or should that be ‘Northern’...?) tale of hubris. Full of intellectual arrogance, confirmation bias on a grand scale, and (independent) scholarly folly of grand proportions.
I think it’s also just genuinely interesting to see Thomas North of all people put forward as ‘the real Shakespeare’, because he is not at all a mainstream contender - whatever one might like to say about McCarthy, he certainly hasn’t made this easy on himself. And given the short shrift he’s been getting on the fringes of social media that pay attention to him, it’s fair to say he’s not a people pleaser. I almost admire his tenacity chasing this lost cause.
You see, Thomas North is seemingly the last literate male in Elizabethan England to be put forward as the ‘real’ playwright. Even some Italian and French writers were suggested decades before poor Thomas North was. Given that this translator, soldier, lawyer and son-of-Henry-VIII’s-main-man-when-it-came-to-the-dissolution-of-the-monasteries did actually have a real link with Shakespeare’s plays, it’s genuinely amazing that he’s only just now been put forwards: you see, it was his translation of Plutarch’s Lives (1590) that Shakespeare used as the source for his 3 Roman Plays. Those are Corialanus, Antony and Cleopatra, and Julius Caesar.
Now, anyone who knows anything about Shakespeare’s sources will know what I’m about to say, and it has been known by critics since at least the late 18th century. North’s Plutarch is not only one of Shakespeare’s most important sources, up there with Holinshed’s Chronicles and Ovid, it is the only one of Shakespeare’s sources that the Bard seemed to think didn’t need that much work to get good enough for the Elizabethan stage. You can check out Dennis’ webpage to see the common language between, say, Antony and Cleopatra, and North’s translation.
Worth pointing out here that McCarthy’s actually completely right on this point, but it’s a rather trivial point that everyone already agrees with: it’s with his novel arguments where he falters.
So with that, let’s get back to Dennis, and his story. His first venture into the world of literature was nearly 20 years ago - and here comes the hubris bit: like all STEM-lords he wanted to apply ideas and methodologies from the sciences to the arts. And, as he writes in the opening chapter to his self-published book, he started this part of his journey by asking himself: ‘what’s the single greatest, most important literary work in the western canon?’. This led him to think about Hamlet as not just a work of imagination and creativity, but as something that evolved into its final state that we all know today.
This is not, of course, completely insane - in fact, this is precisely what academics have done already. We know that the ultimate source of Hamlet is a Danish myth, that - over the course of a few hundred years - migrated to Elizabethan England via a French translation. McCarthy, undaunted by the fact that better minds have already worked out all there is to know about this, set himself the task of answering it his own way.
So he started by looking at contemporary references to Hamlet and Shakespeare. As any student of Elizabethan literature is likely to already know, the earliest reference to Hamlet can be found in Thomas Nashe’s preface to Greene’s translation of Menaphon, 13 years before the earliest publication of Shakespeare’s play. Nashe writes of someone who, ‘if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches’. Given that Nashe then says that his followers are like the ‘Kid’ in Aesop, it is often assumed that Nashe is implying Thomas Kyd wrote this early Hamlet.
But we don’t really know who wrote this early Hamlet, often known as the 'ur-Hamlet': some suggest it may have simply been Shakespeare himself rather than Kyd, and it was merely an early iteration of the play he went on to perfect over the coming decade. McCarthy, always dissenting, reckons Nashe was referring to Thomas North as the author (of course!).
Now, to be fair to McCarthy - and this is as fair to him as I will ever be - this bit isn’t the whacky part, at least prima facie. After all, given that we don’t really know who Nashe was obliquely implying was the author, and the scant details in the text could be interpreted any number of different ways, McCarthy’s suggestion that it might have been North is in and of itself OK.
It’s more the fact that this one little inference became the basis of his multi-decade obsession with his North-Shakespeare hypothesis.
You see, what followed that first supposition was a classic case of confirmation bias. I say a classic case, but actually it is of course a rather extreme case. McCarthy has since published articles on:
Thomas North and Titus Andronicus
Ben Jonson’s Satires (and how they supposedly point to North as the writer of Shakespeare’s plays)
The claimed linguistic parallels between Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy and North’s first translation, the Diall of Princes
He’s also managed to unearth, and sometimes successfully publish books and/or articles on: Thomas’ handwritten marginalia in his personal books, that he thinks are connected to Shakespeare’s works; an unpublished travel journal, again by Thomas North, again thought by McCarthy to be connected to the plays; a copy of a book on politics, by George North, presumed to be Thomas’ cousin and yet again argued be the basis of certain scenes and phrases in the plays; payments that are assumed to be for putting on plays or revels, in the North family accounts; and finally, numerous (but of course coincidental) biographical connections between Thomas and Shakespeare’s plays (you'd have to read his book for those details).
Anyway, some of McCarthy’s discoveries are genuinely interesting in and of themselves, and certainly of historical interest to anyone who is a nerd for Elizabethan stuff, but where McCarthy sees endless corroboration and proof for his conclusions, I see confirmation biases on a scale rarely seen outside of QANON forums.
After all, where Dennis is likely to ask ‘what are the chances that everything Thomas North is known to have written and done can be directly linked to the Bard’s plays?’, I am inclined to answer ‘very likely, if that is what you’re looking for’. It’s just typical conspiracy thinking, isn’t it?
Let’s look at some specific examples of his arguments and so-called ‘evidence’, if you’re not too queasy-stomached with this journey so far.
At some point over the last decade, McCarthy has managed to get journalist Michael Blanding, and (presumably formerly) respected Shakespearean June Schlueter on board with his silliness, and together they’ve unearthed books from the North family library, some of which has marginalia in what they reckon is Thomas North’s handwriting (mentioned above).
You can click here to read a bit about it if you like (honestly, don’t bother), but the gist is simple: McCarthy thinks that North’s marginalia shows North’s process of writing some of the plays, and points in particular to his underlining of supposed ‘key plot points’ in Cymbeline, such as giving tribute to Rome, the slaying of a certain king, and the Roman invasion of Britain. He also loves to bang on about the fact that Shakespeare and North seemingly misspell a character’s name the same way, which he repeatedly asserts in his book is ‘highly unlikely’.
The main problem here is that we already know that Shakespeare used Fabyan’s chronicles as a source, so it’s hard to work out what these marginalia are meant to prove: the connection is already known. The fact that Shakespeare and North misspell ‘Cassibellan’ in the same way (‘Cassibulan’) means little when you remember that publishers would have the final say in how word were spelled, rather than working precisely to what was written in the manuscript: why assume it was Shakespeare who was misspelling the Roman name the same way as North? Clearly another reach by McCarthy, but of course he sees nothing but further confirmation of his theory.
And the fact that North underlined many of the ‘salient’ plot points and bits of phrasing that appear in Cymbeline needn’t suggest anything more than the translator saw Shakespeare’s play (or had a physical copy) and underlined those passages based on that. And that’s only one of any number of possible alternatives!
Anyway, in the early 2010s, he got his hands on some plagiarism software - WCopyfind - and of course applied his newest toy to his singular obsession. His findings from using the tool comprise the bulk of his book’s argument. It will surprise none of you, I’m sure, to hear that - shock, horror - he found exactly what he was looking for. I’m not going to go into detail here about all of the collocations he thinks he’s found, just check out his website for a run down, if you’re really that much of a masochist. (There are times looking into all of this that I’ve had to question both his and my soundness of mind…)
So, I’ll just stick to one example, possibly the single biggest reach I think I found in all his work:the claimed commonalities between Shakespeare’s writing, North, and North’s sources, and the argument that these are evidence for North’s authorship of the plays. For example, he reckons bits of King Lear are taken from one of Thom’s translations. I can happily accept that these connections might be real, to be fair, and that Shakespeare may have read North more widely than Plutarch’s Lives, but McCarthy of course has to go one step further: he asserts that the playwright must also have read North’s non-English source (one Simon Goulart), because EdgaPoor Tom uses the word ‘esperance’, which appears in Goulart’s French text in the same passage McCarthy thinks King Lear is borrowing from, via North.
Exhausting isn’t it?
His argument isn’t just that Shakespeare is borrowing from both North’s translation, and Goulart’s original, of course, but that North wrote King Lear and at some point sold the play to Shakespeare, and so he would have had access to his own translation and the original already when he was writing the play. Just read his webpage for a full breakdown of his warped thought process. As far as I’m concerned, this actually proves nothing. After all, 'esperance' was already an extant word in English by the late 16th century, being first recorded in 1430, so there’s no reason to assume Shakespeare got it from Goulart. And after all, coincidences do happen, but try convincing a conspiracy theorist of that.
It’s also not impossible - if we want to give McCarthy some leeway with his ideas - to believe that Shakespeare may have read both Goulart and North in parallel while writing King Lear. There’s good reason to believe he spoke French quite well, and it’s certainly not unheard of to work this way, even today. But McCarthy of course sees literally everything as confirmation of his theories.
Ultimately, it’s a shame that he had to wrap his research and discoveries up in this anti-Stratfordian nonsense. Had he simply stuck to the more reasonable and conventional view, that mainstream academia has accepted for hundreds of year - i.e. that actually, yes, the Man from Stratford wrote the plays we think he wrote - he could have contributed something useful to the field of Shakespeare’s sources or Elizabethan literature and history more broadly.
By all accounts, this Thomas North chap clearly led an interesting life. He certainly had some influence on Shakespeare’s writing, at least when it came to the three Roman Plays. And you know what, he may even have been used as a source for more of the canon than we had previously thought, if the collocations McCarthy talks about are anything to go by! But because McCarthy is far too fast to assume that nothing could be coincidental, or trivial - when in fact, actually, many things are - he’s put himself in a position where his work will forever be relegated to the fringes of academic study.
Elizabethan manuscript culture is well attested to and well discussed in the literature, and there’s no reason to think that Shakespeare couldn’t have read North’s unpublished journal, probably McCarthy’s favourite widdlle discoveries that he’s endlessly blathering about. Why should we assume that every single verbal parallel found between Shakespeare’s plays and North’s translations means Shakespeare must have been using the older writer as a direct source? And Just because Thomas North was Alice Arden’s half-sister (something else he goes on about a lot!), doesn’t mean he must have written Arden of Feversham, part of the ‘Shakespeare Apocrypha’. After all, we know that William himself had a distant relative on his mother’s side called ‘Thomas Arden’: does that not also, taking this line of argument, corroborate the Shakespeare-as-author case?
Well, there’s good reason to believe that Shakespeare did co-write at least some of Arden, based on robust stylometric analyses, so that is something of a rhetorical question. The point is, again, that McCarthy unfortunately sees everything as evidence for North’s authorship of the canon, and seems to think that because he can link every known biographical tidbit about Thomas North with Shakespeare’s plays, and because he squints his eyes and sees verbal parallels everywhere, and because North’s marginalia happens to misspell something the same way as Cymbeline - and honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg… well, this is the very definition of delusional monomania, right?
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little portrait of a man besotted by his own theories, and you’ve not simply spent the time reading it groaning in agony and despair over the fact that it’s 2024, and these baseless ideas keep popping up. I find something fascinating in all this, even if I also find it all a bit crazy.
Citations - I've tried to link to anything I really need to cite, but I also read/consulted
Shapiro, James - Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, 2011
Blanding, Michael - In Shakespeare's Shadow: A Rogue Scholar's Quest to Reveal the True Source Behind the World's Greatest Plays, 2022
My go to version of Shakespeare's works is The Arden Shakespeare, which also includes lots of notes on specific plays, and their sources, dates etc. I also use The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works
2024.05.04 03:55 Cultural_Ad4935 Jewel and Kevin Rule Montecito
 | The dating rumors have been swirling about the acting and directing great, Kevin Costner, and the talented multiple Grammy award winning singer-songwriter, Jewel. A true Montecito power couple if ever there was one. We saw last year how Meghan and Harry were pining for Kevin's attention and attempted to insert themselves into one of his charity events on stage only for them to be cooly snubbed by the actor and for Meghan to be pushed aside unceremoniously by the lovable microphone lady. submitted by Cultural_Ad4935 to SaintMeghanMarkle [link] [comments] Well, Jewel's 50th birthday is coming up on May 23, and I am predicting there will be a huge Montecito bash in celebration of her milestone birthday. Harry's 40th is coming up too, but I am putting all my bets on Jewel's party as being the ultimate social event of the year in this tight little hamlet. But guess what? There is absolutely no invitation for the Duke and Duchess of Toe Jam. There is most likely legitimate concern that they would set up a farmer's market tent in Kevin's backyard to sell their jams and jellies and maybe some Palmolive soaps. Meanwhile, Jewel is a feature story in People, and she talks about her advocacy for mental health and how she is in a great place now. I am certain that she is warming her vocal chords this month and will belt out a few songs at the event. My feeling is that she will sing a few songs that might very well apply to Meghan and Harry, from a safe distance of course, such as: Who Will Save Your Soul? (for the lies that you told, Megsie) These Hands Are Small I Know (Harry, here's looking at you, kid) Foolish Games (are tearing you both apart, Harry and Megsie) After Invictus in London and the fake Nigeria tour, they will be seething at being NFI to anything else this month. Anyone else looking forward to the snub? |
2024.05.02 19:03 obvs_thrwaway I want to talk a bit about medieval villages
Some background. I have an MA in Medieval Archaeology, but I'm not a practicing archaeologist and I haven't engaged with any literature on the topic since my program (sadly since I ended up working in marketing 😩).
One of the things I've loved about Manor Lords is that for the first time, I can build a medieval town that is consistent with my (probably dated) understanding of the medieval urban fabric.
But I wanted to introduce some of what I learned in my program to help folks in this game both role play and build sustainable communities that are in accordance with what we know of actual historic medieval settlements.
Again I am not a practicing scholar and can no longer cite sources, but I will recommend the book "Life in a Medieval Village" By Frances Gies as a very approachable primer.
Colonizing the Land
Some recent inventions, especially the heavy plow, allowed people to settle and colonize otherwise unfarmable land. A population boom in the 12th century started pushing people out of overpopulated villages and deeper into what had been the margins of settlement.
Medieval lords naturally saw this as a lucrative opportunity, and with the backing of the Church, who saw this as an opportunity to Christianize untamed and therefore sinful land, new towns and villages were chartered and settled by peasants seeking new opportunity (and tax breaks) in these new towns. This is why so many towns across Europe are literally named "Newtown" (ie "Newton", "Novograd", "Neuville").
Land would be cleared, trees cut, houses built, commerce established, and demons driven out and blessed by priests. This game is literally about this process. Or at least the economics of it.
Settlement Patterns
If you're familiar with the Manorial system, then you're familiar with how a king delegates to Barons who delegate to landed gentry who delegate to peasantry.
Settlements follow this hierarchy. A city, which in Western Europe at least is defined only as a town with a Cathedral that is to say has a Bishop, is at the top of the hierarchy. It's in turn supported by large villages, which are supported by very specialized smaller communities and camps, like mines, quarries, foresters, and charcoal burners.
The distinction of cities in the Middle Ages is clear if kinda weird, but Towns/Cities vs Villages is murkier, and is the subject of a lot of spilled in. When does a village become a town? Most distinctions are either too broad, too narrow, or too academic, but I think a useful one is that Towns/Cities support intellectual labor and the new Middle Class. Law firms, guild halls, bankers, money changers, professors. Villages primarily support agricultural and extractive labor like mines and farms. I don't see any indication in this game that there will be any mechanics built around the Middle Class
By an accident of landscape, economics, and human inclinations, these hierarchies tend to be pretty evenly spread out across the landscape. You can read more about what is called Central Placement Theory.
This game does tend to reflect that. Limited upgrades to a town means it's better to specialize a settlement to focus on whatever resource is abundant, and importing the rest.
In archaeology, there are essentially two kinds of buildings vernacular and monumental architecture. Broadly speaking, monumentality is loosely defined as a building which has a symbolic purpose as a major part of its function, Churches, Temples, Palaces and so on.
Vernacular architecture is everything else. Their function is largely practical (which does include a lot of symbolism) and includes houses, barns, granaries, and warehouses. The game actually lacks a lot of monumentality at this stage beyond a couple churches, your castle, and the road shrines. I wouldn't mind seeing more guild halls, market halls (maybe fewer merchants but higher capacity? Or as the only place to buy level 3 goods?).
submitted by obvs_thrwaway to ManorLords [link] [comments]
One of the things I've loved about Manor Lords is that for the first time, I can build a medieval town that is consistent with my (probably dated) understanding of the medieval urban fabric.
But I wanted to introduce some of what I learned in my program to help folks in this game both role play and build sustainable communities that are in accordance with what we know of actual historic medieval settlements.
Again I am not a practicing scholar and can no longer cite sources, but I will recommend the book "Life in a Medieval Village" By Frances Gies as a very approachable primer.
Colonizing the Land
Some recent inventions, especially the heavy plow, allowed people to settle and colonize otherwise unfarmable land. A population boom in the 12th century started pushing people out of overpopulated villages and deeper into what had been the margins of settlement.
Medieval lords naturally saw this as a lucrative opportunity, and with the backing of the Church, who saw this as an opportunity to Christianize untamed and therefore sinful land, new towns and villages were chartered and settled by peasants seeking new opportunity (and tax breaks) in these new towns. This is why so many towns across Europe are literally named "Newtown" (ie "Newton", "Novograd", "Neuville").
Land would be cleared, trees cut, houses built, commerce established, and demons driven out and blessed by priests. This game is literally about this process. Or at least the economics of it.
Settlement Patterns
If you're familiar with the Manorial system, then you're familiar with how a king delegates to Barons who delegate to landed gentry who delegate to peasantry.
Settlements follow this hierarchy. A city, which in Western Europe at least is defined only as a town with a Cathedral that is to say has a Bishop, is at the top of the hierarchy. It's in turn supported by large villages, which are supported by very specialized smaller communities and camps, like mines, quarries, foresters, and charcoal burners.
The distinction of cities in the Middle Ages is clear if kinda weird, but Towns/Cities vs Villages is murkier, and is the subject of a lot of spilled in. When does a village become a town? Most distinctions are either too broad, too narrow, or too academic, but I think a useful one is that Towns/Cities support intellectual labor and the new Middle Class. Law firms, guild halls, bankers, money changers, professors. Villages primarily support agricultural and extractive labor like mines and farms. I don't see any indication in this game that there will be any mechanics built around the Middle Class
By an accident of landscape, economics, and human inclinations, these hierarchies tend to be pretty evenly spread out across the landscape. You can read more about what is called Central Placement Theory.
This game does tend to reflect that. Limited upgrades to a town means it's better to specialize a settlement to focus on whatever resource is abundant, and importing the rest.
- Create farming hamlets that send grain to the main settlement, and export/barter the excess
- Workers camps near the rich resource
- barter and trade networks that plug the the main settlement into the broader commercial network.
- Invest your tech tree's few points into 1 branch that matches your rich resource to ensure the highest degree of productivity.
- One farmhouse takes a lot of support, so I would spread two hamlets of 4-5 houses and place one farmhouse equidistant to ensure that the hamlets don't get too dense and become villages themselves.
In archaeology, there are essentially two kinds of buildings vernacular and monumental architecture. Broadly speaking, monumentality is loosely defined as a building which has a symbolic purpose as a major part of its function, Churches, Temples, Palaces and so on.
Vernacular architecture is everything else. Their function is largely practical (which does include a lot of symbolism) and includes houses, barns, granaries, and warehouses. The game actually lacks a lot of monumentality at this stage beyond a couple churches, your castle, and the road shrines. I wouldn't mind seeing more guild halls, market halls (maybe fewer merchants but higher capacity? Or as the only place to buy level 3 goods?).
- Churches tend to be oriented to the East, and they tend to be situated close to marketplaces and commerce, but rarely are they center stage. They will also be established at the road near the entrance to the town, so that more remote peasants have access as well as demarcating the entrance from wilder-land to civilization.
- Manor Lords does a great job of presenting Medieval Lots and Long Houses. Stone footing, large timbers and mortise and tenon joinery with the spaces filled in with wattle and daub. The lots are long and narrow, and most of the time as much of the land was put to economic use as possible. This is by far my favorite feature of the game. It eschews the modern paradigm of a separation between industry and housing, which we have inherited from our familiarity with 20th century zoning laws.
- Stone houses are missing, but if we can ever upgrade townhomes to Level 4, I would like to see some of them be entirely stone. Timber framed buildings with cantilevered 2nd stories that extend beyond the entrance are also missing, but maybe that wasn't a characteristic of townhomes in this region at the time.
- Industry was largely divided into smelly and not smelly. Bad odors, or miasma was thought to be a major vector of disease and misfortune so Tanners, Potters, Blacksmiths would generally not be allowed to do their work in town, but most other types of industry was allowed to take place on your property as space allowed. There is an "odor" map overlay feature in this game that isn't implemented so I do expect it to matter more in later updates.
- In Europe, winds prevail from west to east, and so industry tends to be on the east side of town, and elites homes and town administration trend towards the western side. This is true today as well. Look at your town map and often you will see the factories and poorer communities located to the east and more affluent neighborhoods to the west. Unless there's a coast that rich people want to get a view of, modern communities still favor putting industry downwind.
- I hope to see market upgrades at some point. Open air markets are good, but that's only one type of market. Markets could be both covered (increase storage capacity), and independently owned shops of course for those level 3 artisan houses would be incredibly welcome.
- Buildings missing from the urban fabric: Hospitals, monasteries, convents, chapels, bath/whore houses, butter crosses (ecclesiastic markers of markets). Of these monasteries would be very welcome and could fit the rural character of the game.
- There are lots of monasteries in medieval towns, but certain orders built in the countryside, so it would be interesting to establish a monastery in one of the "counties" and had to follow a different path to upgrade the monastery to support an Abbot or Prior with imports, wine and candles, foodstuffs, and export books, rabbit meat (suckled rabbit was used during Lent since the unborn wasn't considered "meat" having only existed in the water of the womb).
2024.05.01 17:24 AcidTears111 Hamlet Themed Promposal Help
Hi! I’m going to make a promposal poster to ask my friend to prom. We both love Shakespeare and specifically Hamlet. I’d love some help or ideas for the poster. I’m thinking something like “To be (my prom date), or not to be (my prom date), that is the question.” or maybe something more refined. We acted out Hamlet in our AP Literature class (I was Hamlet, she was Ophelia), so maybe a reference to Hammy and Ophelia?
Thanks for any help, A very stressed student
submitted by AcidTears111 to shakespeare [link] [comments]
Thanks for any help, A very stressed student
2024.05.01 16:19 SpacePaladin15 The Nature of Predators 2-32
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Memory Transcription Subject: Taylor Trench, Human Colonist
Date [standardized human time]: June 25, 2160
The next generation of humans were a third of the way through development in ectogenesis. Soon, there wouldn’t be only thousands left of my kind. When I remembered what I was fighting for, it gave me the willpower to push through the hell General Radai was throwing at us. Ever since our engagement with the Sivkits, the Resket seemed hellbent on trying to break us, more than he had before. He’d made us run laps for hours, having some surprise when that didn’t crack us—well, it dropped Quana and other non-humans, but not the Tellus recruits. His next resort was extreme weather conditions, depriving us of the cooling systems of our helmets; sweating proved a handy adaptation.
I’d grown accustomed to aching all over at the end of each day, collapsing in my bunk with little energy to expend. Sleep was no guarantee, since Radai loved to burst in at the late hours of the night, forcing us to get up and hustle to a “mission.” The Resket definitely had it out for us, and the way he’d spoken to Tellus’ soldiers as of late resembled Mafani’s vitriol. At least boot camp was almost over, though I was seething at the lack of activity on the warfront. Why hadn’t the Consortium sent out the cavalry? They’d had a hundred years to plan for this eventuality; there was no reason progress should be so slow!
“Back up, Cherise,” Gress was saying, as I returned to the dorm from a half-assed shower. “You’re telling me that you wear these ‘high heels’ to look taller, balancing on that tiny stilt? Why does everything you do have to be so cute?!”
She rolled her eyes at the Krev. “Maybe in another life, back on Earth, I’d be a fashionista. It’s interesting to think of all the trends we had, the styles that gained popularity. I’ve never been a girly girl, but still…I want the experience of just wandering one of those retro malls, and shopping for the hell of it. Carefree like we were before aliens.”
“Then we should set up one of these ‘malls.’ I mean, I myself prefer online shopping, but—”
“What do you shop for, Gress?” I interjected. “Obor combs?”
“I only asked to brush your hair once! You’re the one who grew it out and tempted me.”
Quana’s head snapped toward us. “Gress forgets you’re a sapient being yet again. He treats you like some ‘cute thing’ without your own wants and desires.”
“All I did was ask, Quana. Taylor turned me down, so I dropped it. I can’t help that his face screams adorable; that doesn’t mean I don’t know he’s sapient.”
“Where did your daughter get the idea to beg to ‘keep him?’”
“I should’ve never told you about that,” I scoffed. “Lecca is a child. It was unbelievable, but a little humorous.”
Gress slumped his shoulders. “I was horrified when she said that. She doesn’t understand what she’s asking.”
“Taylor wouldn’t make a good pet. He’s too temperamental,” Cherise commented.
“Exactly!” I declared, grinning. “See, everyone knows that.”
“You weren’t supposed to agree with that.”
“Well, I did. And Quana, you can fuck back off to whatever you were doing before you butted into our conversation.”
The Jaslip pinned her ears back and bared her teeth. “You already make a great pet, and you don’t even see it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Heard. So Gress, back to your shopping habits. What do you even do for fun, other than raising obors or Lecca?”
Quana angled an ear toward the conversation. “He watches Jaslip kids die.”
Gress drew a shuddering breath, but ignored her. “Well, I used to do improv classes before I got married. That was how I met my wife, Nevi. I always had a knack for getting into character on the spot. Knowing what I know now, maybe I’d have gone into theater. I got a lead role in most school plays I auditioned for.”
“You were a theater kid? You know what: I can see that,” Cherise commented.
“I’m picturing you doing a really dramatic reading of Hamlet right about now,” I offered.
Gress leapt toward me, jabbing a claw in my face. “Get thee to a nunnery!”
I snickered. Someone’s been reading The Bard’s works in his spare time. “How about no?”
“That’s not your line, Ophelia. Try again!”
“I think that Hamlet had more to say before Ophelia talked, Gressy boy. Go brush up your reading.”
“The only thing I intend to brush up is you! Get over here.”
The Krev pulled an obor comb out of his bag without looking back, and extended it toward me. I leapt away, holding out a hand to swat it away. The brush clattered to the ground, but that didn’t stop Gress. I yelped as the comms initiate chased after me, and grabbed at the underside of my upper arm with his claws. The green-scaled mammal’s machinations proved devious, lightly prodding and scratching the ticklish area. Involuntary laughter took over, as I jerked my arm away from the persistent fiend; it was difficult to breathe through the hysterics. Unrelenting, he tried to poke at my sides next, but I managed to fend off his plans.
“What are you doing?” I protested.
Gress paused for a moment. “Primates play through tickling. Your laughing fit betrayed that humans do as well.”
“You can’t just do that.”
“I can, and I did. What are you going to do about it?”
I lunged toward the floor, swiping the obor comb. Rather than resisting, Gress issued a happy sigh as I scratched his spine; his dark blue tongue flitted out of his mouth with contentment. That move hadn’t produced the intended results. What an irritating creature he was—he’d probably ask for me to do this again. I was glad I’d gotten to club him over the head once, that day on the landing pad, and I was thinking of braining him a second time right now. What had I been reduced to, all for some exchange program nonsense? To increase my humiliation, General Radai walked in as the Krev was leaning into the comb I grudgingly kept moving. I leapt to my feet in a hurry, trying to straighten up.
“Trench, with me. You’re meeting with Mayor Hathaway and myself in the command center,” the Resket squawked.
I tried to smooth over my still-damp hair. “Yes, sir. I’m right behind you.”
What is this about? If Hathaway wants me back in his office…first off, I thought that he hadn’t forgiven me for the drill fuck-up, and secondly, I wouldn’t take it. I don’t want to be a “pet” anymore; because I was his pet much more than I ever have been with Gress.
The training camp had become a permanent base, with its advantageous location on the Tellus hillside. Ever since the Federation incursion, the Trombil had diverted their resources away from building up our colony; everything that they had went to generating more ships and weapons, as many as they could possibly crank out. The metropolis was all but complete, yet most humans weren’t enjoying the new amenities—word of our system’s invasion caused almost every settler to volunteer for some wartime role. The abandonment of our build-up, after all, meant that there would be no cage around Tellus to safeguard our home.
“Sir, if this planet falls, the only humans left are the ones still growing in artificial wombs right now. I hope we’re doing something about the threat,” I ventured. “If I may, you seemed a bit hesitant when the Sivkits arrived. Almost as if you didn’t want to attack them.”
Radai’s steps became more forceful and pronounced, his lanky legs shoving down into the dirt. “I would’ve preferred to gather information and weigh possible attempts of other methods, because now, we’re locked on the path of all-out war. I don’t take that lightly.”
“Neither do I. My entire species got wiped out, sir, in our last bout. I sure as shit want my revenge. What made you decide to attack the Sivkits, if you preferred to sit on your wings?”
“I recognized that the crew would not heed my commands if I didn’t order you to annihilate them. You, and the majority of the human forces at my command, displayed gross insubordination. You panicked at the mere sight of them. I hope that I have not made a dreadful mistake. Either way, I’ve cemented a ghastly place in the history books, and I have blood on my wingtips.”
“We…we couldn’t let them bomb our home. We couldn’t let them find us. Not again.”
“I know you humans feel that way. However, you’ve proven that you’re not reliable assets in the field. Too obstinate, too headstrong. While your close-quarters combat skills are excellent, I can’t justify trusting you to the command of any non-human officer. This is why I’ve been testing you by the elements, because the only way you’ll see direct action is if electronics go down.”
“But sir—”
“Silence. Humans being briefed on our plans is a courtesy; you’re only here because you’re the liaison from Avor. You wanted this war, Trench, so let me fucking win it. Drones are more efficient than you could ever dream of being.”
I held my tongue as Radai stormed into his command center; I had to jog to keep up with the nine-foot-tall avian’s lengthy strides. A holographic starmap was projected from a large display, not dissimilar from those Terrans once had at the center of our bridges. It seemed to be a full display of the thousand-light-year bubble composing Federation space, with all known systems highlighted. Mayor Hathaway, riding a resurgence in popularity with the drastic improvements Tellus had seen, barely acknowledged me. He’d rebranded himself under the motto of a new era of workers’ rights, though he didn’t deserve the credit he’d received from that. I resented having been his fall guy and kissing the ring for so long.
The mayor stroked his graying beard in thought. “We need to reassure the populace of Tellus that they are safe, and that we have everything under control. The last thing we need is unrest; the citizenry is all too fickle. How do you suggest we go about this, General?”
“Management of the colonists here is in your domain. I’m here to relay the Consortium’s plans for the initial phase of the war, since you are a member state,” Radai responded. “Our plan is to utilize a decapitation strike. We’re sending an overwhelming drone force against the homeworld of each of the enemy’s founders: the Farsul and the Kolshians. We take down the peak of the Federation’s power.”
“Only two targets? What about the other 300 worlds?” I blurted.
Irritation flashed in the Resket’s eyes. “Three targets, swarmed by a hundred-fifty thousand ships each. We do want to leave a significant bulk of our force here, to protect Consortium worlds in case they come looking for us. Aren’t you the one who was so focused on protecting Tellus?”
“Yes, sir. That is sensible. Who is the third target you mentioned?”
“Nishtal, the Krakotl world.” Radai’s words brought gleefulness to my brain, at the thought of the birds who’d eliminated us getting their just desserts. “An old, powerful member that spearheaded the extermination fleet. As one of the most anti-predator factions, they must be crushed to break the Federation’s will.”
“I love your plan. It’s great.”
Mayor Hathaway heaved a sigh. “Let the grown-ups speak, Taylor. General, I’m certain that last target will buy us some political leeway. But how will we maintain contact with the vessels, so that we can know the results? Or touch base in case they need an update to their directives.”
“Our drones will be out of range of our FTL comms network,” the Resket replied. “We’ll try to drop buoys discreetly behind us, though each departure from subspace risks detection…and leaves traces of our tech that they could find. It’s also just flat-out a soft target that could be neutralized. In range of their primary systems, we’re better off tapping into their infrastructure.”
“Then it’s possible that we’ll lose contact with the drones for large chunks of time?”
“That’s correct. If they can’t uplink with us after the battle, they’re slated to make several attempts by doubling back. The footage of their battle and any intelligence gained is invaluable. Regardless, barring an immediate surrender, the secondary targets will be powerful and loyal Federation members, such as the Malti, the Drezjin, and most certainly the Duerten. The last one is extremely influential and well-connected.”
I cleared my throat. “Okay. And what about the Arxur?”
“The Arxur, while monstrous, can be left until after the Federation’s fall. They’re on the opposite side of Fed space, so they don’t directly threaten us. We can worry about them after what we hope will be a quick, utter collapse of our dear neighbors. They might surrender after decisive wins in the places I mentioned, preventing the need for further loss of civilian lives.”
Hathaway pursed his lips. “In the event we did need to go further, I must ask about our allies, the Venlil. For all of their flaws, we remember that they tried to help us, and planned to fight with us at Earth. I doubt public opinion is in favor of killing them.”
“Venlil Prime is designated friendly, and will be avoided unless we are given no choice. We listened to your story; we heard that they aren’t like the rest.”
“Thank you. We greatly appreciate being filled in and having our concerns met, as part of your organization. It’s delightful to be included.”
Radai dipped his head. “You’ll also be apprised of the war’s developments as they happen. We’re in this together, Mayor. Let’s just make sure your people don’t forget that.”
“I’ll do what I can to keep them in line. You’ll find me to be a dependable advocate for the Consortium; it’s the least I can do in exchange for your bountiful aid.”
“We did gift you many things to get you off the ground. All we ask in return is respect and support. You’re dismissed, Trench. As Mayor Hathaway said, the adults have things we need to discuss on our own.”
“I’ll see myself out, sir,” I retorted.
My mind was whirling as I strolled out of the command center. I was the first person on this base to know that we were taking the fight to the “prey” xenos, and it’d brought my enthusiasm through the roof! Humanity wouldn’t have to fear the Federation coming after us if we ended their threat; we’d bury them in their crib the way they’d done to us, over two decades ago. It was a shame that Radai ruled out future action in person, though I grasped that drones had higher efficacy. It was a glorious view when I’d watched the Sivkits blink out of existence live, as particle beams lit them up like a firecracker. A goofy smile lingered on my face, imagining the first images of a dead Krakotl homeworld.
An eye for an eye. I wonder what Gress would think of that saying. I can’t tell whether he’d say it exemplified a primate’s violent tendencies, or straight up agree. Cherise, and probably Quana, want those blue birds flayed as much as I do.
In my distracted stupor, I didn’t notice a blur of pink out of my periphery. A Resket bowled his head into my side, flinging me backward several feet. Pain signals shot through various parts of my body like a pinball machine; I struggled to pick myself up, and look at my assailant. Trainer Mafani had ambushed me when I turned back toward the dorms. He must’ve seen me tailing after Radai earlier, and despite the general’s warnings to stay away, he seized his long-awaited opportunity when I exited alone. Wasn’t it dishonorable on Tanet to utilize the element of surprise on an unsuspecting victim?
“You! You terrorist-loving, chatterbox snitch! You sicced General Radai on me, and now, I might never train recruits again.” Venom dripped from Mafani’s voice, as he stamped a foot onto my spine: pushing me back to the dirt. “I was humiliated because of some lesser cloacasucker who tried to govern my speech. You’ll pay for everything, Taylor!”
I struggled to breathe with the weight pressing down on me. “It’s over. I don’t want…to quarrel with you.”
“It’s not about what you want, primate. I want you dead for what you’ve done to me—and I have no moral qualms about fighting dirty with anyone who sides with terrorists!”
“That someone isn’t me! Stop please…you’ve made your point. I’m a refugee from a dead world; you don’t want to k-kill anyone from an endangered species. You can’t! What happens if Radai finds out about this?”
“Radai is preoccupied. He’s not here to save you this time. I’m going to tie you up, leave you out in the desert that I hear you wanted to explore, to bake in the sun I hear you craved on your face so badly. I’ll put a beacon on you so that you are found in a few days, and they see the pitiful way you died. They’ll find you bound like an animal, having soiled yourself and struggled against the restraints until your fingers bled. When you hallucinate for a drop of water, I hope you think of me.”
“That’s sadistic! You…I don’t want to die. Please, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I’m going to inject you with a paralytic, so you won’t be able to struggle—or talk—until it’s too late. Enjoy being locked in your own mind, Taylor Trench.”
Mafani jabbed a needle into my neck, while I tried to scream for help; unfortunately, I couldn’t generate much noise with his weight pressing into my lungs. As my mind remained conscious, my body refused to obey my commands within minutes. I found myself wishing that Gress was here to save me, to play the role of hostage negotiator as he’d done in the past. However, as the twisted Resket trainer began carting me off toward a tucked-away vehicle, there was no one around to save me. I’d made plenty of mistakes over my lifetime, but I didn’t deserve to die like this!
Terror plagued my mind as I was hurled in the back of a truck, and rope was coiled tightly around my limbs.
---
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Memory Transcription Subject: Taylor Trench, Human Colonist
Date [standardized human time]: June 25, 2160
The next generation of humans were a third of the way through development in ectogenesis. Soon, there wouldn’t be only thousands left of my kind. When I remembered what I was fighting for, it gave me the willpower to push through the hell General Radai was throwing at us. Ever since our engagement with the Sivkits, the Resket seemed hellbent on trying to break us, more than he had before. He’d made us run laps for hours, having some surprise when that didn’t crack us—well, it dropped Quana and other non-humans, but not the Tellus recruits. His next resort was extreme weather conditions, depriving us of the cooling systems of our helmets; sweating proved a handy adaptation.
I’d grown accustomed to aching all over at the end of each day, collapsing in my bunk with little energy to expend. Sleep was no guarantee, since Radai loved to burst in at the late hours of the night, forcing us to get up and hustle to a “mission.” The Resket definitely had it out for us, and the way he’d spoken to Tellus’ soldiers as of late resembled Mafani’s vitriol. At least boot camp was almost over, though I was seething at the lack of activity on the warfront. Why hadn’t the Consortium sent out the cavalry? They’d had a hundred years to plan for this eventuality; there was no reason progress should be so slow!
“Back up, Cherise,” Gress was saying, as I returned to the dorm from a half-assed shower. “You’re telling me that you wear these ‘high heels’ to look taller, balancing on that tiny stilt? Why does everything you do have to be so cute?!”
She rolled her eyes at the Krev. “Maybe in another life, back on Earth, I’d be a fashionista. It’s interesting to think of all the trends we had, the styles that gained popularity. I’ve never been a girly girl, but still…I want the experience of just wandering one of those retro malls, and shopping for the hell of it. Carefree like we were before aliens.”
“Then we should set up one of these ‘malls.’ I mean, I myself prefer online shopping, but—”
“What do you shop for, Gress?” I interjected. “Obor combs?”
“I only asked to brush your hair once! You’re the one who grew it out and tempted me.”
Quana’s head snapped toward us. “Gress forgets you’re a sapient being yet again. He treats you like some ‘cute thing’ without your own wants and desires.”
“All I did was ask, Quana. Taylor turned me down, so I dropped it. I can’t help that his face screams adorable; that doesn’t mean I don’t know he’s sapient.”
“Where did your daughter get the idea to beg to ‘keep him?’”
“I should’ve never told you about that,” I scoffed. “Lecca is a child. It was unbelievable, but a little humorous.”
Gress slumped his shoulders. “I was horrified when she said that. She doesn’t understand what she’s asking.”
“Taylor wouldn’t make a good pet. He’s too temperamental,” Cherise commented.
“Exactly!” I declared, grinning. “See, everyone knows that.”
“You weren’t supposed to agree with that.”
“Well, I did. And Quana, you can fuck back off to whatever you were doing before you butted into our conversation.”
The Jaslip pinned her ears back and bared her teeth. “You already make a great pet, and you don’t even see it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Heard. So Gress, back to your shopping habits. What do you even do for fun, other than raising obors or Lecca?”
Quana angled an ear toward the conversation. “He watches Jaslip kids die.”
Gress drew a shuddering breath, but ignored her. “Well, I used to do improv classes before I got married. That was how I met my wife, Nevi. I always had a knack for getting into character on the spot. Knowing what I know now, maybe I’d have gone into theater. I got a lead role in most school plays I auditioned for.”
“You were a theater kid? You know what: I can see that,” Cherise commented.
“I’m picturing you doing a really dramatic reading of Hamlet right about now,” I offered.
Gress leapt toward me, jabbing a claw in my face. “Get thee to a nunnery!”
I snickered. Someone’s been reading The Bard’s works in his spare time. “How about no?”
“That’s not your line, Ophelia. Try again!”
“I think that Hamlet had more to say before Ophelia talked, Gressy boy. Go brush up your reading.”
“The only thing I intend to brush up is you! Get over here.”
The Krev pulled an obor comb out of his bag without looking back, and extended it toward me. I leapt away, holding out a hand to swat it away. The brush clattered to the ground, but that didn’t stop Gress. I yelped as the comms initiate chased after me, and grabbed at the underside of my upper arm with his claws. The green-scaled mammal’s machinations proved devious, lightly prodding and scratching the ticklish area. Involuntary laughter took over, as I jerked my arm away from the persistent fiend; it was difficult to breathe through the hysterics. Unrelenting, he tried to poke at my sides next, but I managed to fend off his plans.
“What are you doing?” I protested.
Gress paused for a moment. “Primates play through tickling. Your laughing fit betrayed that humans do as well.”
“You can’t just do that.”
“I can, and I did. What are you going to do about it?”
I lunged toward the floor, swiping the obor comb. Rather than resisting, Gress issued a happy sigh as I scratched his spine; his dark blue tongue flitted out of his mouth with contentment. That move hadn’t produced the intended results. What an irritating creature he was—he’d probably ask for me to do this again. I was glad I’d gotten to club him over the head once, that day on the landing pad, and I was thinking of braining him a second time right now. What had I been reduced to, all for some exchange program nonsense? To increase my humiliation, General Radai walked in as the Krev was leaning into the comb I grudgingly kept moving. I leapt to my feet in a hurry, trying to straighten up.
“Trench, with me. You’re meeting with Mayor Hathaway and myself in the command center,” the Resket squawked.
I tried to smooth over my still-damp hair. “Yes, sir. I’m right behind you.”
What is this about? If Hathaway wants me back in his office…first off, I thought that he hadn’t forgiven me for the drill fuck-up, and secondly, I wouldn’t take it. I don’t want to be a “pet” anymore; because I was his pet much more than I ever have been with Gress.
The training camp had become a permanent base, with its advantageous location on the Tellus hillside. Ever since the Federation incursion, the Trombil had diverted their resources away from building up our colony; everything that they had went to generating more ships and weapons, as many as they could possibly crank out. The metropolis was all but complete, yet most humans weren’t enjoying the new amenities—word of our system’s invasion caused almost every settler to volunteer for some wartime role. The abandonment of our build-up, after all, meant that there would be no cage around Tellus to safeguard our home.
“Sir, if this planet falls, the only humans left are the ones still growing in artificial wombs right now. I hope we’re doing something about the threat,” I ventured. “If I may, you seemed a bit hesitant when the Sivkits arrived. Almost as if you didn’t want to attack them.”
Radai’s steps became more forceful and pronounced, his lanky legs shoving down into the dirt. “I would’ve preferred to gather information and weigh possible attempts of other methods, because now, we’re locked on the path of all-out war. I don’t take that lightly.”
“Neither do I. My entire species got wiped out, sir, in our last bout. I sure as shit want my revenge. What made you decide to attack the Sivkits, if you preferred to sit on your wings?”
“I recognized that the crew would not heed my commands if I didn’t order you to annihilate them. You, and the majority of the human forces at my command, displayed gross insubordination. You panicked at the mere sight of them. I hope that I have not made a dreadful mistake. Either way, I’ve cemented a ghastly place in the history books, and I have blood on my wingtips.”
“We…we couldn’t let them bomb our home. We couldn’t let them find us. Not again.”
“I know you humans feel that way. However, you’ve proven that you’re not reliable assets in the field. Too obstinate, too headstrong. While your close-quarters combat skills are excellent, I can’t justify trusting you to the command of any non-human officer. This is why I’ve been testing you by the elements, because the only way you’ll see direct action is if electronics go down.”
“But sir—”
“Silence. Humans being briefed on our plans is a courtesy; you’re only here because you’re the liaison from Avor. You wanted this war, Trench, so let me fucking win it. Drones are more efficient than you could ever dream of being.”
I held my tongue as Radai stormed into his command center; I had to jog to keep up with the nine-foot-tall avian’s lengthy strides. A holographic starmap was projected from a large display, not dissimilar from those Terrans once had at the center of our bridges. It seemed to be a full display of the thousand-light-year bubble composing Federation space, with all known systems highlighted. Mayor Hathaway, riding a resurgence in popularity with the drastic improvements Tellus had seen, barely acknowledged me. He’d rebranded himself under the motto of a new era of workers’ rights, though he didn’t deserve the credit he’d received from that. I resented having been his fall guy and kissing the ring for so long.
The mayor stroked his graying beard in thought. “We need to reassure the populace of Tellus that they are safe, and that we have everything under control. The last thing we need is unrest; the citizenry is all too fickle. How do you suggest we go about this, General?”
“Management of the colonists here is in your domain. I’m here to relay the Consortium’s plans for the initial phase of the war, since you are a member state,” Radai responded. “Our plan is to utilize a decapitation strike. We’re sending an overwhelming drone force against the homeworld of each of the enemy’s founders: the Farsul and the Kolshians. We take down the peak of the Federation’s power.”
“Only two targets? What about the other 300 worlds?” I blurted.
Irritation flashed in the Resket’s eyes. “Three targets, swarmed by a hundred-fifty thousand ships each. We do want to leave a significant bulk of our force here, to protect Consortium worlds in case they come looking for us. Aren’t you the one who was so focused on protecting Tellus?”
“Yes, sir. That is sensible. Who is the third target you mentioned?”
“Nishtal, the Krakotl world.” Radai’s words brought gleefulness to my brain, at the thought of the birds who’d eliminated us getting their just desserts. “An old, powerful member that spearheaded the extermination fleet. As one of the most anti-predator factions, they must be crushed to break the Federation’s will.”
“I love your plan. It’s great.”
Mayor Hathaway heaved a sigh. “Let the grown-ups speak, Taylor. General, I’m certain that last target will buy us some political leeway. But how will we maintain contact with the vessels, so that we can know the results? Or touch base in case they need an update to their directives.”
“Our drones will be out of range of our FTL comms network,” the Resket replied. “We’ll try to drop buoys discreetly behind us, though each departure from subspace risks detection…and leaves traces of our tech that they could find. It’s also just flat-out a soft target that could be neutralized. In range of their primary systems, we’re better off tapping into their infrastructure.”
“Then it’s possible that we’ll lose contact with the drones for large chunks of time?”
“That’s correct. If they can’t uplink with us after the battle, they’re slated to make several attempts by doubling back. The footage of their battle and any intelligence gained is invaluable. Regardless, barring an immediate surrender, the secondary targets will be powerful and loyal Federation members, such as the Malti, the Drezjin, and most certainly the Duerten. The last one is extremely influential and well-connected.”
I cleared my throat. “Okay. And what about the Arxur?”
“The Arxur, while monstrous, can be left until after the Federation’s fall. They’re on the opposite side of Fed space, so they don’t directly threaten us. We can worry about them after what we hope will be a quick, utter collapse of our dear neighbors. They might surrender after decisive wins in the places I mentioned, preventing the need for further loss of civilian lives.”
Hathaway pursed his lips. “In the event we did need to go further, I must ask about our allies, the Venlil. For all of their flaws, we remember that they tried to help us, and planned to fight with us at Earth. I doubt public opinion is in favor of killing them.”
“Venlil Prime is designated friendly, and will be avoided unless we are given no choice. We listened to your story; we heard that they aren’t like the rest.”
“Thank you. We greatly appreciate being filled in and having our concerns met, as part of your organization. It’s delightful to be included.”
Radai dipped his head. “You’ll also be apprised of the war’s developments as they happen. We’re in this together, Mayor. Let’s just make sure your people don’t forget that.”
“I’ll do what I can to keep them in line. You’ll find me to be a dependable advocate for the Consortium; it’s the least I can do in exchange for your bountiful aid.”
“We did gift you many things to get you off the ground. All we ask in return is respect and support. You’re dismissed, Trench. As Mayor Hathaway said, the adults have things we need to discuss on our own.”
“I’ll see myself out, sir,” I retorted.
My mind was whirling as I strolled out of the command center. I was the first person on this base to know that we were taking the fight to the “prey” xenos, and it’d brought my enthusiasm through the roof! Humanity wouldn’t have to fear the Federation coming after us if we ended their threat; we’d bury them in their crib the way they’d done to us, over two decades ago. It was a shame that Radai ruled out future action in person, though I grasped that drones had higher efficacy. It was a glorious view when I’d watched the Sivkits blink out of existence live, as particle beams lit them up like a firecracker. A goofy smile lingered on my face, imagining the first images of a dead Krakotl homeworld.
An eye for an eye. I wonder what Gress would think of that saying. I can’t tell whether he’d say it exemplified a primate’s violent tendencies, or straight up agree. Cherise, and probably Quana, want those blue birds flayed as much as I do.
In my distracted stupor, I didn’t notice a blur of pink out of my periphery. A Resket bowled his head into my side, flinging me backward several feet. Pain signals shot through various parts of my body like a pinball machine; I struggled to pick myself up, and look at my assailant. Trainer Mafani had ambushed me when I turned back toward the dorms. He must’ve seen me tailing after Radai earlier, and despite the general’s warnings to stay away, he seized his long-awaited opportunity when I exited alone. Wasn’t it dishonorable on Tanet to utilize the element of surprise on an unsuspecting victim?
“You! You terrorist-loving, chatterbox snitch! You sicced General Radai on me, and now, I might never train recruits again.” Venom dripped from Mafani’s voice, as he stamped a foot onto my spine: pushing me back to the dirt. “I was humiliated because of some lesser cloacasucker who tried to govern my speech. You’ll pay for everything, Taylor!”
I struggled to breathe with the weight pressing down on me. “It’s over. I don’t want…to quarrel with you.”
“It’s not about what you want, primate. I want you dead for what you’ve done to me—and I have no moral qualms about fighting dirty with anyone who sides with terrorists!”
“That someone isn’t me! Stop please…you’ve made your point. I’m a refugee from a dead world; you don’t want to k-kill anyone from an endangered species. You can’t! What happens if Radai finds out about this?”
“Radai is preoccupied. He’s not here to save you this time. I’m going to tie you up, leave you out in the desert that I hear you wanted to explore, to bake in the sun I hear you craved on your face so badly. I’ll put a beacon on you so that you are found in a few days, and they see the pitiful way you died. They’ll find you bound like an animal, having soiled yourself and struggled against the restraints until your fingers bled. When you hallucinate for a drop of water, I hope you think of me.”
“That’s sadistic! You…I don’t want to die. Please, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I’m going to inject you with a paralytic, so you won’t be able to struggle—or talk—until it’s too late. Enjoy being locked in your own mind, Taylor Trench.”
Mafani jabbed a needle into my neck, while I tried to scream for help; unfortunately, I couldn’t generate much noise with his weight pressing into my lungs. As my mind remained conscious, my body refused to obey my commands within minutes. I found myself wishing that Gress was here to save me, to play the role of hostage negotiator as he’d done in the past. However, as the twisted Resket trainer began carting me off toward a tucked-away vehicle, there was no one around to save me. I’d made plenty of mistakes over my lifetime, but I didn’t deserve to die like this!
Terror plagued my mind as I was hurled in the back of a truck, and rope was coiled tightly around my limbs.
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2024.04.27 13:25 East_Adagio7125 Guys, How to improve this deck? 🤔🤔
 | submitted by East_Adagio7125 to cuecardgameAvid [link] [comments] |
2024.04.23 12:12 Rajdeepsinghsharma What are some hidden gems in Jammu and Kashmir that tourists often overlook?
 | Jammu and Kashmir is a state in northern India, which is world-renowned for its natural beauty. From snow-capped mountains and lush green valleys to sparkling lakes and glistening waterfalls, it has it all. Although popular tourist destinations like Srinagar, Gulmarg, and Pahalgam are well-known for their beauty, there are several hidden gems in Jammu and Kashmir that tourists often overlook. submitted by Rajdeepsinghsharma to u/Rajdeepsinghsharma [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/31akxv4ye7wc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=31267702331c8f59ddeb4248c05f2b5302ab3289 One of the best places to visit in Jammu and Kashmir is the Lolab Valley in Kupwara district. It is a lesser-known destination that offers breathtaking landscapes, pristine meadows, and gurgling streams. The Lolab Valley is surrounded by snow-capped mountains and is home to several hiking trails that lead to small hamlets and quaint villages. The valley is also known for its agriculture, and visitors can see farmers tending to fields of apples, walnuts, and other produce. The best time to visit Lolab Valley is from May to October. Another place to visit in Jammu and Kashmir is the Zanskar Valley, which is located in the Ladakh region. It is an isolated valley that is accessible only by road during the summer months. The Zanskar Valley is known for its rugged terrain, snow-capped peaks, and ice-cold streams. It is also famous for the frozen Zanskar River, which turns into a sheet of ice in winter, attracting adventure seekers who want to go ice trekking or ice skating. The best time to visit the Zanskar Valley is from June to September. The Doodhpathri Meadow is another offbeat destination that is located in Budgam district. It is a picturesque meadow surrounded by verdant forests and snow-capped mountains. The meadow gets its name from the white water that flows through it, resembling milk. The Doodhpathri Meadow is an ideal destination for nature lovers and adventurers who want to explore the wilderness. Visitors can go trekking, camping, and horse riding here. The best time to visit the Doodhpathri Meadow is from May to October. If you are looking for a spiritual experience, then visit the Martand Sun Temple, which is located in Anantnag district. It is an ancient temple dedicated to the Sun God, which was built in the 8th century AD. The temple is known for its stunning architectural design, which includes intricate carvings and sculptures. Visitors can also explore the ruins of the temple and learn about its history. The best time to visit the Martand Sun Temple is from April to October. The Tarsar Lake is another hidden gem in Jammu and Kashmir, which is located in the Kashmir Valley. It is a high-altitude Alpine Lake that is surrounded by snow-capped mountains and scenic valleys. The Tarsar Lake is an ideal destination for trekking enthusiasts who want to explore the wilderness and enjoy the beauty of nature. Visitors can also go camping here and indulge in trout fishing. The best time to visit the Tarsar Lake is from June to October. If you are interested in history and culture, then visit the Awantipora Temple, which is located in Pulwama district. It is an ancient temple complex that dates back to the 9th century AD and is dedicated to Lord Vishnu. The temple is known for its stunning architecture, which includes intricate carvings and sculptures. Visitors can also explore the ruins of the temple and learn about its history. The best time to visit the Awantipora Temple is from April to October. ConclusionJammu and Kashmir has several hidden gems that are worth exploring. These destinations offer unique experiences that are off the beaten path and away from the crowds. From natural beauty and adventure sports to history and culture, there is something for everyone in Jammu and Kashmir. To discover more hidden gems, visit the TripAdvisor website for a comprehensive list of places to visit in Jammu and Kashmir. |
2024.04.23 00:39 _Revelator_ Clarkson's Columns: The Mazda 3 rave review & Welsh is the best accent
 | Mazda 3 — probably the most amazing car in Britain, not that you’ll notice it submitted by _Revelator_ to thegrandtour [link] [comments] By Jeremy Clarkson (The Sunday Times, April 21) The Mazda 3 saloon is a long way from ugly. That said, it might just be the most boring-looking car ever made. It’s so anonymous you could have driven one down the aisle at Westminster Abbey when King Charles was being coronated and no one would have spotted it. However, if you look underneath its invisible skin you will discover that this is probably the most amazing car on sale in Britain. As we know, most family cars today are mini-SUVs with some kind of preposterous and unnecessarily complicated hybrid drive system. Or they are fully electric, which is even more stupid. Mazda, however, has no interest in any of this nonsense. It argues that if you want to save fuel and make fewer carbon dioxides, you shouldn’t dispense with the tried and tested internal combustion engine. You should develop it. Hone it. Poke into the corners of possibility with a powerful head torch and a pair of tweezers. And that’s what it has done. https://preview.redd.it/52pb4ya2w3wc1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6f0a00f14dbc7f575f0677bd99517127183102a I hope you’ll forgive me, but I need to get a little bit technical at this point because what the two-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine in the 3 does is combine the characteristics of diesel and petrol technology. First of all, there’s a stratospheric compression ratio of 15:1. This helps use the fuel more efficiently, the sort of thrifty approach championed by Mrs Thatcher, who saw that the alternative — catalytic converters — would create more greenhouse gases. She was right, of course, but nothing could be done back then because Amstrad made all the computers. It can now, though, because Mazda has done it. So, the extremely lean mixture of fuel and air is squirted into the cylinder as normal, but then a very rich mixture is added at precisely the right moment around the spark plug and this causes the initial injection to burn as if it had been ignited by compression. I have literally no idea what I’m on about here, but I do understand the results: 54mpg. And absolutely no sense at all that you are driving something from a place, a very long way in the future, called “sensible”. When 16-valve engines first came along, people remarked on how there was very little low-down grunt. When diesels became all the rage, people commented on how they sounded like canal boats. When we got the turbo, it was hard not to notice the mile-wide gap between pushing the accelerator and actually accelerating. And with electric cars, we quickly realised that going to see a family member on the other side of the country could take a week. But with Mazda’s tech there’s no obvious downside at all. It’s just a nice, smooth engine. And now we must turn our attention to the comfort, which is extraordinary. This has been achieved after a lot of hard work. The chassis is designed to deflect bumps and shudders away from the occupants. The seats have been developed to act as cushions. Even the tyres have soft and squidgy sidewalls. So if you’re a private detective who needs to remain fresh and alert while using a car that’s invisible to tail an errant husband, this has to be your No 1 choice. But what if the errant husband does spot you and puts his foot down? Would you then be wishing that you were in Jim Rockford’s Firebird? Nope. Because the 3 is sprightly enough in a straight line and extremely pointy and together in the bends. I genuinely enjoyed whizzing along the lanes round here in it, and I especially enjoyed having an old-fashioned manual gearbox. A bloody good one too. It has been a very long time since I drove a normal, sensible family car that is this much fun. Usually there’s an incomprehensible dashboard full of symbols and hieroglyphics and the sense that you’re lugging around half a hundredweight of batteries that can’t be recharged anywhere within a hundred miles and which make the act of driving for pleasure as hard as ballet dancing in a pair of wellies. But there was none of this in the Mazda. It was just me, some dials I understood and not so much power that I was frightened to deploy all of it whenever the mood took me. https://preview.redd.it/6l86a3l9w3wc1.jpg?width=1021&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b0466631af4cbda89a8a8fd7bc4573fbcbc3474 Other things I enjoyed were the leather steering wheel, which felt tremendous, and a sense that nothing was going to break or fall off. Things I didn’t enjoy? Well, there are some significant blind spots, there isn’t much space in the back and while the boot is huge, the opening isn’t. You have to think of it, really, as a postbox. But if that’s an issue, you could always buy the hatchback. And then there was the infernal bonging. Before setting off I’d spend hours trying to disable all the idiotic safety features — something that 41 per cent of drivers do, a recent poll discovered — but there was always something I’d forgotten. So, for no apparent reason, I’d be driving along and the racket would start up again. Only on my final day with the car did I discover a little switch down by my right knee that shuts everything up. I’m not sure how this is allowed under EU law, which says you can’t just push an “everything off” button. But Mazda has obviously found a loophole. This, though, is the Mazda way. The company began by making corks and tricycles but with war looming switched to the production of rifles. The war didn’t go well for Japan, and especially for Mazda, which was based in Hiroshima, but somehow it came out on the other side as a carmaker. And ever since it has always dared to be a bit different. There was the longstanding flirtation with Wankel rotary engines. Years after everyone else gave up, Mazda persevered. In the Seventies, however, Ford took a stake in the company and you might think that would spell an end for individualistic thinking. Nope. Because at the precise moment every other carmaker gave up on the idea of a small, affordable two-seater convertible, Mazda came up with the MX5. It also launched a van called the Bongo and a hatchback that had wheels seemingly lifted from the bottom of a grand piano. Today, in partnership with Toyota, it is developing upholstery made from corn starch. And that brings us back to the 3. This is the most impressive and satisfying car I’ve driven for quite some time. It’s quiet, understated, beautifully made, extremely clever and, as a result, a flick to the electric car lobby’s nutsack. And it’s available in something called soul red crystal, which — and I don’t usually like red cars — is the best colour currently available on any car anywhere. The Clarksometer: Mazda 3 Saloon 186PS Exclusive-Line Engine: 1998cc, 4 cylinders, petrol Power: 183bhp @ 6000rpm Torque: 177 lb ft @ 4000rpm Acceleration: 0-62mph: 8.1sec Top speed: 134mph Fuel: 54mpg CO₂: 118g/km Weight: 1,391kg Price: £29,255 Release date: On sale now Jeremy’s rating: ★★★★ 1/2 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Enough of the roadman lingo. If you need an accent, Welsh is bare safe By Jeremy Clarkson (The Sunday Times, April 21) I think that if I decided one day to be antisemitic, I’d struggle, because how can you tell when someone is Jewish? Obviously some wear a silver Star of David round their neck, which is a bit of a giveaway. But the Jews I know look pretty much like everyone else I know. But let’s say I did spot a giveaway sign that someone is Jewish, a yarmulke perhaps. I’d then have to work out why I hated them and that’s even trickier. Yes, I have a ten-year R visa in my passport that permits me to do religious work when in America, but this is because of a weird administrative error at the US embassy, rather than any deep theological knowledge. I think Jews don’t believe Jesus was the son of God. Is that it? Whatever, it would be difficult to dislike someone simply because he believes a beardy 2,000-year-old man wasn’t a deity. I don’t believe he ever lived at all. There’s a similar issue with those of a Roman Catholic disposition. I once worked with a Papist who claimed he suffered prejudice every day of his life. This seems unlikely. Just last month, Lisa, my girlfriend, announced that she’d like to go to church. Not sure why. Something to do with wanting to give up chocolate I think. Anyway, I spent an hour or two googling all the nearby options and when I presented her with the list, she said: “But none of them are Catholic.” Seven years we’ve been together, and I never knew. The point I’m trying to make here is that religion doesn’t matter. You can’t decide to not like someone just because their god is an elephant. It would be as daft as saying you don’t like someone because they are black or a lesbian or a woman. But weirdly, there is still one thing that drowns us all in a steaming vat of prejudice: regional accents. I love that on such a small island, we have (mostly) one language, but about a thousand ways of saying it. We have Jean Brodie’s Edinburgh lilt, Ray Winstone’s Cockney, Gerald Cooper’s Oxfordshire and that marvellously mangled attempt at Scottish by Jessica Lange in Rob Roy. However, we seem to have decided that all of these accents should now be consigned to the bin and replaced by something I hate. It’s called “roadman” and was first deployed, I think, by Taron Egerton in the film Kingsman. God knows where it came from. It’s a sort of mix of London and Jamaican and now it’s everywhere. Hull. Carlisle. Tower Hamlets. The playing fields of Eton. Even the continuity announcers at the BBC use it to say: “Oi blud. Wagwan. Bare safe Countryfile is up next.” It’s not just an accent either. It’s a whole new language which takes words that mean one thing and then uses them to mean something completely different. “Creps”, for example, are training shoes. “Bait” means obvious. And if a roadman asks you to “allow it”, he means stop what you’re doing, or you’ll get “shanked”. Which means knifed. Now, we all know that Cockney rhyming slang was invented to make sure that the authorities had no idea what London’s East End working class were on about. But roadman is plainly designed so that everyone from every class and every ethnic origin and every part of the country can use it and no one is able to understand a single word. It makes my teeth itch with rage so please, if we are all going to use the same accent, can we not think of something better? Not Scouse obviously. It may work in Liverpool, but when anyone from the south hears those guttural squawking noises, you see them recoiling, like they’re about to get a Jamie Carragher-style torrent of goz in the face. Birmingham? No again, I’m afraid, because without wishing to be rude, the Brummie accent makes you sound a bit thick. I’m not saying that Ozzy Osbourne actually is thick. But he sounds it. And I know for a fact that Richard Hammond isn’t thick, but after he’s had six gins and his Shirley origins begin to seep through the cracks, I’m always tempted to give him some crayons and a colouring-in book. Certainly, we can be sure that if Einstein had been from Kings Heath, no one would have taken his theory of relativity seriously. And the only reason William Shakespeare’s held in such high esteem is that in the early 17th century, audiobooks hadn’t been invented. Yorkshire and Geordie accents used to be favoured by advertising agencies because someone who spoke like Sean Bean or Mark Knopfler was perceived to be more trustworthy than someone who spoke like, say, Pam Ayres or Taron Egerton. I think that’s probably true. But the silent “t” in Yorkshire is difficult to perfect and all anyone can say in Geordie is “why I”. And there’s no point suggesting the King’s English, because today that’s almost certainly racist. The obvious answer is Welsh. Last week, I heard a recording of Anthony Hopkins reading When Tomorrow Starts Without Me. I urge you to look this up online. It will make your hair stand on end. It is, and there’s no other word, magnificent. And here’s the thing. It should never be read out loud by anyone who isn’t from the valleys. Can you imagine Nicola Sturgeon reading it? Or Jasper Carrott? Then there’s Michael Sheen. He’s the most preposterous luvvie, of course, but I saw him last week reading the Dylan Thomas poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, and it was like having honey dribbled into my ears. It’s much the same story with Richard Burton. When he says “Broadsword calling Danny Boy” in Where Eagles Dare, it’s possibly the most perfect sound ever recorded. And if you need further proof that Welsh is the future, and roadman isn’t, cast your mind back to Huw Edwards. No wait. Don’t do that. Cast it back to Neil Kinnock. Everything he ever said was complete and utter tosh, but I could listen to him saying it all day long. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ And here's an excerpt from the Sun column: OK, God made some mistakes, and then he created Oz as a place to put them Bone enthusiasts have announced that Australia used to be home to giant 27 stone kangaroos that bounced along at speeds of up to 50mph. This doesn’t surprise me. Because think about it. We’re told that God made all of the world’s creatures, and that must have been a huge undertaking. One minute he’s working on the elephant, and the next he’s designing a mite that burrows into children’s eyes. And he knows he’s got the frog, the cow and the wolf to finish off by tea time. It’s inevitable that sometimes he’d make mistakes. Stuff like the saltwater crocodile or those spiders and snakes that can kill a person just by looking at them. This is why he created Australia, miles from anywhere. Where all of his more stupid animal designs could go. The duck-billed platypus, for example. And the koala, which is permanently stoned and gets chlamydia if you pick up it. So, of course there were giant kangaroos. And I bet if the bone people keep looking, they’ll find an ant with teeth the size of kitchen scissors and 14 eyes. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Clarkson's columns are regularly collected as books. You can buy them from his boss or your local bookshop. |