Ancient egyptian ruling system

Dear Adventurers,
Are you ready to embark on an epic quest into the heart of a world consumed by chaos and mystery?
In the aftermath of a catastrophic event known as the Cataclysm of the Shattered Weave, the once-prosperous world of Asharath lies in ruins, its landscapes transformed into endless deserts and its civilizations reduced to dust. But amidst the desolation, whispers of ancient secrets and untold treasures beckon, drawing adventurers from across the lands to brave the dangers of the desert and seek their fortune amidst the ruins of a world lost to time.
Venture forth into the unforgiving wilderness, uncover ancient ruins and lost civilizations, battle fearsome creatures born of corrupted magic, and unravel the mysteries of a world on the brink of oblivion. Will you carve your own path to glory, or become lost in the sands? The choice is yours.
This is a game designed for more experienced players but no experience is required just a willingness to play. The game is also mostly homebrew with various custom rules and altered game ideas. It will be run on discord and roll20. I'd you're interested or have questions feel free to send a DM my way.

Not sure if this opens a can of worms of ways to change how I do things or there's a simple PS script I can run?
I create an email address for each client I deal with in my m365 tenant, typically for client specific things I need to set up for them. [client1@contoso.com](mailto:client1@contoso.com), [client2@contoso.com](mailto:client2@contoso.com), etc.
Currently, I set these addresses as DLs, I am the only owner and only member.
I give myself send as rights for when a company needs an email coming from the specific address.
Incoming mail to any of those addresses goes into my inbox, as I like.
Things have been fine.
I recently realized that I don't get NDRs and any system messages (read receipts, delivery receipts, etc) for emails I send as a DL into my mailbox.
Message trace in m365 shows those incoming emails DO come in, but then status is failed with the message:
Reason: [{LED=250 2.1.5 RESOLVER.GRP.BlockedMessage; messages of this type are not delivered to groups};{MSG=};{FQDN=};{IP=};{LRT=}]
People have said to run the PS command:
Get-DistributionGroup “distrGroupName” -ReportToManagerEnabled $true -ReportToOriginatorEnabled $false
but that doesn’t seem to solve the problem.
Now some people are saying to set up each address as a shared mailbox. I want all the emails to go into my inbox. I’ll have to create a rule to send incoming mail for each shared mailbox to my inbox?
Would you know if shared mailbox solves the NDR reception issue?
Somehow, 100 distribution lists seems ‘better’ than 100 shared mailboxes that will never be looked at directly.
The DLs tie up less resources (I keep thinking how a shared mailbox can be up to 50 GB? I’d like it to be zero (incoming and sent from that address would be in my inbox / sent folder).
And some others said to set all the email addresses as aliases for my mailbox. That will work for incoming, but you can't send as an alias, right?
Thoughts?
Any other solution(s) to be able to receive loads of different addresses on my domain to my inbox, be able to send as loads of different addresses on my domain AND allow me to get NDR, read and delivery receipts?

TLDR: I'm a DM and I hate the crafting system and its messing with the way I want to run my game as it gets into higher levels. Am I misunderstanding it or is there a better way to do this?
Wall of text incoming, apologies in advance:
Okay so my game takes place on a home brew continent and in an effort to flesh things out, I've added settlement levels and realistic concerns over materials and economics to the world. The players haven't really bumped into this stuff yet since they're spending all their time in one major city and they're still low level but soon they plan to leave and getting resources will be harder. Of course the solution is simple, engage with the crafting mechanics. Except...I don't really 'get' them.
I'm going to use the example of a level 19 item that I know my players will want at some point, a major striking rune. A distant dream right now, but something that will definitely come up if the campaign reaches a conclusion.
Let's assume the player making this is doing so at equal level and must craft it themselves since I've haven't placed a smith or shop or loot nearby where they can get it from. Lets also assume they are legendary in crafting and have +5 intelligence. Basically we're starting with the most favorable scenario and so I'm also using the complex crafting rules.
They take the time to set up and decide to try for the rushed time which would take only 3 days, so 39+15 DC for the crafting check. Their bonus is +32 at this level...wait, what? They have legendary in crafting and are required to roll a nat 20 for a regular success. And it would still take 3 times as long as if they just knew the formula and did a regular set up time using original rules? Okay so maybe the complex crafting rules aren't a strict buff like I though and maybe you shouldn't rush a difficult crafting job but this still seems extreme to me. Also, I understand that using the alternate rules will help with speed later in the process but players are mostly gonna be using things at a similar level to their own right, so when would you ever rush a crafting job with these rules? It seems like a strict nerf from the regular rules for this part of the process...
Anyway after doing the math the player decides to take the long way and take the full 6 day set up time. The DC is just a regular 39 and we'll say the player rolls a critical success. Now they get to spend the remaining half of the materials or they can work through downtime. At 19 with legendary crafting and a critical success the amount of progress they get each day is 200 GP towards the total cost of the item. Nice! This should be quick, the total cost of a major striking rune is only... 31065 GP. Oh... so it takes 156 days to finish. What about trying to rush this part, we'll see if the DC is more reasonable. The DC is based on a flat check this time so you can't really cheese it but we have high crafting so lets see if it goes better. The flat check will be (19 (item level) + 10) - (our crafting bonus of +32). Wait... that's a guaranteed success. So rushing the set up was nearly impossible but rushing the finish is literally a sure thing. See this is why I feel like I must be doing the math wrong. Obviously its possible that the player will have low int and the flat check will be possible to fail but you would need to be legendary to craft this item anyway and therefore it will pretty much always be a ridiculously easy check, especially when you factor in things like hero points.
Alright, so the rushed crafting check is successful, and therefore the result is...2 times the value on earned income crafting reduction. When I fist read this I thought it meant you reduce the remaining crafting time to two days and I actually though that sounded pretty balanced but no, it will still take 78 days to complete.
So then here are my questions. First, is this math right? Second, it seems to me that the choices for a player are to not invest in crafting and trust the GM will step in to get appropriate loot (because I have to do this if I want my players to have a fighting chance against end game enemies) or to invest all the way to legendary for crafting to gain almost no value (and yes I know the crafting skill does other stuff too)? Even with the alternative crafting rules the best way still seems to be paying full price for the item after knowing the formula and getting it in 1 day?
What about a player who likes using potions, but isn't playing alchemist, and wants to use some of high level without spending literally all of their money? True elixir's of life still cost 8000 to make. Major ones are 1300. That's still a lot of downtime if they're trying to make more than one. The alchemist archetype doesn't even really help because at level 20 you'll never get past level 15 advanced alchemy so anything level 15 or below is completely trivial to make and anything level 16 or above is an insane headache?
And for me as a GM what do I do? I can enforce settlement levels to give the world a little more realism and then I'm asking at least one player to functionally waste most of their skill increases just so they have access to high level items. I can just ignore it and give them what they need for loot and say there are always shop keepers who have what they need on hand, but I really hate this option. Honestly the crafting rules just seem so half baked. Do I just need way more downtime in my game?
I also don't really understand why balance is so tight here, it costs 50% of the materials to start crafting anyway and often requires a quest to get more if they aren't in a major population center and on top of that PCs can only sell items for 50% of the total price by default. There is basically no scenario in which the PCs use crafting to break the economics of the game unless the GM specifically allows/encourages it. Finally, and this is just a pet peeve of mine, why do you get almost no benefit from higher proficiency in crafting until you reach really high levels. At level 10 the difference between being trained and being a master is only 2 gold per day... what?
What do you all do for your games? How do you handle crafting and items at higher levels? If you've read this whole post, thanks for sticking with it. Any house rule alternatives you think would work better? Am I fundamentally misunderstanding something?

how will the system be established for the antichristChatGPTChatGPT
The concept of how a system might be established for the Antichrist is often explored within the context of eschatological interpretations, particularly in Christian theology. Here are some common themes or speculative ideas regarding how a system conducive to the Antichrist's rise might be established:

1. Global Crisis and Instability: Many interpretations suggest that a period of widespread chaos, conflict, or crisis will create a climate of fear and desperation among populations. This atmosphere of instability may lead people to seek a strong, charismatic leader who promises solutions and stability, paving the way for the rise of the Antichrist.
2. Political Consolidation and Centralization of Power: Some interpretations envision a scenario where political powers consolidate into a centralized global authority or government. This centralization of power may be driven by perceived necessities such as responding to global crises, maintaining security, or managing resources. The establishment of such a global political system could provide a platform for the Antichrist to exert control and influence.
3. Technological Control and Surveillance: Speculations also exist about the role of advanced technology in enabling the establishment of a system that facilitates the Antichrist's rule. This could involve pervasive surveillance, advanced communication networks, or technological tools that enable monitoring and control of populations.
4. Deceptive Ideologies and Spiritual Deception: The system for the Antichrist may also involve widespread acceptance of deceptive ideologies or false spiritual teachings. This could lead to spiritual apostasy and a departure from traditional moral and religious values, making it easier for the Antichrist to gain influence and authority.
5. Economic Integration and Dependency: Some interpretations suggest that economic integration and interdependence among nations could contribute to the establishment of a system that paves the way for the Antichrist. Economic crises or controls that restrict access to resources might be used to exert control over populations.

It's important to note that these ideas are speculative and symbolic, reflecting interpretations of religious texts and prophetic writings. Different religious traditions and scholars may have varying views on the specifics of how a system for the Antichrist could be established. Interpretations of eschatological events should be approached with an understanding of their symbolic and metaphorical nature, as well as the diversity of perspectives within religious communities.
EDIT 1: asked it to elaborate more
Certainly! Let's break down the attributes associated with each point related to how a system might be established that could pave the way for the rise of the Antichrist, based on certain religious or eschatological interpretations:

1. Global Crisis and Instability:
   • Attributes:
     • Widespread economic turmoil, including recessions, hyperinflation, or financial collapse.
     • Political upheavals, including revolutions, civil unrest, or breakdown of governmental authority.
     • Natural disasters or environmental catastrophes leading to humanitarian crises.
     • Escalation of global conflicts, including wars, terrorism, or geopolitical tensions.
   • Impact:
     • Erosion of trust in existing institutions and leadership.
     • Desire for strong, decisive leadership to restore stability and order.
     • Willingness to accept radical solutions or centralized control in exchange for perceived security.
2. Political Centralization and Consolidation:
   • Attributes:
     • Formation of international alliances or unions with expanding authority.
     • Empowerment of supranational organizations (e.g., United Nations) with global governance capabilities.
     • Implementation of global regulatory frameworks or agreements that supersede national sovereignty.
   • Impact:
     • Gradual erosion of national sovereignty and autonomy.
     • Centralization of political power into fewer hands or institutions.
     • Creation of a conducive environment for a singular global leader to emerge.
3. Technological Advances and Surveillance:
   • Attributes:
     • Proliferation of surveillance technologies, including facial recognition, biometrics, and data analytics.
     • Adoption of digital currencies or cashless systems that enable tracking of financial transactions.
     • Integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to monitor and control populations.
   • Impact:
     • Increased levels of social control and monitoring.
     • Potential for manipulation and targeted influence over individuals.
     • Enhancement of governmental or corporate authority over personal freedoms and privacy.
4. Deceptive Ideologies and Spiritual Apostasy:
   • Attributes:
     • Spread of deceptive ideologies promoting secularism, moral relativism, or new age spirituality.
     • Erosion of traditional religious beliefs and values.
     • Embrace of ideologies that prioritize individualism, materialism, or self-centeredness.
   • Impact:
     • Weakening of moral and ethical foundations.
     • Vulnerability to manipulation and false teachings.
     • Rejection of absolute truths and spiritual principles.
5. Economic Integration and Dependency:
   • Attributes:
     • Increased globalization and interconnectedness of economies.
     • Reliance on international trade and financial systems.
     • Concentration of economic power in multinational corporations or centralized financial institutions.
   • Impact:
     • Exposure to systemic risks and vulnerabilities in global economic networks.
     • Dependency on centralized authorities for economic stability and access to resources.
     • Potential for economic crises to trigger calls for centralized intervention and control.
6. Cultural Shifts and Norms:
   • Attributes:
     • Evolution of societal norms that prioritize individual gratification and consumerism.
     • Acceptance of behaviors or practices once deemed immoral or unethical.
     • Devaluation of human life or dignity in favor of utilitarian values.
   • Impact:
     • Transformation of cultural values and ethical frameworks.
     • Normalization of behaviors that align with prophetic warnings about moral decay.
     • Creation of a cultural environment conducive to the rise of a leader who embodies negative traits.

These attributes reflect speculative interpretations within certain religious or eschatological frameworks and are intended to illustrate the potential conditions or factors that could contribute to the establishment of a system aligned with prophecies about the Antichrist. Interpretations may vary widely among religious communities and scholars, emphasizing the symbolic and metaphorical nature of eschatological teachings.

~First~
HHH/Herbert’s Hundred Harem
“Hello again. I didn’t think you’d have the time to deal with me.” Moriarty notes as he sees exactly WHO is waiting for him at Epsilon Four. It’s a simple streetside bench, show up with a suitcase, the contact has an identical one, walk off with the other case and the contact does the same.
“Just wanted to remind you that even if the rest of The Undaunted have decided to forget Argus. I haven’t.” Chenk replies calmly. He doesn’t rise from his seat, he doesn’t even look at Moriarty as the Carib man sits down next to him. Neither man looks to each other.
“Really? Well it’s good to know that someone remembers that worthless failure fondly.”
“Just why?” Chenk asks and Moriarty glances towards him.
“You couldn’t possibly understand.” The criminal says to the cop.
“Try me.”
“No I mean it literally. You’re too young. I... Argus spent centuries in a miasmatic stillness. Living, but far from alive. You have no idea what it’s like. Your life is... short, purposeful, bright and wondrous. You have lived your life surrounded by equals, with betters to aspire to best and compete with. Friends, colleagues, rivals and even enemies.”
“But there was only stillness for Argus?” Chenk asks. His tone is not full of judgment. Just questions.
“Less. Reality was all a grey blur. Not dark, not bright, not warm nor cold, not anything. A suffocating stillness that amounted to nothing and rotted all time. Argus lost track of more time than your last three generations have experienced collectively. All for nothing. Nothing accomplished. Nothing done. It would take mere minutes to describe each of the identical days in pedantic detail.” He says before huffing.
“A dull life isn’t so...” Chenk protests and Moriarty turns to give him an even look.
“You still do not understand. You do not know what it is like to lose track of all things. To wake one day to find that all others have had lives full of excitement, purpose and poignancy. Knowing that there was none for you. Knowing that this was where they all desired you to be. Safe, placid, collared, controlled, contained and tame. To understand that without even realizing it you have thrown away your natural lifespan twice over if not more for the pursuit of mindless nothingness. Accomplishing nothing, amounting to nothing.” Moriarty says and Chenk merely listens.
“To understand with full certainty that all things were made for those other than you. That the systems, designs and patterns of the galaxy at large are not for you to have or paths for you to walk. That the rules, expectations and all things exist to relegate you to less than a person, to a resource. A thing to possess and if you speak up, saying that such a thing is wrong, that such a thing is repulsive and the mere idea of being a mere commodity makes your skin crawl and your bones ache.... Only to be told that such an attitude, that valuing your own life and dreams is what is truly wrong...” Moriarty’s rant tapers off and he looks at Chenk.
“You can’t possibly understand. To spend so long as nothing more than a commodity, all the function of a coin of trytite and with even less agency, that you cannot even recall a time when you were not. THAT is why Argus had to die. That is how I was born. I found a way out, but I needed to charge through blades and burning pain and make something from the sheer wailing nothingness that surrounded me.”
“... I can understand better than you think.” Chenk says and Moriarty scoffs. “The shorter lives and weaker technology of humans on the homeworld doesn’t preclude us from doing terrible things to each other. The myth of the noble savage is just that. A myth.”
“Sure you understand, what with your?... Twenty? Twenty five long long years of life?”
“Imagine if you will a world were the delusional, dismissive and cruel hold the reigns of power.”
“Yes. Imagine.” Moriarty states in an amused tone.
“Maintaining their grip under a thin veneer of false kindness and falser tolerance. Claiming the moral high ground in everything they do, even as they debase, disgrace and damage all things around them.”
“Average afternoon.”
“And the worst of it? People believe it. It’s beaten into your head from such a young age that you have no foundation to stand on. No initial learning to show you how to puzzle your way out of this, or even recognize that you’re not in a good place. Knowing that you are effectively a conquered people, not conquered by an outside power but by delusional fools who think that reality can somehow be mastered. That somehow if they scream loud enough, that nature itself will obey. That the fundamental laws of nature will bend to their idiot whims.”
“Not a strong foe.”
“Strong? No. Corruptive? Most certainly. Imagine being told that you are responsible for the sins and crimes of those that have been dead longer than you’ve been alive. That because you’re the wrong colour, or the wrong sex that you don’t have the right to speak when someone calls you a monster. Imagine if merely joking about the wrong thing would have a pack of screaming lunatics descend on you and if you try and push them away as they scream in your face you are then arrested and called a criminal. And that’s just to start. So no, I may not understand centuries in a listless, lifeless life, but I understand what it’s like to be trapped in hell.” Chenk says and Moriarty is very still as he processes it and then nods.
“Escaping those fools must have felt like being reborn.”
“Yes.”
“As becoming Moriarty was for me.”
“Yes, but you didn’t have to go so far. A change of address would have been enough.”
“I’ll wager just moving to another country would have done the same for you. But here I am, a weak informant turned criminal mastermind and you on the opposite side of the galaxy.”
“We both went a little far.”
“No, too far implies that we made it fail. Neither of us have. Not really.”
“... Being captured by Intelligence and...”
“I sought a new life. I sought purpose, direction and wealth. Power too. Am I lacking any of those things?” Moriarty asks and Chenk turns to him with an unimpressed look before his communicator goes off. He checks it even as Moriarty’s own starts begging for attention.
“So apparently they thought there was good odds on you strangling me.” Morairty notes. “This message is for you, informing you that you were in fact not to strangle me.”
“And I just received a reminder that you are an asset not an assault target.” Chenk says. “Which means they’re getting impatient with me.”
He then stands up with the briefcase Moriarty brought with him and Moriarty does the same with the case Chenk brought.
They then say nothing to each other as they both turn and leave in opposite directions. Moriarty considerably richer in both trade bars and smaller coins, and Chank carrying a very, very dangerous device.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
“Alright, our capture and interrogation of the Darnaxion Concurrence has led to... nothing. We’ve got nothing but the small fry and all of them are contacted by an automated voice. They’re paid half again as well as any other job on the plate to do their work and we so far have errand girls, janitors, a couple mechanics and security.” Investigator Snow says
“And what kind of errands do these girls do?” One of the crowd asks and Herbert checks his own notes.
“Pick up legally acquired chemical or substance, open package and empty it into relevant hopper. Press two buttons, the exciting ones get three, and then continue. Putting all their jobs together, we get a solid supply chain that’s moderately well protected with no one talking to each other and therefore, no real way to breach the security through them.” He says. “These girls don’t know anything, and while they were screamingly violent in the face of any intruder, that was part of the job. Security has the largest number of actually known employees, but they only know the cleaners, basic errand runners and mechanics. They haven’t so much as seen an accountant, employer or leader in their entire employment to them.”
“Have you tried tracing back the financial information?”
“One of the first things we did. It led to several accounts that have been routinely accessed with several automated payments and are being kept full due to several small stock portfolios being attached. The access points we’ve found lead back to some basic AI logic trees that seem to be handling not only the money but the employment as well.”
“And let me guess, the AI is anonymous.”
“Correct, furthermore we were able to access it and according to it’s records, the AI itself has not been accessed in a century.” Herbert finishes.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, we either have one of the must subtle and patient plotters, hinting at one of the longer lived races or something else has happened.”
“Something else?”
“There are other ways to observe an organization you’ve set up. And if you have the payment and employment system down perfectly, then there is little need to interact with it further. So we need to widen our gaze if we’re going to find out exactly who was in charge.”
“And why the hell they’d use Blood Metal for flooring of all things! That’s what’s really confusing me!” One of the women says.
“That too... I doubt it was for storage.” Another says and Herbert looks through things.
“Which is where things get... odder. They have a storage warehouse we found and raided and... there’s much, much more Blood Metal there. Five times the previous amount. Their storage area has overflowed.”
“Excuse me. Did you just say there are Thirty Nine Thousand and Two Hundred and Fifty more Kilograms of Blood Metal!?”
“Yes. Four fifths in a specialized storage area, the rest in an overflow area with an automatic scale on it.”
“This has gone well and truly beyond parody. What the fuck is going on!?” Someone demands.
“Isn’t that what we’re trying to find out?” Herbert mutters under his breath. There are too many people in this room, too many strong personalities with their own ideas how to get things done and everyone who is getting things done is doing so by ordering their people to ignore everyone else. Which is fucking dangerous and only The Endless Streams running around and getting all the disparate investigation squads, hit squads and commando units talking to each other has prevented friendly fire so far.
Everyone here is supposed to be in charge and above everyone else which means that fucking nothing is happening as they’re squabbling about the priorities. He feels his left eye twitch and then decides that’s his subconscious’ way of telling him that enough is enough.
He takes out a whistle from his pocket and blows into it hard. He pauses after everyone stops talking, then they start again and he blows the whistle again.
“Alright that is enough! We’re squabbling like children and getting nothing done while our people trip over a lack of fucking direction! This ends now! If no one can agree on a leader for this committee then I will take the lead myself and start sorting this madness! We are staring down a potentially apocalyptic threat and you’re all still treating this as if it were a debate about zoning laws and mining rights! This is not the time for debate, this is the time to get things done or die!”
“And what makes you think you are qualified to lead this?”
“The fact I have heavily armed assassins and spies inserted into all your damn groups and are the people facilitating cooperation. So... yes, by logistical and martial force I have control here. Now, do you all have something you can agree on, or am I going to try and get things done my way?”
“And your way is?”
“Minimum damage, maximum results, total confusion.” He says and there’s a pause.
“Confusion?”
“Yes, confusion. It can be very useful.” He says and there’s a pause. No one comes forward. “Alright then. I’m in charge.”
He pulls out his communicator. “Alright Streams, listen to me. Get the groups you’re attached to moving and get the information. I want everything mildly electronic to have a data chit plugged in and all data copied, I don’t care if it’s the lights, the scale or a random dildo found in a corner. If it takes Axiom or electricity into it’s system I want to know what it does exactly. Leave nothing unturned and I don’t care how random your intrusive thoughts are, follow every single lead no matter how absurd. The still increasing amount of Blood Metal has gotten well past the point of parody. I want answers. Understood?”
He receives a confirmation and nods before putting the communicator on sleep mode. He then addresses the group surrounding him. “Any questions? Or perhaps, any concerns?”
~First~ Last

NOTE: Tilray Brands have well developed businesses operating within the state of Colorado, including beverages brewing and distillery, along with restaurants, bars and cannabis approved licensed facilities. These rule changes can certainly improve those markets moving together with cannabis brands and vice versa.
"The bill would, among other things, phase out the requirement for RFID tags for every plant. Just before the legislative session adjourns for the year, Colorado lawmakers passed a broad-ranging bill to clean up state marijuana industry rules and eliminate unnecessary redundancies and red tape.
The measure, Senate Bill 76, “is an important step toward a more sensible and evidence-based system that not only protects public safety, but also allows for economic growth and opportunities,” said Chuck Smith, president of the board of directors of the cannabis trade group Colorado Leads.
Among the bill’s various provisions, it would:
Allow certain licensed businesses to export and import “genetic material” from cannabis to other states and countries. Change the business permit renewal process as of 2026 to allow companies with multiple licenses to only apply once, and also allow companies to renew every two years instead of annually. Permit cannabis retailers to sell nonalcoholic foods and beverages, as long as that revenue stream remains 20% or less of the store’s total sales. Phase out the mandate for radio frequency identification technology (RFID) tags for all legal marijuana plants starting in 2027. Grant marijuana companies eligibility for new state tax credits that had previously been out of reach. The RFID requirement, in particular, has long been a major headache for growers.
Smith said in a press release that Colorado’s cannabis business community will certainly benefit from the help, given that the industry has fallen on hard times in recent years.
“The economic benefits associated with legal marijuana have recently slowed due to several challenges, many of which are rooted in the laws and regulations that govern it. We appreciate Colorado lawmakers and regulators making it a priority to start chipping away at some of our state’s more arbitrary and problematic policies. There is still more work to be done,” Smith said.
The bill now awaits the signature of Colorado’s pro-cannabis Gov. Jared Polis."
https://www.greenmarketreport.com/colorado-legislature-approves-sweeping-overhaul-of-cannabis-industry-rules/

IsoHorns Wideband 6 GHz Asymmetrical 90° Horn (WB6-A90) antenna is designed for the Cambium Networks ePMP 4600 4x4 and ePMP 4600L 2x2 radios.
Cambium Networks:
We've made a couple more key steps forward. Please see below for the latest update on what’s happening with 6 GHz and Cambium’s ePMP™ solutions.
First, status on FCC and ISEDC approvals:

• Canada's regulatory agency ISEDC has now posted on their REL website approvals of all ePMP 6 GHz hardware (4600 and 4600L Access Points and Force 4625 and Force 4600C Subscriber Modules).
• The FCC has approved the 4600 and 4600L Access Points and Force 4600C Subscriber Module in both fixed client mode and standard mode.
• The only hardware approval remaining for the FCC is the Force 4625 Subscriber Module. This is the final certification step, which we expect to happen in the next few weeks.

Here is the update on software releases:

• Release 5.6.1 was officially released on April 3. This had a number of improvements in stability and scalability with support for TDD Synchronization.
• Release 5.7 is now available for open beta. This release has many overall system performance improvements, and early results from alpha testing are promising. For 5 GHz deployments this release also supports backwards compatibility to Force 300 Series SMs. For the ePMP 5 GHz 4500 portfolio, the Force 4525 in the FCC region now has full DFS approval and therefore DFS frequencies will be opened up in 5.7 software. Watch for latest releases and beta opportunities here.
• Release 5.7.1 will be published as soon as we receive the final FCC approval on the remaining hardware (see above). When 5.7.1 is released, full commercial operation of 6 GHz ePMP networks can proceed.

The duration of this sequence of events is unknown and can always change. Right now we are still hopeful for mid May to begin live operation in the U.S. and Canada with released software and fully certified hardware, but this could still shift to a later date based on the FCC's progress. We'll be sure to keep you posted.
A reminder of some things to think about as we get closer to the official launch:

1. Our distributor partners are bringing in stock of the new ePMP 6 GHz radios and demand is very strong. If you haven't already done so, please reach out now to your distributor and make sure they know your rollout plans so you can get in the queue for delivery.
2. All radios (APs and SMs) must have a GPS receiver attached, and that GPS receiver must be one that is approved by the FCC for use with Cambium radios. For the ePMP 4600, ePMP 4600L and Force 4600C, the GPS receiver is included with the radio. For the Force 4625, the GPS receiver must be ordered separately (model #: N000940L001A).
3. All radios must be able to reach the internet to connect to the AFC. This is built in to the radio and no configuration is required. However, you may need to modify your firewall or routing rules to ensure the radios can reach the AFC. We’re preparing instructions on how to set up a proxy server on your network so that only a single server must reach out to the AFC as a proxy from the radios.
4. Look out for announcements on software updates: there will be a software update that supports the AFC which will need to be loaded on all ePMP radios.
5. And don’t forget about the 5 GHz ePMP 4500 platform that complements the 6 GHz ePMP 4600 platform. We are seeing great results on early deployments. TDD synchronization and backward compatibility with Force 300 series SMs is coming this quarter.

Some additional resources:

• If you need another copy of the 6 GHz playbook, it’s available here.
• Cambium and Nextlink published a press release that describes how Nextlink is deploying 6 GHz ePMP solutions to serve rural communities.
• More information about the ePMP platform is available here.
• Latest software versions and documentation are here.
• The Cambium Community is another great place to find late-breaking news on all Cambium products. And of course we’d love to hear about your experiences, please take a moment to post!
• Sales models for the 6 GHz radios deployable in the U.S. and Canada are:

Part Number
Description
C068940A122A
ePMP 4600 6 GHz 4x4 Access Point Radio (FCC/IC) (US cord)
C068940A152A
ePMP 4600L 6 GHz 2x2 Access Point Radio (FCC/IC) (US cord)
C068940M142A
ePMP 6 GHz Force 4625 SM Bulk packaging (FCC/IC) (US Cord)
C068940C122B
ePMP 6 GHz Force 4600C SM Radio (FCC/IC) (US Cord)
N000940L001A
USB GPS Receiver with holder

I'm working on a strategy game with RPG story elements. A good comp is Heroes of Might and Magic (looks different, but similar gameplay loop). Turn based, world map army movement, army management. The game is made in Godot. We are a small team, just two people. We've been building it one step at a time, we have a battle system, army management, and the world map basics in place.
Our "questlines" or game progression events won't be anything more complicated than the kinds of things you see in Elden Ring- most of the story and worldbuilding is done passively through art and flavor text. We aren't talking about a morality system with 200 endings. That said, game progression events do occur as the player moves through the world activating different triggers.
IE: -the player defeats an ancient guardian, unlocking the ability to train special units in the grove it was protecting.
-the players armies have reached a certain size, triggering a boss army to spawn and pursue the player
-the player liberates a besieged city and acquires a new army and commander
-...etc
We are looking at tools like Arcweave and Articy, as well as community tools like Dialogic. Certain aspects of the the premium services (arcweave/articy) are not desirable-- expensive, requires using mono build of godot, in the case of Articy it's Windows only...
But there is something scary about using a community made project like Dialogic, QuestManager, or Questify-- we aren't sure how stable these are, and how long they will be maintained.
Looking for any advice from folks experienced in these tools and general workflow wisdom! Specific questions are:
-any favorite tools, or tools you hate? -how strong is the case to build our own system? -what am I likely not considering but should?

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:

1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”

The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:

1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”

The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.

For new members who might not be aware this issue goes back years. Even though many of us on this reddit myself included might have medical knowledge and experience we are not in the proper situation to give medical guidance towards a persons condition.
Random people on a reddit voting up or down on someone's disorder based with only vague information might be well meaning yet ultimately has real world consequences for improper diagnosis.
Intersex is an umbrella term for over 40 conditions some are genetic some are developmental some are hormonal and all can have aspects of other conditions.
Due to the varied and extenstive nature the advice of this reddit has always been seek medical assistance for your condition.
Medical professionals includ but are not limited to: doctors, physician assistants, therapists, psychologists, endocrinologists, social workers, geneticists, urologists and gynecologists.
The fact is with an Intersex condition a total body and mental health survey often needs to be done to lead to the best outcomes.
We just want to ensure that our members have the best health possible.
Additionally we never ask require or even assume someone does or doesn't have a diagnosis that has never been and never will be a factor in who posts or can post.
We are like that because we are aware that it isn't always easy to have a confirmed diagnosis due to barriers to care and many people myself included as a child knew things were odd about my body but only learned later on it was due to being intersex.
Thus we have an honors system if your an ally or interested member be upfront about it. If you're going to talk about your Intersex experience hopefully you're not lying if for some reason it is brought to our attention that you have been disingenuous then a conversation will be had.
We do our best and remember there is over 10,000 people on this reddit and only a few of us to moderate, if something slips just flag it and we will get to it when possible.
I wish you all the best and deeply regret that anyone would feel that rules meant to ensure safe access to healthcare is meant as a way to reject anyone from this reddit.
The goal is always to be as permissive and supportive as possible we need a place that is safe loving and supportive we are doing our best to make this one such place.
Please respect the rules of this reddit in place to ensure safety.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:

1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”

The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.

I started having a lupus flare on Friday and then over the weekend I developed what my PCM believes to be a cold sore above my top lip. She says it’s likely caused by HSV1 that was dormant in my body for years, but due to a weakened immune system, it cause a cold sore.
Does anyone know if you can get cold sores without having HSV1. I’m devastated to think I may be a lifelong carrier of this virus. I remember my dad getting frequent cold sores when I was a kid, so if it is HSV1, that’s likely where I was exposed. But I’m 36 and have never dealt with it before. Since I started a bad flare last week I was really hoping that this is some random lupus fluke.
I just followed up with my PCM to see if I could get tested to confirm or rule out HSV1.
Any insight would be appreciated.

I developed a Points system to reward myself, but my roommate says I’m just masking an addiction
I’ve been trying to get healthier and have better daily habits so I developed a simple “points system” for my daily life. I won’t go into full details but it’s basically: I gain points for healthy and good behavior and then later during the weekend I spend those points on unhealthy and bad behavior.
Small example: when I eat healthy for the day I gain +5 points. When I go to the gym I get +10, when I get out of my comfort zone and do social activities I get +15 etc, etc.
On the weekend it’s my time to spend points so I use -10 points to eat a fast food meal. Then I use -5 to smoke weed and another -5 to beat off to porn.
The rule is that I can bank points but cannot go negative, so if I want to watch anime girls get naked but I’m at 3 points I can’t do it. I track the points in an excel sheet and have graphs to see how I’m doing over all.
My roommate is a psychology student and he says this is both unhealthy and a mask for an addiction. He says that stable healthy people don’t fixate on getting permission for the things they want, and my reward system is just a complex facade for addictions to junk food and smoking weed and anime girls. He also said focusing my free time on gaining fake points is why I won’t get a girl friend as well because it’s weird and women would be turned off when they find out my system.
I told him it’s not an addiction because if I don’t have the points I don’t do the bad behavior. But then I started thinking about how my whole week is focused on gaining points so I can do bad things on the weekend and started to think he’s right about me. Now I’m pretty sad because I thought I was doing well these past few months and now I’m not sure what to do.

The city of Emyar Ramé, meaning “peace on the river” in an ancient Norcaran dialect.
Ruled jointly by the nobility of the Astalani and Dolmanani, Emyar Ramé was built on both banks of the mighty river Dol near where it dumps into the North Sea. In the middle of the river is a great island, joined to either side of the Dol by great wooden bridges, and on that island is the Sacred Keep, the center of the two nation’s power and the only structure in the city primarily made from stone.
Norcarans have historically made very little use of writing, preferring oral tradition as a method of memorializing the past instead. When the Beonsfaffen of northern Volwicia began colonizing the northwest coast of Norcar in the early 10th century they recorded a handful of these myths and histories from the Astalani they encountered, but it wasn’t until the Alraeinsfaffen allied with and occupied Emyar Ramé in 937 or 938 that any knowledge of the city’s history was entered into the written record. The loremasters of both nations provided their accounts of its founding to the scholars of Alraein. Both suggest that the site of the city has been occupied by some level of settlement since time immemorial, with myths suggesting that it once was the city of the old gods in the “time before time”.
The disagreement betwen the Astalani and Dolmanani loremasters begins with the question of which nation’s predecessor state originally occupied the site and which nation’s predecessor state was subsequently won their way into ruling the city in joint capacity. The Astalani assert that it was their ancestors who won the city in a war fought against the old gods and established it as a settlement of man, and that the ancestors of the Dolmanani in later years laid siege to the city in an attempt to expand after being forced to concede large swathes of territory to the then greater powers of eastern Norcar. Eventually a treaty was signed allowing the Dolmanani to settle within and around the city, and in subsequent decades gradual political reforms allowed for members of either tribe to hold office, and eventually the city came to be ruled by both peoples.
The Dolmanani on the other hand hold that the city was gifted to their ancestors by the old gods before their departure from this plane of existence, and that the mouth of the river Dol itself is from where their people were born. They claim that out of greed and jealousy, the ancestors of the Astalani sacked the city in its infancy and utterly destroyed it, building their own settlement on its ruins using slave labor from the defeated populace. Slave uprisings in the following decades eventually culminated in a full blown revolution, and the result was a treaty signed granting joint control to both peoples.
Whatever the case, the contention has provided little conflict for the modern nations beyond scholarly debate. In fact, while the nations have come to blows on a handful of occasions over the centuries due to disagreements in matters of policy and leadership, full on civil war has never erupted. Tensions are rising however with the arrival of the Volwicians. Fleeing their homeland after Once-King Nemic the Feeble conceded all his lands to the ever growing Maslahaabi (Yellow Empire) without fielding a single soldier, the Beonsfaffen, or Men of Beon, settled parts of the northwest coast of Norcar, where they began relations with the local Astalani chiefs after a few scuffles. The Alraeinsfaffen on the other hand arrived near the mouth of the river Dol and quickly curried favor with the leadership of both nations within Emyar Ramé. With neither tribe willing to live in a New Volwicia under the leadership of another party, the Beonsfaffen began to raise support among disgruntled Astalani chiefs for an uprising against Dolmanan and their allies, while the Alraeinsfaffen began aiding Emyar Ramé in preventing civil war and putting the Men of Beon under their boot.
Peace on the river is under threat for the first time in centuries, and the result of the mounting conflict will decide how the land of Norcar will fare in the inevitable conflict with the Yellow Threat of the Maslahaabi to the south.

1. How does an anarchic society preserve anarchy past the first three generations without recourse to either tradition (which would necessarily be a subjugation of the individual to the system and it’s customs and tradition, which produces keepers of those traditions, authorities on them, and this seems doomed to create hierarchies over time)? How does it avoid creation of hierarchies of the specialists, or of tradition, or of strength, or of demagogues who sway people to their side with persuasive words and performative rejection of hard authority that furthers their soft social power as an “unofficial” leader?
   
2. How does an anarchic society ensure that community and trust in fellow people distinct from your immediate social circle is preserved? With no rules supplanting the free agency and independence of each and every person, what prevents a parent from deciding they don’t want their kids anymore and abandoning or killing them due to being mentally unstable or mentally ill (or abandoning them by committing suicide)? And what prevents people neglecting dirty or unpleasant jobs until they have catastrophic consequences before anyone bothers to take them on? What system controls for people abusing the kindness of strangers, travelling around to avoid social repercussions? How can trust be protected from those predatory people?
   
3. What strategies could prevent an anarchist revolution being coopted by fascists or violent sadists who embrace the rhetoric of total freedom and the destruction of the state and its defenders and tyrants to just engage in violence and unjustified execution and so on while defending their deeds with the label of necessity for the revolution using charisma and sound arguments reliant on a particularly dangerously extreme but viable purist interpretation? How can these strategies avoid becoming the basis of future power structures and hierarchies a century or two down the road?
   

I can copy and paste the discussion that was happening on the previous iteration if desired.