Steel gamefowl farm
Why don't syndicate bounties on Endless Nodes give the standing reward for every round?
2024.06.01 12:08 bdrumev Why don't syndicate bounties on Endless Nodes give the standing reward for every round?
For Example, Cavia Mirror Defense. As things stand, people just go in the bounty, do one round and extract every single time and spam that for standing. And no one ever goes long, for there is little incentive to do so. So farming for those Full Rotation rewards on Steel Path is all but a pipe dream, unless I play solo or miraculously get a full party of sheer enthusiasts together. And the only time there is a longer run possible, it is from the Omnia Fissures alone.
submitted by bdrumev to Warframe [link] [comments]
2024.06.01 08:14 HughEhhoule Bait Dog: Part 3
For anyone who wants to see how things began.
https://www.reddit.com/HFY/s/S97b2fqIjx
“In what universe would I ever do you a favor? “ I say, sweeping the floor of the reinforced barn.
“It’s not a favor, it’s a trade, bud.
What do you want in return? “ Trenchcoat asks from within the coffin-like cage.
“To be back home, 8 months ago. “ I reply.
Over the past few weeks I’ve managed to integrate myself into the day to day life on the farm. Things are still a grim, horrifying slog, but with every day it gets a bit easier to deal with.
“Give me something I can do. “ The creature pleads.
“Why, so I can wind up on the end of another ‘ Gotcha’ moment? I’m good. “ is my answer.
A few minutes of silence go by, Augustus breaks it.
“I don’t know many secrets of the universe. Facts, not really my bag. But I know a couple.
How about I share one with you?
No one, not the pope, not my brother, not the shit-bird perched on the highest branch of my twisted family tree, knows what happens when you die.
Some of us never will, of course. Others have ways of avoiding it, but at the end of the day, when the lights truly go out, we know next to nothing.
We do know one thing though. There is judgement, by who? Who knows? Why? Not important.
But at the end of the day, if your battery can’t be recharged, you really want to be thinking about how many marks are on each side of the ledger. “
I don’t reply, and for the next hour or so I ignore the pleading and hinting Trenchcoat does.
But that night, as I sip acidic tea, and try to get a handle on how in the fuck old televisions function, his offer is at the forefront of my mind.
He wants to kill, specifically 6 teenagers who, according to him, have been murdering classmates yearly in a twisted ritual.
He wants me to think this is some kind of noble act, he frames it as almost superheroic. The evil prick knows how I feel, knows that I see the blood on my hands every day, and would kill ( possibly literally) for some way to atone.
Is it a play? I honestly don’t think so, something about how eager the twisted thing is, about how he’s treating the situation as a buyer’s market makes me think something about this makes it important to him.
He offers me everything besides safety and protection. I’m desperate for help, but I have no way to hold him to any agreement.
So the thought rolls around in my mind, staving off the few hours of sleep I get.
“Okay, so, I have it on good authority that tea is supposed to taste better over here. What the hell is wrong with this? “ I say, sitting around an outside table with Sylvia, Dafydd and Colin.
Sylvia smiles, “ Barium, calcium, and a touch of castor oil. “
I look at the brew, then at her.
“If I had told you when you got here you need to drink that to mitigate the effects of working with void touched objects and creatures, you’d have assumed the worst, and found a way to avoid drinking it.
Good to see you becoming more perceptive though. “ Sylvia explains.
“That’s called paranoia, Syl. “ I reply.
She laughs, lighting a cigarette.
“Do you know why I’ve let you figure things out on your own? “ The ancient woman asks.
“Accepted? Yes. Understood, not in the slightest. “ I answer, wondering what sadist invented the scone.
“It’s because I need a leader. Someone who can understand, not a boy who puts his head down and listens to orders.
Someone who can make their own decisions when the time comes.
And I think that time is coming soon. “ Her statement feels like a question.
“If I chose to be here I’d be honored.” I counter.
“That attitude on the other hand… needs work.
Nikolas, today, we talk about what’s really going on.
We play a role in a much larger organization, us, and other families like us, are the ‘boots on the ground’ so to speak.
Our job is not to capture creatures, or horde esoteric goods. We do not foil the schemes of demons, nor blind those who look too deeply into the abyss.
We’re given information about events that could steer the path of humanity into a brick wall. And our job is to make sure they don’t happen. “ Sylvia reveals.
“Something is happening with these fights? “ I ask.
“As I said, perceptive.
Yes, it could be next week, it could be in a decade or two. Right now, we know very little about it, other than when it happens, it would be in our best interests to be of a high standing in the pits. “ She replies.
I absorb the information, and t drug laced tea in equal measure. As I do, I feel something, I feel I’m a part of what’s going on.
This is going to sound dumb as hell, but up until this point I hadn’t been taking things seriously. Don’t get me wrong, death is on the table, and I was trying to avoid that. But I was just treading water, hoping something or someone came by and to get me out of this situation.
But as Syl lays things out, I start to think of my place here, what I can be doing to better my state.
“Here is the part where you avoid telling me why you couldn’t have used anyone around here. “ I prod.
I keep her gaze, Colin and Dafydd shift uncomfortably.
“Augustus, he’s a tricky one. But a very lucky find for us.
I’ve tried 2 others. A boy and a girl, both I practically raised.
Marco, he was a warrior. But the demon got in his head. There was nothing that could be done beyond end his suffering.
Zelma, I won’t talk about.
That thing, it has a way of turning someone’s best traits against them. You, are a blank slate, but you’re family. You’re my best guess as to how we can use him to our advantage.
And this is why I need you, not to listen, but to understand. To see what’s happening, and make your own decisions. If I were to give you my knowledge, if I were to arm you with the best weapons, and the most powerful esoteric objects I know. He’d just have more to turn against you. “ Sylvia’s revelation scares me and puts a massive weight on my shoulders all at the same time.
Confidence and fear are both dangerous emotions. The two of them are almost like drugs in a way.
After eight months of mainlining fear, the tiny line of confidence Sylvia gave me, went straight to my head.
Trenchcoat told me where to find a video file. And after a couple of weeks of running it through every possible test I could, to check for any kind of manipulation, supernatural or otherwise, I watched it.
I was confident that the world would be much better off without the people committing the vicious acts contained in those twenty minutes of footage.
A teenage view of morality, I admit. But what do you want, I’m a teenager.
We watch the abandoned house from across the street. It’s a dingy, urban blight affected suburb, that being said, how no one seems to notice the seven foot freak with me, I have no idea.
The kid inside smoking stolen cigarettes and illegally supplied booze is a husky young guy of about 14. The half dozen kids that show up a couple hours later look closer to my age, last couple of years of high school I’m guessing.
The way they get into the house tells me they’ve done this before. The backpacks they all carry tell me they’re there for a purpose.
“How fucking funny would it be if I just killed you here and took off? “ Trenchcoat says, looming behind me.
I tense.
“It’s a joke. Out of my whole rotten family, Art and I, are close. I’m not going anywhere.
Unfortunately for you. “ Trenchcoat shoves me to the ground as he walks toward the house.
We get in through a basement window, I fit easily, Trenchcoat contorts his body to fit through the thin opening, somehow doing so silently.
I keep hearing Sylvia in my head. Telling me how she needs someone that can make his own decisions.
As I stand in the litter strewn basement, beside a creature with child murder on it’s mind I question the decision that I made.
At first the illumination is dim, nothing more than scraps of moonlight filtered through splintered wood. But with an industrial click, suddenly a half dozen lightbulbs bathe the basement in harsh, yellowish light.
Harsh, but not harsh enough to cause the reaction I see from Trenchcoat.
He squints and tries, unsuccessfully to turn away from the lights. Something about them is causing him discomfort. I get my hopes up for a moment he’s going to burst into flame or turn into dust or something, but no dice.
The sight of the walking nightmare looking pained and confused makes me panic. But before I can think of how I fucked up, I hear a voice.
The room, by the sounds of it, the entire house, has been rigged with speakers. Cleverly recessed in sconces and corners.
“Augi, long time no see. And I see you brought a little Renfield fella with you. “ The voice is modulated, Trenchcoat looks curious for a moment.
“Who, is this? You that clown that’s been fucking with Art?” He guesses.
The voice laughs, “Nope.
Who I am, is a guy who managed to find a few boxes of lightbulbs from ’93.
Then again, with eBay, that could make me just about anyone. “
Trenchcoat turns and looks toward the window we came in. He reaches a hand toward it, stopping a few inches away.
“That’s fucking interesting. “ He says, eyes darting around the room.
“Isn’t it though? “ The voice replies, clearly hearing the creature’s whisper, “ Tonight you get the pay for centuries of the worst shit committed by man or beast. I’ve made sure of that. No one in this house is going anywhere for the next 8 hours.
I’m sure the rest of the houseguests are pretty confused as to what’s going on. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so let me give you the Cliff’s notes.
You kids have been killing a monster a year for half a decade. You were the perfect bait, and I have faith you’ll be able to outwit Augi long enough to make it out of here.
If not, you’ll still have helped kill one of the worst things to walk the face of the earth. “
“What the hell is he talking about? “ I ask, a sinking feeling in my gut.
“That’s what you’re worried about right now?
Yeah, these kids are more Scooby gang than Manson family. Don’t blame me for the fact it only took an out of context exorcism video and some promises of making things right with the universe to get you on board with killing them. “ Trenchcoat spits.
I feel afraid, stupid and small. Which is to say, lately, business as usual.
I begin to break lightbulbs, I notice no runes, or anything else that would indicate they have any kind of supernatural origin.
As the basement dims, Trenchcoat starts to breathe easier.
“What’s going on, what stopped you from leaving? “ I ask.
“This little shit is playing The Game. “ Trenchcoat says to himself as much as to me. He looks deep in thought, inspecting the glass from the bulbs.
“What are you talking about? “ I say, my voice cracking slightly.
I hear noises upstairs, frantic foot falls. Indecipherable shouting.
Trenchcoat turns to me, exasperated and filled with anger.
“You’ve heard of ‘Rules’ right? All that ‘Don’t turn left on East street at 3:24 am kind of shit? “ The creature starts, “More and more of them popping up lately. Can’t miss the things.
Well, your kind seems great at finding them, but fucking awful at figuring out what they are. It’s not someone’s new job, or creepy school. The answer is so damned simple, but all of you’ve missed it.
It's a game. It’s, The Game.
It’s ran by the thickest branches of my family tree, and the stakes are high enough even I don’t really understand.
And whoever has us here, he’s weaponized it. The crazy fuck. “
“Call on your family for help then. “ I say, starting to deal with the fear and confusion.
“You first. “ Is Trenchcoat’s reply.
I get his point, and for a twisted, shitty moment, I find myself relating to the murderous thing I’ve been saddled with.
“So what’s the plan? “ I ask.
“Get my hands on whoever’s been stalking me. Between A and B, probably kill those little do-gooders upstairs out of spite.
I need you to circumvent rules we come across. Humans need to agree to follow the rules, it’s why people encounter them in jobs and schools so much. I’m not human, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t get a choice. “ I’m shaking my head as Augustus relates his plan.
“We’re not hurting those kids. “ I say defiantly.
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem with that.
But I’m a God damned child killing monster, bud! How long is that going to take to sink the fuck in?
Me not doing what I do, isn’t like giving up smokes. Think of it like not having a slash for months on end. Sooner or later, like it or not, I’m either finding a bathroom or pissing my pants. “ the rant scares me, but it makes me think.
Something about Augustus, it seems very, 90’s. Whoever was on the speakers was talking about the lightbulbs being from ’93. I’m picking up on a very distinct pattern.
I file that information with the rest of the disconnected lore I’ve managed to find on Trenchcoat as I follow him up the steep, narrow set of stairs.
He whips the thin wood door open, taking an aggressive, lurching step into the livingroom beyond. Surely ready to dispense too far quips and limitless violence, as per usual.
But that doesn’t happen, his rage filled scowl turns into a look of resignation, “Fuck”, is the monster’s last word before he disappears.
I cautiously walk up the loose splinter ridden stairs, expecting Augustus to be waiting around the corner, or engaged in combat with some other horror.
But once I get to the top, there’s nothing more sinister than a livingroom covered in dust and graffiti strewn with old bottles and new stains.
I know my chance when I see it. The particle board sealing the bay window is rotten, the glass long since broken.
No monster, no crazy family, I’ll take my chances with the streets of the U. K.
I tap the crumbling wood with a foot, it rattles, it won’t take much to make a hole.
I line up a kick, freedom no more than a quarter inch of rotten wood away.
“I wouldn’t do that. “ Says a voice behind me, male, around my age I’d guess, but with a confidence that makes me listen, “ Rigged with a load of C4 in the window frame.
Don’t take my word for it, guy wasn’t very subtle. ”
Sure enough, I see small wires running along the edges of the frame and embedded in the particle board.
I turn around, the six people standing in front of me have a vibe I can only describe as severe.
“Are we going to have issues? “ a slight, dark skinned guy asks.
“You making threats? “ I reply.
“No, he isn’t. “ it’s the same voice that warned me about the explosives. It belongs to a squared jawed kid with short black hair, he’s wearing a grey hoodie, and separates himself from the group. “ Call me Kent, and I’m in charge of making threats.
Sid, he’s our people person, he’s just trying to see if you’re someone we need to worry about. “
“We don’t have time to figure this kid out, leave him. “ a short, ginger girl says.
“Ami, why don’t I stay out of equipment, and you and Kent let me figure this kid out?” Sid says.
“I’m Nik. “ I volunteer.
“Good to meet you Nik. “ Sid says, walking around Kent, “Didn’t mean to start things off on the wrong foot.
We’ve just gotten used to doing these kinds of things in our own way over the past bit. We get a little… weird around this time of year if I’m being honest. “
I nod, apprehensive at giving any kind of detailed response.
“Derik” says a tall, pale guy, “ Research. “
“Liam. “ a tanned boy in a flannel shirt and deep blue jeans tells me, “ Oxford doesn’t talk, accident a couple of years back. I’m logistics, he figures spooky shit out. “
Oxford is thin and bald, his face looks much older than it should. Like he’s the victim of some kind of wasting disease.
Telling these kids the truth would be, complicated. And something about their war vet demeanor, makes me want to keep things simple.
So I give them a version of the truth. One where I was plucked from my room by Trenchcoat, and brought here for a slow death.
They buy it. I think.
“Well, I don’t know what this Jigsaw wannabe has planned, but trust me when I say, it can’t be much worse than the things we’ve went through. “ Kent says, trying to be reassuring.
“Just, one more thing. “ Sid begins, “ Why all the scars? “
I know I’ve won most of the group over, but I don’t like the look Sid is giving me.
“Work on a farm, on top of that, the family owns an auction. Lots of bent steel and splinters, what can I say? “ I say, trying to sound casual.
“Fair enough, that accent though. “ Sid’s look becomes almost predatory as he talks.
“Immigration my guy. What’s with the third degree? “ I reply.
“We’ve just met and I’ve only asked three questions.
Humor me here though.
You get taken in the night by that thing that winked out of existence.
Seems pretty nice of him to let you put on shoes. “ Sid lets his statement hang.
Kent turns, I don’t like where this is going. Panic and fear start to well up.
“What’re you thinking Sid? “ Kent asks.
“Kid’s lying. But he’s good at it. “ Sid answers.
“You saying this has turned into a, me, situation? “ Kent’s question starts a deep pit in my stomach.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far. But I don’t like the idea of him having seen our faces. I think this is a Liam situation. “ As Sid says this I look to Liam, who already seems deep in thought.
“Local cops will back our story, but he could go beyond them.
We tie him up until all of this is done, and we get some video of him putting a blade into the body upstairs. He goes telling any stories, it’s us and the locals versus some Yank on video stabbing the kid. “ Liam suggests.
I tried to fight, it went, embarrassingly. Kent had me on the ground in some kind of arm lock in about a second.
I’m bound to an old wooden chair with electrical cords, dragged into a room on the second floor where the chubby kid from before lays face down in a coagulated pool of his own blood. Surrounded by the trappings of misspent youth.
The door locks, and I stare at the corpse, wondering what in the hell went on up here, and in what universe are these psychopaths anything other than what they seemed on screen.
Time becomes almost malleable. I’m terrified to the point where every moment seems to stretch out forever.
Then, I hear it. A wet, organic noise. It starts below the body, and slowly starts to spread.
After a minute or two, the body starts to jerk and twitch. The room is dim as hell, but some kind of ropey, flesh-like substance, is sealing off the door.
I watch as the corpse clumsily gets to it’s feet. It’s skin pale, it’s throat slit to the point of near decapitation.
The head falls backward, obscenely with a small spurt of thick blood.
I scream, I thought I’d been getting used to being face to face with monsters. But fully bound, inches away from a kid that seems to be filled with a twisting mass of barbed, writhing, intestine like tentacles, I realize I’m not used to shit.
The ropey mass forms the barest suggestion of features, a shifting, lumpen mass of ever moving tendrils coming from what used to be the kid’s neck.
The sound spreads more, cracks in the floorboards and walls begin to show hints of the tendrils filling them in like spray foam.
No one is hearing my screams, or if they are, they have no interest in helping.
Ever wonder how you’d handle torture? I think if you’re the kind of person to be reading this, it’s likely you have.
I started by pissing myself.
The second the thin tendril touches my hand, I feel a blinding, flensing pain. I can do nothing but watch, as thousands of nearly hair thin spines tear and consume my flesh. As it slowly, almost, curiously makes it’s way up my arm, it leaves a bloodless, scarred furrow about an eighth of an inch deep.
My second reaction was to lose any pretense at defiance or dignity. I thrash and scream, beg and offer. All of this turning into choked sobs as the thing starts to do much of the same with another tendril.
It felt like I was in hell, every inch of me nothing more than a canvas for this artist of misery.
But pain, it can only go so far. Whether we’re talking about my tolerance, or this thing’s interest.
Mutilation, the brutal wedding of pain and loss. That was it’s next step.
A thick, almost centipede like tendril sits on my pinky like a hot iron. I can only watch in horror as I see fat, then muscle, then bone, then, nothing.
My voice shreds, I tear my wrists and ankles trying desperately to break the expertly tied wires.
My mind is at the breaking point, the creature in front of my makes a terrible, high pitched keening I assume is laughter.
My body is a roadmap of scarred pits and lines. My hand sports a cleanly severed finger. Fuck me, I wish things ended there.
Of all the important parts of the human body, the eye, tends to feel the least pain. Which isn’t to say, as I watched the greedy, grasping claws slowly take pieces of one of mine, it didn’t hurt, but the worst part, was knowing what was happening.
The vision in my left eye begins to distort at first, the edges getting blurry, then going dark. Bit by bit, chunk by irreplaceable chunk, the creature takes half my vision.
I can feel the shifting air on the bare socket, to call what I’m doing screaming, would be understating things to the point of absurdity.
My brain reels at what has just happened. I can feel my grip on reality begin to loosen, pain, worse than can bare, loss of half my sight, it’s too much.
My brain feels filled with static, for a few brief moments I swear, I can hear someone, a voice, trying to tell me something.
But then, a smell hits me. Something so foul, so alien, it yanks me back from the brink of disassociation. I gag and choke, as the air becomes thick with the rotten, chemical reek.
Then, I see it, I see, him.
As randomly as he disappeared, in an instant Trenchcoat is in the room.
He’s torn apart, wounds so deep and ragged, I can see the door on the other side of the room through the worst of them.
One arm is a twisted, broken mess, the flesh jacket torn to shreds of necrotic tissue.
The look on his face is panic, paranoia. A rictus grin of someone that has been kept on his toes for entirely too long.
He trembles and heaves, looking like he could fall over at any second.
He points his good arm at the tendril creature, who I notice has a too familiar eye suspended in it’s shifting features.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the motherfucker who just made me kill my favorite cousin, would you? “ Trenchcoat asks, his voice cracked, and strained.
He gets a confused keening in response.
“Bad day for you then. “ Augustus says.
There is no style to his violence, Trenchcoat grabs the shifting mass, his wicked, claw tipped fingers angling themselves in tendrils. As he lifts the thing, floorboards break, and it’s torn free from the root-like system it was creating in the room.
Three brutal slams cover me in ichor and pieces of creature. Trenchcoat tosses the mewling, twitching pile in a corner and looks at me with disgust.
“You let that thing do this to you? Fuckin’ pathetic, bud.
And who tied you up? “ The nightmare I’ve been cursed with chides me.
“The kids downstairs. “ I say only now realizing I’ve still been sobbing.
One handed, Trenchcoat snaps the wires, then stumbles backward, slowly sliding down the wall.
He coughs, grey, bloody phlegm hitting the ground.
“So, what’s the play here? If this shit broke you, I could use the spare parts, if not, well, you know what the Bible says.
An eye for an eye. “ Trenchcoat grins as he talks, nearly on the brink of death.
And that’s where I think I’m going to leave things. Because, honestly I don’t know what I’m choosing.
I’m mutilated, half blind, using too much of my energy typing to strangers online about things because, I’m so fucking alone here.
If you hear from me again, I hope I made the right move. If not, take this as a lesson on what happens when you screw around with the occult.
submitted by HughEhhoule to HFY [link] [comments]
https://www.reddit.com/HFY/s/S97b2fqIjx
“In what universe would I ever do you a favor? “ I say, sweeping the floor of the reinforced barn.
“It’s not a favor, it’s a trade, bud.
What do you want in return? “ Trenchcoat asks from within the coffin-like cage.
“To be back home, 8 months ago. “ I reply.
Over the past few weeks I’ve managed to integrate myself into the day to day life on the farm. Things are still a grim, horrifying slog, but with every day it gets a bit easier to deal with.
“Give me something I can do. “ The creature pleads.
“Why, so I can wind up on the end of another ‘ Gotcha’ moment? I’m good. “ is my answer.
A few minutes of silence go by, Augustus breaks it.
“I don’t know many secrets of the universe. Facts, not really my bag. But I know a couple.
How about I share one with you?
No one, not the pope, not my brother, not the shit-bird perched on the highest branch of my twisted family tree, knows what happens when you die.
Some of us never will, of course. Others have ways of avoiding it, but at the end of the day, when the lights truly go out, we know next to nothing.
We do know one thing though. There is judgement, by who? Who knows? Why? Not important.
But at the end of the day, if your battery can’t be recharged, you really want to be thinking about how many marks are on each side of the ledger. “
I don’t reply, and for the next hour or so I ignore the pleading and hinting Trenchcoat does.
But that night, as I sip acidic tea, and try to get a handle on how in the fuck old televisions function, his offer is at the forefront of my mind.
He wants to kill, specifically 6 teenagers who, according to him, have been murdering classmates yearly in a twisted ritual.
He wants me to think this is some kind of noble act, he frames it as almost superheroic. The evil prick knows how I feel, knows that I see the blood on my hands every day, and would kill ( possibly literally) for some way to atone.
Is it a play? I honestly don’t think so, something about how eager the twisted thing is, about how he’s treating the situation as a buyer’s market makes me think something about this makes it important to him.
He offers me everything besides safety and protection. I’m desperate for help, but I have no way to hold him to any agreement.
So the thought rolls around in my mind, staving off the few hours of sleep I get.
“Okay, so, I have it on good authority that tea is supposed to taste better over here. What the hell is wrong with this? “ I say, sitting around an outside table with Sylvia, Dafydd and Colin.
Sylvia smiles, “ Barium, calcium, and a touch of castor oil. “
I look at the brew, then at her.
“If I had told you when you got here you need to drink that to mitigate the effects of working with void touched objects and creatures, you’d have assumed the worst, and found a way to avoid drinking it.
Good to see you becoming more perceptive though. “ Sylvia explains.
“That’s called paranoia, Syl. “ I reply.
She laughs, lighting a cigarette.
“Do you know why I’ve let you figure things out on your own? “ The ancient woman asks.
“Accepted? Yes. Understood, not in the slightest. “ I answer, wondering what sadist invented the scone.
“It’s because I need a leader. Someone who can understand, not a boy who puts his head down and listens to orders.
Someone who can make their own decisions when the time comes.
And I think that time is coming soon. “ Her statement feels like a question.
“If I chose to be here I’d be honored.” I counter.
“That attitude on the other hand… needs work.
Nikolas, today, we talk about what’s really going on.
We play a role in a much larger organization, us, and other families like us, are the ‘boots on the ground’ so to speak.
Our job is not to capture creatures, or horde esoteric goods. We do not foil the schemes of demons, nor blind those who look too deeply into the abyss.
We’re given information about events that could steer the path of humanity into a brick wall. And our job is to make sure they don’t happen. “ Sylvia reveals.
“Something is happening with these fights? “ I ask.
“As I said, perceptive.
Yes, it could be next week, it could be in a decade or two. Right now, we know very little about it, other than when it happens, it would be in our best interests to be of a high standing in the pits. “ She replies.
I absorb the information, and t drug laced tea in equal measure. As I do, I feel something, I feel I’m a part of what’s going on.
This is going to sound dumb as hell, but up until this point I hadn’t been taking things seriously. Don’t get me wrong, death is on the table, and I was trying to avoid that. But I was just treading water, hoping something or someone came by and to get me out of this situation.
But as Syl lays things out, I start to think of my place here, what I can be doing to better my state.
“Here is the part where you avoid telling me why you couldn’t have used anyone around here. “ I prod.
I keep her gaze, Colin and Dafydd shift uncomfortably.
“Augustus, he’s a tricky one. But a very lucky find for us.
I’ve tried 2 others. A boy and a girl, both I practically raised.
Marco, he was a warrior. But the demon got in his head. There was nothing that could be done beyond end his suffering.
Zelma, I won’t talk about.
That thing, it has a way of turning someone’s best traits against them. You, are a blank slate, but you’re family. You’re my best guess as to how we can use him to our advantage.
And this is why I need you, not to listen, but to understand. To see what’s happening, and make your own decisions. If I were to give you my knowledge, if I were to arm you with the best weapons, and the most powerful esoteric objects I know. He’d just have more to turn against you. “ Sylvia’s revelation scares me and puts a massive weight on my shoulders all at the same time.
Confidence and fear are both dangerous emotions. The two of them are almost like drugs in a way.
After eight months of mainlining fear, the tiny line of confidence Sylvia gave me, went straight to my head.
Trenchcoat told me where to find a video file. And after a couple of weeks of running it through every possible test I could, to check for any kind of manipulation, supernatural or otherwise, I watched it.
I was confident that the world would be much better off without the people committing the vicious acts contained in those twenty minutes of footage.
A teenage view of morality, I admit. But what do you want, I’m a teenager.
We watch the abandoned house from across the street. It’s a dingy, urban blight affected suburb, that being said, how no one seems to notice the seven foot freak with me, I have no idea.
The kid inside smoking stolen cigarettes and illegally supplied booze is a husky young guy of about 14. The half dozen kids that show up a couple hours later look closer to my age, last couple of years of high school I’m guessing.
The way they get into the house tells me they’ve done this before. The backpacks they all carry tell me they’re there for a purpose.
“How fucking funny would it be if I just killed you here and took off? “ Trenchcoat says, looming behind me.
I tense.
“It’s a joke. Out of my whole rotten family, Art and I, are close. I’m not going anywhere.
Unfortunately for you. “ Trenchcoat shoves me to the ground as he walks toward the house.
We get in through a basement window, I fit easily, Trenchcoat contorts his body to fit through the thin opening, somehow doing so silently.
I keep hearing Sylvia in my head. Telling me how she needs someone that can make his own decisions.
As I stand in the litter strewn basement, beside a creature with child murder on it’s mind I question the decision that I made.
At first the illumination is dim, nothing more than scraps of moonlight filtered through splintered wood. But with an industrial click, suddenly a half dozen lightbulbs bathe the basement in harsh, yellowish light.
Harsh, but not harsh enough to cause the reaction I see from Trenchcoat.
He squints and tries, unsuccessfully to turn away from the lights. Something about them is causing him discomfort. I get my hopes up for a moment he’s going to burst into flame or turn into dust or something, but no dice.
The sight of the walking nightmare looking pained and confused makes me panic. But before I can think of how I fucked up, I hear a voice.
The room, by the sounds of it, the entire house, has been rigged with speakers. Cleverly recessed in sconces and corners.
“Augi, long time no see. And I see you brought a little Renfield fella with you. “ The voice is modulated, Trenchcoat looks curious for a moment.
“Who, is this? You that clown that’s been fucking with Art?” He guesses.
The voice laughs, “Nope.
Who I am, is a guy who managed to find a few boxes of lightbulbs from ’93.
Then again, with eBay, that could make me just about anyone. “
Trenchcoat turns and looks toward the window we came in. He reaches a hand toward it, stopping a few inches away.
“That’s fucking interesting. “ He says, eyes darting around the room.
“Isn’t it though? “ The voice replies, clearly hearing the creature’s whisper, “ Tonight you get the pay for centuries of the worst shit committed by man or beast. I’ve made sure of that. No one in this house is going anywhere for the next 8 hours.
I’m sure the rest of the houseguests are pretty confused as to what’s going on. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so let me give you the Cliff’s notes.
You kids have been killing a monster a year for half a decade. You were the perfect bait, and I have faith you’ll be able to outwit Augi long enough to make it out of here.
If not, you’ll still have helped kill one of the worst things to walk the face of the earth. “
“What the hell is he talking about? “ I ask, a sinking feeling in my gut.
“That’s what you’re worried about right now?
Yeah, these kids are more Scooby gang than Manson family. Don’t blame me for the fact it only took an out of context exorcism video and some promises of making things right with the universe to get you on board with killing them. “ Trenchcoat spits.
I feel afraid, stupid and small. Which is to say, lately, business as usual.
I begin to break lightbulbs, I notice no runes, or anything else that would indicate they have any kind of supernatural origin.
As the basement dims, Trenchcoat starts to breathe easier.
“What’s going on, what stopped you from leaving? “ I ask.
“This little shit is playing The Game. “ Trenchcoat says to himself as much as to me. He looks deep in thought, inspecting the glass from the bulbs.
“What are you talking about? “ I say, my voice cracking slightly.
I hear noises upstairs, frantic foot falls. Indecipherable shouting.
Trenchcoat turns to me, exasperated and filled with anger.
“You’ve heard of ‘Rules’ right? All that ‘Don’t turn left on East street at 3:24 am kind of shit? “ The creature starts, “More and more of them popping up lately. Can’t miss the things.
Well, your kind seems great at finding them, but fucking awful at figuring out what they are. It’s not someone’s new job, or creepy school. The answer is so damned simple, but all of you’ve missed it.
It's a game. It’s, The Game.
It’s ran by the thickest branches of my family tree, and the stakes are high enough even I don’t really understand.
And whoever has us here, he’s weaponized it. The crazy fuck. “
“Call on your family for help then. “ I say, starting to deal with the fear and confusion.
“You first. “ Is Trenchcoat’s reply.
I get his point, and for a twisted, shitty moment, I find myself relating to the murderous thing I’ve been saddled with.
“So what’s the plan? “ I ask.
“Get my hands on whoever’s been stalking me. Between A and B, probably kill those little do-gooders upstairs out of spite.
I need you to circumvent rules we come across. Humans need to agree to follow the rules, it’s why people encounter them in jobs and schools so much. I’m not human, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t get a choice. “ I’m shaking my head as Augustus relates his plan.
“We’re not hurting those kids. “ I say defiantly.
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem with that.
But I’m a God damned child killing monster, bud! How long is that going to take to sink the fuck in?
Me not doing what I do, isn’t like giving up smokes. Think of it like not having a slash for months on end. Sooner or later, like it or not, I’m either finding a bathroom or pissing my pants. “ the rant scares me, but it makes me think.
Something about Augustus, it seems very, 90’s. Whoever was on the speakers was talking about the lightbulbs being from ’93. I’m picking up on a very distinct pattern.
I file that information with the rest of the disconnected lore I’ve managed to find on Trenchcoat as I follow him up the steep, narrow set of stairs.
He whips the thin wood door open, taking an aggressive, lurching step into the livingroom beyond. Surely ready to dispense too far quips and limitless violence, as per usual.
But that doesn’t happen, his rage filled scowl turns into a look of resignation, “Fuck”, is the monster’s last word before he disappears.
I cautiously walk up the loose splinter ridden stairs, expecting Augustus to be waiting around the corner, or engaged in combat with some other horror.
But once I get to the top, there’s nothing more sinister than a livingroom covered in dust and graffiti strewn with old bottles and new stains.
I know my chance when I see it. The particle board sealing the bay window is rotten, the glass long since broken.
No monster, no crazy family, I’ll take my chances with the streets of the U. K.
I tap the crumbling wood with a foot, it rattles, it won’t take much to make a hole.
I line up a kick, freedom no more than a quarter inch of rotten wood away.
“I wouldn’t do that. “ Says a voice behind me, male, around my age I’d guess, but with a confidence that makes me listen, “ Rigged with a load of C4 in the window frame.
Don’t take my word for it, guy wasn’t very subtle. ”
Sure enough, I see small wires running along the edges of the frame and embedded in the particle board.
I turn around, the six people standing in front of me have a vibe I can only describe as severe.
“Are we going to have issues? “ a slight, dark skinned guy asks.
“You making threats? “ I reply.
“No, he isn’t. “ it’s the same voice that warned me about the explosives. It belongs to a squared jawed kid with short black hair, he’s wearing a grey hoodie, and separates himself from the group. “ Call me Kent, and I’m in charge of making threats.
Sid, he’s our people person, he’s just trying to see if you’re someone we need to worry about. “
“We don’t have time to figure this kid out, leave him. “ a short, ginger girl says.
“Ami, why don’t I stay out of equipment, and you and Kent let me figure this kid out?” Sid says.
“I’m Nik. “ I volunteer.
“Good to meet you Nik. “ Sid says, walking around Kent, “Didn’t mean to start things off on the wrong foot.
We’ve just gotten used to doing these kinds of things in our own way over the past bit. We get a little… weird around this time of year if I’m being honest. “
I nod, apprehensive at giving any kind of detailed response.
“Derik” says a tall, pale guy, “ Research. “
“Liam. “ a tanned boy in a flannel shirt and deep blue jeans tells me, “ Oxford doesn’t talk, accident a couple of years back. I’m logistics, he figures spooky shit out. “
Oxford is thin and bald, his face looks much older than it should. Like he’s the victim of some kind of wasting disease.
Telling these kids the truth would be, complicated. And something about their war vet demeanor, makes me want to keep things simple.
So I give them a version of the truth. One where I was plucked from my room by Trenchcoat, and brought here for a slow death.
They buy it. I think.
“Well, I don’t know what this Jigsaw wannabe has planned, but trust me when I say, it can’t be much worse than the things we’ve went through. “ Kent says, trying to be reassuring.
“Just, one more thing. “ Sid begins, “ Why all the scars? “
I know I’ve won most of the group over, but I don’t like the look Sid is giving me.
“Work on a farm, on top of that, the family owns an auction. Lots of bent steel and splinters, what can I say? “ I say, trying to sound casual.
“Fair enough, that accent though. “ Sid’s look becomes almost predatory as he talks.
“Immigration my guy. What’s with the third degree? “ I reply.
“We’ve just met and I’ve only asked three questions.
Humor me here though.
You get taken in the night by that thing that winked out of existence.
Seems pretty nice of him to let you put on shoes. “ Sid lets his statement hang.
Kent turns, I don’t like where this is going. Panic and fear start to well up.
“What’re you thinking Sid? “ Kent asks.
“Kid’s lying. But he’s good at it. “ Sid answers.
“You saying this has turned into a, me, situation? “ Kent’s question starts a deep pit in my stomach.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far. But I don’t like the idea of him having seen our faces. I think this is a Liam situation. “ As Sid says this I look to Liam, who already seems deep in thought.
“Local cops will back our story, but he could go beyond them.
We tie him up until all of this is done, and we get some video of him putting a blade into the body upstairs. He goes telling any stories, it’s us and the locals versus some Yank on video stabbing the kid. “ Liam suggests.
I tried to fight, it went, embarrassingly. Kent had me on the ground in some kind of arm lock in about a second.
I’m bound to an old wooden chair with electrical cords, dragged into a room on the second floor where the chubby kid from before lays face down in a coagulated pool of his own blood. Surrounded by the trappings of misspent youth.
The door locks, and I stare at the corpse, wondering what in the hell went on up here, and in what universe are these psychopaths anything other than what they seemed on screen.
Time becomes almost malleable. I’m terrified to the point where every moment seems to stretch out forever.
Then, I hear it. A wet, organic noise. It starts below the body, and slowly starts to spread.
After a minute or two, the body starts to jerk and twitch. The room is dim as hell, but some kind of ropey, flesh-like substance, is sealing off the door.
I watch as the corpse clumsily gets to it’s feet. It’s skin pale, it’s throat slit to the point of near decapitation.
The head falls backward, obscenely with a small spurt of thick blood.
I scream, I thought I’d been getting used to being face to face with monsters. But fully bound, inches away from a kid that seems to be filled with a twisting mass of barbed, writhing, intestine like tentacles, I realize I’m not used to shit.
The ropey mass forms the barest suggestion of features, a shifting, lumpen mass of ever moving tendrils coming from what used to be the kid’s neck.
The sound spreads more, cracks in the floorboards and walls begin to show hints of the tendrils filling them in like spray foam.
No one is hearing my screams, or if they are, they have no interest in helping.
Ever wonder how you’d handle torture? I think if you’re the kind of person to be reading this, it’s likely you have.
I started by pissing myself.
The second the thin tendril touches my hand, I feel a blinding, flensing pain. I can do nothing but watch, as thousands of nearly hair thin spines tear and consume my flesh. As it slowly, almost, curiously makes it’s way up my arm, it leaves a bloodless, scarred furrow about an eighth of an inch deep.
My second reaction was to lose any pretense at defiance or dignity. I thrash and scream, beg and offer. All of this turning into choked sobs as the thing starts to do much of the same with another tendril.
It felt like I was in hell, every inch of me nothing more than a canvas for this artist of misery.
But pain, it can only go so far. Whether we’re talking about my tolerance, or this thing’s interest.
Mutilation, the brutal wedding of pain and loss. That was it’s next step.
A thick, almost centipede like tendril sits on my pinky like a hot iron. I can only watch in horror as I see fat, then muscle, then bone, then, nothing.
My voice shreds, I tear my wrists and ankles trying desperately to break the expertly tied wires.
My mind is at the breaking point, the creature in front of my makes a terrible, high pitched keening I assume is laughter.
My body is a roadmap of scarred pits and lines. My hand sports a cleanly severed finger. Fuck me, I wish things ended there.
Of all the important parts of the human body, the eye, tends to feel the least pain. Which isn’t to say, as I watched the greedy, grasping claws slowly take pieces of one of mine, it didn’t hurt, but the worst part, was knowing what was happening.
The vision in my left eye begins to distort at first, the edges getting blurry, then going dark. Bit by bit, chunk by irreplaceable chunk, the creature takes half my vision.
I can feel the shifting air on the bare socket, to call what I’m doing screaming, would be understating things to the point of absurdity.
My brain reels at what has just happened. I can feel my grip on reality begin to loosen, pain, worse than can bare, loss of half my sight, it’s too much.
My brain feels filled with static, for a few brief moments I swear, I can hear someone, a voice, trying to tell me something.
But then, a smell hits me. Something so foul, so alien, it yanks me back from the brink of disassociation. I gag and choke, as the air becomes thick with the rotten, chemical reek.
Then, I see it, I see, him.
As randomly as he disappeared, in an instant Trenchcoat is in the room.
He’s torn apart, wounds so deep and ragged, I can see the door on the other side of the room through the worst of them.
One arm is a twisted, broken mess, the flesh jacket torn to shreds of necrotic tissue.
The look on his face is panic, paranoia. A rictus grin of someone that has been kept on his toes for entirely too long.
He trembles and heaves, looking like he could fall over at any second.
He points his good arm at the tendril creature, who I notice has a too familiar eye suspended in it’s shifting features.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the motherfucker who just made me kill my favorite cousin, would you? “ Trenchcoat asks, his voice cracked, and strained.
He gets a confused keening in response.
“Bad day for you then. “ Augustus says.
There is no style to his violence, Trenchcoat grabs the shifting mass, his wicked, claw tipped fingers angling themselves in tendrils. As he lifts the thing, floorboards break, and it’s torn free from the root-like system it was creating in the room.
Three brutal slams cover me in ichor and pieces of creature. Trenchcoat tosses the mewling, twitching pile in a corner and looks at me with disgust.
“You let that thing do this to you? Fuckin’ pathetic, bud.
And who tied you up? “ The nightmare I’ve been cursed with chides me.
“The kids downstairs. “ I say only now realizing I’ve still been sobbing.
One handed, Trenchcoat snaps the wires, then stumbles backward, slowly sliding down the wall.
He coughs, grey, bloody phlegm hitting the ground.
“So, what’s the play here? If this shit broke you, I could use the spare parts, if not, well, you know what the Bible says.
An eye for an eye. “ Trenchcoat grins as he talks, nearly on the brink of death.
And that’s where I think I’m going to leave things. Because, honestly I don’t know what I’m choosing.
I’m mutilated, half blind, using too much of my energy typing to strangers online about things because, I’m so fucking alone here.
If you hear from me again, I hope I made the right move. If not, take this as a lesson on what happens when you screw around with the occult.
2024.06.01 08:11 HughEhhoule Bait Dog: Part 3
For anyone who wants to see how I got into this situation.
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/s/R0DAycoVIm
“In what universe would I ever do you a favor? “ I say, sweeping the floor of the reinforced barn.
“It’s not a favor, it’s a trade, bud.
What do you want in return? “ Trenchcoat asks from within the coffin-like cage.
“To be back home, 8 months ago. “ I reply.
Over the past few weeks I’ve managed to integrate myself into the day to day life on the farm. Things are still a grim, horrifying slog, but with every day it gets a bit easier to deal with.
“Give me something I can do. “ The creature pleads.
“Why, so I can wind up on the end of another ‘ Gotcha’ moment? I’m good. “ is my answer.
A few minutes of silence go by, Augustus breaks it.
“I don’t know many secrets of the universe. Facts, not really my bag. But I know a couple.
How about I share one with you?
No one, not the pope, not my brother, not the shit-bird perched on the highest branch of my twisted family tree, knows what happens when you die.
Some of us never will, of course. Others have ways of avoiding it, but at the end of the day, when the lights truly go out, we know next to nothing.
We do know one thing though. There is judgement, by who? Who knows? Why? Not important.
But at the end of the day, if your battery can’t be recharged, you really want to be thinking about how many marks are on each side of the ledger. “
I don’t reply, and for the next hour or so I ignore the pleading and hinting Trenchcoat does.
But that night, as I sip acidic tea, and try to get a handle on how in the fuck old televisions function, his offer is at the forefront of my mind.
He wants to kill, specifically 6 teenagers who, according to him, have been murdering classmates yearly in a twisted ritual.
He wants me to think this is some kind of noble act, he frames it as almost superheroic. The evil prick knows how I feel, knows that I see the blood on my hands every day, and would kill ( possibly literally) for some way to atone.
Is it a play? I honestly don’t think so, something about how eager the twisted thing is, about how he’s treating the situation as a buyer’s market makes me think something about this makes it important to him.
He offers me everything besides safety and protection. I’m desperate for help, but I have no way to hold him to any agreement.
So the thought rolls around in my mind, staving off the few hours of sleep I get.
“Okay, so, I have it on good authority that tea is supposed to taste better over here. What the hell is wrong with this? “ I say, sitting around an outside table with Sylvia, Dafydd and Colin.
Sylvia smiles, “ Barium, calcium, and a touch of castor oil. “
I look at the brew, then at her.
“If I had told you when you got here you need to drink that to mitigate the effects of working with void touched objects and creatures, you’d have assumed the worst, and found a way to avoid drinking it.
Good to see you becoming more perceptive though. “ Sylvia explains.
“That’s called paranoia, Syl. “ I reply.
She laughs, lighting a cigarette.
“Do you know why I’ve let you figure things out on your own? “ The ancient woman asks.
“Accepted? Yes. Understood, not in the slightest. “ I answer, wondering what sadist invented the scone.
“It’s because I need a leader. Someone who can understand, not a boy who puts his head down and listens to orders.
Someone who can make their own decisions when the time comes.
And I think that time is coming soon. “ Her statement feels like a question.
“If I chose to be here I’d be honored.” I counter.
“That attitude on the other hand… needs work.
Nikolas, today, we talk about what’s really going on.
We play a role in a much larger organization, us, and other families like us, are the ‘boots on the ground’ so to speak.
Our job is not to capture creatures, or horde esoteric goods. We do not foil the schemes of demons, nor blind those who look too deeply into the abyss.
We’re given information about events that could steer the path of humanity into a brick wall. And our job is to make sure they don’t happen. “ Sylvia reveals.
“Something is happening with these fights? “ I ask.
“As I said, perceptive.
Yes, it could be next week, it could be in a decade or two. Right now, we know very little about it, other than when it happens, it would be in our best interests to be of a high standing in the pits. “ She replies.
I absorb the information, and t drug laced tea in equal measure. As I do, I feel something, I feel I’m a part of what’s going on.
This is going to sound dumb as hell, but up until this point I hadn’t been taking things seriously. Don’t get me wrong, death is on the table, and I was trying to avoid that. But I was just treading water, hoping something or someone came by and to get me out of this situation.
But as Syl lays things out, I start to think of my place here, what I can be doing to better my state.
“Here is the part where you avoid telling me why you couldn’t have used anyone around here. “ I prod.
I keep her gaze, Colin and Dafydd shift uncomfortably.
“Augustus, he’s a tricky one. But a very lucky find for us.
I’ve tried 2 others. A boy and a girl, both I practically raised.
Marco, he was a warrior. But the demon got in his head. There was nothing that could be done beyond end his suffering.
Zelma, I won’t talk about.
That thing, it has a way of turning someone’s best traits against them. You, are a blank slate, but you’re family. You’re my best guess as to how we can use him to our advantage.
And this is why I need you, not to listen, but to understand. To see what’s happening, and make your own decisions. If I were to give you my knowledge, if I were to arm you with the best weapons, and the most powerful esoteric objects I know. He’d just have more to turn against you. “ Sylvia’s revelation scares me and puts a massive weight on my shoulders all at the same time.
Confidence and fear are both dangerous emotions. The two of them are almost like drugs in a way.
After eight months of mainlining fear, the tiny line of confidence Sylvia gave me, went straight to my head.
Trenchcoat told me where to find a video file. And after a couple of weeks of running it through every possible test I could, to check for any kind of manipulation, supernatural or otherwise, I watched it.
I was confident that the world would be much better off without the people committing the vicious acts contained in those twenty minutes of footage.
A teenage view of morality, I admit. But what do you want, I’m a teenager.
We watch the abandoned house from across the street. It’s a dingy, urban blight affected suburb, that being said, how no one seems to notice the seven foot freak with me, I have no idea.
The kid inside smoking stolen cigarettes and illegally supplied booze is a husky young guy of about 14. The half dozen kids that show up a couple hours later look closer to my age, last couple of years of high school I’m guessing.
The way they get into the house tells me they’ve done this before. The backpacks they all carry tell me they’re there for a purpose.
“How fucking funny would it be if I just killed you here and took off? “ Trenchcoat says, looming behind me.
I tense.
“It’s a joke. Out of my whole rotten family, Art and I, are close. I’m not going anywhere.
Unfortunately for you. “ Trenchcoat shoves me to the ground as he walks toward the house.
We get in through a basement window, I fit easily, Trenchcoat contorts his body to fit through the thin opening, somehow doing so silently.
I keep hearing Sylvia in my head. Telling me how she needs someone that can make his own decisions.
As I stand in the litter strewn basement, beside a creature with child murder on it’s mind I question the decision that I made.
At first the illumination is dim, nothing more than scraps of moonlight filtered through splintered wood. But with an industrial click, suddenly a half dozen lightbulbs bathe the basement in harsh, yellowish light.
Harsh, but not harsh enough to cause the reaction I see from Trenchcoat.
He squints and tries, unsuccessfully to turn away from the lights. Something about them is causing him discomfort. I get my hopes up for a moment he’s going to burst into flame or turn into dust or something, but no dice.
The sight of the walking nightmare looking pained and confused makes me panic. But before I can think of how I fucked up, I hear a voice.
The room, by the sounds of it, the entire house, has been rigged with speakers. Cleverly recessed in sconces and corners.
“Augi, long time no see. And I see you brought a little Renfield fella with you. “ The voice is modulated, Trenchcoat looks curious for a moment.
“Who, is this? You that clown that’s been fucking with Art?” He guesses.
The voice laughs, “Nope.
Who I am, is a guy who managed to find a few boxes of lightbulbs from ’93.
Then again, with eBay, that could make me just about anyone. “
Trenchcoat turns and looks toward the window we came in. He reaches a hand toward it, stopping a few inches away.
“That’s fucking interesting. “ He says, eyes darting around the room.
“Isn’t it though? “ The voice replies, clearly hearing the creature’s whisper, “ Tonight you get the pay for centuries of the worst shit committed by man or beast. I’ve made sure of that. No one in this house is going anywhere for the next 8 hours.
I’m sure the rest of the houseguests are pretty confused as to what’s going on. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so let me give you the Cliff’s notes.
You kids have been killing a monster a year for half a decade. You were the perfect bait, and I have faith you’ll be able to outwit Augi long enough to make it out of here.
If not, you’ll still have helped kill one of the worst things to walk the face of the earth. “
“What the hell is he talking about? “ I ask, a sinking feeling in my gut.
“That’s what you’re worried about right now?
Yeah, these kids are more Scooby gang than Manson family. Don’t blame me for the fact it only took an out of context exorcism video and some promises of making things right with the universe to get you on board with killing them. “ Trenchcoat spits.
I feel afraid, stupid and small. Which is to say, lately, business as usual.
I begin to break lightbulbs, I notice no runes, or anything else that would indicate they have any kind of supernatural origin.
As the basement dims, Trenchcoat starts to breathe easier.
“What’s going on, what stopped you from leaving? “ I ask.
“This little shit is playing The Game. “ Trenchcoat says to himself as much as to me. He looks deep in thought, inspecting the glass from the bulbs.
“What are you talking about? “ I say, my voice cracking slightly.
I hear noises upstairs, frantic foot falls. Indecipherable shouting.
Trenchcoat turns to me, exasperated and filled with anger.
“You’ve heard of ‘Rules’ right? All that ‘Don’t turn left on East street at 3:24 am kind of shit? “ The creature starts, “More and more of them popping up lately. Can’t miss the things.
Well, your kind seems great at finding them, but fucking awful at figuring out what they are. It’s not someone’s new job, or creepy school. The answer is so damned simple, but all of you’ve missed it.
It's a game. It’s, The Game.
It’s ran by the thickest branches of my family tree, and the stakes are high enough even I don’t really understand.
And whoever has us here, he’s weaponized it. The crazy fuck. “
“Call on your family for help then. “ I say, starting to deal with the fear and confusion.
“You first. “ Is Trenchcoat’s reply.
I get his point, and for a twisted, shitty moment, I find myself relating to the murderous thing I’ve been saddled with.
“So what’s the plan? “ I ask.
“Get my hands on whoever’s been stalking me. Between A and B, probably kill those little do-gooders upstairs out of spite.
I need you to circumvent rules we come across. Humans need to agree to follow the rules, it’s why people encounter them in jobs and schools so much. I’m not human, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t get a choice. “ I’m shaking my head as Augustus relates his plan.
“We’re not hurting those kids. “ I say defiantly.
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem with that.
But I’m a God damned child killing monster, bud! How long is that going to take to sink the fuck in?
Me not doing what I do, isn’t like giving up smokes. Think of it like not having a slash for months on end. Sooner or later, like it or not, I’m either finding a bathroom or pissing my pants. “ the rant scares me, but it makes me think.
Something about Augustus, it seems very, 90’s. Whoever was on the speakers was talking about the lightbulbs being from ’93. I’m picking up on a very distinct pattern.
I file that information with the rest of the disconnected lore I’ve managed to find on Trenchcoat as I follow him up the steep, narrow set of stairs.
He whips the thin wood door open, taking an aggressive, lurching step into the livingroom beyond. Surely ready to dispense too far quips and limitless violence, as per usual.
But that doesn’t happen, his rage filled scowl turns into a look of resignation, “Fuck”, is the monster’s last word before he disappears.
I cautiously walk up the loose splinter ridden stairs, expecting Augustus to be waiting around the corner, or engaged in combat with some other horror.
But once I get to the top, there’s nothing more sinister than a livingroom covered in dust and graffiti strewn with old bottles and new stains.
I know my chance when I see it. The particle board sealing the bay window is rotten, the glass long since broken.
No monster, no crazy family, I’ll take my chances with the streets of the U. K.
I tap the crumbling wood with a foot, it rattles, it won’t take much to make a hole.
I line up a kick, freedom no more than a quarter inch of rotten wood away.
“I wouldn’t do that. “ Says a voice behind me, male, around my age I’d guess, but with a confidence that makes me listen, “ Rigged with a load of C4 in the window frame.
Don’t take my word for it, guy wasn’t very subtle. ”
Sure enough, I see small wires running along the edges of the frame and embedded in the particle board.
I turn around, the six people standing in front of me have a vibe I can only describe as severe.
“Are we going to have issues? “ a slight, dark skinned guy asks.
“You making threats? “ I reply.
“No, he isn’t. “ it’s the same voice that warned me about the explosives. It belongs to a squared jawed kid with short black hair, he’s wearing a grey hoodie, and separates himself from the group. “ Call me Kent, and I’m in charge of making threats.
Sid, he’s our people person, he’s just trying to see if you’re someone we need to worry about. “
“We don’t have time to figure this kid out, leave him. “ a short, ginger girl says.
“Ami, why don’t I stay out of equipment, and you and Kent let me figure this kid out?” Sid says.
“I’m Nik. “ I volunteer.
“Good to meet you Nik. “ Sid says, walking around Kent, “Didn’t mean to start things off on the wrong foot.
We’ve just gotten used to doing these kinds of things in our own way over the past bit. We get a little… weird around this time of year if I’m being honest. “
I nod, apprehensive at giving any kind of detailed response.
“Derik” says a tall, pale guy, “ Research. “
“Liam. “ a tanned boy in a flannel shirt and deep blue jeans tells me, “ Oxford doesn’t talk, accident a couple of years back. I’m logistics, he figures spooky shit out. “
Oxford is thin and bald, his face looks much older than it should. Like he’s the victim of some kind of wasting disease.
Telling these kids the truth would be, complicated. And something about their war vet demeanor, makes me want to keep things simple.
So I give them a version of the truth. One where I was plucked from my room by Trenchcoat, and brought here for a slow death.
They buy it. I think.
“Well, I don’t know what this Jigsaw wannabe has planned, but trust me when I say, it can’t be much worse than the things we’ve went through. “ Kent says, trying to be reassuring.
“Just, one more thing. “ Sid begins, “ Why all the scars? “
I know I’ve won most of the group over, but I don’t like the look Sid is giving me.
“Work on a farm, on top of that, the family owns an auction. Lots of bent steel and splinters, what can I say? “ I say, trying to sound casual.
“Fair enough, that accent though. “ Sid’s look becomes almost predatory as he talks.
“Immigration my guy. What’s with the third degree? “ I reply.
“We’ve just met and I’ve only asked three questions.
Humor me here though.
You get taken in the night by that thing that winked out of existence.
Seems pretty nice of him to let you put on shoes. “ Sid lets his statement hang.
Kent turns, I don’t like where this is going. Panic and fear start to well up.
“What’re you thinking Sid? “ Kent asks.
“Kid’s lying. But he’s good at it. “ Sid answers.
“You saying this has turned into a, me, situation? “ Kent’s question starts a deep pit in my stomach.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far. But I don’t like the idea of him having seen our faces. I think this is a Liam situation. “ As Sid says this I look to Liam, who already seems deep in thought.
“Local cops will back our story, but he could go beyond them.
We tie him up until all of this is done, and we get some video of him putting a blade into the body upstairs. He goes telling any stories, it’s us and the locals versus some Yank on video stabbing the kid. “ Liam suggests.
I tried to fight, it went, embarrassingly. Kent had me on the ground in some kind of arm lock in about a second.
I’m bound to an old wooden chair with electrical cords, dragged into a room on the second floor where the chubby kid from before lays face down in a coagulated pool of his own blood. Surrounded by the trappings of misspent youth.
The door locks, and I stare at the corpse, wondering what in the hell went on up here, and in what universe are these psychopaths anything other than what they seemed on screen.
Time becomes almost malleable. I’m terrified to the point where every moment seems to stretch out forever.
Then, I hear it. A wet, organic noise. It starts below the body, and slowly starts to spread.
After a minute or two, the body starts to jerk and twitch. The room is dim as hell, but some kind of ropey, flesh-like substance, is sealing off the door.
I watch as the corpse clumsily gets to it’s feet. It’s skin pale, it’s throat slit to the point of near decapitation.
The head falls backward, obscenely with a small spurt of thick blood.
I scream, I thought I’d been getting used to being face to face with monsters. But fully bound, inches away from a kid that seems to be filled with a twisting mass of barbed, writhing, intestine like tentacles, I realize I’m not used to shit.
The ropey mass forms the barest suggestion of features, a shifting, lumpen mass of ever moving tendrils coming from what used to be the kid’s neck.
The sound spreads more, cracks in the floorboards and walls begin to show hints of the tendrils filling them in like spray foam.
No one is hearing my screams, or if they are, they have no interest in helping.
Ever wonder how you’d handle torture? I think if you’re the kind of person to be reading this, it’s likely you have.
I started by pissing myself.
The second the thin tendril touches my hand, I feel a blinding, flensing pain. I can do nothing but watch, as thousands of nearly hair thin spines tear and consume my flesh. As it slowly, almost, curiously makes it’s way up my arm, it leaves a bloodless, scarred furrow about an eighth of an inch deep.
My second reaction was to lose any pretense at defiance or dignity. I thrash and scream, beg and offer. All of this turning into choked sobs as the thing starts to do much of the same with another tendril.
It felt like I was in hell, every inch of me nothing more than a canvas for this artist of misery.
But pain, it can only go so far. Whether we’re talking about my tolerance, or this thing’s interest.
Mutilation, the brutal wedding of pain and loss. That was it’s next step.
A thick, almost centipede like tendril sits on my pinky like a hot iron. I can only watch in horror as I see fat, then muscle, then bone, then, nothing.
My voice shreds, I tear my wrists and ankles trying desperately to break the expertly tied wires.
My mind is at the breaking point, the creature in front of my makes a terrible, high pitched keening I assume is laughter.
My body is a roadmap of scarred pits and lines. My hand sports a cleanly severed finger. Fuck me, I wish things ended there.
Of all the important parts of the human body, the eye, tends to feel the least pain. Which isn’t to say, as I watched the greedy, grasping claws slowly take pieces of one of mine, it didn’t hurt, but the worst part, was knowing what was happening.
The vision in my left eye begins to distort at first, the edges getting blurry, then going dark. Bit by bit, chunk by irreplaceable chunk, the creature takes half my vision.
I can feel the shifting air on the bare socket, to call what I’m doing screaming, would be understating things to the point of absurdity.
My brain reels at what has just happened. I can feel my grip on reality begin to loosen, pain, worse than can bare, loss of half my sight, it’s too much.
My brain feels filled with static, for a few brief moments I swear, I can hear someone, a voice, trying to tell me something.
But then, a smell hits me. Something so foul, so alien, it yanks me back from the brink of disassociation. I gag and choke, as the air becomes thick with the rotten, chemical reek.
Then, I see it, I see, him.
As randomly as he disappeared, in an instant Trenchcoat is in the room.
He’s torn apart, wounds so deep and ragged, I can see the door on the other side of the room through the worst of them.
One arm is a twisted, broken mess, the flesh jacket torn to shreds of necrotic tissue.
The look on his face is panic, paranoia. A rictus grin of someone that has been kept on his toes for entirely too long.
He trembles and heaves, looking like he could fall over at any second.
He points his good arm at the tendril creature, who I notice has a too familiar eye suspended in it’s shifting features.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the motherfucker who just made me kill my favorite cousin, would you? “ Trenchcoat asks, his voice cracked, and strained.
He gets a confused keening in response.
“Bad day for you then. “ Augustus says.
There is no style to his violence, Trenchcoat grabs the shifting mass, his wicked, claw tipped fingers angling themselves in tendrils. As he lifts the thing, floorboards break, and it’s torn free from the root-like system it was creating in the room.
Three brutal slams cover me in ichor and pieces of creature. Trenchcoat tosses the mewling, twitching pile in a corner and looks at me with disgust.
“You let that thing do this to you? Fuckin’ pathetic, bud.
And who tied you up? “ The nightmare I’ve been cursed with chides me.
“The kids downstairs. “ I say only now realizing I’ve still been sobbing.
One handed, Trenchcoat snaps the wires, then stumbles backward, slowly sliding down the wall.
He coughs, grey, bloody phlegm hitting the ground.
“So, what’s the play here? If this shit broke you, I could use the spare parts, if not, well, you know what the Bible says.
An eye for an eye. “ Trenchcoat grins as he talks, nearly on the brink of death.
And that’s where I think I’m going to leave things. Because, honestly I don’t know what I’m choosing.
I’m mutilated, half blind, using too much of my energy typing to strangers online about things because, I’m so fucking alone here.
If you hear from me again, I hope I made the right move. If not, take this as a lesson on what happens when you screw around with the occult.
submitted by HughEhhoule to nosleep [link] [comments]
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/s/R0DAycoVIm
“In what universe would I ever do you a favor? “ I say, sweeping the floor of the reinforced barn.
“It’s not a favor, it’s a trade, bud.
What do you want in return? “ Trenchcoat asks from within the coffin-like cage.
“To be back home, 8 months ago. “ I reply.
Over the past few weeks I’ve managed to integrate myself into the day to day life on the farm. Things are still a grim, horrifying slog, but with every day it gets a bit easier to deal with.
“Give me something I can do. “ The creature pleads.
“Why, so I can wind up on the end of another ‘ Gotcha’ moment? I’m good. “ is my answer.
A few minutes of silence go by, Augustus breaks it.
“I don’t know many secrets of the universe. Facts, not really my bag. But I know a couple.
How about I share one with you?
No one, not the pope, not my brother, not the shit-bird perched on the highest branch of my twisted family tree, knows what happens when you die.
Some of us never will, of course. Others have ways of avoiding it, but at the end of the day, when the lights truly go out, we know next to nothing.
We do know one thing though. There is judgement, by who? Who knows? Why? Not important.
But at the end of the day, if your battery can’t be recharged, you really want to be thinking about how many marks are on each side of the ledger. “
I don’t reply, and for the next hour or so I ignore the pleading and hinting Trenchcoat does.
But that night, as I sip acidic tea, and try to get a handle on how in the fuck old televisions function, his offer is at the forefront of my mind.
He wants to kill, specifically 6 teenagers who, according to him, have been murdering classmates yearly in a twisted ritual.
He wants me to think this is some kind of noble act, he frames it as almost superheroic. The evil prick knows how I feel, knows that I see the blood on my hands every day, and would kill ( possibly literally) for some way to atone.
Is it a play? I honestly don’t think so, something about how eager the twisted thing is, about how he’s treating the situation as a buyer’s market makes me think something about this makes it important to him.
He offers me everything besides safety and protection. I’m desperate for help, but I have no way to hold him to any agreement.
So the thought rolls around in my mind, staving off the few hours of sleep I get.
“Okay, so, I have it on good authority that tea is supposed to taste better over here. What the hell is wrong with this? “ I say, sitting around an outside table with Sylvia, Dafydd and Colin.
Sylvia smiles, “ Barium, calcium, and a touch of castor oil. “
I look at the brew, then at her.
“If I had told you when you got here you need to drink that to mitigate the effects of working with void touched objects and creatures, you’d have assumed the worst, and found a way to avoid drinking it.
Good to see you becoming more perceptive though. “ Sylvia explains.
“That’s called paranoia, Syl. “ I reply.
She laughs, lighting a cigarette.
“Do you know why I’ve let you figure things out on your own? “ The ancient woman asks.
“Accepted? Yes. Understood, not in the slightest. “ I answer, wondering what sadist invented the scone.
“It’s because I need a leader. Someone who can understand, not a boy who puts his head down and listens to orders.
Someone who can make their own decisions when the time comes.
And I think that time is coming soon. “ Her statement feels like a question.
“If I chose to be here I’d be honored.” I counter.
“That attitude on the other hand… needs work.
Nikolas, today, we talk about what’s really going on.
We play a role in a much larger organization, us, and other families like us, are the ‘boots on the ground’ so to speak.
Our job is not to capture creatures, or horde esoteric goods. We do not foil the schemes of demons, nor blind those who look too deeply into the abyss.
We’re given information about events that could steer the path of humanity into a brick wall. And our job is to make sure they don’t happen. “ Sylvia reveals.
“Something is happening with these fights? “ I ask.
“As I said, perceptive.
Yes, it could be next week, it could be in a decade or two. Right now, we know very little about it, other than when it happens, it would be in our best interests to be of a high standing in the pits. “ She replies.
I absorb the information, and t drug laced tea in equal measure. As I do, I feel something, I feel I’m a part of what’s going on.
This is going to sound dumb as hell, but up until this point I hadn’t been taking things seriously. Don’t get me wrong, death is on the table, and I was trying to avoid that. But I was just treading water, hoping something or someone came by and to get me out of this situation.
But as Syl lays things out, I start to think of my place here, what I can be doing to better my state.
“Here is the part where you avoid telling me why you couldn’t have used anyone around here. “ I prod.
I keep her gaze, Colin and Dafydd shift uncomfortably.
“Augustus, he’s a tricky one. But a very lucky find for us.
I’ve tried 2 others. A boy and a girl, both I practically raised.
Marco, he was a warrior. But the demon got in his head. There was nothing that could be done beyond end his suffering.
Zelma, I won’t talk about.
That thing, it has a way of turning someone’s best traits against them. You, are a blank slate, but you’re family. You’re my best guess as to how we can use him to our advantage.
And this is why I need you, not to listen, but to understand. To see what’s happening, and make your own decisions. If I were to give you my knowledge, if I were to arm you with the best weapons, and the most powerful esoteric objects I know. He’d just have more to turn against you. “ Sylvia’s revelation scares me and puts a massive weight on my shoulders all at the same time.
Confidence and fear are both dangerous emotions. The two of them are almost like drugs in a way.
After eight months of mainlining fear, the tiny line of confidence Sylvia gave me, went straight to my head.
Trenchcoat told me where to find a video file. And after a couple of weeks of running it through every possible test I could, to check for any kind of manipulation, supernatural or otherwise, I watched it.
I was confident that the world would be much better off without the people committing the vicious acts contained in those twenty minutes of footage.
A teenage view of morality, I admit. But what do you want, I’m a teenager.
We watch the abandoned house from across the street. It’s a dingy, urban blight affected suburb, that being said, how no one seems to notice the seven foot freak with me, I have no idea.
The kid inside smoking stolen cigarettes and illegally supplied booze is a husky young guy of about 14. The half dozen kids that show up a couple hours later look closer to my age, last couple of years of high school I’m guessing.
The way they get into the house tells me they’ve done this before. The backpacks they all carry tell me they’re there for a purpose.
“How fucking funny would it be if I just killed you here and took off? “ Trenchcoat says, looming behind me.
I tense.
“It’s a joke. Out of my whole rotten family, Art and I, are close. I’m not going anywhere.
Unfortunately for you. “ Trenchcoat shoves me to the ground as he walks toward the house.
We get in through a basement window, I fit easily, Trenchcoat contorts his body to fit through the thin opening, somehow doing so silently.
I keep hearing Sylvia in my head. Telling me how she needs someone that can make his own decisions.
As I stand in the litter strewn basement, beside a creature with child murder on it’s mind I question the decision that I made.
At first the illumination is dim, nothing more than scraps of moonlight filtered through splintered wood. But with an industrial click, suddenly a half dozen lightbulbs bathe the basement in harsh, yellowish light.
Harsh, but not harsh enough to cause the reaction I see from Trenchcoat.
He squints and tries, unsuccessfully to turn away from the lights. Something about them is causing him discomfort. I get my hopes up for a moment he’s going to burst into flame or turn into dust or something, but no dice.
The sight of the walking nightmare looking pained and confused makes me panic. But before I can think of how I fucked up, I hear a voice.
The room, by the sounds of it, the entire house, has been rigged with speakers. Cleverly recessed in sconces and corners.
“Augi, long time no see. And I see you brought a little Renfield fella with you. “ The voice is modulated, Trenchcoat looks curious for a moment.
“Who, is this? You that clown that’s been fucking with Art?” He guesses.
The voice laughs, “Nope.
Who I am, is a guy who managed to find a few boxes of lightbulbs from ’93.
Then again, with eBay, that could make me just about anyone. “
Trenchcoat turns and looks toward the window we came in. He reaches a hand toward it, stopping a few inches away.
“That’s fucking interesting. “ He says, eyes darting around the room.
“Isn’t it though? “ The voice replies, clearly hearing the creature’s whisper, “ Tonight you get the pay for centuries of the worst shit committed by man or beast. I’ve made sure of that. No one in this house is going anywhere for the next 8 hours.
I’m sure the rest of the houseguests are pretty confused as to what’s going on. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so let me give you the Cliff’s notes.
You kids have been killing a monster a year for half a decade. You were the perfect bait, and I have faith you’ll be able to outwit Augi long enough to make it out of here.
If not, you’ll still have helped kill one of the worst things to walk the face of the earth. “
“What the hell is he talking about? “ I ask, a sinking feeling in my gut.
“That’s what you’re worried about right now?
Yeah, these kids are more Scooby gang than Manson family. Don’t blame me for the fact it only took an out of context exorcism video and some promises of making things right with the universe to get you on board with killing them. “ Trenchcoat spits.
I feel afraid, stupid and small. Which is to say, lately, business as usual.
I begin to break lightbulbs, I notice no runes, or anything else that would indicate they have any kind of supernatural origin.
As the basement dims, Trenchcoat starts to breathe easier.
“What’s going on, what stopped you from leaving? “ I ask.
“This little shit is playing The Game. “ Trenchcoat says to himself as much as to me. He looks deep in thought, inspecting the glass from the bulbs.
“What are you talking about? “ I say, my voice cracking slightly.
I hear noises upstairs, frantic foot falls. Indecipherable shouting.
Trenchcoat turns to me, exasperated and filled with anger.
“You’ve heard of ‘Rules’ right? All that ‘Don’t turn left on East street at 3:24 am kind of shit? “ The creature starts, “More and more of them popping up lately. Can’t miss the things.
Well, your kind seems great at finding them, but fucking awful at figuring out what they are. It’s not someone’s new job, or creepy school. The answer is so damned simple, but all of you’ve missed it.
It's a game. It’s, The Game.
It’s ran by the thickest branches of my family tree, and the stakes are high enough even I don’t really understand.
And whoever has us here, he’s weaponized it. The crazy fuck. “
“Call on your family for help then. “ I say, starting to deal with the fear and confusion.
“You first. “ Is Trenchcoat’s reply.
I get his point, and for a twisted, shitty moment, I find myself relating to the murderous thing I’ve been saddled with.
“So what’s the plan? “ I ask.
“Get my hands on whoever’s been stalking me. Between A and B, probably kill those little do-gooders upstairs out of spite.
I need you to circumvent rules we come across. Humans need to agree to follow the rules, it’s why people encounter them in jobs and schools so much. I’m not human, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t get a choice. “ I’m shaking my head as Augustus relates his plan.
“We’re not hurting those kids. “ I say defiantly.
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem with that.
But I’m a God damned child killing monster, bud! How long is that going to take to sink the fuck in?
Me not doing what I do, isn’t like giving up smokes. Think of it like not having a slash for months on end. Sooner or later, like it or not, I’m either finding a bathroom or pissing my pants. “ the rant scares me, but it makes me think.
Something about Augustus, it seems very, 90’s. Whoever was on the speakers was talking about the lightbulbs being from ’93. I’m picking up on a very distinct pattern.
I file that information with the rest of the disconnected lore I’ve managed to find on Trenchcoat as I follow him up the steep, narrow set of stairs.
He whips the thin wood door open, taking an aggressive, lurching step into the livingroom beyond. Surely ready to dispense too far quips and limitless violence, as per usual.
But that doesn’t happen, his rage filled scowl turns into a look of resignation, “Fuck”, is the monster’s last word before he disappears.
I cautiously walk up the loose splinter ridden stairs, expecting Augustus to be waiting around the corner, or engaged in combat with some other horror.
But once I get to the top, there’s nothing more sinister than a livingroom covered in dust and graffiti strewn with old bottles and new stains.
I know my chance when I see it. The particle board sealing the bay window is rotten, the glass long since broken.
No monster, no crazy family, I’ll take my chances with the streets of the U. K.
I tap the crumbling wood with a foot, it rattles, it won’t take much to make a hole.
I line up a kick, freedom no more than a quarter inch of rotten wood away.
“I wouldn’t do that. “ Says a voice behind me, male, around my age I’d guess, but with a confidence that makes me listen, “ Rigged with a load of C4 in the window frame.
Don’t take my word for it, guy wasn’t very subtle. ”
Sure enough, I see small wires running along the edges of the frame and embedded in the particle board.
I turn around, the six people standing in front of me have a vibe I can only describe as severe.
“Are we going to have issues? “ a slight, dark skinned guy asks.
“You making threats? “ I reply.
“No, he isn’t. “ it’s the same voice that warned me about the explosives. It belongs to a squared jawed kid with short black hair, he’s wearing a grey hoodie, and separates himself from the group. “ Call me Kent, and I’m in charge of making threats.
Sid, he’s our people person, he’s just trying to see if you’re someone we need to worry about. “
“We don’t have time to figure this kid out, leave him. “ a short, ginger girl says.
“Ami, why don’t I stay out of equipment, and you and Kent let me figure this kid out?” Sid says.
“I’m Nik. “ I volunteer.
“Good to meet you Nik. “ Sid says, walking around Kent, “Didn’t mean to start things off on the wrong foot.
We’ve just gotten used to doing these kinds of things in our own way over the past bit. We get a little… weird around this time of year if I’m being honest. “
I nod, apprehensive at giving any kind of detailed response.
“Derik” says a tall, pale guy, “ Research. “
“Liam. “ a tanned boy in a flannel shirt and deep blue jeans tells me, “ Oxford doesn’t talk, accident a couple of years back. I’m logistics, he figures spooky shit out. “
Oxford is thin and bald, his face looks much older than it should. Like he’s the victim of some kind of wasting disease.
Telling these kids the truth would be, complicated. And something about their war vet demeanor, makes me want to keep things simple.
So I give them a version of the truth. One where I was plucked from my room by Trenchcoat, and brought here for a slow death.
They buy it. I think.
“Well, I don’t know what this Jigsaw wannabe has planned, but trust me when I say, it can’t be much worse than the things we’ve went through. “ Kent says, trying to be reassuring.
“Just, one more thing. “ Sid begins, “ Why all the scars? “
I know I’ve won most of the group over, but I don’t like the look Sid is giving me.
“Work on a farm, on top of that, the family owns an auction. Lots of bent steel and splinters, what can I say? “ I say, trying to sound casual.
“Fair enough, that accent though. “ Sid’s look becomes almost predatory as he talks.
“Immigration my guy. What’s with the third degree? “ I reply.
“We’ve just met and I’ve only asked three questions.
Humor me here though.
You get taken in the night by that thing that winked out of existence.
Seems pretty nice of him to let you put on shoes. “ Sid lets his statement hang.
Kent turns, I don’t like where this is going. Panic and fear start to well up.
“What’re you thinking Sid? “ Kent asks.
“Kid’s lying. But he’s good at it. “ Sid answers.
“You saying this has turned into a, me, situation? “ Kent’s question starts a deep pit in my stomach.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far. But I don’t like the idea of him having seen our faces. I think this is a Liam situation. “ As Sid says this I look to Liam, who already seems deep in thought.
“Local cops will back our story, but he could go beyond them.
We tie him up until all of this is done, and we get some video of him putting a blade into the body upstairs. He goes telling any stories, it’s us and the locals versus some Yank on video stabbing the kid. “ Liam suggests.
I tried to fight, it went, embarrassingly. Kent had me on the ground in some kind of arm lock in about a second.
I’m bound to an old wooden chair with electrical cords, dragged into a room on the second floor where the chubby kid from before lays face down in a coagulated pool of his own blood. Surrounded by the trappings of misspent youth.
The door locks, and I stare at the corpse, wondering what in the hell went on up here, and in what universe are these psychopaths anything other than what they seemed on screen.
Time becomes almost malleable. I’m terrified to the point where every moment seems to stretch out forever.
Then, I hear it. A wet, organic noise. It starts below the body, and slowly starts to spread.
After a minute or two, the body starts to jerk and twitch. The room is dim as hell, but some kind of ropey, flesh-like substance, is sealing off the door.
I watch as the corpse clumsily gets to it’s feet. It’s skin pale, it’s throat slit to the point of near decapitation.
The head falls backward, obscenely with a small spurt of thick blood.
I scream, I thought I’d been getting used to being face to face with monsters. But fully bound, inches away from a kid that seems to be filled with a twisting mass of barbed, writhing, intestine like tentacles, I realize I’m not used to shit.
The ropey mass forms the barest suggestion of features, a shifting, lumpen mass of ever moving tendrils coming from what used to be the kid’s neck.
The sound spreads more, cracks in the floorboards and walls begin to show hints of the tendrils filling them in like spray foam.
No one is hearing my screams, or if they are, they have no interest in helping.
Ever wonder how you’d handle torture? I think if you’re the kind of person to be reading this, it’s likely you have.
I started by pissing myself.
The second the thin tendril touches my hand, I feel a blinding, flensing pain. I can do nothing but watch, as thousands of nearly hair thin spines tear and consume my flesh. As it slowly, almost, curiously makes it’s way up my arm, it leaves a bloodless, scarred furrow about an eighth of an inch deep.
My second reaction was to lose any pretense at defiance or dignity. I thrash and scream, beg and offer. All of this turning into choked sobs as the thing starts to do much of the same with another tendril.
It felt like I was in hell, every inch of me nothing more than a canvas for this artist of misery.
But pain, it can only go so far. Whether we’re talking about my tolerance, or this thing’s interest.
Mutilation, the brutal wedding of pain and loss. That was it’s next step.
A thick, almost centipede like tendril sits on my pinky like a hot iron. I can only watch in horror as I see fat, then muscle, then bone, then, nothing.
My voice shreds, I tear my wrists and ankles trying desperately to break the expertly tied wires.
My mind is at the breaking point, the creature in front of my makes a terrible, high pitched keening I assume is laughter.
My body is a roadmap of scarred pits and lines. My hand sports a cleanly severed finger. Fuck me, I wish things ended there.
Of all the important parts of the human body, the eye, tends to feel the least pain. Which isn’t to say, as I watched the greedy, grasping claws slowly take pieces of one of mine, it didn’t hurt, but the worst part, was knowing what was happening.
The vision in my left eye begins to distort at first, the edges getting blurry, then going dark. Bit by bit, chunk by irreplaceable chunk, the creature takes half my vision.
I can feel the shifting air on the bare socket, to call what I’m doing screaming, would be understating things to the point of absurdity.
My brain reels at what has just happened. I can feel my grip on reality begin to loosen, pain, worse than can bare, loss of half my sight, it’s too much.
My brain feels filled with static, for a few brief moments I swear, I can hear someone, a voice, trying to tell me something.
But then, a smell hits me. Something so foul, so alien, it yanks me back from the brink of disassociation. I gag and choke, as the air becomes thick with the rotten, chemical reek.
Then, I see it, I see, him.
As randomly as he disappeared, in an instant Trenchcoat is in the room.
He’s torn apart, wounds so deep and ragged, I can see the door on the other side of the room through the worst of them.
One arm is a twisted, broken mess, the flesh jacket torn to shreds of necrotic tissue.
The look on his face is panic, paranoia. A rictus grin of someone that has been kept on his toes for entirely too long.
He trembles and heaves, looking like he could fall over at any second.
He points his good arm at the tendril creature, who I notice has a too familiar eye suspended in it’s shifting features.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the motherfucker who just made me kill my favorite cousin, would you? “ Trenchcoat asks, his voice cracked, and strained.
He gets a confused keening in response.
“Bad day for you then. “ Augustus says.
There is no style to his violence, Trenchcoat grabs the shifting mass, his wicked, claw tipped fingers angling themselves in tendrils. As he lifts the thing, floorboards break, and it’s torn free from the root-like system it was creating in the room.
Three brutal slams cover me in ichor and pieces of creature. Trenchcoat tosses the mewling, twitching pile in a corner and looks at me with disgust.
“You let that thing do this to you? Fuckin’ pathetic, bud.
And who tied you up? “ The nightmare I’ve been cursed with chides me.
“The kids downstairs. “ I say only now realizing I’ve still been sobbing.
One handed, Trenchcoat snaps the wires, then stumbles backward, slowly sliding down the wall.
He coughs, grey, bloody phlegm hitting the ground.
“So, what’s the play here? If this shit broke you, I could use the spare parts, if not, well, you know what the Bible says.
An eye for an eye. “ Trenchcoat grins as he talks, nearly on the brink of death.
And that’s where I think I’m going to leave things. Because, honestly I don’t know what I’m choosing.
I’m mutilated, half blind, using too much of my energy typing to strangers online about things because, I’m so fucking alone here.
If you hear from me again, I hope I made the right move. If not, take this as a lesson on what happens when you screw around with the occult.
2024.06.01 04:26 ShinyCharizard01 Skyrim Build: The Ice Wraith
Race: Male Nord
Stat Spread: 70% Health, 20% Magicka, 10% Stamina
Major Skills: Light Armor, Two-Handed, Destruction, Conjuration, Alchemy, Enchanting
Factions: College of Winterhold, Companions, Imperial Legion, Dawnguard
Gear: Stalhrim Light Armor, minus the helmet (wear Aetherial Crown instead), Stahlrim Battleaxe
Backstory: The Ice Wraith was born all the way back in 3E 411, 22 years before the Oblivion Crisis, in a small cabin on the outskirts of Falkreath. His mother was a simple farmer, and his father was an explorer who often delved into ancient ruins to sell ancient trinkets to the market stalls in Falkreath. The Ice Wraith's life was simple. He'd help his mother around the farm, hunting and trapping different animals or chopping firewood, then he would usually help his father pack for excursions, and that was that. The Ice Wraith was content with the monotony of his farm life.
On the eve of his 21st birthday, the coldest, harshest winter the Ice Wraith had ever seen rolled around. The crops he and his mother had planted were decimated by frostbite, and his aging father was unable to out to ruins in the mounting blizzard.
Not wanting to see his family go hungry, the Ice Wraith packed his father's old iron battle axe and headed into the Jerall Mountains. He hoped he could find a few sluggish animals in the cold, but even his Nord blood wasn't enough to save him, and he soon collapsed from exhaustion into the snow.
Years later, in 4E 201, as the snow on the mountains melt, the frozen Ice Wraith thaws. The snow and ice somehow magically preserved his body, and the Ice Wraith wakes to a strange, changed Skyrim.
As he wanders the mountains, relearning how his limbs work, he is caught on the border, and you know the rest...
After escaping Helgen with Hadvar, the Ice Wraith will spend some time contemplating why he was kept alive and getting used to the modern world. Skyrim has changed since he was frozen, with a civil war and dragons threatening the province. What's more, his time in the ice has had an effect on him. He finds himself skilled at frost magic, and able to conjure Frost Atronachs to his aid.
With this in mind, the Ice Wraith heads to the College of Winterhold first. He needs to learn how to control his newfound ice powers and he hopes to learn more of his abilities at the College. Along the way, he spots the ancient warrior guild of the Companions fighting a Giant. He always wanted to join them, and he figures now is the perfect chance. After all, he has no formal combat training. He will opt to keep the werewolf power, not viewing it as a curse, but as a blessing, even if he doesn't exactly worship Hircine.
Upon learning he is Dragonborn, the Ice Wraith will see this as the reason he was kept alive all these years. Perhaps the gods wanted him to face his destiny and slay Alduin and had to take some...odd steps to ensure that would happen. He revels in the chance to be the legendary Dragonborn he grew up hearing of.
He will join the Imperials in the civil war. While he does believe in Ulfric's rebellion, the Ice Wraith has only ever known Skyrim as part of the Empire. To him, preserving the Empire is more important than Talos worship.
He will join the Dawnguard to rid Skyrim of the vampire menace. He has already devoted himself to Hircine, after all, and so joining Molag Bal's coven of vampires wouldn't sit right with him.
Finally, he faces Miraak on Solsthiem simply out of hubris. If this 'First Dragonborn' is truly as powerful as he claims, the Ice Wraith believes Miraak should back up his words with steel.
submitted by ShinyCharizard01 to SkyrimBuilds [link] [comments]
Stat Spread: 70% Health, 20% Magicka, 10% Stamina
Major Skills: Light Armor, Two-Handed, Destruction, Conjuration, Alchemy, Enchanting
Factions: College of Winterhold, Companions, Imperial Legion, Dawnguard
Gear: Stalhrim Light Armor, minus the helmet (wear Aetherial Crown instead), Stahlrim Battleaxe
Backstory: The Ice Wraith was born all the way back in 3E 411, 22 years before the Oblivion Crisis, in a small cabin on the outskirts of Falkreath. His mother was a simple farmer, and his father was an explorer who often delved into ancient ruins to sell ancient trinkets to the market stalls in Falkreath. The Ice Wraith's life was simple. He'd help his mother around the farm, hunting and trapping different animals or chopping firewood, then he would usually help his father pack for excursions, and that was that. The Ice Wraith was content with the monotony of his farm life.
On the eve of his 21st birthday, the coldest, harshest winter the Ice Wraith had ever seen rolled around. The crops he and his mother had planted were decimated by frostbite, and his aging father was unable to out to ruins in the mounting blizzard.
Not wanting to see his family go hungry, the Ice Wraith packed his father's old iron battle axe and headed into the Jerall Mountains. He hoped he could find a few sluggish animals in the cold, but even his Nord blood wasn't enough to save him, and he soon collapsed from exhaustion into the snow.
Years later, in 4E 201, as the snow on the mountains melt, the frozen Ice Wraith thaws. The snow and ice somehow magically preserved his body, and the Ice Wraith wakes to a strange, changed Skyrim.
As he wanders the mountains, relearning how his limbs work, he is caught on the border, and you know the rest...
After escaping Helgen with Hadvar, the Ice Wraith will spend some time contemplating why he was kept alive and getting used to the modern world. Skyrim has changed since he was frozen, with a civil war and dragons threatening the province. What's more, his time in the ice has had an effect on him. He finds himself skilled at frost magic, and able to conjure Frost Atronachs to his aid.
With this in mind, the Ice Wraith heads to the College of Winterhold first. He needs to learn how to control his newfound ice powers and he hopes to learn more of his abilities at the College. Along the way, he spots the ancient warrior guild of the Companions fighting a Giant. He always wanted to join them, and he figures now is the perfect chance. After all, he has no formal combat training. He will opt to keep the werewolf power, not viewing it as a curse, but as a blessing, even if he doesn't exactly worship Hircine.
Upon learning he is Dragonborn, the Ice Wraith will see this as the reason he was kept alive all these years. Perhaps the gods wanted him to face his destiny and slay Alduin and had to take some...odd steps to ensure that would happen. He revels in the chance to be the legendary Dragonborn he grew up hearing of.
He will join the Imperials in the civil war. While he does believe in Ulfric's rebellion, the Ice Wraith has only ever known Skyrim as part of the Empire. To him, preserving the Empire is more important than Talos worship.
He will join the Dawnguard to rid Skyrim of the vampire menace. He has already devoted himself to Hircine, after all, and so joining Molag Bal's coven of vampires wouldn't sit right with him.
Finally, he faces Miraak on Solsthiem simply out of hubris. If this 'First Dragonborn' is truly as powerful as he claims, the Ice Wraith believes Miraak should back up his words with steel.
2024.06.01 01:53 zdog4618 Not all level 100 super mutants?
I’ve been farming west tek now for an hour and I notice not all the enemies are level 100? I heard that you might have to complete the steel reign quest in order to get them all to spawn at 100? I’m level 151 myself.
submitted by zdog4618 to fo76 [link] [comments]
2024.06.01 00:26 critical_courtney [Hot Off The Press] — Chapter Nine
![[Hot Off The Press] — Chapter Nine](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/TVFEjLdFCl4UpdvtRIxnHcXFDJzESKU9xoGEOVG79fg.jpg "[Hot Off The Press] — Chapter Nine") | https://preview.redd.it/bzhyafrd8u3d1.jpg?width=1410&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=619ea410316f9fc35579da6390cef37812952938 submitted by critical_courtney to redditserials [link] [comments] My Discord Buy me a cup of coffee (if you want) Previous Chapter Chapter Ten: (Dawn) Heat rose from the frying pan as the cooking oil I dropped in slowly spread around the stickproof steel surface. Outside, I heard Billie call out and then the Fates made a few noisy clucks before going silent. I tossed a popcorn kernel into the pan and put a glass lid on top, waiting for it to pop. Checking my phone, I saw a text from Frankie Dee. But in my phone, she was listed under “Frankie (Pal, Not Colleague).” She’d written, “On my way.” But because lesbians are terminally late for every event they attend, I assumed my pal sent that before even having her shoes on. In fact, the exact order of events was probably: send a text, watch a couple of videos on TikTok, remember the event, mad scramble for shoes and a jacket, and then leave the house. With a quiet little POP, the dry kernel transformed into its yellow and white counterpart, the movie-watcher’s favorite companion. I tossed it into my mouth, only burning my tongue slightly in the process. Then, I poured several more kernels into the hot, oily pan from a glass jar labeled, “Iowa Organic Popcorn.” These kernels came from a farm in Iowa owned by a butch lesbian couple. Our school took a field trip to their farm in 9th grade for the usual farm fun, a hay maze (or a maize maze, as I jokingly called it), a petting zoo, and crop science lessons. All the other kids were fussing over the lambs or screaming and laughing from inside the maze. But I just wanted to learn more about the farmers who’d blown my mind. Women. . . can be together. Like — just be together, in love. That realization felt like something so simple and foundational I should’ve learned years earlier. But, of course, my Bible-thumping father and sheltered church-girl life ensured those kinds of “evils” were excluded from my purview. Looking back, I’m not sure how he missed that we were visiting a farm run by two dykes. Then again, I guess that wasn’t exactly advertised on the permission slip. I just remember being glued to the hip of Sadie Henshaw all day long as she showed us tractors, different types of soil, and the feed for their animals. Her blonde hair was cut short and styled like any other man’s hair in Linn County. She was a shorter, stout woman who never went a day without overalls and a ball cap. Her wife, Daniela, handled all of the finances and told us a little about things like farm subsidies and corporate farms vs. mom-and-mom operations. Some kids left the cornfields that day wanting to be farmers. But I left wanting to be another girl’s wife. The sound of popping kernels brought me back to the present as I picked up the frying pan and shook it back and forth with the lid on. A knock at my door revealed a certain newspaper editor had arrived safely. And as I poured the steaming popcorn into a large, blue Finding Nemo bowl, I called out, “It’s unlocked. Come in!” My mind played a brief scene of Frankie Dee walking into, not just mine, but our house and hanging her keys up on the keyring we’d bought while antiquing. She’d get home after a late night covering a library board meeting or some such, and I’d pull a chicken pot pie from the stove and — fuck. I had to stop this dangerous line of thinking. She walked into the living room and took her shoes off, just as I was bringing in the giant bowl of popcorn. “I brought a bottle of wine. I hope that’s okay,” she said. I smiled. “That’s perfect. I’ll grab some glasses from the kitchen.” Frankie watched me scoop a handful of popcorn and place it on The Morrigan’s altar. She raised an eyebrow. “Does the goddess of war and prophecy enjoy a nice salty sacrifice now and then?” I snorted and returned from the kitchen with a pair of stemless pink wine glasses. “First, it’s an offering, not a sacrifice. And second, popcorn has been around since 3600 BCE. You can’t tell me she hasn’t tried it and fallen in love,” I said, plopping down on the couch. Frankie sat down slower and made sure there was a cushion of space between us. “Does Artemis not get popcorn?” I shook my head. “I only leave animal offerings from things I’ve hunted on her shrine.” “You hunt?” Nodding, I motioned toward my bedroom. “Keep a hunting rifle in the gun safe behind my closet door. I head up to camp a few times a year to hunt small things. Rabbits, turkeys, pheasant, sometimes squirrels if I want to make chili.” Frankie made an incredible laugh and leaned in closer. “Squirrels for chili? Are you serious?” “What’s so funny about that?” Her smile was bright enough to light up the harbor, and I wanted so badly for her to guide my ship into her port. My heart rate kicked up as she teased me. Wait a second, I thought. Is she teasing ME? When did we switch places? “Where on earth did you grow up eating squirrel chili?” she asked, crossing her arms. I stuffed my face with popcorn before answering. “Iowa,” I said. She whistled. Was this the first time I’d heard Frankie Dee do that? Holy shit. “Corn girl,” she said. “And now you’re here, using our phrases like, ‘up to camp,’ without an issue in the world.” “I’m sorry. Are people From Away not allowed to use any Mainerisms?” I asked, huffing and eating more popcorn. Frankie reached over and grabbed a handful. “It’s cute is all,” she said, closing her arms and throwing back the entire mouthful of popcorn. I sat there blinking. “Did you just call me cute?” “Hard tellin’ not knowin’, bub. What’s my witchy lesson for tonight? Why am I sitting on your sofa?” Frankie asked with a dodge only slightly less artful than Neo’s. Shaking my head, I rolled my eyes. I’d remember her words and circle back around to them later, long after the wine had been poured. “Your lesson tonight, FeeDee, is to learn the difference between Hollywood’s idea of witchcraft and the actual use of the craft.” “So. . . movie night?” she asked. I nodded. “Double-feature. We’ll start with The Craft and finish with Hocus Pocus,” I said, grabbing my remote and turning on the TV. “Shit. We’re going ‘90s tonight. I kind of feel like I should have brought over Capris Sun pouches instead of wine,” Frankie said, pouring me a glass. “Hey, the night is young. It may not be the ‘90s anymore. But just in case you’re nostalgic, we have technological advances like apps that’ll allow an underpaid delivery contractor to rush into Hennie’s and grab us Capris Suns and maybe even Dunkaroos or Fruit Roll-Ups,” I said, elbowing my guest. My pal. My crush. But most definitely not my colleague or girlfriend. The movie started, and it seemed like half of the wine in my glass was gone before the opening credits finished. Silence filled the couch as I fought to keep my eyes on the TV and not on the beautiful blonde bombshell next to me. “Holy shit! Is that Neve Campbell?” “Yes!” I said. “Just seven short months before two guys forever ruined her life with knives, a cheap voice changer, and a ghost mask. That was a great year for the Scream Queen.” We sat in silence and watched Nancy, Bonnie, and Rochelle meet Sarah Bailey and introduce her to their witchy ways of worshipping Manon. “Didn’t they make, like, a billion Scream movies?” Frankie asked, turning our conversation back to a different ‘90s film franchise. “Yeah, and they’re each amazing in their own way, adding layered commentary of horror movies through the decades. The last couple of movies even had lesbians in them.” Frankie just smiled and looked back at the TV. “She was my first crush, you know?” I said. The newspaper editor turned back to me with a sloppy smile that made me want her lips on mine all the more. “Who was yours?” I asked. She snorted but didn’t answer, trying to turn back and watch the movie. But I curled my legs up on the couch and smacked her toes lightly with mine. “Hey! I asked you a very important question, FeeDee. You can’t just ignore it. Come on. Who was your first celebrity crush?” Scratching the back of her head, Frankie finished her glass of wine and poured herself another. Meanwhile, I was starting to feel my first glass kick in as a warmth slowly washed over me. For good measure, I poked her toes with my feet again. “I’m still waiting,” I mumbled. The look she flashed me was hungry for just a moment, and I felt my body tense. I know I wanted to eat more than just popcorn tonight. But did she? As her cheeks burned, Frankie Dee blurted out, “It was Cassandra Peterson, okay?” Neither of us was paying attention to the movie anymore as my smile grew wide enough that I could have turned toward the camera with an excited look on my face, that is if my life was the mockumentary I sometimes imagined it to be. “Elvira?!” I almost screamed. “Mistress of the Dark?” Frankie rolled her eyes again. “There’s no need to get overexcited,” she mumbled, crossing her arms. I scooted a little closer. Three-quarters of a cushion now separated us. “You’re right. I guess there’s not. It’s just. . . unlike my first crush, yours actually turned out to be a fellow member of the Sappho Syndicate,” I said, finishing my glass of wine and batting my eyelashes at Frankie. Why are you acting like this? I thought. That earned me a belly laugh from my movie date. “Sappho Syndicate? Is that an actual organization you can join?” she asked in between laughs, doubling over almost in tears. “Sure is,” I said, feeling more of that wine seep into my brain (because that’s how alcohol works). “We meet on Tuesdays in our matching plaid button-downs and hash out the latest edition of The Gay Agenda. Then, when business is done, we all do laps in the parking lot in our Subarus while blasting Girl in Red.” Frankie finally stopped laughing and wiped the tears from her eyes. We went back to watching the movie as I explained to my date exactly what we’d missed, about how the girls each cast a spell to get revenge or improve their lives. And right around the time Nancy’s stepfather died, I realized after she’d stopped laughing so hard, that Frankie had moved closer to me. Only half a cushion separated us now. Did she do that on purpose? I thought, sipping my second glass of wine. No. It’s only an inch or two. If she really wanted to sit closer, she just would. Unless. . . she’s playing a game? No. Frankie Dee isn’t the type of woman to play games. I tried to focus on the movie again. But my mind thought, Which is exactly what would make her suddenly choosing to play a game so surprising! Shit. We gays really did tend to overthink and analyze everything to death, didn’t we? Show me a homo, and I’ll show you an inflated sense of anxiety and a catalog of thoughts like “Was that on purpose?” And “What exactly did she mean when she said that?” The rest of the movie went by uneventfully. I even managed to quiet my brain long enough to enjoy seeing Sarah overcome the coven that turned on her. “That was actually kind of fun in a B-movie cult classic kind of way,” Frankie said, starting her third glass of wine. “Yeah. It’s always fun to revisit, even if a movie about empowering women through magic only goes so far when it’s directed and written by men.” I got up to use the bathroom. When I came back, Frankie was checking her emails. “Working during movie night?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. She shrugged. “I wanted to read Emma’s transcribed interview with a woman running for Cumberland County Sheriff. But I can do that tomorrow.” “That’s right, you can. Because you have more important things to worry about on date night like the Black Flame Candle being lit and resurrecting three evil witches.” I waited for the newspaper editor to correct me over calling this “date night,” but she just turned her attention back to the television. She definitely heard me, I thought. She was looking right at me. Is this also part of her game? Scanning her face for some kind of smile, I found none and relented, sitting back on the couch as we waited for the film to buffer. “So. . . Iowa? What brought you to Maine?” Frankie asked in a tone I assumed to be her interview voice. Did all journalists have one of those to fill awkward silences or make easy conversation? “Fleeing my nutjob church-obsessed father. No offense,” I said, showing my palms and flashing a smile. Truth was, my view of Evangelicals was pretty grim due to my upbringing and the state of this nation over the last several years. But maybe, if I could allow her the space to do so, Frankie might just repair a microscopic piece of my faith in folks who shared her beliefs. “Ayuh, that’ll do it,” she said and immediately dropped the subject. Before an awkward silence could grow, the movie started, and our attention was immediately captured by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy. “So. . . they’re like — evil?” Frankie asked, finishing the popcorn. Before I could answer, I realized something had changed when I’d gotten up to pee. Our thighs were touching! Holy shit! I thought. There’s no cushion left between us! Electricity ran up and down my legs, as I racked my brain to figure out what I should do next. She wants to play? I thought. Fine. Let’s play. I’ll bet she gets flustered and scoots back over. FeeDee’s more of a chicken than all three of the Fates combined. “Yeah,” I said, slowly stretching and casually draping my legs over Frankie’s. “But they’re really silly. They drain the life from her and turn that dude into a cat. And then they’re resurrected in the modern day. Hijinx ensue.” Where I expected Frankie to push my legs off her or at least scowl, she instead called my bluff by reaching behind her and pulling down a white fuzzy blanket I kept on the back of my couch. I just blinked as she spread the blanket over us. Warmth continued to shoot through me, half driven by the wine, half driven by the pretty girl who just blanketed us. Under the blanket, Frankie settled her hand flat against my thigh, and I fought hard to keep from asking, “Who are you, and what have you done with my FeeDee?!” Except she wasn’t my FeeDee. She was just Frankie. . . my pal, my home-girl, my rotten soldier. She’s my sweet cheese, my good-time gal. Right? Okay. Maybe she’s leveled up her game, I thought. Gone is the sheepish coworker. Round two. I had one more move that was sure to tip the scales my way. I scooted my shoulder closer, leaned into her, nuzzled my cheek against her neck, and left my head resting there. Game. Set. Match, I thought. And to my utter consternation, she leaned her head on top of mine, and the smell of her vanilla cashmere lotion was all I could focus on. Frankie Dee was suddenly a new class of opponent. This would require lots of analysis and overthinking. But fuck me. . . I was just so tired. I took in another deep breath of Frankie’s lotion and felt my eyelids slowly drop just as Max, Dani, and Allison wandered into the Sanderson cottage. The last thing I heard before everything went black was Frankie’s snoring. At least — that’s what I assumed the noise was. It was powerful enough that if Paul Bunyan were still around, he’d wonder who was sawing through trees so quickly. *** Morning light streamed in through my living room windows as the autoplay on whatever streaming service we’d used last night (there are like a billion now) had somehow kept playing and eventually settled on a show about a family of four blue cartoon dogs. Not long after I woke up, I heard Frankie’s breathing change, and she lifted her head from mine and turned to look at me. A crick in my neck must have grown through the night because a flashing pain stretched from my shoulder up to my jawline. But I didn’t seem to care as I turned to look into Frankie’s honeyed brown eyes. She said nothing, not entirely awake yet. My phone told me it was 9:17 a.m. Before I could think better of it, I said, “At least this time you fell asleep on top of me.” The newspaper editor groaned and mumbled, “Oh, shut up. I should have been at work hours ago.” We stood and stretched, and I couldn’t stop smiling while thinking about last night. “Sorry we missed the rest of the movie,” Frankie said, clicking her tongue behind her teeth. I shrugged. “Eh, it’s not as good as The Craft. That’s why I had us watch it last. You want coffee first or a shower?” The newspaper editor rubbed her face and stretched her eyes wide open. “Coffee would be divine,” she mumbled before surrendering to my suggestion and stumbling into the kitchen. I followed behind her with an inescapable smile. Closing my eyes, I muttered, “Blessed be.” |
2024.06.01 00:20 3NIK56 Any advice for a new player?
I just started playing fallout 76 a few days ago. I'm level 62, I've completed steel reign, the wastelanders quests (including vault 79), and the original story (except the scorchbeast queen because i have no high level friends to drop a nuke with). I'm running a rifleman build using the gauss rifle and lever action rifle, and with are level 45. However, I still do no damage whatsoever. I can't even do primal cuts events because It takes a minute to kill one Yao guai. I've searched this sub and the wiki for any way to make my build work, and I've come up with nothing. So, how do I make a class swap to something that's more powerful, and what should I go for?
I've already done some prep for a bloodied build, but I don't have the fusion cores to make power armor something consistent. I've been farming PA stations but it takes too long and 25% cores don't last. That being said, I have max rank nerd rage and serendipity.
Anything that doesn't require RNG would be nice. I'm fine with a bit of level grinding, but something that I can make work by level 75 is appreciated. I also really like the rifleman playstyle, so something like that or a heavy weapons build with the plasma caster would be nice.
submitted by 3NIK56 to fo76 [link] [comments]
I've already done some prep for a bloodied build, but I don't have the fusion cores to make power armor something consistent. I've been farming PA stations but it takes too long and 25% cores don't last. That being said, I have max rank nerd rage and serendipity.
Anything that doesn't require RNG would be nice. I'm fine with a bit of level grinding, but something that I can make work by level 75 is appreciated. I also really like the rifleman playstyle, so something like that or a heavy weapons build with the plasma caster would be nice.
2024.05.31 23:52 A_Very_Horny_Zed Can someone comment on my Sandalphon build?
I used mods for sigils because I wanted to see if this is in theory the best possible setup. I ended up with this, and I like it and I was wondering if you guys could see any ways to optimize it.
His ascension weapon isn't maxed yet (still farming his skybound arte usages)
Weapon has: SUPP Dmg 15, ATK 25, Stun Power 20, Stronghold 15, Steel Nerves 10
Tyranny + Stamina
Damage Cap + Cascade
Damage Cap + Aegis
Damage Cap + Uplift
Damage Cap + Crit Rate
Life on the Line + Uplift
War Elemental
Improved Dodge + Uplift
Guts + Autorevive
Ain+
Supreme Primarch's Warpath + HP (definitely still trying to roll transmarvels for a better Warpath+ currently)
Supreme Primarch's Awakening
submitted by A_Very_Horny_Zed to GranblueFantasyRelink [link] [comments]
His ascension weapon isn't maxed yet (still farming his skybound arte usages)
Weapon has: SUPP Dmg 15, ATK 25, Stun Power 20, Stronghold 15, Steel Nerves 10
Tyranny + Stamina
Damage Cap + Cascade
Damage Cap + Aegis
Damage Cap + Uplift
Damage Cap + Crit Rate
Life on the Line + Uplift
War Elemental
Improved Dodge + Uplift
Guts + Autorevive
Ain+
Supreme Primarch's Warpath + HP (definitely still trying to roll transmarvels for a better Warpath+ currently)
Supreme Primarch's Awakening
2024.05.31 23:21 nyx_xy Steel
What is the best mob to farm steel? I tried doing the method of feeding stuff to your pet, but I’m only getting one steel for every 100 feeds and that’s awful. Plus I can’t even buy multiple at once like with reagents. I also have a lot of emps if anyone is nice enough to give some.
submitted by nyx_xy to Wizard101 [link] [comments]
2024.05.31 22:00 Mizzno [H] Games [W] GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon, Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, Headbangers: Rhythm Royale, Games (Listed Below), Steam Gift Cards
N.B.: I'm mainly looking for the games listed in the title and at the bottom of the thread. Feel free to post other offers, but if I haven't responded to your comment(s) by my next posting, I likely wasn't able to find a trade that interested me.
For sale (for Steam Gift Cards or gifted Steam Wallet balance):
For trade:
*signifies that a game is tentatively up for trade, assuming I buy the bundle
WANT:
IGS Rep Page: https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/ti26nz/mizznos_igs_rep_page/
submitted by Mizzno to indiegameswap [link] [comments]
For sale (for Steam Gift Cards or gifted Steam Wallet balance):
- Dark Souls™: Prepare To Die™ Edition (removed from Steam Store;
$350$400 or best offer) - Fall Guys (removed from Steam Store)
- Fall Guys - Dragon Hugger Pack (removed from Steam Store)
- Fall Guys - Icy Adventure Pack (removed from Steam Store)
Marvel's Avengers - The Definitive Edition (removed from Steam Store)Spec Ops: The Line (removed from Steam Store)
- Humble Hunie Sakura Bundle (can also trade for a full "charity" bundle (Australia Fire Relief Bundle or similar))
- Humble Sekai Project Bundle (can also trade for a full "charity" bundle (Stand with Ukraine Bundle or similar))
For trade:
*signifies that a game is tentatively up for trade, assuming I buy the bundle
- Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed
- Life is Strange: True Colors
- Scorn
- There Is No Light: Enhanced Edition
- Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace
- Blood Rage: Digital Edition
- Gloomhaven - Solo Scenarios: Mercenary Challenges
- Small World
- Small World - A Spider's Web
- Small World - Be not Afraid...
- Small World - Cursed!
- Small World - Grand Dames
- Small World - Royal Bonus
- Splendor
- Splendor - The Cities
- Splendor - The Strongholds
- Splendor - The Trading Posts
- Terraforming Mars
- A Short Hike(?)
- A Story Beside(?)
- Aces & Adventures(?)
- Arcade Spirits(?)
- Battlestar Galactica Deadlock(?)
- Beyond Blue(?)
- Cat Quest(?)
- Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!(?)
- EARTHLOCK(?)
- Harmony's Odyssey(?)
- Homeworld Remastered Collection(?)
- Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure(?)
- Minecraft: Java Edition - MCC Island Jingle Jam Rewards Pack(?)
- Monster Prom(?)
- Sifu Deluxe Cosmetic Pack(?)
- Spirit of the Island(?)
- SUPERHOT(?)
- Tinytopia(?)
- Toodee and Topdee(?)
- Train Valley 2(?)
- Turbo Golf Racing(?)
- Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story(?)
- Xenonauts(?)
- Back 4 Blood
- Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition
- Batman: Arkham City - Game of the Year Edition
- Batman: Arkham Knight Premium Edition
- Batman™: Arkham Origins
- Injustice 2 Legendary Edition
- Mad Max
- Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition
- Mortal Kombat 11
- Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate Add-On Bundle
- Mortal Kombat XL
- Bionic Commando: Rearmed
- Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
- Lost Planet 3 - Complete
- Mega Man Legacy Collection
- STRIDER™ / ストライダー飛竜®
- 112 Operator
- 911 Operator
- The Amazing American Circus
- Armello
- Backbone
- Calico
- Euro Truck Simulator 2
- Farming Simulator 17
- Ghostrunner
- Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
- Lust from Beyond: M Edition
- Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine
- Orbital Racer
- Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition
- PAYDAY 2
- Pilgrims
- Soulblight
- Space Crew: Legendary Edition
- Starfinder Core Rulebook (Paizo key) and Starfinder Adventure: Junker's Delight (Paizo key)
- Strange Brigade
- Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
- System Shock 2
- System Shock: Enhanced Edition
- Ticket to Ride
- XCOM® 2
- X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest
- Highway Blossoms
- HunieCam Studio
- KARAKARA
- Sunrider Academy
- Sunrider: Liberation Day - Captain's Edition
- The Elder Scrolls: Legends: 2 Card Packs (Skyrim) 1 Event Ticket 100 Gold 100 Souls
- ESO Vanity Pet: Bristlegut Piglet and 15 Days of ESO Plus
- Ame no Marginal -Rain Marginal-
- KARAKARA
- Memory's Dogma CODE:01
- Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project
- Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project - Season Pass
- A Kiss For the Petals - Remembering How We Met
- Sakura Angels
- Beach Bounce
- Beach Bounce - Soundtrack
- Blue Rose
- Lionessy Story
- My Personal Angel
- Natural - Beyond Nature -
- Postmen Of Horizon (removed from Steam Store)
- Koi-Koi Japan [Hanafuda playing cards]
- Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle
- Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle : School Girls Edition
- Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold'em
- Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
- Guns of Icarus Alliance
- Guns of Icarus Online
- Impossible Creatures Steam Edition
- Lethal League
- Tempest: Pirate Action RPG
- Tempest - Treasure Lands
- Tempest - Original Soundtrack
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf
- Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
- Tenta Shooter
- Gun Gun Pixies
- DUSK
- For The King
- Book of Demons
- PlateUp!
- Kingdom Two Crowns
- White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
- Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
- Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
- Steel Rats™
- Hue
- Sifu Deluxe Edition Upgrade Bundle (Epic key)
- Gal*Gun: Double Peace
- The Invisible Hours
- Synergia
- ROCKETRON
- Project Nimbus: Complete Edition
- Dead Age
- Spirit Hunter: NG
- Slain: Back from Hell(?)
- Cook, Serve, Delicious!
- Tower of Time
- Danger Scavenger
- Survive the Nights
- Valfaris
- Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition
- This War of Mine
- 112 Operator
- 911 Operator
- Book of Demons
- Broken Age
- Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
- Crying Suns
- Crying Suns
- Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
- Driftland: The Magic Revival
- Liberated (GOG key)
- Moon Hunters
- Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
- Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG key)
- WARSAW
- X-Morph: Defense + European Assault, Survival of the Fittest, and Last Bastion DLC (I believe this redeems as the linked Complete Pack, minus the soundtrack)
- ΔV: Rings of Saturn(?)
- Arcade Paradise
- Calico
- Say No! More
- Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
- Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel
- Phoenix Point: Year One Edition
- Deliver Us The Moon
- Morkredd
- Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
- Spirit Hunter: NG
- Survivalist: Invisible Strain
- Warhammer: Vermintide 2
- ENDLESS™ Space 2
- Surviving the Aftermath
- The Long Dark
- Duck Game
- SCP: Secret Files
- WWE 2K23
- The Jackbox Party Pack
- Outward (redeems as the base game only, not the linked Definitive Edition)
- Outward - The Soroboreans
- Outward Soundtrack
- Blade Assault
- Founders' Fortune
- Hokko Life
- Monster Crown
- Othercide
- Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition
- ScourgeBringer
- Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
- HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED™
- Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
- Sonic CD (removed from Steam Store)
- LEGO® Harry Potter: Years 1-4
- LEGO® Harry Potter: Years 5-7
- STRIDER™ / ストライダー飛竜®
- Bionic Commando
- Full Metal Furies
- Ultra Street Fighter® IV
- Starbound
- Mafia III: Sign of the Times
- BioShock 2
- Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
- Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter
- The Mean Greens - Plastic Warfare
- Crusaders of the Lost Idols Legendary Starter Pack
- Project CARS (removed from Steam Store)
WANT:
- 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
- art of rally
- Astebreed: Definitive Edition
- Avernum: Escape from the Pit
- BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
- Cornucopia
- CrossCode
- Dead Rising 4
- Dungreed
- Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2
- Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection
- Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition
- Myst (2021)
- NBA 2K23
- NECROPOLIS: BRUTAL EDITION
- Omensight: Definitive Edition
- OPUS: Echo of Starsong - Full Bloom Edition
- OPUS: Rocket of Whispers
- OPUS: The Day We Found Earth
- Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
- RAGE
- Resident Evil Village
- The Jackbox Party Pack 5
- The Jackbox Party Pack 6
- The Jackbox Party Pack 7
- Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap
- Zombie Army 4: Dead War
- any extra copies of WWE 2K23
IGS Rep Page: https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/ti26nz/mizznos_igs_rep_page/
2024.05.31 19:57 Illustrious-Comment6 [FARM] PVE speed team casual account nearly F2P
![[FARM] PVE speed team casual account nearly F2P](https://external-preview.redd.it/4sGKfp2QJM-06a82mZvWyQyuWDIQD68gT7oc05xPg5s.jpg?width=320&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7fddaa4f5c46726707fe3658674d045e3f3b3dd7 "[FARM] PVE speed team casual account nearly F2P") | Hello guys, submitted by Illustrious-Comment6 to summonerswar [link] [comments] First of all, english is not my native language, i'm trying my best without any translator, be kind and respectful ! The objective of this post is to show farming teams, safe and consistent, and not speed records. I just restarted the game after a huge break, and instantly wanted to improve my old farming teams. For those who wonders, I was the creator of old dot teams for GB12 (https://www.reddit.com/summonerswacomments/kdo24f/gb12\_consistent\_speed\_team\_under\_a\_minute\_100\_safe/) made it popular by SeanB video on my account. As I'm not usually a big farmer, my account is not that great but I pulled some really nice mobs and i've got pretty decent farming teams now that I wanted to show. I don't really know what is the meta actually but i'm proud of what I built. These are my teams and timers : Cairos teams For giant, it seems to be the easiest GB12 classical team. Turn order is : Prilea, Teshar, Konamiya, Naomi, Wind Homie A lot of fight runes made it easy. I was struggling with dragon abyssal hard but I just pulled Patrick who destroys it so hard. Turn order is : Shaina, Julie, Kyle, Patrick, light homie. Run example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmS8Bg6pqI As you can see, Light homie is only useful on the boss, 2nd floor Zaiross is getting killed after Patrick s2. With the build that I choose on light homie, i can fill up all attack bars + buff attack on everyone, so all of my team play 2 times before the dragon and he gets obliterated. I'll not lie, light homie AI is pretty dumb, she doesn't always use S3 into S2 but its still pretty consistent. If she fails, it's around 45/50 seconds per run, instead of 31/35. By the way, Kyle and Patrick are not even fully skilled up. Light homie skills : Light Homie Skill tree For necromancer it seems to be the classical team also, i'll not go into details. Turn order : cannon girl, icaru, raoq, lapis, Shamann :) Spiritual realm is super easy, turn order is : Sieq, Shaina, Raok, Lapis, Verdehile. It seems to be the easiest of all teams, i'll not go into further details unless you guys have questions. Steel fortress is not that easy as a first approach, I was looking for a consistent buff block and found that wonderful Copper brother. It's super smooth, super consistent, Brandia oneshoted 3rd wave boss and final boss. Turn order is : Zinc, Loren, Raoq, Brandia, Verdehile. I believe you can go for Kro instead of Brandia, I didn't tried. Punisher's Crypt was the second hardest in my opinion, I was loosing my mind until I go full dumb with a horde of inugami. And it works! Turn order is Eirgar, Icaru, Raoq, Kro and Verdehile. Hope that posts can help you building speed teams. Don't hesitate if you want to see other runs or the runes I'm using. Cyyyya Wyzeong. |
2024.05.31 17:38 Entire_Possible_9976 "Bossing", the Pitt and Stygian Stones.
It goes without saying that I along with the majority of players believe there needs to be a significant boost to the access of Stygian Stones, largely because right now Solo players are the ones who are likely to be quitting the season earlier than they otherwise would, had they more access to them without needing to group. As it makes accessing Uber uniques very very difficult for players who do not wish to group.
But this isn't only about that....
Shouldn't the Stygian Stones be designed around "Bossing", rather than just the Pit?
Surely the logical barrier of entry to Tormented bosses, would be the previous difficulty level of boss?
I'd propose the following-
(Minor boss = Zir, Varshan, Beast in ice etc)
"Bossing" Changes
Uber Duriel and Uber Andariel both drop a guaranteed Stygian Stone upon every kill. As you have proved you're ready for the next level of difficulty. It also means players who like the "Bossing" aspect of the game get to kill bosses more often, whilst Pit enjoyers can still earn their Stygian Stones that way.
Perhaps there should even be two tiers of Stygian Stones? One used to summon Duriel/Andariel and one to summon the minor bosses? Because currently there is no reason to use Stygian Stones on the minor bosses, and even when they become more accessible, there's still very little reason to use them in summoning the minor bosses over Duriel/Andariel.
The Pit
Pit bosses should also drop "Minor Boss" Summoning materials.
Something like 25% chance below level 20, 50% chance between 20-40 and 100% chance from 40-60. Then perhaps for every level higher you can increase the chance that the summoning materials are double by 2%, to incentivise further pushing.
Legion Events
Legion Events should be permanently changed to "Iron Wolf Legion events" for every subsequent season, keeping part of this seasons theme in the game. Instead of dropping random boss mats in World Tier 4, they now drop "Honour tickets", which can be traded at an Iron Wolf vendoboard in town in exchange for "Minor boss" materials of your choice. Right now Legion Events don't have as much incentive as other content and it would be nice to keep them relevant. Perhaps offering 3-5 "Minor Boss" summoning materials of your choice for completing every legion event would encourage people to complete legion events when they're active.
Nightmare Dungeons
After completing your Glyphs, there's a significantly reduced reason to continue this content. For those who enjoy nightmare dungeons, perhaps offer Minor Boss summoning materials for Levels 80-100? Perhaps offering an increase of 5% for each level, or offer a guaranteed Boss material after completion at level 80, and then a 5% increased chances of a further material drop each level above 80, meaning level 100 drops 2 additional materials in addition to the normal Distilled Fear drops. Again, it just incentivises playing a variety of the content.
The reward of fighting higher difficulty bosses should come from fighting lower difficult ones, in my opinion. I don't think you should be 'Forced' to kill Uber Duriel in order to fight Tormented Duriel, but I believe it is logical to incentivise that kind of "Boss Ladder" progression.
The idea that you grind the Pit for masterworking is fine, but to then need to grind it again even if your gear is perfectly masterworked in order to get only a chance at Stygian Stones makes the end game have less variety for no reason whatsoever, and is no doubt a lesser incentive to play for more casual players, which this game is targeted at.
This season has been a huge step forward. As a Path of Exile player, many of the changes I'm arguing for above, I'd actually be arguing the opposite in that game. That's because I recognise this is a game designed at a more entry level ARPG player, and that's fine, I've had fun this season and can see myself having fun in future seasons too. It just feels right now though, that the casual player who doesn't group is getting shafted a bit compared to group players.
TL:DR
The Pitt should drop Minor Boss summoning mats, either instead of, or in addition to, Stygian Stones.
Uber bosses should drop guaranteed Stygian stones. Perhaps a two tier system:
Nightmare Dungeons, after level 80, drop Minor Boss summoning materials, an incentive to replay them after Glyph completion.
Gameplay rotation would look like the following when entering world tier 4 -
Nightmare dungeons to farm Glyph XP....Then at higher levels an option return to get 3-5 minor boss mats (3 Distilled fear + 2 others)
The Pit to farm Masterworking materials...Then at higher levels the option to return to get chance at Stygian Stones + 2 minor boss mats + Masterwork materials.
Helltide....Living Steel + fastest way to obtain new gear and target farm specific gear pieces.
Legion Events....Allows the target farming of specific minor boss materials.
Bossing....Killing Uber versions is now the best way to farm Tormented versions. Meaning it's far more possible to actually enjoy Bossing.
submitted by Entire_Possible_9976 to diablo4 [link] [comments]
But this isn't only about that....
Shouldn't the Stygian Stones be designed around "Bossing", rather than just the Pit?
Surely the logical barrier of entry to Tormented bosses, would be the previous difficulty level of boss?
I'd propose the following-
(Minor boss = Zir, Varshan, Beast in ice etc)
"Bossing" Changes
Uber Duriel and Uber Andariel both drop a guaranteed Stygian Stone upon every kill. As you have proved you're ready for the next level of difficulty. It also means players who like the "Bossing" aspect of the game get to kill bosses more often, whilst Pit enjoyers can still earn their Stygian Stones that way.
Perhaps there should even be two tiers of Stygian Stones? One used to summon Duriel/Andariel and one to summon the minor bosses? Because currently there is no reason to use Stygian Stones on the minor bosses, and even when they become more accessible, there's still very little reason to use them in summoning the minor bosses over Duriel/Andariel.
The Pit
Pit bosses should also drop "Minor Boss" Summoning materials.
Something like 25% chance below level 20, 50% chance between 20-40 and 100% chance from 40-60. Then perhaps for every level higher you can increase the chance that the summoning materials are double by 2%, to incentivise further pushing.
Legion Events
Legion Events should be permanently changed to "Iron Wolf Legion events" for every subsequent season, keeping part of this seasons theme in the game. Instead of dropping random boss mats in World Tier 4, they now drop "Honour tickets", which can be traded at an Iron Wolf vendoboard in town in exchange for "Minor boss" materials of your choice. Right now Legion Events don't have as much incentive as other content and it would be nice to keep them relevant. Perhaps offering 3-5 "Minor Boss" summoning materials of your choice for completing every legion event would encourage people to complete legion events when they're active.
Nightmare Dungeons
After completing your Glyphs, there's a significantly reduced reason to continue this content. For those who enjoy nightmare dungeons, perhaps offer Minor Boss summoning materials for Levels 80-100? Perhaps offering an increase of 5% for each level, or offer a guaranteed Boss material after completion at level 80, and then a 5% increased chances of a further material drop each level above 80, meaning level 100 drops 2 additional materials in addition to the normal Distilled Fear drops. Again, it just incentivises playing a variety of the content.
The reward of fighting higher difficulty bosses should come from fighting lower difficult ones, in my opinion. I don't think you should be 'Forced' to kill Uber Duriel in order to fight Tormented Duriel, but I believe it is logical to incentivise that kind of "Boss Ladder" progression.
The idea that you grind the Pit for masterworking is fine, but to then need to grind it again even if your gear is perfectly masterworked in order to get only a chance at Stygian Stones makes the end game have less variety for no reason whatsoever, and is no doubt a lesser incentive to play for more casual players, which this game is targeted at.
This season has been a huge step forward. As a Path of Exile player, many of the changes I'm arguing for above, I'd actually be arguing the opposite in that game. That's because I recognise this is a game designed at a more entry level ARPG player, and that's fine, I've had fun this season and can see myself having fun in future seasons too. It just feels right now though, that the casual player who doesn't group is getting shafted a bit compared to group players.
TL:DR
The Pitt should drop Minor Boss summoning mats, either instead of, or in addition to, Stygian Stones.
Uber bosses should drop guaranteed Stygian stones. Perhaps a two tier system:
- Duriel and Andariel drop a "Major Stygian Stone", to summon their Tormented versions.
- Minor Bosses drop a "Minor Stygian Stone", to summon their Tormented versions. The Tormented versions then drop 3x the materials for Uber Duriel/Andariel.
Nightmare Dungeons, after level 80, drop Minor Boss summoning materials, an incentive to replay them after Glyph completion.
Gameplay rotation would look like the following when entering world tier 4 -
Nightmare dungeons to farm Glyph XP....Then at higher levels an option return to get 3-5 minor boss mats (3 Distilled fear + 2 others)
The Pit to farm Masterworking materials...Then at higher levels the option to return to get chance at Stygian Stones + 2 minor boss mats + Masterwork materials.
Helltide....Living Steel + fastest way to obtain new gear and target farm specific gear pieces.
Legion Events....Allows the target farming of specific minor boss materials.
Bossing....Killing Uber versions is now the best way to farm Tormented versions. Meaning it's far more possible to actually enjoy Bossing.
2024.05.31 15:15 Sea-Ad7139 What do all of you do with your ancient dangers after you clear them out?
In my best colony, it was a steel storage room and drill site, with a storage room on the side. In my current colony, it was first a entity containment place, then a hydroponic place farming hyperweave using a mod.
submitted by Sea-Ad7139 to RimWorld [link] [comments]
2024.05.31 15:06 CrankBot [WTSWTT] Spyderco Native 5 DLC ✂︎ Kershaw Dividend ✂︎ Civivi Bo ✂︎ Pyrite Alt Green
Timestamp
Open to offers, PP G&S, all prices include USPS CONUS shipping. Willing to discount on bundles.
Trade interests:
S30V DLC blade SECONDS, swapped to a grey handle from a Maxamet Native. I received this from the swap in this configuration. It appears to be factory edge and overall excellent condition. The only real sign of wear appears on the pocket clip which I assume came from a different donor when the handle swap was done. I have pocketed it around the house, flicked it a bunch and cut paper. The lock pin protrudes a tiny bit more on the clip side.
SOLD
SV 30 - photos / video
Made in USA. This travelled with me in my work bag but has only seen light use on the blade. The stonewash finish blade has a few light scratches but the edge has only been touched up a handful of times. The action is great and the assisted opening is very snappy as you would expect. Unfortunately the clip side scale has lost some anodizing finish from a loose clip. The clip is tight now and also shows wear.
SOLD
SV 30 - photos / video
Nitro-V steel DLC (or whatever their coating is called.) Received from the swap, pocketed a couple times around the house and flicked it a bunch but otherwise unused by me. I did touch up the tip edge which I attempted to capture in photo. Perfect centering. Flicks open smooth. The spine has a couple light scratches that I just noticed while taking photos. Comes with an aftermarket deep carry clip. Will ship in a Civivi taco.
We all know and love this one. Solid lockup, smooth action and drop shut. Has been lightly carried and I don't see any scratches on the stonewash finish. FULL DISCLOSURE: it smells ever so slightly like a cow. For real. I think my wife grabbed it and used it to cut the wrapping off a hay bale. Or something. I have disassembled it and cleaned it but if I hold it directly under my nose I can still smell it. So there it is. You get the essence of my farm with this one.
submitted by CrankBot to Knife_Swap [link] [comments]
Open to offers, PP G&S, all prices include USPS CONUS shipping. Willing to discount on bundles.
Trade interests:
- Spyderco Sage, Manix or Efficient
- Byrd Raven or Crow
- Benchmade
Spyderco Native 5 LW DLC Seconds
SV 90 - photos / videoS30V DLC blade SECONDS, swapped to a grey handle from a Maxamet Native. I received this from the swap in this configuration. It appears to be factory edge and overall excellent condition. The only real sign of wear appears on the pocket clip which I assume came from a different donor when the handle swap was done. I have pocketed it around the house, flicked it a bunch and cut paper. The lock pin protrudes a tiny bit more on the clip side.
SOLD Kershaw Dividend 1812GRY
Made in USA. This travelled with me in my work bag but has only seen light use on the blade. The stonewash finish blade has a few light scratches but the edge has only been touched up a handful of times. The action is great and the assisted opening is very snappy as you would expect. Unfortunately the clip side scale has lost some anodizing finish from a loose clip. The clip is tight now and also shows wear.
SOLD Civivi Bo
Nitro-V steel DLC (or whatever their coating is called.) Received from the swap, pocketed a couple times around the house and flicked it a bunch but otherwise unused by me. I did touch up the tip edge which I attempted to capture in photo. Perfect centering. Flicks open smooth. The spine has a couple light scratches that I just noticed while taking photos. Comes with an aftermarket deep carry clip. Will ship in a Civivi taco.
CJRB Pyrite Alt Green Micarta
SV 35 - photos / videoWe all know and love this one. Solid lockup, smooth action and drop shut. Has been lightly carried and I don't see any scratches on the stonewash finish. FULL DISCLOSURE: it smells ever so slightly like a cow. For real. I think my wife grabbed it and used it to cut the wrapping off a hay bale. Or something. I have disassembled it and cleaned it but if I hold it directly under my nose I can still smell it. So there it is. You get the essence of my farm with this one.
2024.05.31 14:47 CDown01 J.'s Journals: Blood Ties
Previous Entry
Sometimes I just don’t know how to leave well enough alone. I decided to head out to that town in New Mexico and found a whole lot more than I bargained for. Now I guess it’s time to write about it as Belle snickers at me behind my back as she drives (I can see you sneaking glances at this over my shoulder you know). I won’t admit it to her but running into her was the best part of this whole thing.
It all started with me just walking out of the apartment I was staying in and looking for a bus headed towards New Mexico. Eventually I got lucky and found one but it wasn’t my luck I was surprised by. What surprised me was the familiar face getting off the bus. Belle looked almost exactly the same as she had all those years ago. Sure the clothes were different, maybe she was a bit cleaner after living the high life in D.C. but it was her, I was sure of that. She came running over to greet me as soon as she noticed me starring. Apparently I hadn’t changed that much either.
The meeting was bittersweet, that was my fault though, I was always to quick to business. Turns out she was heading the same way as me but she’d just gotten into town to pick up a rental. She offered me a ride and I accepted, what better way to catch up than a drive out to New Mexico. Along the way she dropped a bomb on me, she didn’t work for Chimera anymore. She was looking into what happened in Cloudcrest, the town we were headed to. It was purely “professional curiosity” as she put it. I think she’s just as interested as I am in something that scared Chimera away.
It was strange seeing Belle again, not bad but… weird. I hadn’t seen her in so long I forgot she existed outside of her letters. It was like she was real only when I read the words on the page. Other than that I hadn’t thought about her much before I started writing in this thing. Just having her there in the car, even when it was just silent, brought me back to those years in Paris. Just her and I against the world. But it wasn’t Paris and so much had changed since those days. Still, it’s nice to have her back in the flesh.
Belle also told me why exactly she’d left Chimera, or more so why she was forced to leave. It actually started with an apology. I’d been trying to avoid the topic and any fights that might come from it but she brought it up and immediately said I was right. I was right about Chimera, of course I was but I didn’t realize exactly how right. They had been keeping tabs on the letters she sent to me. They never used my actual name, not even the J. I normally go by. Even still someone realized who those letters were really going to and started using them to plot my movements around the country. Baelen also followed Belle’s own records back and figured out what she actually was. Afterwards she was offered an ultimatum, lead them to me or be interrogated for any information she knew about me.
Obviously she didn’t like either of those options so she picked up and ran. Why she ran right to the site of Chimera’s most recent failure is up for debate. She’s never been one to take anything laying down especially not blackmail, I get the feeling this is no different. What I really wanted to know was why Baelen is so intent on finding me. He knew who I was, I’d made sure of that on multiple occasions. I’ve also actively spoke out against Chimera to just about any supernatural being who’d listen to me, as if they needed anymore bad press.
What I don’t understand is what he’d gain by finding me. He has access to all the data we ever recorded. Well, anything Frank and Stein didn’t manage to encrypt or delete before they left. If he’s after that why start with me then? Why not just start looking for Frank and Stein, they had to be on some government’s payroll still. Maybe the man’s finally losing it and using me as a scapegoat? I’ll have to keep an ear to the ground though, I don’t like people looking for me without a reason.
We got to Cloudcrest just as the sun was starting to set and the town was a disaster. There were these scorch marks on the pavement where something had left holes. All the buildings we drove past on main street were still standing but only just. Bricks were missing from them and widows were boarded up. One of the houses on the outskirts had most of the roof torn off but the car in the driveway suggested that someone was still using it. The whole looked like something you’d see on television after a tornado struck.
The strangest thing was how few people we saw. There were some buildings with open signs on but I didn’t see anyone in them. There was one or two people on the sidewalks and we were the only car on the road. It was unnerving to see a ghost town so soon after it became one. Belle just parked the car on main street, didn’t even bother locking it.
Despite the state of the town it was still hard to find the kind of evidence we were looking for. I just wanted to get some idea of what did this. I assumed we were looking for a what, not a who. I still do but Belle is convinced it might be both wrapped up into one. Some sort of incredibly powerful supernatural being that can blend in with people isn’t really a comforting thought. She’s got absolutely no evidence to back that up though.
Usually looking around as it was starting to get dark would be a bad idea. But for Belle and I that wasn’t a problem. As we poked around the town we started to see more and more of those holes surrounded by scorch marks on the ground. A lot of the damage was something we ended up chalking up to wind, really really strong wind. It was almost like the most severe thunderstorm I’d ever seen had happened right on-top of a tornado. It really did look like this was all just a case of freak bad weather until we found the feather.
As usual it was Belle who ended up finding something of any real importance. A feather, massive and steel blue that must’ve been at least six feet long. The feather was roughly the size of a person but no bird could be that big, right? It was also pretty hard, not hard like granite but… it’s hard to explain. If you hit it with something you’d feel it bounce back, like the feather was a solid immovable object. But touch the feather and it would feel…. like a normal feather. Maybe it was a little more rigid but it felt largely normal. It was only when you hit it with something that it reacted differently.
Whatever that feather came from had to be the reason Chimera was here. Speaking of Chimera I asked Belle about the official statement they’d given for what happened here. Apparently it was a “geological event” that cut the place off. Not sure that one was going to hold up but apparently thats what they claimed.
Belle and I looked around a little while longer but didn’t really find anything worth writing down here. There was a little mark seared into one of the trees though. It was a bird surrounded by something that might’ve been smoke. There were a few lightning bolts in the design as well. I have to admit, it was an odd find but it didn’t mean anything to me. Could be someone with some metal working skill and too much spare time just made a design and burned it into the nearest tree.
We decided to give up a little while after sunset. We thought it was best not to make ourselves look more suspicious than we already did. After that we went in search of a bar to relax for a bit before we called it a night.. Well as luck would have it thats where the people were. Hopefully they weren’t all that was left of the town.
When we walked in four pairs of eyes scanned over us and my heart dropped. I didn’t recognize the woman with the eagles tattoos in the corner or the purple suited jackass she was talking to. Not sure why I got that feeling about him but anyone in a full purple suit out here is probably bad company. The startled bartender didn’t strike me as anything special either but the last man in the room did. He was dressed in red as usual, this time a red suit and black bowtie that made him look like a valet. His usual red tinted sun glasses sat on his nose obscuring his eyes. And his slicked back black hair made him look a little more modern than usual.
The second I saw him that all to familiar icy feeling shot up my spine. I hadn’t seen that bastard for two years now and I was hoping I was done with him. After all our deal was done, I’d fulfilled my end. Belle paid the man no mind, I’m not even sure if she could see him. I figured I should try and ignore him as well. Belle got us drinks, long island ice teas, an apparent favorite of her’s and we took a table next to the tattooed woman.
I’ve had to snoop more than once during my time at the BSA so eavesdropping from a table over was second nature to me. The man in the purple suit and the tattooed woman were arguing about something, the terms of some reward by the sounds of it. She was trying to whisk him away somewhere, I didn’t catch the place’s name, only that is was up in New York. I was trying to listen in to exactly what she was offering the guy when a name I hadn’t heard in a while crossed his lips, “Bianca”. After that it was hard to focus, I hadn’t seen her in years but there wasn’t a day she wasn’t in my thoughts at least once.
I must’ve been staring after that distraction and when I snapped back to reality the tattooed woman was staring me right in the eyes. Her eyes were… imposing, that powerful stormy grey couldn’t be natural. I couldn’t help but to feel just a little threatened by her gaze. Something about it told me I did not want to mess with her so I turned back to my drink. Belle and I talked for a bit until the man in red tapped my shoulder with a single gloved finger. As I slowly turned to him he didn’t make a sound and I realized with surprise that nothing else was making any noise either. Everything and everyone around me had slowed to a crawl. The man didn’t say a word, just handed a blue jewel incrusted dagger to me and walked out, grinning the whole time.
My body was on autopilot, I just took the dagger and started as the man in red walked out. As soon as he was out of sight everything returned to normal. Belle said she didn’t see anything when I asked, even said she only saw three other people in the bar. We left after that, I didn’t want to hang around anymore.
The dagger and that name stopped me cold, I was going to be just about useless for the rest of the night. The dagger was just something I lifted from an Egyptian museum on vacation once. Nothing really special but I wanted a souvenir and it looked interesting enough. Eventually that dagger would be a gift to my daughter. That’s where the other name that had me so distracted comes in, my daughter's name, Bianca.
I never thought I’d be the family type, especially considering that I really was content to just wander on my own. When I met Caroline all that changed though. It was a few years after I’d left the BSA, I was walking down a street in Chicago when a car pulled over. The driver Caroline, asked for directions and when I saw an opportunity for a ride I took it. I offered to give her directions to wherever it was she was going as long as I could hitch a ride. I’m not sure what made her agree. By all accounts letting a stranger into your car in Chicago is a horrible idea but she went with it. I don’t remember where exactly it was she wanted directions to, we never did get there anyways.
The two of us fell for each other, both free spirits just kind of floating around the states with the breeze. She’d owned a law firm at one point but gave it up for much the same reasons as I’d left the BSA, it just wasn’t the company she remembered. Our little adventures across the country were the highlights of my life so far and probably will be forever. I don’t think I’ve got the time to write about them here but maybe I should someday.
The one moment that sticks with me more than the rest is when I told her what I was. At that point quite a few people I’d worked with in the past had figured it out. The whole BSA knew exactly what I was and no one really batted an eye at it. All that is a longwinded way of saying I wasn’t hiding what I was nearly as much anymore. Still Caroline had no idea, no suspicion but didn’t even react when I told her. It was another thing I admired about her, she could just accept something like that and never let it bother her.
Anyway it wasn’t too long before we’d settled down on a farm in Wyoming. Marsh was the best man at my wedding, even Frank and Stein made it out. That was actually the last time I saw Marsh before the cancer took him, really one of the last good memories I had of him. Caroline and I lived on that farm for the next 3 years before everything went to hell.
It was nothing to do with us but rather what we were trying to do. We had been trying for children, we wanted to start a real family here. The night we finally did was the night I lost control. I had dreams that night, dreams of my deal with the man in red. When Caroline rolled me over that night to… try again, I wasn’t really myself. I can’t describe it, it was like I was watching myself while I wasn’t myself but I still felt… everything. Once it was all over I saw the man in red again, his gaseous form flowing out of my body and materializing in the corner. He looked up to where some part of me had been observing from the ceiling and nodded with a smile before he disappeared and my vision went dark.
After that things were never quite the same. Caroline found out she was pregnant and I was more scared then I’d ever been. Both because of the circumstances of the baby’s conception and the general fear that comes with being a first time parent. When it came time to name the baby Caroline decided on Bianca. The day she was born we all thought we’d lost Caroline. She did lose a lot of blood but she’s always been a fighter, she pulled through just like I knew she would. But I couldn’t be around Bianca, I was constantly reminded of that horrible night and the man in red. I swore I could hear him laughing way off in the distance every time I stared into her blue eyes.
I was a coward, I always was but this is another one of those times that really sticks out to me. I left them, I left my wife and my daughter because of bad memories and what might happen. Instead of being there to help, seeing exactly what the deal I made meant for Bianca, I walked out. I’ve tried to bring myself to go back, to talk to Caroline and tell her why but I can’t. Even if I did find it in me to go back things would never be the same. There aren’t words to make anyone forgive a father who walks out on his family like I did. I’d never expect either of them to forgive me in the first place.
A year or two ago I actually saw her, Bianca. Kind of hard to miss with her eyes glowing like they were. She was all grown up, didn’t even recognize me but she looked like she’d had it rough. We sat and talked for a bit on the step of some dingy apartment building in Nevada for hours. We didn’t actually talk about a whole lot, just the weather, how her day was, and what was going on in her life. She was a little guarded but it was so nice to just sit and talk with her after all that time. It made me wonder what it would’ve been like if I had stayed to raise her. Thinking about that still makes me tear up. I gave her that jeweled dagger before I left, it was a kind of parting gift. I hoped she could sell it and live a better life, the thing had to be worth a small fortune after all.
She never did as far as I know though. Something like that being found and sold somewhere might make the news, especially since it was taken from a museum. Maybe she realized who I was after all and held onto it. Not sure if that would be better or worse than just remembering me as someone who walked out of her life before she even knew me though.
That’s why I was so defenseless as we left the bar. There was just so many things I still torture myself with that were thrown back at me out of the blue. I’m glad Belle just decided to leave. I guess she could tell something was bothering me. I’m sure she could tell when I started writing this, never was all that good at putting pen to paper and it was definitely out of character.
That dagger the man in red gave me was a fake, the thing just disintegrated in my hands as we drove. I guess that means he didn’t take it from my daughter but why did he give it me in the first place? It’s all too much to think about right now, yet another reason why I’m writing about everything here.
I’ve actually started to enjoy keeping this little thing. Maybe I don’t do it quite right and I just go on and on about the past but its nice. I finally have something to tell my stories to, even if it is just a bit of processed tree. Anyways I should probably finish this up before Belle gets too antsy (I know your still peeking at this, eyes on the road). I should ask if she wants to stick around once we get… wherever it is she’s decided we’re going now. She’ll need someplace to lie low away from Chimera and I have just the place in mind.
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Sometimes I just don’t know how to leave well enough alone. I decided to head out to that town in New Mexico and found a whole lot more than I bargained for. Now I guess it’s time to write about it as Belle snickers at me behind my back as she drives (I can see you sneaking glances at this over my shoulder you know). I won’t admit it to her but running into her was the best part of this whole thing.
It all started with me just walking out of the apartment I was staying in and looking for a bus headed towards New Mexico. Eventually I got lucky and found one but it wasn’t my luck I was surprised by. What surprised me was the familiar face getting off the bus. Belle looked almost exactly the same as she had all those years ago. Sure the clothes were different, maybe she was a bit cleaner after living the high life in D.C. but it was her, I was sure of that. She came running over to greet me as soon as she noticed me starring. Apparently I hadn’t changed that much either.
The meeting was bittersweet, that was my fault though, I was always to quick to business. Turns out she was heading the same way as me but she’d just gotten into town to pick up a rental. She offered me a ride and I accepted, what better way to catch up than a drive out to New Mexico. Along the way she dropped a bomb on me, she didn’t work for Chimera anymore. She was looking into what happened in Cloudcrest, the town we were headed to. It was purely “professional curiosity” as she put it. I think she’s just as interested as I am in something that scared Chimera away.
It was strange seeing Belle again, not bad but… weird. I hadn’t seen her in so long I forgot she existed outside of her letters. It was like she was real only when I read the words on the page. Other than that I hadn’t thought about her much before I started writing in this thing. Just having her there in the car, even when it was just silent, brought me back to those years in Paris. Just her and I against the world. But it wasn’t Paris and so much had changed since those days. Still, it’s nice to have her back in the flesh.
Belle also told me why exactly she’d left Chimera, or more so why she was forced to leave. It actually started with an apology. I’d been trying to avoid the topic and any fights that might come from it but she brought it up and immediately said I was right. I was right about Chimera, of course I was but I didn’t realize exactly how right. They had been keeping tabs on the letters she sent to me. They never used my actual name, not even the J. I normally go by. Even still someone realized who those letters were really going to and started using them to plot my movements around the country. Baelen also followed Belle’s own records back and figured out what she actually was. Afterwards she was offered an ultimatum, lead them to me or be interrogated for any information she knew about me.
Obviously she didn’t like either of those options so she picked up and ran. Why she ran right to the site of Chimera’s most recent failure is up for debate. She’s never been one to take anything laying down especially not blackmail, I get the feeling this is no different. What I really wanted to know was why Baelen is so intent on finding me. He knew who I was, I’d made sure of that on multiple occasions. I’ve also actively spoke out against Chimera to just about any supernatural being who’d listen to me, as if they needed anymore bad press.
What I don’t understand is what he’d gain by finding me. He has access to all the data we ever recorded. Well, anything Frank and Stein didn’t manage to encrypt or delete before they left. If he’s after that why start with me then? Why not just start looking for Frank and Stein, they had to be on some government’s payroll still. Maybe the man’s finally losing it and using me as a scapegoat? I’ll have to keep an ear to the ground though, I don’t like people looking for me without a reason.
We got to Cloudcrest just as the sun was starting to set and the town was a disaster. There were these scorch marks on the pavement where something had left holes. All the buildings we drove past on main street were still standing but only just. Bricks were missing from them and widows were boarded up. One of the houses on the outskirts had most of the roof torn off but the car in the driveway suggested that someone was still using it. The whole looked like something you’d see on television after a tornado struck.
The strangest thing was how few people we saw. There were some buildings with open signs on but I didn’t see anyone in them. There was one or two people on the sidewalks and we were the only car on the road. It was unnerving to see a ghost town so soon after it became one. Belle just parked the car on main street, didn’t even bother locking it.
Despite the state of the town it was still hard to find the kind of evidence we were looking for. I just wanted to get some idea of what did this. I assumed we were looking for a what, not a who. I still do but Belle is convinced it might be both wrapped up into one. Some sort of incredibly powerful supernatural being that can blend in with people isn’t really a comforting thought. She’s got absolutely no evidence to back that up though.
Usually looking around as it was starting to get dark would be a bad idea. But for Belle and I that wasn’t a problem. As we poked around the town we started to see more and more of those holes surrounded by scorch marks on the ground. A lot of the damage was something we ended up chalking up to wind, really really strong wind. It was almost like the most severe thunderstorm I’d ever seen had happened right on-top of a tornado. It really did look like this was all just a case of freak bad weather until we found the feather.
As usual it was Belle who ended up finding something of any real importance. A feather, massive and steel blue that must’ve been at least six feet long. The feather was roughly the size of a person but no bird could be that big, right? It was also pretty hard, not hard like granite but… it’s hard to explain. If you hit it with something you’d feel it bounce back, like the feather was a solid immovable object. But touch the feather and it would feel…. like a normal feather. Maybe it was a little more rigid but it felt largely normal. It was only when you hit it with something that it reacted differently.
Whatever that feather came from had to be the reason Chimera was here. Speaking of Chimera I asked Belle about the official statement they’d given for what happened here. Apparently it was a “geological event” that cut the place off. Not sure that one was going to hold up but apparently thats what they claimed.
Belle and I looked around a little while longer but didn’t really find anything worth writing down here. There was a little mark seared into one of the trees though. It was a bird surrounded by something that might’ve been smoke. There were a few lightning bolts in the design as well. I have to admit, it was an odd find but it didn’t mean anything to me. Could be someone with some metal working skill and too much spare time just made a design and burned it into the nearest tree.
We decided to give up a little while after sunset. We thought it was best not to make ourselves look more suspicious than we already did. After that we went in search of a bar to relax for a bit before we called it a night.. Well as luck would have it thats where the people were. Hopefully they weren’t all that was left of the town.
When we walked in four pairs of eyes scanned over us and my heart dropped. I didn’t recognize the woman with the eagles tattoos in the corner or the purple suited jackass she was talking to. Not sure why I got that feeling about him but anyone in a full purple suit out here is probably bad company. The startled bartender didn’t strike me as anything special either but the last man in the room did. He was dressed in red as usual, this time a red suit and black bowtie that made him look like a valet. His usual red tinted sun glasses sat on his nose obscuring his eyes. And his slicked back black hair made him look a little more modern than usual.
The second I saw him that all to familiar icy feeling shot up my spine. I hadn’t seen that bastard for two years now and I was hoping I was done with him. After all our deal was done, I’d fulfilled my end. Belle paid the man no mind, I’m not even sure if she could see him. I figured I should try and ignore him as well. Belle got us drinks, long island ice teas, an apparent favorite of her’s and we took a table next to the tattooed woman.
I’ve had to snoop more than once during my time at the BSA so eavesdropping from a table over was second nature to me. The man in the purple suit and the tattooed woman were arguing about something, the terms of some reward by the sounds of it. She was trying to whisk him away somewhere, I didn’t catch the place’s name, only that is was up in New York. I was trying to listen in to exactly what she was offering the guy when a name I hadn’t heard in a while crossed his lips, “Bianca”. After that it was hard to focus, I hadn’t seen her in years but there wasn’t a day she wasn’t in my thoughts at least once.
I must’ve been staring after that distraction and when I snapped back to reality the tattooed woman was staring me right in the eyes. Her eyes were… imposing, that powerful stormy grey couldn’t be natural. I couldn’t help but to feel just a little threatened by her gaze. Something about it told me I did not want to mess with her so I turned back to my drink. Belle and I talked for a bit until the man in red tapped my shoulder with a single gloved finger. As I slowly turned to him he didn’t make a sound and I realized with surprise that nothing else was making any noise either. Everything and everyone around me had slowed to a crawl. The man didn’t say a word, just handed a blue jewel incrusted dagger to me and walked out, grinning the whole time.
My body was on autopilot, I just took the dagger and started as the man in red walked out. As soon as he was out of sight everything returned to normal. Belle said she didn’t see anything when I asked, even said she only saw three other people in the bar. We left after that, I didn’t want to hang around anymore.
The dagger and that name stopped me cold, I was going to be just about useless for the rest of the night. The dagger was just something I lifted from an Egyptian museum on vacation once. Nothing really special but I wanted a souvenir and it looked interesting enough. Eventually that dagger would be a gift to my daughter. That’s where the other name that had me so distracted comes in, my daughter's name, Bianca.
I never thought I’d be the family type, especially considering that I really was content to just wander on my own. When I met Caroline all that changed though. It was a few years after I’d left the BSA, I was walking down a street in Chicago when a car pulled over. The driver Caroline, asked for directions and when I saw an opportunity for a ride I took it. I offered to give her directions to wherever it was she was going as long as I could hitch a ride. I’m not sure what made her agree. By all accounts letting a stranger into your car in Chicago is a horrible idea but she went with it. I don’t remember where exactly it was she wanted directions to, we never did get there anyways.
The two of us fell for each other, both free spirits just kind of floating around the states with the breeze. She’d owned a law firm at one point but gave it up for much the same reasons as I’d left the BSA, it just wasn’t the company she remembered. Our little adventures across the country were the highlights of my life so far and probably will be forever. I don’t think I’ve got the time to write about them here but maybe I should someday.
The one moment that sticks with me more than the rest is when I told her what I was. At that point quite a few people I’d worked with in the past had figured it out. The whole BSA knew exactly what I was and no one really batted an eye at it. All that is a longwinded way of saying I wasn’t hiding what I was nearly as much anymore. Still Caroline had no idea, no suspicion but didn’t even react when I told her. It was another thing I admired about her, she could just accept something like that and never let it bother her.
Anyway it wasn’t too long before we’d settled down on a farm in Wyoming. Marsh was the best man at my wedding, even Frank and Stein made it out. That was actually the last time I saw Marsh before the cancer took him, really one of the last good memories I had of him. Caroline and I lived on that farm for the next 3 years before everything went to hell.
It was nothing to do with us but rather what we were trying to do. We had been trying for children, we wanted to start a real family here. The night we finally did was the night I lost control. I had dreams that night, dreams of my deal with the man in red. When Caroline rolled me over that night to… try again, I wasn’t really myself. I can’t describe it, it was like I was watching myself while I wasn’t myself but I still felt… everything. Once it was all over I saw the man in red again, his gaseous form flowing out of my body and materializing in the corner. He looked up to where some part of me had been observing from the ceiling and nodded with a smile before he disappeared and my vision went dark.
After that things were never quite the same. Caroline found out she was pregnant and I was more scared then I’d ever been. Both because of the circumstances of the baby’s conception and the general fear that comes with being a first time parent. When it came time to name the baby Caroline decided on Bianca. The day she was born we all thought we’d lost Caroline. She did lose a lot of blood but she’s always been a fighter, she pulled through just like I knew she would. But I couldn’t be around Bianca, I was constantly reminded of that horrible night and the man in red. I swore I could hear him laughing way off in the distance every time I stared into her blue eyes.
I was a coward, I always was but this is another one of those times that really sticks out to me. I left them, I left my wife and my daughter because of bad memories and what might happen. Instead of being there to help, seeing exactly what the deal I made meant for Bianca, I walked out. I’ve tried to bring myself to go back, to talk to Caroline and tell her why but I can’t. Even if I did find it in me to go back things would never be the same. There aren’t words to make anyone forgive a father who walks out on his family like I did. I’d never expect either of them to forgive me in the first place.
A year or two ago I actually saw her, Bianca. Kind of hard to miss with her eyes glowing like they were. She was all grown up, didn’t even recognize me but she looked like she’d had it rough. We sat and talked for a bit on the step of some dingy apartment building in Nevada for hours. We didn’t actually talk about a whole lot, just the weather, how her day was, and what was going on in her life. She was a little guarded but it was so nice to just sit and talk with her after all that time. It made me wonder what it would’ve been like if I had stayed to raise her. Thinking about that still makes me tear up. I gave her that jeweled dagger before I left, it was a kind of parting gift. I hoped she could sell it and live a better life, the thing had to be worth a small fortune after all.
She never did as far as I know though. Something like that being found and sold somewhere might make the news, especially since it was taken from a museum. Maybe she realized who I was after all and held onto it. Not sure if that would be better or worse than just remembering me as someone who walked out of her life before she even knew me though.
That’s why I was so defenseless as we left the bar. There was just so many things I still torture myself with that were thrown back at me out of the blue. I’m glad Belle just decided to leave. I guess she could tell something was bothering me. I’m sure she could tell when I started writing this, never was all that good at putting pen to paper and it was definitely out of character.
That dagger the man in red gave me was a fake, the thing just disintegrated in my hands as we drove. I guess that means he didn’t take it from my daughter but why did he give it me in the first place? It’s all too much to think about right now, yet another reason why I’m writing about everything here.
I’ve actually started to enjoy keeping this little thing. Maybe I don’t do it quite right and I just go on and on about the past but its nice. I finally have something to tell my stories to, even if it is just a bit of processed tree. Anyways I should probably finish this up before Belle gets too antsy (I know your still peeking at this, eyes on the road). I should ask if she wants to stick around once we get… wherever it is she’s decided we’re going now. She’ll need someplace to lie low away from Chimera and I have just the place in mind.
2024.05.31 14:46 CDown01 J.'s Journals: Blood Ties
Previous Entry
Sometimes I just don’t know how to leave well enough alone. I decided to head out to that town in New Mexico and found a whole lot more than I bargained for. Now I guess it’s time to write about it as Belle snickers at me behind my back as she drives (I can see you sneaking glances at this over my shoulder you know). I won’t admit it to her but running into her was the best part of this whole thing.
It all started with me just walking out of the apartment I was staying in and looking for a bus headed towards New Mexico. Eventually I got lucky and found one but it wasn’t my luck I was surprised by. What surprised me was the familiar face getting off the bus. Belle looked almost exactly the same as she had all those years ago. Sure the clothes were different, maybe she was a bit cleaner after living the high life in D.C. but it was her, I was sure of that. She came running over to greet me as soon as she noticed me starring. Apparently I hadn’t changed that much either.
The meeting was bittersweet, that was my fault though, I was always to quick to business. Turns out she was heading the same way as me but she’d just gotten into town to pick up a rental. She offered me a ride and I accepted, what better way to catch up than a drive out to New Mexico. Along the way she dropped a bomb on me, she didn’t work for Chimera anymore. She was looking into what happened in Cloudcrest, the town we were headed to. It was purely “professional curiosity” as she put it. I think she’s just as interested as I am in something that scared Chimera away.
It was strange seeing Belle again, not bad but… weird. I hadn’t seen her in so long I forgot she existed outside of her letters. It was like she was real only when I read the words on the page. Other than that I hadn’t thought about her much before I started writing in this thing. Just having her there in the car, even when it was just silent, brought me back to those years in Paris. Just her and I against the world. But it wasn’t Paris and so much had changed since those days. Still, it’s nice to have her back in the flesh.
Belle also told me why exactly she’d left Chimera, or more so why she was forced to leave. It actually started with an apology. I’d been trying to avoid the topic and any fights that might come from it but she brought it up and immediately said I was right. I was right about Chimera, of course I was but I didn’t realize exactly how right. They had been keeping tabs on the letters she sent to me. They never used my actual name, not even the J. I normally go by. Even still someone realized who those letters were really going to and started using them to plot my movements around the country. Baelen also followed Belle’s own records back and figured out what she actually was. Afterwards she was offered an ultimatum, lead them to me or be interrogated for any information she knew about me.
Obviously she didn’t like either of those options so she picked up and ran. Why she ran right to the site of Chimera’s most recent failure is up for debate. She’s never been one to take anything laying down especially not blackmail, I get the feeling this is no different. What I really wanted to know was why Baelen is so intent on finding me. He knew who I was, I’d made sure of that on multiple occasions. I’ve also actively spoke out against Chimera to just about any supernatural being who’d listen to me, as if they needed anymore bad press.
What I don’t understand is what he’d gain by finding me. He has access to all the data we ever recorded. Well, anything Frank and Stein didn’t manage to encrypt or delete before they left. If he’s after that why start with me then? Why not just start looking for Frank and Stein, they had to be on some government’s payroll still. Maybe the man’s finally losing it and using me as a scapegoat? I’ll have to keep an ear to the ground though, I don’t like people looking for me without a reason.
We got to Cloudcrest just as the sun was starting to set and the town was a disaster. There were these scorch marks on the pavement where something had left holes. All the buildings we drove past on main street were still standing but only just. Bricks were missing from them and widows were boarded up. One of the houses on the outskirts had most of the roof torn off but the car in the driveway suggested that someone was still using it. The whole looked like something you’d see on television after a tornado struck.
The strangest thing was how few people we saw. There were some buildings with open signs on but I didn’t see anyone in them. There was one or two people on the sidewalks and we were the only car on the road. It was unnerving to see a ghost town so soon after it became one. Belle just parked the car on main street, didn’t even bother locking it.
Despite the state of the town it was still hard to find the kind of evidence we were looking for. I just wanted to get some idea of what did this. I assumed we were looking for a what, not a who. I still do but Belle is convinced it might be both wrapped up into one. Some sort of incredibly powerful supernatural being that can blend in with people isn’t really a comforting thought. She’s got absolutely no evidence to back that up though.
Usually looking around as it was starting to get dark would be a bad idea. But for Belle and I that wasn’t a problem. As we poked around the town we started to see more and more of those holes surrounded by scorch marks on the ground. A lot of the damage was something we ended up chalking up to wind, really really strong wind. It was almost like the most severe thunderstorm I’d ever seen had happened right on-top of a tornado. It really did look like this was all just a case of freak bad weather until we found the feather.
As usual it was Belle who ended up finding something of any real importance. A feather, massive and steel blue that must’ve been at least six feet long. The feather was roughly the size of a person but no bird could be that big, right? It was also pretty hard, not hard like granite but… it’s hard to explain. If you hit it with something you’d feel it bounce back, like the feather was a solid immovable object. But touch the feather and it would feel…. like a normal feather. Maybe it was a little more rigid but it felt largely normal. It was only when you hit it with something that it reacted differently.
Whatever that feather came from had to be the reason Chimera was here. Speaking of Chimera I asked Belle about the official statement they’d given for what happened here. Apparently it was a “geological event” that cut the place off. Not sure that one was going to hold up but apparently thats what they claimed.
Belle and I looked around a little while longer but didn’t really find anything worth writing down here. There was a little mark seared into one of the trees though. It was a bird surrounded by something that might’ve been smoke. There were a few lightning bolts in the design as well. I have to admit, it was an odd find but it didn’t mean anything to me. Could be someone with some metal working skill and too much spare time just made a design and burned it into the nearest tree.
We decided to give up a little while after sunset. We thought it was best not to make ourselves look more suspicious than we already did. After that we went in search of a bar to relax for a bit before we called it a night.. Well as luck would have it thats where the people were. Hopefully they weren’t all that was left of the town.
When we walked in four pairs of eyes scanned over us and my heart dropped. I didn’t recognize the woman with the eagles tattoos in the corner or the purple suited jackass she was talking to. Not sure why I got that feeling about him but anyone in a full purple suit out here is probably bad company. The startled bartender didn’t strike me as anything special either but the last man in the room did. He was dressed in red as usual, this time a red suit and black bowtie that made him look like a valet. His usual red tinted sun glasses sat on his nose obscuring his eyes. And his slicked back black hair made him look a little more modern than usual.
The second I saw him that all to familiar icy feeling shot up my spine. I hadn’t seen that bastard for two years now and I was hoping I was done with him. After all our deal was done, I’d fulfilled my end. Belle paid the man no mind, I’m not even sure if she could see him. I figured I should try and ignore him as well. Belle got us drinks, long island ice teas, an apparent favorite of her’s and we took a table next to the tattooed woman.
I’ve had to snoop more than once during my time at the BSA so eavesdropping from a table over was second nature to me. The man in the purple suit and the tattooed woman were arguing about something, the terms of some reward by the sounds of it. She was trying to whisk him away somewhere, I didn’t catch the place’s name, only that is was up in New York. I was trying to listen in to exactly what she was offering the guy when a name I hadn’t heard in a while crossed his lips, “Bianca”. After that it was hard to focus, I hadn’t seen her in years but there wasn’t a day she wasn’t in my thoughts at least once.
I must’ve been staring after that distraction and when I snapped back to reality the tattooed woman was staring me right in the eyes. Her eyes were… imposing, that powerful stormy grey couldn’t be natural. I couldn’t help but to feel just a little threatened by her gaze. Something about it told me I did not want to mess with her so I turned back to my drink. Belle and I talked for a bit until the man in red tapped my shoulder with a single gloved finger. As I slowly turned to him he didn’t make a sound and I realized with surprise that nothing else was making any noise either. Everything and everyone around me had slowed to a crawl. The man didn’t say a word, just handed a blue jewel incrusted dagger to me and walked out, grinning the whole time.
My body was on autopilot, I just took the dagger and started as the man in red walked out. As soon as he was out of sight everything returned to normal. Belle said she didn’t see anything when I asked, even said she only saw three other people in the bar. We left after that, I didn’t want to hang around anymore.
The dagger and that name stopped me cold, I was going to be just about useless for the rest of the night. The dagger was just something I lifted from an Egyptian museum on vacation once. Nothing really special but I wanted a souvenir and it looked interesting enough. Eventually that dagger would be a gift to my daughter. That’s where the other name that had me so distracted comes in, my daughter's name, Bianca.
I never thought I’d be the family type, especially considering that I really was content to just wander on my own. When I met Caroline all that changed though. It was a few years after I’d left the BSA, I was walking down a street in Chicago when a car pulled over. The driver Caroline, asked for directions and when I saw an opportunity for a ride I took it. I offered to give her directions to wherever it was she was going as long as I could hitch a ride. I’m not sure what made her agree. By all accounts letting a stranger into your car in Chicago is a horrible idea but she went with it. I don’t remember where exactly it was she wanted directions to, we never did get there anyways.
The two of us fell for each other, both free spirits just kind of floating around the states with the breeze. She’d owned a law firm at one point but gave it up for much the same reasons as I’d left the BSA, it just wasn’t the company she remembered. Our little adventures across the country were the highlights of my life so far and probably will be forever. I don’t think I’ve got the time to write about them here but maybe I should someday.
The one moment that sticks with me more than the rest is when I told her what I was. At that point quite a few people I’d worked with in the past had figured it out. The whole BSA knew exactly what I was and no one really batted an eye at it. All that is a longwinded way of saying I wasn’t hiding what I was nearly as much anymore. Still Caroline had no idea, no suspicion but didn’t even react when I told her. It was another thing I admired about her, she could just accept something like that and never let it bother her.
Anyway it wasn’t too long before we’d settled down on a farm in Wyoming. Marsh was the best man at my wedding, even Frank and Stein made it out. That was actually the last time I saw Marsh before the cancer took him, really one of the last good memories I had of him. Caroline and I lived on that farm for the next 3 years before everything went to hell.
It was nothing to do with us but rather what we were trying to do. We had been trying for children, we wanted to start a real family here. The night we finally did was the night I lost control. I had dreams that night, dreams of my deal with the man in red. When Caroline rolled me over that night to… try again, I wasn’t really myself. I can’t describe it, it was like I was watching myself while I wasn’t myself but I still felt… everything. Once it was all over I saw the man in red again, his gaseous form flowing out of my body and materializing in the corner. He looked up to where some part of me had been observing from the ceiling and nodded with a smile before he disappeared and my vision went dark.
After that things were never quite the same. Caroline found out she was pregnant and I was more scared then I’d ever been. Both because of the circumstances of the baby’s conception and the general fear that comes with being a first time parent. When it came time to name the baby Caroline decided on Bianca. The day she was born we all thought we’d lost Caroline. She did lose a lot of blood but she’s always been a fighter, she pulled through just like I knew she would. But I couldn’t be around Bianca, I was constantly reminded of that horrible night and the man in red. I swore I could hear him laughing way off in the distance every time I stared into her blue eyes.
I was a coward, I always was but this is another one of those times that really sticks out to me. I left them, I left my wife and my daughter because of bad memories and what might happen. Instead of being there to help, seeing exactly what the deal I made meant for Bianca, I walked out. I’ve tried to bring myself to go back, to talk to Caroline and tell her why but I can’t. Even if I did find it in me to go back things would never be the same. There aren’t words to make anyone forgive a father who walks out on his family like I did. I’d never expect either of them to forgive me in the first place.
A year or two ago I actually saw her, Bianca. Kind of hard to miss with her eyes glowing like they were. She was all grown up, didn’t even recognize me but she looked like she’d had it rough. We sat and talked for a bit on the step of some dingy apartment building in Nevada for hours. We didn’t actually talk about a whole lot, just the weather, how her day was, and what was going on in her life. She was a little guarded but it was so nice to just sit and talk with her after all that time. It made me wonder what it would’ve been like if I had stayed to raise her. Thinking about that still makes me tear up. I gave her that jeweled dagger before I left, it was a kind of parting gift. I hoped she could sell it and live a better life, the thing had to be worth a small fortune after all.
She never did as far as I know though. Something like that being found and sold somewhere might make the news, especially since it was taken from a museum. Maybe she realized who I was after all and held onto it. Not sure if that would be better or worse than just remembering me as someone who walked out of her life before she even knew me though.
That’s why I was so defenseless as we left the bar. There was just so many things I still torture myself with that were thrown back at me out of the blue. I’m glad Belle just decided to leave. I guess she could tell something was bothering me. I’m sure she could tell when I started writing this, never was all that good at putting pen to paper and it was definitely out of character.
That dagger the man in red gave me was a fake, the thing just disintegrated in my hands as we drove. I guess that means he didn’t take it from my daughter but why did he give it me in the first place? It’s all too much to think about right now, yet another reason why I’m writing about everything here.
I’ve actually started to enjoy keeping this little thing. Maybe I don’t do it quite right and I just go on and on about the past but its nice. I finally have something to tell my stories to, even if it is just a bit of processed tree. Anyways I should probably finish this up before Belle gets too antsy (I know your still peeking at this, eyes on the road). I should ask if she wants to stick around once we get… wherever it is she’s decided we’re going now. She’ll need someplace to lie low away from Chimera and I have just the place in mind.
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Sometimes I just don’t know how to leave well enough alone. I decided to head out to that town in New Mexico and found a whole lot more than I bargained for. Now I guess it’s time to write about it as Belle snickers at me behind my back as she drives (I can see you sneaking glances at this over my shoulder you know). I won’t admit it to her but running into her was the best part of this whole thing.
It all started with me just walking out of the apartment I was staying in and looking for a bus headed towards New Mexico. Eventually I got lucky and found one but it wasn’t my luck I was surprised by. What surprised me was the familiar face getting off the bus. Belle looked almost exactly the same as she had all those years ago. Sure the clothes were different, maybe she was a bit cleaner after living the high life in D.C. but it was her, I was sure of that. She came running over to greet me as soon as she noticed me starring. Apparently I hadn’t changed that much either.
The meeting was bittersweet, that was my fault though, I was always to quick to business. Turns out she was heading the same way as me but she’d just gotten into town to pick up a rental. She offered me a ride and I accepted, what better way to catch up than a drive out to New Mexico. Along the way she dropped a bomb on me, she didn’t work for Chimera anymore. She was looking into what happened in Cloudcrest, the town we were headed to. It was purely “professional curiosity” as she put it. I think she’s just as interested as I am in something that scared Chimera away.
It was strange seeing Belle again, not bad but… weird. I hadn’t seen her in so long I forgot she existed outside of her letters. It was like she was real only when I read the words on the page. Other than that I hadn’t thought about her much before I started writing in this thing. Just having her there in the car, even when it was just silent, brought me back to those years in Paris. Just her and I against the world. But it wasn’t Paris and so much had changed since those days. Still, it’s nice to have her back in the flesh.
Belle also told me why exactly she’d left Chimera, or more so why she was forced to leave. It actually started with an apology. I’d been trying to avoid the topic and any fights that might come from it but she brought it up and immediately said I was right. I was right about Chimera, of course I was but I didn’t realize exactly how right. They had been keeping tabs on the letters she sent to me. They never used my actual name, not even the J. I normally go by. Even still someone realized who those letters were really going to and started using them to plot my movements around the country. Baelen also followed Belle’s own records back and figured out what she actually was. Afterwards she was offered an ultimatum, lead them to me or be interrogated for any information she knew about me.
Obviously she didn’t like either of those options so she picked up and ran. Why she ran right to the site of Chimera’s most recent failure is up for debate. She’s never been one to take anything laying down especially not blackmail, I get the feeling this is no different. What I really wanted to know was why Baelen is so intent on finding me. He knew who I was, I’d made sure of that on multiple occasions. I’ve also actively spoke out against Chimera to just about any supernatural being who’d listen to me, as if they needed anymore bad press.
What I don’t understand is what he’d gain by finding me. He has access to all the data we ever recorded. Well, anything Frank and Stein didn’t manage to encrypt or delete before they left. If he’s after that why start with me then? Why not just start looking for Frank and Stein, they had to be on some government’s payroll still. Maybe the man’s finally losing it and using me as a scapegoat? I’ll have to keep an ear to the ground though, I don’t like people looking for me without a reason.
We got to Cloudcrest just as the sun was starting to set and the town was a disaster. There were these scorch marks on the pavement where something had left holes. All the buildings we drove past on main street were still standing but only just. Bricks were missing from them and widows were boarded up. One of the houses on the outskirts had most of the roof torn off but the car in the driveway suggested that someone was still using it. The whole looked like something you’d see on television after a tornado struck.
The strangest thing was how few people we saw. There were some buildings with open signs on but I didn’t see anyone in them. There was one or two people on the sidewalks and we were the only car on the road. It was unnerving to see a ghost town so soon after it became one. Belle just parked the car on main street, didn’t even bother locking it.
Despite the state of the town it was still hard to find the kind of evidence we were looking for. I just wanted to get some idea of what did this. I assumed we were looking for a what, not a who. I still do but Belle is convinced it might be both wrapped up into one. Some sort of incredibly powerful supernatural being that can blend in with people isn’t really a comforting thought. She’s got absolutely no evidence to back that up though.
Usually looking around as it was starting to get dark would be a bad idea. But for Belle and I that wasn’t a problem. As we poked around the town we started to see more and more of those holes surrounded by scorch marks on the ground. A lot of the damage was something we ended up chalking up to wind, really really strong wind. It was almost like the most severe thunderstorm I’d ever seen had happened right on-top of a tornado. It really did look like this was all just a case of freak bad weather until we found the feather.
As usual it was Belle who ended up finding something of any real importance. A feather, massive and steel blue that must’ve been at least six feet long. The feather was roughly the size of a person but no bird could be that big, right? It was also pretty hard, not hard like granite but… it’s hard to explain. If you hit it with something you’d feel it bounce back, like the feather was a solid immovable object. But touch the feather and it would feel…. like a normal feather. Maybe it was a little more rigid but it felt largely normal. It was only when you hit it with something that it reacted differently.
Whatever that feather came from had to be the reason Chimera was here. Speaking of Chimera I asked Belle about the official statement they’d given for what happened here. Apparently it was a “geological event” that cut the place off. Not sure that one was going to hold up but apparently thats what they claimed.
Belle and I looked around a little while longer but didn’t really find anything worth writing down here. There was a little mark seared into one of the trees though. It was a bird surrounded by something that might’ve been smoke. There were a few lightning bolts in the design as well. I have to admit, it was an odd find but it didn’t mean anything to me. Could be someone with some metal working skill and too much spare time just made a design and burned it into the nearest tree.
We decided to give up a little while after sunset. We thought it was best not to make ourselves look more suspicious than we already did. After that we went in search of a bar to relax for a bit before we called it a night.. Well as luck would have it thats where the people were. Hopefully they weren’t all that was left of the town.
When we walked in four pairs of eyes scanned over us and my heart dropped. I didn’t recognize the woman with the eagles tattoos in the corner or the purple suited jackass she was talking to. Not sure why I got that feeling about him but anyone in a full purple suit out here is probably bad company. The startled bartender didn’t strike me as anything special either but the last man in the room did. He was dressed in red as usual, this time a red suit and black bowtie that made him look like a valet. His usual red tinted sun glasses sat on his nose obscuring his eyes. And his slicked back black hair made him look a little more modern than usual.
The second I saw him that all to familiar icy feeling shot up my spine. I hadn’t seen that bastard for two years now and I was hoping I was done with him. After all our deal was done, I’d fulfilled my end. Belle paid the man no mind, I’m not even sure if she could see him. I figured I should try and ignore him as well. Belle got us drinks, long island ice teas, an apparent favorite of her’s and we took a table next to the tattooed woman.
I’ve had to snoop more than once during my time at the BSA so eavesdropping from a table over was second nature to me. The man in the purple suit and the tattooed woman were arguing about something, the terms of some reward by the sounds of it. She was trying to whisk him away somewhere, I didn’t catch the place’s name, only that is was up in New York. I was trying to listen in to exactly what she was offering the guy when a name I hadn’t heard in a while crossed his lips, “Bianca”. After that it was hard to focus, I hadn’t seen her in years but there wasn’t a day she wasn’t in my thoughts at least once.
I must’ve been staring after that distraction and when I snapped back to reality the tattooed woman was staring me right in the eyes. Her eyes were… imposing, that powerful stormy grey couldn’t be natural. I couldn’t help but to feel just a little threatened by her gaze. Something about it told me I did not want to mess with her so I turned back to my drink. Belle and I talked for a bit until the man in red tapped my shoulder with a single gloved finger. As I slowly turned to him he didn’t make a sound and I realized with surprise that nothing else was making any noise either. Everything and everyone around me had slowed to a crawl. The man didn’t say a word, just handed a blue jewel incrusted dagger to me and walked out, grinning the whole time.
My body was on autopilot, I just took the dagger and started as the man in red walked out. As soon as he was out of sight everything returned to normal. Belle said she didn’t see anything when I asked, even said she only saw three other people in the bar. We left after that, I didn’t want to hang around anymore.
The dagger and that name stopped me cold, I was going to be just about useless for the rest of the night. The dagger was just something I lifted from an Egyptian museum on vacation once. Nothing really special but I wanted a souvenir and it looked interesting enough. Eventually that dagger would be a gift to my daughter. That’s where the other name that had me so distracted comes in, my daughter's name, Bianca.
I never thought I’d be the family type, especially considering that I really was content to just wander on my own. When I met Caroline all that changed though. It was a few years after I’d left the BSA, I was walking down a street in Chicago when a car pulled over. The driver Caroline, asked for directions and when I saw an opportunity for a ride I took it. I offered to give her directions to wherever it was she was going as long as I could hitch a ride. I’m not sure what made her agree. By all accounts letting a stranger into your car in Chicago is a horrible idea but she went with it. I don’t remember where exactly it was she wanted directions to, we never did get there anyways.
The two of us fell for each other, both free spirits just kind of floating around the states with the breeze. She’d owned a law firm at one point but gave it up for much the same reasons as I’d left the BSA, it just wasn’t the company she remembered. Our little adventures across the country were the highlights of my life so far and probably will be forever. I don’t think I’ve got the time to write about them here but maybe I should someday.
The one moment that sticks with me more than the rest is when I told her what I was. At that point quite a few people I’d worked with in the past had figured it out. The whole BSA knew exactly what I was and no one really batted an eye at it. All that is a longwinded way of saying I wasn’t hiding what I was nearly as much anymore. Still Caroline had no idea, no suspicion but didn’t even react when I told her. It was another thing I admired about her, she could just accept something like that and never let it bother her.
Anyway it wasn’t too long before we’d settled down on a farm in Wyoming. Marsh was the best man at my wedding, even Frank and Stein made it out. That was actually the last time I saw Marsh before the cancer took him, really one of the last good memories I had of him. Caroline and I lived on that farm for the next 3 years before everything went to hell.
It was nothing to do with us but rather what we were trying to do. We had been trying for children, we wanted to start a real family here. The night we finally did was the night I lost control. I had dreams that night, dreams of my deal with the man in red. When Caroline rolled me over that night to… try again, I wasn’t really myself. I can’t describe it, it was like I was watching myself while I wasn’t myself but I still felt… everything. Once it was all over I saw the man in red again, his gaseous form flowing out of my body and materializing in the corner. He looked up to where some part of me had been observing from the ceiling and nodded with a smile before he disappeared and my vision went dark.
After that things were never quite the same. Caroline found out she was pregnant and I was more scared then I’d ever been. Both because of the circumstances of the baby’s conception and the general fear that comes with being a first time parent. When it came time to name the baby Caroline decided on Bianca. The day she was born we all thought we’d lost Caroline. She did lose a lot of blood but she’s always been a fighter, she pulled through just like I knew she would. But I couldn’t be around Bianca, I was constantly reminded of that horrible night and the man in red. I swore I could hear him laughing way off in the distance every time I stared into her blue eyes.
I was a coward, I always was but this is another one of those times that really sticks out to me. I left them, I left my wife and my daughter because of bad memories and what might happen. Instead of being there to help, seeing exactly what the deal I made meant for Bianca, I walked out. I’ve tried to bring myself to go back, to talk to Caroline and tell her why but I can’t. Even if I did find it in me to go back things would never be the same. There aren’t words to make anyone forgive a father who walks out on his family like I did. I’d never expect either of them to forgive me in the first place.
A year or two ago I actually saw her, Bianca. Kind of hard to miss with her eyes glowing like they were. She was all grown up, didn’t even recognize me but she looked like she’d had it rough. We sat and talked for a bit on the step of some dingy apartment building in Nevada for hours. We didn’t actually talk about a whole lot, just the weather, how her day was, and what was going on in her life. She was a little guarded but it was so nice to just sit and talk with her after all that time. It made me wonder what it would’ve been like if I had stayed to raise her. Thinking about that still makes me tear up. I gave her that jeweled dagger before I left, it was a kind of parting gift. I hoped she could sell it and live a better life, the thing had to be worth a small fortune after all.
She never did as far as I know though. Something like that being found and sold somewhere might make the news, especially since it was taken from a museum. Maybe she realized who I was after all and held onto it. Not sure if that would be better or worse than just remembering me as someone who walked out of her life before she even knew me though.
That’s why I was so defenseless as we left the bar. There was just so many things I still torture myself with that were thrown back at me out of the blue. I’m glad Belle just decided to leave. I guess she could tell something was bothering me. I’m sure she could tell when I started writing this, never was all that good at putting pen to paper and it was definitely out of character.
That dagger the man in red gave me was a fake, the thing just disintegrated in my hands as we drove. I guess that means he didn’t take it from my daughter but why did he give it me in the first place? It’s all too much to think about right now, yet another reason why I’m writing about everything here.
I’ve actually started to enjoy keeping this little thing. Maybe I don’t do it quite right and I just go on and on about the past but its nice. I finally have something to tell my stories to, even if it is just a bit of processed tree. Anyways I should probably finish this up before Belle gets too antsy (I know your still peeking at this, eyes on the road). I should ask if she wants to stick around once we get… wherever it is she’s decided we’re going now. She’ll need someplace to lie low away from Chimera and I have just the place in mind.
2024.05.31 14:44 CDown01 J.'s Journals: Blood Ties
Previous Entry
Sometimes I just don’t know how to leave well enough alone. I decided to head out to that town in New Mexico and found a whole lot more than I bargained for. Now I guess it’s time to write about it as Belle snickers at me behind my back as she drives (I can see you sneaking glances at this over my shoulder you know). I won’t admit it to her but running into her was the best part of this whole thing.
It all started with me just walking out of the apartment I was staying in and looking for a bus headed towards New Mexico. Eventually I got lucky and found one but it wasn’t my luck I was surprised by. What surprised me was the familiar face getting off the bus. Belle looked almost exactly the same as she had all those years ago. Sure the clothes were different, maybe she was a bit cleaner after living the high life in D.C. but it was her, I was sure of that. She came running over to greet me as soon as she noticed me starring. Apparently I hadn’t changed that much either.
The meeting was bittersweet, that was my fault though, I was always to quick to business. Turns out she was heading the same way as me but she’d just gotten into town to pick up a rental. She offered me a ride and I accepted, what better way to catch up than a drive out to New Mexico. Along the way she dropped a bomb on me, she didn’t work for Chimera anymore. She was looking into what happened in Cloudcrest, the town we were headed to. It was purely “professional curiosity” as she put it. I think she’s just as interested as I am in something that scared Chimera away.
It was strange seeing Belle again, not bad but… weird. I hadn’t seen her in so long I forgot she existed outside of her letters. It was like she was real only when I read the words on the page. Other than that I hadn’t thought about her much before I started writing in this thing. Just having her there in the car, even when it was just silent, brought me back to those years in Paris. Just her and I against the world. But it wasn’t Paris and so much had changed since those days. Still, it’s nice to have her back in the flesh.
Belle also told me why exactly she’d left Chimera, or more so why she was forced to leave. It actually started with an apology. I’d been trying to avoid the topic and any fights that might come from it but she brought it up and immediately said I was right. I was right about Chimera, of course I was but I didn’t realize exactly how right. They had been keeping tabs on the letters she sent to me. They never used my actual name, not even the J. I normally go by. Even still someone realized who those letters were really going to and started using them to plot my movements around the country. Baelen also followed Belle’s own records back and figured out what she actually was. Afterwards she was offered an ultimatum, lead them to me or be interrogated for any information she knew about me.
Obviously she didn’t like either of those options so she picked up and ran. Why she ran right to the site of Chimera’s most recent failure is up for debate. She’s never been one to take anything laying down especially not blackmail, I get the feeling this is no different. What I really wanted to know was why Baelen is so intent on finding me. He knew who I was, I’d made sure of that on multiple occasions. I’ve also actively spoke out against Chimera to just about any supernatural being who’d listen to me, as if they needed anymore bad press.
What I don’t understand is what he’d gain by finding me. He has access to all the data we ever recorded. Well, anything Frank and Stein didn’t manage to encrypt or delete before they left. If he’s after that why start with me then? Why not just start looking for Frank and Stein, they had to be on some government’s payroll still. Maybe the man’s finally losing it and using me as a scapegoat? I’ll have to keep an ear to the ground though, I don’t like people looking for me without a reason.
We got to Cloudcrest just as the sun was starting to set and the town was a disaster. There were these scorch marks on the pavement where something had left holes. All the buildings we drove past on main street were still standing but only just. Bricks were missing from them and widows were boarded up. One of the houses on the outskirts had most of the roof torn off but the car in the driveway suggested that someone was still using it. The whole looked like something you’d see on television after a tornado struck.
The strangest thing was how few people we saw. There were some buildings with open signs on but I didn’t see anyone in them. There was one or two people on the sidewalks and we were the only car on the road. It was unnerving to see a ghost town so soon after it became one. Belle just parked the car on main street, didn’t even bother locking it.
Despite the state of the town it was still hard to find the kind of evidence we were looking for. I just wanted to get some idea of what did this. I assumed we were looking for a what, not a who. I still do but Belle is convinced it might be both wrapped up into one. Some sort of incredibly powerful supernatural being that can blend in with people isn’t really a comforting thought. She’s got absolutely no evidence to back that up though.
Usually looking around as it was starting to get dark would be a bad idea. But for Belle and I that wasn’t a problem. As we poked around the town we started to see more and more of those holes surrounded by scorch marks on the ground. A lot of the damage was something we ended up chalking up to wind, really really strong wind. It was almost like the most severe thunderstorm I’d ever seen had happened right on-top of a tornado. It really did look like this was all just a case of freak bad weather until we found the feather.
As usual it was Belle who ended up finding something of any real importance. A feather, massive and steel blue that must’ve been at least six feet long. The feather was roughly the size of a person but no bird could be that big, right? It was also pretty hard, not hard like granite but… it’s hard to explain. If you hit it with something you’d feel it bounce back, like the feather was a solid immovable object. But touch the feather and it would feel…. like a normal feather. Maybe it was a little more rigid but it felt largely normal. It was only when you hit it with something that it reacted differently.
Whatever that feather came from had to be the reason Chimera was here. Speaking of Chimera I asked Belle about the official statement they’d given for what happened here. Apparently it was a “geological event” that cut the place off. Not sure that one was going to hold up but apparently thats what they claimed.
Belle and I looked around a little while longer but didn’t really find anything worth writing down here. There was a little mark seared into one of the trees though. It was a bird surrounded by something that might’ve been smoke. There were a few lightning bolts in the design as well. I have to admit, it was an odd find but it didn’t mean anything to me. Could be someone with some metal working skill and too much spare time just made a design and burned it into the nearest tree.
We decided to give up a little while after sunset. We thought it was best not to make ourselves look more suspicious than we already did. After that we went in search of a bar to relax for a bit before we called it a night.. Well as luck would have it thats where the people were. Hopefully they weren’t all that was left of the town.
When we walked in four pairs of eyes scanned over us and my heart dropped. I didn’t recognize the woman with the eagles tattoos in the corner or the purple suited jackass she was talking to. Not sure why I got that feeling about him but anyone in a full purple suit out here is probably bad company. The startled bartender didn’t strike me as anything special either but the last man in the room did. He was dressed in red as usual, this time a red suit and black bowtie that made him look like a valet. His usual red tinted sun glasses sat on his nose obscuring his eyes. And his slicked back black hair made him look a little more modern than usual.
The second I saw him that all to familiar icy feeling shot up my spine. I hadn’t seen that bastard for two years now and I was hoping I was done with him. After all our deal was done, I’d fulfilled my end. Belle paid the man no mind, I’m not even sure if she could see him. I figured I should try and ignore him as well. Belle got us drinks, long island ice teas, an apparent favorite of her’s and we took a table next to the tattooed woman.
I’ve had to snoop more than once during my time at the BSA so eavesdropping from a table over was second nature to me. The man in the purple suit and the tattooed woman were arguing about something, the terms of some reward by the sounds of it. She was trying to whisk him away somewhere, I didn’t catch the place’s name, only that is was up in New York. I was trying to listen in to exactly what she was offering the guy when a name I hadn’t heard in a while crossed his lips, “Bianca”. After that it was hard to focus, I hadn’t seen her in years but there wasn’t a day she wasn’t in my thoughts at least once.
I must’ve been staring after that distraction and when I snapped back to reality the tattooed woman was staring me right in the eyes. Her eyes were… imposing, that powerful stormy grey couldn’t be natural. I couldn’t help but to feel just a little threatened by her gaze. Something about it told me I did not want to mess with her so I turned back to my drink. Belle and I talked for a bit until the man in red tapped my shoulder with a single gloved finger. As I slowly turned to him he didn’t make a sound and I realized with surprise that nothing else was making any noise either. Everything and everyone around me had slowed to a crawl. The man didn’t say a word, just handed a blue jewel incrusted dagger to me and walked out, grinning the whole time.
My body was on autopilot, I just took the dagger and started as the man in red walked out. As soon as he was out of sight everything returned to normal. Belle said she didn’t see anything when I asked, even said she only saw three other people in the bar. We left after that, I didn’t want to hang around anymore.
The dagger and that name stopped me cold, I was going to be just about useless for the rest of the night. The dagger was just something I lifted from an Egyptian museum on vacation once. Nothing really special but I wanted a souvenir and it looked interesting enough. Eventually that dagger would be a gift to my daughter. That’s where the other name that had me so distracted comes in, my daughter's name, Bianca.
I never thought I’d be the family type, especially considering that I really was content to just wander on my own. When I met Caroline all that changed though. It was a few years after I’d left the BSA, I was walking down a street in Chicago when a car pulled over. The driver Caroline, asked for directions and when I saw an opportunity for a ride I took it. I offered to give her directions to wherever it was she was going as long as I could hitch a ride. I’m not sure what made her agree. By all accounts letting a stranger into your car in Chicago is a horrible idea but she went with it. I don’t remember where exactly it was she wanted directions to, we never did get there anyways.
The two of us fell for each other, both free spirits just kind of floating around the states with the breeze. She’d owned a law firm at one point but gave it up for much the same reasons as I’d left the BSA, it just wasn’t the company she remembered. Our little adventures across the country were the highlights of my life so far and probably will be forever. I don’t think I’ve got the time to write about them here but maybe I should someday.
The one moment that sticks with me more than the rest is when I told her what I was. At that point quite a few people I’d worked with in the past had figured it out. The whole BSA knew exactly what I was and no one really batted an eye at it. All that is a longwinded way of saying I wasn’t hiding what I was nearly as much anymore. Still Caroline had no idea, no suspicion but didn’t even react when I told her. It was another thing I admired about her, she could just accept something like that and never let it bother her.
Anyway it wasn’t too long before we’d settled down on a farm in Wyoming. Marsh was the best man at my wedding, even Frank and Stein made it out. That was actually the last time I saw Marsh before the cancer took him, really one of the last good memories I had of him. Caroline and I lived on that farm for the next 3 years before everything went to hell.
It was nothing to do with us but rather what we were trying to do. We had been trying for children, we wanted to start a real family here. The night we finally did was the night I lost control. I had dreams that night, dreams of my deal with the man in red. When Caroline rolled me over that night to… try again, I wasn’t really myself. I can’t describe it, it was like I was watching myself while I wasn’t myself but I still felt… everything. Once it was all over I saw the man in red again, his gaseous form flowing out of my body and materializing in the corner. He looked up to where some part of me had been observing from the ceiling and nodded with a smile before he disappeared and my vision went dark.
After that things were never quite the same. Caroline found out she was pregnant and I was more scared then I’d ever been. Both because of the circumstances of the baby’s conception and the general fear that comes with being a first time parent. When it came time to name the baby Caroline decided on Bianca. The day she was born we all thought we’d lost Caroline. She did lose a lot of blood but she’s always been a fighter, she pulled through just like I knew she would. But I couldn’t be around Bianca, I was constantly reminded of that horrible night and the man in red. I swore I could hear him laughing way off in the distance every time I stared into her blue eyes.
I was a coward, I always was but this is another one of those times that really sticks out to me. I left them, I left my wife and my daughter because of bad memories and what might happen. Instead of being there to help, seeing exactly what the deal I made meant for Bianca, I walked out. I’ve tried to bring myself to go back, to talk to Caroline and tell her why but I can’t. Even if I did find it in me to go back things would never be the same. There aren’t words to make anyone forgive a father who walks out on his family like I did. I’d never expect either of them to forgive me in the first place.
A year or two ago I actually saw her, Bianca. Kind of hard to miss with her eyes glowing like they were. She was all grown up, didn’t even recognize me but she looked like she’d had it rough. We sat and talked for a bit on the step of some dingy apartment building in Nevada for hours. We didn’t actually talk about a whole lot, just the weather, how her day was, and what was going on in her life. She was a little guarded but it was so nice to just sit and talk with her after all that time. It made me wonder what it would’ve been like if I had stayed to raise her. Thinking about that still makes me tear up. I gave her that jeweled dagger before I left, it was a kind of parting gift. I hoped she could sell it and live a better life, the thing had to be worth a small fortune after all.
She never did as far as I know though. Something like that being found and sold somewhere might make the news, especially since it was taken from a museum. Maybe she realized who I was after all and held onto it. Not sure if that would be better or worse than just remembering me as someone who walked out of her life before she even knew me though.
That’s why I was so defenseless as we left the bar. There was just so many things I still torture myself with that were thrown back at me out of the blue. I’m glad Belle just decided to leave. I guess she could tell something was bothering me. I’m sure she could tell when I started writing this, never was all that good at putting pen to paper and it was definitely out of character.
That dagger the man in red gave me was a fake, the thing just disintegrated in my hands as we drove. I guess that means he didn’t take it from my daughter but why did he give it me in the first place? It’s all too much to think about right now, yet another reason why I’m writing about everything here.
I’ve actually started to enjoy keeping this little thing. Maybe I don’t do it quite right and I just go on and on about the past but its nice. I finally have something to tell my stories to, even if it is just a bit of processed tree. Anyways I should probably finish this up before Belle gets too antsy (I know your still peeking at this, eyes on the road). I should ask if she wants to stick around once we get… wherever it is she’s decided we’re going now. She’ll need someplace to lie low away from Chimera and I have just the place in mind.
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Sometimes I just don’t know how to leave well enough alone. I decided to head out to that town in New Mexico and found a whole lot more than I bargained for. Now I guess it’s time to write about it as Belle snickers at me behind my back as she drives (I can see you sneaking glances at this over my shoulder you know). I won’t admit it to her but running into her was the best part of this whole thing.
It all started with me just walking out of the apartment I was staying in and looking for a bus headed towards New Mexico. Eventually I got lucky and found one but it wasn’t my luck I was surprised by. What surprised me was the familiar face getting off the bus. Belle looked almost exactly the same as she had all those years ago. Sure the clothes were different, maybe she was a bit cleaner after living the high life in D.C. but it was her, I was sure of that. She came running over to greet me as soon as she noticed me starring. Apparently I hadn’t changed that much either.
The meeting was bittersweet, that was my fault though, I was always to quick to business. Turns out she was heading the same way as me but she’d just gotten into town to pick up a rental. She offered me a ride and I accepted, what better way to catch up than a drive out to New Mexico. Along the way she dropped a bomb on me, she didn’t work for Chimera anymore. She was looking into what happened in Cloudcrest, the town we were headed to. It was purely “professional curiosity” as she put it. I think she’s just as interested as I am in something that scared Chimera away.
It was strange seeing Belle again, not bad but… weird. I hadn’t seen her in so long I forgot she existed outside of her letters. It was like she was real only when I read the words on the page. Other than that I hadn’t thought about her much before I started writing in this thing. Just having her there in the car, even when it was just silent, brought me back to those years in Paris. Just her and I against the world. But it wasn’t Paris and so much had changed since those days. Still, it’s nice to have her back in the flesh.
Belle also told me why exactly she’d left Chimera, or more so why she was forced to leave. It actually started with an apology. I’d been trying to avoid the topic and any fights that might come from it but she brought it up and immediately said I was right. I was right about Chimera, of course I was but I didn’t realize exactly how right. They had been keeping tabs on the letters she sent to me. They never used my actual name, not even the J. I normally go by. Even still someone realized who those letters were really going to and started using them to plot my movements around the country. Baelen also followed Belle’s own records back and figured out what she actually was. Afterwards she was offered an ultimatum, lead them to me or be interrogated for any information she knew about me.
Obviously she didn’t like either of those options so she picked up and ran. Why she ran right to the site of Chimera’s most recent failure is up for debate. She’s never been one to take anything laying down especially not blackmail, I get the feeling this is no different. What I really wanted to know was why Baelen is so intent on finding me. He knew who I was, I’d made sure of that on multiple occasions. I’ve also actively spoke out against Chimera to just about any supernatural being who’d listen to me, as if they needed anymore bad press.
What I don’t understand is what he’d gain by finding me. He has access to all the data we ever recorded. Well, anything Frank and Stein didn’t manage to encrypt or delete before they left. If he’s after that why start with me then? Why not just start looking for Frank and Stein, they had to be on some government’s payroll still. Maybe the man’s finally losing it and using me as a scapegoat? I’ll have to keep an ear to the ground though, I don’t like people looking for me without a reason.
We got to Cloudcrest just as the sun was starting to set and the town was a disaster. There were these scorch marks on the pavement where something had left holes. All the buildings we drove past on main street were still standing but only just. Bricks were missing from them and widows were boarded up. One of the houses on the outskirts had most of the roof torn off but the car in the driveway suggested that someone was still using it. The whole looked like something you’d see on television after a tornado struck.
The strangest thing was how few people we saw. There were some buildings with open signs on but I didn’t see anyone in them. There was one or two people on the sidewalks and we were the only car on the road. It was unnerving to see a ghost town so soon after it became one. Belle just parked the car on main street, didn’t even bother locking it.
Despite the state of the town it was still hard to find the kind of evidence we were looking for. I just wanted to get some idea of what did this. I assumed we were looking for a what, not a who. I still do but Belle is convinced it might be both wrapped up into one. Some sort of incredibly powerful supernatural being that can blend in with people isn’t really a comforting thought. She’s got absolutely no evidence to back that up though.
Usually looking around as it was starting to get dark would be a bad idea. But for Belle and I that wasn’t a problem. As we poked around the town we started to see more and more of those holes surrounded by scorch marks on the ground. A lot of the damage was something we ended up chalking up to wind, really really strong wind. It was almost like the most severe thunderstorm I’d ever seen had happened right on-top of a tornado. It really did look like this was all just a case of freak bad weather until we found the feather.
As usual it was Belle who ended up finding something of any real importance. A feather, massive and steel blue that must’ve been at least six feet long. The feather was roughly the size of a person but no bird could be that big, right? It was also pretty hard, not hard like granite but… it’s hard to explain. If you hit it with something you’d feel it bounce back, like the feather was a solid immovable object. But touch the feather and it would feel…. like a normal feather. Maybe it was a little more rigid but it felt largely normal. It was only when you hit it with something that it reacted differently.
Whatever that feather came from had to be the reason Chimera was here. Speaking of Chimera I asked Belle about the official statement they’d given for what happened here. Apparently it was a “geological event” that cut the place off. Not sure that one was going to hold up but apparently thats what they claimed.
Belle and I looked around a little while longer but didn’t really find anything worth writing down here. There was a little mark seared into one of the trees though. It was a bird surrounded by something that might’ve been smoke. There were a few lightning bolts in the design as well. I have to admit, it was an odd find but it didn’t mean anything to me. Could be someone with some metal working skill and too much spare time just made a design and burned it into the nearest tree.
We decided to give up a little while after sunset. We thought it was best not to make ourselves look more suspicious than we already did. After that we went in search of a bar to relax for a bit before we called it a night.. Well as luck would have it thats where the people were. Hopefully they weren’t all that was left of the town.
When we walked in four pairs of eyes scanned over us and my heart dropped. I didn’t recognize the woman with the eagles tattoos in the corner or the purple suited jackass she was talking to. Not sure why I got that feeling about him but anyone in a full purple suit out here is probably bad company. The startled bartender didn’t strike me as anything special either but the last man in the room did. He was dressed in red as usual, this time a red suit and black bowtie that made him look like a valet. His usual red tinted sun glasses sat on his nose obscuring his eyes. And his slicked back black hair made him look a little more modern than usual.
The second I saw him that all to familiar icy feeling shot up my spine. I hadn’t seen that bastard for two years now and I was hoping I was done with him. After all our deal was done, I’d fulfilled my end. Belle paid the man no mind, I’m not even sure if she could see him. I figured I should try and ignore him as well. Belle got us drinks, long island ice teas, an apparent favorite of her’s and we took a table next to the tattooed woman.
I’ve had to snoop more than once during my time at the BSA so eavesdropping from a table over was second nature to me. The man in the purple suit and the tattooed woman were arguing about something, the terms of some reward by the sounds of it. She was trying to whisk him away somewhere, I didn’t catch the place’s name, only that is was up in New York. I was trying to listen in to exactly what she was offering the guy when a name I hadn’t heard in a while crossed his lips, “Bianca”. After that it was hard to focus, I hadn’t seen her in years but there wasn’t a day she wasn’t in my thoughts at least once.
I must’ve been staring after that distraction and when I snapped back to reality the tattooed woman was staring me right in the eyes. Her eyes were… imposing, that powerful stormy grey couldn’t be natural. I couldn’t help but to feel just a little threatened by her gaze. Something about it told me I did not want to mess with her so I turned back to my drink. Belle and I talked for a bit until the man in red tapped my shoulder with a single gloved finger. As I slowly turned to him he didn’t make a sound and I realized with surprise that nothing else was making any noise either. Everything and everyone around me had slowed to a crawl. The man didn’t say a word, just handed a blue jewel incrusted dagger to me and walked out, grinning the whole time.
My body was on autopilot, I just took the dagger and started as the man in red walked out. As soon as he was out of sight everything returned to normal. Belle said she didn’t see anything when I asked, even said she only saw three other people in the bar. We left after that, I didn’t want to hang around anymore.
The dagger and that name stopped me cold, I was going to be just about useless for the rest of the night. The dagger was just something I lifted from an Egyptian museum on vacation once. Nothing really special but I wanted a souvenir and it looked interesting enough. Eventually that dagger would be a gift to my daughter. That’s where the other name that had me so distracted comes in, my daughter's name, Bianca.
I never thought I’d be the family type, especially considering that I really was content to just wander on my own. When I met Caroline all that changed though. It was a few years after I’d left the BSA, I was walking down a street in Chicago when a car pulled over. The driver Caroline, asked for directions and when I saw an opportunity for a ride I took it. I offered to give her directions to wherever it was she was going as long as I could hitch a ride. I’m not sure what made her agree. By all accounts letting a stranger into your car in Chicago is a horrible idea but she went with it. I don’t remember where exactly it was she wanted directions to, we never did get there anyways.
The two of us fell for each other, both free spirits just kind of floating around the states with the breeze. She’d owned a law firm at one point but gave it up for much the same reasons as I’d left the BSA, it just wasn’t the company she remembered. Our little adventures across the country were the highlights of my life so far and probably will be forever. I don’t think I’ve got the time to write about them here but maybe I should someday.
The one moment that sticks with me more than the rest is when I told her what I was. At that point quite a few people I’d worked with in the past had figured it out. The whole BSA knew exactly what I was and no one really batted an eye at it. All that is a longwinded way of saying I wasn’t hiding what I was nearly as much anymore. Still Caroline had no idea, no suspicion but didn’t even react when I told her. It was another thing I admired about her, she could just accept something like that and never let it bother her.
Anyway it wasn’t too long before we’d settled down on a farm in Wyoming. Marsh was the best man at my wedding, even Frank and Stein made it out. That was actually the last time I saw Marsh before the cancer took him, really one of the last good memories I had of him. Caroline and I lived on that farm for the next 3 years before everything went to hell.
It was nothing to do with us but rather what we were trying to do. We had been trying for children, we wanted to start a real family here. The night we finally did was the night I lost control. I had dreams that night, dreams of my deal with the man in red. When Caroline rolled me over that night to… try again, I wasn’t really myself. I can’t describe it, it was like I was watching myself while I wasn’t myself but I still felt… everything. Once it was all over I saw the man in red again, his gaseous form flowing out of my body and materializing in the corner. He looked up to where some part of me had been observing from the ceiling and nodded with a smile before he disappeared and my vision went dark.
After that things were never quite the same. Caroline found out she was pregnant and I was more scared then I’d ever been. Both because of the circumstances of the baby’s conception and the general fear that comes with being a first time parent. When it came time to name the baby Caroline decided on Bianca. The day she was born we all thought we’d lost Caroline. She did lose a lot of blood but she’s always been a fighter, she pulled through just like I knew she would. But I couldn’t be around Bianca, I was constantly reminded of that horrible night and the man in red. I swore I could hear him laughing way off in the distance every time I stared into her blue eyes.
I was a coward, I always was but this is another one of those times that really sticks out to me. I left them, I left my wife and my daughter because of bad memories and what might happen. Instead of being there to help, seeing exactly what the deal I made meant for Bianca, I walked out. I’ve tried to bring myself to go back, to talk to Caroline and tell her why but I can’t. Even if I did find it in me to go back things would never be the same. There aren’t words to make anyone forgive a father who walks out on his family like I did. I’d never expect either of them to forgive me in the first place.
A year or two ago I actually saw her, Bianca. Kind of hard to miss with her eyes glowing like they were. She was all grown up, didn’t even recognize me but she looked like she’d had it rough. We sat and talked for a bit on the step of some dingy apartment building in Nevada for hours. We didn’t actually talk about a whole lot, just the weather, how her day was, and what was going on in her life. She was a little guarded but it was so nice to just sit and talk with her after all that time. It made me wonder what it would’ve been like if I had stayed to raise her. Thinking about that still makes me tear up. I gave her that jeweled dagger before I left, it was a kind of parting gift. I hoped she could sell it and live a better life, the thing had to be worth a small fortune after all.
She never did as far as I know though. Something like that being found and sold somewhere might make the news, especially since it was taken from a museum. Maybe she realized who I was after all and held onto it. Not sure if that would be better or worse than just remembering me as someone who walked out of her life before she even knew me though.
That’s why I was so defenseless as we left the bar. There was just so many things I still torture myself with that were thrown back at me out of the blue. I’m glad Belle just decided to leave. I guess she could tell something was bothering me. I’m sure she could tell when I started writing this, never was all that good at putting pen to paper and it was definitely out of character.
That dagger the man in red gave me was a fake, the thing just disintegrated in my hands as we drove. I guess that means he didn’t take it from my daughter but why did he give it me in the first place? It’s all too much to think about right now, yet another reason why I’m writing about everything here.
I’ve actually started to enjoy keeping this little thing. Maybe I don’t do it quite right and I just go on and on about the past but its nice. I finally have something to tell my stories to, even if it is just a bit of processed tree. Anyways I should probably finish this up before Belle gets too antsy (I know your still peeking at this, eyes on the road). I should ask if she wants to stick around once we get… wherever it is she’s decided we’re going now. She’ll need someplace to lie low away from Chimera and I have just the place in mind.
2024.05.31 14:14 EvidenceOfDespair [TV Spoilers] The meeting was between a very particular group
So, the meeting between the corporate heads in the TV show. A lot of people have used this to conclude "Vault-Tec started the war". In my opinion, that's entirely misreading the situation. Lucy and The Ghoul have both drawn inaccurate conclusions from their limited knowledge. The Ghoul was not exactly the most perceptive guy around, and reading the news from across the nation likely wasn't something he did. What do I mean by that? Fallout 4. The Boston Bugle.
See, in Fallout 4, you can discover several articles in the Boston Bugle building from their October 19, 2077 - October 23, 2077 issue. The Great War was on 10/23/77. So, significant date range. Why do I bring this up? Here's the full text of one article:
White House Remains Empty - Where is our President? By Mags Veccio Boston Bugle Staff Writer
For more than half a year, the West Wing of America's most famous residence has remained shrouded in near complete darkness. A skeleton crew of manual laborers remains on staff to maintain the property, but nobody has lived - or worked politically - there for several months. And even though the White House Press Corps was unofficially and unceremoniously disbanded around the same time, the media has remained steadfast in answering that most important of questions:
Where is our President?
At first, the assumption was that the entirety of the United States government had moved operations to Raven Rock, the military operations center located in the mountainous region of Pennsylvania just a few miles northeast of the Presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland. But further investigations have revealed that neither the President nor his Cabinet have been to the Raven Rock complex in over a year.
So if not Raven Rock, then where?
Thanks to an extensive and exhaustive investigation, the Boston Bugle has uncovered the answer, and our readers will likely consider it as strange as it is shocking:
The President has been leading our country from a Poseidon Energy oil rig just off the coast of San Francisco.
It's certainly an odd choice for a Presidential command center. Or is it? Not as much as it may seem, as our investigation discovered. Thanks to the testimony of a highly-placed anonymous source, the Boston Bugle has learned that the official designation of the oil rig is actually "Control Station Enclave" - giving credence to the long-running rumors of a secret, militarized "shadow government," known as the Enclave, that would take control of the United States in the event of a nuclear conflagration.
And so, the mystery of the missing President has finally been solved. But in doing so, has the Boston Bugle also uncovered evidence that the end of the world, in the form of total atomic war, is also at hand?
Sadly, the President's silence seems to speak volumes.
Oh. Well isn't that interesting? The press uncovers proof of The Enclave, who are already a known conspiracy theory in pre-war America, and within the week the bombs drop. But then there's the show itself. The first scene of the first episode of the show, in fact.
[newscaster] [over radio] …negotiations were scheduled to continue today as the White House had no comment about the President’s whereabouts.
Now, this snippet of a report could be taken in one of two ways. Either they asked a generic "where is he", or they asked a very specific "so is it true he's at Control Station Enclave?" However, either way, the very first spoken line of dialogue in the show brings up the exact same subject as the news article which exposes The Enclave to the world. Now, isn't that a bit pointed?
Then there's the cold fusion technology. Which was bought out by and controlled by Vault-Tec. Who was using it at the start of the show, doing research on it, and whose research on it led to pretty much the entire plot? Was it Vault-Tec? Nope. It was The Enclave. Who, according to Fallout 2, has override codes for the Vaults and was ultimately behind the Vault Experiments? The Enclave. So, The Enclave has consistently had access to all of Vault-Tec's stuff. Vault-Tec has always been under and a part of The Enclave.
The show brings up several times that the corporations are immensely richer than the government at this point. The show makes it quite clear who the real power is between the two.
Now, who else is there? Well, one of the major ones is West Tek's Leon Von Felden. You might remember West Tek as the people responsible for the Forced Evolutionary Virus and power armor. I think we all know how this one ties to The Enclave, right? Well here's the thing: Vault-Tec sure was involved in a lot of FEV experimentation too, weren't they? So now we have a nice little interplay between these three "separate" organizations.
Now, General Atomics isn't at the meeting, but we also know that GA and RobCo were heavily intertwined. Mr. Handy? A co-production. Liberty Prime? Also a co-production. Robobrains were a General Atomics creation, and we see one on a roomba in the show being used to house Bud. And then of course there's all the other vaults staffed with Robobrains in the show. Additionally, the Fallout 1 manual establishes that General Atomics was contracted for tech involved in the Vaults. From Page 1 to Page 2 of the manual:
Important Vault Statistics Vault Number ............................13 Starting construction date .........August 2063 Ending construction date ..........March 2069 Starting Budget .........................$400,000,000,000 Final Budget, with interest ........$645,000,000,000 Total number of occupants .......1,000 (at capacity) Total duration ...........................10 years (at capacity) Number of living quarters .........100 (hot bunking required if at maximum capacity) Door thickness ..........................4 yards, steel Earth coverage .........................3,200,000 tons of soil, at 200 feet Computer control system .........Think machine Primary power supply ...............Geo-thermal Secondary power supply ..........General Atomics Nuclear Power backup systems Power requirements .................3.98mkw/day Stores .......................................Complete construction equipment, hydro-agricultural farms, water purification from underground river, defensive weaponry to equip 10 men, communication, social and entertainment files (for total duration)
Now, REPCONN is represented at the meeting by Julia Masters. She is not a show original character. She actually comes from REPCONN Inter-office Correspondence #3262173 in Fallout: New Vegas. This is undated, but reveals that at one point, Poseidon tried to buy them out. Later on, Mr. House gave it a go. Mr. House, of course, has obvious reasons for wanting to own the rocket company. But doesn't it make it weird that the one dissident at the meeting, the one who isn't a part of The Enclave after the war, is trying to force a hostile takeover of another member of the meeting? Her name and position in the company come from this specific terminal, the only possible way to manage to have her in the show is to also know Mr. House was engaged in hostile action against them. Given the fact they're sitting in the same room like this, I'd go so far as to posit that this hostile takeover attempt was after the meeting, which further positions House as turning on this group.
There's more evidence for this however. House did buy out REPCONN. To quote the tour guide in New Vegas:
"REPCONN's illustrious history began way back in 2054, shortly after the famous Delta XI rocket was completed and launched. REPCONN's initial focus was on the development of fuel to be used in orbital propulsion in response to the energy crisis of 2052. Sad times, indeed. The company really took off when RobCo purchased REPCONN in late 2076 to develop unmanned rockets to explore the solar system."
Not only does this tell us that House successfully took over this company but it also gives us an idea of when the meeting takes place. No later than 2076. This makes a lot of sense, Cooper had time to go through 100% of divorce proceedings with Barb after the meeting, it couldn't have been that close to the Great War.
So, now we have a pretty good idea of the order of events here, right? Mr. House objects to the whole "blow up the world" plan and begins explicitly, openly fighting the other conspirators. He buys out REPCONN via a hostile takeover. He builds the Vegas defense system and is off by only one hour when it comes to when the bombs will fall. Thing is, Julia was also in on it. She helped make the RobCo deal go through. Why would Julia even be at this meeting if the meeting was after House took over REPCONN? They're just a subsidiary of him after that.
But it gets even more messy. Julia was a triple agent, believed to be working for Poseidon Energy. Once again, this all comes from the REPCONN terminal entries, which is the exclusive sole appearance of Julia Masters outside the show. House put REPCONN on weapons research. Julia proceeded to work to steal this research for an unknown party, said to have been believed to be Poseidon Energy. Which loops us right back around to The Enclave, whom of course were based out of Poseidon Energy's oil rig and thus very heavily intertwined. We have a strong connection between Julia Masters and The Enclave now, Robert House and The Enclave not working together, and Robert House intentionally taking over a company connected to a conspiracy involving the other two major Enclave-connected companies.
But then there's the figures in shadow watching the meeting. Who are they? Well obviously, there's no clear answer. But it seems odd to me that people don't focus on this more. There were more people present for this meeting, who aren't weighing in and the audience are explicitly kept in the dark about. Who would they be? I think the obvious answer here is the President and some staff of his.
So, Vault-Tec and West Tek are two parties whom are heavily intertwined with The Enclave, Mr. House explicitly dislikes the "start the Great War" plan, Mr. House is explicitly taking action against another party involved in this conspiracy, there's a secret shadowy group involved in the conspiracy, The Enclave is heavily implied to be trying to steal tech from Mr. House, and The Enclave was exposed within a week of the war starting. Vault-Tec was, during the building stages of the vaults, always working with RobCo, which fits his involvement up to the meeting, as Mr. Handy and Robobrains were both a joint venture between RobCo and General Atomics.
In short? Vault-Tec didn't start the war, that's just Cooper's misinformed interpretation of events and Lucy's daddy issues informing how we perceive all this. The Enclave started the war because they'd just been exposed to the public and it was now or never. Vault-Tec is just part of The Enclave.
The clincher, imo? Cold fusion. Cooper discovers that the cold fusion technology was bought out by Vault-Tec and buried. They didn't even use it in their own vaults, instead using General Atomics nuclear technology. But then, who perfected it? Who got it up and running? We see who at the start of the show as well. The Enclave. The Enclave, as Fallout 2 tells us, also has total control over the vaults. The Enclave has total control over the vaults, including getting all the data from them. They have access codes. So, who's the common factor in everything? The vaults, FEV, power armor, cold fusion, robbing Mr. House after he took over REPCONN, everything? The Enclave. The Enclave started the war, not Vault-Tec. Barb being in charge of Vault-Tec is a misdirect. "Vault-Tec" didn't nuke Shady Sands, but Hank isn't about to explain "no, actually I'm part of The Enclave and The Enclave nuked Shady Sands", he's more than happy to leave everyone in the dark about that aspect and keep the blame on Vault-Tec. Why reveal your hand? No need to go screaming out to both the NCR and The Brotherhood that their arch-nemesis is involved in all this more than they already know.
And that just guides us to one other question: who leads The Enclave now? Two presidents down, did they get a new one? From where? Who's qualified to lead The Enclave now? Barb. Barb leads The Enclave now.
submitted by EvidenceOfDespair to Fallout [link] [comments]
See, in Fallout 4, you can discover several articles in the Boston Bugle building from their October 19, 2077 - October 23, 2077 issue. The Great War was on 10/23/77. So, significant date range. Why do I bring this up? Here's the full text of one article:
White House Remains Empty - Where is our President? By Mags Veccio Boston Bugle Staff Writer
For more than half a year, the West Wing of America's most famous residence has remained shrouded in near complete darkness. A skeleton crew of manual laborers remains on staff to maintain the property, but nobody has lived - or worked politically - there for several months. And even though the White House Press Corps was unofficially and unceremoniously disbanded around the same time, the media has remained steadfast in answering that most important of questions:
Where is our President?
At first, the assumption was that the entirety of the United States government had moved operations to Raven Rock, the military operations center located in the mountainous region of Pennsylvania just a few miles northeast of the Presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland. But further investigations have revealed that neither the President nor his Cabinet have been to the Raven Rock complex in over a year.
So if not Raven Rock, then where?
Thanks to an extensive and exhaustive investigation, the Boston Bugle has uncovered the answer, and our readers will likely consider it as strange as it is shocking:
The President has been leading our country from a Poseidon Energy oil rig just off the coast of San Francisco.
It's certainly an odd choice for a Presidential command center. Or is it? Not as much as it may seem, as our investigation discovered. Thanks to the testimony of a highly-placed anonymous source, the Boston Bugle has learned that the official designation of the oil rig is actually "Control Station Enclave" - giving credence to the long-running rumors of a secret, militarized "shadow government," known as the Enclave, that would take control of the United States in the event of a nuclear conflagration.
And so, the mystery of the missing President has finally been solved. But in doing so, has the Boston Bugle also uncovered evidence that the end of the world, in the form of total atomic war, is also at hand?
Sadly, the President's silence seems to speak volumes.
Oh. Well isn't that interesting? The press uncovers proof of The Enclave, who are already a known conspiracy theory in pre-war America, and within the week the bombs drop. But then there's the show itself. The first scene of the first episode of the show, in fact.
[newscaster] [over radio] …negotiations were scheduled to continue today as the White House had no comment about the President’s whereabouts.
Now, this snippet of a report could be taken in one of two ways. Either they asked a generic "where is he", or they asked a very specific "so is it true he's at Control Station Enclave?" However, either way, the very first spoken line of dialogue in the show brings up the exact same subject as the news article which exposes The Enclave to the world. Now, isn't that a bit pointed?
Then there's the cold fusion technology. Which was bought out by and controlled by Vault-Tec. Who was using it at the start of the show, doing research on it, and whose research on it led to pretty much the entire plot? Was it Vault-Tec? Nope. It was The Enclave. Who, according to Fallout 2, has override codes for the Vaults and was ultimately behind the Vault Experiments? The Enclave. So, The Enclave has consistently had access to all of Vault-Tec's stuff. Vault-Tec has always been under and a part of The Enclave.
The show brings up several times that the corporations are immensely richer than the government at this point. The show makes it quite clear who the real power is between the two.
Now, who else is there? Well, one of the major ones is West Tek's Leon Von Felden. You might remember West Tek as the people responsible for the Forced Evolutionary Virus and power armor. I think we all know how this one ties to The Enclave, right? Well here's the thing: Vault-Tec sure was involved in a lot of FEV experimentation too, weren't they? So now we have a nice little interplay between these three "separate" organizations.
Now, General Atomics isn't at the meeting, but we also know that GA and RobCo were heavily intertwined. Mr. Handy? A co-production. Liberty Prime? Also a co-production. Robobrains were a General Atomics creation, and we see one on a roomba in the show being used to house Bud. And then of course there's all the other vaults staffed with Robobrains in the show. Additionally, the Fallout 1 manual establishes that General Atomics was contracted for tech involved in the Vaults. From Page 1 to Page 2 of the manual:
Important Vault Statistics Vault Number ............................13 Starting construction date .........August 2063 Ending construction date ..........March 2069 Starting Budget .........................$400,000,000,000 Final Budget, with interest ........$645,000,000,000 Total number of occupants .......1,000 (at capacity) Total duration ...........................10 years (at capacity) Number of living quarters .........100 (hot bunking required if at maximum capacity) Door thickness ..........................4 yards, steel Earth coverage .........................3,200,000 tons of soil, at 200 feet Computer control system .........Think machine Primary power supply ...............Geo-thermal Secondary power supply ..........General Atomics Nuclear Power backup systems Power requirements .................3.98mkw/day Stores .......................................Complete construction equipment, hydro-agricultural farms, water purification from underground river, defensive weaponry to equip 10 men, communication, social and entertainment files (for total duration)
Now, REPCONN is represented at the meeting by Julia Masters. She is not a show original character. She actually comes from REPCONN Inter-office Correspondence #3262173 in Fallout: New Vegas. This is undated, but reveals that at one point, Poseidon tried to buy them out. Later on, Mr. House gave it a go. Mr. House, of course, has obvious reasons for wanting to own the rocket company. But doesn't it make it weird that the one dissident at the meeting, the one who isn't a part of The Enclave after the war, is trying to force a hostile takeover of another member of the meeting? Her name and position in the company come from this specific terminal, the only possible way to manage to have her in the show is to also know Mr. House was engaged in hostile action against them. Given the fact they're sitting in the same room like this, I'd go so far as to posit that this hostile takeover attempt was after the meeting, which further positions House as turning on this group.
There's more evidence for this however. House did buy out REPCONN. To quote the tour guide in New Vegas:
"REPCONN's illustrious history began way back in 2054, shortly after the famous Delta XI rocket was completed and launched. REPCONN's initial focus was on the development of fuel to be used in orbital propulsion in response to the energy crisis of 2052. Sad times, indeed. The company really took off when RobCo purchased REPCONN in late 2076 to develop unmanned rockets to explore the solar system."
Not only does this tell us that House successfully took over this company but it also gives us an idea of when the meeting takes place. No later than 2076. This makes a lot of sense, Cooper had time to go through 100% of divorce proceedings with Barb after the meeting, it couldn't have been that close to the Great War.
So, now we have a pretty good idea of the order of events here, right? Mr. House objects to the whole "blow up the world" plan and begins explicitly, openly fighting the other conspirators. He buys out REPCONN via a hostile takeover. He builds the Vegas defense system and is off by only one hour when it comes to when the bombs will fall. Thing is, Julia was also in on it. She helped make the RobCo deal go through. Why would Julia even be at this meeting if the meeting was after House took over REPCONN? They're just a subsidiary of him after that.
But it gets even more messy. Julia was a triple agent, believed to be working for Poseidon Energy. Once again, this all comes from the REPCONN terminal entries, which is the exclusive sole appearance of Julia Masters outside the show. House put REPCONN on weapons research. Julia proceeded to work to steal this research for an unknown party, said to have been believed to be Poseidon Energy. Which loops us right back around to The Enclave, whom of course were based out of Poseidon Energy's oil rig and thus very heavily intertwined. We have a strong connection between Julia Masters and The Enclave now, Robert House and The Enclave not working together, and Robert House intentionally taking over a company connected to a conspiracy involving the other two major Enclave-connected companies.
But then there's the figures in shadow watching the meeting. Who are they? Well obviously, there's no clear answer. But it seems odd to me that people don't focus on this more. There were more people present for this meeting, who aren't weighing in and the audience are explicitly kept in the dark about. Who would they be? I think the obvious answer here is the President and some staff of his.
So, Vault-Tec and West Tek are two parties whom are heavily intertwined with The Enclave, Mr. House explicitly dislikes the "start the Great War" plan, Mr. House is explicitly taking action against another party involved in this conspiracy, there's a secret shadowy group involved in the conspiracy, The Enclave is heavily implied to be trying to steal tech from Mr. House, and The Enclave was exposed within a week of the war starting. Vault-Tec was, during the building stages of the vaults, always working with RobCo, which fits his involvement up to the meeting, as Mr. Handy and Robobrains were both a joint venture between RobCo and General Atomics.
In short? Vault-Tec didn't start the war, that's just Cooper's misinformed interpretation of events and Lucy's daddy issues informing how we perceive all this. The Enclave started the war because they'd just been exposed to the public and it was now or never. Vault-Tec is just part of The Enclave.
The clincher, imo? Cold fusion. Cooper discovers that the cold fusion technology was bought out by Vault-Tec and buried. They didn't even use it in their own vaults, instead using General Atomics nuclear technology. But then, who perfected it? Who got it up and running? We see who at the start of the show as well. The Enclave. The Enclave, as Fallout 2 tells us, also has total control over the vaults. The Enclave has total control over the vaults, including getting all the data from them. They have access codes. So, who's the common factor in everything? The vaults, FEV, power armor, cold fusion, robbing Mr. House after he took over REPCONN, everything? The Enclave. The Enclave started the war, not Vault-Tec. Barb being in charge of Vault-Tec is a misdirect. "Vault-Tec" didn't nuke Shady Sands, but Hank isn't about to explain "no, actually I'm part of The Enclave and The Enclave nuked Shady Sands", he's more than happy to leave everyone in the dark about that aspect and keep the blame on Vault-Tec. Why reveal your hand? No need to go screaming out to both the NCR and The Brotherhood that their arch-nemesis is involved in all this more than they already know.
And that just guides us to one other question: who leads The Enclave now? Two presidents down, did they get a new one? From where? Who's qualified to lead The Enclave now? Barb. Barb leads The Enclave now.
2024.05.31 12:25 technosunene Embracing Solar Energy in Bhilai: A Path Towards Sustainable Development
 | Bhilai, a prominent industrial city in the state of Chhattisgarh, India, has long been known for its steel production, with the Bhilai Steel Plant being a significant contributor to the city's economy. However, in recent years, Bhilai has been making strides towards embracing renewable energy, particularly solar power. This shift is part of a broader effort to promote sustainability, reduce carbon emissions, and ensure energy security. submitted by technosunene to u/technosunene [link] [comments] The Rise of Solar Energy The global push towards renewable energy has seen solar power emerge as a leading source of clean energy. India, blessed with abundant sunlight for most of the year, is ideally positioned to harness this resource. The government's ambitious targets, such as achieving 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030, underscore the commitment to this cause. Bhilai, with its vast industrial landscape and growing urban population, presents a unique opportunity to integrate solar power into its energy mix. https://preview.redd.it/m2sgnxvxnq3d1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=7eb3cc75385c137b1faae66476f16eb415d9c4c3 Solar Initiatives in Bhilai
Despite the numerous benefits, the adoption of solar energy in Bhilai faces certain challenges. The initial cost of installation, though decreasing, remains a barrier for some. Additionally, the efficient integration of solar power into the existing grid requires technological advancements and infrastructure upgrades. To address these challenges, continuous efforts are needed from both the government and private sectors. Subsidies and financial incentives should be extended to make solar power more accessible. Public awareness campaigns can educate citizens about the long-term benefits of solar energy, encouraging wider adoption. Conclusion Bhilai stands at the cusp of a renewable energy revolution. By harnessing solar power, the city can lead the way in sustainable development, setting an example for other industrial cities in India. The transition to solar energy promises not only environmental and economic benefits but also a brighter and more sustainable future for Bhilai and its residents. As the city continues to innovate and invest in solar technology, it is well on its way to becoming a beacon of green energy in India. |
2024.05.31 11:51 SoftAd5844 Which warframe should I get?
I have been going through all the warframes, their abilities and their playstyles and i have narrowed down to 3 warframes, Xaku, Garuda and Voruna. I have 260 hours into the game and who i loved playing the most are wisp, saryn, protea and ember. the farm for xaku and voruna isn't that bad but for garuda ill just get the prime version since its easier. I am wondering which warframe will help me reach steel path and help me long term being multipurpose and efficient or the best at what it does? I also like fashion and so if one is better than the other, but the other warframe looks much better then i am all for it :).
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submitted by SoftAd5844 to Warframe [link] [comments]
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2024.05.31 10:11 Sweet-Count2557 Maldives Island Airport Name
 | Maldives Island Airport Name As we step foot onto the tropical paradise of the Maldives, we are greeted by the bustling Velana International Airport. Its name, like a beacon, symbolizes the gateway to this idyllic island nation.However, in recent years, there have been discussions about potentially changing the airport's name. This has sparked an intriguing debate, inviting us to explore the importance of airport names, the historical background of this particular airport, and the potential implications of such a change.So, let us embark on a journey of discovery, as we delve into the captivating world of the Maldives Island Airport Name.Potential Name ChangeThe potential for a name change at Velana International Airport has sparked discussions and generated curiosity among locals and travelers alike. Formerly known as Malé International Airport and Ibrahim Nasir International Airport, the airport underwent a name change on January 1, 2017, to become Velana International Airport. This renaming was part of a strategic plan aligned with the economic vision of the Yameen administration.Velana International Airport, located in the Maldives, is the main gateway to this picturesque island nation. It serves as the capital's primary airport and is responsible for handling both international and domestic flights. The airport is operated by the Maldives Airports Company Limited, which took over after previous attempts at privatization fell through.One notable development at Velana International Airport is the completion of a new runway in 2018. This expansion project aims to accommodate larger aircraft and increase the airport's capacity. Additionally, there are plans underway for the construction of a new passenger terminal, expected to be completed by 2025. This modern terminal will enhance the airport's facilities and improve the overall travel experience for passengers.With its strategic location and ongoing expansion efforts, Velana International Airport is set to continue playing a vital role in connecting the Maldives to the rest of the world. As discussions surrounding a potential name change unfold, it will be interesting to see how the airport's identity evolves while maintaining its status as a key transportation hub for this idyllic island nation.Importance of Airport NamesAfter exploring the potential for a name change at Velana International Airport, it's important to understand the significance and role that airport names play in the world of aviation and travel. Airport names aren't just arbitrary labels; they serve a crucial purpose in facilitating efficient travel and creating a sense of identity and connection for the region they represent.Here are five reasons why airport names hold such importance:Navigation and Identification: Airport names are essential for clear communication and easy location identification, ensuring smooth navigation for travelers and aviation personnel.Cultural and Historical Reflection: The names of airports often reflect the local culture, history, or geography, creating a sense of identity and pride for the region they serve.Promoting Tourism and Travel: Well-known airport names can serve as landmarks and contribute to the promotion of tourism, enhancing the visibility and recognition of a region.Sense of Community and Heritage: Airport names can be a source of pride and historical significance for the local community, as they often reflect the region's heritage, notable figures, or significant events.Efficient Travel Planning: Clear and distinctive airport names help in avoiding confusion and facilitate efficient travel planning and logistics for airlines, passengers, and airport authorities.Historical Background of the AirportLet's take a look at the historical background of Velana International Airport, formerly known as Ibrahim Nasir International Airport.The airport first opened its doors in 1960 with a small steel sheet runway.Over the years, it underwent several name changes, including becoming Malé International Airport in 1981, Ibrahim Nasir International Airport in 2011, and eventually Velana International Airport in 2017.With a rich history of development and expansion, the airport has become the largest and busiest in the Maldives, catering to both international and domestic flights as well as seaplane operations.Airport OriginsDuring the early years of aviation in the Maldives, the establishment of airports played a crucial role in connecting the remote islands of this archipelago nation. Here are some interesting facts about the origins of the Maldives airports:Male International Airport, also known as Velana International Airport, is the main gateway to the Maldives. It's located in the capital city and serves as the main international airport.Gan International Airport has a unique history. It was initially a military airbase during World War II and now operates as a smaller airport with limited flight operations.Maafaru International Airport, located in the Noonu Atoll region, is a relatively new addition. Its construction started in 2017 and it now serves the region with a spacious runway.The Maldives is home to a total of 18 airports, including 5 international and 13 domestic airports. Each airport has its own unique airport code for identification.All airports in the Maldives offer various facilities such as eateries, Wi-Fi, lounges, and shuttle services to ensure a convenient travel experience for passengers.Development Over TimeThe historical background of Velana International Airport, formerly known as Hulhulé Airport, traces back to its humble beginnings with a small steel sheet runway in 1960. Over the years, the airport underwent several name changes, from Malé International Airport to Ibrahim Nasir International Airport, before finally being renamed Velana International Airport in 2017.The development of the airport has been significant, with the construction of a new runway in 2018, enabling it to accommodate larger aircraft. Currently, a new passenger terminal is under construction and expected to be completed by 2025.Velana International Airport is the largest airport in the Maldives and is managed by Island Aviation Services. It serves as a gateway for both domestic and international flights, connecting various destinations such as Raa Atoll and Noonu. Airlines like Trans Maldivian Airways and Sri Lankan Airlines operate from this airport, ensuring convenient travel for passengers.Additionally, the Hanimaadhoo International Airport serves as the domestic airport in the Maldives.Privatization of the AirportPrivatization of the airport in the Maldives signaled a significant shift in operational control and management, resulting in increased efficiency, improved service quality, and enhanced infrastructure development. This move aimed to transform the Maldives island airport, located on Hulhule island, into a world-class facility that could efficiently handle the growing number of international flights and cater to the needs of domestic airports.The privatization process involved key players such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC), GMR Group, and Malaysia Airports. However, this process faced challenges and controversies, leading to the termination of the concession agreement and the return of operational control to the Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL).Despite these setbacks, the expansion and development of Velana International Airport have been significant outcomes of the privatization and subsequent management by MACL. As the main gateway to the Maldives, the airport has witnessed a remarkable increase in passenger traffic, now serving millions of passengers per year.Additionally, the privatization of the airport has paved the way for the development of other airports in the Maldives. For instance, the Maafaru International Airport, owned by Coastline Hotels, has emerged as a vital hub for luxury travel, catering to high-end tourists seeking a seamless and exclusive experience.Airport Facilities and ServicesWhen it comes to airport facilities and services in the Maldives, passengers can expect a range of amenities to enhance their travel experience.From comfortable lounges to enjoy a moment of relaxation, to eateries offering delicious meals, there's something for everyone.Additionally, efficient baggage handling and transportation options such as shuttle services ensure seamless navigation within the airport premises.Terminal AmenitiesPassengers traveling through the Maldives Island Airport can enjoy a wide range of terminal amenities, providing them with a comfortable and convenient travel experience.Here are some of the amenities available at the airport:Eateries offering local and international cuisine, providing a range of dining options for passengers.Wi-Fi facilities, allowing passengers to stay connected and access the internet during their travel.Lounges equipped with comfortable seating, workspaces, and other facilities for a more comfortable and private environment.Shuttle services that provide convenient transportation between terminals, parking areas, and nearby hotels, enhancing the overall travel experience.Duty-free shops, currency exchange services, and ATMs, offering convenience for travelers to fulfill their shopping and financial needs.These amenities cater to both international and domestic flights, ensuring that passengers have a pleasant time at the Maldives Island Airport.Baggage HandlingUpon arrival at the Maldives Island Airport, travelers can expect efficient and secure baggage handling services that ensure the smooth movement of their belongings throughout their journey. The airport takes pride in its state-of-the-art baggage handling system, designed to provide a seamless experience for passengers. The system includes check-in counters where travelers can drop off their luggage, which is then transported to the aircraft via conveyor belts and baggage carts. At the destination, the bags are carefully unloaded and made available for retrieval at the baggage claim area. In case of any mishandled or damaged luggage, the airport has dedicated facilities and procedures to address the issue promptly. The Maldives Island Airport prioritizes the safe and reliable transport of baggage, allowing travelers to focus on enjoying their time in the beautiful resort islands of the Maldives.Baggage Handling ServicesCheck-in countersConveyor beltsBaggage cartsBaggage claim areaLost and found facilitiesMishandled luggage proceduresThe Maldives Island Airport - your gateway to the stunning islands of the Indian Ocean.Transportation OptionsTravelers arriving at the Maldives Island Airport can enjoy a variety of transportation options and convenient airport facilities and services.The airport serves as a hub for domestic flights, offering easy access to other destinations within the Maldives. Passengers can choose to travel by ferry, speedboat, or seaplanes for a seamless island hopping experience. The airport also provides shuttle services to nearby Island Resorts, ensuring a hassle-free journey for tourists.Inside the single terminal, travelers can find a range of amenities such as eateries, Wi-Fi, and lounges, allowing them to relax and refresh before their next adventure.Flyme and Maldivian are two major airlines operating at the airport, providing reliable and efficient services to passengers.With its excellent transportation options and well-equipped facilities, the Maldives Island Airport ensures a pleasant travel experience for all.Impact on Tourism IndustryThe impact of Maldives' well-connected airports on the tourism industry is undeniable. With a network of airports strategically located throughout the archipelago, the Maldives has ensured convenient access for tourists, both domestic and international, to its stunning coral islands. Let's take a closer look at how the airports have shaped the tourism industry in the Maldives.Domestic FlightsInternational FlightsAirportGan International AirportVelana International AirportLocationAddu City, MaldivesHulhulé Island, MaldivesFacilitiesNew runway, new terminalModern infrastructure, duty-free shops, loungesServicesScheduled flights, daily flightsExtensive network, numerous airlinesGan International Airport, located in Addu City, serves as a vital domestic airport, connecting the southernmost part of the Maldives to other islands. With its new runway and terminal, it ensures smooth operations and increased capacity for domestic flights, facilitating travel for tourists exploring the region.Velana International Airport, situated in Hulhulé Island, is the main gateway to the Maldives. This bustling airport handles both domestic and international flights, playing a crucial role in attracting tourists from around the world. Equipped with modern infrastructure, duty-free shops, and lounges, it offers a comfortable experience for travelers.The extensive network and numerous airlines operating at Velana International Airport provide tourists with a wide range of options for reaching the Maldives. With scheduled flights and daily connections, it is easier than ever for visitors to embark on their tropical getaway.Top International Airports in the MaldivesWith its extensive network of airports strategically located throughout the archipelago, the Maldives has established itself as a premier destination for travelers. Now, let's explore the top international airports in the Maldives that play a crucial role in welcoming visitors from around the world.Velana International Airport (Male International Airport): Located on the island of Hulhule, Male International Airport is the main gateway to the Maldives. It serves as the primary hub for both domestic and international flights, connecting the country to various destinations worldwide.Gan International Airport: Situated in the southernmost atoll of Addu, Gan International Airport offers convenient access to the beautiful islands in the southern region of the Maldives. It's a popular choice for travelers seeking a direct flight to this part of the country.Hanimaadhoo International Airport: Located in the Haa Dhaalu Atoll, Hanimaadhoo International Airport serves as a vital transportation hub for visitors to the northern islands of the Maldives. It provides easy access to popular tourist destinations in the region.Villa International Airport: Situated on the island of Maamigili in the Alif Dhaal Atoll, Villa International Airport is a domestic airport that also caters to international flights. It offers a convenient alternative for travelers seeking direct access to nearby resorts.Dharavandhoo Airport: This airport, operated by the Government through the Maldives Transport and Contracting Company, is located on the island of Dharavandhoo in the Baa Atoll. It provides a gateway to the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in Baa Atoll and is a popular choice for tourists visiting this pristine area.These top international airports in the Maldives ensure seamless connectivity and facilitate the influx of travelers to this breathtaking island nation.Domestic Airports in the MaldivesNestled among the picturesque islands of the Maldives, a network of 13 domestic airports provides essential connectivity to the remote corners of this tropical paradise. These airports play a crucial role in connecting various regions within the Maldives and ensuring that travelers can easily explore all that this stunning archipelago has to offer.One of the significant domestic airports is the Kooddoo Airport, located in the Gaafu Alifu Atoll. This airport, operated by Villa Air, serves as a hub for domestic sectors and offers regular flights to and from the capital city, Male. It provides convenient access to the luxurious resorts located in the southern part of the Maldives.The Addu International Airport, also known as Gan International Airport, situated in the Addu Atoll, is another important domestic airport. This airport has a fascinating history, as it was originally a military airbase during World War II. Today, it serves as a gateway to the southernmost atolls and offers flights to the capital city and other domestic destinations.Additionally, the Dhaalu Atoll is served by the Maamigili Island-based Villa International Airport. This airport caters to the needs of tourists visiting the Baa Atoll and offers excellent connectivity to other domestic and international flights.In the Thaa Atoll, the Thimarafushi Airport plays a vital role in connecting the region with the rest of the Maldives. Opened for public use in 2013, this airport has enhanced accessibility and convenience for both locals and tourists.These domestic airports are essential for ensuring seamless travel experiences and enabling visitors to explore the breathtaking beauty of the Maldives.Transfers and ConnectivityWhen it comes to transfers and connectivity in the Maldives, there are multiple options available to ensure seamless travel between the islands.The airports in the Maldives provide a range of transportation options, including ferries, speedboats, and seaplanes, allowing travelers to easily navigate between different destinations.These island connectivity options not only enhance accessibility but also provide a unique and scenic way to explore the beautiful Maldivian archipelago.Airport Transportation OptionsVelana International Airport, the main gateway into the Maldives, offers a range of transportation options that ensure seamless connectivity to various islands. Whether you're heading to a luxurious resort or a remote guesthouse, the airport has you covered. Here are the airport transportation options available:Domestic Flights: Velana International Airport includes a well-equipped runway and passenger terminal for domestic flights. This allows travelers to easily hop on a plane and reach their desired island destination within the Maldives.Ferry: For those looking for a more budget-friendly option, the airport offers ferries that provide a scenic and leisurely way to reach different islands.Speedboat: If you're in a hurry or prefer a more private mode of transportation, speedboats are available for hire. They offer a quick and convenient way to reach your island destination.Seaplanes: For a truly unique experience, seaplanes are available for transportation to resorts located on remote islands. Enjoy stunning aerial views as you glide over the turquoise waters of the Maldives.Taxis: Once you arrive at Velana International Airport, taxis are readily available for transportation to nearby areas. This is a convenient option for those looking to explore the capital city of Male or nearby attractions.Island Connectivity OptionsAfter exploring the various airport transportation options at Velana International Airport, let's now delve into the island connectivity choices available in the Maldives.With a total of 18 airports in the country, including 5 international and 13 domestic airports, the islands of the Maldives are well connected.For those seeking a luxurious experience, the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island Resort and Spa offers a VIP lounge at Velana International Airport, providing a seamless transition from the airport to the resort.Domestic airlines like Flyme and Maldivian operate flights to various islands, ensuring convenient transfers.Additionally, ferries and speedboats are popular options for island transfers, while seaplanes are a unique and thrilling way to reach remote atolls.Gan Island, with its single runway, serves as a hub for inter-island connectivity, making it easier to explore the stunning beauty of the Maldives.Statistics and Growth of the AirportThe statistics and growth of the airport reveal the significant role air travel plays in connecting the Maldives' coral islands, with a total of 18 airports, including 5 international and 13 domestic airports.Here are some key points about the statistics and growth of the airport:The main airport in the Maldives is Velana International Airport, also known as Male International Airport. It serves as the largest and busiest airport in the country, acting as the main gateway for travelers.SriLankan Airlines is the largest foreign carrier into the Maldives, operating over 21 flights a week. This highlights the strong international connectivity that the Maldives' airports provide.In terms of domestic flights, there are 13 airports spread over roughly 200 islands. The Transport and Contracting Company operates flights between these domestic airports, ensuring convenient travel options for locals and tourists.The growth of the airport is evident in its infrastructure development. The completion of a new runway capable of accommodating larger aircraft is a testament to the continuous efforts to enhance the airport's capacity and meet the growing demands of air travel.Velana International Airport is also equipped with modern facilities, such as eateries, Wi-Fi, lounges, and shuttle services, ensuring a seamless travel experience for passengers.Future Plans and UpgradesIn our discussion of future plans and upgrades, let's explore the exciting developments that lie ahead for the Maldives' island airports. The Maldives, known for its stunning beaches and crystal-clear waters, is a popular tourist destination attracting visitors from all over the world. To accommodate the increasing number of travelers, the Airports of Maldives have ambitious plans to enhance their facilities and services.Velana International Airport, the largest and busiest airport in the Maldives, is set to undergo significant upgrades. A new passenger terminal is in the works, expected to be completed by 2025. This expansion project includes the construction of a cargo terminal and a fuel farm, ensuring that the airport is well-equipped to handle the growing demand for flights to the Maldives. The aim is to increase the airport's capacity to serve 7.3 million passengers annually.Gan International Airport, although smaller in size, is not left behind. It is currently undergoing upgrades to improve its facilities and transportation options, such as taxis and speedboats. These enhancements will provide visitors with convenient and efficient ways to travel to and from the airport.Additionally, the Maldives Airports Company Limited is working on the development and expansion of Hanimaadhoo International Airport. This initiative aims to further improve the airport's facilities and services, specifically catering to the Haa Dhaalu Atoll.To summarize the future plans and upgrades of the Maldives' island airports, let's take a look at the table below:AirportUpgrades and DevelopmentsVelana InternationalNew passenger terminal, cargo terminal, fuel farm, increased capacity to serve 7.3 million passengersGan InternationalFacility improvements, enhanced transportation optionsHanimaadhoo InternationalExpansion and development to better serve the Haa Dhaalu AtollWith these ambitious plans, the Airports of Maldives are determined to ensure that visitors have a seamless and enjoyable experience from the moment they arrive. The upgrades and expansions will not only benefit tourists but also contribute to the growth and development of the Maldivian economy.Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat Is Maldives Airport Called?We call the main airport in the Maldives Velana International Airport, also known as Male International Airport. It's a key airport in the country with top-notch facilities and connectivity.The Maldives has a total of 18 airports, including international and domestic ones. When you visit, you'll find convenient transportation options, comfortable hotels, and customs services.Don't forget to check out the lounges, airlines, and shopping opportunities available at the airport.What Airport Do You Fly Into Maldives?When flying to the Maldives, our go-to airport is Velana International Airport. It's the gateway to this tropical paradise, with 18 airports connecting the islands.From the airport, you can easily access top luxury resorts, indulge in popular activities like snorkeling and diving, and savor must-try local dishes.Whether you're on a budget or seeking a honeymoon destination, the Maldives offers a unique experience.What Are the 4 New Airports in the Maldives?There are four new airports in the Maldives that have recently been developed. These airports have had a significant impact on tourism in the country, as they provide increased airport infrastructure and improved airport connectivity.The development of these airports has also brought about economic benefits, such as job opportunities and improved transportation options for both domestic and international travelers.However, there are also concerns about the environmental impact of these new airports and their potential effects on the delicate ecosystem of the Maldives.How Far Is the Maldives Airport From the Island?Getting from the Maldives airport to the island is an adventure in itself. With various transportation options like ferries, speedboats, and seaplanes, the journey is both exciting and convenient. The distance between the airport and the nearest island can vary, but with quick transfers, you'll be enjoying your island paradise in no time.The average travel time and cost of airport transfers in the Maldives depend on your chosen mode of transportation. Whether you prefer a thrilling speedboat ride or a scenic seaplane journey, there's a perfect way to reach your dream island from the airport.Plus, there are popular resorts near the Maldives airport, offering luxury and comfort just a stone's throw away.ConclusionAs the sun sets on the turquoise waters of the Maldives, Velana International Airport stands as a gateway to paradise. With its potential name change and historical significance, this airport embodies the spirit of a nation eager to embrace the future.Privatization, top-notch facilities, and seamless connectivity ensure that every traveler's journey is a smooth one.As we soar towards the future, the sky is the limit for the growth and upgrades that await this island airport. submitted by Sweet-Count2557 to worldkidstravel [link] [comments] |
2024.05.31 06:21 a_modest_espeon [H] Lots of Games, Please Look [W] Games(See Below)/Offers, Wishlisted Items, and Paypal
I am currently taking paypal for games, you always go first and cover fees
For game trades, you always go first and message me, usually it takes me about 1-2 days to get back to you at the latest
My Rep Page has not been updated in about 5 years, but I have a lot of trades finished
Bolded items are just the ones I would like to consider keeping so don't feel as though you need to offer more for the game
Wants
Oneshot
Subnautica
Stellaris (and dlc)
Fallout 4
Wishlist Items
Have
A Plague Tale: Innocence
ADOM (ANCIENT DOMAINS OF MYSTERY)
Bridge Constructor Portal
Chivalry 2 - Epic Edition
Deep Rock Galactic
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut
Doom Eternal
Elite Dangerous
Endless Space 2 - Digital Deluxe Edition
Ghostrunner
Honey I Joined a Cult
Lost Ruins
Mass Effect Legendary Edition (temporarily unavailable)
MONSTER TRAIN (FIRST CLASS - COLLECTORS EDITION)
OUTWARD + THE SOROBOREANS AND OUTWARD SOUNDTRACK
PATHFINDER: WRATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS
Rebel Inc: Escalation
REMNANT: FROM THE ASHES - COMPLETE EDITION
SCP:Secret Files
SHOTGUN KING: THE FINAL CHECKMATE
Songs of Conquest
Spyro™ Reignited Trilogy
Surviving Mars
THE OUTER WORLDS: SPACER'S CHOICE EDITION
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales
VALKYRIA CHRONICLES 4 COMPLETE EDITION
Yakuza 4 Remastered
20XX
7 Grand Steps
A Juggler's Tale
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Aaero
Aces and Adventures
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Age of Wonders III
Ageless
Agents of Mayhem
AI War: Fleet Command
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All You Can Eat
Aragami 2
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Assassin's Creed® Origins
Assault Android Cactus
Atom RPG Trudograd
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AUTONAUTS VS PIRATEBOTS
Backbone
Bad End Theater
Banner Saga Trilogy - Deluxe Pack
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Batman Arkham Origins (x2)
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Before Your Eyes
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Beholder
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Coromon
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Distance
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EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Blood Storm + DLC
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Puzzle Agent
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Surgeon Simulator + Anniversary Ed. Content
Surviving the Aftermath
Swag and Sorcery
Sword Legacy Omen
SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising
System Shock 2
System Shock: Enhanced Edition
Tainted Grail: Conquest
Tales from the Borderlands
Tales of Berseria™
Tales of the Neon Sea
Tangledeep + Soundtrack
Tank Mechanic Simulator
Team Indie
Teleglitch: Die More Edition
Telltale Texas Hold'em
TemTem
The Adventure Pals
The Ambassador: Fractured Timelines
The Ascent
The Ball
The Battle of Polytopia
The Blackout Club
THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: LITTLE HOPE
THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: MAN OF MEDAN
The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos + Goodies + OST
The Dwarves
The First Tree (x3)
The Forgotten City
The Gardens Between
The Henry Stickmin Collection
THE INVISIBLE HAND
The Journey Down: Chapter Three
The Legend of Tianding
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
The Quarry Deluxe Edition
The Red Lantern
The Serpent Rogue
The Stillness of the Wind
The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead - 400 Days
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier
The Walking Dead: Final Season
The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
The Walking Dead: Season Two
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series
The Wild Eight
The Witness (x2)
theHunter: Call of the Wild
Them and Us
There is No Light:Enhanced Edition
Think of the Children
Thirty Flights of Loving
This is the Police
This War of Mine
This War of Mine: Final Cut
Throne of Lies® The Online Game of Deceit (x3)
Tilt Brush
TIMEframe
Tin Can
Titan Quest Anniversary
Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove (x2)
Tokyo 42
Tooth and Tail (x2)
Torment: Tides of Numenera
Total Tank Simulator (x2)
Tower of Guns (x2)
Train Simulator 2017 + Platform Clutter + Town Scenery
Train Station Renovation
Tribes of Midgard
Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince
Tropico 4
Turbo Gold Racing
Twin Mirror (x2)
Two Point Campus
Ultimate Chicken Horse (x3)
Undertale
Unmetal
Unpacking
Valfaris
Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
Vane
Vault of the Void
Verdun
Vertiginous Golf
Vikings - Wolves of Midgard
Visage
Void Bastards
Volgarr the Viking
Wandersong
Wargroove
Waking Mars
WARHAMMER 40,000: CHAOS GATE - DAEMONHUNTERS
Warhammer: Chaosbane
Werewolf: The Apocalypse Heart of the Forest
West of Dead
Westerado: Double Barreled
Where the Water Tastes like Wine
WHO PRESSED MUTE ON UNCLE MARCUS
Wildfire
WINDJAMMERS 2
Windward
Wingspan
Wizard of Legend (x3)
World of Goo
Worms Revolution
WORMS RUMBLE + LEGENDS PACK DLC
Wuppo (x2)
WWE 2K Battlegrounds
WWE 2K Battlegrounds + Brawler Pass
WWE 2K23
XCOM: CHIMERA SQUAD
XCOM: ULTIMATE COLLECTION
Yes, Your Grace
Yooka-Laylee
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK HEADRUSH
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK SPORTS
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK TELEVISION
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 1 XL
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 2
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 3
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 4: The Ride
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 6 The Lost Gold
Ziggurat
Zombie Night Terror
Others GameMaker Studio Pro
Ashampoo BackUp Pro 14
Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7
Ashampoo WinOptimizer 18
Battleborn Starter Skin Pack
Darkest Dungeon Shieldbreaker DLC
Double Fine Adventure Documentary
GWENT - Ultimate Starter Pack
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 1 DLC
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 2 DLC
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 3 DLC
Mage and Minions - $10 In-Game Currency
Music Maker EDM Edition
Music Maker: Hip Hop Edition
PAYDAY 2: Sydney Mega Mask
Starfinder: Pact Worlds Campaign Setting
XCOM® 2: Reinforcement Pack
XCOM® 2: Resistance Warrior Pack
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK MOVIES
submitted by a_modest_espeon to SteamGameSwap [link] [comments]
For game trades, you always go first and message me, usually it takes me about 1-2 days to get back to you at the latest
My Rep Page has not been updated in about 5 years, but I have a lot of trades finished
Bolded items are just the ones I would like to consider keeping so don't feel as though you need to offer more for the game
Wants
Oneshot
Subnautica
Stellaris (and dlc)
Fallout 4
Wishlist Items
Have
A Plague Tale: Innocence
ADOM (ANCIENT DOMAINS OF MYSTERY)
Bridge Constructor Portal
Chivalry 2 - Epic Edition
Deep Rock Galactic
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut
Doom Eternal
Elite Dangerous
Endless Space 2 - Digital Deluxe Edition
Ghostrunner
Honey I Joined a Cult
Lost Ruins
Mass Effect Legendary Edition (temporarily unavailable)
MONSTER TRAIN (FIRST CLASS - COLLECTORS EDITION)
OUTWARD + THE SOROBOREANS AND OUTWARD SOUNDTRACK
PATHFINDER: WRATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS
Rebel Inc: Escalation
REMNANT: FROM THE ASHES - COMPLETE EDITION
SCP:Secret Files
SHOTGUN KING: THE FINAL CHECKMATE
Songs of Conquest
Spyro™ Reignited Trilogy
Surviving Mars
THE OUTER WORLDS: SPACER'S CHOICE EDITION
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales
VALKYRIA CHRONICLES 4 COMPLETE EDITION
Yakuza 4 Remastered
20XX
7 Grand Steps
A Good Snowman is Hard to Buildobserver (x3)
A Juggler's Tale
A Mortician's Tale
A New Beginning - Final Cut
Aaero
Aces and Adventures
AER Memories of Old (x2)
Age of Wonders III
Ageless
Agents of Mayhem
AI War: Fleet Command
Alien Spidy
Aliens:Fireteam Elite
Alina of the Arena
All You Can Eat
Aragami 2
Arcade Paradise
Army Men RTS
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation (x2)
Assassin's Creed® Origins
Assault Android Cactus
Atom RPG Trudograd
Atomicrops
AUTONAUTS VS PIRATEBOTS
Backbone
Bad End Theater
Banner Saga Trilogy - Deluxe Pack
Banners of Ruin
Bastion (x2)
Batman Arkham Origins (x2)
Battle Chef Brigade
Beacon Pines
Beat Hazard Ultra
Bee Simulator
Before Your Eyes
BEHIND THE FRAME: THE FINEST SCENERY
Beholder
BENDY AND THE DARK REVIVAL
Beneath Oresa
Between the Stars
Beyond a Steel Sky
Binary Domain
Bioshock Remastered
BioShock: The Collection
Biped
Black Book
Blade Assault
Blasphemous
Blazing Beaks
Bleed 2
Bloodstained®︎: Ritual of the Night
Bone - Episode 1 & Episode 2
Boomerang Fu (x3)
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe
Boreal Blade
Boyfriend Dungeon
Broken Age (x2)
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Brutal Legend
BUILDER SIMULATOR
Burly Men At Sea (x2)
Bury Me, My Love
Celeste
Chasm
Chicken Police
Children of Silentown
CHUCHEL Cherry Edition (x2)
CivCity: Rome
Coffee Talk
COMMAND & CONQUER REMASTERED COLLECTION
Company of Heroes 2 + Company of Heroes 2 - Whale and Dolphin Conservation Charity Pattern Pack
Conan Chop Chop
CONTROL STANDARD EDITION (Steam or Epic Games)
COOK, SERVE, DELICIOUS! 3
Coromon
Crowntakers
Crusader Kings Complete
Cultist Simulator (x2)
Curious Expedition
CURSE OF THE DEAD GODS
Cyber Hook
DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: HOUSE OF ASHES
Darkside Detective
Darksiders Genesis
Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition (x2)
Darksiders Warmastered Edition
Dead In Bermuda
Deadly Days
Death Squared (x2)
Deathloop
Decieve Inc.
Deleveled
Desperados 3
Destroy All Humans!
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Disciples: Liberation
Distance
DISTRAINT 2 + Soundtrack
Distrust (x3)
Drawful 2
DUCATI - 90th Anniversary
Duke Nukem Forever
Duke Nukem Forever Hail to the Icons
Duke Nukem Forever The Doctor Who Cloned Me
Dungeons 3 (x2)
Dusty Revenge: Co-Op Edition
Dwarfs!?
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Blood Storm + DLC
EarthNight
Eastside Hockey Manager
Elderborn
Eldest Souls
Elex
Ellipsis
Embr
Emily is Away <3
ENCASED: A SCI-FI POST-APOCALYPTIC RPG
Endless Space® - Collection (x2)
Epic Chef
Eternal Threads
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Europa Universalis IV
Evan's Remains
Evergarden
EVERSPACE™
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
Fallout 1
Family Man
Farmer's Dynasty
Fibbage XL
Fights in Tight Spaces
Figment
Finding Paradise
First Class Trouble
Five Dates
Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel
Foretales
Fort Triumph
Founders' Fortune
Framed Collection
Framed Collection (x2)
Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse
Freddi Fish 3: The Case of the Stolen Conch Shell
Freddi Fish 4: The Case of the Hogfish Rustlers of Briny Gulch
Freddi Fish 5: The Case of the Creature of Coral Cove
Freddi Fish and Luther's Maze Madness
Freddi Fish and Luther's Water Worries
Freedom Force
Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich
Friends Vs Friends
FTL
Full Metal Furies
Full Throttle Remastered (x2)
Fury Unleashed
Gas Station Simulator
Genesis Noir
Get In The Car, Loser!
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
God's Trigger
Golf Gang
Gonner
GRAV (Early Access)
Greedfall
GRID 2
Grime
Grow: Song of the Evertree
Growing Up
Guns of Icarus Online
Hacknet (x2) + Hacknet Labyrinths DLC (x1)
Haiku, the Robot
Hammerting
Hard Reset Redux
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Heaven's Vault
Heavenly Bodies (x2)
Hell Let Loose
Hell Pie
Hello Neighbor Hide and Seek
Hellpoint
Hero Siege Complete + Cyberpunk Samurai + Demon Slayer Bundle + Extra slots & stash space + ClassShield Lancer + Shaman + Plague Doctor + Marauder + Amazon+Avenger Paladin DLCs
Heroes of Hammerwatch
Hexcells Complete Pack
Hidden & Dangerous 2: Courage Under Fire
Hidden & Dangerous: Action Pack
Hidden Folks
HITMAN™: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (x2)
HIVESWAP: Act 1
Hokko life
Hollow Knight
Hot Brass
Hot Wheels Unleashed
Hotshot Racing
Hyper Light Drifter
I am not a Monster: First Contact
I'm not a Monster
If Found...
Impostor Factory
In Between
In Sound Mind
Injustice Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition (x3)
INK Deluxe Edition
Iris and the Giant
Iron Harvest
Jack Move
JumpJet Rex
Jupiter Hell
Jurassic World Evolution - Deluxe Dinosaur Pack
Just Cause 3 XXL Edition
Kerbal Space Program
KeyWe
Kill it with Fire
KillSquad
Kingdom Classic
Kingdom Two Crowns
Kingdom: New Lands (x2)
Knights of Pen and Paper 2
Kraken Academy!!
Late Shift
Later Alligator
Lawn Mowing Simulator
Legend of Keepers
Legion TD2-MULTIPLAYER TOWER DEFENSE
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Premium Edition
LEGO DC Super-Villains Deluxe Edition
LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game
LEGO® Batman 2 DC Super Heroes™
LEGO® Worlds
Let's Explore the Farm (Junior Field Trips)
Let's Explore the Jungle (Junior Field Trips)
Levelhead
Leviathan Warships
Life is Strange 2: Complete Season
Life is Strange: True Colors
Lone Fungus
Lords and Villeins
Lostwinds
Lovecraft's Untold Stories
Lumino City
Luna's Wandering Stars
Machinarium
Mad Max
Mafia: Definitive Edition
Mafia: Definitive Edition
Magicka
Maid of Sker
Majesty 2
Majesty Gold HD
Marooners
Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom
Massive Chalice
Meeple Station
Merchany of the Skies
Metal Hellsinger
Metro Exodus
Midnight Protocol
Mind Scanners
Mini Metro
MINIT (x2)
MirrorMoon EP
Monster Loves You
Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp
Moonlighter
Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
Morkredd
MOTHERGUNSHIP
Moving Out
Mr. Shifty
Mr.Prepper
Mushroom 11
My Memory of Us
My Time at Portia
Narita Boy
Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Strikers
NBA 2K20
NEBUCHADNEZZAR
Necromunda: Hired Gun
Necronator: Dead Wrong (x2)
Neo Cab
Neon Abyss
Neon Drive (Steam)
Newt One
Niche (x3)
NICKELODEON ALL-STAR BRAWL
Nimbatus The Space Drone Constructor
Ninja Pizza Girl
No Time to Explain Remastered
No Time to Relax
Not For Broadcast
Not Tonight
Oaken
Offworld Trading Company + Jupiter's Forge Expansion Pack (x2)
Old Man's Journey
OlliOlli World - Rad edition
OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood
Omno
One Step From Eden
Operation Flashpoint: Red River
OPERATION: TANGO
Opus Magnum
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength (x2)
Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You (x3)
Othercide
Otxo
Out of the Park Baseball 18
Overcooked! 2 - Surf 'n' Turf Pack
Overcooked! 2 - Too Many Cooks
Overgrowth
Overlord II
OZYMANDIAS: BRONZE AGE EMPIRE SIM
PAC-MAN™ CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION 2
Pajama Sam 2: Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening
Pajama Sam 3: You Are What You Eat From Your Head To Your Feet
Pajama Sam's Lost & Found
Pajama Sam's Sock Works
Pajama Sam: Games to Play on Any Day
Pale Echoes
Panzer Corps 2
Paper Fire Rookie
Paperbark
Paradigm (x2)
Paradise Killer
Party Hard (x2)
Patch Quest
PayDay 2
Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
Pesterquest
Pesterquest
PGA TOUR 2K21
Pikuniku
Pinstripe (x2)
Plague Inc: Evolved
Planet of the Eyes
Planet Zoo
PlateUp! (x2)
Plunge
Police Stories
Police Stories
Portal Knights
Primal Carnage: Extinction
Prodeus
Project Highrise (x2)
Project Winter
Psychonauts
Putt-Putt® and Pep's Balloon-o-Rama
Putt-Putt® and Pep's Dog on a Stick
Putt-Putt® Enters the Race
Putt-Putt® Goes to the Moon
Putt-Putt® Joins the Circus
Putt-Putt® Joins the Parade
Putt-Putt® Travels Through Time
Putt-Putt®: Pep's Birthday Surprise
Puzzle Agent
Puzzle Agent 2
Q.U.B.E. 2
Q.U.B.E: Director's Cut
Quest of Dungeons
Quiplash
Railroad Corporation
Railroad Tycoon 3
Railroad Tycoon II Platinum
Rain World
Raji: An Ancient Epic
Rapture Rejects + Safari outfit
Realpolitiks
Rebel Cops
Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville
RED SOLSTICE 2: SURVIVORS
Regency Solitaire
Regions of Ruin
Regular Human Basketball (x3)
Relicta
Remnants of Isolation
Resident Evil 0 HD REMASTER
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
Resident Evil 6
Resident Evil HD REMASTER
Resident Evil Revelations (X2)
Resident Evil Revelations 2 Deluxe Edition
Retimed
Retro Game Crunch
Retrowave
Revita
Rime
Rise and Shine
Rising Dusk
Rituals
Road 96
Road to Ballhalla
Roadwarden
Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball
Rock of Ages 2: Bigger & Boulder™
Rocket Birds: Hardboiled Chicken
ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS
Rogue Heroes:Ruins of Tasos
Roguebook
Rollerdrome
ROUNDS (x2)
Rustler
Rusty Lake Paradise
RÖKI
S.W.I.N.E. HD REMASTER
Saints Row: The Third
Sam & Max: Season 1
Sam & Max: Season 2
Satellite Reign (x2)
Scorn
Scourgebringer
Screencheat
Scribblenauts Unlimited (x2)
Secrets of Raetikon
Shadow Complex Remastered (Epic Games)
SHADOW TACTICS: AIKO'S CHOICE
Shady Part of Me
Shelter 2 (x3)
Shenmue I & II
shutshimi
Sid Meier's Railroads!
Sigma Theory: Global Cold War (x2)
SimplePlanes
SIMULACRA
Size Matters
Slipstream
Sniper Elite
Sniper Elite 3 (x2)
Sniper Elite V2
Snowtopia: Ski Resort Builder
Song of Horror
SOULCALIBUR VI
Souldiers
Speed Brawl
Spellcaster University
Spelunky
Spirit of the Island
Spirits
SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS: BATTLE FOR BIKINI BOTTOM - REHYDRATED
Spy Fox 2 "Some Assembly Required"
Spy Fox 3 "Operation Ozone"
Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal"
Spy Fox In: Hold the Mustard
Squad (Early Access)
StarCrossed
State of Mind
Staxel
Stealth 2: A Game of Clones
Stick Fight: The Game (x4)
Streamline Early Access
Streets of Rage
Stronghold Crusader 2
Subsurface Circular (x3)
Suchart:Genius Artist Simulator
Sudden Strike 4
Super Daryl Deluxe
Super Galaxy Squadron EX
Super Hexagon (x2)
Super House of Dead Ninjas: True Ninja Pack
Super House of the Dead Ninjas (x2)
Super Lesbian Animal RPG
Super Magbot
Super Time Force Ultra
SUPERHOT (x3)
Surgeon Simulator + Anniversary Ed. Content
Surviving the Aftermath
Swag and Sorcery
Sword Legacy Omen
SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising
System Shock 2
System Shock: Enhanced Edition
Tainted Grail: Conquest
Tales from the Borderlands
Tales of Berseria™
Tales of the Neon Sea
Tangledeep + Soundtrack
Tank Mechanic Simulator
Team Indie
Teleglitch: Die More Edition
Telltale Texas Hold'em
TemTem
The Adventure Pals
The Ambassador: Fractured Timelines
The Ascent
The Ball
The Battle of Polytopia
The Blackout Club
THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: LITTLE HOPE
THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: MAN OF MEDAN
The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos + Goodies + OST
The Dwarves
The First Tree (x3)
The Forgotten City
The Gardens Between
The Henry Stickmin Collection
THE INVISIBLE HAND
The Journey Down: Chapter Three
The Legend of Tianding
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
The Quarry Deluxe Edition
The Red Lantern
The Serpent Rogue
The Stillness of the Wind
The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead - 400 Days
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier
The Walking Dead: Final Season
The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
The Walking Dead: Season Two
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series
The Wild Eight
The Witness (x2)
theHunter: Call of the Wild
Them and Us
There is No Light:Enhanced Edition
Think of the Children
Thirty Flights of Loving
This is the Police
This War of Mine
This War of Mine: Final Cut
Throne of Lies® The Online Game of Deceit (x3)
Tilt Brush
TIMEframe
Tin Can
Titan Quest Anniversary
Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove (x2)
Tokyo 42
Tooth and Tail (x2)
Torment: Tides of Numenera
Total Tank Simulator (x2)
Tower of Guns (x2)
Train Simulator 2017 + Platform Clutter + Town Scenery
Train Station Renovation
Tribes of Midgard
Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince
Tropico 4
Turbo Gold Racing
Twin Mirror (x2)
Two Point Campus
Ultimate Chicken Horse (x3)
Undertale
Unmetal
Unpacking
Valfaris
Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
Vane
Vault of the Void
Verdun
Vertiginous Golf
Vikings - Wolves of Midgard
Visage
Void Bastards
Volgarr the Viking
Wandersong
Wargroove
Waking Mars
WARHAMMER 40,000: CHAOS GATE - DAEMONHUNTERS
Warhammer: Chaosbane
Werewolf: The Apocalypse Heart of the Forest
West of Dead
Westerado: Double Barreled
Where the Water Tastes like Wine
WHO PRESSED MUTE ON UNCLE MARCUS
Wildfire
WINDJAMMERS 2
Windward
Wingspan
Wizard of Legend (x3)
World of Goo
Worms Revolution
WORMS RUMBLE + LEGENDS PACK DLC
Wuppo (x2)
WWE 2K Battlegrounds
WWE 2K Battlegrounds + Brawler Pass
WWE 2K23
XCOM: CHIMERA SQUAD
XCOM: ULTIMATE COLLECTION
Yes, Your Grace
Yooka-Laylee
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK HEADRUSH
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK SPORTS
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK TELEVISION
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 1 XL
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 2
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 3
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 4: The Ride
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK Vol. 6 The Lost Gold
Ziggurat
Zombie Night Terror
Others GameMaker Studio Pro
Ashampoo BackUp Pro 14
Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7
Ashampoo WinOptimizer 18
Battleborn Starter Skin Pack
Darkest Dungeon Shieldbreaker DLC
Double Fine Adventure Documentary
GWENT - Ultimate Starter Pack
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 1 DLC
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 2 DLC
Killing Floor - Community Weapon Pack 3 DLC
Mage and Minions - $10 In-Game Currency
Music Maker EDM Edition
Music Maker: Hip Hop Edition
PAYDAY 2: Sydney Mega Mask
Starfinder: Pact Worlds Campaign Setting
XCOM® 2: Reinforcement Pack
XCOM® 2: Resistance Warrior Pack
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK MOVIES