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[Daily News] Are These New Seiko Chronos Ugly Or Not?, Breguet Has Two New Military Chronographs, French Watchmaker Teams Up With French Carmaker For French Race and Dan Henry Is Back With New Colors And Same Price
2023.06.07 14:01 dreftzg [Daily News] Are These New Seiko Chronos Ugly Or Not?, Breguet Has Two New Military Chronographs, French Watchmaker Teams Up With French Carmaker For French Race and Dan Henry Is Back With New Colors And Same Price
Welcome back, it's Wednesday and I'll just come out and say it - that Seiko is ugly... Change my mind.
Seiko Adds Four Completely New Chronographs To The Prospex Collection And Four Limited Editions To The Presage Craftsmanship Series
In 1999 Seiko launched a limited edition they called the Sportura Kinetic Chronograph. It was a funky watch that used four subdials to display the time and chronograph functions. Just looking at it and you feel the angst of the end of the millennium and the cheesy futurism (not to be confused with neo futurism in architecture led by Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava) that permeated industrial design of the time - from Oakley glasses to Jnco jeans. There’s no easy way to say this, but it’s an ugly watch. I can appreciate the experiment. But come on.
However, Seiko believes that the four dial layout of the Kinetic was pleasing to the eye. That’s why they decided to recreate it in four new solar chronographs that they are adding to the Prospex collection, marking the company’s association with the World Athletics Championships to be held in Budapest, Hungary, in August. Officially called the Seiko Prospex Speedtimer Solar Chronograph, all four watches sport a new movement with the Seiko Caliber 8A50, a 1/100-second chronograph with a +/- 15-seconds per month precision rating.
The Seiko Prospex Speedtimer Solar Chronograph watch is 42mm-wide, 12.9mm-thick, and its lug-to-lug distance is 48.3mm. All four watches have the same case and bracelet design but in different executions and ever-so-slightly different prices and naming schemes. I could go on into detail about the dials and colors, but it’s all just a bit confusing. You can hop on over here if you would like to know more.
Two of the models will be limited edition of 4,000 each and two will be regular production models. The Seiko Prospex Speedtimer Solar Chronograph watch prices range from 890 Euros to 970 Euros, and all four versions will be available from July 2023. Regular readers of the newsletter will know I keep things very chipper here and don’t pass judgement. But these new Seiko’s are just baffling to me. They look like those Diesel watches you buy at the mall. Am I wrong?
Thankfully, Seiko has another announcement for today. While they have shown these watches previously, they are now starting to sell these stunning Presage Craftsmanship Series watches. Marking the 110th anniversary of its first wristwatch, the Laurel, Seiko is putting out two pairs of these limited edition pieces, with each featuring a dial made by a dedicated artisan or craft workshop through a traditional Japanese decorative technique — enamel, urushi lacquer, Arita porcelain, and shippō enamel. All four models boast a new case shape, a fresh dial aesthetic, and an in-house automatic movement. And they are now hitting the market.
And despite Seiko’s price increases for recent releases, these new editions seem to align with their predecessors. The white enamel SPB393 retails for €1,650, the brown urushi SPB395 for €2,000, the ivory Arita porcelain SPB397 for €2,000, and the blue shippō enamel SPB399 for €2,250.
2/
Breguet Gives Us Two Redesigned Variations Of The Classic Chronograph With The Type XX And Type 20
Just the other day I linked to a great article on Type 20, the references issued by the French military in the 1950s. There were many brands who stepped up to produce these Type 20 watches, but the reference has stuck around to be synonymous with one brand in particular - Breguet. They have been making the Type 20 for years now, with occasional updates, but now Breguet is unveiling the new Type XX and Type 20 – a civilian and military-inspired take on the classic design - which is the biggest change to the line.
Despite at first glance looking like it’s two of the same watches with different dials, the Type 20 and Type XX are actually different watches. Both watches come in the same steel case that measures 42mm wide and 14.1mm thick with bidirectional steel bezels and matching lume pips. But this is pretty much where the similarities stop. The Type 20 has a military inspired dial with mint green lume and syringe hands, while the Type XX is a civilian version with a creamy yellow lume and alpha hands.
The Type 20 and Type XX both have a new self-winding movement, the Calibre 728 for the civilian version and Calibre 7281 for the military version. Each movement has a column wheel, vertical clutch, 5Hz frequency, and flyback functionality with 60 hours of power reserve, plus an inverted in-line lever escapement with a flat silicon balance spring for increased durability, longevity, and magnetic resistance.
Why two different calibers? The difference lies in dial layout and how useful it would be in military or civilian applications. On the military version, you only have two registers, with a 30-minute totalizer at three o'clock, now larger than the 60-second totalizer at nine o'clock. Meanwhile, the civilian version has a 15-minute totalizer at three o'clock, a 12-hour totalizer at six o'clock, and running seconds at nine o'clock.
This is not a cheap watch. It will run you $18,000. But it might just be one of the best vintage revivals we have seen in a year full of vintage revivals.
3/
French Watchmaker Yema Teams Up With Alpine French Racing Team To Mark The Most French Race With Five New Watches
One of the most legendary races in the world starts on Saturday and ends on Sunday. Yes, it’s the 24 hours of Le Mans. The race is, of course, one of the most recognisable french things, alongside the croissant and hating tourists. You know what else is very french? Alpine, the legendary car manufacturer that gained it’s fame with the quirky A110 and is currently doing really well (under Renault ownership) with its successor, also called the A110. Alpine will be present at the 24h of Le Mans With their Endurance Team. If only there was a watchmaker that could join in, making it a French hat trick. There is. It’s Yema. Yema has made five new watches to mark Alpine’s stint at Le Mans - the Yema Rallygraf A470 Limited Edition and four Rallygraf Alpine Endurance Team Automatic models of which one is mechanical while the other three are powered by the Seiko VK64 meca-quartz movement.
The Yema Rallygraf A470 Limited Edition takes all the right cues from 70s racing chronographs. The stainless steel case is 39mm wide and 12mm thick without the double-domed sapphire crystal. The solid caseback shows the Alpine Endurance Team logo and the limitation of the watch. The dial is finished in a gradient-blue colour, Alpine’s signature color, with a vintage dashboard-inspired bicompax layout and Alpine’s logo on the chronograph seconds hand. Inside the watch is the Valjoux 7753 and the watch comes on an appropriate black leather rally strap with a steel pin buckle. This watch will be limited to 470 pieces and can be pre-ordered for a price of USD 2,190 with delivery expected in September 2023.
This runs at a frequency of 28,800vph and delivers 48 hours of power reserve. The watch comes on a black leather rally strap with a steel pin buckle. Limited to 470 pieces, tying in with the car, it can be pre-ordered for a price of EUR 2,190 with delivery expected in September 2023.
Then there’s the meca-quartz variants. They take the same case as the Rallygraf and give it three variations - white dial with a blue outside minute track, a cream dial with a black outside minute track or a black dial with a cream outside minute track. All of these are also available for preorder now for EUR 399 and will be delivered in September 2023.
Yema also announced a second mechanical watch made in collaboration with Alpine, the Rallygraf Alpine Endurance Team Automatic. This will officially be unveiled this coming Saturday at the Circuit de la Sarthe, during the racing weekend of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Although we don’t know all the details at this moment, we can see it’s made of stainless steel, comes on a multi-link bracelet or black leather strap and has a black dial. The bidirectional rotating bezel can be used to calculate speeds, in combination with the inner ‘Temps Ecoule’ flange in white and blue. It is powered by the in-house Calibre YEMA2000 and will cost USD 990.
4/
The Dan Henry 1970 44mm is back with new colours and the same, affordable price
You might know Dan Hendy as the microbrand that has been pumping out vintage inspired watches since 2016. What you might not know is that they made their name with the Dan Henry 1970 44mm Automatic Diver, the first of their watches to feature an automatic movement. While it might not seem like a big deal, it was for Dan Hanry and the shoppers in the sub $500 range. While Dan Henry serviced it’s customers by providing good value for money with quartz movements, the 1970 44mm Automatic Diver was the first time they offered a mechanical movement at such an affordable price. It sold out instantly and now, four years later, they are back with a limited edition of 1970 pieces.
It’s a very big watch. Very big. The heavy stainless steel super compressor style case measures 44mm in diameter and is 14.8mm thick with a 50.5mm lug-to-lug length. Despite these large dimensions, and with all other manufacturers fighting to go smaller, people still love this watch. They love it enough for it to go for over retail on the secondary market, which is not common for a watch in this pricepoint. Both of the crowns, one for rotating the inner-bezel and one for adjusting the time, screw into the case, giving it 200m water resistance.
The dials get a contrasting pop of color on the outskirts. There’s the black and orange, as well as the black and off-white with a black case and blue with white color combinations. Each version comes with its own colour-matching FKM rubber tropic strap. To keep the price low, the watches are powered by the Seiko NH35. Not the best movement in the world, but it gets the job done for an exceptionally low price.
The new Dan Henry 1970 44mm Automatic Diver is limited to 1,970 pieces, available from Dan Henry and costs $310.
5/
Bamford Teams Up With Land Rover For The LR002 Limited Edition
Somehere near the end of last year, Land Rover designed their first watch. They called it the LR001 and they turned to Bamford to put the watch into production. It was a great looking field watch made of titanium and all in shades of grey, with a decent price and limited to 100 pieces so they all sold out very fast. Now, Bamford London and Land Rover are bringing it back with an updated, equally limited, version in all black called the LR002.
The LR002 is pretty much the same watch as the LR001, except for the color. While not a fan of black watches, this isn’t a bad thing, as it gives you a chance to buy the sold out Land Rover watch. What is bad is the price, but more on that later. The case measures 40mm wide and 13.25mm thick, and is made out of DLC coated titanium. It has a shape that resembles a field watch but much more modern and has fixed bars. From photos, due to the thick case and fixed bars, this watch looks to wear much larger than it actually is.
The dial seems to be much more interesting than the case. It has a sandwich construction with the top part having a matte black surface and the underside being filled with white lume. And by alternating circular and oblong cutouts, there’s a dynamic look to the dial. Inside the watch is the same movement as in the LR001, the Selita SW200-1B, and it’s delivered on a leather NATO-style bracelet.
The LR002 will have a run of just 100 pieces that are exclusively sold through Hodinkee. At the time of writing there are still pieces available for sale at a price of $1,700. And that’s the biggest issue. The LR001 sold for about $1,300 and the only difference between the two watches is the DLC coating. Is it worth the price difference?
6/
The Casio A120 Is The Best Pairing For Stranger Things, But Do We Need It?
The immense popularity of Stranger Thing undoubtedly lies in it’s 80s nostalgia that reminded us all of our childhoods. While playing to our good memories, it also roped in new generations by picking the best the decade had to offer and presenting it as something cool. That’s why you have a bunch of kids out there listening to Kate Bush and Metallica, while wearing Casio watches and buying VHS tapes. So it only makes perfect sense that Casio would team up with Stranger Things for a limited edition watch, and what better reference to do it with then the A120. This is the Casio x Stranger Things A120WEST-1A.
The watch is a classic Casio A120, with a 33.5mm x 40.7mm rectangle case and since it’s plastic it weighs only 25 grams. It’s not filled with a bunch of functions, but it does have a chronograph, alarm and calendar and you get three years of battery life. There’s a number of Stranger Things references on the watch - there’s a silhouette of the series’ demogorgon monster beneath the digital display and the LED backlight flickers and rapidly blinks just like the surfacing of a demogorgon in the show. Once lit, you can see the watermark of an upside down Stranger Things logo.
Casio has not announced when the watch will be available or how much it will cost, but you can keep an eye out on it here. Is this a nice homage to a good TV show, or just another example of over-consumerism and corporate media properties slapping their name everywhere, without actually making a meaningfully authentic version of the watch?
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A review of Monta’s current flagship dress watch, the Noble
2/
Hands on with the 39mm and 42mm versions of the Hanhart 414 ES Flyback
3/
A week with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore limited edition in pink gold and titanium
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Great dials are always appreciated, but no matter how good the dial is, it doesn’t matter if the watch isn’t wearable. The excellent design choices found on the dial of the Heartlander follow through to the case. Crafted from stainless steel the 38mm-wide case has a lovely 46mm lug-to-lug distance and is only 11.2mm-thick from solid steel caseback to domed sapphire crystal. These dimensions are in the Goldilocks region for an everyday watch for me and my ~6.5-inch wrist. The cases are predominantly brushed except for a thin highly polished bevel that flanks each side of the lugs.
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People loved the Seiko Alpinist giveaway! That's why I'm doing a new one. This time, we're giving away four Hamilton Khaki Field Automatics in a color of your choice. Head on over to the newsletter if you would like to enter.
If you would like to receive some additional watch-adjacent content, as well as this news overview, every morning Monday-Friday in the form of a newsletter feel free to subscribe. However, there is absolutely no need for you to subscribe, as all the news from the newsletter is posted here. It is only if you want to receive a couple of daily links that are not strictly watch-related and want to get this news overview in your inbox.
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What's new
1/Seiko Adds Four Completely New Chronographs To The Prospex Collection And Four Limited Editions To The Presage Craftsmanship Series
In 1999 Seiko launched a limited edition they called the Sportura Kinetic Chronograph. It was a funky watch that used four subdials to display the time and chronograph functions. Just looking at it and you feel the angst of the end of the millennium and the cheesy futurism (not to be confused with neo futurism in architecture led by Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava) that permeated industrial design of the time - from Oakley glasses to Jnco jeans. There’s no easy way to say this, but it’s an ugly watch. I can appreciate the experiment. But come on.
However, Seiko believes that the four dial layout of the Kinetic was pleasing to the eye. That’s why they decided to recreate it in four new solar chronographs that they are adding to the Prospex collection, marking the company’s association with the World Athletics Championships to be held in Budapest, Hungary, in August. Officially called the Seiko Prospex Speedtimer Solar Chronograph, all four watches sport a new movement with the Seiko Caliber 8A50, a 1/100-second chronograph with a +/- 15-seconds per month precision rating.
The Seiko Prospex Speedtimer Solar Chronograph watch is 42mm-wide, 12.9mm-thick, and its lug-to-lug distance is 48.3mm. All four watches have the same case and bracelet design but in different executions and ever-so-slightly different prices and naming schemes. I could go on into detail about the dials and colors, but it’s all just a bit confusing. You can hop on over here if you would like to know more.
Two of the models will be limited edition of 4,000 each and two will be regular production models. The Seiko Prospex Speedtimer Solar Chronograph watch prices range from 890 Euros to 970 Euros, and all four versions will be available from July 2023. Regular readers of the newsletter will know I keep things very chipper here and don’t pass judgement. But these new Seiko’s are just baffling to me. They look like those Diesel watches you buy at the mall. Am I wrong?
Thankfully, Seiko has another announcement for today. While they have shown these watches previously, they are now starting to sell these stunning Presage Craftsmanship Series watches. Marking the 110th anniversary of its first wristwatch, the Laurel, Seiko is putting out two pairs of these limited edition pieces, with each featuring a dial made by a dedicated artisan or craft workshop through a traditional Japanese decorative technique — enamel, urushi lacquer, Arita porcelain, and shippō enamel. All four models boast a new case shape, a fresh dial aesthetic, and an in-house automatic movement. And they are now hitting the market.
And despite Seiko’s price increases for recent releases, these new editions seem to align with their predecessors. The white enamel SPB393 retails for €1,650, the brown urushi SPB395 for €2,000, the ivory Arita porcelain SPB397 for €2,000, and the blue shippō enamel SPB399 for €2,250.
2/
Breguet Gives Us Two Redesigned Variations Of The Classic Chronograph With The Type XX And Type 20
Just the other day I linked to a great article on Type 20, the references issued by the French military in the 1950s. There were many brands who stepped up to produce these Type 20 watches, but the reference has stuck around to be synonymous with one brand in particular - Breguet. They have been making the Type 20 for years now, with occasional updates, but now Breguet is unveiling the new Type XX and Type 20 – a civilian and military-inspired take on the classic design - which is the biggest change to the line.
Despite at first glance looking like it’s two of the same watches with different dials, the Type 20 and Type XX are actually different watches. Both watches come in the same steel case that measures 42mm wide and 14.1mm thick with bidirectional steel bezels and matching lume pips. But this is pretty much where the similarities stop. The Type 20 has a military inspired dial with mint green lume and syringe hands, while the Type XX is a civilian version with a creamy yellow lume and alpha hands.
The Type 20 and Type XX both have a new self-winding movement, the Calibre 728 for the civilian version and Calibre 7281 for the military version. Each movement has a column wheel, vertical clutch, 5Hz frequency, and flyback functionality with 60 hours of power reserve, plus an inverted in-line lever escapement with a flat silicon balance spring for increased durability, longevity, and magnetic resistance.
Why two different calibers? The difference lies in dial layout and how useful it would be in military or civilian applications. On the military version, you only have two registers, with a 30-minute totalizer at three o'clock, now larger than the 60-second totalizer at nine o'clock. Meanwhile, the civilian version has a 15-minute totalizer at three o'clock, a 12-hour totalizer at six o'clock, and running seconds at nine o'clock.
This is not a cheap watch. It will run you $18,000. But it might just be one of the best vintage revivals we have seen in a year full of vintage revivals.
3/
French Watchmaker Yema Teams Up With Alpine French Racing Team To Mark The Most French Race With Five New Watches
One of the most legendary races in the world starts on Saturday and ends on Sunday. Yes, it’s the 24 hours of Le Mans. The race is, of course, one of the most recognisable french things, alongside the croissant and hating tourists. You know what else is very french? Alpine, the legendary car manufacturer that gained it’s fame with the quirky A110 and is currently doing really well (under Renault ownership) with its successor, also called the A110. Alpine will be present at the 24h of Le Mans With their Endurance Team. If only there was a watchmaker that could join in, making it a French hat trick. There is. It’s Yema. Yema has made five new watches to mark Alpine’s stint at Le Mans - the Yema Rallygraf A470 Limited Edition and four Rallygraf Alpine Endurance Team Automatic models of which one is mechanical while the other three are powered by the Seiko VK64 meca-quartz movement.
The Yema Rallygraf A470 Limited Edition takes all the right cues from 70s racing chronographs. The stainless steel case is 39mm wide and 12mm thick without the double-domed sapphire crystal. The solid caseback shows the Alpine Endurance Team logo and the limitation of the watch. The dial is finished in a gradient-blue colour, Alpine’s signature color, with a vintage dashboard-inspired bicompax layout and Alpine’s logo on the chronograph seconds hand. Inside the watch is the Valjoux 7753 and the watch comes on an appropriate black leather rally strap with a steel pin buckle. This watch will be limited to 470 pieces and can be pre-ordered for a price of USD 2,190 with delivery expected in September 2023.
This runs at a frequency of 28,800vph and delivers 48 hours of power reserve. The watch comes on a black leather rally strap with a steel pin buckle. Limited to 470 pieces, tying in with the car, it can be pre-ordered for a price of EUR 2,190 with delivery expected in September 2023.
Then there’s the meca-quartz variants. They take the same case as the Rallygraf and give it three variations - white dial with a blue outside minute track, a cream dial with a black outside minute track or a black dial with a cream outside minute track. All of these are also available for preorder now for EUR 399 and will be delivered in September 2023.
Yema also announced a second mechanical watch made in collaboration with Alpine, the Rallygraf Alpine Endurance Team Automatic. This will officially be unveiled this coming Saturday at the Circuit de la Sarthe, during the racing weekend of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Although we don’t know all the details at this moment, we can see it’s made of stainless steel, comes on a multi-link bracelet or black leather strap and has a black dial. The bidirectional rotating bezel can be used to calculate speeds, in combination with the inner ‘Temps Ecoule’ flange in white and blue. It is powered by the in-house Calibre YEMA2000 and will cost USD 990.
4/
The Dan Henry 1970 44mm is back with new colours and the same, affordable price
You might know Dan Hendy as the microbrand that has been pumping out vintage inspired watches since 2016. What you might not know is that they made their name with the Dan Henry 1970 44mm Automatic Diver, the first of their watches to feature an automatic movement. While it might not seem like a big deal, it was for Dan Hanry and the shoppers in the sub $500 range. While Dan Henry serviced it’s customers by providing good value for money with quartz movements, the 1970 44mm Automatic Diver was the first time they offered a mechanical movement at such an affordable price. It sold out instantly and now, four years later, they are back with a limited edition of 1970 pieces.
It’s a very big watch. Very big. The heavy stainless steel super compressor style case measures 44mm in diameter and is 14.8mm thick with a 50.5mm lug-to-lug length. Despite these large dimensions, and with all other manufacturers fighting to go smaller, people still love this watch. They love it enough for it to go for over retail on the secondary market, which is not common for a watch in this pricepoint. Both of the crowns, one for rotating the inner-bezel and one for adjusting the time, screw into the case, giving it 200m water resistance.
The dials get a contrasting pop of color on the outskirts. There’s the black and orange, as well as the black and off-white with a black case and blue with white color combinations. Each version comes with its own colour-matching FKM rubber tropic strap. To keep the price low, the watches are powered by the Seiko NH35. Not the best movement in the world, but it gets the job done for an exceptionally low price.
The new Dan Henry 1970 44mm Automatic Diver is limited to 1,970 pieces, available from Dan Henry and costs $310.
5/
Bamford Teams Up With Land Rover For The LR002 Limited Edition
Somehere near the end of last year, Land Rover designed their first watch. They called it the LR001 and they turned to Bamford to put the watch into production. It was a great looking field watch made of titanium and all in shades of grey, with a decent price and limited to 100 pieces so they all sold out very fast. Now, Bamford London and Land Rover are bringing it back with an updated, equally limited, version in all black called the LR002.
The LR002 is pretty much the same watch as the LR001, except for the color. While not a fan of black watches, this isn’t a bad thing, as it gives you a chance to buy the sold out Land Rover watch. What is bad is the price, but more on that later. The case measures 40mm wide and 13.25mm thick, and is made out of DLC coated titanium. It has a shape that resembles a field watch but much more modern and has fixed bars. From photos, due to the thick case and fixed bars, this watch looks to wear much larger than it actually is.
The dial seems to be much more interesting than the case. It has a sandwich construction with the top part having a matte black surface and the underside being filled with white lume. And by alternating circular and oblong cutouts, there’s a dynamic look to the dial. Inside the watch is the same movement as in the LR001, the Selita SW200-1B, and it’s delivered on a leather NATO-style bracelet.
The LR002 will have a run of just 100 pieces that are exclusively sold through Hodinkee. At the time of writing there are still pieces available for sale at a price of $1,700. And that’s the biggest issue. The LR001 sold for about $1,300 and the only difference between the two watches is the DLC coating. Is it worth the price difference?
6/
The Casio A120 Is The Best Pairing For Stranger Things, But Do We Need It?
The immense popularity of Stranger Thing undoubtedly lies in it’s 80s nostalgia that reminded us all of our childhoods. While playing to our good memories, it also roped in new generations by picking the best the decade had to offer and presenting it as something cool. That’s why you have a bunch of kids out there listening to Kate Bush and Metallica, while wearing Casio watches and buying VHS tapes. So it only makes perfect sense that Casio would team up with Stranger Things for a limited edition watch, and what better reference to do it with then the A120. This is the Casio x Stranger Things A120WEST-1A.
The watch is a classic Casio A120, with a 33.5mm x 40.7mm rectangle case and since it’s plastic it weighs only 25 grams. It’s not filled with a bunch of functions, but it does have a chronograph, alarm and calendar and you get three years of battery life. There’s a number of Stranger Things references on the watch - there’s a silhouette of the series’ demogorgon monster beneath the digital display and the LED backlight flickers and rapidly blinks just like the surfacing of a demogorgon in the show. Once lit, you can see the watermark of an upside down Stranger Things logo.
Casio has not announced when the watch will be available or how much it will cost, but you can keep an eye out on it here. Is this a nice homage to a good TV show, or just another example of over-consumerism and corporate media properties slapping their name everywhere, without actually making a meaningfully authentic version of the watch?
-------------------------------------------------------------
On hand - a selection of reviews
1/A review of Monta’s current flagship dress watch, the Noble
2/
Hands on with the 39mm and 42mm versions of the Hanhart 414 ES Flyback
3/
A week with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore limited edition in pink gold and titanium
-------------------------------------------------------------
Watch Worthy - A look at an offbeat, less known watch you might actually like
Dryden is a go-everywhere-do-anything watch with plenty of optionsGreat dials are always appreciated, but no matter how good the dial is, it doesn’t matter if the watch isn’t wearable. The excellent design choices found on the dial of the Heartlander follow through to the case. Crafted from stainless steel the 38mm-wide case has a lovely 46mm lug-to-lug distance and is only 11.2mm-thick from solid steel caseback to domed sapphire crystal. These dimensions are in the Goldilocks region for an everyday watch for me and my ~6.5-inch wrist. The cases are predominantly brushed except for a thin highly polished bevel that flanks each side of the lugs.
-------------------------------------------------------------
People loved the Seiko Alpinist giveaway! That's why I'm doing a new one. This time, we're giving away four Hamilton Khaki Field Automatics in a color of your choice. Head on over to the newsletter if you would like to enter.
If you would like to receive some additional watch-adjacent content, as well as this news overview, every morning Monday-Friday in the form of a newsletter feel free to subscribe. However, there is absolutely no need for you to subscribe, as all the news from the newsletter is posted here. It is only if you want to receive a couple of daily links that are not strictly watch-related and want to get this news overview in your inbox.
2023.06.07 13:08 DevenRue Map of Galat
 | submitted by DevenRue to dndmaps [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 12:41 Meaning-Plenty O’ Pir Panchal
After remaining invincible and impregnable for centuries, the mighty Pir Panchal is witnessing enormous developmental activity for a new expressway, a challenging railway line and most of the dam-fed hydropower projects involving an investment of tens of thousands of crores. At places, this is triggering the fragile range to cave in at the cost of homes and livelihoods of age-old villages, a situation that experts believe could have been avoided with better pre-feasibility studies and sophisticated project implementation, reports Masood Hussain
Anticipated for years, finally, the increased incidence of land subsidence and sinking in the Pir Panchal Mountains is Jammu and Kashmir’s new normal. The young fragile and unstable mountain range separating Kashmir from the rest of the world is in news frequently as the slopes housing small habitations for centuries are caving in.
On February 19, 2023, around 16 structures of Duksar Dalwa (Duksar Dal), a hamlet almost 45 km uphill from Ramban, suffered serious damage as the land caved in. It crippled road connectivity between Gool and Ramban where almost 500 meters developed cracks, tripped the electric supply and snapped the water supply. Three homes developed cracks forcing authorities to shift the impacted population to safer areas.
Officials said while they are working overtime to resume power and water supplies, they are also improving the Dharam-Salballa road to make it an alternative supply route to the “literally disconnected” area. In the sinking village, the official encouraged the residents to move swiftly to safer spots. For residents, however, the gradual 3-day sinking was a painful watch of their life earnings slowly cracking up and becoming black holes over hills.
It started with a crater that widened to almost 500 meters during two nights, making almost everything around unsafe, unstable and life-threatening. A mosque, Darsgah, the village seminary and the village graveyard were destroyed. Residents quickly exhumed a recently buried body and laid it to rest at a “safe” place.
Officials who visited the spot said the village’s agriculture fields were rendered useless, pushing residents into poverty. They lost homes and their livelihoods too.
The Duksar erasing came less than a fortnight after Doda lost a cluster of houses to a similar instance on February 3, 2023. Located on the foothills on the road to Kishtwar near Thathri, nearly 35 km from Doda, the volunteers, residents and government officials had to quickly shift 117 members of 19 families as the patch of slope housing the Nai Basti cluster gave in within three days. A total of 21 structures cracked and became unsafe.
Horrific Tunnel Collapse
The last horrific tragedy took place on May 19, 2022, when the workers were digging into an adit (minor access to the T3 tunnel) near Khooni Nalla at Ramsu’s Makerkot area. It collapsed over them killing ten workers including two local residents and eight Nepalese labourers. The tragedy struck during the day amid incessant rain but still, only two persons could be rescued alive.
The workers were on the challenging stretch of the national highway between Digdole and Khooni Nallah, which is otherwise notorious for frequent landslides and shooting stones due to fragile geology. It was part of the twin-tube tunnel that would connect Digdole to Panthyal and was implemented by Ceigall India Limited in a JV with Patel Engineering Limited. (The contractor has been imposed a heavy fine.)
The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) that has taken over the Jammu Srinagar national highway from Border Roads Organisation (BRO), a few years back, is constructing at least five tunnels to bypass the highway’s 3-km “killer’’ stretch from Panthyal to Makerkote. Tunnel T3 is part of this intervention.
Unlike the rest of the highway, the 36-km Banihal Ramban stretch has been the most challenging one and that is why it is still under implementation. On this stretch are six “killer spots” located on a 14-km road stretch and NHAI intends to spend Rs 2000 crore to manage this. Implementation of this would offer some safety from frequent halts owing to shooting stones at Marog, Panthial, Digdol and Battery Chashma.
Triggering Instability
Implementation of these projects is triggering crises for the localities living around them. As many as 13 houses in Sujmatana village near Ramsu were literally devastated. The round-the-clock blasting for the tunnel projects and cutting work made these houses inhospitable after they developed cracks. Most of them have left their unsafe homes and migrated elsewhere. Though officials are looking into the crisis since 2017, it is yet to be settled.
On August 4, 2022, 36 families had a providential escape when their Bassan village in Reasi became the casualty of sinking and erosion at the same time. Without any notice, landslides carried down boulders and muck that crashed the houses and put the agriculture fields out of sight. It was so abrupt, villages said, that they had no time to take their belongings along.
Officials admitted that almost 60 kanals of land sank as another 400 kanals patch was rendered useless. Almost all the fruit trees, mostly walnut and apricot, were engulfed in mud. Almost 200 meters of a PMGSY road was also downthrown by around 25 meters from its actual alignment.
The earlier worst case was reported from Dalwas when on March 28, 2020, the residents fled when their homes and fields were literally buried by landslides. Almost 40 households were impacted.
The village has been there for ages and never experienced any such threat. Then one day it literally disappeared. Residents alleged that being away from Srinagar and Jammu, deep into the mountains they hardly were reported. At one point in time when they wanted to protest, authorities invoked Covid19 concerns to prevent it.
Response Protocol
Over the years, the government response has remained unchanged. Once the reports land that spots are sinking, they as the first quick reaction, send cops, paramilitary, SDRF and revenue officials to oversee and, in most cases, extend help in quick evacuations. In stage two, the respective Deputy Commissioner writes to geologists and the Department of Geology and Mining and, off late, to the Geological Survey of India, who rush their experts to these spots. In the subsequent few days, they study the local rock formations and submit reports, part of which goes to newspapers and by and large the files get closed.
At the same time, files start rolling about relief and rehabilitation. It takes its own time. In many cases, people who lose their homes and livelihoods are yet to be properly rehabilitated.
Invariably, the policymakers and the administrators avoid two vital ingredients of the story – the assessments that the local populations make about the crisis they land in and the wider angle that remains unchanged across the Pir Panchal range.
Resident Assessments
Affected populations are unwilling to accept that these crises are natural. They see them as man-made disasters. Raqeeb Wani, a former Sarpanch of Daskar Dalwa told The Telegraph that his village’s erasing is directly linked to the construction of two railway tunnels downhill, that would link a 3km rail track between Sangaldan and Chaddi. He attributed it to the “continuous blasting” that loosens the soil and adds to the instability of the mountain.
“A few years ago, we had a similar disaster in Sangaldan a few years ago when an entire market caved in,” Wani was quoted as saying. “That also was owing to the railway project.”
In the case of Dalwas, for instance, a former lawmaker from Ramban Ashok Kumar Dogra said the “unscientific planning” of the widening of the national highway is responsible. “The highway authorities started excavation of the road from beneath the village without raising any wall on the side of the village. As no concrete measures were taken by the NHAI to protect the village and debris was also disposed of at the same place, the tragedy was bound to happen and the houses collapsed and the village sank,” Dogra told Outlook. “I will not call it a natural disaster. It was the unplanned construction that destabilised the soil of the whole area, leading to its sinking.”
Right to A Road
Pir Panchal mountain range has remained literally invincible and technically impregnable for centuries. It took decades of thought process and a lot of resources to lay a foot track between Jammu and Srinagar, to have an alternative to Mughal Road. Known to history as the Banihal Cart Road, it was difficult and always retained by Dogra despots as a private route. It remained inaccessible to people till 1922. Till the Jawahar Tunnel was inaugurated, the road would pass over the Banihal pass, the abandoned remnants of which still exist.
This made Kashmir rely on the Jhelum Valley Road (JVR) as the main highway.
Almost 225 residents from 48 households who somehow survived the tragedy moved to another village and are still struggling to pick the threads of their lives. Though life has returned to the village, they are still fighting for an electric supply line and the rebuilding of the school building.
An Upcoming Railway
The road is just not the only thing that is happening deep inside the Pir Panchal mountain range. While the road is being upgraded, there is a railway project in an advanced stage of implementation.
Unlike the road that is being laid over the foothills not far away from the old alignment that also followed a foot track of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the railway track is passing through a virgin area, part of which has not seen even a bus. For making rail reach Baramulla from Udhampur, the 272-km project is going to cost a whopping Rs 37012 crore of which more than ninety per cent has already been spent.
Work on JVR started in 1880 and was formally thrown open in September 1890, when Maharaja Partap Singh was driven through from Baramulla to Kohala. The construction of this gigantic road project was implemented by a major British Indian contractor M/S Spedding, Mitchell & Co and was overseen by different British engineers at different stretches. While General de Bourbel oversaw everything as the Chief Engineer Kashmir, it was Alexander Atkinsonmanagedmost of the road up to Chakoti (on the other side of LoC now) and a few parts on the Kashmir side; Farrant was in charge of construction between Chakotiand Baramulla; as EG Hebbert supervised its completion in November 1889. Resources apart, it cost too many lives. Between Chakoti and Baramulla, 54 Pathans were killed in four years. Besides, 20 lives were lost to snake bites.
Post-partition, the Banihal Road became arterial and pressure built with a surge in population and demand in Kashmir. For seven decades, this road bore the brunt of all the pressures of travel, demand and consumerism and gave in. The rise of the Kashmir apple added another pressure factor so did the security requirements.
Finally, a stage reached that the health of the national highway was directly linked to the economic well-being of Kashmir. This paved the way for the decision by the Government of India that distances need to be reduced and the highway must be improved so that commuters do not end up spending a day on a 300-km highway.
More than a decade after the first spadework, it is emerging as one of the best roads. There are three major tunnels that have skipped dangerous patches while reducing distance and uphill driving: a set of four small tunnels near Nandni with a combined length of 1.4 km; 9.2 km Chenani-Nashri tunnel has bypassed a gruelling uphill drive and 8.5 km Banihal-Qazigund tunnel is going to tame dangerous Banihal Pass forever.
Distance has dropped from 300 to 270 km and the travel time from 12 to around 5 hours. But the Banihal-Ramban stretch remains a challenge. Earlier, it was merely a technological crisis, now it is a serious ecological issue.
These villagers were fortunate in comparison to the Sadal hamlet of Udhampur which was buried under a massive mudslide at noon on September 6, 2014. Following incessant rains for many days, it triggered massive floods in Kashmir and the rest of the erstwhile state. As many as 41 residents from 65 households were killed by the wee hour mountain collapse that brought an almost 30-foot-thick blanket of rafted rock fragments mud, sludge and rubble.
The rail is already chugging between Udhampur and Katra (25 km) since July 2014, Baramulla to Qazigund (118 km) since October 2009; and Qazigund to Baramulla (18 km) since June 2013. This leaves the most challenging stretch of 111 km between Banihal and Katra to be implemented.
However, the cost of the track does not define the project. It is the work that details the challenge. Nearly 119 km of the entire track will pass through 38 tunnels, the longest of which is 12.77 km long.
What is interesting is that in the 111-km Banihal – Katra track, 97.42 km are tunnels and most of the rest are bridges. Railway officials have to do 163.82 km of tunnelling in total – 66.4 km are escape tunnels – to make the track possible. For making these tunnel spots accessible to men and machines, there is a network of 205 km of roads, which remain busy round the clock.
This track will have 37 bridges – totalling 7 km in length, including the iconic Chenab Bridge, which is tipped to be the highest railway bridge on earth. While this bridge is ready, the current focus is on the first cable-stayed railway bridge on Anji Khad.
With thousands of people working deep inside the mountains with basic cutting and blasting machinery a lot of activity is generated.
There were dozens of instances in which the portions of various tunnels collapsed resulting in either changing the alignment or repairing the damage and restoring the tunnel. In July 2006, an almost 3 km long tunnel on the Udhampur-Katra track gradually started sinking after massive soil swelling on the two ends making it unusable and thus delaying the project. Northern Railways later hired an Austrian consultant, Geo Consult International (GCI), to salvage the project after many years of delay. The causes of the damage were visible to even the then Chief Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who said he saw “a river flowing under the tunnel”.
A number of tunnels between Katra and Sangaldan witnessed “abnormal” water discharge making construction a challenging task. In Sangladan, the managers were shocked when they saw a 500-meter track between two tunnels actually missing one fine morning. Reported in 2006, it destroyed a vast stretch of land on a slope housing as many as 100 structures besides over 400 meters of the road connecting Mahore and Gulabgarh.
In 2016 summer of 2016, authorities shifted 124 families – almost the entire village of Dharam, after the vast patch of land that housed the hamlet caved in within three months. Though the officials attributed it to natural reasons, the residents linked the unprecedented situation to the ongoing work on the railway line passing close to the village.
Oceans In Gorges
Piercing the Pir Panchal mountains for smooth, faster and better communication is just not the only thing happening in the region. Owing to the mighty Chenab, the region is Jammu and Kashmir’s powerhouse. More than 90 per cent of the hydropower potential is restricted to the region owing to the availability of water and enough space to construct dams within the mountain gorges. This has led to a situation where the region holds a massive amount of water in its dams.
The region’s tryst with power generation started late last century with the implementation of the 900-MW Salal power project in Reasi in 1978. The project’s 1.45 million cubic meter dam has created the Salal lake which has the capacity to retain more than 28 million cubic meters of water.
Then came the 390-MW Dul-Hasti Power Project near Kishtwar. It was followed by the 900-MW Baglihar power with 1.8 cubic meters of the dam and an additional reservoir capacity of 39.5 cubic meters – a facility that has created a huge water body in the mountain gorges between Chanderkote belt and Thathri to the extent that certain localities and infrastructures had to be relocated. Quite a few people still live in the highway town of Pul Doda.
The region has many other power projects at different stages of implementation. These include 850-MW Rattle, 100-MW Pakal Dul, 624-MW Kiru, 540-MW Kwar, 800-MW Bursar, and 930-MW Kirthai-II. This is an investment of tens of thousands of crore in mountain gorges on a single river within a river length of fewer than 100 km.
Baglihar is the only project that Jammu and Kashmir’s fully-owned JKSPDC owns. Chenab Valley Power Projects Ltd, a joint venture between JKSPDC and NHPC, India’s hydropower giant, is implementing four power projects – Pakal Dul, Kiru, Kwar and Karthia-II. Salal and Dul Hasti owned fully by NHPC and Ratle is being executed under a fresh JV with JKSPDC in which the latter holds 49 per cent stakes.
Stakes apart, hydropower stations are gigantic projects. These need huge spaces for water storage – even in the case of run-of-the-river schemes, and a lot of tunnelling. All projects have main tunnels, both head race and tail race, and then there are a lot of additional adits and small tunnels for servicing. Even though most of the tunnels and the dams are concrete structures, having such critical infrastructure usually triggers soil erosion and soil swellings too often. The 110-km Batote Kishtwar road has been ailing for all these years. Never in a year could it operate for all 365 days.
Cause versus Consequence?
Science has fundamentally opposed the idea of correlating causes with consequences especially when there is no plausible explanation. In the case of the Pir Panchal region, however, there are striking correlations. For most of recent history, land sliding has been happening around the national highway only. However, in the last decade, land subsidence is a routine and it is happening at all places where developmental activities are going on.
Bhaderwah town and its surroundings are witnessing “region-exclusive” tremors almost every year. In August 2022, there were 21 tremors, reaching up to 3.9 on the Richter scale. Such summer tremors have been there in 2013, 2016, 2017, and 2018. In fact, 2013 was harrowing as the earthquakes touched 5.8 on the Richter scale.
Land patches are caving in at spots closer to some kind of major developmental activity. This is as true with railway projects as it is in road widening projects. Certain spots caved in because works were implemented without a detailed study.
In Sangaldan, for instance, when the railway track collapsed, it was pointed out by geologist Prof GM Bhat that it had been built “on a fossil slide”, which failed to withstand the weight and crumbled down. “We knew it for decades but we were never consulted,” Bhat said. “In this part of the Himalayas, rock types change after every half a kilometre.”
A respected geologist, Bhat insists that developmental activities can take place in any space that is as fragile as Pir Panchal but it needs adequate pre-implementation study and proper implementation mechanism.
“In the four-laning of the highway, the crisis would have been manageable had there been least vertical cuts,” Bhat said. “Impounding so much of water (in power projects dams) within a small patch has the potential of inducing earthquakes.” He insists that the managers of the water projects must ensure better maintenance of the tunnels or these could become a serious crisis in future.
Bhat, however, sees society also going unruly. “In Banihal near the Mahu Mangat side, a hillock is a completely populated town now,” he said. “Has anybody tried to verify where the waste goes? Are we expecting a major crisis in the coming days when the hill will cave in because of seepage?”
The region is a risky belt given its fragile geology. The upcoming railway line is built over three major active geological fault lines: the Main Boundary Thrust (between Udhampur and Katra), the Muree Thrust (between Baglihar and Sangaldan) and the Panjal Thrust (between Digdol and Mahu Mangat). “I never say railway tracks cannot cross fault lines but I believe that had local expertise been involved, extensive fieldwork would have reduced the costs and perfected the alignment”. Entire Jammu and Kashmir is classified as seismic zone-V, the highest earthquake-prone area. CAG has already done a thick report on the resources that were wasted because of the geological surprises that erupted after various rail projects were implemented. Parts of the alignment were changed and completed works were abandoned.
A fault line actually passes through the centre of the Baghlihar dam and most other reservoirs are very close to the fault lines underneath. “A dam burst will be worse than the earthquake itself,” Bhat, who retired recently after heading the University of Jammu’s Geology Department for a long time, said. Interestingly, the area is reporting an increased incidence of cloudbursts, seen as an indicator of climate change. “One major cloudburst near a dam can trigger unprecedented devastation.”
One such cloudburst on July 28, 2021, almost decimated Honzer, a hamlet concealed within inaccessible mountains of remote Dacchan, killing 26 residents. The bodies of almost 18 of the victims were never found.
Many geologists who studied Dalwa fall attributed the land subsidence to water seepage, and extensive cutting of steep slopes. They have suggested a robust urban land use plan, a prerequisite for any activity, especially in hilly areas.
https://kashmirlife.net/o-pir-panchal-vol-14-issue-49-311779/
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Anticipated for years, finally, the increased incidence of land subsidence and sinking in the Pir Panchal Mountains is Jammu and Kashmir’s new normal. The young fragile and unstable mountain range separating Kashmir from the rest of the world is in news frequently as the slopes housing small habitations for centuries are caving in.
On February 19, 2023, around 16 structures of Duksar Dalwa (Duksar Dal), a hamlet almost 45 km uphill from Ramban, suffered serious damage as the land caved in. It crippled road connectivity between Gool and Ramban where almost 500 meters developed cracks, tripped the electric supply and snapped the water supply. Three homes developed cracks forcing authorities to shift the impacted population to safer areas.
Officials said while they are working overtime to resume power and water supplies, they are also improving the Dharam-Salballa road to make it an alternative supply route to the “literally disconnected” area. In the sinking village, the official encouraged the residents to move swiftly to safer spots. For residents, however, the gradual 3-day sinking was a painful watch of their life earnings slowly cracking up and becoming black holes over hills.
It started with a crater that widened to almost 500 meters during two nights, making almost everything around unsafe, unstable and life-threatening. A mosque, Darsgah, the village seminary and the village graveyard were destroyed. Residents quickly exhumed a recently buried body and laid it to rest at a “safe” place.
Officials who visited the spot said the village’s agriculture fields were rendered useless, pushing residents into poverty. They lost homes and their livelihoods too.
The Duksar erasing came less than a fortnight after Doda lost a cluster of houses to a similar instance on February 3, 2023. Located on the foothills on the road to Kishtwar near Thathri, nearly 35 km from Doda, the volunteers, residents and government officials had to quickly shift 117 members of 19 families as the patch of slope housing the Nai Basti cluster gave in within three days. A total of 21 structures cracked and became unsafe.
Horrific Tunnel Collapse
The last horrific tragedy took place on May 19, 2022, when the workers were digging into an adit (minor access to the T3 tunnel) near Khooni Nalla at Ramsu’s Makerkot area. It collapsed over them killing ten workers including two local residents and eight Nepalese labourers. The tragedy struck during the day amid incessant rain but still, only two persons could be rescued alive.
The workers were on the challenging stretch of the national highway between Digdole and Khooni Nallah, which is otherwise notorious for frequent landslides and shooting stones due to fragile geology. It was part of the twin-tube tunnel that would connect Digdole to Panthyal and was implemented by Ceigall India Limited in a JV with Patel Engineering Limited. (The contractor has been imposed a heavy fine.)
The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) that has taken over the Jammu Srinagar national highway from Border Roads Organisation (BRO), a few years back, is constructing at least five tunnels to bypass the highway’s 3-km “killer’’ stretch from Panthyal to Makerkote. Tunnel T3 is part of this intervention.
Unlike the rest of the highway, the 36-km Banihal Ramban stretch has been the most challenging one and that is why it is still under implementation. On this stretch are six “killer spots” located on a 14-km road stretch and NHAI intends to spend Rs 2000 crore to manage this. Implementation of this would offer some safety from frequent halts owing to shooting stones at Marog, Panthial, Digdol and Battery Chashma.
Triggering Instability
Implementation of these projects is triggering crises for the localities living around them. As many as 13 houses in Sujmatana village near Ramsu were literally devastated. The round-the-clock blasting for the tunnel projects and cutting work made these houses inhospitable after they developed cracks. Most of them have left their unsafe homes and migrated elsewhere. Though officials are looking into the crisis since 2017, it is yet to be settled.
On August 4, 2022, 36 families had a providential escape when their Bassan village in Reasi became the casualty of sinking and erosion at the same time. Without any notice, landslides carried down boulders and muck that crashed the houses and put the agriculture fields out of sight. It was so abrupt, villages said, that they had no time to take their belongings along.
Officials admitted that almost 60 kanals of land sank as another 400 kanals patch was rendered useless. Almost all the fruit trees, mostly walnut and apricot, were engulfed in mud. Almost 200 meters of a PMGSY road was also downthrown by around 25 meters from its actual alignment.
The earlier worst case was reported from Dalwas when on March 28, 2020, the residents fled when their homes and fields were literally buried by landslides. Almost 40 households were impacted.
The village has been there for ages and never experienced any such threat. Then one day it literally disappeared. Residents alleged that being away from Srinagar and Jammu, deep into the mountains they hardly were reported. At one point in time when they wanted to protest, authorities invoked Covid19 concerns to prevent it.
Response Protocol
Over the years, the government response has remained unchanged. Once the reports land that spots are sinking, they as the first quick reaction, send cops, paramilitary, SDRF and revenue officials to oversee and, in most cases, extend help in quick evacuations. In stage two, the respective Deputy Commissioner writes to geologists and the Department of Geology and Mining and, off late, to the Geological Survey of India, who rush their experts to these spots. In the subsequent few days, they study the local rock formations and submit reports, part of which goes to newspapers and by and large the files get closed.
At the same time, files start rolling about relief and rehabilitation. It takes its own time. In many cases, people who lose their homes and livelihoods are yet to be properly rehabilitated.
Invariably, the policymakers and the administrators avoid two vital ingredients of the story – the assessments that the local populations make about the crisis they land in and the wider angle that remains unchanged across the Pir Panchal range.
Resident Assessments
Affected populations are unwilling to accept that these crises are natural. They see them as man-made disasters. Raqeeb Wani, a former Sarpanch of Daskar Dalwa told The Telegraph that his village’s erasing is directly linked to the construction of two railway tunnels downhill, that would link a 3km rail track between Sangaldan and Chaddi. He attributed it to the “continuous blasting” that loosens the soil and adds to the instability of the mountain.
“A few years ago, we had a similar disaster in Sangaldan a few years ago when an entire market caved in,” Wani was quoted as saying. “That also was owing to the railway project.”
In the case of Dalwas, for instance, a former lawmaker from Ramban Ashok Kumar Dogra said the “unscientific planning” of the widening of the national highway is responsible. “The highway authorities started excavation of the road from beneath the village without raising any wall on the side of the village. As no concrete measures were taken by the NHAI to protect the village and debris was also disposed of at the same place, the tragedy was bound to happen and the houses collapsed and the village sank,” Dogra told Outlook. “I will not call it a natural disaster. It was the unplanned construction that destabilised the soil of the whole area, leading to its sinking.”
Right to A Road
Pir Panchal mountain range has remained literally invincible and technically impregnable for centuries. It took decades of thought process and a lot of resources to lay a foot track between Jammu and Srinagar, to have an alternative to Mughal Road. Known to history as the Banihal Cart Road, it was difficult and always retained by Dogra despots as a private route. It remained inaccessible to people till 1922. Till the Jawahar Tunnel was inaugurated, the road would pass over the Banihal pass, the abandoned remnants of which still exist.
This made Kashmir rely on the Jhelum Valley Road (JVR) as the main highway.
Almost 225 residents from 48 households who somehow survived the tragedy moved to another village and are still struggling to pick the threads of their lives. Though life has returned to the village, they are still fighting for an electric supply line and the rebuilding of the school building.
An Upcoming Railway
The road is just not the only thing that is happening deep inside the Pir Panchal mountain range. While the road is being upgraded, there is a railway project in an advanced stage of implementation.
Unlike the road that is being laid over the foothills not far away from the old alignment that also followed a foot track of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the railway track is passing through a virgin area, part of which has not seen even a bus. For making rail reach Baramulla from Udhampur, the 272-km project is going to cost a whopping Rs 37012 crore of which more than ninety per cent has already been spent.
Work on JVR started in 1880 and was formally thrown open in September 1890, when Maharaja Partap Singh was driven through from Baramulla to Kohala. The construction of this gigantic road project was implemented by a major British Indian contractor M/S Spedding, Mitchell & Co and was overseen by different British engineers at different stretches. While General de Bourbel oversaw everything as the Chief Engineer Kashmir, it was Alexander Atkinsonmanagedmost of the road up to Chakoti (on the other side of LoC now) and a few parts on the Kashmir side; Farrant was in charge of construction between Chakotiand Baramulla; as EG Hebbert supervised its completion in November 1889. Resources apart, it cost too many lives. Between Chakoti and Baramulla, 54 Pathans were killed in four years. Besides, 20 lives were lost to snake bites.
Post-partition, the Banihal Road became arterial and pressure built with a surge in population and demand in Kashmir. For seven decades, this road bore the brunt of all the pressures of travel, demand and consumerism and gave in. The rise of the Kashmir apple added another pressure factor so did the security requirements.
Finally, a stage reached that the health of the national highway was directly linked to the economic well-being of Kashmir. This paved the way for the decision by the Government of India that distances need to be reduced and the highway must be improved so that commuters do not end up spending a day on a 300-km highway.
More than a decade after the first spadework, it is emerging as one of the best roads. There are three major tunnels that have skipped dangerous patches while reducing distance and uphill driving: a set of four small tunnels near Nandni with a combined length of 1.4 km; 9.2 km Chenani-Nashri tunnel has bypassed a gruelling uphill drive and 8.5 km Banihal-Qazigund tunnel is going to tame dangerous Banihal Pass forever.
Distance has dropped from 300 to 270 km and the travel time from 12 to around 5 hours. But the Banihal-Ramban stretch remains a challenge. Earlier, it was merely a technological crisis, now it is a serious ecological issue.
These villagers were fortunate in comparison to the Sadal hamlet of Udhampur which was buried under a massive mudslide at noon on September 6, 2014. Following incessant rains for many days, it triggered massive floods in Kashmir and the rest of the erstwhile state. As many as 41 residents from 65 households were killed by the wee hour mountain collapse that brought an almost 30-foot-thick blanket of rafted rock fragments mud, sludge and rubble.
The rail is already chugging between Udhampur and Katra (25 km) since July 2014, Baramulla to Qazigund (118 km) since October 2009; and Qazigund to Baramulla (18 km) since June 2013. This leaves the most challenging stretch of 111 km between Banihal and Katra to be implemented.
However, the cost of the track does not define the project. It is the work that details the challenge. Nearly 119 km of the entire track will pass through 38 tunnels, the longest of which is 12.77 km long.
What is interesting is that in the 111-km Banihal – Katra track, 97.42 km are tunnels and most of the rest are bridges. Railway officials have to do 163.82 km of tunnelling in total – 66.4 km are escape tunnels – to make the track possible. For making these tunnel spots accessible to men and machines, there is a network of 205 km of roads, which remain busy round the clock.
This track will have 37 bridges – totalling 7 km in length, including the iconic Chenab Bridge, which is tipped to be the highest railway bridge on earth. While this bridge is ready, the current focus is on the first cable-stayed railway bridge on Anji Khad.
With thousands of people working deep inside the mountains with basic cutting and blasting machinery a lot of activity is generated.
There were dozens of instances in which the portions of various tunnels collapsed resulting in either changing the alignment or repairing the damage and restoring the tunnel. In July 2006, an almost 3 km long tunnel on the Udhampur-Katra track gradually started sinking after massive soil swelling on the two ends making it unusable and thus delaying the project. Northern Railways later hired an Austrian consultant, Geo Consult International (GCI), to salvage the project after many years of delay. The causes of the damage were visible to even the then Chief Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who said he saw “a river flowing under the tunnel”.
A number of tunnels between Katra and Sangaldan witnessed “abnormal” water discharge making construction a challenging task. In Sangladan, the managers were shocked when they saw a 500-meter track between two tunnels actually missing one fine morning. Reported in 2006, it destroyed a vast stretch of land on a slope housing as many as 100 structures besides over 400 meters of the road connecting Mahore and Gulabgarh.
In 2016 summer of 2016, authorities shifted 124 families – almost the entire village of Dharam, after the vast patch of land that housed the hamlet caved in within three months. Though the officials attributed it to natural reasons, the residents linked the unprecedented situation to the ongoing work on the railway line passing close to the village.
Oceans In Gorges
Piercing the Pir Panchal mountains for smooth, faster and better communication is just not the only thing happening in the region. Owing to the mighty Chenab, the region is Jammu and Kashmir’s powerhouse. More than 90 per cent of the hydropower potential is restricted to the region owing to the availability of water and enough space to construct dams within the mountain gorges. This has led to a situation where the region holds a massive amount of water in its dams.
The region’s tryst with power generation started late last century with the implementation of the 900-MW Salal power project in Reasi in 1978. The project’s 1.45 million cubic meter dam has created the Salal lake which has the capacity to retain more than 28 million cubic meters of water.
Then came the 390-MW Dul-Hasti Power Project near Kishtwar. It was followed by the 900-MW Baglihar power with 1.8 cubic meters of the dam and an additional reservoir capacity of 39.5 cubic meters – a facility that has created a huge water body in the mountain gorges between Chanderkote belt and Thathri to the extent that certain localities and infrastructures had to be relocated. Quite a few people still live in the highway town of Pul Doda.
The region has many other power projects at different stages of implementation. These include 850-MW Rattle, 100-MW Pakal Dul, 624-MW Kiru, 540-MW Kwar, 800-MW Bursar, and 930-MW Kirthai-II. This is an investment of tens of thousands of crore in mountain gorges on a single river within a river length of fewer than 100 km.
Baglihar is the only project that Jammu and Kashmir’s fully-owned JKSPDC owns. Chenab Valley Power Projects Ltd, a joint venture between JKSPDC and NHPC, India’s hydropower giant, is implementing four power projects – Pakal Dul, Kiru, Kwar and Karthia-II. Salal and Dul Hasti owned fully by NHPC and Ratle is being executed under a fresh JV with JKSPDC in which the latter holds 49 per cent stakes.
Stakes apart, hydropower stations are gigantic projects. These need huge spaces for water storage – even in the case of run-of-the-river schemes, and a lot of tunnelling. All projects have main tunnels, both head race and tail race, and then there are a lot of additional adits and small tunnels for servicing. Even though most of the tunnels and the dams are concrete structures, having such critical infrastructure usually triggers soil erosion and soil swellings too often. The 110-km Batote Kishtwar road has been ailing for all these years. Never in a year could it operate for all 365 days.
Cause versus Consequence?
Science has fundamentally opposed the idea of correlating causes with consequences especially when there is no plausible explanation. In the case of the Pir Panchal region, however, there are striking correlations. For most of recent history, land sliding has been happening around the national highway only. However, in the last decade, land subsidence is a routine and it is happening at all places where developmental activities are going on.
Bhaderwah town and its surroundings are witnessing “region-exclusive” tremors almost every year. In August 2022, there were 21 tremors, reaching up to 3.9 on the Richter scale. Such summer tremors have been there in 2013, 2016, 2017, and 2018. In fact, 2013 was harrowing as the earthquakes touched 5.8 on the Richter scale.
Land patches are caving in at spots closer to some kind of major developmental activity. This is as true with railway projects as it is in road widening projects. Certain spots caved in because works were implemented without a detailed study.
In Sangaldan, for instance, when the railway track collapsed, it was pointed out by geologist Prof GM Bhat that it had been built “on a fossil slide”, which failed to withstand the weight and crumbled down. “We knew it for decades but we were never consulted,” Bhat said. “In this part of the Himalayas, rock types change after every half a kilometre.”
A respected geologist, Bhat insists that developmental activities can take place in any space that is as fragile as Pir Panchal but it needs adequate pre-implementation study and proper implementation mechanism.
“In the four-laning of the highway, the crisis would have been manageable had there been least vertical cuts,” Bhat said. “Impounding so much of water (in power projects dams) within a small patch has the potential of inducing earthquakes.” He insists that the managers of the water projects must ensure better maintenance of the tunnels or these could become a serious crisis in future.
Bhat, however, sees society also going unruly. “In Banihal near the Mahu Mangat side, a hillock is a completely populated town now,” he said. “Has anybody tried to verify where the waste goes? Are we expecting a major crisis in the coming days when the hill will cave in because of seepage?”
The region is a risky belt given its fragile geology. The upcoming railway line is built over three major active geological fault lines: the Main Boundary Thrust (between Udhampur and Katra), the Muree Thrust (between Baglihar and Sangaldan) and the Panjal Thrust (between Digdol and Mahu Mangat). “I never say railway tracks cannot cross fault lines but I believe that had local expertise been involved, extensive fieldwork would have reduced the costs and perfected the alignment”. Entire Jammu and Kashmir is classified as seismic zone-V, the highest earthquake-prone area. CAG has already done a thick report on the resources that were wasted because of the geological surprises that erupted after various rail projects were implemented. Parts of the alignment were changed and completed works were abandoned.
A fault line actually passes through the centre of the Baghlihar dam and most other reservoirs are very close to the fault lines underneath. “A dam burst will be worse than the earthquake itself,” Bhat, who retired recently after heading the University of Jammu’s Geology Department for a long time, said. Interestingly, the area is reporting an increased incidence of cloudbursts, seen as an indicator of climate change. “One major cloudburst near a dam can trigger unprecedented devastation.”
One such cloudburst on July 28, 2021, almost decimated Honzer, a hamlet concealed within inaccessible mountains of remote Dacchan, killing 26 residents. The bodies of almost 18 of the victims were never found.
Many geologists who studied Dalwa fall attributed the land subsidence to water seepage, and extensive cutting of steep slopes. They have suggested a robust urban land use plan, a prerequisite for any activity, especially in hilly areas.
https://kashmirlife.net/o-pir-panchal-vol-14-issue-49-311779/
2023.06.07 11:57 mArKoLeW My dreams seem dumber and dumber the more time I spent here
DISCLAIMER: I am no professional and trying to educate myself on the go.
Hi, I started to plan a homelab for myself and did quite a lot of work on that so far. Planned nearly everything out and am currently looking for HW and starting to feel down. I layout out my future rack (left is front, right is back) and noticed it's going to be expensive but that's fine as I am going to do it modularly so step by step. Even though it's going to stay in the planning state for quite some time as I want to do it properly and not spontaneously.
In general, I want to have something like a "three node" setup (one node optimized for cpu power for tasks like virtualization and for example cfd, one node for gaming and GPU accelerated computing, and one "node" [consisting out of at least 3 low power nodes] for HA and serving services like DNS, pihole, website, etc) The Diagram is quite complicated but you maybe get the idea. I want to only have the HA nodes running all the time and powering up the "bigger" ones only when I need them.
My main focus for hardware is the ability to scale the "power" nodes up. So a great mainboard in which I could for example easily put more and more ram or more GPUs without having to change the mainboard. Feeling like "Oh I need more RAM" Okay just buy it, put it in, and be done without the overhead of needing to change the mainboard and so on. The goal is to make them more overpowered as money finds its way into my pocket.
What I am struggling with now is finding suitable hardware for that purpose and it makes me question the whole project. So I just thought I could share my progress so far with planning, maybe a lil sanity check, and some recommendations on trusted stores for used commercial-grade server components to get the motivation up again. Also, a lot of concerns in posts on here about noise and heat, and the classic only get what you need is stressing me a bit out. So as I plan and read on here I feel more educated but also more delusional about my project.
Also how much did you guys plan and how did you cope with struggles while doing so? Or did you just go with the moment?
If someone feels like talking about it on maybe discord or sth I would be more than happy about that.
Just for fun here is my network diagram but I don't think that is important. I am going to try to realize it with Proxmox and VLANs.
Please ask for any more information you want/need and give feedback on my post itself.
By the way, I see the whole planning and homelab as a hobby so I am not interested in rented or cloud solutions.
So please share your thoughts if you have time and maybe I get a great new idea.
submitted by mArKoLeW to homelab [link] [comments]
Hi, I started to plan a homelab for myself and did quite a lot of work on that so far. Planned nearly everything out and am currently looking for HW and starting to feel down. I layout out my future rack (left is front, right is back) and noticed it's going to be expensive but that's fine as I am going to do it modularly so step by step. Even though it's going to stay in the planning state for quite some time as I want to do it properly and not spontaneously.
In general, I want to have something like a "three node" setup (one node optimized for cpu power for tasks like virtualization and for example cfd, one node for gaming and GPU accelerated computing, and one "node" [consisting out of at least 3 low power nodes] for HA and serving services like DNS, pihole, website, etc) The Diagram is quite complicated but you maybe get the idea. I want to only have the HA nodes running all the time and powering up the "bigger" ones only when I need them.
My main focus for hardware is the ability to scale the "power" nodes up. So a great mainboard in which I could for example easily put more and more ram or more GPUs without having to change the mainboard. Feeling like "Oh I need more RAM" Okay just buy it, put it in, and be done without the overhead of needing to change the mainboard and so on. The goal is to make them more overpowered as money finds its way into my pocket.
What I am struggling with now is finding suitable hardware for that purpose and it makes me question the whole project. So I just thought I could share my progress so far with planning, maybe a lil sanity check, and some recommendations on trusted stores for used commercial-grade server components to get the motivation up again. Also, a lot of concerns in posts on here about noise and heat, and the classic only get what you need is stressing me a bit out. So as I plan and read on here I feel more educated but also more delusional about my project.
Also how much did you guys plan and how did you cope with struggles while doing so? Or did you just go with the moment?
If someone feels like talking about it on maybe discord or sth I would be more than happy about that.
Just for fun here is my network diagram but I don't think that is important. I am going to try to realize it with Proxmox and VLANs.
Please ask for any more information you want/need and give feedback on my post itself.
By the way, I see the whole planning and homelab as a hobby so I am not interested in rented or cloud solutions.
So please share your thoughts if you have time and maybe I get a great new idea.
2023.06.07 11:04 lechatheureux The Tonpa Kingdoms Part 2 (The Kingdoms of Jangshun and Monyul)
Check out part 1 for context
The Tonpa Kingdoms Part 1 (Overview and The Gods) : worldbuilding (reddit.com)
There are 5 connected Kingdoms that have Tonpa as their main religion these are.
Jangshun
A Place of snow-capped Mountains and green Valleys, said to be built upon the ruins of the ancient Jungar people who controlled much of the area of Jangshun and the nearby kingdoms of Monyul and Taishigang.
Very little is known about the Jungar, their ruins are scattered throughout the landscape of Jangshun, and are often characterized by simple stone structures, pottery shards, and other artifacts. Based on these remains, it is believed that the Jungar were a relatively simple society, with a lifestyle that revolved around farming, herding, and other basic activities.
Despite their lack of sophistication, the Jugar are an important part of the history and culture of the region many myths and legends have grown up around them, the people of Jangshun often see the Jungar as a symbol of the enduring spirit of the region, and take pride in the fact that they were able to survive and thrive in a harsh and unforgiving environment. In addition to their physical remains, the Jungar have left a lasting impact on the people of Jangshun in other ways. Their language, customs, and traditions are thought to have influenced the culture of the later kingdom, and many people still feel a strong connection to the Jagun and their way of life.
The Capital of Jangshun is called Druktse, founded by Dragon Priests and the legendary Namgyal dynasty the city is known for its unique architecture, with buildings made of wood and stone, intricately carved and painted with colorful designs and motifs, the streets are narrow and winding, with prayer flags fluttering in the breeze and the sound of temple bells ringing in the air.
At the center of the city is the Royal Palace of Jigme Wangchuk, a majestic building that serves as the residence of the Royal Family, the palace consists of several wings and halls, each with its own specific function. The main hall is the center of political and ceremonial activities, where the king held court and received important guests. The royal family's private quarters were located in a separate wing, with opulent living spaces and lavish decorations.
One of the most impressive features of the palace is the Eagle Tower, a tall structure that houses the elite Eagle Guards, who were responsible for the king's security the tower is covered from top to bottom with intricate carvings of the bird of prey.
The palace is surrounded by lush gardens and fountains, and it is guarded by soldiers in traditional Eagle attire, the Eagle Guards of the palace of Jingme Wangchuk are an elite group of soldiers tasked with protecting the king and the royal family, known for their fearsome reputation and exceptional combat skills, the Eagle Guards are considered one of the most prestigious units in the Jangshun army.
The guards are named after the majestic eagles that inhabit the mountainous regions of Jangshun, and they were trained to emulate the hunting tactics of these birds of prey. They are adept at using the terrain to their advantage, and are particularly skilled at scaling steep cliffs and mountainous terrain to surprise and overwhelm their enemies. In addition to their exceptional combat skills, the Eagle Guards were also known for their loyalty and dedication to the royal family. They undergo rigorous training and were selected based on their physical prowess, intelligence, and character, to become an Eagle Guard, applicants must be graduates of both the School of the Father and School of the Dragon.
The Eagle Guards are outfitted in distinctive uniforms that featured a stylized eagle emblem, and they were armed with a variety of weapons, including bows, spears, and swords. They were also known to use eagle feathers and talons in their armor and equipment, as a nod to the unit's namesake.
Druktse is a hub of cultural and religious activities, with several monasteries and temples located throughout the city.
The most famous of these is the Tashicho Dzong, a stunning fortress monastery that serves as the seat of The Gyelpa (The Duke) the secondary ruler of Druktse and the center of Druk-Ta worship. The dzong is surrounded by high walls and towers, and is accessible through a grand gate that is guarded by soldiers. The interior of the dzong is a maze of courtyards, chapels, and offices, all connected by narrow passageways and staircases.
One of the most impressive features of Tashicho Dzong is its towering central fortress and monastery, which rises above the rest of the complex and can be seen from miles around. This fortress is home to the Dragon Priests and is one of the most important structures in Jangshun. The fortress monastery is also famous for its beautiful architecture and intricate artwork. The walls of the courtyards are adorned with colorful murals and paintings, while the chapels are filled with statues and other religious artifacts. Visitors to Tashicho Dzong can tour the complex and learn about Jangshun history and culture, as well as observe the daily routines of the monks who live and work there. The Monastery is open to the public during certain hours of the day, and visitors are advised to dress modestly and remove their shoes before entering the chapels. Even though the current royal family of Jangshun are connected to The Father, The Dragon holds a special place in Druktse.
The people of Druktse are known for their warm hospitality and their strong sense of community. They celebrate several festivals throughout the year, including the annual Tshechu festival, the 3 Gods Festival which features colorful dances and rituals performed by monks and laypeople.
To the north-east of the Kingdom lies the second biggest city in Jangshun, the city of Lhagyal, often called “The Fire-proof City”
Lhagyal is a mass of stone walls and buildings with precious little wood being used at all, the walls of the city are imposingly high and even the central palace is relatively flat and does not rise above the walls, there are 4 gates made of pure steel and those are the only entrances and exits.
Inside the city walls, the streets are narrow and winding, with tall, tightly packed buildings constructed from rough-hewn stone. The architecture is distinct, with flat roofs and ornate metal doors decorating the doorways and windows, many of the buildings are built into the city's walls, their backs resting against the ancient stones.
There is more to the city than what meets the eye. Beneath the streets lie a labyrinth of tunnels and catacombs, built for both practical and spiritual purposes. Some are used for storage or as escape routes, while others are filled with ancient artifacts and sacred relics. The catacombs are also home to a complex network of underground temples and shrines and busy streets that are home to underground residences and businesses.
Despite its rugged appearance, the city's architecture is a testament to its resilience. It has withstood numerous attempts at invasion over the centuries, including attacks by powerful enemies armed with the latest in siege weaponry. The city's fortifications are a marvel of engineering, designed to withstand even the most devastating attacks and yet, for all its defensive prowess, the city has never lost sight of its cultural heritage.
The most famous instance of this was when the neighbouring Confucian Kingdom of Jinyun attempted to invade Jangshun with its impressive military might, scores of loyal foot-soldiers hardened by decades of conflict and advanced siege technology that included weapons that used fireworks.
The city withstood months of warfare with Lhagyal earning its nickname of “The Fire-proof City” The stone structures withstood the fireworks and the hard rock of the walls withstood the Jinyun catapults, outside the city several guerilla efforts by the Eagle Guards, The Company of the Hand and The White Tigers from Monyul lending their support repelled attempted on-foot invasions by the hardened Jinyun soldiers.
In the south-west of Jangshun, near the borders of Monyul and Taishigang lies the town of Gyalpeling, a place revered by monks and pilgrims alike. Gyalpeling, meaning "Abode of the Victorious" is a small yet vibrant town located in a remote corner of the kingdom. Its strategic location, surrounded by imposing mountains and blessed with fertile lands, has made it a crucial hub for spiritual activities and monastic life. The town is centered around a grand monastery, which serves as the heart and soul of the community. The monastery, known as Samtenling Monastery, is a majestic complex of ornate buildings adorned with colorful murals, fluttering prayer flags, and the sound of chanting monks echoing through the air. It is a revered place of worship and learning, drawing scholars, practitioners, and seekers of wisdom from far and wide. The streets of Gyalpeling are lined with modest housing for monks, adorned with intricate woodcarvings and colorful paintings. The locals, known for their warm hospitality and deep reverence for Tonpa, every activity the townspeople engage in helps the monastery in some way, whether trading, farming or craftsmanship, every resident of Gyalpeling helps out the monastery in some way. The town also boasts natural hot springs, believed to have healing properties, which attract pilgrims and visitors seeking solace and rejuvenation. The pristine rivers and lakes surrounding Gyalpeling add to its enchanting beauty, serving as places for meditation, ritual ablutions, and scenic walks. Gyalpeling is not only a place of spiritual significance, but it also serves as a center of learning, with numerous scriptoria, libraries, and meditation caves where monks engage in intensive study, contemplation, and meditation, prospective monks come from all over the 5 Kingdoms to study in Gyalpeling, as monks educated within its walls are valued in any court of the Tonpa Kingdoms.
One of the most valuable cities in Jangshun isn't far from the capital, a short 1 hour horse ride east of Druktse stands the city of Jangtse, a jewel in the crown of the kingdom. Jangtse, meaning "Silver Peak" in the local tongue, owes its fame and prosperity to the rich veins of silver that run through the nearby mountains, making it a thriving center for mining and trade. At the heart of Jangtse rises a magnificent conical palace, known as Jang Potrang, or the "Silver Palace." The palace, glistening like a beacon atop the tallest hill in the city, is adorned with silver-plated roofs, walls, and pillars, reflecting the sunlight and casting a mesmerizing glow over the surrounding landscape. It serves as the royal residence, where the Count holds court and conducts affairs pertaining to the area between Jangtse and Druktse. The streets of Jangtse are lined with buildings that boast silver-plated facades, creating a surreal and shimmering sight as one walks through the city, often shining gold from reflecting the sunlight, the wealth of the city is evident in the intricate silver filigree work that adorns windows, doors, and rooftops of temples, mansions, and markets alike. The silversmiths of Jangtse are renowned for their craftsmanship, producing exquisite silverware and jewelry that are sought after by collectors and traders from distant lands. The city is a bustling center of commerce, with a vibrant market square where merchants from across the region gather to trade in silver, gemstones, textiles, and other precious goods. The sounds of bartering, laughter, and the clinking of silver coins fill the air.
The Armies of Jangshun are known for their ferocious foot-soldiers, the every-day rank and file soldiers of the Jangshun armies are regarded as the best in the region and are a feared prospect to face on any battlefield.
The soldiers of the army of Jangshun are highly disciplined and skilled in the art of warfare, and are renowned throughout the region for their courage and loyalty. They are trained in a variety of weapons and fighting styles, including archery, swordsmanship, and hand-to-hand combat.
It is said that the success of the army comes from the fact that many men and women who fight in it are from mountainous regions and are conditioned from a young age to move over mountainous land with ease, their armies can easily traverse land that would be impossible for normal armies to travel over, due to the fact that the soldiers know the land.
The army of Jangshun is led by a commander-in-chief, who is appointed by the common foot-soldiers and is responsible for the overall strategy and tactics of the army. Under the commander-in-chief, there are several generals and officers who oversee different units of the army, each with their own specific roles and responsibilities. The soldiers of the army of Jangshun are equipped with a variety of weapons and armor, including shields, helmets, and chainmail. They are also skilled in the use of traditional weapons, such as the da and the gochu, which are types of swords. In addition to their skills in battle, the soldiers of the army of Jangshun are also highly respected for their loyalty and devotion to their ruler and country. They are known for their strong sense of duty and honor, and are willing to lay down their lives in defense of their homeland. The army of Jangshun is often called upon to defend the kingdom against invading forces, and has a long history of successful battles and campaigns. Their reputation for courage and skill has earned them the respect of their neighbors and allies, and they are a source of pride and inspiration for the people of Jangshun.
One of the most famous regiments from Jangshun is the “Wheel of Steel” A heavily armored longsword unit founded by Princess Jamyang Daughter of King Kunga and Sister of King Yangchen of the Yeshe Dynasty after she travelled to Europe and witnessed people fighting in full suits of armor, this was a foreign concept in the areas around her and she implemented the idea with her Father's (And later Brother's) full support they were first deployed in aid of Taishigang who were experiencing an invasion from a nearby Dharmist Kingdom. The longswords cleaved through the invading forces lack of armor and their steel plates deflected blows.
Monyul
Monyul is a land of vast open spaces and stunning natural beauty. The kingdom is home to a proud and fiercely independent people, who have built a rich culture and a strong military tradition, its plains are green and warm during the summer but snow is not uncommon in winter. Dharmaling is the capital city of Monyul and is nestled in the hills, surrounded by winding rivers and vast grasslands. It is a city steeped in tradition and culture, with a rich history that stretches back centuries.
Dharmaling was built as the northern most outpost of the Dharmist Indraprastha Empire but was conquered by Tonpa forces from a tribe that would eventually become known as the Monyul. The city is built around a central marketplace, where merchants from all over the known world come to trade their wares. The marketplace is a bustling hub of activity, filled with the sounds of bargaining and haggling, and the aromas of exotic spices and perfumes.
The Company of the Wind have their main offices in Dharmaling and use the bustling 10 storey wooden building to plan its operations throughout the known world. The streets of Dharmaling are relatively wide due to the constant horse carts that pass through them. The buildings are made of stone and wood, with intricately carved facades and ornate balconies. Many of the houses have flat roofs, which are used as outdoor living spaces during the warmer months. At the heart of the city lies the great monastery of The 3 Gods, unlike in other cities which have separate monasteries for the three Gods, this temple combines them as a display of unity between the three sects. The massive structure dominates the skyline, with its towering walls and intricate carvings. The monastery is home to a community of monks, who dedicate their lives to the study and practice of Tonpa. Surrounding the monastery are the homes of the nobility, who are known for their wealth and power. These grand estates are filled with beautiful gardens and courtyards, and are often adorned with intricate carvings and colorful murals. Outside the city walls, the landscape is dotted with small villages and nomadic encampments. These communities are home to herders and farmers, who make their living tending to the region's yaks and sheep. Despite its remote location, Dharmaling is a city of great importance, both culturally and politically. It is a place of pilgrimage for Monks, Merchants and laypeople from all over the world, and is also a hub of trade and commerce. The people of Dharmaling are proud of their heritage and their way of life, and are fiercely protective of their city and its traditions.
A 30 minute walk to the west of Dharmaling lies the Temple of Tong Thang, the Beehive Temple, as visitors approach the temple, they are greeted by the gentle humming of bees that buzz around the entrance, seemingly inviting them inside, the entrance is adorned with ornate wooden doors intricately carved with depictions of bees in flight, the temple is home to hundreds of bee colonies. The interior of the temple is a marvel of craftsmanship.The walls are adorned with honeycomb patterns carved into the stone, creating a mesmerizing visual display. Soft light filters through small openings in the dome-shaped ceiling, the centerpiece of the temple is a large altar made of honey-colored stone, adorned with intricate carvings of bees and honeycombs, where devotees offer their prayers and offerings. The Temple of Thong Tang is a place of worship dedicated to the reverence of bees and their significance in nature and the cycle of life, every day priests and priestesses of The Mother make their way to the temple to tend to the bees, bringing them water and sliced fruits, every year there is a festival outside the temple where priests and priestesses of Caihong distribute honey gathered from the bees.
Monyul is home to a large lake called Jangchub Tso, the lake is bordered by lush green forests and snow-capped mountains to the south-east, a product of Monyul's border with Taishigang.
On the edge of the lake there is a large city called "Gangri Thang", which is known for its fish markets and skilled boatwrights, nobles from the surrounding Kingdoms often commission boatwrights from Gangri Thang to build grand freshwater barges for them.
Several villages surround the lake, mostly fishing and farming communities, every spring fishermen from these villages make their way to Gangri Thang with hundreds of fish, hoping to hock their catch to fishmongers, tourists and Company of the Wind officers.
The fish they carry is mainly the several species of trout that live in the lake but a few of the lucky ones carry the Golden Mahseer, a gleaming fish variety that is said to be very difficult to catch, although the taste of the fish pales in comparison to the trout, the Golden Mahseer is revered for its scales that give off a vibrant golden glow, these scales are often used in ceremonial dress of the region adoring clothing and jewellery.
The people of Monyul are also skilled artisans, known for their intricate weavings and pottery. The kingdom is home to many workshops and marketplaces, where merchants sell their wares to buyers from all over the region. The people of Monyul are known for their skill at horsemanship, and the kingdom is home to some of the finest cavalry units in the region. The army of Monyul is also composed of archers and spearmen, who are trained in the art of mounted combat and guerrilla warfare.
The most prestigious regiment of Monyul is a cavalry unit called the White Tigers, the horsemasters of the White Tigers are known as the strictest in the Tonpa Kingdoms, if a horse fails a single training drill both the horse and rider are deemed unworthy. The White Tigers main weapon is a thick spear, painted red with a bronze spearhead, it has a heavy counterweight at the back that also doubles as a blunt weapon. Their secondary weapons are a heavy sword and a short bow.
submitted by lechatheureux to worldbuilding [link] [comments]
The Tonpa Kingdoms Part 1 (Overview and The Gods) : worldbuilding (reddit.com)
There are 5 connected Kingdoms that have Tonpa as their main religion these are.
Jangshun
A Place of snow-capped Mountains and green Valleys, said to be built upon the ruins of the ancient Jungar people who controlled much of the area of Jangshun and the nearby kingdoms of Monyul and Taishigang.
Very little is known about the Jungar, their ruins are scattered throughout the landscape of Jangshun, and are often characterized by simple stone structures, pottery shards, and other artifacts. Based on these remains, it is believed that the Jungar were a relatively simple society, with a lifestyle that revolved around farming, herding, and other basic activities.
Despite their lack of sophistication, the Jugar are an important part of the history and culture of the region many myths and legends have grown up around them, the people of Jangshun often see the Jungar as a symbol of the enduring spirit of the region, and take pride in the fact that they were able to survive and thrive in a harsh and unforgiving environment. In addition to their physical remains, the Jungar have left a lasting impact on the people of Jangshun in other ways. Their language, customs, and traditions are thought to have influenced the culture of the later kingdom, and many people still feel a strong connection to the Jagun and their way of life.
The Capital of Jangshun is called Druktse, founded by Dragon Priests and the legendary Namgyal dynasty the city is known for its unique architecture, with buildings made of wood and stone, intricately carved and painted with colorful designs and motifs, the streets are narrow and winding, with prayer flags fluttering in the breeze and the sound of temple bells ringing in the air.
At the center of the city is the Royal Palace of Jigme Wangchuk, a majestic building that serves as the residence of the Royal Family, the palace consists of several wings and halls, each with its own specific function. The main hall is the center of political and ceremonial activities, where the king held court and received important guests. The royal family's private quarters were located in a separate wing, with opulent living spaces and lavish decorations.
One of the most impressive features of the palace is the Eagle Tower, a tall structure that houses the elite Eagle Guards, who were responsible for the king's security the tower is covered from top to bottom with intricate carvings of the bird of prey.
The palace is surrounded by lush gardens and fountains, and it is guarded by soldiers in traditional Eagle attire, the Eagle Guards of the palace of Jingme Wangchuk are an elite group of soldiers tasked with protecting the king and the royal family, known for their fearsome reputation and exceptional combat skills, the Eagle Guards are considered one of the most prestigious units in the Jangshun army.
The guards are named after the majestic eagles that inhabit the mountainous regions of Jangshun, and they were trained to emulate the hunting tactics of these birds of prey. They are adept at using the terrain to their advantage, and are particularly skilled at scaling steep cliffs and mountainous terrain to surprise and overwhelm their enemies. In addition to their exceptional combat skills, the Eagle Guards were also known for their loyalty and dedication to the royal family. They undergo rigorous training and were selected based on their physical prowess, intelligence, and character, to become an Eagle Guard, applicants must be graduates of both the School of the Father and School of the Dragon.
The Eagle Guards are outfitted in distinctive uniforms that featured a stylized eagle emblem, and they were armed with a variety of weapons, including bows, spears, and swords. They were also known to use eagle feathers and talons in their armor and equipment, as a nod to the unit's namesake.
Druktse is a hub of cultural and religious activities, with several monasteries and temples located throughout the city.
The most famous of these is the Tashicho Dzong, a stunning fortress monastery that serves as the seat of The Gyelpa (The Duke) the secondary ruler of Druktse and the center of Druk-Ta worship. The dzong is surrounded by high walls and towers, and is accessible through a grand gate that is guarded by soldiers. The interior of the dzong is a maze of courtyards, chapels, and offices, all connected by narrow passageways and staircases.
One of the most impressive features of Tashicho Dzong is its towering central fortress and monastery, which rises above the rest of the complex and can be seen from miles around. This fortress is home to the Dragon Priests and is one of the most important structures in Jangshun. The fortress monastery is also famous for its beautiful architecture and intricate artwork. The walls of the courtyards are adorned with colorful murals and paintings, while the chapels are filled with statues and other religious artifacts. Visitors to Tashicho Dzong can tour the complex and learn about Jangshun history and culture, as well as observe the daily routines of the monks who live and work there. The Monastery is open to the public during certain hours of the day, and visitors are advised to dress modestly and remove their shoes before entering the chapels. Even though the current royal family of Jangshun are connected to The Father, The Dragon holds a special place in Druktse.
The people of Druktse are known for their warm hospitality and their strong sense of community. They celebrate several festivals throughout the year, including the annual Tshechu festival, the 3 Gods Festival which features colorful dances and rituals performed by monks and laypeople.
To the north-east of the Kingdom lies the second biggest city in Jangshun, the city of Lhagyal, often called “The Fire-proof City”
Lhagyal is a mass of stone walls and buildings with precious little wood being used at all, the walls of the city are imposingly high and even the central palace is relatively flat and does not rise above the walls, there are 4 gates made of pure steel and those are the only entrances and exits.
Inside the city walls, the streets are narrow and winding, with tall, tightly packed buildings constructed from rough-hewn stone. The architecture is distinct, with flat roofs and ornate metal doors decorating the doorways and windows, many of the buildings are built into the city's walls, their backs resting against the ancient stones.
There is more to the city than what meets the eye. Beneath the streets lie a labyrinth of tunnels and catacombs, built for both practical and spiritual purposes. Some are used for storage or as escape routes, while others are filled with ancient artifacts and sacred relics. The catacombs are also home to a complex network of underground temples and shrines and busy streets that are home to underground residences and businesses.
Despite its rugged appearance, the city's architecture is a testament to its resilience. It has withstood numerous attempts at invasion over the centuries, including attacks by powerful enemies armed with the latest in siege weaponry. The city's fortifications are a marvel of engineering, designed to withstand even the most devastating attacks and yet, for all its defensive prowess, the city has never lost sight of its cultural heritage.
The most famous instance of this was when the neighbouring Confucian Kingdom of Jinyun attempted to invade Jangshun with its impressive military might, scores of loyal foot-soldiers hardened by decades of conflict and advanced siege technology that included weapons that used fireworks.
The city withstood months of warfare with Lhagyal earning its nickname of “The Fire-proof City” The stone structures withstood the fireworks and the hard rock of the walls withstood the Jinyun catapults, outside the city several guerilla efforts by the Eagle Guards, The Company of the Hand and The White Tigers from Monyul lending their support repelled attempted on-foot invasions by the hardened Jinyun soldiers.
In the south-west of Jangshun, near the borders of Monyul and Taishigang lies the town of Gyalpeling, a place revered by monks and pilgrims alike. Gyalpeling, meaning "Abode of the Victorious" is a small yet vibrant town located in a remote corner of the kingdom. Its strategic location, surrounded by imposing mountains and blessed with fertile lands, has made it a crucial hub for spiritual activities and monastic life. The town is centered around a grand monastery, which serves as the heart and soul of the community. The monastery, known as Samtenling Monastery, is a majestic complex of ornate buildings adorned with colorful murals, fluttering prayer flags, and the sound of chanting monks echoing through the air. It is a revered place of worship and learning, drawing scholars, practitioners, and seekers of wisdom from far and wide. The streets of Gyalpeling are lined with modest housing for monks, adorned with intricate woodcarvings and colorful paintings. The locals, known for their warm hospitality and deep reverence for Tonpa, every activity the townspeople engage in helps the monastery in some way, whether trading, farming or craftsmanship, every resident of Gyalpeling helps out the monastery in some way. The town also boasts natural hot springs, believed to have healing properties, which attract pilgrims and visitors seeking solace and rejuvenation. The pristine rivers and lakes surrounding Gyalpeling add to its enchanting beauty, serving as places for meditation, ritual ablutions, and scenic walks. Gyalpeling is not only a place of spiritual significance, but it also serves as a center of learning, with numerous scriptoria, libraries, and meditation caves where monks engage in intensive study, contemplation, and meditation, prospective monks come from all over the 5 Kingdoms to study in Gyalpeling, as monks educated within its walls are valued in any court of the Tonpa Kingdoms.
One of the most valuable cities in Jangshun isn't far from the capital, a short 1 hour horse ride east of Druktse stands the city of Jangtse, a jewel in the crown of the kingdom. Jangtse, meaning "Silver Peak" in the local tongue, owes its fame and prosperity to the rich veins of silver that run through the nearby mountains, making it a thriving center for mining and trade. At the heart of Jangtse rises a magnificent conical palace, known as Jang Potrang, or the "Silver Palace." The palace, glistening like a beacon atop the tallest hill in the city, is adorned with silver-plated roofs, walls, and pillars, reflecting the sunlight and casting a mesmerizing glow over the surrounding landscape. It serves as the royal residence, where the Count holds court and conducts affairs pertaining to the area between Jangtse and Druktse. The streets of Jangtse are lined with buildings that boast silver-plated facades, creating a surreal and shimmering sight as one walks through the city, often shining gold from reflecting the sunlight, the wealth of the city is evident in the intricate silver filigree work that adorns windows, doors, and rooftops of temples, mansions, and markets alike. The silversmiths of Jangtse are renowned for their craftsmanship, producing exquisite silverware and jewelry that are sought after by collectors and traders from distant lands. The city is a bustling center of commerce, with a vibrant market square where merchants from across the region gather to trade in silver, gemstones, textiles, and other precious goods. The sounds of bartering, laughter, and the clinking of silver coins fill the air.
The Armies of Jangshun are known for their ferocious foot-soldiers, the every-day rank and file soldiers of the Jangshun armies are regarded as the best in the region and are a feared prospect to face on any battlefield.
The soldiers of the army of Jangshun are highly disciplined and skilled in the art of warfare, and are renowned throughout the region for their courage and loyalty. They are trained in a variety of weapons and fighting styles, including archery, swordsmanship, and hand-to-hand combat.
It is said that the success of the army comes from the fact that many men and women who fight in it are from mountainous regions and are conditioned from a young age to move over mountainous land with ease, their armies can easily traverse land that would be impossible for normal armies to travel over, due to the fact that the soldiers know the land.
The army of Jangshun is led by a commander-in-chief, who is appointed by the common foot-soldiers and is responsible for the overall strategy and tactics of the army. Under the commander-in-chief, there are several generals and officers who oversee different units of the army, each with their own specific roles and responsibilities. The soldiers of the army of Jangshun are equipped with a variety of weapons and armor, including shields, helmets, and chainmail. They are also skilled in the use of traditional weapons, such as the da and the gochu, which are types of swords. In addition to their skills in battle, the soldiers of the army of Jangshun are also highly respected for their loyalty and devotion to their ruler and country. They are known for their strong sense of duty and honor, and are willing to lay down their lives in defense of their homeland. The army of Jangshun is often called upon to defend the kingdom against invading forces, and has a long history of successful battles and campaigns. Their reputation for courage and skill has earned them the respect of their neighbors and allies, and they are a source of pride and inspiration for the people of Jangshun.
One of the most famous regiments from Jangshun is the “Wheel of Steel” A heavily armored longsword unit founded by Princess Jamyang Daughter of King Kunga and Sister of King Yangchen of the Yeshe Dynasty after she travelled to Europe and witnessed people fighting in full suits of armor, this was a foreign concept in the areas around her and she implemented the idea with her Father's (And later Brother's) full support they were first deployed in aid of Taishigang who were experiencing an invasion from a nearby Dharmist Kingdom. The longswords cleaved through the invading forces lack of armor and their steel plates deflected blows.
Monyul
Monyul is a land of vast open spaces and stunning natural beauty. The kingdom is home to a proud and fiercely independent people, who have built a rich culture and a strong military tradition, its plains are green and warm during the summer but snow is not uncommon in winter. Dharmaling is the capital city of Monyul and is nestled in the hills, surrounded by winding rivers and vast grasslands. It is a city steeped in tradition and culture, with a rich history that stretches back centuries.
Dharmaling was built as the northern most outpost of the Dharmist Indraprastha Empire but was conquered by Tonpa forces from a tribe that would eventually become known as the Monyul. The city is built around a central marketplace, where merchants from all over the known world come to trade their wares. The marketplace is a bustling hub of activity, filled with the sounds of bargaining and haggling, and the aromas of exotic spices and perfumes.
The Company of the Wind have their main offices in Dharmaling and use the bustling 10 storey wooden building to plan its operations throughout the known world. The streets of Dharmaling are relatively wide due to the constant horse carts that pass through them. The buildings are made of stone and wood, with intricately carved facades and ornate balconies. Many of the houses have flat roofs, which are used as outdoor living spaces during the warmer months. At the heart of the city lies the great monastery of The 3 Gods, unlike in other cities which have separate monasteries for the three Gods, this temple combines them as a display of unity between the three sects. The massive structure dominates the skyline, with its towering walls and intricate carvings. The monastery is home to a community of monks, who dedicate their lives to the study and practice of Tonpa. Surrounding the monastery are the homes of the nobility, who are known for their wealth and power. These grand estates are filled with beautiful gardens and courtyards, and are often adorned with intricate carvings and colorful murals. Outside the city walls, the landscape is dotted with small villages and nomadic encampments. These communities are home to herders and farmers, who make their living tending to the region's yaks and sheep. Despite its remote location, Dharmaling is a city of great importance, both culturally and politically. It is a place of pilgrimage for Monks, Merchants and laypeople from all over the world, and is also a hub of trade and commerce. The people of Dharmaling are proud of their heritage and their way of life, and are fiercely protective of their city and its traditions.
A 30 minute walk to the west of Dharmaling lies the Temple of Tong Thang, the Beehive Temple, as visitors approach the temple, they are greeted by the gentle humming of bees that buzz around the entrance, seemingly inviting them inside, the entrance is adorned with ornate wooden doors intricately carved with depictions of bees in flight, the temple is home to hundreds of bee colonies. The interior of the temple is a marvel of craftsmanship.The walls are adorned with honeycomb patterns carved into the stone, creating a mesmerizing visual display. Soft light filters through small openings in the dome-shaped ceiling, the centerpiece of the temple is a large altar made of honey-colored stone, adorned with intricate carvings of bees and honeycombs, where devotees offer their prayers and offerings. The Temple of Thong Tang is a place of worship dedicated to the reverence of bees and their significance in nature and the cycle of life, every day priests and priestesses of The Mother make their way to the temple to tend to the bees, bringing them water and sliced fruits, every year there is a festival outside the temple where priests and priestesses of Caihong distribute honey gathered from the bees.
Monyul is home to a large lake called Jangchub Tso, the lake is bordered by lush green forests and snow-capped mountains to the south-east, a product of Monyul's border with Taishigang.
On the edge of the lake there is a large city called "Gangri Thang", which is known for its fish markets and skilled boatwrights, nobles from the surrounding Kingdoms often commission boatwrights from Gangri Thang to build grand freshwater barges for them.
Several villages surround the lake, mostly fishing and farming communities, every spring fishermen from these villages make their way to Gangri Thang with hundreds of fish, hoping to hock their catch to fishmongers, tourists and Company of the Wind officers.
The fish they carry is mainly the several species of trout that live in the lake but a few of the lucky ones carry the Golden Mahseer, a gleaming fish variety that is said to be very difficult to catch, although the taste of the fish pales in comparison to the trout, the Golden Mahseer is revered for its scales that give off a vibrant golden glow, these scales are often used in ceremonial dress of the region adoring clothing and jewellery.
The people of Monyul are also skilled artisans, known for their intricate weavings and pottery. The kingdom is home to many workshops and marketplaces, where merchants sell their wares to buyers from all over the region. The people of Monyul are known for their skill at horsemanship, and the kingdom is home to some of the finest cavalry units in the region. The army of Monyul is also composed of archers and spearmen, who are trained in the art of mounted combat and guerrilla warfare.
The most prestigious regiment of Monyul is a cavalry unit called the White Tigers, the horsemasters of the White Tigers are known as the strictest in the Tonpa Kingdoms, if a horse fails a single training drill both the horse and rider are deemed unworthy. The White Tigers main weapon is a thick spear, painted red with a bronze spearhead, it has a heavy counterweight at the back that also doubles as a blunt weapon. Their secondary weapons are a heavy sword and a short bow.
2023.06.07 09:16 14g0t Bloons TD 6 - Update Notes! Version 37.0
Bloons TD 6 v37.0 - Update Notes!
Rolling out now on iOS, Android, Steam please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
Key New Features
Game Changes / Additions
Ice Monkey
Obyn Greenfoot
Boomerang Monkey
This part has to be included along with the Lych Soul rework with Paragons which is finally making it in this update after necessary delays. As Boomerang Paragon’s knockback hits so many times so quickly, we need to make it more reasonable when applied to targets that aren’t immediately destroyed.
MOAB Assassin fills a useful role of a pure long cooldown ‘single target assassination’ in the game, but when compared to something like First Strike it feels a little lacking that it is unable to carry damage through MOAB Layers
Blade Shooter has always struggled to find much value without MK or as a step to Maelstrom, so to give it build value on its own we feel like this should be a part of the base value on the upgrade.
Lowest tiers of ice monkey are far too effective for their cost against ceramics, with this scaling well all the way to round 100, we feel like ice duration against ceramics needs to be reduced to counter this but for now this reduction will only apply until T3.
The Bloon Solver’s rework has been very popular, however, we’d like to have a better lead up into the new mechanics by introducing this earlier at the tier 4 now.
This will allow Cripple MOAB to take out regular MOAB layers in one shot until round 100; for such a slow attacking single target tower we feel this will help top path flex, even if mostly for show.
Reworking Grape Shot crosspathing as it gains far too much crosspath value by T2 but then is lacking in purpose at higher tiers, double shot will only work as one extra grape however Destroyer will now apply its full attack rate buff to the grapes and Flagship will equip aspects of Grape Shot on the mini planes.
Spectre is shifting a little of the ceramic bonus around into basic all damage at the cost of reduced pierce, which should make up for lack of single target damage while also making the pierce crosspath more necessary when being used for cleanup focus.
Even with the map-range advantage, rotors are weak compared to any other constant AoE circle like this. Chinook feels like it’s near a place we are happy with now, however we want another tiny nudge on cost while keeping cash generation value the same. Pushing some higher values on the last Comanche Commander changes as the missile attack is effectively such a small portion of the tower’s total damage late game.
As the Rapid Reload crosspath has actually fallen behind in value compared to Burny Stuff for top path Mortars we want to try a slight stun duration increase as this buffs the base path with a larger benefit to Rapid Reload mortars as a stalling option. Mortar consistency is lacking at x3x making it tough to spend on even though x4x is fairly good, so some of the T4 rate is shifting down to help out with this. As the camo property has grown quite weak and currently Signal Flare is considered the best decamo tool, we want to push back slightly on its cost and by reducing the blast radius of the decamo area while emphasizing crosspathing for effectiveness there.
As Engineer sentries do this already, newly spawned Mini Avatars from temples will now by default match the target priority of the temple.
We’re changing the Ninja Monkey Paragon’s focus as a fighter against camo, as we feel like a greater strength and tactical value against camo will be the full reveal of all camos rather than all camo removal.
Alchemist Transforming Tonic is in a weird spot with the transformation unable to attack through walls when the base alchemist is able to. Also with this, including a QoL fix for the T5 that currently prevents transformed towers from functioning with target priority.
While the tornado doesn't do anything to MOABs, it still spends itself on them which wastes a relatively long cooldown, so addressing this flaw. Avatar of wrath doubles the base attack speed before any scaling is applied, but this hasn’t ever applied to the 205 Lightning, so taking care of that as well. Housekeeping - even deep in the forest, it does actually make life better.
We’ve heard the feedback, so Spiked Mines get a tweak to get more mines exploding but with less pierce on each, to overall increase quality of life in more frequent use but less wasted pierce. This will help out with some of the problems it has scaling into late game super ceramics.
A minor QoL for cheap Monkeyopolis creation, we included a small base amount of cash production to the generation formula.
The 005 crosspath fix in the last update left XXXL Trap slower than previously even if crosspathed to 205, so we are increasing that base 005 slightly to match up the 205 crosspath again so that it isn’t any slower than before.
As our newest tower to be added to BTD6, we went over feedback for every path and made a large number of adjustments addressing a variety of points.
Removing the stacking aspect of Gwendolin’s burn damage over time, but increasing the damage as she levels up so that it actually scales up in power now.
While they are complicated individuals, Adora can now fully appreciate the sacrifice of the newest Monkeys in the struggle against the Bloons.
We aren’t happy with strats that start looking like exploits with frequent sell-replace loops.
Psi’s stalling out of the end of round is an odd mix of useful / annoying / out of control, so we are for now capping this to a 3 seconds of overtime stalling. Psi’s Psychic Blast ability also has weirdly low pierce for a long cooldown ability with no damage, we are increasing the base pierce greatly but it no longer increases in pierce at Lv7 since the extra pulse brings more pierce anyway.
Five months of 2023 done and dusted, which feels to us like it has zoomed by, perhaps because the Auckland office where the BTD6 team is based has only just reopened after the severe flooding at the end of January. All of Update 36 and the majority of Update 37 were completed while again working from home, but we’re very excited to have the office repairs done, the flood wall almost finished, and the ability to work shoulder to shoulder again on fun new things for the monkeyverse! Here’s the latest gaze into the crystal ball:
submitted by 14g0t to NoRules [link] [comments]
Rolling out now on iOS, Android, Steam please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
Key New Features
- New Paragon - The Magus Perfectus! (loves casting spells) Some of you know we teased this last year, but we needed more time to balance the art and design required to make this extra special, so we are very pleased to get this live! Wizard Monkey’s Paragon is designed to be a higher level strategic Paragon with powerful ability usage similar to the Doomship.
- The core of the Magus is a toggle to and from a Draining Beam which deals very small single target damage but absorbs graveyard mana as it damages and destroys Bloons
- While toggled off from the Drain Beam, Magus attacks with a powerful Arcane Spike that deals massive damage to MOABs and revives Bloons it slays, while a Dark Phoenix circles overhead attacking with Firebomb breath and a radial fireball attack
- Phoenix Explosion Ability: can be cast to consume the Paragon’s entire graveyard to set all Bloons on screen on fire for 30 seconds and summon one Zombie ZOMG for every 9000 graveyard mana consumed
- Arcane Metamorphosis Ability: can be used to consume all graveyard mana and transform the Magus briefly into an alternate form which decimates everything with a flame cascade attack; Metamorphosis lasts longer the more mana it consumes
- Magus was designed for armchair play so it will fill and consume graveyard mana on its own, but our goal was to create more actively controlled Paragon for those who will enjoy microing between Beam on and off and choosing which awesome Ability to unleash and when
- Happy Birthday BTD6 - On June 14th, BTD6 will celebrate 5 years of monkeytastic fun and strategy! We hope you’ll join us for the main menu changes, skinned Collection event, special Questing, and general celebration. Thank you for five amazing years and we’re looking forward to all the years ahead!
- New Hero Skin - Jiangshi Sauda, a fun new cross-cultural look for Sauda brainstormed by the art team, mixing inspirations from a favorite show and Chinese folklore
- New Map - Erosion
- Community designed advanced map Erosion
- TheWiseTroll’s original concept proposed land and water but when thinking about map colors and the little stories we think of behind each map, the concept of the polar bear walking back with the shrinking ice was too compelling to do anything else
- New Quests
- Birthday Party - Pop the Party Bloon as many times as you can before it escapes
- Blade Sauda Nowhere - Try out Sauda and learn some of her skills
- Patch’s Cheap Chimps Challenge - Beat Logs with as little cash spent as you can
- Striken Bad - Defeat the BAD on round 100 using First Strike. The spelling hurts us, too, you’re not the only one - but we had to do it!
- Least Cash and Least Tier Boss Events
- We’ve heard feedback about and have been wanting to shake up Boss rules, so here we go!
- Applying new victory conditions to Boss Events completely changes the focus while still needing the damage output and type to handle each Boss
- Time still matters, as the secondary time score will break any ties
- New Trophy Store Items
- Heroes: Geraldo Pack Mule pet, Quincy Spec Ops Drop In placement
- Monkeys: Sweden Village Flag
- Bloons: Party Hat Bloons
- Game & UI: Vortex Avatar, Sunset Samba 64 Mix music track, Quincy Arrows banner
- Nexus.gg Creator Supporter Avatar - show your support for Content Creators by using the Creator Support button on the Settings screen and purchasing any IAP
- Limited Time only {trophy items if there’s a seasonal}
- 5 Year Anniversary Avatar, 5 Year Anniversary Banner
- New CT Team Store items
- Base Props: Treasure Chest
- Icons: Overclock icon, Archmage Staff icon
- Frames: Bloon From The Dead frame, Mage Hat frame
- New Slider
- Everybody loves sliders, right?
- After lots of discussion on the team and a fair few player requests, we’ve added a ‘Projectile and Effects Scaling’ accessibility option to main menu Settings
- This is primarily for accessibility to minimize the size and brightness of projectiles and effects, especially when the screen is crowded with Monkeys and Bloons
- This is not directly a performance improvement feature, so please do not expect the game to run noticeably better - just noticeably cleaner
- We tried not to remove key game state indicators but this is ultimately in player control - if you adjust the slider and effects and projectiles make it harder to play the game, please reset the slider until the game is working the way you want
- It’s also really fun for silly screengrabs, so please post your favorites!
Game Changes / Additions
- New Party Time game theme event!
- Refactored how leaderboard scores are stored so that we could add Least Cash/Tiers ranking options for Boss Events
- Bosses on spawn will now clear the map of all existing projectiles
- Highest Round profile stat renamed to Highest Round (All Time) & added in the new profile stat Highest Round (Current Version).
- The 4 different Highest Round profile stats are now grouped together near the top of the profile stats page
- Freeplay budget scaling reduced slightly (same speed/hp, but number of Bloons added per round will increase at a slower rate)
- Added a new Roundset with Income curve to be used by our events team; this customized income curve allows us more flexibility to make this roundset than would otherwise have been possible with existing roundset tools
- Translated game into Thai
- Added a ‘Play Again’ button to the victory screen for quests
- Added a ‘Disable Dialogue’ checkmark for some quests after beating them
- Game hints are now hidden during Quests
- Story Quests now sort to the top of the quest list & completed Story Quests sort to the bottom
- A large number of localization fixes - thanks for the player feedback on your pet peeves!
- Resolved a number of general crashes
- Number of additions/changes to improve existing quests, highlight scores to beat & increase our possibilities for quest creation
- Resolved an issue with abilities highlighted in quests remaining highlighted after restarting
- Holding down on a tower should correctly hide the UI again
- Quests no longer play placement effects for any pre-placed towers
- Resolved an issue that could prevent Total Damage from counting correctly to profile
- Resolved an issue where total insta monkeys profile stat would decrease if the instas were used
- Resolved certain very specific freeplay seeds causing crashes on certain rounds
- Bloons Leaked summary no longer gets cleared in co-op after reviewing map
- Stairs in the top corners on Resort are now placement blockers
- Resolved a crash that could occur when waiting on the events screen as events end
- Resolved a crash that could occur when the Hero Booster popup was canceling via any map mechanics forcing the player to deselect the hero
- Fixed some towers not targeting the test bloon when set to target type Strong
- Fixed position of the full patch notes link on update popups on some resolutions
- Midnight Mansion plays a fishie animation in the bloon exit on loading in
- Resolved an issue where placed items on the map lose their cosmetic skins after a resync occurs during a co-op game.
- Obtaining towers from redistribution on co-op that are still locked for you will now show messaging in the unlocks screen as to why you are not earning XP for it
- Pressing back from the avatabanner selection will now just back out of that selection
- Changed Pop Count on summary screen to Damage Count and added actual Pop Count
- Hero portraits no longer linger too long on the screen after exiting the upgrades menu in game
- Paragon art state changes moved from 22/42/62/82 to 20/40/60/80
- Resolved map-based buffs not inheriting to subtowers correctly
- Resolved an issue where an external proxy could sometimes cause the game to hang on loading forever
- Co-op red areas fade in more slowly when you cross the boundary
- Resolved online/Invisible profile setting displaying text incorrectly
- Audio polish when opening reward chests in the collection event
- Updated wording on logout screen to address some confusion
- Added a background to the rewards UI
- Added confirmation pop-up for In App Purchases added from outside the game
- Monklish font has been regenerated to include the Māori macrons
Ice Monkey
- Resolved a number of cases of the xx2 Refreeze crosspath not re-freezing bloons when dealing certain numbers of damage.
- xx5 Trade Empire should no longer buff too many merchants in co-op
- Resolved tower moving from flagship to navarch displaying vfx at the wrong scale
- Resolved "Paragon available" pip displaying for Buccaneer with only Flagship and Pirate Lord unlocked
- Resolved an issue where Navarch’s attack rate buff would not apply to Doomship in some cases depending on build order
- xx2 Centered Path ace no longer displays it’s placement target on screen initially when loading a save
- Upgrading to 002 Ace no longer refreshes the cooldown on the special toggle
- Resolved an issue with Monkey Ace jumping offscreen after a Retry Last Round
- 5xx Banana Central no longer buffs other Banana Centrals in co-op
- 1xx Engineers can now place their sentries correctly on One Two Tree
- Overclocking a 5xx Engineer’s sentry just as it starts exploding no longer crashes the game
- Engineer Paragon no longer crashes if created while a Bloontrap is being deployed
- Engineer Paragon no longer crashes when selling the main tower while it has a sentry moving through the air that has not landed yet
- Engineer Paragon should no longer throw sentries into the middle of the map due to techbots
- Resolved an issue where the Paragon’s permanent speed boost per round would not load until the end of the first round played after loading a save
- 3xx Great White projectiles can no longer hit bloons far out of range
- 3xx Great White rare crash that could occur at end of rounds has been resolved
- 3xx Great White’s slow applied to grabbed target now expires correctly
- 310 Beast Handler now has eyebrows, just like that one map suggestion
- Corrected the splash asset for crosspathed 4xx & 5xx Beasts
- Merging an Orca into a Megalodon while it's taking out a bad should no longer cause a 2nd Megalodon to briefly appear
- x1x Microraptor no longer fails to attack in some cases when being moved to different heights
- x4x Tyrannosaurus Rex ability now scales with Challenge Editor ability cooldown slider
- Beast Handler's bird targeting no longer breaks when set to strong if bloons are leaving radius
- Resolved a crash that could occur when moving a beast to the screen boundary
Obyn Greenfoot
- Resolved an issue where Obyn’s Wall of Trees when placed on an intersection looping back around on itself would not be able to hit the children of any targets that passed over it
- Resolved a crash that could occur when attacking glued Bloons
- Resolved an issue where selling Geraldo, and then re-buying him would show the description of the last-viewed store item from before selling him
- PC: Beast Handler’s hotkey in the hotkeys menu has been moved up near the rest of the support towers
- PC: Added a ‘ Monkey Special 2’ hotkey (for towers like Beast Handler, Necromancers & Ace Paragon). By default the Special 1 & Special 2 hotkeys have been assigned to PageUp & PageDown and ordered so that PageUp triggers the upper specialty, and PageDown triggers the lower one
- Arcade: Resolved a strange one pixel wide black line that can appear above some text characters on the arcade font
- Chromebook: Game no longer crashes if attempting to login via webview
- Chromebook: Resolved an issue with bluetooth mice being unable to scroll
Boomerang Monkey
This part has to be included along with the Lych Soul rework with Paragons which is finally making it in this update after necessary delays. As Boomerang Paragon’s knockback hits so many times so quickly, we need to make it more reasonable when applied to targets that aren’t immediately destroyed.
- Boomerang Paragon knockback amount reduced 3 > 1
MOAB Assassin fills a useful role of a pure long cooldown ‘single target assassination’ in the game, but when compared to something like First Strike it feels a little lacking that it is unable to carry damage through MOAB Layers
- x4x MOAB Assassin ability passes through MOAB layers
- x4x MOAB Assassin ability explosion centers around the impact target
Blade Shooter has always struggled to find much value without MK or as a step to Maelstrom, so to give it build value on its own we feel like this should be a part of the base value on the upgrade.
- x3x Blade Shooter pierce increased from 6 > 8
Lowest tiers of ice monkey are far too effective for their cost against ceramics, with this scaling well all the way to round 100, we feel like ice duration against ceramics needs to be reduced to counter this but for now this reduction will only apply until T3.
- 000 Ice Monkey freeze duration reduced by 50% on ceramics
- All T3 Ice Monkeys increase freeze duration on ceramics from 50 > 100%
- 203 Icicles crosspath now gains camo prio
The Bloon Solver’s rework has been very popular, however, we’d like to have a better lead up into the new mechanics by introducing this earlier at the tier 4 now.
- 4xx Bloon Dissolver now creates puddles on track leading up to Bloon Solver, puddles deal 1 damage, all other stats and crosspath benefits are the same.
This will allow Cripple MOAB to take out regular MOAB layers in one shot until round 100; for such a slow attacking single target tower we feel this will help top path flex, even if mostly for show.
- 5xx Cripple MOAB damage increased from 80 > 280
Reworking Grape Shot crosspathing as it gains far too much crosspath value by T2 but then is lacking in purpose at higher tiers, double shot will only work as one extra grape however Destroyer will now apply its full attack rate buff to the grapes and Flagship will equip aspects of Grape Shot on the mini planes.
- 210 Grape Shot total projectiles reduced from 10 -> 6
- 310 Destroyer also reduced from 10 > 6 grapes
- 310 Destroyer now increases grape attack rate twice as much, matching increase to the regular attack
- 410 Aircraft Carrier planes radial attack now fires an arc of grapes instead of darts
- 410 Aircraft Carrier planes radial Emission Angle 360 > 90
- 410 Aircraft Carrier planes radial projectile count 8 > 6
- 410 Aircraft Carrier plane grape projectile speed 100 > 200
- 420 Aircraft Carrier planes radial projectile art: dart > hot grape
- 420 Aircraft Carrier planes radial damage type Sharp > Fire
- 400 Aircraft Carrier plane radials damage 1 > 2
- 4xx Aircraft Carrier missiles now follow tower target priority
Spectre is shifting a little of the ceramic bonus around into basic all damage at the cost of reduced pierce, which should make up for lack of single target damage while also making the pierce crosspath more necessary when being used for cleanup focus.
- xx4 Spectre Dart damage increased 3 > 4
- xx4 Spectre Dart ceramic bonus reduced 2 > 1
- xx4 Spectre Dart pierce reduced 15 > 10
- xx4 Spectre Bomb damage increased 2 > 3
- xx4 Spectre Bomb ceramic bonus reduced 4 > 3
- xx4 Spectre Bomb pierce reduced 30 > 20
Even with the map-range advantage, rotors are weak compared to any other constant AoE circle like this. Chinook feels like it’s near a place we are happy with now, however we want another tiny nudge on cost while keeping cash generation value the same. Pushing some higher values on the last Comanche Commander changes as the missile attack is effectively such a small portion of the tower’s total damage late game.
- 302 Razor Rotors will now benefit from the faster firing crosspath
- 3xx Razor Rotors cooldown rate 0.75 > 0.5
- x4x Support Chinook price reduced from $10500 > 9500
- x4x Support Chinook supply crate cash generated reduced $1650 > 1,550
- x4x Support Chinook max uses per round reduced from 3 > 2
- xx4 & xx5 Comanche mini's follow the target priority set on their main Heli
- xx5 Comanche Commander missile damage 7 > 15
- xx5 Comanche Commander missile moab bonus 5 > 8
- xx5 Comanche Commander mini's missile dmg 5 > 15
- xx5 Comanche Commander mini's missile moab bonus 5 > 8
As the Rapid Reload crosspath has actually fallen behind in value compared to Burny Stuff for top path Mortars we want to try a slight stun duration increase as this buffs the base path with a larger benefit to Rapid Reload mortars as a stalling option. Mortar consistency is lacking at x3x making it tough to spend on even though x4x is fairly good, so some of the T4 rate is shifting down to help out with this. As the camo property has grown quite weak and currently Signal Flare is considered the best decamo tool, we want to push back slightly on its cost and by reducing the blast radius of the decamo area while emphasizing crosspathing for effectiveness there.
- 4xx The Big One stun duration non-MOABs increased from 0.5s > 0.75
- 5xx The Biggest One stun duration MOAB increased from 0.3s > 0.5
- 5xx The Biggest One stun duration BFB increased from 0.2s > 0.3
- 5xx The Biggest One stun duration DDT increased from 0.2s > 0.3
- x3x Heavy Shells attack delay reduced from 1.08 > 0.81
- x4x Artillery Battery attack rate buff reduced from ¼ to ⅓ (remains the same rate: 0.27)
- xx3 Signal flare cost increased $700 > 800
- xx4 Shattering Shells price reduced from $11,000 > 10900
- xx3 Signal Flare decamo radius reduced from 50 > 43
- 103 Signal Flare decamo pierce increased by 5 > 10
- xx4 Shattering Shells burn DoT deals moab bonus +5
As Engineer sentries do this already, newly spawned Mini Avatars from temples will now by default match the target priority of the temple.
- 4xx Sun Temple's Magic Sacrifice mini Sun Avatars when placed will spawn with the same target prio as their parent tower
We’re changing the Ninja Monkey Paragon’s focus as a fighter against camo, as we feel like a greater strength and tactical value against camo will be the full reveal of all camos rather than all camo removal.
- Ascended Shadow now grants global camo detection for all your towers
- Ascended Shadow no longer strips camo from Bloons with every attack
- Ascended Shadow main attack gains bonus to camo +6
- Ascended Shadow Flash Bomb Explosion gains bonus to camo +20
- Ascended Shadow Flash Bomb Shurikens gains bonus to camo +16
- Ascended Shadow Sticky Bomb Projectile gains bonus to camo +3200
- Ascended Shadow Sticky Bomb Explosion gains bonus to camo +700
- Ascended Shadow now deals 25% damage to all non-Boss MOABs that spawn
Alchemist Transforming Tonic is in a weird spot with the transformation unable to attack through walls when the base alchemist is able to. Also with this, including a QoL fix for the T5 that currently prevents transformed towers from functioning with target priority.
- x4x Transforming Tonic transformed alchemist can now ignore line of sight
- x5x Total Transformation towers transformed by the x5x will keep their Target Priority
While the tornado doesn't do anything to MOABs, it still spends itself on them which wastes a relatively long cooldown, so addressing this flaw. Avatar of wrath doubles the base attack speed before any scaling is applied, but this hasn’t ever applied to the 205 Lightning, so taking care of that as well. Housekeeping - even deep in the forest, it does actually make life better.
- 3xx Druid of the Storm’s Tornado no longer targets MOAB-class Bloons
- x3x Druid of the Jungle no longer pops Lead Bloons without 130 crosspath
- x3x Jungle Vine follows target prio of tower instead of strong
- x3x Jungle Vine defaults tower to strong priority when purchased
- 205 Avatar of Wrath base Heart of Thunder attack rate increased 2.3s > 1.15
We’ve heard the feedback, so Spiked Mines get a tweak to get more mines exploding but with less pierce on each, to overall increase quality of life in more frequent use but less wasted pierce. This will help out with some of the problems it has scaling into late game super ceramics.
- 4xx Spiked Mines pierce increased from 12 > 20
- 4xx Spiked Mines explosion pierce reduced from 40 > 30
- 4xx Spiked Mines DoT damage increased from 1 > 10
- 5xx Super Mines explosion pierce remains at 60
- 5xx Super Mines DoT damage increased from 1000 > 2500
A minor QoL for cheap Monkeyopolis creation, we included a small base amount of cash production to the generation formula.
- xx5 Monkeyopolis income formula now includes a base +$2500 minimum
The 005 crosspath fix in the last update left XXXL Trap slower than previously even if crosspathed to 205, so we are increasing that base 005 slightly to match up the 205 crosspath again so that it isn’t any slower than before.
- xx5 XXXL Trap attack cooldown reduced from 5.8s > 4.6
As our newest tower to be added to BTD6, we went over feedback for every path and made a large number of adjustments addressing a variety of points.
- 3xx Great White thrash rate benefits from speed buffs
- 3xx Great White damage increased 4 > 8
- 3xx Great White max extra damage from merge increased 8 > 16
- 3xx Great White max attack rate buff from merge increased 0.20634 > 0.38
- 3xx Great White extra thrash knockback duration from merge increased 0.1 > 0.2
- 4xx Orca thrash damage increased 20 > 30
- 4xx Orca thrash max extra damage from merge increased 40 > 60
- 4xx Orca max attack rate buff from merge increased 0.37829 > 0.38
- 4xx Orca thrash radius increased 20 > 24
- 5xx Megalodon price reduced from 55,000 > 45,000
- 5xx Megalodon thrash radius increased 30 > 36
- 5xx & x5x Beast handler paths are now overclockable
- x4x and x5x Max Merge Bonus: Overkill damage on MOABs now distributes to the children of that target
- xx1 Gyrfalcon path deals +1 damage to Regrows to stop accidental infinite regrow farms
- xx3 Golden Eagle pierce increased 12 > 15
- xx3 Golden Eagle pierce range increased 24 > 30
- xx3 Golden Eagle ceramic pierce penalty reduced from +3 > 1
- xx3 Golden Eagle Max Merge Bonus: Now grabs MOABs with pierce penalty +14
Removing the stacking aspect of Gwendolin’s burn damage over time, but increasing the damage as she levels up so that it actually scales up in power now.
- Lv6 Gwendonlin main attack DoT stack count 0 > 1
- Lv6 Gwendonlin main attack DoT damage increased from 1 > 2
- Lv9 Gwendonlin main attack DoT damage increased from 1 > 4
- Lv10 Gwendonlin main attack DoT damage now increases by 1 per additional level
While they are complicated individuals, Adora can now fully appreciate the sacrifice of the newest Monkeys in the struggle against the Bloons.
- Lv7 Blood Sacrifice can now be used on Beast Handlers
We aren’t happy with strats that start looking like exploits with frequent sell-replace loops.
- Upon Selling Brickell - all of her placed Mines are now expired along with her as well
Psi’s stalling out of the end of round is an odd mix of useful / annoying / out of control, so we are for now capping this to a 3 seconds of overtime stalling. Psi’s Psychic Blast ability also has weirdly low pierce for a long cooldown ability with no damage, we are increasing the base pierce greatly but it no longer increases in pierce at Lv7 since the extra pulse brings more pierce anyway.
- If no Bloons are left unpopped on screen aside from ones Psi is currently holding & destroying, these Bloons will be destroyed after a maximum of 3 seconds
- Lv3 Psychic Blast pierce increased from 50 > 200
- Lv7 Psychic Blast pierce increased from 100 > 200
- All Lych Soul variations can now be stunned/slowed by paragon tier upgrades
Five months of 2023 done and dusted, which feels to us like it has zoomed by, perhaps because the Auckland office where the BTD6 team is based has only just reopened after the severe flooding at the end of January. All of Update 36 and the majority of Update 37 were completed while again working from home, but we’re very excited to have the office repairs done, the flood wall almost finished, and the ability to work shoulder to shoulder again on fun new things for the monkeyverse! Here’s the latest gaze into the crystal ball:
- Update 38 Key Content
- New Boss - Phayze: another all new Boss concept and play style, not giving any other hints apart from the name itself
- Summer fun: a new Brickell hero skin and a waterpark map aimed toward Intermediate to help keep northern hemisphere summer cool
- Quests: continuing to build new quest system features and adding a few new Quests to the list
- Update 39 Key Content
- Map Editor: under construction since last year with internal systems testing happening during 38.0 development, we are super excited to put map creation tools in player hands on as many platforms as possible when it goes live
- New Hero - Spirit Walker: another unique design that we’re sandboxing already to make sure it has as much balance and art iteration as possible, again no hints other than the name
- Update 40 Key Content
- New Paragon - Monkey Sub: we’ve tagged sub as the next Paragon, so tell the Navarch to stop hoarding all of the Portable Lakes!
- Stretch Goals - Boss Rush Team Event and CT Themes: lots of unknowns 3 updates out but we have strong plans for a new Team event and new parameters for Contested Territory that will make each CT more dynamic - anything that we don’t get done by end of year will have strong groundwork for next year
- Console
- Getting closer to submission on Xbox and PlayStation but this has been slow going. We’ve added another programmer and are working even more closely with platform partners to get through our last issues and launch as soon as possible, but that’s likely at least another 2 months. Switch is still a consideration depending on response to Xbox and PlayStation, as it will require additional bespoke development.
2023.06.07 09:04 TheGeekyZoologist Jurassic World: The Hegemony of Biosyn (JWD rewrite) - Act III
See the previous posts: https://www.reddit.com/JurassicPark/comments/1419mpy/jurassic_world_the_hegemony_of_biosyn_dominion/ https://www.reddit.com/JurassicPark/comments/142b35e/jurassic_world_the_hegemony_of_biosyn_jwd_rewrite/
Visually confirming Rainn's revelation, Victoria is shown in a cage inside Amelia Everett's lab, within Biosyn's Citadel. Mia does her best to comfort the scared and depressed Achillobator and her motivations are explored shortly after. It's revealed that due to her experience within the team who made the Indominus and the Indoraptor, Biosyn tasked her with reviving InGen's IBRIS program by breeding raptors with high obedience potential. However, none of the achillobators cloned by Biosyn proved to be trainable enough for the program's ambitions (even though they attempted to mimic Owen's experience by having keepers being there at the animals' birth), which displeased Dodgson and the other higher-ups, who are now favouring another research team, who focuses on a more intrusive way of controlling dinosaurs. Basically treated as a second-class researcher amidst a rather toxic work environment, Mia became desperate enough to hire poachers to capture Blue, which she intended to breed with their achillobators in order to finally have trainable individuals. As Victoria is not sexually mature, Mia is in front of a considerable setback and fears that Dodgson will pull the plug due to her lack of results, especially in this troubled period for Biosyn.
The tying noose
The next day, the intel collected by the UN agents (people involved in the Black Market, Biosyn's connections with it) are sent to the nearby countries, including Italy, where an arrest warrant is launched against Kayla.
On his side, Isaac Gibbon is contacted by Bigelow who tells him about the debacle of their mission in Malta, saying that Claire and Owen saved the grey guards from disaster. He orders her to stay in Italy for the moment and wait for new orders. Shortly receives, he receives a candidate for a desk job in the DSD: It's Franklin. Gibbon tells Franklin he heard about his bravery during the 2019 incidents and his past connection with InGen (Before the DPG, Franklin worked for it as an IT Technician), before asking questions about Claire as he is aware that she collaborated with him not only on some occasions in the past few years but also in the 2019 Costa Rican incident, where Franklin was the couple's companion while they were running from InGen's agents and the authorities.
Dubrovnik
The inhabitants and tourists of the Croatian seaside city of Dubrovnik are surprised when a Biosyn Quetzalcoatlus descends upon the old town and starts attacking people. As a joke similar to one in TLW with the Japanese businessman and his reference to Godzilla, some extra could yell in Valyrian "I left Westeros because of this!" or "By the Seven, not again!" (Dubrovnik was one of Game of Thrones' filming location).
Ramsay's email
In a manner similar to the Hawaii attack scene in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla, the Dubrovnik scene cuts just as the Quetzal swoops on the bystanders and we are now in the bar of Biosyn's employee village. Wu is watching the news of the Dubrovnik attack on the TV (there is even a declaration from Zoe Murdoch, in which she denies the pterosaur came from Auronzo's Sanctuary and was probably created by a rival company who somehow put their hands upon Biosyn Quetzalcoatlus DNA. In the bar, someone whisper that one of their Quetzals did escaped from the valley thanks to the temporary deactivation of the invisible fence system and that Dodgson has launched an investigation to know who's responsible) when he receives a mysterious email from Ramsay, which includes the name of some woman. Wu search it on the internet and ends up on IMDB where he discovers that the adult "Charlotte" on the videos is actually an actress who lives in London.
Arrest
In Rome, early in the morning, Kayla is arrested in her flat by the police as she is accused of illegal smuggling.
Viscontini
Following all the incidents in the Alps, the clash in the Sabine Hills and the recent Dubrovnik attack, people gets pissed at Biosyn and protests occur in several locations, including Rome. In the Italian Ministry of the Interior, Viscontini has an argument with Pazzi, declaring that they need to take severe actions against Biosyn but the minister retorts that taking large-scale actions against the corporation might trigger a whole deal of undesirable consequences, including deteriorating US-Italian relations due to the close ties between Biosyn and the US government. He won't risk that just because of some rumours, weak proof and small incidents. Viscontini retorts that soon, Biosyn might have an angry mob showing at its gates with the goal of driving it out of Italy.
Following Vuillier's instructions, Claire, Owen, Nyamu and Dougal leave Malta the same day and fly to the Eternal City, where they have to meet Viscontini in the AISI headquarters. There, they have a video call with Vuillier. He and Viscontini wants to send the trio of WDMC agents to Auronzo Valley so they can infiltrate Biosyn's facility, find compromising information and transmit them to the Italian authorities, hoping to finally convince Pazzi and the rest of the government to take action against Biosyn. However, one of the agents points out that they will need an entrance ticket as one doesn't simply walk into Auronzo, since the borders of Biosyn's lands are guarded and monitored while some people disappeared after going too close from the Sanctuary (anti-Biosyn activists, reckless adventurers, Grendel Corporation's spies, others from the AISI's and Austrian government). Viscontini declare they might have that ticket.
We cut to Kayla in her prison cell. The guard announces she has visit and she is brought to a room where Viscontini and Dougal waits for her. The head of the AISI and the WDMC agent then negotiate with her: In exchange for her freedom, she will bring Dougal, Claire and Owen to Biosyn's Sanctuary. However, Viscontini precise he'll have her hunted down if she ever betrays them.
Kayla raises the fact that she can't show up at Auronzo like this and needs a motive. Viscontini and Dougal then talk about the animals seized in Malta's black market.
Theo's Mission
That day, Wu summons Theo, explain the whole issue with the fake Charlotte and ask him to go to London, find the actress and question her about the videos so they can have proofs to show Maisie, who started to really become insufferable because of Dodgson's bad influence (in that part of the story, one of the few scenes where she's likeable is one where she and Drummond bonds over the common passion for dinosaurs). The ex-mercenary soon leaves Auronzo, taking a bus for Venice in the nearest village while Wu explains to Pellegrino and Dodgson that Theo had urgent family matters to deal with in the UK.
Leaving San Francisco
Desiring to supervise the Dolomites Crisis more closely, Vuillier fly to Italy.
Nine containers
As evidence of Biosyn's possible connections to the Maltese black market has been discussed on the news, Dodgson knows it's a matter of time before Vuillier, the Italians or the Austrians send people in Auronzo and expose Biosyn's misdeeds.
We then follow Pellegrino's POV as she oversees the exit of nine large mysterious containers from the Citadel and their departure from the airstrip just outside the valley. One of her subordinates asks what's inside and she answers that she has no idea, with Dodgson only giving her a series of instructions. They watch the containers being flown abroad.
The following day, Pellegrino speak about it to Wu and other employees with anti-Dodgson sentiments like Drummond. She notices that Wu is uncomfortable as they talk about it and realize he must be hiding something. Ramsay, who just arrived from the US in preparation for a big corporate event in the Citadel, almost surprise their discussion. As they're not sure if they can trust him or not, they pretend it's nothing. Wu then phones Theo and asks him about his secret mission's progress.
London
In London, Theo finds the actress from the videos and initially posing as a reporter, filming her in an interview, he then ask her questions about the videos and after some hesitations, she concedes to give him answers and reveals among other things that the shooting occurred a few months ago in some local warehouse, that the director of those videos is none other than Colin Trevorrow (who, desperate for a job after the debacle of the Jurassic World film, accepted to participate to that project, oblivious that Biosyn was behind it since a dummy company took care of the production).
AISI
Vuillier arrives in Rome and meets with his agents, Nyamu and Viscontini in one of the AISI headquarters' conference rooms, where a map of Auronzo Valley and its surroundings has been laid. Kayla is also there and offscreen, our characters talk about the plan.
At the end of the meeting, everyone but Vuillier and Viscontini leave the room. Both have a secret conversation during which the Italian say that the Grey Guard's Mediterranean Company, supported by the Austrians and secretly by him (as he fears that Biosyn has informers within the Italian government), are deployed in one of the villages near Auronzo, and is supposed to act as a Plan B should the Claire-Owen-Dougal trio fail, by taking a secret path through an old mine and a mountain pass before breaking into Biosyn's citadel. The WDMC agents don't know that and when Vuillier ask why, Viscontini answers that it's better that way (should the agents be captured ant tortured, they won't tell Biosyn that there is a second team) and that the secret path isn't safer as one of his spy was killed by some creature after taking it and arriving in sight of the valley. He thinks that a small dozen of grey guards have better chances surviving the pass' guardian(s) than three civilian agents.
To the Dolomites
The next day, in the middle of the morning, Kayla is preparing her plane in some airstrip near Rome and the seized creature from the black market is loaded in the hold (I have no idea which species to choose). Equipped by the Italians, Claire, Owen and Dougal say farewell to Vuillier, Nyamu and Viscontini. The Frenchman tells Claire that it's time to unleash the She-wolf upon Dodgson but Claire correct him by saying "Not the She-wolf. The Dragon." (in this AU, she has a particular connection with the dragon-like Indominus), implying she'll get the mission done whatever it takes. He and the other two men wish them good luck and the trio of WDMC agents climb aboard the plane. They soon take off.
Biosyn's aerial defense
Kayla's plane arrives in sight of the mountains which delimit Biosyn's Sanctuary. Informed of their mission by Vuillier and Viscontini, one of the grey guards is watching the plane through his binoculars as it passes over the village where they are staying.
Kayla is soon contacted by the Citadel's control room as they detected the aircraft on their radars and they ask her why she's coming. The pilot answer that she collected an animal which might interest them (she told the WDMC agents and the Italians that Biosyn doesn't have this particular species in their Sanctuary) and ask to land on their airstrip. While the Biosyn employees discuss, the plane is about to enter Auronzo Valley by the east, as that part of the sanctuary is the furthest from most of the buildings (while the airstrip is in the northernmost parts of Biosyn's lands, beyond the mountains with the frozen dam lake) and thus where Claire, Owen and Dougal has the best chances of landing unnoticed. The trio of agents take their parachutes and prepare to jump, but at the same time, Dodgson, who heard that Kayla was arrested by the authorities just a few days ago, fears that her plane is a Trojan horse and decides to activate the valley's "aerial defense". On the screen of one of the room's monitors, we see a group of dots heading straight towards the plane. It's actually a group of pteranodons, from the same toothed variant as those who appeared in Jurassic Park 3 (there is even at least one black male identical to the scrapped one from Johnston's film), and they just collide with the plane, crashing against the cockpit and getting turned to shred by the rotors' blades, damaging the plane (the scene is partly inspired by a cutscene from the Ninth Mission of Paraworld's campaign). Owen wonder why those pteranodons behave in a suicidal manner. Suddenly, the pteranodons retreat and as their window is shrinking, the agents know they have to jump now (they've reached the middle of the valley and their trajectory deviated northwards, towards the mountain dam). Claire jumps first but as Owen is about to jump in his turn, the plane is attacked by a Quetzalcoatlus and the Raptor Whisperer sees another and a few pteranodons chasing her fiancée, whose parachute opened. Claire shakes the pterosaurs off by disappearing into the valley's dense forest. As they will be grabbed by the attacking pterosaurs as soon as they leave the aircraft, Owen, Dougal and Kayla stay inside it and brace for the crash. The plane crashes down at the surface of the frozen lake by the mountain dam in the northern part of the valley.
Back in Rome, Vuillier, Nyamu and Viscontini are worried as they heard the agents and the pterosaurs' screams (they had an open channel all that time with Kayla's plane). They hope the agents will survive this ordeal and activate the beacons they were given before their departure.
Note: The fate of the animal they took with them is still unclear for me. It really depends on the chosen species. If it's something large and potentially dangerous, Kayla would probably want to drop it in the valley in order to have a lighter plane and not deal with it after crashing. But if it's a creature about the size of a small dog for example, they could free it as they leave the wreckage.
Gigantoraptor
We then cut to Claire hanging in the trees but instead of a Therizinosaurus (which already appeared in TRQ. Moreover, Claire had a small arc with this species in that story), she is threatened by a Gigantoraptor. The scene plays out much like the Theri scene from Trevorrow's version, with Claire hiding in a pond etc.. Once the Gigantoraptor walks away, Claire gets out of the pond and sees the fumes from the plane's crash in the distance, behind the mountain dam.
The dam lake
Before it sinks in the lake, Owen, Dougal and Kayla leave her plane and step on the ice. Under it, they notice a large shadow and know they better move away from the lake. They notice a ladder by the dam but as they head towards it, a Quetzalcoatlus or a Pteranodon lands on their way. They step back, moving towards an opening on the lake's surface. Suddenly, a giant 9-meters long temnospondyl (based upon an unnamed and fragmentary genus from Lesotho) burst out the water, almost killing one of the characters. Ensue a scene where our three protagonists have to evade both the pterosaur and the amphibian. The pterosaur ends up being dragged underwater by the temnospondyl but other pterosaurs arrive and to escape them, our trio climbs on the dam and rushes to its elevator, going down in the valley. Down at the dam's base, they notice it's dilapidated and Kayla tell her two companions that Biosyn sell some of its power to the nearest villages.
Note: The main doubt I have about this scene is having a temnospondyl living in the icy water of a mountain lake. It might be too much of a stretch so if you think it's not realistic at all, it will be scrapped from the scene (and perhaps be replaced by a juvenile Baryonyx or something like this, an animal which could be also the one our characters brought with them in the plane.
Plan B
Since the agents lost their beacons during the pterosaurs' attack and the crash, they couldn't tell Rome that they were still alive. Vuillier and Viscontini fear the worst and send a message to Laurenzo Cesare.
Droppings
Meanwhile, Claire started walking towards the dam, hoping to find her companions on the way if they made it out alive from the crash. When she hears a racket in the woods, she hides and a Biosyn tyrannosaur arrives. But it's not on a hunting mode and instead, it just leaves some droppings on a log near Claire's hiding place. After the predator leaves, she approaches the log and smears her face with the droppings, remembering her "Walk in the Park" with Owen when they searched her nephews during the Fall of Jurassic World (the droppings hide her smell, dissuading the other animals to investigate her).
Argument
An argument bursts out between Owen, Dougal and Kayla while they're walking south. The first wants to find his fiancée, the second says that their mission is more important, and Kayla is mad at both men since she lost her plane (and livelihood) because of the WDMC's mission. And unsure about her intentions, the two men distrust her but she tries to reassure them by saying that Biosyn can fuck off since they are also responsible for destroying her plane.
However, the Sanctuary's denizens remind them that they better be united or else it will be the failure of their quest.
At some distance, in the middle of the fog, they see the recognizable silhouette of a sauropod, that of an Argentinosaurus (the species was seen in the distance and mentioned earlier in the story. Instead of Argentinosaurus, it could also be another large titanosaur). However, this herbivore has the particularity of having a symbiotic relation with some small carnivore species within Biosyn Sanctuary (I'm more thinking about a pterosaur or a flying/semi-arboreal theropod than a strictly ground-dwelling predator. For now, the baboon-sized Variraptor is my candidate), with the Argentinosaurus letting those carnivores eat its parasites and the insects flying around it while the carnivores will let out an alarm call shall a large predator approach. It could be illustrated in a scene where an Acrocanthosaurus (the one from the Drive-in scene) is spotted by the carnivores as it passes by. The Argentinosaurus turns to face the larger predator, adopt a defensive posture, and as the acro hasn't yet moved, the smaller carnivores take off from the sauropod and flies straight to the acro's head. Harassed by those creatures, the Acrocanthosaurus retreats. Thus, if those small carnivores (which we'll call the Argentinosaurus' suite) are brave enough to attack a megatheropod, our three protagonists know they're not safe and that they better move away.
The Sanctuary's true nature
While still heading north, Claire's path crosses that of a bull Shantungosaurus. She move out of his way and stay still. She and the audience recognize the animal as he was already in the JW rewrite and TRQ (in the first story, he gained some scars after a fight with a few Metriacanthosaurus), where he was a secondary "character" (and a threat in a few scenes). Both have a peaceful scene where they make eye contact but that quiet moment is shattered when a gunshot resounds in the forest and the hadrosaur flees, badly wounded. Claire hides and in the distance, she sees a hunter, accompanied by a couple of Biosyn security guards and another employee which she presume is some sort of supervisohunting guide. Watching how the hunter is dressed and how he behave in the wild, she knows he's not a professional hunter but just a rich hobbyist and then realizes the Sanctuary's true nature: It's a hunting reserve. As the Shantungosaurus escaped them, the hunter express his discontentment at the guide, which promise to find him another quarry. They leave and following the blood trail left by the hadrosaur, Claire finds him by a stream. His wounds are too grievous and he's too weak to lash out at Claire, who kneels by his head, trying to comfort him in his last moments, up until his last breath. Watching another of her former park's animals dying fills Claire with not only grief, but also anger. She change her plans and heads back south instead of continuing northward, following the hunting party's track.
Note: It doesn't necessarily have to be a Shantungosaurus in the role of the animal shot by the hunters, but it have to be a recognizable animal from the previous installments for emotional impact and Claire's development (another candidate could be the Therizinosaurus from TRQ)
She later finds another hunting party. One of its members, a Biosyn guard, pulls out an item she recognize: a raptor resonating chamber. The guard use it like a bird call and soon, an Achillobator, arrive, believing it heard one of its kind. The poor animal is shot by the hunters, who scream in satisfaction before taking a picture with their quarry. They then brings it to the Biosyn vehicle waiting nearby but before they leave (after having a short conversation during they mention that another team captured the rex and is bringing it the paddocks), Claire deliberately attract the attention of one of the guards, the same one which used the resonating chamber, and he say to his companions he won't be long. He move away from the road and deeper in the woods, he fall into Claire's ambush. She kill him, loot some of his equipment (including the resonating chamber), hide his body and leave. Worried for his colleague, the other guard with the hunters orders the guide to drive them back to the lodge, and search his friend. But he too is murdered by Claire, who takes a small metallic box on him. Activating the box, she realize it's a sonic weapon she has seen before, in the hands of InGen Security's elite troops during the fall of Isla Nublar (it's like a weaponized version of the box Dodgson and his companions have in Crichton's TLW). She turns it off, take it with her and follows the hunters vehicle's tracks on the road, towards the lodge.
However, Claire ignores she's being watched, and not by human eyes...
Over hill
Cesare and his men leave their accommodation and head for the frontiers of Biosyn's lands. Leaving their vehicles near a ruined fort, the grey guards start their trek while the sun is setting behind the mountains ahead of them.
A bed in the trees
As walking through the valley at night would be too dangerous, Owen, Dougal and Kayla decide to find a resting place and climb in a tree. From it, they have a panorama on a nearby lake and notice they are approximately halfway between the dam and the Citadel. At this moment, we also have peaceful scenes with the valley's denizens at dusk (Pelecanimimus fishing in the lake, herbivores drinking nearby, the same Spinosaurus from the report at the beginning peacefully sitting on the bank like an oversized duck...).
Theo's peace
In the evening, just a few hours before his flight to Venice, Theo also passes by his former home, which he left years ago before joining Ken Wheatley's mercenary company. His ex-wife still lives here and noticing that she started a new life with another man and seems happy, he walks away in peace, leaving behind him the last picture he had of himself and her (earlier in the story, Theo is seen looking at said picture).
The secret path
Back in Italy, the grey guards find the entrance of an old mine and enter it, taking the path that will allow them to pass under the limits of Biosyn's lands.
Mercenaries
Mercenary troops land in Biosyn's airstrip and their leader is brought to the Citadel. He has a discussion with Dodgson behind closed doors.
Foes... or allies?
A few hours after nightfall, Claire finally finds a large old chalet with typical Tyrolean architecture: The Hunting Lodge (it's implied that it was built way before Biosyn bought those lands, when the area was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before WWI). Claire remarks it's surrounded by an invisible fence (identical to the one from Jurassic World Evolution 2's Biosyn DLC) which prevents the animals from getting too close. Aware that the lodge wouldn't be a shelter for her and that its occupants probably outnumber her, she turns away from it, continuing to wander in the woods. But just a few minutes later, she hears sound in the nearby bushes. Aware she might be hunted, she is ready to use the ultrasound box and fight for her life. A pack of Achillobators shows up, menacingly walking towards her. At the same time, it starts to rain.
Claire first thinks of using the box and running away while the predators would be bothered by the sound but she knows it will be useless in the long run as they could track her all across the Sanctuary. She then remembers the reports she read earlier in the story, and especially that of the 2001 incident on Sorna, where Alan Grant and his companions walked out alive and unharmed from a close encounter with raptors.
In dire straits, she makes up a desperate plan and carefully, she pulls out the resonating chamber she stole from the Biosyn guards. She uses it and due to their bad experience in the sanctuary with the resonating chambers' usual users, the raptors get agitated but their pack leader tells them to calm down as Claire doesn't seem to be a Biosyn guard or a hunter. The pack leader walks alone towards Claire and sniffs the dried blood on her hands and clothes, realizing it belongs to other humans. Nothing happens for a moment and then the pack leader lets out a bark. Behind Claire, two raptors move aside. Slowly walking backwards, watching carefully the raptors' moves, Claire exits the circle made by the surrounding predators and continues doing so until she's at a respectable distance. At the beginning, the raptors just watch her but as she's heading towards the Hunting Lodge, she hears them following her. However, she is aware that they would have already pounced on her if they wanted to eat her and knows that they're more intrigued. Meanwhile, the rain intensifies (there could also be a storm).
Claire reaches the invisible fence, crosses it, and searches for its power source. But as she's sabotaging it, the Lodge caretaker (a gnarly-looking old local man) spots her and frightened by her look, runs away towards the building. She is forced to catch him and, after a short struggle, kill him with her knife before he can raise the alarm. After showing some trouble due to killing a probable innocent, she resumes her sabotage and the fence is deactivated. The raptors cross it and see Claire entering the lodge. Near its entrance, she finds a sword hanging on the wall as a decorative element and noticing it's still sharp, she takes it along with its sheath and heads for the rooms. Behind her, the raptors open the door and silently enter in the lodge. In the hallway which leads to the rooms, Claire stays still when the raptors walk past her as they head to the rooms and grin as her audacious plan is working. Claire enters one of the rooms, raises her sword blade over a sleeping hunter and when the time comes, thrust it into his body. Meanwhile, the raptors open other doors and entering the rooms, they rush on the sleepers. Slaughter ensues and only those who locked up their doors have the time to wake up, grab a weapon and fight for their very survival. Some of the lodge's occupants offer some resistance in the lounge but there, Claire activates the sonic weapon she stole and an ear-piercing sharp sound comes from it. While the raptors back off behind her, their common enemies kneel and scream in pain and Claire (who put on some earplug) slashes their throats, deactivate the weapon, and let the raptors tear the hunters alive while she raids some items (stuff like snacks, water, a first-aid kit, a map...) and leave, disappearing in the woods.
A bit later, she finds a small cave whose entrance is high from the ground and rest in it, sleeping until mid-morning.
The mountain's pass
At the end of their night-long ascent, the grey guards arrive in a pass/cave where they found human bones, which they presume to be those of the AISI's spy Viscontini told them about, and the remains of a Biosyn drone. Soon after, they are attacked by the guardian animal(s) the corporation left there to kill any trespasser coming from that direction. (I haven't chosen any species yet). They manage to defeat it (or them) and dawn break out as they arrive at a vista point which overlooks the valley. The grey guards observe it, the eyes of Cesare stop on the Citadel for a moment, and they retreat back inside the mountain to rest a few hours before descending into the valley. They send a message to Vuillier and Viscontini, telling them that they're inside the Sanctuary.
Traces of a slaughter
During their early morning patrol, a security team discovers that a massacre occurred during the night in the Hunting Lodge. They find clues indicating that someone helped the raptors and participated in the killings. The control room check the Lodge CCTV footage and fear spreads like wildfire among the staff when they discover the culprit is a sinister-looking black-clad hooded woman. Seeing that one of the figure's hand is a prosthesis and that the other wear a silver ring with a red gem, they realize it's Claire and Dodgson pretty much start to crap his pants (partly because one of the hunters was a very wealthy and powerful foreign client whose disappearance won't go unnoticed). Since she made it out alive from the plane's crash, Dodgson fears that the other WDMC agents might have too. When asked about the slaughter itself, Dodgson orders his staff to cover it up for the moment, as he don't want to worry the board of directors who are set to arrive later that day for a big event he planned in the evening.
Theo's return
Theo returns to Auronzo and Wu, who just learned about Claire's presence in the valley, tells him that they must get Maisie out of the facility as soon as possible since disaster tends to follow Claire like a shadow.
Taking the gloves off
However, Maisie has meanwhile discovered that the videos were another lie, by recognizing one of the scientists from the video, who also work at the Citadel (and who didn't aged, even though the adult Charlotte's video was supposed to be taken fourteen years ago). Aware that the gentle method is no longer considerable, Dodgson decides to use the hard one and Doctor Lesser locks Maisie in a cell within her lab, to which Wu can't access. Lesser reveal that it wasn't Wu who told Dodgson that she was a clone but the spy he has among Lockwood Manor's employees, and that the only true part in the video was the one about the genetic disease: Charlotte did had it, just like her mother Elizabeth before that (she died in 1993 and it was because of her Lockwood and Hammond fell out), and had the car accident which took her life didn't happened, the disease would have killed her a few years later. As he wanted Maisie to have a long life, Benjamin Lockwood asked the scientists he hired (there is a whole subplot about what they became in TRQ) to cure it and they did find a way. As the scientists' notes were accidently destroyed, the solution is now within Maisie's body, and Dodgson wants it so he can put new drugs on the market.
Before it's too late, Wu and Theo, with Ramsay's help, start organizing Maisie's evasion. The geneticist mentions a secret trail from WWI in the northeastern mountains: It's their escape route. He then heads for his lab, planning something else.
Tracking Claire
Curious about Biosyn's movements around the Hunting Lodge, Owen, Dougal and Kayla investigate it after the departure of the security troops. They discover evidence of Claire's passage and Owen tries to follow her fiancée's tracks. Kayla and/or Dougal make comments about the slaughter of the hunters.
Bigelow's last chance
Isaac Gibbon gives Jessica Bigelow a new mission: Go to Auronzo and ensure the evacuation of Lewis Dodgson and Biosyn's most important research. The agent ask her boss why and he said that he just received news that Biosyn is compromised. He also precise that it's her last chance after the Malta fiasco. Bigelow leave her safe house in central Italy and goes north.
Shady preparations
Continuing south, Owen, Dougal and Kayla see mercenaries positioning some sort of moveable antenna on a ridge which overlooks the road which connects the Citadel to the valley's northern continue, as finding Claire and entering the Citadel is more urgent.
The gathering of the clouds
One of the control room's employees ask Dodgson to come. He shows him footage from the Biosyn lands's southern gate, near the employee village.
Before the gate, a group of Carabinieri stand, showing to the guards and the security cameras a search warrant: The government finally decided to act against Biosyn. But Dodgson refuses to open the gates for the Carabinieri and orders the mercenaries who arrived during the night to intimidate them. The Carabinieri move away from the gate, with their leader warning against the consequences of such an action. At a respectable distance from the gate, Vuillier, Viscontini and Nyamu watched the scene. Soon, other groups of Carabinieri are deployed along the other entrances to Biosyn's lands. The siege of Auronzo has started.
Hearing about the siege's situation, some employees leave their post and head for the metro (which connects the Citadel to the village. Another loop also connects the Citadel to the various facilities across the Sanctuary, including the seven towers and the dam), in order to go to the village and then hoping to be able to leave Biosyn's lands before things starts to get too ugly but Dodgson's has the metro's station locked and commands them to go back to their posts. Seeing their CEO starting to act like Hitler in his bunker, they are afraid.
End of Act III.
See you tomorrow for Act IV
submitted by TheGeekyZoologist to JurassicPark [link] [comments]
Act III - The Gathering of the Clouds
Mia EverettVisually confirming Rainn's revelation, Victoria is shown in a cage inside Amelia Everett's lab, within Biosyn's Citadel. Mia does her best to comfort the scared and depressed Achillobator and her motivations are explored shortly after. It's revealed that due to her experience within the team who made the Indominus and the Indoraptor, Biosyn tasked her with reviving InGen's IBRIS program by breeding raptors with high obedience potential. However, none of the achillobators cloned by Biosyn proved to be trainable enough for the program's ambitions (even though they attempted to mimic Owen's experience by having keepers being there at the animals' birth), which displeased Dodgson and the other higher-ups, who are now favouring another research team, who focuses on a more intrusive way of controlling dinosaurs. Basically treated as a second-class researcher amidst a rather toxic work environment, Mia became desperate enough to hire poachers to capture Blue, which she intended to breed with their achillobators in order to finally have trainable individuals. As Victoria is not sexually mature, Mia is in front of a considerable setback and fears that Dodgson will pull the plug due to her lack of results, especially in this troubled period for Biosyn.
The tying noose
The next day, the intel collected by the UN agents (people involved in the Black Market, Biosyn's connections with it) are sent to the nearby countries, including Italy, where an arrest warrant is launched against Kayla.
On his side, Isaac Gibbon is contacted by Bigelow who tells him about the debacle of their mission in Malta, saying that Claire and Owen saved the grey guards from disaster. He orders her to stay in Italy for the moment and wait for new orders. Shortly receives, he receives a candidate for a desk job in the DSD: It's Franklin. Gibbon tells Franklin he heard about his bravery during the 2019 incidents and his past connection with InGen (Before the DPG, Franklin worked for it as an IT Technician), before asking questions about Claire as he is aware that she collaborated with him not only on some occasions in the past few years but also in the 2019 Costa Rican incident, where Franklin was the couple's companion while they were running from InGen's agents and the authorities.
Dubrovnik
The inhabitants and tourists of the Croatian seaside city of Dubrovnik are surprised when a Biosyn Quetzalcoatlus descends upon the old town and starts attacking people. As a joke similar to one in TLW with the Japanese businessman and his reference to Godzilla, some extra could yell in Valyrian "I left Westeros because of this!" or "By the Seven, not again!" (Dubrovnik was one of Game of Thrones' filming location).
Ramsay's email
In a manner similar to the Hawaii attack scene in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla, the Dubrovnik scene cuts just as the Quetzal swoops on the bystanders and we are now in the bar of Biosyn's employee village. Wu is watching the news of the Dubrovnik attack on the TV (there is even a declaration from Zoe Murdoch, in which she denies the pterosaur came from Auronzo's Sanctuary and was probably created by a rival company who somehow put their hands upon Biosyn Quetzalcoatlus DNA. In the bar, someone whisper that one of their Quetzals did escaped from the valley thanks to the temporary deactivation of the invisible fence system and that Dodgson has launched an investigation to know who's responsible) when he receives a mysterious email from Ramsay, which includes the name of some woman. Wu search it on the internet and ends up on IMDB where he discovers that the adult "Charlotte" on the videos is actually an actress who lives in London.
Arrest
In Rome, early in the morning, Kayla is arrested in her flat by the police as she is accused of illegal smuggling.
Viscontini
Following all the incidents in the Alps, the clash in the Sabine Hills and the recent Dubrovnik attack, people gets pissed at Biosyn and protests occur in several locations, including Rome. In the Italian Ministry of the Interior, Viscontini has an argument with Pazzi, declaring that they need to take severe actions against Biosyn but the minister retorts that taking large-scale actions against the corporation might trigger a whole deal of undesirable consequences, including deteriorating US-Italian relations due to the close ties between Biosyn and the US government. He won't risk that just because of some rumours, weak proof and small incidents. Viscontini retorts that soon, Biosyn might have an angry mob showing at its gates with the goal of driving it out of Italy.
Following Vuillier's instructions, Claire, Owen, Nyamu and Dougal leave Malta the same day and fly to the Eternal City, where they have to meet Viscontini in the AISI headquarters. There, they have a video call with Vuillier. He and Viscontini wants to send the trio of WDMC agents to Auronzo Valley so they can infiltrate Biosyn's facility, find compromising information and transmit them to the Italian authorities, hoping to finally convince Pazzi and the rest of the government to take action against Biosyn. However, one of the agents points out that they will need an entrance ticket as one doesn't simply walk into Auronzo, since the borders of Biosyn's lands are guarded and monitored while some people disappeared after going too close from the Sanctuary (anti-Biosyn activists, reckless adventurers, Grendel Corporation's spies, others from the AISI's and Austrian government). Viscontini declare they might have that ticket.
We cut to Kayla in her prison cell. The guard announces she has visit and she is brought to a room where Viscontini and Dougal waits for her. The head of the AISI and the WDMC agent then negotiate with her: In exchange for her freedom, she will bring Dougal, Claire and Owen to Biosyn's Sanctuary. However, Viscontini precise he'll have her hunted down if she ever betrays them.
Kayla raises the fact that she can't show up at Auronzo like this and needs a motive. Viscontini and Dougal then talk about the animals seized in Malta's black market.
Theo's Mission
That day, Wu summons Theo, explain the whole issue with the fake Charlotte and ask him to go to London, find the actress and question her about the videos so they can have proofs to show Maisie, who started to really become insufferable because of Dodgson's bad influence (in that part of the story, one of the few scenes where she's likeable is one where she and Drummond bonds over the common passion for dinosaurs). The ex-mercenary soon leaves Auronzo, taking a bus for Venice in the nearest village while Wu explains to Pellegrino and Dodgson that Theo had urgent family matters to deal with in the UK.
Leaving San Francisco
Desiring to supervise the Dolomites Crisis more closely, Vuillier fly to Italy.
Nine containers
As evidence of Biosyn's possible connections to the Maltese black market has been discussed on the news, Dodgson knows it's a matter of time before Vuillier, the Italians or the Austrians send people in Auronzo and expose Biosyn's misdeeds.
We then follow Pellegrino's POV as she oversees the exit of nine large mysterious containers from the Citadel and their departure from the airstrip just outside the valley. One of her subordinates asks what's inside and she answers that she has no idea, with Dodgson only giving her a series of instructions. They watch the containers being flown abroad.
The following day, Pellegrino speak about it to Wu and other employees with anti-Dodgson sentiments like Drummond. She notices that Wu is uncomfortable as they talk about it and realize he must be hiding something. Ramsay, who just arrived from the US in preparation for a big corporate event in the Citadel, almost surprise their discussion. As they're not sure if they can trust him or not, they pretend it's nothing. Wu then phones Theo and asks him about his secret mission's progress.
London
In London, Theo finds the actress from the videos and initially posing as a reporter, filming her in an interview, he then ask her questions about the videos and after some hesitations, she concedes to give him answers and reveals among other things that the shooting occurred a few months ago in some local warehouse, that the director of those videos is none other than Colin Trevorrow (who, desperate for a job after the debacle of the Jurassic World film, accepted to participate to that project, oblivious that Biosyn was behind it since a dummy company took care of the production).
AISI
Vuillier arrives in Rome and meets with his agents, Nyamu and Viscontini in one of the AISI headquarters' conference rooms, where a map of Auronzo Valley and its surroundings has been laid. Kayla is also there and offscreen, our characters talk about the plan.
At the end of the meeting, everyone but Vuillier and Viscontini leave the room. Both have a secret conversation during which the Italian say that the Grey Guard's Mediterranean Company, supported by the Austrians and secretly by him (as he fears that Biosyn has informers within the Italian government), are deployed in one of the villages near Auronzo, and is supposed to act as a Plan B should the Claire-Owen-Dougal trio fail, by taking a secret path through an old mine and a mountain pass before breaking into Biosyn's citadel. The WDMC agents don't know that and when Vuillier ask why, Viscontini answers that it's better that way (should the agents be captured ant tortured, they won't tell Biosyn that there is a second team) and that the secret path isn't safer as one of his spy was killed by some creature after taking it and arriving in sight of the valley. He thinks that a small dozen of grey guards have better chances surviving the pass' guardian(s) than three civilian agents.
To the Dolomites
The next day, in the middle of the morning, Kayla is preparing her plane in some airstrip near Rome and the seized creature from the black market is loaded in the hold (I have no idea which species to choose). Equipped by the Italians, Claire, Owen and Dougal say farewell to Vuillier, Nyamu and Viscontini. The Frenchman tells Claire that it's time to unleash the She-wolf upon Dodgson but Claire correct him by saying "Not the She-wolf. The Dragon." (in this AU, she has a particular connection with the dragon-like Indominus), implying she'll get the mission done whatever it takes. He and the other two men wish them good luck and the trio of WDMC agents climb aboard the plane. They soon take off.
Biosyn's aerial defense
Kayla's plane arrives in sight of the mountains which delimit Biosyn's Sanctuary. Informed of their mission by Vuillier and Viscontini, one of the grey guards is watching the plane through his binoculars as it passes over the village where they are staying.
Kayla is soon contacted by the Citadel's control room as they detected the aircraft on their radars and they ask her why she's coming. The pilot answer that she collected an animal which might interest them (she told the WDMC agents and the Italians that Biosyn doesn't have this particular species in their Sanctuary) and ask to land on their airstrip. While the Biosyn employees discuss, the plane is about to enter Auronzo Valley by the east, as that part of the sanctuary is the furthest from most of the buildings (while the airstrip is in the northernmost parts of Biosyn's lands, beyond the mountains with the frozen dam lake) and thus where Claire, Owen and Dougal has the best chances of landing unnoticed. The trio of agents take their parachutes and prepare to jump, but at the same time, Dodgson, who heard that Kayla was arrested by the authorities just a few days ago, fears that her plane is a Trojan horse and decides to activate the valley's "aerial defense". On the screen of one of the room's monitors, we see a group of dots heading straight towards the plane. It's actually a group of pteranodons, from the same toothed variant as those who appeared in Jurassic Park 3 (there is even at least one black male identical to the scrapped one from Johnston's film), and they just collide with the plane, crashing against the cockpit and getting turned to shred by the rotors' blades, damaging the plane (the scene is partly inspired by a cutscene from the Ninth Mission of Paraworld's campaign). Owen wonder why those pteranodons behave in a suicidal manner. Suddenly, the pteranodons retreat and as their window is shrinking, the agents know they have to jump now (they've reached the middle of the valley and their trajectory deviated northwards, towards the mountain dam). Claire jumps first but as Owen is about to jump in his turn, the plane is attacked by a Quetzalcoatlus and the Raptor Whisperer sees another and a few pteranodons chasing her fiancée, whose parachute opened. Claire shakes the pterosaurs off by disappearing into the valley's dense forest. As they will be grabbed by the attacking pterosaurs as soon as they leave the aircraft, Owen, Dougal and Kayla stay inside it and brace for the crash. The plane crashes down at the surface of the frozen lake by the mountain dam in the northern part of the valley.
Back in Rome, Vuillier, Nyamu and Viscontini are worried as they heard the agents and the pterosaurs' screams (they had an open channel all that time with Kayla's plane). They hope the agents will survive this ordeal and activate the beacons they were given before their departure.
Note: The fate of the animal they took with them is still unclear for me. It really depends on the chosen species. If it's something large and potentially dangerous, Kayla would probably want to drop it in the valley in order to have a lighter plane and not deal with it after crashing. But if it's a creature about the size of a small dog for example, they could free it as they leave the wreckage.
Gigantoraptor
We then cut to Claire hanging in the trees but instead of a Therizinosaurus (which already appeared in TRQ. Moreover, Claire had a small arc with this species in that story), she is threatened by a Gigantoraptor. The scene plays out much like the Theri scene from Trevorrow's version, with Claire hiding in a pond etc.. Once the Gigantoraptor walks away, Claire gets out of the pond and sees the fumes from the plane's crash in the distance, behind the mountain dam.
The dam lake
Before it sinks in the lake, Owen, Dougal and Kayla leave her plane and step on the ice. Under it, they notice a large shadow and know they better move away from the lake. They notice a ladder by the dam but as they head towards it, a Quetzalcoatlus or a Pteranodon lands on their way. They step back, moving towards an opening on the lake's surface. Suddenly, a giant 9-meters long temnospondyl (based upon an unnamed and fragmentary genus from Lesotho) burst out the water, almost killing one of the characters. Ensue a scene where our three protagonists have to evade both the pterosaur and the amphibian. The pterosaur ends up being dragged underwater by the temnospondyl but other pterosaurs arrive and to escape them, our trio climbs on the dam and rushes to its elevator, going down in the valley. Down at the dam's base, they notice it's dilapidated and Kayla tell her two companions that Biosyn sell some of its power to the nearest villages.
Note: The main doubt I have about this scene is having a temnospondyl living in the icy water of a mountain lake. It might be too much of a stretch so if you think it's not realistic at all, it will be scrapped from the scene (and perhaps be replaced by a juvenile Baryonyx or something like this, an animal which could be also the one our characters brought with them in the plane.
Plan B
Since the agents lost their beacons during the pterosaurs' attack and the crash, they couldn't tell Rome that they were still alive. Vuillier and Viscontini fear the worst and send a message to Laurenzo Cesare.
Droppings
Meanwhile, Claire started walking towards the dam, hoping to find her companions on the way if they made it out alive from the crash. When she hears a racket in the woods, she hides and a Biosyn tyrannosaur arrives. But it's not on a hunting mode and instead, it just leaves some droppings on a log near Claire's hiding place. After the predator leaves, she approaches the log and smears her face with the droppings, remembering her "Walk in the Park" with Owen when they searched her nephews during the Fall of Jurassic World (the droppings hide her smell, dissuading the other animals to investigate her).
Argument
An argument bursts out between Owen, Dougal and Kayla while they're walking south. The first wants to find his fiancée, the second says that their mission is more important, and Kayla is mad at both men since she lost her plane (and livelihood) because of the WDMC's mission. And unsure about her intentions, the two men distrust her but she tries to reassure them by saying that Biosyn can fuck off since they are also responsible for destroying her plane.
However, the Sanctuary's denizens remind them that they better be united or else it will be the failure of their quest.
At some distance, in the middle of the fog, they see the recognizable silhouette of a sauropod, that of an Argentinosaurus (the species was seen in the distance and mentioned earlier in the story. Instead of Argentinosaurus, it could also be another large titanosaur). However, this herbivore has the particularity of having a symbiotic relation with some small carnivore species within Biosyn Sanctuary (I'm more thinking about a pterosaur or a flying/semi-arboreal theropod than a strictly ground-dwelling predator. For now, the baboon-sized Variraptor is my candidate), with the Argentinosaurus letting those carnivores eat its parasites and the insects flying around it while the carnivores will let out an alarm call shall a large predator approach. It could be illustrated in a scene where an Acrocanthosaurus (the one from the Drive-in scene) is spotted by the carnivores as it passes by. The Argentinosaurus turns to face the larger predator, adopt a defensive posture, and as the acro hasn't yet moved, the smaller carnivores take off from the sauropod and flies straight to the acro's head. Harassed by those creatures, the Acrocanthosaurus retreats. Thus, if those small carnivores (which we'll call the Argentinosaurus' suite) are brave enough to attack a megatheropod, our three protagonists know they're not safe and that they better move away.
The Sanctuary's true nature
While still heading north, Claire's path crosses that of a bull Shantungosaurus. She move out of his way and stay still. She and the audience recognize the animal as he was already in the JW rewrite and TRQ (in the first story, he gained some scars after a fight with a few Metriacanthosaurus), where he was a secondary "character" (and a threat in a few scenes). Both have a peaceful scene where they make eye contact but that quiet moment is shattered when a gunshot resounds in the forest and the hadrosaur flees, badly wounded. Claire hides and in the distance, she sees a hunter, accompanied by a couple of Biosyn security guards and another employee which she presume is some sort of supervisohunting guide. Watching how the hunter is dressed and how he behave in the wild, she knows he's not a professional hunter but just a rich hobbyist and then realizes the Sanctuary's true nature: It's a hunting reserve. As the Shantungosaurus escaped them, the hunter express his discontentment at the guide, which promise to find him another quarry. They leave and following the blood trail left by the hadrosaur, Claire finds him by a stream. His wounds are too grievous and he's too weak to lash out at Claire, who kneels by his head, trying to comfort him in his last moments, up until his last breath. Watching another of her former park's animals dying fills Claire with not only grief, but also anger. She change her plans and heads back south instead of continuing northward, following the hunting party's track.
Note: It doesn't necessarily have to be a Shantungosaurus in the role of the animal shot by the hunters, but it have to be a recognizable animal from the previous installments for emotional impact and Claire's development (another candidate could be the Therizinosaurus from TRQ)
She later finds another hunting party. One of its members, a Biosyn guard, pulls out an item she recognize: a raptor resonating chamber. The guard use it like a bird call and soon, an Achillobator, arrive, believing it heard one of its kind. The poor animal is shot by the hunters, who scream in satisfaction before taking a picture with their quarry. They then brings it to the Biosyn vehicle waiting nearby but before they leave (after having a short conversation during they mention that another team captured the rex and is bringing it the paddocks), Claire deliberately attract the attention of one of the guards, the same one which used the resonating chamber, and he say to his companions he won't be long. He move away from the road and deeper in the woods, he fall into Claire's ambush. She kill him, loot some of his equipment (including the resonating chamber), hide his body and leave. Worried for his colleague, the other guard with the hunters orders the guide to drive them back to the lodge, and search his friend. But he too is murdered by Claire, who takes a small metallic box on him. Activating the box, she realize it's a sonic weapon she has seen before, in the hands of InGen Security's elite troops during the fall of Isla Nublar (it's like a weaponized version of the box Dodgson and his companions have in Crichton's TLW). She turns it off, take it with her and follows the hunters vehicle's tracks on the road, towards the lodge.
However, Claire ignores she's being watched, and not by human eyes...
Over hill
Cesare and his men leave their accommodation and head for the frontiers of Biosyn's lands. Leaving their vehicles near a ruined fort, the grey guards start their trek while the sun is setting behind the mountains ahead of them.
A bed in the trees
As walking through the valley at night would be too dangerous, Owen, Dougal and Kayla decide to find a resting place and climb in a tree. From it, they have a panorama on a nearby lake and notice they are approximately halfway between the dam and the Citadel. At this moment, we also have peaceful scenes with the valley's denizens at dusk (Pelecanimimus fishing in the lake, herbivores drinking nearby, the same Spinosaurus from the report at the beginning peacefully sitting on the bank like an oversized duck...).
Theo's peace
In the evening, just a few hours before his flight to Venice, Theo also passes by his former home, which he left years ago before joining Ken Wheatley's mercenary company. His ex-wife still lives here and noticing that she started a new life with another man and seems happy, he walks away in peace, leaving behind him the last picture he had of himself and her (earlier in the story, Theo is seen looking at said picture).
The secret path
Back in Italy, the grey guards find the entrance of an old mine and enter it, taking the path that will allow them to pass under the limits of Biosyn's lands.
Mercenaries
Mercenary troops land in Biosyn's airstrip and their leader is brought to the Citadel. He has a discussion with Dodgson behind closed doors.
Foes... or allies?
A few hours after nightfall, Claire finally finds a large old chalet with typical Tyrolean architecture: The Hunting Lodge (it's implied that it was built way before Biosyn bought those lands, when the area was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before WWI). Claire remarks it's surrounded by an invisible fence (identical to the one from Jurassic World Evolution 2's Biosyn DLC) which prevents the animals from getting too close. Aware that the lodge wouldn't be a shelter for her and that its occupants probably outnumber her, she turns away from it, continuing to wander in the woods. But just a few minutes later, she hears sound in the nearby bushes. Aware she might be hunted, she is ready to use the ultrasound box and fight for her life. A pack of Achillobators shows up, menacingly walking towards her. At the same time, it starts to rain.
Claire first thinks of using the box and running away while the predators would be bothered by the sound but she knows it will be useless in the long run as they could track her all across the Sanctuary. She then remembers the reports she read earlier in the story, and especially that of the 2001 incident on Sorna, where Alan Grant and his companions walked out alive and unharmed from a close encounter with raptors.
In dire straits, she makes up a desperate plan and carefully, she pulls out the resonating chamber she stole from the Biosyn guards. She uses it and due to their bad experience in the sanctuary with the resonating chambers' usual users, the raptors get agitated but their pack leader tells them to calm down as Claire doesn't seem to be a Biosyn guard or a hunter. The pack leader walks alone towards Claire and sniffs the dried blood on her hands and clothes, realizing it belongs to other humans. Nothing happens for a moment and then the pack leader lets out a bark. Behind Claire, two raptors move aside. Slowly walking backwards, watching carefully the raptors' moves, Claire exits the circle made by the surrounding predators and continues doing so until she's at a respectable distance. At the beginning, the raptors just watch her but as she's heading towards the Hunting Lodge, she hears them following her. However, she is aware that they would have already pounced on her if they wanted to eat her and knows that they're more intrigued. Meanwhile, the rain intensifies (there could also be a storm).
Claire reaches the invisible fence, crosses it, and searches for its power source. But as she's sabotaging it, the Lodge caretaker (a gnarly-looking old local man) spots her and frightened by her look, runs away towards the building. She is forced to catch him and, after a short struggle, kill him with her knife before he can raise the alarm. After showing some trouble due to killing a probable innocent, she resumes her sabotage and the fence is deactivated. The raptors cross it and see Claire entering the lodge. Near its entrance, she finds a sword hanging on the wall as a decorative element and noticing it's still sharp, she takes it along with its sheath and heads for the rooms. Behind her, the raptors open the door and silently enter in the lodge. In the hallway which leads to the rooms, Claire stays still when the raptors walk past her as they head to the rooms and grin as her audacious plan is working. Claire enters one of the rooms, raises her sword blade over a sleeping hunter and when the time comes, thrust it into his body. Meanwhile, the raptors open other doors and entering the rooms, they rush on the sleepers. Slaughter ensues and only those who locked up their doors have the time to wake up, grab a weapon and fight for their very survival. Some of the lodge's occupants offer some resistance in the lounge but there, Claire activates the sonic weapon she stole and an ear-piercing sharp sound comes from it. While the raptors back off behind her, their common enemies kneel and scream in pain and Claire (who put on some earplug) slashes their throats, deactivate the weapon, and let the raptors tear the hunters alive while she raids some items (stuff like snacks, water, a first-aid kit, a map...) and leave, disappearing in the woods.
A bit later, she finds a small cave whose entrance is high from the ground and rest in it, sleeping until mid-morning.
The mountain's pass
At the end of their night-long ascent, the grey guards arrive in a pass/cave where they found human bones, which they presume to be those of the AISI's spy Viscontini told them about, and the remains of a Biosyn drone. Soon after, they are attacked by the guardian animal(s) the corporation left there to kill any trespasser coming from that direction. (I haven't chosen any species yet). They manage to defeat it (or them) and dawn break out as they arrive at a vista point which overlooks the valley. The grey guards observe it, the eyes of Cesare stop on the Citadel for a moment, and they retreat back inside the mountain to rest a few hours before descending into the valley. They send a message to Vuillier and Viscontini, telling them that they're inside the Sanctuary.
Traces of a slaughter
During their early morning patrol, a security team discovers that a massacre occurred during the night in the Hunting Lodge. They find clues indicating that someone helped the raptors and participated in the killings. The control room check the Lodge CCTV footage and fear spreads like wildfire among the staff when they discover the culprit is a sinister-looking black-clad hooded woman. Seeing that one of the figure's hand is a prosthesis and that the other wear a silver ring with a red gem, they realize it's Claire and Dodgson pretty much start to crap his pants (partly because one of the hunters was a very wealthy and powerful foreign client whose disappearance won't go unnoticed). Since she made it out alive from the plane's crash, Dodgson fears that the other WDMC agents might have too. When asked about the slaughter itself, Dodgson orders his staff to cover it up for the moment, as he don't want to worry the board of directors who are set to arrive later that day for a big event he planned in the evening.
Theo's return
Theo returns to Auronzo and Wu, who just learned about Claire's presence in the valley, tells him that they must get Maisie out of the facility as soon as possible since disaster tends to follow Claire like a shadow.
Taking the gloves off
However, Maisie has meanwhile discovered that the videos were another lie, by recognizing one of the scientists from the video, who also work at the Citadel (and who didn't aged, even though the adult Charlotte's video was supposed to be taken fourteen years ago). Aware that the gentle method is no longer considerable, Dodgson decides to use the hard one and Doctor Lesser locks Maisie in a cell within her lab, to which Wu can't access. Lesser reveal that it wasn't Wu who told Dodgson that she was a clone but the spy he has among Lockwood Manor's employees, and that the only true part in the video was the one about the genetic disease: Charlotte did had it, just like her mother Elizabeth before that (she died in 1993 and it was because of her Lockwood and Hammond fell out), and had the car accident which took her life didn't happened, the disease would have killed her a few years later. As he wanted Maisie to have a long life, Benjamin Lockwood asked the scientists he hired (there is a whole subplot about what they became in TRQ) to cure it and they did find a way. As the scientists' notes were accidently destroyed, the solution is now within Maisie's body, and Dodgson wants it so he can put new drugs on the market.
Before it's too late, Wu and Theo, with Ramsay's help, start organizing Maisie's evasion. The geneticist mentions a secret trail from WWI in the northeastern mountains: It's their escape route. He then heads for his lab, planning something else.
Tracking Claire
Curious about Biosyn's movements around the Hunting Lodge, Owen, Dougal and Kayla investigate it after the departure of the security troops. They discover evidence of Claire's passage and Owen tries to follow her fiancée's tracks. Kayla and/or Dougal make comments about the slaughter of the hunters.
Bigelow's last chance
Isaac Gibbon gives Jessica Bigelow a new mission: Go to Auronzo and ensure the evacuation of Lewis Dodgson and Biosyn's most important research. The agent ask her boss why and he said that he just received news that Biosyn is compromised. He also precise that it's her last chance after the Malta fiasco. Bigelow leave her safe house in central Italy and goes north.
Shady preparations
Continuing south, Owen, Dougal and Kayla see mercenaries positioning some sort of moveable antenna on a ridge which overlooks the road which connects the Citadel to the valley's northern continue, as finding Claire and entering the Citadel is more urgent.
The gathering of the clouds
One of the control room's employees ask Dodgson to come. He shows him footage from the Biosyn lands's southern gate, near the employee village.
Before the gate, a group of Carabinieri stand, showing to the guards and the security cameras a search warrant: The government finally decided to act against Biosyn. But Dodgson refuses to open the gates for the Carabinieri and orders the mercenaries who arrived during the night to intimidate them. The Carabinieri move away from the gate, with their leader warning against the consequences of such an action. At a respectable distance from the gate, Vuillier, Viscontini and Nyamu watched the scene. Soon, other groups of Carabinieri are deployed along the other entrances to Biosyn's lands. The siege of Auronzo has started.
Hearing about the siege's situation, some employees leave their post and head for the metro (which connects the Citadel to the village. Another loop also connects the Citadel to the various facilities across the Sanctuary, including the seven towers and the dam), in order to go to the village and then hoping to be able to leave Biosyn's lands before things starts to get too ugly but Dodgson's has the metro's station locked and commands them to go back to their posts. Seeing their CEO starting to act like Hitler in his bunker, they are afraid.
End of Act III.
See you tomorrow for Act IV
2023.06.07 05:32 Vinxl_ What if the old man tried to kill you
I step outside, only to be met with a man who seems to be waiting for someone or something, he is just standing on a boat in a small lake, looks like he is fishing. I go over to observe him from a distance to see what he was doing. I crouch down near an opening of the many thick pine trees so I can watch what he is doing. He turns and looks at me, dead in the eyes. Then he turns to grab something. It’s a… crossbow? He turns back to me and takes aim.
I’m frozen in fear, Unable to move. He shoots, And misses. At this moment I knew I had to do something, or I would be dead. I stand up and start bolting towards the forest. He won’t be able to catch me there. The thick tall tree was rubbing against my skin as I kept running. I was as though I was being held back by a large crowd.
It begins to rain. Now I can’t see much at all, water is obstructing my view. I need to find shelter. There Is a bright light that might be a campfire. Sprinting over towards the light, I rub my eyes to try and see what’s going on. There seems to be a smaller light pulling away from the bigger one. I think its in a cave or tent sort of place, still can’t see.
I finally step foot into the shelter, I rub my eyes only to come face to face with the old man holding a torch. His face was all scrunched up like a paper ball. His eyes were dark brown with a menacing touch to them. the hair was like a dog’s fur, all scruffy and uneven. the old man stares me down. He grabs my arm and pulls me closer to the fire as If he was burning me alive. I try to pull out of it, but he is twice my size which isn’t fair because I’m exhausted from all this running. I manage to kick him in the groin, which he is stunned by and drops his torch in his other hand and grasps the area to desperately try and cope with the pain. My arm is now free, I grab his torch and throw it at him. He screams and lands on the campfire and His screams can no longer be heard as the fire has reached his neck, therefore his voice box. He slowly closes his eyes. Now there is a lifeless body on the floor, that smells like leather being tanned over a flame.
“I know what I’ll be eating tonight then”. I say to myself.
His cave was small but roomy at the same time. The old man seemed to like his taste. There were four wooden pillars at each corner of the square area. A red and green carpet made from fur, either a bear or a very big sheep. He had a less than comfy bed made of rock and grass. And some meat dry aging on a rack just near the door. This is where I think I’ll live until I know what’s really going on.
submitted by Vinxl_ to botw [link] [comments]
I’m frozen in fear, Unable to move. He shoots, And misses. At this moment I knew I had to do something, or I would be dead. I stand up and start bolting towards the forest. He won’t be able to catch me there. The thick tall tree was rubbing against my skin as I kept running. I was as though I was being held back by a large crowd.
It begins to rain. Now I can’t see much at all, water is obstructing my view. I need to find shelter. There Is a bright light that might be a campfire. Sprinting over towards the light, I rub my eyes to try and see what’s going on. There seems to be a smaller light pulling away from the bigger one. I think its in a cave or tent sort of place, still can’t see.
I finally step foot into the shelter, I rub my eyes only to come face to face with the old man holding a torch. His face was all scrunched up like a paper ball. His eyes were dark brown with a menacing touch to them. the hair was like a dog’s fur, all scruffy and uneven. the old man stares me down. He grabs my arm and pulls me closer to the fire as If he was burning me alive. I try to pull out of it, but he is twice my size which isn’t fair because I’m exhausted from all this running. I manage to kick him in the groin, which he is stunned by and drops his torch in his other hand and grasps the area to desperately try and cope with the pain. My arm is now free, I grab his torch and throw it at him. He screams and lands on the campfire and His screams can no longer be heard as the fire has reached his neck, therefore his voice box. He slowly closes his eyes. Now there is a lifeless body on the floor, that smells like leather being tanned over a flame.
“I know what I’ll be eating tonight then”. I say to myself.
His cave was small but roomy at the same time. The old man seemed to like his taste. There were four wooden pillars at each corner of the square area. A red and green carpet made from fur, either a bear or a very big sheep. He had a less than comfy bed made of rock and grass. And some meat dry aging on a rack just near the door. This is where I think I’ll live until I know what’s really going on.
2023.06.07 05:29 xtremexavier15 TSROTI 6 (pt 1)
Toxic Rats: Geoff, Scott, Trent, Sammy, Sierra
Mutant Maggots: Anne Maria, Katie, Molly, Scarlett, Dave, DJ
Episode 06: Runaway Model
"Previously, on Total Drama Revenge of the Island!" Chris opened over a stock shot of Wawanakwa, the capstone theme starting up in the background. "The campers got deep," the recap montage opened with Sierra and Molly sinking to the lake bed in their antique diving suits, the former quickly getting held back by Fang, "in an underwater scavenger hunt."
"Sierra quickly got under her team's skin as soon as she came back," Sammy was shown upset with Sierra for taking a picture of her, "and Anne Maria and Geoff began to develop feelings for each other," the two were shown having a conversation with each other in the morning.
"In the end, Leshawna was tossed for swiping everybody's stuff," Sammy was shown tossing out everyone's belongings from the bag, "even though it was really Scott. Sneaky," the host added over Scott admitting his role in the confessional.
"It's now Team Maggot versus Team Rat," the host said, the Maggots' logo appearing on-screen against a radiant golden background. The logo rotated around into the Rats' logo, and a five-way split-screen of the Rats' remaining members rose up from the background – Trent in the upper left against a brownish-red backdrop; Geoff in the upper right against dark blue; Sierra in the middle top against orange; Sammy in the bottom left against turquoise; and Scott in the bottom right against yellow. "Will the Rats man up before they're a man down? Let's hope not," Chris said as the scene cut to him standing at the end of the dock with Chef. "There's nothing more entertaining than a man down."
As if on cue, the wood under Chef started to creak and crack, breaking away and sending Chef plunging into the lake with a startled scream. Chris laughed. "More where that came from, right now, on Total! Drama! Revenge of the Island!"
XXXXX
The sun was already high in the sky as the episode opened, and a loon cried out in the distance as the camera panned down onto DJ and Dave looking rather distressed outside the communal bathroom. The normal guy knocked on the door and asked "Is it our turn next?"
"Keep your panties on!" Anne Maria called out as the camera cut to the inside of the bathroom. The mirror on the back wall was too cracked and smudged to use, the trash can was grimy, and the strip of fly paper hanging in the corner was in need of a change, but nevertheless, Molly, Anne Maria, Katie, and Scarlett were still gathered along the countertop – Scarlett was sitting on the far left, Molly was plucking her unibrows, Katie was happily filing her nails, and Anne Maria was spraying her hair.
"Anne Maria?" Molly said. "Could I borrow some lipstick from you? I forgot it back at the cabin."
"You can help yourself, but don't go touching my hair spray," Anne Maria answered. She finished spraying her hair, and flicked it to show how bulletproof it was as it briefly shined. "Now that is how you do hair!"
"I prefer having a natural appearance," Scarlett clarified. "I'm mostly just here to wash my face and brush my teeth."
They later saw that Katie had pulled out a bag containing a makeup kit.
"What's that bag for?" Molly asked the influencer while brushing her hair.
"This is my portable makeup kit," Katie said. "If I need to get myself ready in the morning, this'll do the job in five minutes max."
"Do you carry that around with you at all times?" Anne Maria looked at the bag.
"Only when I'm traveling to places," Katie answered as she put on her lipstick. "I've done a lot of makeup tutorials with this thing, and they've skyrocketed my channel up to one million views."
"That's interesting to hear," Scarlett rolled her eyes. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be taking my leave."
Katie watched Scarlett and Anne Maria go, and turned to Molly. "By the way, you can borrow my lipstick too if you want."
Confessional: Katie
"Chris still has a hold of my tablet," Katie confessed. "I'm sure my subscribers are wondering why I'm inactive, but some of them will probably understand that I'm competing on a TV show."
Confessional: Molly
"Katie's been a lot more helpful to us with her device taken away, and now she wants to help me with fashion," Molly explained. "If that means she's not mad at me anymore, I'll take what I can get."
Confessional Ends
The scene flashed to the girls' side of the Rat cabin as Sammy said "I can't believe what happened last episode." The shot cut inside to show her sitting in her bunk bed. "Not only did people's belongings get taken, but Leshawna was pinned for it."
Sierra was using her phone until she heard Sammy. "What makes you so sure it wasn't Leshawna if the bag was under her bed?" the blogger emphasized.
"Someone else could've slipped it under there, and Leshawna's too respectful to touch our things!" Sammy enforced.
"I'll have to think about that more," Sierra said. "You know, this is the most I've ever heard you say."
"What do you mean?" Sammy asked.
"You're mostly silent, and also nervous most of the time," Sierra claimed.
"I just prefer keeping to myself," Sammy said. "I'm introverted."
"Have you managed to have any friends in your life?" Sierra wondered.
"I do, but I only have five friends," Sammy responded while holding her arm. "We make up the cheerleading team back home, and they really love and care about me, but they tend to forget about my own opinions."
"Have you ever told them it bothers you?" Sierra asked again.
"Not really. I don't want them to hate me," Sammy said sadly.
"I never had many friends, so I don't know how to help you there, but if you want to let them know something is wrong, just do it," Sierra shrugged. "I'm sure it can't hurt."
Confessional: Sammy
"Sierra may have a point. She's eccentric, but she definitely can be smart." Sammy admits. "My friends can drag me into activities I'm not interested in, although cheerleading is something I like to do."
Confessional Ends
The whining ring as the scene cut to a shot of one of the island's loudspeakers heralded a broadcast from Chris. "Iiiit's challenge time!" he began. "Campers~! Meet me on the other side of the island~!" he announced in an almost sing-song voice.
\
The footage immediately skipped ahead to the two teams already nearly assembled on two sets of low bleachers in a clearing lined with a handful of stage and spotlights. The five Rats were seated on the stands to the right of the camera, while DJ was just now filing in with his teammates on the left.
"Yo Katie," DJ greeted the girl. "Your hair is looking fantastic today.
"It's all thanks to this makeup kit," Katie showed her bag as DJ took his seat next to her. "It's really helpful for your looks."
The perspective inverted to reveal that the two teams had gathered before a large stage and runway, complete with a short catwalk and a large curtained-off backstage area. Chef was already waiting in the pink dress he'd worn to ceremonies back in season two, and Chris shortly joined him by way of descending from above with his jetpack. The host was wearing a sharp gray suit and fashionable glasses with tinted lens, but more noticeable were the changes to his hair – it was now pure white and long enough for him to sport a short ponytail.
Chef walked up as he landed and took the jetpack of his back, then walked away as Chris spread his arms and smiled. "Welcome to your challenge," he opened. "The Weird and Wild Fashion Spectacular!" He took a paper fan out of his breast pocket and waved it a bit as he spread his arms even wider.
"We're doing a fashion challenge? Awesome!" Molly cheered.
"Fashion? Now you're talkin'!" Anne Maria sprayed her hair about while complimenting Chris.
"You won't be walking the catwalk," Chris started to fan himself, "no-no-no-no. No amount of fashion can help you people."
"You don't say?" Dave mumbled to himself.
"Here's how it's gonna work," Chris continued. "Each team gets a wardrobe of clothes," the camera cut to a dresser, clothes rack, and several pieces of luggage on the side of the stage, "a make-up kit, and ten minutes to dress and make up a model." Chef held up an hourglass and glared mutely at the camera. "Which, you'll send down the runway," the shot zoomed in on the host's fan as he walked his fingers across it, "to be judged by myself, Chef, and today's Total Drama classic competitor, Lindsay!"
One of the suitcases on the side of the stage popped open, revealing the former contestant. "Yay! Don't you just love my new, special fashion boots?" Lindsay asked the campers, raising a leg to show off blue boots different from her regular brown ones.
"Wait, we get to dress an actual model!" Trent got excited.
"Uh-huh," Chris said, scraping some white powder off his shoulder with his fan. "Right after you catch one."
"Catch a model?" Geoff wondered. "Why would one even come to this island?"
"Did I say human models?" Chris corrected, fanning himself again as he walked across the stage. "Don't think so! No, your models are in there!" He thrust his finger off to the right, forcing Lindsay to duck under his arm. The camera quick-panned to the woods just as an earth-shattering roar shook the area.
"They're wild! They're mutated!" Chris told the campers, the camera moving behind his back. "And like me, they despise teenagers." The five Rats were shown looking shocked and concerned.
"Okay fashionistas," the host said in a campy accent, "go!" He blew his airhorn again, and the campers ran off.
\
The footage flashed ahead to a trail in the woods, Sierra and Geoff searching behind a rock and Sammy looking at a bush in the background while DJ walked by in the foreground. The camera panned to the right and stopped on Anne Maria and Scarlett, who were warily looking upwards.
Something croaked above them and the shot cut to a small frog, seemingly normal aside from an eye stalk on the top of its head, sitting on a branch. With a grunt of effort, Molly pounced on it from the right, and smiled when she opened her hands and saw she'd caught it. Unfortunately for her, the mutant frog produced an odd noise and flash of light, blinking out of sight but quickly reappearing on top of the confused young woman's head. With another noise and flash of light it disappeared, this time bringing Molly with it, and they blinked back into existence in mid-air a few yards away. Molly screamed as she started to fall, and the mutant frog teleported away to presumed safety before its failed assailant landed with a crash on the forest floor.
\
In another part of the forest, Trent was looking around absentmindedly while approaching what appeared to be a gigantic turtle shell, a short and spiky tail poking out of one end. The boy tapped the tail with his foot, but gasped when the tail suddenly wrapped around his leg and pulled him inside the shell. The beast inside growled and stood up, its stout legs and turtle head popping out of the shell's holes...along with Trent. With another growl, the mutant punched him away, and he landed in a heap with a pained groan.
\
The camera cut next to what appeared to be an ordinary beaver sitting perfectly still just at the edge of a bush. Dave rose, grinning from another bush in the background, then pounced upon it. His jubilation quickly faded into confusion as the unmoving beaver was somehow lifted up by its tail, taking Dave with it.
The shot cut outward to reveal the beaver has no more than a lure of a large bipedal anglerfish-like monster, which promptly roared. Katie, who was standing nearby, promptly ran away, and was soon followed by Dave and the angler mutant.
\
Another flash moved the focus to a close-up of a slice of pepperoni pizza, lying on the ground in the middle of a loop of rope that led off to the left. "Pizza? What's this doing here?" Scott said, the camera zooming out to show him looking down at it. He looked up and tilted his head, and the shot cut over to none other than Fang not quite hidden behind a tree, an axe in one hand and the anchored rope of his snare trap in the other.
Scott knew what was going to happen, but decided to have a little fun. "Too bad there's pepperoni on it, otherwise I'd totally eat that," he said loud enough for the shark to hear as he walked off.
Fang palmed his face and walked over to the slice and started picking the toppings off of it. Meanwhile, Scott used his shark tooth to cut the rope of the snare.
The effect was instant. Fang was hoisted up in the air by his wrist, and Scott came over to where the pizza was. "Oh perfect! No pepperoni!!" He picked up the pizza and ate it as he left, the shark growling at him as he was hung up.
\
The scene cut abruptly to a massive mutant brawl between a massive two-headed rabbit, two spiny woolly beavers, and a hairless squirrel zapping them with its eye-lasers from a nearby branch. The camera panned left as a giant hermit crab scuttled up and snapped its claws, with Trent, Sammy, and Geoff watching from behind a bush in the background with wide eyes.
"So which one do we use?" Geoff asked.
"Uh, maybe we should find something that can't eat us," Sammy replied.
A whine signaled the loudspeaker turning on once again, and soon enough Chris's announcement rang through the air. "Five minutes, people!"
"Hey, Rats!" Sierra quickly followed, directing her teammates' attention to their right. "Why don't we use that rat?" he asked, the shot cutting to a close-up of a small rat happily chewing on a leaf atop a fallen log. A large hairless rat jumped onto the log, quickly stuffed the rat into its mouth, then chittered and looked around.
"It'd be easy to catch and dress. It just needs a little more domestication," Trent proudly said.
"That's a good plan," Scott supported with a grin.
"Stand back," Geoff told everybody and went towards the rat's direction. "I have an idea for the fashion style."
\
"Don't give up yet! There's gotta be something on this island we can catch!" Molly told her teammates, the Maggots now hunkering down behind a bush.
"How about that critter?" DJ looked over the bush, and the shot cut to none other than Sasquatchanakwa walking into a cave, oblivious to the teens watching him.
"How are we gonna get him out of that cave?" Dave asked.
Scarlett smirked. "I've conducted a plan, but I need a bag for this," she told her teammates.
\
The Maggots were back on the stage watching Scarlett seated near Katie's makeup bag. She folded a few clothes together, squirted it with glue, and shook the bag together.
"This is what I call a "Detonating Duffel Bag," Scarlett talked about her creation. "It can and will dress any target within its sixty foot blast radius! With a mix of glue and clothes it'll be unremarkably simple to just launch the bag at the animal."
Confessional: Anne Maria
"I like her way of thinking," Anne Maria told the camera, "even if I don't understand what she's saying half the time."
Confessional Ends
Katie picked up her bag and looked at what was inside. "Puffy sweater vests? Plaid skirts? High knee socks? It seems you just put together an outfit that resembles yourself, Scarlett."
"Katie has a point," Dave told the brainiac. "You clearly made the outfit something you yourself would like instead of what everyone would like."
Scarlett was annoyed. "So what else should we use instead?"
"How about we compare our fashion styles and see what we'll all agree on," Katie suggested.
"That can work," DJ nodded. "To our cabins!"
\
The scene immediately flashed away to the Rats where their own rat has been dressed by Geoff.
"This rat looks ready to party and have fun!" Geoff described his choice as the rat was wearing a black collared shirt, a brown cap, a black chain necklace, and gray sneakers.
The rat expressed its dislike of the party style by ripping the clothes into shreds.
"Seems the rat isn't a big fan of the choice of fashion," Scott said.
A sudden ringing got the team's attention, and Chris announced "Three minutes remaining!" over an unseen loudspeaker.
"If you guys don't mind, I'll take a crack at it," Sammy offered.
\
The scene cut back to the Maggot cabin, where the team were inside the girls' side of the cabin.
"So these are what we normally wear," Katie said as she presented a row of clothes on the bunk bed. From left-to-right, it showed clothes belonging to Scarlett, Anne Maria, DJ, Dave, Molly, and Katie.
"That's correct," Anne Maria agreed, "but why are our clothes all lined up?"
"You know how some teams normally can't agree on anything, right?" Katie started her conversation.
"You're right about that," Molly said.
"So what if instead of arguing, we just combine our fashion styles into one big burrito?" Katie said extravagantly.
"A fashion mesh? That's a weird way to go, but I don't want to argue right now," Dave told them.
"If I had my sewing kit, I'd whip up a line of clothing suited to fit our animal, but since we're running out of time, let's just try to stuff all our clothes into the bag," Molly suggested.
"I'll add some dye colors inside just to make our colors clash," Katie said.
"I'll assist as well, but let's make sure to actually fold our clothes," Dave emphasized.
"Agreed," Scarlett said. "We want to make our outfit mash look as clean and fresh as possible."
"Now that we have a plan, let's get right to it," Molly encouraged the team.
Confessional: Dave
"I don't like to give away my clothes, but once I realized that I only have to give two pairs, I went along with the plan," Dave admitted.
Confessional Ends
The scene flashed back to the Rats, the camera positioned close to Sammy's face but focused on her four teammates behind her. The camera zoomed out as they watched her tighten a piece of cloth over their rat model.
"That should be about it," Sammy said. "Me and my friends tend to design clothes during our sleepovers."
"It's not bad, Sammy," Geoff started to say.
"I think you did a wonderful job," Trent critiqued.
Another ringing got their attention, and they looked up towards an unseen loudspeaker as Chris announced "One minute!"
"It's good enough," Scott declared. "Let's get back to Chris."
\
The scene flashed back to the Maggots hiding behind a rock near Sasquatchanakwa's cave.
"This DDD is ready for action," DJ held up the bag.
"What does it stand for exactly?" Anne Maria asked him.
"Detonating Duffel Bag," DJ made it more clear before tossing the bag over to Katie. "Go long!"
Katie ran towards the cave with the bag in hand as the scene cut to the inside. Sasquatchanakwa was sitting in a wooden armchair, drinking a can of soda and watching some jaunty-themed show on an old television set when Katie's bag landed in his lap. With a curious grunt he looked at the bag.
That's when the explosion happened, and when it did, the yeti let out a frightening roar, scaring the Maggots.
"That doesn't sound good!" Katie panicked.
Confessional: Katie
"I don't know if running away from Sasquatchanakwa is worse than hurting him," Katie said. "I'm not the fastest runner, but I'm not going to die."
Confessional Ends
The scene cut to a spotlight as it turned on; then a couple stage lights turning on as well; then a mutant squirrel hopping up next to a book-reading bear which lowered its book to reveal its three eyes, both animals looking at something curiously; then the stage and catwalk, Chris front and center with Chef and Lindsay – the former in sort of rapper-ish outfit with a red tracksuit and hat, earphones, and gold chains – sitting at the judge's table.
"It's freaky forest fashion time!" the host announced. "Rat-istas," he turned and pointed his fan backstage, "show me somethin' fierce." The five Rats walked out on stage, Geoff, Trent, and Sierra on the left with Sammy and Scott on the right.
"Chef, drop that needle!" Chris commanded next, the shot cutting to a close-up of a record turntable as the needle was dropped onto the spinning disc and a trendy tune began to play. The camera zoomed out, and Chef gave the host and campers a thumbs-up.
"This small rodent is wearing a fresh, popstar fashion style like no one else's," Sierra began smoothly, motioning to the gap between her and Sammy as their model reluctantly scurried out on all fours but continued down the runway on its hind legs. It was wearing a pink wig and a purple dress with white stripes. The camera followed it as it walked along looking both nervous and awkward, Sierra continuing her piece all the while. "Her pink hair matches well with her diva attitude and her dress screams fame." She finished with a grimace.
"A bit typical and overly glamorous," Chris said as the rat reached the end of the catwalk. "I give it an 8.5," the host announced as he held up a placard with his score.
The Rats shouted cheers of victory.
Chef held up an 8.0.
Lindsay held up a 1.8 to the uproar of the Rats. She realized her mistake and flipped her placard upside down, showing an 8.1. "Oops."
"Okay," Chris said tersely, looking back towards the catwalk. "Show me what you've got, Maggots!" he called out, the trendy music resuming as the shot cut back to the stage, showing it utterly empty. The camera zoomed in and the music kept playing, but for several more seconds there was still no movement backstage. "...Maggots?" Chris called out again and finally Katie ran out screaming at the top of her lungs.
"As you can see, the yeti is wearing a mix of several different styles based upon us," Katie said as her team quickly ran out to join her.
All six looked towards the backstage curtain, and the furious sasquatch growled and chased after them. His outfit consisted of several different styles – white sneakers resembling Katie's, long white socks resembling Scarlett's, pants resembling Anne Maria's, a blue and yellow collared shirt resembling Dave's, glasses resembling Molly's, and a hat resembling DJ's.
"The outfit consists of a variety of garments applied forcefully to random parts of his body," Katie said, cringing in terror as her team's model quickly tossed Scarlett, Dave, and Molly away again while DJ and Anne Maria quickly got off the stage. The ape-man grabbed her after she finished.
The music stopped, and Sasquatchanakwa finally noticed the three judges just as the first one spoke up. "That thing is huge," Lindsay gasped at the sight of the model before her, "but the outfit had too many themes. Maybe stick to just one next time."
"I agree with Lindsay," Chris admitted, fanning himself again. "It hardly complements the Yeti's husky physique."
Confessional: Katie
"Going with Scarlett's first idea for the yeti would have been boring," Katie groaned in disappointment, "but at least the yeti probably wouldn't have gotten as mad right now."
Confessional Ends
Still holding Katie, Sasquatchanakwa saw what he was wearing. Angry at the 6-way outfit put on him, he threw Katie away, took off the hat and glasses, kicked off the shoes and socks, and ripped off the pants and shirt.
"Chris is right. The team are too different-" Lindsay tried to say, but was cut off when the yeti suddenly reached forward and grabbed her by the head, yanking her out of her seat. The shot zoomed out as an engine whirred to life, revealing that Sasquatchanakwa had also commandeered Chris's jetpack. With the captive dumb princess in his arms, he took off into the air.
"Hey, he took my jetpack!" Chris quickly protested. The shot cut back to the ape-man and dumb blonde as Lindsay screamed, and Saquatchanakwa flew off to the foggy and ominous crags of Boney Island.
"Uh-huh...," Chris said blankly, still fanning himself. "Will Lindsay survive?" he asked the camera, lifting up his shades. "And am I legally liable if she doesn't? Find out, after the break."
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(Commercial Break)
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submitted by xtremexavier15 to u/xtremexavier15 [link] [comments]
Mutant Maggots: Anne Maria, Katie, Molly, Scarlett, Dave, DJ
Episode 06: Runaway Model
"Previously, on Total Drama Revenge of the Island!" Chris opened over a stock shot of Wawanakwa, the capstone theme starting up in the background. "The campers got deep," the recap montage opened with Sierra and Molly sinking to the lake bed in their antique diving suits, the former quickly getting held back by Fang, "in an underwater scavenger hunt."
"Sierra quickly got under her team's skin as soon as she came back," Sammy was shown upset with Sierra for taking a picture of her, "and Anne Maria and Geoff began to develop feelings for each other," the two were shown having a conversation with each other in the morning.
"In the end, Leshawna was tossed for swiping everybody's stuff," Sammy was shown tossing out everyone's belongings from the bag, "even though it was really Scott. Sneaky," the host added over Scott admitting his role in the confessional.
"It's now Team Maggot versus Team Rat," the host said, the Maggots' logo appearing on-screen against a radiant golden background. The logo rotated around into the Rats' logo, and a five-way split-screen of the Rats' remaining members rose up from the background – Trent in the upper left against a brownish-red backdrop; Geoff in the upper right against dark blue; Sierra in the middle top against orange; Sammy in the bottom left against turquoise; and Scott in the bottom right against yellow. "Will the Rats man up before they're a man down? Let's hope not," Chris said as the scene cut to him standing at the end of the dock with Chef. "There's nothing more entertaining than a man down."
As if on cue, the wood under Chef started to creak and crack, breaking away and sending Chef plunging into the lake with a startled scream. Chris laughed. "More where that came from, right now, on Total! Drama! Revenge of the Island!"
XXXXX
The sun was already high in the sky as the episode opened, and a loon cried out in the distance as the camera panned down onto DJ and Dave looking rather distressed outside the communal bathroom. The normal guy knocked on the door and asked "Is it our turn next?"
"Keep your panties on!" Anne Maria called out as the camera cut to the inside of the bathroom. The mirror on the back wall was too cracked and smudged to use, the trash can was grimy, and the strip of fly paper hanging in the corner was in need of a change, but nevertheless, Molly, Anne Maria, Katie, and Scarlett were still gathered along the countertop – Scarlett was sitting on the far left, Molly was plucking her unibrows, Katie was happily filing her nails, and Anne Maria was spraying her hair.
"Anne Maria?" Molly said. "Could I borrow some lipstick from you? I forgot it back at the cabin."
"You can help yourself, but don't go touching my hair spray," Anne Maria answered. She finished spraying her hair, and flicked it to show how bulletproof it was as it briefly shined. "Now that is how you do hair!"
"I prefer having a natural appearance," Scarlett clarified. "I'm mostly just here to wash my face and brush my teeth."
They later saw that Katie had pulled out a bag containing a makeup kit.
"What's that bag for?" Molly asked the influencer while brushing her hair.
"This is my portable makeup kit," Katie said. "If I need to get myself ready in the morning, this'll do the job in five minutes max."
"Do you carry that around with you at all times?" Anne Maria looked at the bag.
"Only when I'm traveling to places," Katie answered as she put on her lipstick. "I've done a lot of makeup tutorials with this thing, and they've skyrocketed my channel up to one million views."
"That's interesting to hear," Scarlett rolled her eyes. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be taking my leave."
Katie watched Scarlett and Anne Maria go, and turned to Molly. "By the way, you can borrow my lipstick too if you want."
Confessional: Katie
"Chris still has a hold of my tablet," Katie confessed. "I'm sure my subscribers are wondering why I'm inactive, but some of them will probably understand that I'm competing on a TV show."
Confessional: Molly
"Katie's been a lot more helpful to us with her device taken away, and now she wants to help me with fashion," Molly explained. "If that means she's not mad at me anymore, I'll take what I can get."
Confessional Ends
The scene flashed to the girls' side of the Rat cabin as Sammy said "I can't believe what happened last episode." The shot cut inside to show her sitting in her bunk bed. "Not only did people's belongings get taken, but Leshawna was pinned for it."
Sierra was using her phone until she heard Sammy. "What makes you so sure it wasn't Leshawna if the bag was under her bed?" the blogger emphasized.
"Someone else could've slipped it under there, and Leshawna's too respectful to touch our things!" Sammy enforced.
"I'll have to think about that more," Sierra said. "You know, this is the most I've ever heard you say."
"What do you mean?" Sammy asked.
"You're mostly silent, and also nervous most of the time," Sierra claimed.
"I just prefer keeping to myself," Sammy said. "I'm introverted."
"Have you managed to have any friends in your life?" Sierra wondered.
"I do, but I only have five friends," Sammy responded while holding her arm. "We make up the cheerleading team back home, and they really love and care about me, but they tend to forget about my own opinions."
"Have you ever told them it bothers you?" Sierra asked again.
"Not really. I don't want them to hate me," Sammy said sadly.
"I never had many friends, so I don't know how to help you there, but if you want to let them know something is wrong, just do it," Sierra shrugged. "I'm sure it can't hurt."
Confessional: Sammy
"Sierra may have a point. She's eccentric, but she definitely can be smart." Sammy admits. "My friends can drag me into activities I'm not interested in, although cheerleading is something I like to do."
Confessional Ends
The whining ring as the scene cut to a shot of one of the island's loudspeakers heralded a broadcast from Chris. "Iiiit's challenge time!" he began. "Campers~! Meet me on the other side of the island~!" he announced in an almost sing-song voice.
\
The footage immediately skipped ahead to the two teams already nearly assembled on two sets of low bleachers in a clearing lined with a handful of stage and spotlights. The five Rats were seated on the stands to the right of the camera, while DJ was just now filing in with his teammates on the left.
"Yo Katie," DJ greeted the girl. "Your hair is looking fantastic today.
"It's all thanks to this makeup kit," Katie showed her bag as DJ took his seat next to her. "It's really helpful for your looks."
The perspective inverted to reveal that the two teams had gathered before a large stage and runway, complete with a short catwalk and a large curtained-off backstage area. Chef was already waiting in the pink dress he'd worn to ceremonies back in season two, and Chris shortly joined him by way of descending from above with his jetpack. The host was wearing a sharp gray suit and fashionable glasses with tinted lens, but more noticeable were the changes to his hair – it was now pure white and long enough for him to sport a short ponytail.
Chef walked up as he landed and took the jetpack of his back, then walked away as Chris spread his arms and smiled. "Welcome to your challenge," he opened. "The Weird and Wild Fashion Spectacular!" He took a paper fan out of his breast pocket and waved it a bit as he spread his arms even wider.
"We're doing a fashion challenge? Awesome!" Molly cheered.
"Fashion? Now you're talkin'!" Anne Maria sprayed her hair about while complimenting Chris.
"You won't be walking the catwalk," Chris started to fan himself, "no-no-no-no. No amount of fashion can help you people."
"You don't say?" Dave mumbled to himself.
"Here's how it's gonna work," Chris continued. "Each team gets a wardrobe of clothes," the camera cut to a dresser, clothes rack, and several pieces of luggage on the side of the stage, "a make-up kit, and ten minutes to dress and make up a model." Chef held up an hourglass and glared mutely at the camera. "Which, you'll send down the runway," the shot zoomed in on the host's fan as he walked his fingers across it, "to be judged by myself, Chef, and today's Total Drama classic competitor, Lindsay!"
One of the suitcases on the side of the stage popped open, revealing the former contestant. "Yay! Don't you just love my new, special fashion boots?" Lindsay asked the campers, raising a leg to show off blue boots different from her regular brown ones.
"Wait, we get to dress an actual model!" Trent got excited.
"Uh-huh," Chris said, scraping some white powder off his shoulder with his fan. "Right after you catch one."
"Catch a model?" Geoff wondered. "Why would one even come to this island?"
"Did I say human models?" Chris corrected, fanning himself again as he walked across the stage. "Don't think so! No, your models are in there!" He thrust his finger off to the right, forcing Lindsay to duck under his arm. The camera quick-panned to the woods just as an earth-shattering roar shook the area.
"They're wild! They're mutated!" Chris told the campers, the camera moving behind his back. "And like me, they despise teenagers." The five Rats were shown looking shocked and concerned.
"Okay fashionistas," the host said in a campy accent, "go!" He blew his airhorn again, and the campers ran off.
\
The footage flashed ahead to a trail in the woods, Sierra and Geoff searching behind a rock and Sammy looking at a bush in the background while DJ walked by in the foreground. The camera panned to the right and stopped on Anne Maria and Scarlett, who were warily looking upwards.
Something croaked above them and the shot cut to a small frog, seemingly normal aside from an eye stalk on the top of its head, sitting on a branch. With a grunt of effort, Molly pounced on it from the right, and smiled when she opened her hands and saw she'd caught it. Unfortunately for her, the mutant frog produced an odd noise and flash of light, blinking out of sight but quickly reappearing on top of the confused young woman's head. With another noise and flash of light it disappeared, this time bringing Molly with it, and they blinked back into existence in mid-air a few yards away. Molly screamed as she started to fall, and the mutant frog teleported away to presumed safety before its failed assailant landed with a crash on the forest floor.
\
In another part of the forest, Trent was looking around absentmindedly while approaching what appeared to be a gigantic turtle shell, a short and spiky tail poking out of one end. The boy tapped the tail with his foot, but gasped when the tail suddenly wrapped around his leg and pulled him inside the shell. The beast inside growled and stood up, its stout legs and turtle head popping out of the shell's holes...along with Trent. With another growl, the mutant punched him away, and he landed in a heap with a pained groan.
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The camera cut next to what appeared to be an ordinary beaver sitting perfectly still just at the edge of a bush. Dave rose, grinning from another bush in the background, then pounced upon it. His jubilation quickly faded into confusion as the unmoving beaver was somehow lifted up by its tail, taking Dave with it.
The shot cut outward to reveal the beaver has no more than a lure of a large bipedal anglerfish-like monster, which promptly roared. Katie, who was standing nearby, promptly ran away, and was soon followed by Dave and the angler mutant.
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Another flash moved the focus to a close-up of a slice of pepperoni pizza, lying on the ground in the middle of a loop of rope that led off to the left. "Pizza? What's this doing here?" Scott said, the camera zooming out to show him looking down at it. He looked up and tilted his head, and the shot cut over to none other than Fang not quite hidden behind a tree, an axe in one hand and the anchored rope of his snare trap in the other.
Scott knew what was going to happen, but decided to have a little fun. "Too bad there's pepperoni on it, otherwise I'd totally eat that," he said loud enough for the shark to hear as he walked off.
Fang palmed his face and walked over to the slice and started picking the toppings off of it. Meanwhile, Scott used his shark tooth to cut the rope of the snare.
The effect was instant. Fang was hoisted up in the air by his wrist, and Scott came over to where the pizza was. "Oh perfect! No pepperoni!!" He picked up the pizza and ate it as he left, the shark growling at him as he was hung up.
\
The scene cut abruptly to a massive mutant brawl between a massive two-headed rabbit, two spiny woolly beavers, and a hairless squirrel zapping them with its eye-lasers from a nearby branch. The camera panned left as a giant hermit crab scuttled up and snapped its claws, with Trent, Sammy, and Geoff watching from behind a bush in the background with wide eyes.
"So which one do we use?" Geoff asked.
"Uh, maybe we should find something that can't eat us," Sammy replied.
A whine signaled the loudspeaker turning on once again, and soon enough Chris's announcement rang through the air. "Five minutes, people!"
"Hey, Rats!" Sierra quickly followed, directing her teammates' attention to their right. "Why don't we use that rat?" he asked, the shot cutting to a close-up of a small rat happily chewing on a leaf atop a fallen log. A large hairless rat jumped onto the log, quickly stuffed the rat into its mouth, then chittered and looked around.
"It'd be easy to catch and dress. It just needs a little more domestication," Trent proudly said.
"That's a good plan," Scott supported with a grin.
"Stand back," Geoff told everybody and went towards the rat's direction. "I have an idea for the fashion style."
\
"Don't give up yet! There's gotta be something on this island we can catch!" Molly told her teammates, the Maggots now hunkering down behind a bush.
"How about that critter?" DJ looked over the bush, and the shot cut to none other than Sasquatchanakwa walking into a cave, oblivious to the teens watching him.
"How are we gonna get him out of that cave?" Dave asked.
Scarlett smirked. "I've conducted a plan, but I need a bag for this," she told her teammates.
\
The Maggots were back on the stage watching Scarlett seated near Katie's makeup bag. She folded a few clothes together, squirted it with glue, and shook the bag together.
"This is what I call a "Detonating Duffel Bag," Scarlett talked about her creation. "It can and will dress any target within its sixty foot blast radius! With a mix of glue and clothes it'll be unremarkably simple to just launch the bag at the animal."
Confessional: Anne Maria
"I like her way of thinking," Anne Maria told the camera, "even if I don't understand what she's saying half the time."
Confessional Ends
Katie picked up her bag and looked at what was inside. "Puffy sweater vests? Plaid skirts? High knee socks? It seems you just put together an outfit that resembles yourself, Scarlett."
"Katie has a point," Dave told the brainiac. "You clearly made the outfit something you yourself would like instead of what everyone would like."
Scarlett was annoyed. "So what else should we use instead?"
"How about we compare our fashion styles and see what we'll all agree on," Katie suggested.
"That can work," DJ nodded. "To our cabins!"
\
The scene immediately flashed away to the Rats where their own rat has been dressed by Geoff.
"This rat looks ready to party and have fun!" Geoff described his choice as the rat was wearing a black collared shirt, a brown cap, a black chain necklace, and gray sneakers.
The rat expressed its dislike of the party style by ripping the clothes into shreds.
"Seems the rat isn't a big fan of the choice of fashion," Scott said.
A sudden ringing got the team's attention, and Chris announced "Three minutes remaining!" over an unseen loudspeaker.
"If you guys don't mind, I'll take a crack at it," Sammy offered.
\
The scene cut back to the Maggot cabin, where the team were inside the girls' side of the cabin.
"So these are what we normally wear," Katie said as she presented a row of clothes on the bunk bed. From left-to-right, it showed clothes belonging to Scarlett, Anne Maria, DJ, Dave, Molly, and Katie.
"That's correct," Anne Maria agreed, "but why are our clothes all lined up?"
"You know how some teams normally can't agree on anything, right?" Katie started her conversation.
"You're right about that," Molly said.
"So what if instead of arguing, we just combine our fashion styles into one big burrito?" Katie said extravagantly.
"A fashion mesh? That's a weird way to go, but I don't want to argue right now," Dave told them.
"If I had my sewing kit, I'd whip up a line of clothing suited to fit our animal, but since we're running out of time, let's just try to stuff all our clothes into the bag," Molly suggested.
"I'll add some dye colors inside just to make our colors clash," Katie said.
"I'll assist as well, but let's make sure to actually fold our clothes," Dave emphasized.
"Agreed," Scarlett said. "We want to make our outfit mash look as clean and fresh as possible."
"Now that we have a plan, let's get right to it," Molly encouraged the team.
Confessional: Dave
"I don't like to give away my clothes, but once I realized that I only have to give two pairs, I went along with the plan," Dave admitted.
Confessional Ends
The scene flashed back to the Rats, the camera positioned close to Sammy's face but focused on her four teammates behind her. The camera zoomed out as they watched her tighten a piece of cloth over their rat model.
"That should be about it," Sammy said. "Me and my friends tend to design clothes during our sleepovers."
"It's not bad, Sammy," Geoff started to say.
"I think you did a wonderful job," Trent critiqued.
Another ringing got their attention, and they looked up towards an unseen loudspeaker as Chris announced "One minute!"
"It's good enough," Scott declared. "Let's get back to Chris."
\
The scene flashed back to the Maggots hiding behind a rock near Sasquatchanakwa's cave.
"This DDD is ready for action," DJ held up the bag.
"What does it stand for exactly?" Anne Maria asked him.
"Detonating Duffel Bag," DJ made it more clear before tossing the bag over to Katie. "Go long!"
Katie ran towards the cave with the bag in hand as the scene cut to the inside. Sasquatchanakwa was sitting in a wooden armchair, drinking a can of soda and watching some jaunty-themed show on an old television set when Katie's bag landed in his lap. With a curious grunt he looked at the bag.
That's when the explosion happened, and when it did, the yeti let out a frightening roar, scaring the Maggots.
"That doesn't sound good!" Katie panicked.
Confessional: Katie
"I don't know if running away from Sasquatchanakwa is worse than hurting him," Katie said. "I'm not the fastest runner, but I'm not going to die."
Confessional Ends
The scene cut to a spotlight as it turned on; then a couple stage lights turning on as well; then a mutant squirrel hopping up next to a book-reading bear which lowered its book to reveal its three eyes, both animals looking at something curiously; then the stage and catwalk, Chris front and center with Chef and Lindsay – the former in sort of rapper-ish outfit with a red tracksuit and hat, earphones, and gold chains – sitting at the judge's table.
"It's freaky forest fashion time!" the host announced. "Rat-istas," he turned and pointed his fan backstage, "show me somethin' fierce." The five Rats walked out on stage, Geoff, Trent, and Sierra on the left with Sammy and Scott on the right.
"Chef, drop that needle!" Chris commanded next, the shot cutting to a close-up of a record turntable as the needle was dropped onto the spinning disc and a trendy tune began to play. The camera zoomed out, and Chef gave the host and campers a thumbs-up.
"This small rodent is wearing a fresh, popstar fashion style like no one else's," Sierra began smoothly, motioning to the gap between her and Sammy as their model reluctantly scurried out on all fours but continued down the runway on its hind legs. It was wearing a pink wig and a purple dress with white stripes. The camera followed it as it walked along looking both nervous and awkward, Sierra continuing her piece all the while. "Her pink hair matches well with her diva attitude and her dress screams fame." She finished with a grimace.
"A bit typical and overly glamorous," Chris said as the rat reached the end of the catwalk. "I give it an 8.5," the host announced as he held up a placard with his score.
The Rats shouted cheers of victory.
Chef held up an 8.0.
Lindsay held up a 1.8 to the uproar of the Rats. She realized her mistake and flipped her placard upside down, showing an 8.1. "Oops."
"Okay," Chris said tersely, looking back towards the catwalk. "Show me what you've got, Maggots!" he called out, the trendy music resuming as the shot cut back to the stage, showing it utterly empty. The camera zoomed in and the music kept playing, but for several more seconds there was still no movement backstage. "...Maggots?" Chris called out again and finally Katie ran out screaming at the top of her lungs.
"As you can see, the yeti is wearing a mix of several different styles based upon us," Katie said as her team quickly ran out to join her.
All six looked towards the backstage curtain, and the furious sasquatch growled and chased after them. His outfit consisted of several different styles – white sneakers resembling Katie's, long white socks resembling Scarlett's, pants resembling Anne Maria's, a blue and yellow collared shirt resembling Dave's, glasses resembling Molly's, and a hat resembling DJ's.
"The outfit consists of a variety of garments applied forcefully to random parts of his body," Katie said, cringing in terror as her team's model quickly tossed Scarlett, Dave, and Molly away again while DJ and Anne Maria quickly got off the stage. The ape-man grabbed her after she finished.
The music stopped, and Sasquatchanakwa finally noticed the three judges just as the first one spoke up. "That thing is huge," Lindsay gasped at the sight of the model before her, "but the outfit had too many themes. Maybe stick to just one next time."
"I agree with Lindsay," Chris admitted, fanning himself again. "It hardly complements the Yeti's husky physique."
Confessional: Katie
"Going with Scarlett's first idea for the yeti would have been boring," Katie groaned in disappointment, "but at least the yeti probably wouldn't have gotten as mad right now."
Confessional Ends
Still holding Katie, Sasquatchanakwa saw what he was wearing. Angry at the 6-way outfit put on him, he threw Katie away, took off the hat and glasses, kicked off the shoes and socks, and ripped off the pants and shirt.
"Chris is right. The team are too different-" Lindsay tried to say, but was cut off when the yeti suddenly reached forward and grabbed her by the head, yanking her out of her seat. The shot zoomed out as an engine whirred to life, revealing that Sasquatchanakwa had also commandeered Chris's jetpack. With the captive dumb princess in his arms, he took off into the air.
"Hey, he took my jetpack!" Chris quickly protested. The shot cut back to the ape-man and dumb blonde as Lindsay screamed, and Saquatchanakwa flew off to the foggy and ominous crags of Boney Island.
"Uh-huh...," Chris said blankly, still fanning himself. "Will Lindsay survive?" he asked the camera, lifting up his shades. "And am I legally liable if she doesn't? Find out, after the break."
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(Commercial Break)
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2023.06.07 05:08 I_369 I never saw anything like these before. Be safe everybody.
 | submitted by I_369 to Paterson [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 05:03 I_369 I've not seen AQI as high as this! Be safe everyone.
 | It is getting crazy. Seems like I am in a Hollywood movie 🫨🤕🥵 submitted by I_369 to newjersey [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 03:20 TheSmogmonsterZX The Daughter that Follows - Chapter 27 - Reunited - Part 5
Disclaimer: Registered trademarks and copyrights are properties of their rightful owners. As this series jumps realities very often it is hard to track that info.
DM, the Digitalman, the Scion of Variable is a creation of my good friend who does not use Reddit and is used with permission.
The Pokémon Lucario is © The Pokemon Company.
“When you're in your darkest place, you give yourself hope and that's inner strength.”
― Uncle Iroh
The Daughter that Follows
Chapter 27
Reunited
Part 5
“So, are we all ready?” Darius asked as he rolled out a second grill in his backyard. He had decided to host the mini-reunion for Alan and his friend.
“We are so friggin’ ready.” Kenji grinned. “I can almost taste the meat...”
“Why is he acting like he hasn’t had meat in forever?” Alan asked Brooklynn while pointing to her husband.
“I wish I knew, he has his own grill.” Brooklyn shook her head. “Cooks good corn.”
“Speaking of, I got these for you.” Alan held up several cobs. “Won’t be a competition because Vegeta thinks vegetables are a sin.”
Brooklyn rolled her eyes, “I know the type.”
“So...” Sammie pointed into Darius’ house. “Is your other guest okay?”
“He’s fine, he just doesn’t like the sun that much.” Alan grinned.
“He’s a vampire.” Yaz said.
“Don’t say that.” Sammie chided her wife.
“Technically he’s a nosferatu.” Alan wavered his hand. “But also be quiet, I want Anna surprised, and Salem surprised.”
“Why is he getting surprised?” Kenji asked.
Yaz smiled, “You didn’t pay attention to his shirt, did you?”
“I think he might be a fan of Alan’s friend.” Sammie said.
Not a moment after that a hole opened above Darius’ driveway. They heard Ben shout in surprise as he fell out with Anna and Vegeta.
“You know, you’re brave...” Vegeta said, “But you need to have more spatial awareness if you’re not gonna fly.”
“We can’t fly here.” Ben said as he was flown over Darius’ roof and sat down.
“Where’s Anna?” Alan asked.
“She saw someone attacking Spider-Men.” Vegeta shrugged.”Dropped us off and ran off.”
“Oh.” Alan blinked.
“Yeah, it looked like some wasp thingy.” Vegeta flew back and returned with a huge slab of meat. “Wagusaurus.”
Alan stopped to think for a moment before another hole in reality opened and Anna walked through covered in orange and green gunk.
“Hose?” She asked grumpily.
Darius pointed to the side of his house.
“So I take it, it squished good?” Salem snickered from the sliding door.
Anna froze and looked up. Then she looked at her father.
“Surprise.” Alan smirked.
Anna ran up and hugged her father. “That’s for surprising me.”
Alan nodded. “I kinda figured.”
Salem was laughing like mad as Anna went to hose herself off. Then he froze as he saw Vegeta cutting up the meat.
“Surprise.” Alan smiled and tapped Vegeta on the shoulder. “You gotta fan here, man.”
“Huh?” Vegeta turned to see the fanged nosferatu staring and pointing. “Hey, you want to help? This stuff is heavy.”
Salem just nodded and helped the saiyan prince separate out the meat.
Anna came walking back around the corner, she had used her aura to squeeze the water from her clothes and skin, though her hair was still wet. She giggled as her father simply eradicated the gunk that was on his clothes.
“Thank you.” Anna smiled up at Alan.
“Yeah, well he’ll be going with you.” Alan smiled. “Plus this needed to happen outside of a battle zone.”
“Oh yeah.” Anna nodded emphatically. “Completely.”
Alan smiled as he clapped his hands. “All right! Everyone get ready for a taste test sensation! Except Brooklynn, I’ll have your corn done not long after.”
“What is she vegetarian?” Vegeta snapped.
“Vegan.” Brooklyn said as she crossed her arms.
“I make meat.” Vegeta crossed his arms as if to challenge her.
“Good for you, my husband is who you want to impress.” She nodded to Kenji.
“Huh, fair.” Vegeta nodded. “Why is he staring at the grills?”
“He grills too, but for fun.” Brooklynn smiled.
“Hey, amateur!” Vegeta stomped forward.
Kenji flinched. “Yes?”
“You’re my second.” Vegeta grinned.
Kenji smiled and saluted, “Yes sir!”
“Ben, you got my stuff?” Alan asked.
“Stuff?” Vegeta asked as Ben walked out with a wheeled tray filled with cooking paraphernalia.
“Oh, now we’re getting serious!” Vegeta grinned. “Anna, you got my stuff?”
Anna nodded and tossed out a pink and blue capsule that turned into another wheeled tray with similar cooking tools on it.
“Just so we’re clear, I’m recusing myself.” Anna smiled.
“Clever girl.” Vegeta stared at her with a vicious smile..
“Man if you knew the history of that phrase here.” Alan shook his head. “All right folks, quarter of a steak each for the taste testing. Be honest, put your fork on the plate you like most.”
“Do we get ketchup?” Anna asked with a devious grin.
Both men stopped and glared.
“I found the heckler.” Alan said through gritted teeth.
“Considering her parentage, I’m not surprised.” Vegeta nodded.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Darkseid paced on Apokalips.
He had been shunted back to his planet and reality with ease by the ghostly reaper. He had been embarrassed for the last time by the Scions. He would not tolerate it anymore.
“Kalibak!” He shouted for his son.
Kalibak came forward and kneeled. “Father.”
“Prepare all to attack Earth. If I cannot go to them I will draw them to me. We will slaughter Superman's adopted homeworld.” Darkseid grinned.
The sound of chains echoed through the halls.
“Alice?” Hare lifted his head.
“She’s coming...” March Hare’s vocalizer on the back of the warbeast he was attached to, sang to life.
Soon a woman in white with red on a half mask walked into view.
“And who are you?” Darkseid asked.
“I am called Kyton. I come from Alan Quain’s home reality.” She said as the chains holding Hare released him. “I am the Revenant of Heroes, element of metal.” March Hare’s brain case released itself and fell to the ground.
“FREEDOM!” The brains’ final thoughts shouted from the vocalizer.
“You will keep them no longer!” Kyton’s chains flew from openings and snagged the ragged body of Hare into a swirling portal.
“So it is war!” Darkseid grinned as lanced out a punch, but a wall of crystal rose up from the ground.
“I’m here to asshole.” Stephen Quain walked in as the air around all of Darkseid’s forces turned to solid crystalline bindings. “And we brought an old friend.”
A scream of rage tore through the air as a clown mask landed at Darkseid’s feet.
Darkseid looked down and was caught by a powerful uppercut, but it was nothing to him. He did recognize his opponent, they had taken him form Quain’s home reality and tormented him. They had tried to shatter the mask he wore only to find it resisted them at all attempts. He wore a new mask now, but Darkseid felt the same hidden power inside it. He grinned and grabbed the human’s fist and tossed him back.
“Dammnit!” SideEffect shouted. “If I could feel those bones I’d be even more pissed!”
“And now I am...” Darkseid looked outside his window to see a series of explosions ripple across Apokalips.
A man flew down to his window, a billowing red cape.
“I’m afraid not, Darkseid, this is the Scion’s war.” Superman smiled. “We’re just helping.” He flew in and slammed the leader of Apokalips through the walls.
Kyton looked at Stephen Quain, “Don’t kill the sapient ones.”
Stephne rolled his eyes. “Just because I have a history with the hairball doesn’t mean I’m trigger happy.”
Kalibak looked around in confusion. The crystal bindings were all too familiar and he looked at the human in fear. “Can you please not turn me into crystal again? It really hurts.”
Stephen rolled his eyes.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
In the black space above Apokalips, a green form looked down upon the world. A scythe and sword were by his side, as was a young pale skinned woman. She shook her head but did not oppose the Scion.
“You started this early.” Death of the Endless sighed. “Why?”
“Because it’s the one thing no one would expect me to actually do.” Wraith drew his daggers from his side and looked them over. His black blade still had a knick in it from when a piece broke off in Atropos. “So I’ll make sure this entire war is off balance.”
Death of the Endless shook her head. “I think she got under your skin. So to speak.”
“She did.” Wraith acknowledged. “For this I am not Death. For this I am the endless rage of the murdered and unavenged. She wants this fight, I’ll give it to her, but on my terms.”
“What are your friends doing?” Death of the Endless looked down.
One half of Apokolips was now thoroughly exploded with mechanical animals running rampant over it. The other half was now a flower covered paradise that had strange trees restraining the parademons and other forces.
“What they do best.” Wraith smiled. “Chaos and Imbalance.”
“And what can we do?” The voice of Astral, Scion of Order asked as he appeared.
“Cage of this reality, separate it from itself.” Wraith leaned on his scythe.
“Shadow reality?” Astral asked.
Wraith nodded.
“I’m gonna need my buddy down there.” Astral nodded.
“I’m your buddy?!” Perfection cooed as he appeared. “Hiya D.o.E.! How’s Delirium?”
“Delerious.” Death of the Endless smiled with a nod.
“All right!” Perfection cheered. “One shadow realm coming up!” He snapped his fingers and a wig very similar to a popular card game anime character’s hair appeared on his head and his clothes shifted to a similar style.
“Does that mean I have to be Kaiba?” Astral sighed.
“Would you?” Perfection asked with a pleading look.
“Okay, fine. This once.” Astral sighed and his trench coat shifted to that of another coat similar to the other one’s rival.
“I’m not watching this.” Wraith sighed as he vanished.
“Man, what a party pooper.” Perfection sighed. “Well it’s time to get twisted!”
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Anna sat watching her friends and her father. Everyone was relaxed and the party was winding to a close. Vegeta was busy going over a speech with her dad and Salem was busy trying to understand how Ben survived a Carnotaurus as a teenager with no powers.
“We will go to our final battle soon.” Rio sat beside her enjoying some of the last steak.
“Well not our last.” Anna smiled.
Rio shook her head. “I cannot go with you beyond this.”
Anna looked at Rio. “Did I say something, do something?”
Rio shook her head. “I have a responsibility I too will be stepping into, at Arceus’ last request.”
Anna hugged Rio. “You could have said something.”
“I was conflicted.” Rio admitted, “But it was Arlina that made me realize I had to do it.”
Anna nodded. “You’ll always be my sister.”
“You will always be welcome in my world.” Rio smiled and gave a happy yip.
Anna smiled. “Bonds beyond life and death.”
“Bonds beyond time and space.” Rio said as a compliment to it. “I will cherish the time we have had together.”
Anna smiled and held up the pokeball.
“Oh no,we still need that, I don’t want to travel the multiverse exposed to it!” Rio barked nervously.
Anna laughed. “Okay, One last big adventure.”
“Once more unto the breach, my friends.” Alan said as he sat next to them.
“What?” Anna asked.
“The Bard himself.” Alan smiled. “Henry the Fifth.”
Anna nodded. “I’m scared.”
Alan nodded. “So am I. I could lose the most important people to me. But it has to stop, she has to be stopped, he has to be stopped. No more.”
Anna nodded.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead.” Yaz said. “Act Three, Scene One.”
“Indeed.” Alan smiled and nodded. “I better pick up Teal’c and the other’s too.”
Anna looked at her father quizzically.
“He sounds a lot like Kratos. But he enjoys breaking False gods, so...” He paused. “Disturbingly coincidental hobbies.”
Anna giggled.
“How many of my friends have that hobby?” Alan pondered aloud.
Vegeta jumped up and waved his hand.
“No, Vegeta. Frieza was not a false god.” Alan sighed.
“Fair.” Vegeta harrumphed.
“Well I have to get this all cleaned up tomorrow.” Darius sighed.
Alan gave a baring laugh.
“What?” Darius asked.
“Darius.” Anna scoffed, “We aren’t trashy guests...” She focused and Hong Long came out from her aura and quickly began to pick up trash.
Alan simply focused on various small bits that flew to the trash cans. Within minutes the backyard and the grills were sparkling.
“Kami, do I miss the easy cleanups...” Vegeta sighed. “You know the stars here are bit different, but I like’em.”
Anna smiled and began to point out the constellations. Soon though Alan, Anna and their guests returned to the Camp for one more night of rest.
When they got back Anna and Alan crashed within minutes, Vegeta and Salem were still up staring out at the stars.
“You feel it?” Vegeta asked.
“Like a cat with its hackles up.” Salem nodded.
“What do you do, to keep her safe?” Vegeta asked.
“Got some magic, but mostly I use big guns.” Salem said. “I can hack, but it’s a tertiary skill nowadays. If I get pissed I can jack my bodies’ power up, but not anywhere near as powerful as you.”
Vegeta nodded. “Willing to die?”
“For them?” Salem just nodded.
“Good.” Vegeta nodded. “He wants me up front with Darkseid. How do you think I’ll fair?”
“Depends.” Salem shrugged, “What’s your newest technique?”
“Well I developed a bit of an Ego, if you will.” Vegeta grinned.
“No, not with Darkseid.” Salem shook his head. “Definitely poor on the aggression, but you do not want to take a hit. Especially the Omega Beams, you can’t dodge them, you can only put others in front of them.”
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
“He wasn’t there.” Consumption hissed. “Not even a trace of him.”
Atropos blinked in shock. She felt for certain Wraith would retreat to the Gates of Hell in their home reality. That he wasn’t there was a shock.
“That’s because he’s off picking a fight with Darkseid.” Odin shook his head. “Your plans aren’t coming together, Norn.”
“Don’t call me that.” Atropos said in an off-sweet tone. “I write fates, they make a show of them.”
Odin grunted. He was starting to regret working with this woman.
“As I said it doesn’t matter.” Atropos shoved her hand into her leg, golden ichor rolled out as she pulled an obsidian black shard from her leg. “A piece of his Sin left to remember him by.”
“I can use that.” Sindri shot up, “That will work” He walked over and held out his hands.
Atropos smiled and dropped it in his open palms. The sharp piece struck into the dwarf’s hand and his grief flashed before his eyes and he clutched his hand around the piece as he roared in pain. He forced himself over to his work table and pried it out of his own hand.
Atropos watched in shock.
“It wants you to suffer under your own guilt.” Sindri winced. “Vicious piece, but it has a piece of him, more than enough.”
“Then let Undeath Echo through the multiverse.” Atropos roared with laughter.
Odin watched the woman and slowly tilted his head towards her, then to Sindri. He nodded slowly as he realized what was happening. He had to get out of this mad house and fast.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Anna stretched as Hong Long coiled about in the sky, doing his own version of warming up. Alan yawned as he said his goodbyes to his co-workers and bosses.
Dr. Grant handed him a book, an old one signed by another Paleontologist. Quain grinned as he put the book signed by Tim Murphy into his bag. Dr. Ellie Sattler just gave him a hug. Dr. Wu who had the hardest time saying goodbye, despite the few words the two ever exchanged they had become good friends and trusted each other.
“Don’t go bad or I’ll be back.” Alan smiled.
“I don’t think I can anymore.” Wu smiled.
“He’s got the heart!” Anna shouted. “He took a while to grow into it though!”
Dr. Wu smiled and waved. “Take care of her, she still needs her father.”
Alan nodded and stood next to his daughter.
“What do you think, two holes?” Anna asked.
Alan blew a raspberry. “Why waste the energy?”
Anna nodded. “So who is going to make it?”
Alan stroked his chin. “Rock paper scissors?”
Anna rolled her eyes and Hong Long roared and tore into reality leaving an extra large whole gaping open.
“See you in a week!” Anna laughed as she ran and jumped through. Salem came screaming after her shouting about not being ready.
“That’s CHEATING!” Alan shouted as he raced after his daughter. Vegeta sighed and ran after his friend, grumbling about losing the steak-off once more.
As he breached into the multiverse he felt the power of his new nature course through him. He held it back, but just barely. He wanted to show Darkseid exactly how bad he had messed up.
Anna also felt the power crest in her and she looked back and smiled at her father while Salem tumbled in the rear of Hong Long’s frame. She waved as her father and Vegeta skewed off in a different direction.
“I think I’m gonna puke!” Salem groaned as he spun around.
\\\\
First
Previous
End of the Daughter that Follows
SPOTIFY LIST!
////
All the Scions: OH!
S: Yup.
Astral: Fuck.
Maven: With extra cheddar.
Perfection: What?
Maven: It’s a saying from my home reality.
Perfection: But why Cheddar?
DM: How does he even have Cheddar, that’s from England.
Perfection: My head hurts.
S: So that’s her plan folks.
Mosious: That’s not good.
Theten: But there’s no need for Undeath. It’s antithetical to the universe!
Karma: Maybe it’s about exactly that. Like we’re concepts. What if she’s going for Extra material power.
S: Smart woman wins the prize.
Wraith: SHE... ANger... RAGE...
Karma: Oh no, he’s sputtering.
Astral: (steps back)
S: And now folks I work on outlining the final battle. I’ll know more about it’s length in a week or two. In the meantime I will continue to work on GSD.
submitted by TheSmogmonsterZX to HFY [link] [comments]
DM, the Digitalman, the Scion of Variable is a creation of my good friend who does not use Reddit and is used with permission.
The Pokémon Lucario is © The Pokemon Company.
“When you're in your darkest place, you give yourself hope and that's inner strength.”
― Uncle Iroh
The Daughter that Follows
Chapter 27
Reunited
Part 5
“So, are we all ready?” Darius asked as he rolled out a second grill in his backyard. He had decided to host the mini-reunion for Alan and his friend.
“We are so friggin’ ready.” Kenji grinned. “I can almost taste the meat...”
“Why is he acting like he hasn’t had meat in forever?” Alan asked Brooklynn while pointing to her husband.
“I wish I knew, he has his own grill.” Brooklyn shook her head. “Cooks good corn.”
“Speaking of, I got these for you.” Alan held up several cobs. “Won’t be a competition because Vegeta thinks vegetables are a sin.”
Brooklyn rolled her eyes, “I know the type.”
“So...” Sammie pointed into Darius’ house. “Is your other guest okay?”
“He’s fine, he just doesn’t like the sun that much.” Alan grinned.
“He’s a vampire.” Yaz said.
“Don’t say that.” Sammie chided her wife.
“Technically he’s a nosferatu.” Alan wavered his hand. “But also be quiet, I want Anna surprised, and Salem surprised.”
“Why is he getting surprised?” Kenji asked.
Yaz smiled, “You didn’t pay attention to his shirt, did you?”
“I think he might be a fan of Alan’s friend.” Sammie said.
Not a moment after that a hole opened above Darius’ driveway. They heard Ben shout in surprise as he fell out with Anna and Vegeta.
“You know, you’re brave...” Vegeta said, “But you need to have more spatial awareness if you’re not gonna fly.”
“We can’t fly here.” Ben said as he was flown over Darius’ roof and sat down.
“Where’s Anna?” Alan asked.
“She saw someone attacking Spider-Men.” Vegeta shrugged.”Dropped us off and ran off.”
“Oh.” Alan blinked.
“Yeah, it looked like some wasp thingy.” Vegeta flew back and returned with a huge slab of meat. “Wagusaurus.”
Alan stopped to think for a moment before another hole in reality opened and Anna walked through covered in orange and green gunk.
“Hose?” She asked grumpily.
Darius pointed to the side of his house.
“So I take it, it squished good?” Salem snickered from the sliding door.
Anna froze and looked up. Then she looked at her father.
“Surprise.” Alan smirked.
Anna ran up and hugged her father. “That’s for surprising me.”
Alan nodded. “I kinda figured.”
Salem was laughing like mad as Anna went to hose herself off. Then he froze as he saw Vegeta cutting up the meat.
“Surprise.” Alan smiled and tapped Vegeta on the shoulder. “You gotta fan here, man.”
“Huh?” Vegeta turned to see the fanged nosferatu staring and pointing. “Hey, you want to help? This stuff is heavy.”
Salem just nodded and helped the saiyan prince separate out the meat.
Anna came walking back around the corner, she had used her aura to squeeze the water from her clothes and skin, though her hair was still wet. She giggled as her father simply eradicated the gunk that was on his clothes.
“Thank you.” Anna smiled up at Alan.
“Yeah, well he’ll be going with you.” Alan smiled. “Plus this needed to happen outside of a battle zone.”
“Oh yeah.” Anna nodded emphatically. “Completely.”
Alan smiled as he clapped his hands. “All right! Everyone get ready for a taste test sensation! Except Brooklynn, I’ll have your corn done not long after.”
“What is she vegetarian?” Vegeta snapped.
“Vegan.” Brooklyn said as she crossed her arms.
“I make meat.” Vegeta crossed his arms as if to challenge her.
“Good for you, my husband is who you want to impress.” She nodded to Kenji.
“Huh, fair.” Vegeta nodded. “Why is he staring at the grills?”
“He grills too, but for fun.” Brooklynn smiled.
“Hey, amateur!” Vegeta stomped forward.
Kenji flinched. “Yes?”
“You’re my second.” Vegeta grinned.
Kenji smiled and saluted, “Yes sir!”
“Ben, you got my stuff?” Alan asked.
“Stuff?” Vegeta asked as Ben walked out with a wheeled tray filled with cooking paraphernalia.
“Oh, now we’re getting serious!” Vegeta grinned. “Anna, you got my stuff?”
Anna nodded and tossed out a pink and blue capsule that turned into another wheeled tray with similar cooking tools on it.
“Just so we’re clear, I’m recusing myself.” Anna smiled.
“Clever girl.” Vegeta stared at her with a vicious smile..
“Man if you knew the history of that phrase here.” Alan shook his head. “All right folks, quarter of a steak each for the taste testing. Be honest, put your fork on the plate you like most.”
“Do we get ketchup?” Anna asked with a devious grin.
Both men stopped and glared.
“I found the heckler.” Alan said through gritted teeth.
“Considering her parentage, I’m not surprised.” Vegeta nodded.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Darkseid paced on Apokalips.
He had been shunted back to his planet and reality with ease by the ghostly reaper. He had been embarrassed for the last time by the Scions. He would not tolerate it anymore.
“Kalibak!” He shouted for his son.
Kalibak came forward and kneeled. “Father.”
“Prepare all to attack Earth. If I cannot go to them I will draw them to me. We will slaughter Superman's adopted homeworld.” Darkseid grinned.
The sound of chains echoed through the halls.
“Alice?” Hare lifted his head.
“She’s coming...” March Hare’s vocalizer on the back of the warbeast he was attached to, sang to life.
Soon a woman in white with red on a half mask walked into view.
“And who are you?” Darkseid asked.
“I am called Kyton. I come from Alan Quain’s home reality.” She said as the chains holding Hare released him. “I am the Revenant of Heroes, element of metal.” March Hare’s brain case released itself and fell to the ground.
“FREEDOM!” The brains’ final thoughts shouted from the vocalizer.
“You will keep them no longer!” Kyton’s chains flew from openings and snagged the ragged body of Hare into a swirling portal.
“So it is war!” Darkseid grinned as lanced out a punch, but a wall of crystal rose up from the ground.
“I’m here to asshole.” Stephen Quain walked in as the air around all of Darkseid’s forces turned to solid crystalline bindings. “And we brought an old friend.”
A scream of rage tore through the air as a clown mask landed at Darkseid’s feet.
Darkseid looked down and was caught by a powerful uppercut, but it was nothing to him. He did recognize his opponent, they had taken him form Quain’s home reality and tormented him. They had tried to shatter the mask he wore only to find it resisted them at all attempts. He wore a new mask now, but Darkseid felt the same hidden power inside it. He grinned and grabbed the human’s fist and tossed him back.
“Dammnit!” SideEffect shouted. “If I could feel those bones I’d be even more pissed!”
“And now I am...” Darkseid looked outside his window to see a series of explosions ripple across Apokalips.
A man flew down to his window, a billowing red cape.
“I’m afraid not, Darkseid, this is the Scion’s war.” Superman smiled. “We’re just helping.” He flew in and slammed the leader of Apokalips through the walls.
Kyton looked at Stephen Quain, “Don’t kill the sapient ones.”
Stephne rolled his eyes. “Just because I have a history with the hairball doesn’t mean I’m trigger happy.”
Kalibak looked around in confusion. The crystal bindings were all too familiar and he looked at the human in fear. “Can you please not turn me into crystal again? It really hurts.”
Stephen rolled his eyes.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
In the black space above Apokalips, a green form looked down upon the world. A scythe and sword were by his side, as was a young pale skinned woman. She shook her head but did not oppose the Scion.
“You started this early.” Death of the Endless sighed. “Why?”
“Because it’s the one thing no one would expect me to actually do.” Wraith drew his daggers from his side and looked them over. His black blade still had a knick in it from when a piece broke off in Atropos. “So I’ll make sure this entire war is off balance.”
Death of the Endless shook her head. “I think she got under your skin. So to speak.”
“She did.” Wraith acknowledged. “For this I am not Death. For this I am the endless rage of the murdered and unavenged. She wants this fight, I’ll give it to her, but on my terms.”
“What are your friends doing?” Death of the Endless looked down.
One half of Apokolips was now thoroughly exploded with mechanical animals running rampant over it. The other half was now a flower covered paradise that had strange trees restraining the parademons and other forces.
“What they do best.” Wraith smiled. “Chaos and Imbalance.”
“And what can we do?” The voice of Astral, Scion of Order asked as he appeared.
“Cage of this reality, separate it from itself.” Wraith leaned on his scythe.
“Shadow reality?” Astral asked.
Wraith nodded.
“I’m gonna need my buddy down there.” Astral nodded.
“I’m your buddy?!” Perfection cooed as he appeared. “Hiya D.o.E.! How’s Delirium?”
“Delerious.” Death of the Endless smiled with a nod.
“All right!” Perfection cheered. “One shadow realm coming up!” He snapped his fingers and a wig very similar to a popular card game anime character’s hair appeared on his head and his clothes shifted to a similar style.
“Does that mean I have to be Kaiba?” Astral sighed.
“Would you?” Perfection asked with a pleading look.
“Okay, fine. This once.” Astral sighed and his trench coat shifted to that of another coat similar to the other one’s rival.
“I’m not watching this.” Wraith sighed as he vanished.
“Man, what a party pooper.” Perfection sighed. “Well it’s time to get twisted!”
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Anna sat watching her friends and her father. Everyone was relaxed and the party was winding to a close. Vegeta was busy going over a speech with her dad and Salem was busy trying to understand how Ben survived a Carnotaurus as a teenager with no powers.
“We will go to our final battle soon.” Rio sat beside her enjoying some of the last steak.
“Well not our last.” Anna smiled.
Rio shook her head. “I cannot go with you beyond this.”
Anna looked at Rio. “Did I say something, do something?”
Rio shook her head. “I have a responsibility I too will be stepping into, at Arceus’ last request.”
Anna hugged Rio. “You could have said something.”
“I was conflicted.” Rio admitted, “But it was Arlina that made me realize I had to do it.”
Anna nodded. “You’ll always be my sister.”
“You will always be welcome in my world.” Rio smiled and gave a happy yip.
Anna smiled. “Bonds beyond life and death.”
“Bonds beyond time and space.” Rio said as a compliment to it. “I will cherish the time we have had together.”
Anna smiled and held up the pokeball.
“Oh no,we still need that, I don’t want to travel the multiverse exposed to it!” Rio barked nervously.
Anna laughed. “Okay, One last big adventure.”
“Once more unto the breach, my friends.” Alan said as he sat next to them.
“What?” Anna asked.
“The Bard himself.” Alan smiled. “Henry the Fifth.”
Anna nodded. “I’m scared.”
Alan nodded. “So am I. I could lose the most important people to me. But it has to stop, she has to be stopped, he has to be stopped. No more.”
Anna nodded.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead.” Yaz said. “Act Three, Scene One.”
“Indeed.” Alan smiled and nodded. “I better pick up Teal’c and the other’s too.”
Anna looked at her father quizzically.
“He sounds a lot like Kratos. But he enjoys breaking False gods, so...” He paused. “Disturbingly coincidental hobbies.”
Anna giggled.
“How many of my friends have that hobby?” Alan pondered aloud.
Vegeta jumped up and waved his hand.
“No, Vegeta. Frieza was not a false god.” Alan sighed.
“Fair.” Vegeta harrumphed.
“Well I have to get this all cleaned up tomorrow.” Darius sighed.
Alan gave a baring laugh.
“What?” Darius asked.
“Darius.” Anna scoffed, “We aren’t trashy guests...” She focused and Hong Long came out from her aura and quickly began to pick up trash.
Alan simply focused on various small bits that flew to the trash cans. Within minutes the backyard and the grills were sparkling.
“Kami, do I miss the easy cleanups...” Vegeta sighed. “You know the stars here are bit different, but I like’em.”
Anna smiled and began to point out the constellations. Soon though Alan, Anna and their guests returned to the Camp for one more night of rest.
When they got back Anna and Alan crashed within minutes, Vegeta and Salem were still up staring out at the stars.
“You feel it?” Vegeta asked.
“Like a cat with its hackles up.” Salem nodded.
“What do you do, to keep her safe?” Vegeta asked.
“Got some magic, but mostly I use big guns.” Salem said. “I can hack, but it’s a tertiary skill nowadays. If I get pissed I can jack my bodies’ power up, but not anywhere near as powerful as you.”
Vegeta nodded. “Willing to die?”
“For them?” Salem just nodded.
“Good.” Vegeta nodded. “He wants me up front with Darkseid. How do you think I’ll fair?”
“Depends.” Salem shrugged, “What’s your newest technique?”
“Well I developed a bit of an Ego, if you will.” Vegeta grinned.
“No, not with Darkseid.” Salem shook his head. “Definitely poor on the aggression, but you do not want to take a hit. Especially the Omega Beams, you can’t dodge them, you can only put others in front of them.”
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
“He wasn’t there.” Consumption hissed. “Not even a trace of him.”
Atropos blinked in shock. She felt for certain Wraith would retreat to the Gates of Hell in their home reality. That he wasn’t there was a shock.
“That’s because he’s off picking a fight with Darkseid.” Odin shook his head. “Your plans aren’t coming together, Norn.”
“Don’t call me that.” Atropos said in an off-sweet tone. “I write fates, they make a show of them.”
Odin grunted. He was starting to regret working with this woman.
“As I said it doesn’t matter.” Atropos shoved her hand into her leg, golden ichor rolled out as she pulled an obsidian black shard from her leg. “A piece of his Sin left to remember him by.”
“I can use that.” Sindri shot up, “That will work” He walked over and held out his hands.
Atropos smiled and dropped it in his open palms. The sharp piece struck into the dwarf’s hand and his grief flashed before his eyes and he clutched his hand around the piece as he roared in pain. He forced himself over to his work table and pried it out of his own hand.
Atropos watched in shock.
“It wants you to suffer under your own guilt.” Sindri winced. “Vicious piece, but it has a piece of him, more than enough.”
“Then let Undeath Echo through the multiverse.” Atropos roared with laughter.
Odin watched the woman and slowly tilted his head towards her, then to Sindri. He nodded slowly as he realized what was happening. He had to get out of this mad house and fast.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Anna stretched as Hong Long coiled about in the sky, doing his own version of warming up. Alan yawned as he said his goodbyes to his co-workers and bosses.
Dr. Grant handed him a book, an old one signed by another Paleontologist. Quain grinned as he put the book signed by Tim Murphy into his bag. Dr. Ellie Sattler just gave him a hug. Dr. Wu who had the hardest time saying goodbye, despite the few words the two ever exchanged they had become good friends and trusted each other.
“Don’t go bad or I’ll be back.” Alan smiled.
“I don’t think I can anymore.” Wu smiled.
“He’s got the heart!” Anna shouted. “He took a while to grow into it though!”
Dr. Wu smiled and waved. “Take care of her, she still needs her father.”
Alan nodded and stood next to his daughter.
“What do you think, two holes?” Anna asked.
Alan blew a raspberry. “Why waste the energy?”
Anna nodded. “So who is going to make it?”
Alan stroked his chin. “Rock paper scissors?”
Anna rolled her eyes and Hong Long roared and tore into reality leaving an extra large whole gaping open.
“See you in a week!” Anna laughed as she ran and jumped through. Salem came screaming after her shouting about not being ready.
“That’s CHEATING!” Alan shouted as he raced after his daughter. Vegeta sighed and ran after his friend, grumbling about losing the steak-off once more.
As he breached into the multiverse he felt the power of his new nature course through him. He held it back, but just barely. He wanted to show Darkseid exactly how bad he had messed up.
Anna also felt the power crest in her and she looked back and smiled at her father while Salem tumbled in the rear of Hong Long’s frame. She waved as her father and Vegeta skewed off in a different direction.
“I think I’m gonna puke!” Salem groaned as he spun around.
\\\\
First
Previous
End of the Daughter that Follows
SPOTIFY LIST!
////
All the Scions: OH!
S: Yup.
Astral: Fuck.
Maven: With extra cheddar.
Perfection: What?
Maven: It’s a saying from my home reality.
Perfection: But why Cheddar?
DM: How does he even have Cheddar, that’s from England.
Perfection: My head hurts.
S: So that’s her plan folks.
Mosious: That’s not good.
Theten: But there’s no need for Undeath. It’s antithetical to the universe!
Karma: Maybe it’s about exactly that. Like we’re concepts. What if she’s going for Extra material power.
S: Smart woman wins the prize.
Wraith: SHE... ANger... RAGE...
Karma: Oh no, he’s sputtering.
Astral: (steps back)
S: And now folks I work on outlining the final battle. I’ll know more about it’s length in a week or two. In the meantime I will continue to work on GSD.
2023.06.07 03:20 Personal_Hippo1277 Clio Token Size As Text Size By Tier Comparison [Mega Text Wall For Enjoyers of Scrolling]
When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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submitted by Personal_Hippo1277 to NovelAi [link] [comments]
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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2023.06.07 02:21 NoSneezePlz Bloons TD 6 - Update Notes! Version 37.0
 | https://preview.redd.it/0ko9r0ktoh4b1.png?width=840&format=png&auto=webp&s=d366457be60997a8f03ca838d5c3eacef9cacf8d submitted by NoSneezePlz to btd6 [link] [comments] Bloons TD 6 v37.0 - Update Notes!Rolling out now on iOS, Android, Steam please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.Check out the more awesomer update video here. Key New Features
New Awesome
News - Anniversary Giveaways!https://preview.redd.it/27pjluypoh4b1.png?width=350&format=png&auto=webp&s=265a9a9a1456e7323d224938edcbaa995cd35d3c We would also like to formally announce that we will be doing a week of giveaways on our Twitter starting next Monday NZT to celebrate the BTD6 5 year anniversary! 5 winners will be picked randomly each day for 5 days to win an awesome prize from our merch store. This will be exclusive to Twitter so make sure to follow us here to be involved! Game Changes / Additions
Quest Changes
Bug Fixes & General Changes
Tower Specific FixesIce Monkey
Hero Specific FixesObyn Greenfoot
Balance ChangesBoomerang MonkeyThis part has to be included along with the Lych Soul rework with Paragons which is finally making it in this update after necessary delays. As Boomerang Paragon’s knockback hits so many times so quickly, we need to make it more reasonable when applied to targets that aren’t immediately destroyed.
MOAB Assassin fills a useful role of a pure long cooldown ‘single target assassination’ in the game, but when compared to something like First Strike it feels a little lacking that it is unable to carry damage through MOAB Layers
Blade Shooter has always struggled to find much value without MK or as a step to Maelstrom, so to give it build value on its own we feel like this should be a part of the base value on the upgrade.
Lowest tiers of ice monkey are far too effective for their cost against ceramics, with this scaling well all the way to round 100, we feel like ice duration against ceramics needs to be reduced to counter this but for now this reduction will only apply until T3.
The Bloon Solver’s rework has been very popular, however, we’d like to have a better lead up into the new mechanics by introducing this earlier at the tier 4 now.
This will allow Cripple MOAB to take out regular MOAB layers in one shot until round 100; for such a slow attacking single target tower we feel this will help top path flex, even if mostly for show.
Reworking Grape Shot crosspathing as it gains far too much crosspath value by T2 but then is lacking in purpose at higher tiers, double shot will only work as one extra grape however Destroyer will now apply its full attack rate buff to the grapes and Flagship will equip aspects of Grape Shot on the mini planes.
Spectre is shifting a little of the ceramic bonus around into basic all damage at the cost of reduced pierce, which should make up for lack of single target damage while also making the pierce crosspath more necessary when being used for cleanup focus.
Even with the map-range advantage, rotors are weak compared to any other constant AoE circle like this. Chinook feels like it’s near a place we are happy with now, however we want another tiny nudge on cost while keeping cash generation value the same. Pushing some higher values on the last Comanche Commander changes as the missile attack is effectively such a small portion of the tower’s total damage late game.
As the Rapid Reload crosspath has actually fallen behind in value compared to Burny Stuff for top path Mortars we want to try a slight stun duration increase as this buffs the base path with a larger benefit to Rapid Reload mortars as a stalling option. Mortar consistency is lacking at x3x making it tough to spend on even though x4x is fairly good, so some of the T4 rate is shifting down to help out with this. As the camo property has grown quite weak and currently Signal Flare is considered the best decamo tool, we want to push back slightly on its cost and by reducing the blast radius of the decamo area while emphasizing crosspathing for effectiveness there.
As Engineer sentries do this already, newly spawned Mini Avatars from temples will now by default match the target priority of the temple.
We’re changing the Ninja Monkey Paragon’s focus as a fighter against camo, as we feel like a greater strength and tactical value against camo will be the full reveal of all camos rather than all camo removal.
Alchemist Transforming Tonic is in a weird spot with the transformation unable to attack through walls when the base alchemist is able to. Also with this, including a QoL fix for the T5 that currently prevents transformed towers from functioning with target priority.
While the tornado doesn't do anything to MOABs, it still spends itself on them which wastes a relatively long cooldown, so addressing this flaw. Avatar of wrath doubles the base attack speed before any scaling is applied, but this hasn’t ever applied to the 205 Lightning, so taking care of that as well. Housekeeping - even deep in the forest, it does actually make life better.
We’ve heard the feedback, so Spiked Mines get a tweak to get more mines exploding but with less pierce on each, to overall increase quality of life in more frequent use but less wasted pierce. This will help out with some of the problems it has scaling into late game super ceramics.
A minor QoL for cheap Monkeyopolis creation, we included a small base amount of cash production to the generation formula.
The 005 crosspath fix in the last update left XXXL Trap slower than previously even if crosspathed to 205, so we are increasing that base 005 slightly to match up the 205 crosspath again so that it isn’t any slower than before.
As our newest tower to be added to BTD6, we went over feedback for every path and made a large number of adjustments addressing a variety of points.
Removing the stacking aspect of Gwendolin’s burn damage over time, but increasing the damage as she levels up so that it actually scales up in power now.
While they are complicated individuals, Adora can now fully appreciate the sacrifice of the newest Monkeys in the struggle against the Bloons.
We aren’t happy with strats that start looking like exploits with frequent sell-replace loops.
Psi’s stalling out of the end of round is an odd mix of useful / annoying / out of control, so we are for now capping this to a 3 seconds of overtime stalling. Psi’s Psychic Blast ability also has weirdly low pierce for a long cooldown ability with no damage, we are increasing the base pierce greatly but it no longer increases in pierce at Lv7 since the extra pulse brings more pierce anyway.
Five months of 2023 done and dusted, which feels to us like it has zoomed by, perhaps because the Auckland office where the BTD6 team is based has only just reopened after the severe flooding at the end of January. All of Update 36 and the majority of Update 37 were completed while again working from home, but we’re very excited to have the office repairs done, the flood wall almost finished, and the ability to work shoulder to shoulder again on fun new things for the monkeyverse! Here’s the latest gaze into the crystal ball:
|
2023.06.07 02:06 Born-Beach Something twisted crawled out from the edge of the universe, and it’s coming our way.
The forest is black. Pitch black.
I pound over the dirt trail, my feet turning the pedals like twin pistons. The bicycle bounces and jolts, shuddering as it rolls across the wooden bridge. There’s something in the air tonight. A chill.
But it isn’t the chill of autumn. No, this is the chill of unease. It crawls up my spine carrying the deep-rooted knowledge that something about these woods, something about this trail isn’t right. It’s the unmistakable dread of being watched.
Pursued.
I stand up and ride harder. My lungs burn with every push of the pedals but I can’t shake the feeling that I need to get out of these woods fast. The hospital is twenty minutes away. I just need to make it there.
I’m close.
So close.
WOMP
Bass rumbles behind me. It’s followed by a rush of wind, enough to throw me forward while ravishing the forest like a tempest. Trees groan. Their frames break and kneel, surrendering to the gale. Branches and leaves come loose. They ricochet through the air like shrapnel, cutting into my cheek and and I throw up an arm to keep myself from losing an eye.
This is insanity.
It’s lunacy.
I don’t know what’s happening, but I know I have to make it through this. I have to get out of these woods, get back to the hospital to see my sister before the heart monitor flatlines.
She’s not doing well. Are your mother and father home?
No, ma’am.
Can you get here to be with her? She doesn’t have long.
Yes ma’am. No matter what.
The distant bass nears, growing thunderous. It’s as though the whole world is shaking, like the Earth might split in two and swallow me whole. I grit my teeth. I let loose a defiant roar, sweat pouring down my temples as my legs tremble, willing my bike forward.
Faster, dammit!
Faster!
There’s a flash. Then another.
Lightning?
No.
I’m answered by an explosion of light, so violent and bright that I can’t see a damn thing. I holler. Scream. My body jerks forward as my front wheel collides with what feels like a fallen branch. Next thing I know, I’m flying over my handlebars.
What’s the phrase?
Ass-over-tea-kettle.
Yeah, that’s it.
I brace myself for a broken arm, maybe worse, but the pain never comes. Nothing comes. It’s as though I’m floating in limbo, like gravity’s unable to finish what it started. I can’t feel a thing– not the dirt beneath me, not my face pressed against the bark of a tree. For a little while, I think I’m dead. That I’m in purgatory.
But then my eyes adjust. The world comes into focus, beginning as a blurry smudge, but soon becoming a picture-perfect recreation of my worst nightmare.
I’m not in the forest anymore.
I’m above it.
I’m looking down at the mess of trees and I’m terrified at how small they are, how much smaller they’re getting with every passing second.
I’m floating into the sky, being carried by a narrow beam of light.
___________________________
That was a long time ago. Thirty years, give or take.
A lot’s changed since then, but one thing’s remained the same: the nightmares. I have them every night. I dream about that blinding light, that same low bass and that same gut-churning horror of being eaten by the sky.
I used to think they were a coping mechanism. I figured that since the dreams came shortly after my older sister passed, that maybe they were just how my eleven-year-old brain was dealing with the grief. My therapist seemed to agree.
“You’re quite right that there may be a link there,” she’d tell me, lowering her glasses and offering a medical-grade smile. “It’s very likely that these dreams are a form of abstract healing, a means to allow your mind to come to terms with its trauma.”
For a long time, I thought she was right. Or better put, I hoped she was. Now though? Well, I think maybe we were both wrong.
Shit.
Where are my manners?
I’m over here rambling about my childhood, and you’re wondering who the hell I am.
My name is Isaiah Mitchell. I’m a boogeyman, but not the cool kind. I don’t hide in closets or haunt old houses. I’m the type that your parents rant about while watching the evening news, the sort that tinfoil hats point to whenever things go wrong.
I’m what you might call a Man in Black.
The work I do is classified. It’s the sort of work that happens behind the scenes, with shadowy people in shadowy circles. So when I tell you that last night something catastrophic happened, I’m not talking about the stock market dipping a couple percentage points. I'm not talking about increased traffic on your morning commute.
I’m talking about trouble.
Lots of it.
It’s the kind of trouble that’s making me do something I don’t generally do, which is break rules. By the end of this, I might break all of them. But this is important, and in moments like these I find myself thinking about my late sister, Hope, and how she would have wanted me to do the right thing. It’s how she raised me, after all.
So here goes nothing.
This begins with a story, but it ends with a decision. The story is mine, and the decision is yours. When I’m finished, you get to choose whether you spend the time you have left a little wiser, or laugh this off as the ramblings of a lunatic.
Whatever you choose, I’ll have made my peace.
The story is a personal one. It’s about me, but it’s also about you– it’s about everything in the universe, right down to the last atom, and how all of us are facing a horror the likes of which we can’t begin to imagine.
It’s the story of the worst night of my life, and what might one day be the worst night of yours.
It goes like this.
_______________________
The beam of light sucks me up and spits me into absolute darkness. The sensory whiplash is enough to give me a headache, something like a migraine that pulses near my temples and feels like a bulldozer inside my skull.
It’s uncomfortable.
But not half as uncomfortable as the situation I’m in.
“Hello?” I mumble to the dark. I stumble to my feet, feeling around my environment blindly. It’s cold. Hard. It feels like I might be in a room full of metal, but I can’t imagine where that would be. A warehouse?
Footsteps echo in the distance. They’re closing in.
“Who’s there?” I sputter, and I think maybe I’ve been drugged. People don’t just up and float into the sky in the middle of the night. It isn’t a thing.
That means I’m hallucinating.
That means whoever kidnapped me knows a thing or two about stealing kids.
That means they’re a professional.
What’s the phrase?
Serial killer.
Yeah, that’s it.
WOOOOMP
I clap my hands to my ears. It’s that same bass from the forest, except now it’s reverberating all around me. Another bass joins it. This one is different… coming from a new direction, with a lower tone. It’s almost like they’re communicating– like morse code.
“Please,” I beg. “Just let me go. I swear I won’t tell anybody!”
Static crackles. It’s followed by a sharp squeal of microphone feedback, then the buzz of modulating frequency. “Communication calibrated,” a digital voice says. “Subject identified: homosapien. Geographic location: New Mexico. Language model: English.”
There’s a pause, it’s long and silent enough that I can hear my pulse rushing through my veins. I’m positive I’m going to die. These things don’t happen to people who live to tell the tale.
“Can you understand us, homosapien?” the voice asks.
Yes, I say.
Can you turn on the lights? I ask.
The only thing worse than being murdered is being murdered in the dark.
Yes, they say.
I’m blinded for the third time in as many minutes. I blink, my eyes adjusting to the green glow as it fills the chamber. Wherever I am, it’s strange. Alien. Tall vats of liquid are scattered around a large, circular room, each hosting tubes that extend outward to a central console. Everything is metallic. I can’t make out any labels– any sort of identification at all.
“Is this level of light sufficient?” another voice asks, this one right behind me.
I wheel around, and my breath catches in my chest. In front of me is something that doesn’t exist– can’t exist. It’s roughly ten feet tall, and it’s got sharp teeth, sharp claws, scaled skin, and a tail. It’s a monster. A living, breathing monster.
Fuck.
I scramble backward. My back collides with one of the vats, and blue liquid sloshes against the glass. “Thehellareyou?” I shout all at once.
“We are the Chosen,” says the first voice, approaching my other side. “We are lifeforms from many galaxies away, and we have come to save humanity.”
They stare at me through giant eyes, and each of those eyes are filled with dozens of pulsing pupils. Almost like ink blots.
“I’ve been abducted…” I sputter, hardly able to breathe. “By aliens. Aliens… are real… and I’ve been abducted…”
“Correct,” says one of the aliens. I realize this one has gray scales, while the other has teal. At least I can tell them apart.
Gray looks at his arm, and a digital screen comes to life. He taps at it with a crooked finger. “Readings indicate heightened levels of cortisol and increased adrenal flow. Source: Fight or flight response. Biologically rational, but devoid of purpose.” He looks at me, cocks his over-large head to the side. “You have neither the option to fight us or flee us, so it would be best to comply. Do you understand?”
My jaw hangs open. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. Are these aliens really standing there reading me my Miranda Rights? “Are you going to probe me?” I ask. “Like the movies?”
Teal blinks at me, his pupils dilating. “Negative.” He points to a vat. “We will break down your genetic tissue into usable material, harvesting your most compatible DNA strands while discarding the rest. It is for the greater good.”
I follow his finger to the tank, and now that I’m right up against it, I can see clearly what’s floating inside. My stomach twists into a knot. Inside of it is a human body. Everything from the man’s waist down has been dissolved, and what’s left of his intestines are dangling freely.
“Jesus Christ!”
“There is no cause for concern,” Teal says. He lumbers across the chamber to the metallic console that all the tubes are feeding into. “Your disappearance will be accounted for. A clone will be deployed to resume your life, preventing suspicion and avoiding social disruption.”
“Let me get this straight,” I say, trying to ignore how faint I’m starting to feel. “You’re going to kill me… to save humanity?”
“Correct.”
The room spins. My chest gets tight and my vision becomes a scrambled mess. My ears are ringing like church bells. I stumble, losing my sense of equilibrium and I think I taste vomit in my throat.
“No,” I mutter. “This isn’t happening… Can’t be happening…”
I steady myself against a vat, looking up to see a dead woman’s face staring back at me. Pieces of her skull have been eaten away. I can see the wrinkles of her brain underneath.
“Heart rate out of range,” Gray says, but I hardly hear him. He grabs my wrist, presses a device against the center of my hand.
I struggle. Fight. I try to use my teeth, but he’s strong, much stronger than me. A coldness pulses against my palm, almost like an ice cube, and soon that frigid sensation is traveling across my fingertips. Up my arm.
“What did you…” I mutter, but the sensation is rolling through the rest of my body. It’s soothing. My eyes find my palm and I see a strange shape seared into the skin, a scatter of dots surrounding a black square. Suddenly I can’t remember the thought I was trying to finish. Was any of this really worth panicking over?
It was just a few corpses in vats, after all.
“You have been administered a sedative,” Gray explains.
My heart rate slows. My ears stop ringing. The ghost of a smile sneaks across my face.
Gray’s staring at his display. “Cortisol levels reduced. Adrenal response suppressed. Biometric readings indicate subject has achieved a suitable level of suggestibility to proceed.”
“Affirmative,” says Teal, working the console.
I feel like I’m drifting through the lake on a warm summer day. My heart is full. I’m in absolute bliss, and all I can think is that Hope should get to experience this before she dies…
“Pulse is quickening,” Gray says with a frown.
Hope.
My sister.
My dying sister, alone in the hospital wondering why her little brother abandoned her.
“Sedation effect dropping,” Gray says. “98%. 94%. Emotional instability reaching unacceptable levels.”
“Hope,” I sputter, feeling like I’m coming out of a daze. “I have to get to the hospital– please! My sister is sick! She needs me!”
Gray presses the device against my other hand, and another pulse of relaxation courses through me. “Invalid concern,” he tells me. “Clone will be a perfect recreation of you, body and mind. It will retain all memories allowing it to continue your life uninterrupted. Conclusion: your expiring sibling will receive suitable emotional support prior to her decomposition.”
Fucking aliens. It takes everything I have to fight against the sedative, to make my case. “How?” I groan. “How is my DNA supposed to save humanity? What the hell is it saving us from anyway?”
Teal turns from the console to face us. His giant eyes are narrowed in a thoroughly displeased manner. “Invalid request. Information too critical to risk dissemination.”
“Rebuttal,” says Gray. “Clone’s memory can be modified. Current biometric readings indicate high levels of emotional discontent, placing likelihood of a compromised harvest at 34%. Solution: permit subject to understand purpose of sacrifice. Result: sense of closure and enhanced probability of project success.”
Teal turns back to the console. “Rebuttal accepted. Proceed.”
Gray looks at me. He places his scaly fingers against my head, and I squirm a little. “Brace yourself for disorientation,” he tells me. “You will experience physical unease and hyperstimulation. After, you will understand the horror that awaits your species in the dark.”
______________________________
For a long time, that’s as far as the nightmare gets. Gray prattles on that I’m about to see the truth, some twisted fate that justifies melting humans into sludge, but before he can deliver the goods, I wake up.
Every. Time.
Blue balls doesn’t begin to describe it.
Last night, it happens again. The nightmare, I mean. Same aliens, same tanks of human soup, but this time I wake up in a cold sweat. My phone is ringing on the bedside table. There’s a name on the screen that I hate to see.
“Whatisit?” I grumble.
“Jesus Christ, Mitchell. I’ve been calling for ten minutes!”
My boss. Lisa.
She goes off. The words are coming out like machine-gun fire, and from the background chatter I figure she’s speaking to more than just me. It sounds like there’s a crowd around her, like she’s briefing suits as she jogs down a hallway.
“Got all that?” she asks.
Something about a shitstorm. Something about an F35. The air force just shot down a UAP, which is how we say UFO these days to avoid getting laughed out of the room. Apparently it happened in New Mexico. My backyard.
This calls for a liter of coffee. Maybe two.
I stumble into the kitchen and put a pot on. I have some time while she holds the phone to her chest and barks orders at the drones around her. One cream. One sugar. My spoon clinks against the side of the mug as her voice blares through the speaker.
“Mitchell?” she says. “Still there?”
She says she’s got coordinates. I take a sip of scalding java. I’m dazed enough I barely feel it burn my tongue. My fingers punch the coordinates into my laptop, bringing up the location the supposed UAP was shot down.
I spit my coffee over my screen.
“The fuck?” I mutter, leaning forward and doing a double take at the map.
“What is it?” she’s asking.
“Nothing,” I’m saying.
But it’s a lie. The truth is, the coordinates are a dead match for the forest where I had my waltz with psychosis thirty years ago. They’re the coordinates from my dream. Right down to the rickety old bridge.
I ask her if she’s sure the numbers are correct.
“Am I sure?” she snaps. “Look, if you’re asking me if this is another Chinese spy balloon then the answer is go fuck yourself. I’ve been pulling my hair out for the past twenty minutes. This is the real deal, so suit up and get ready to go. I’ve got a bird on the way.”
The clock on my microwave reads 2:34 a.m. and my stomach is telling me to sort my life out. “Do I have time for breakfast?” I ask.
Click.
The line goes dead.
Twenty minutes later, a helicopter is landing on my lawn. I board it in a daze, and we take off in the direction of the crash like we’re trying to outrun a cruise missile. I’m watching the lights of the countryside drift by, and it occurs to me that from all the way up here, in the dead of night, they almost look like stars.
I wonder how long it’d take to snuff them out.
How long it’d take to burn a whole galaxy to ashes?
To crush a universe in the palm of your hand?
Things to consider.
The closer we get to the crash site, the worse my thoughts become. They’re bordering on obsessive. I’m tangoing with darkness. Radio chatter is coming through the com line, something about aliens and extraterrestrials, but all I’m thinking about is controlling my bladder.
I’m drowning in hypotheticals.
I’m wondering what happens if I lose my mind between here and the crash site, what the protocols are, where they’ll take me. Do I get the night off? The week?
“Everything okay, sir?”
It’s the co-pilot. She’s turning in her seat and looking at me like I’m having a medical emergency.
“You look a bit pale,” she tells me.
My muscles work overtime as I twist my mouth into a smile. “Never better,” I lie. “How far out are we?”
“Twenty miles,” she says with a reassuring grin. She turns back in her seat and I take the opportunity to let out an exhausted sigh.
I close my eyes. Take a dozen deep breaths.
Happy thoughts.
I try to ignore how dry my mouth is, how badly my hands are shaking. I try to ignore the fact that every time I look down at my palms, I see that same scatter of dots, that same faded square that no doctor has been able to explain. “I’ve never seen scars like that,” they tell me. “How’d you get them?”
I don’t know, I tell them.
I don’t know.
But I do.
I’ve known this entire time, probably, but I’ve just been too terrified to accept it. I’m not what I think I am– this world isn’t what I think it is either. It’s all of this that’s making me want to curl into a ball. It’s making me want to weep on the floor, to scream at the top of my lungs and pull my hair out with everything I have.
It’s making me want to throw open the helicopter door, take a breath of fresh air and then plunge head-first into the dirt like a human turnip. And if I thought it was that easy, I might just do it.
But somehow, I know it isn’t.
I know it won’t save me– won’t save us, from what’s coming.
See, last night I had the same dream I’ve had for the last thirty years. The same abduction. The same aliens. But last night, I got to see the director’s cut. The Extended Edition. Last night, when Gray told me he was going to show me just how fucked we all are, he actually came through.
Imagine that.
What I saw was everything.
I saw how all of this ends. How all of it began. What I saw is what’s waiting for us in the black infinity of space. And the more that I think about it, the more I think it might be driving me mad.
“Just up ahead,” says the pilot. “Ten minutes to touch down.”
Eight minutes.
Five.
“Jesus,” he says, at the three minute mark. “Are you two seeing this?”
And up ahead is a plume of smoke, rising into the night sky. There’s the faint flicker of fading fires, the haphazard glow of industrial lighting, and there, at the center of it all, is the unmistakable shape of something that shouldn’t exist.
“That… doesn’t look like it’s from this planet…” the co-pilot mutters over the com line.
“No,” the pilot replies, and his voice is shaking. “It doesn't.”
They’re right. They both are. What it looks like is something extra-terrestrial, something alien. It looks like something ripped straight from my worst nightmares.
And really, that’s just where I wish it had stayed.
submitted by Born-Beach to nosleep [link] [comments]
I pound over the dirt trail, my feet turning the pedals like twin pistons. The bicycle bounces and jolts, shuddering as it rolls across the wooden bridge. There’s something in the air tonight. A chill.
But it isn’t the chill of autumn. No, this is the chill of unease. It crawls up my spine carrying the deep-rooted knowledge that something about these woods, something about this trail isn’t right. It’s the unmistakable dread of being watched.
Pursued.
I stand up and ride harder. My lungs burn with every push of the pedals but I can’t shake the feeling that I need to get out of these woods fast. The hospital is twenty minutes away. I just need to make it there.
I’m close.
So close.
WOMP
Bass rumbles behind me. It’s followed by a rush of wind, enough to throw me forward while ravishing the forest like a tempest. Trees groan. Their frames break and kneel, surrendering to the gale. Branches and leaves come loose. They ricochet through the air like shrapnel, cutting into my cheek and and I throw up an arm to keep myself from losing an eye.
This is insanity.
It’s lunacy.
I don’t know what’s happening, but I know I have to make it through this. I have to get out of these woods, get back to the hospital to see my sister before the heart monitor flatlines.
She’s not doing well. Are your mother and father home?
No, ma’am.
Can you get here to be with her? She doesn’t have long.
Yes ma’am. No matter what.
The distant bass nears, growing thunderous. It’s as though the whole world is shaking, like the Earth might split in two and swallow me whole. I grit my teeth. I let loose a defiant roar, sweat pouring down my temples as my legs tremble, willing my bike forward.
Faster, dammit!
Faster!
There’s a flash. Then another.
Lightning?
No.
I’m answered by an explosion of light, so violent and bright that I can’t see a damn thing. I holler. Scream. My body jerks forward as my front wheel collides with what feels like a fallen branch. Next thing I know, I’m flying over my handlebars.
What’s the phrase?
Ass-over-tea-kettle.
Yeah, that’s it.
I brace myself for a broken arm, maybe worse, but the pain never comes. Nothing comes. It’s as though I’m floating in limbo, like gravity’s unable to finish what it started. I can’t feel a thing– not the dirt beneath me, not my face pressed against the bark of a tree. For a little while, I think I’m dead. That I’m in purgatory.
But then my eyes adjust. The world comes into focus, beginning as a blurry smudge, but soon becoming a picture-perfect recreation of my worst nightmare.
I’m not in the forest anymore.
I’m above it.
I’m looking down at the mess of trees and I’m terrified at how small they are, how much smaller they’re getting with every passing second.
I’m floating into the sky, being carried by a narrow beam of light.
___________________________
That was a long time ago. Thirty years, give or take.
A lot’s changed since then, but one thing’s remained the same: the nightmares. I have them every night. I dream about that blinding light, that same low bass and that same gut-churning horror of being eaten by the sky.
I used to think they were a coping mechanism. I figured that since the dreams came shortly after my older sister passed, that maybe they were just how my eleven-year-old brain was dealing with the grief. My therapist seemed to agree.
“You’re quite right that there may be a link there,” she’d tell me, lowering her glasses and offering a medical-grade smile. “It’s very likely that these dreams are a form of abstract healing, a means to allow your mind to come to terms with its trauma.”
For a long time, I thought she was right. Or better put, I hoped she was. Now though? Well, I think maybe we were both wrong.
Shit.
Where are my manners?
I’m over here rambling about my childhood, and you’re wondering who the hell I am.
My name is Isaiah Mitchell. I’m a boogeyman, but not the cool kind. I don’t hide in closets or haunt old houses. I’m the type that your parents rant about while watching the evening news, the sort that tinfoil hats point to whenever things go wrong.
I’m what you might call a Man in Black.
The work I do is classified. It’s the sort of work that happens behind the scenes, with shadowy people in shadowy circles. So when I tell you that last night something catastrophic happened, I’m not talking about the stock market dipping a couple percentage points. I'm not talking about increased traffic on your morning commute.
I’m talking about trouble.
Lots of it.
It’s the kind of trouble that’s making me do something I don’t generally do, which is break rules. By the end of this, I might break all of them. But this is important, and in moments like these I find myself thinking about my late sister, Hope, and how she would have wanted me to do the right thing. It’s how she raised me, after all.
So here goes nothing.
This begins with a story, but it ends with a decision. The story is mine, and the decision is yours. When I’m finished, you get to choose whether you spend the time you have left a little wiser, or laugh this off as the ramblings of a lunatic.
Whatever you choose, I’ll have made my peace.
The story is a personal one. It’s about me, but it’s also about you– it’s about everything in the universe, right down to the last atom, and how all of us are facing a horror the likes of which we can’t begin to imagine.
It’s the story of the worst night of my life, and what might one day be the worst night of yours.
It goes like this.
_______________________
The beam of light sucks me up and spits me into absolute darkness. The sensory whiplash is enough to give me a headache, something like a migraine that pulses near my temples and feels like a bulldozer inside my skull.
It’s uncomfortable.
But not half as uncomfortable as the situation I’m in.
“Hello?” I mumble to the dark. I stumble to my feet, feeling around my environment blindly. It’s cold. Hard. It feels like I might be in a room full of metal, but I can’t imagine where that would be. A warehouse?
Footsteps echo in the distance. They’re closing in.
“Who’s there?” I sputter, and I think maybe I’ve been drugged. People don’t just up and float into the sky in the middle of the night. It isn’t a thing.
That means I’m hallucinating.
That means whoever kidnapped me knows a thing or two about stealing kids.
That means they’re a professional.
What’s the phrase?
Serial killer.
Yeah, that’s it.
WOOOOMP
I clap my hands to my ears. It’s that same bass from the forest, except now it’s reverberating all around me. Another bass joins it. This one is different… coming from a new direction, with a lower tone. It’s almost like they’re communicating– like morse code.
“Please,” I beg. “Just let me go. I swear I won’t tell anybody!”
Static crackles. It’s followed by a sharp squeal of microphone feedback, then the buzz of modulating frequency. “Communication calibrated,” a digital voice says. “Subject identified: homosapien. Geographic location: New Mexico. Language model: English.”
There’s a pause, it’s long and silent enough that I can hear my pulse rushing through my veins. I’m positive I’m going to die. These things don’t happen to people who live to tell the tale.
“Can you understand us, homosapien?” the voice asks.
Yes, I say.
Can you turn on the lights? I ask.
The only thing worse than being murdered is being murdered in the dark.
Yes, they say.
I’m blinded for the third time in as many minutes. I blink, my eyes adjusting to the green glow as it fills the chamber. Wherever I am, it’s strange. Alien. Tall vats of liquid are scattered around a large, circular room, each hosting tubes that extend outward to a central console. Everything is metallic. I can’t make out any labels– any sort of identification at all.
“Is this level of light sufficient?” another voice asks, this one right behind me.
I wheel around, and my breath catches in my chest. In front of me is something that doesn’t exist– can’t exist. It’s roughly ten feet tall, and it’s got sharp teeth, sharp claws, scaled skin, and a tail. It’s a monster. A living, breathing monster.
Fuck.
I scramble backward. My back collides with one of the vats, and blue liquid sloshes against the glass. “Thehellareyou?” I shout all at once.
“We are the Chosen,” says the first voice, approaching my other side. “We are lifeforms from many galaxies away, and we have come to save humanity.”
They stare at me through giant eyes, and each of those eyes are filled with dozens of pulsing pupils. Almost like ink blots.
“I’ve been abducted…” I sputter, hardly able to breathe. “By aliens. Aliens… are real… and I’ve been abducted…”
“Correct,” says one of the aliens. I realize this one has gray scales, while the other has teal. At least I can tell them apart.
Gray looks at his arm, and a digital screen comes to life. He taps at it with a crooked finger. “Readings indicate heightened levels of cortisol and increased adrenal flow. Source: Fight or flight response. Biologically rational, but devoid of purpose.” He looks at me, cocks his over-large head to the side. “You have neither the option to fight us or flee us, so it would be best to comply. Do you understand?”
My jaw hangs open. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. Are these aliens really standing there reading me my Miranda Rights? “Are you going to probe me?” I ask. “Like the movies?”
Teal blinks at me, his pupils dilating. “Negative.” He points to a vat. “We will break down your genetic tissue into usable material, harvesting your most compatible DNA strands while discarding the rest. It is for the greater good.”
I follow his finger to the tank, and now that I’m right up against it, I can see clearly what’s floating inside. My stomach twists into a knot. Inside of it is a human body. Everything from the man’s waist down has been dissolved, and what’s left of his intestines are dangling freely.
“Jesus Christ!”
“There is no cause for concern,” Teal says. He lumbers across the chamber to the metallic console that all the tubes are feeding into. “Your disappearance will be accounted for. A clone will be deployed to resume your life, preventing suspicion and avoiding social disruption.”
“Let me get this straight,” I say, trying to ignore how faint I’m starting to feel. “You’re going to kill me… to save humanity?”
“Correct.”
The room spins. My chest gets tight and my vision becomes a scrambled mess. My ears are ringing like church bells. I stumble, losing my sense of equilibrium and I think I taste vomit in my throat.
“No,” I mutter. “This isn’t happening… Can’t be happening…”
I steady myself against a vat, looking up to see a dead woman’s face staring back at me. Pieces of her skull have been eaten away. I can see the wrinkles of her brain underneath.
“Heart rate out of range,” Gray says, but I hardly hear him. He grabs my wrist, presses a device against the center of my hand.
I struggle. Fight. I try to use my teeth, but he’s strong, much stronger than me. A coldness pulses against my palm, almost like an ice cube, and soon that frigid sensation is traveling across my fingertips. Up my arm.
“What did you…” I mutter, but the sensation is rolling through the rest of my body. It’s soothing. My eyes find my palm and I see a strange shape seared into the skin, a scatter of dots surrounding a black square. Suddenly I can’t remember the thought I was trying to finish. Was any of this really worth panicking over?
It was just a few corpses in vats, after all.
“You have been administered a sedative,” Gray explains.
My heart rate slows. My ears stop ringing. The ghost of a smile sneaks across my face.
Gray’s staring at his display. “Cortisol levels reduced. Adrenal response suppressed. Biometric readings indicate subject has achieved a suitable level of suggestibility to proceed.”
“Affirmative,” says Teal, working the console.
I feel like I’m drifting through the lake on a warm summer day. My heart is full. I’m in absolute bliss, and all I can think is that Hope should get to experience this before she dies…
“Pulse is quickening,” Gray says with a frown.
Hope.
My sister.
My dying sister, alone in the hospital wondering why her little brother abandoned her.
“Sedation effect dropping,” Gray says. “98%. 94%. Emotional instability reaching unacceptable levels.”
“Hope,” I sputter, feeling like I’m coming out of a daze. “I have to get to the hospital– please! My sister is sick! She needs me!”
Gray presses the device against my other hand, and another pulse of relaxation courses through me. “Invalid concern,” he tells me. “Clone will be a perfect recreation of you, body and mind. It will retain all memories allowing it to continue your life uninterrupted. Conclusion: your expiring sibling will receive suitable emotional support prior to her decomposition.”
Fucking aliens. It takes everything I have to fight against the sedative, to make my case. “How?” I groan. “How is my DNA supposed to save humanity? What the hell is it saving us from anyway?”
Teal turns from the console to face us. His giant eyes are narrowed in a thoroughly displeased manner. “Invalid request. Information too critical to risk dissemination.”
“Rebuttal,” says Gray. “Clone’s memory can be modified. Current biometric readings indicate high levels of emotional discontent, placing likelihood of a compromised harvest at 34%. Solution: permit subject to understand purpose of sacrifice. Result: sense of closure and enhanced probability of project success.”
Teal turns back to the console. “Rebuttal accepted. Proceed.”
Gray looks at me. He places his scaly fingers against my head, and I squirm a little. “Brace yourself for disorientation,” he tells me. “You will experience physical unease and hyperstimulation. After, you will understand the horror that awaits your species in the dark.”
______________________________
For a long time, that’s as far as the nightmare gets. Gray prattles on that I’m about to see the truth, some twisted fate that justifies melting humans into sludge, but before he can deliver the goods, I wake up.
Every. Time.
Blue balls doesn’t begin to describe it.
Last night, it happens again. The nightmare, I mean. Same aliens, same tanks of human soup, but this time I wake up in a cold sweat. My phone is ringing on the bedside table. There’s a name on the screen that I hate to see.
“Whatisit?” I grumble.
“Jesus Christ, Mitchell. I’ve been calling for ten minutes!”
My boss. Lisa.
She goes off. The words are coming out like machine-gun fire, and from the background chatter I figure she’s speaking to more than just me. It sounds like there’s a crowd around her, like she’s briefing suits as she jogs down a hallway.
“Got all that?” she asks.
Something about a shitstorm. Something about an F35. The air force just shot down a UAP, which is how we say UFO these days to avoid getting laughed out of the room. Apparently it happened in New Mexico. My backyard.
This calls for a liter of coffee. Maybe two.
I stumble into the kitchen and put a pot on. I have some time while she holds the phone to her chest and barks orders at the drones around her. One cream. One sugar. My spoon clinks against the side of the mug as her voice blares through the speaker.
“Mitchell?” she says. “Still there?”
She says she’s got coordinates. I take a sip of scalding java. I’m dazed enough I barely feel it burn my tongue. My fingers punch the coordinates into my laptop, bringing up the location the supposed UAP was shot down.
I spit my coffee over my screen.
“The fuck?” I mutter, leaning forward and doing a double take at the map.
“What is it?” she’s asking.
“Nothing,” I’m saying.
But it’s a lie. The truth is, the coordinates are a dead match for the forest where I had my waltz with psychosis thirty years ago. They’re the coordinates from my dream. Right down to the rickety old bridge.
I ask her if she’s sure the numbers are correct.
“Am I sure?” she snaps. “Look, if you’re asking me if this is another Chinese spy balloon then the answer is go fuck yourself. I’ve been pulling my hair out for the past twenty minutes. This is the real deal, so suit up and get ready to go. I’ve got a bird on the way.”
The clock on my microwave reads 2:34 a.m. and my stomach is telling me to sort my life out. “Do I have time for breakfast?” I ask.
Click.
The line goes dead.
Twenty minutes later, a helicopter is landing on my lawn. I board it in a daze, and we take off in the direction of the crash like we’re trying to outrun a cruise missile. I’m watching the lights of the countryside drift by, and it occurs to me that from all the way up here, in the dead of night, they almost look like stars.
I wonder how long it’d take to snuff them out.
How long it’d take to burn a whole galaxy to ashes?
To crush a universe in the palm of your hand?
Things to consider.
The closer we get to the crash site, the worse my thoughts become. They’re bordering on obsessive. I’m tangoing with darkness. Radio chatter is coming through the com line, something about aliens and extraterrestrials, but all I’m thinking about is controlling my bladder.
I’m drowning in hypotheticals.
I’m wondering what happens if I lose my mind between here and the crash site, what the protocols are, where they’ll take me. Do I get the night off? The week?
“Everything okay, sir?”
It’s the co-pilot. She’s turning in her seat and looking at me like I’m having a medical emergency.
“You look a bit pale,” she tells me.
My muscles work overtime as I twist my mouth into a smile. “Never better,” I lie. “How far out are we?”
“Twenty miles,” she says with a reassuring grin. She turns back in her seat and I take the opportunity to let out an exhausted sigh.
I close my eyes. Take a dozen deep breaths.
Happy thoughts.
I try to ignore how dry my mouth is, how badly my hands are shaking. I try to ignore the fact that every time I look down at my palms, I see that same scatter of dots, that same faded square that no doctor has been able to explain. “I’ve never seen scars like that,” they tell me. “How’d you get them?”
I don’t know, I tell them.
I don’t know.
But I do.
I’ve known this entire time, probably, but I’ve just been too terrified to accept it. I’m not what I think I am– this world isn’t what I think it is either. It’s all of this that’s making me want to curl into a ball. It’s making me want to weep on the floor, to scream at the top of my lungs and pull my hair out with everything I have.
It’s making me want to throw open the helicopter door, take a breath of fresh air and then plunge head-first into the dirt like a human turnip. And if I thought it was that easy, I might just do it.
But somehow, I know it isn’t.
I know it won’t save me– won’t save us, from what’s coming.
See, last night I had the same dream I’ve had for the last thirty years. The same abduction. The same aliens. But last night, I got to see the director’s cut. The Extended Edition. Last night, when Gray told me he was going to show me just how fucked we all are, he actually came through.
Imagine that.
What I saw was everything.
I saw how all of this ends. How all of it began. What I saw is what’s waiting for us in the black infinity of space. And the more that I think about it, the more I think it might be driving me mad.
“Just up ahead,” says the pilot. “Ten minutes to touch down.”
Eight minutes.
Five.
“Jesus,” he says, at the three minute mark. “Are you two seeing this?”
And up ahead is a plume of smoke, rising into the night sky. There’s the faint flicker of fading fires, the haphazard glow of industrial lighting, and there, at the center of it all, is the unmistakable shape of something that shouldn’t exist.
“That… doesn’t look like it’s from this planet…” the co-pilot mutters over the com line.
“No,” the pilot replies, and his voice is shaking. “It doesn't.”
They’re right. They both are. What it looks like is something extra-terrestrial, something alien. It looks like something ripped straight from my worst nightmares.
And really, that’s just where I wish it had stayed.
2023.06.07 02:02 mccarthycodes Help me understand ELT! Should I be moving data through both my data lake and data warehouse?
ELT is such a common pattern, and I just want to make sure that I'm understanding it correctly.
I've been reading through Data Pipelines Pocket Reference from O'Riley, the book lays out a common ELT architecture like so (comments in parentheses my own):
In summary, my questions would be:
submitted by mccarthycodes to dataengineering [link] [comments]
I've been reading through Data Pipelines Pocket Reference from O'Riley, the book lays out a common ELT architecture like so (comments in parentheses my own):
- Extract - Read data from some source system and land it in S3 (raw data lake?), possibly performing some minor transformations (EtLT) (processed data lake?) to enable downstream loading.
- Load - Basically just use Redshift's COPY command to bring the landed data into staging tables in the data warehouse.
- Transform - Use dbt to build models from the staging tables.
In summary, my questions would be:
- Is it normal to extract all data to a bucket in an ELT pipeline?
- Would this bucket be considered a data lake?
- Why not build an analytical lake w/ Athena as an alternative to Redshift?
2023.06.07 01:28 v1sibleninja Unsafe work environment
I am a performer in a stationary non-union stunt show in CA. My employer routinely ignores OSHA rules regarding unrated, unlabeled, and/or worn rigging materials that they refuse to replace until catastrophic failure (ropes have snapped under load during performance). We even had a large animatronic puppet break and fall unarrested to the stage nearly landing on a performer. This animatronic has also been found to be leaking CO2 into an unventilated space with no CO2 alarms installed, yet the business somehow continues to pass inspection. There are suspicions of bribery but that is a separate can of worms. Additionally the theatre holds 750 people including audience, cast, crew, and retail, yet the building has no AEDs. We have brought it to their attention that it is illegal, yet they still are not providing one for us. There is also a water element (4-5ft deep moat) to our show, that performers regularly fall in accidentally, or as part of choreography. There is also a serious risk of spinal injury in this show. We’ve asked our employer to provide a spine board for water rescue, but they have so far refused. There are ADA and fire code violations as well (blocked/obstructed wheelchair ramp). I know I can report the OSHA and ADA violations, but what can be done about the AED and backboard? From my research an AED is required by law due to the theatre’s capacity, but I can’t find any info about whether or not a spine board is legally required. My biggest concerns are retaliation and/or the show getting shut down. I don’t want to put my friends and myself out of a job, but I want my employer to stop increasing profits by cutting corners with safety. For clarity, employer is based in FL, and operating the show through a CA based LLC. Thank you for any advice.
submitted by v1sibleninja to legaladvice [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 00:00 greywolfpub The Lone Hero: Cyber Initiative (An Isekai Fantasy/Scifi LitRPG) - Chapter Three: The Fall Of Senterra
I couldn’t help but feel a tingle of relief and excitement when seeing this screen. Clothes, armor, a guide. I wasn’t going to be walking around clueless for long.
I stroked my chin at these selections. While armor looked tempting, I couldn’t afford it. Same with the 24 hour guide. A thorough immersive guide right now would leave me broke and naked.
Well, this choice was already set in stone for me, wasn’t it?
“One temporary guide, please,” I said a bit nervously. Though nothing happened. I pivoted my head to and fro, but nothing. Where the heck was my guide?
“Whoah! Full moon! Hello!” I heard a strong Italian Brooklyn accent over my head, realizing that I wasn’t alone. He was a metal orb with hummingbird wings, covered in etched lines and cybernetic crevices all over his metal plates.
I should have picked the clothes first!
I crouched over to cover my unmentionables and cried, “Simple gear, simple gear!” Immediately, I was given a wardrobe. Even had the entire Sailor Moon glowing light as I was dressed up head to toe: A dark cloak with a hood lined with fur, pants, gauntlets, a padded leather top, high leather boots, and a bag over my belt.
“Heh, kid, you don’t have to call out your selections. Not that I mind. That high pitched squeal was unpredictably hilarious.”
I scratched the back of my head sheepishly. “Heh, sorry about that. This is all very new to me.”
He zip-lined right in front of me, the sound of his wings buzzing making my eyes grow wider. He zoomed in on my face as if he was analyzing me features, then suddenly, a red dot appeared on him, and I fell on my ass.
The first thought that crossed my mind was a laser sight, and that was exactly what it looked like before a red scanning beam traced me left to right.
He chuckled. “Heh, you’re pretty skittish for a guy with those level 1 stats. Well, allow me to introduce myself, hero. My name is Devicho. That’s D-E-V-I-C-H-O. And I am your temporary guide, here to answer all of your questions!”
I got up off my ass and nodded. “My name is Silas.”
“Yeah, I got that from your stats.”
“Oh, right. Well, crap, where do I start?”
“I got ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes!?”
“Yeah, I know. But them’s the rules. It’s all the boss is allowing me.”
“The boss?”
“The dungeon core. Alzera-Kar. We call this hidden gem mother, as she is the creator of all things in the country of Thalian.”
“Wait, a dungeon core created all of this?”
“Oh boy, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Thalian is made up of five nations: Marviel, land of the fae, Dradersi, land of the dragons, Guedmar, land of the orcs, Dokumbe, land of the goblins, and finally, Senterra, the fallen land of the humans.”
“Fallen?”
His voice dipped. “Hey, listen kid, I’m not gonna sugar coat anything for you here. Senterra is gone. A barren wasteland from what I could tell. If there are any humans left, they are most likely in hiding, so the other races can’t find them. A little history lesson for ya since we are tight on time: long long ago, these five nations lived in harmony as one. That harmony was doomed to fall, as the dungeon core, our great mother, created more and more resources. Now you see, the dragons were selfish bastards. They thrived off of money, greed, and pride. They started the racial divide, and these five species segregated themselves. Walls separate some regions, while big bodies of water separated others. Now, with the way things were rolling, the dragons were on the top of the food chain, and the humans were on the very bottom of it. As expected, all the races started to take advantage of the weaker race, bullying them to no end. Wars broke and Senterra crumbled. I’m talkin’ mass genocide, kid. The savagery, the bloodshed. Oh, it was horrible. Alzera-Kar saw this and was very upset. To help these deprived and enslaved humans, she created cyber sense.”
“You mean that purple evil Kirby that I killed? That was one of them?”
“No, well, yeah, but that was a defective cyber sense. And I’ll explain how. Originally, cyber sense was a mechanism solely for humans. They are particles in the air, nano feeds that respond to humans around its perimeter. They are everywhere, essentially dominating all of Thalian. Now what they do is shape themselves into cyber gear to improve the biological functions of human beings. This gave humans the edge that they needed, but after the humans broke the shackles of the other Thalian nations, they became the bullies. More war, more bloodshed. At this point mother Alzera-Kar was stressed. Her creations were dying. Her creations were killing themselves off. She didn’t know how to contain this ceaseless war and divide. Under this intense strain and tension, her crystal structure shattered, breaking off in three pieces. Without this protection, her core is vulnerable, and open for influence. These three pieces were scattered all over Thalian, but as of late, three nations have those pieces, and kid, they are protecting them with their lives! Dradersi has one, Guedmar has the other, and Marviel has one, too. These three nations are in constant strife! When one nation has all three parts, they can locate Alzera-Kar, and make her do anything they want.”
I was speechless…
“In this vulnerability, the cyber sense that was enhancing humans through cyber gear started to create evil fleshy beings. I’m talkin’ monsters. Of all sizes! They are only detectable by humans, which is why most nations made sense out of keeping humans as detectors. Remember what I said about them practically squattin’ everywhere? Well, that didn’t change. These hideous freaks lurk around, and materialize at any given moment. They became sentient. The upside though is when you kill the stronger ones, you get a full blown cyber gear. Some lesser creatures drop some precious loot too, parts to build a full-fledged cyber gear. It is good to note that cyber gear only operates for humans.”
“I think I’m getting some of the pieces to this puzzle together, here. Was I sent here to restore Senterra?”
“You bet!”
“And find the three shards to help Alzera-Ker?”
“Boy, you caught on quick, didn’cha?”
“But I don’t understand. Why not snatch the shards herself? She is all powerful, right? She’s pretty much the god in this country.”
“Not when she’s unprotected. If mother could become defective when vulnerable, imagine how much harder it’d be for her to get those shards?”
“I guess you’re right…”
“Not only that, but those kingdoms who have her shards are keeping it on lock down. Warded I imagine. It won’t be easy.”
“Why me?” I asked honestly. “I understand her humans here are suffering, and she went out somewhere else to find a hero. I don’t know why she wouldn’t pick someone locally. So I have to ask, why a foreigner? And why me?”
“I guess she saw something special in you that she couldn’t find in her natives. But don’t feel too overwhelmed. You’re not the only hero she went out of her way to find.”
“You mean there are others?”
“Of course! This is an entire nation we are talking about, after all.”
“How can you be so sure? A girl and her titan hound hunted me down back in my home town.”
He paused and then asked me sternly. “What did this girl look like?”
“White hair, real model type bod. A few inches shorter than me. And her titan, a big brawny dude in armor, had a skull for a face.”
“That ain’t sound good.”
“You know her? Her name is Lucyna.”
He sighed. “She’s from, Dradersi, daughter of King Orelus. Usually, dragon-kins have horns on their heads, sometimes along their jaws too. And some scales on their skin. They can materialize wings for flight at will, and are physically strong by nature. Lucyna probably used a spell to disguise herself as a human to remove those features on Earth. What’s more bothersome than that though was she found a way to open a gate to your world, and managed to track you down…”
“Not only track me down, she killed me.”
“I don’t understand. How the heck are you here if she killed you?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I’d died and came back to life, isekai’d to this crazy fantasy RPG world.”
“You think this is wacky? You should hear what she thinks about people from Earth! Every race here was inspired by a planet from different galaxies. The plan was to make a cornucopia of races, but things started to get messy quick.”
“This mother seems to appreciate variety.”
“It has its goods and bads, as I’ve already mentioned. Which brings me back to Lucyna. This whole death business, it’s unsettling. And if she has access to Earth the same way mother does, you may very well be the only hero. Mother hadn’t started the recruiting process yet. She is still on the selection stage.”
“Then how did someone like Lucyna even know what she was planning?”
“Could be a precautionary step? Not sure. Lucyna is very smart. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a few steps ahead of her maker.”
“She’s on my hit list,” I said seriously. “Her and her dog.”
“Hey kid, slow down. You’re nowhere near her league! That dragon-kin is an elite, a royal one at that.”
“Then I’ll level up! Whatever it takes!”
“Kid…”
I wouldn’t expect anyone to understand. It’s not just a vendetta. All of my life I was invisible. I love my mom, but things changed when she started focusing on her career. She was hardly ever there. Dad was never around, either. He taught me to never take shit from anyone, use my fists when I have to, and never give up. That’s it. I was alone, in my own mind, in my own world. I became detached from everything, losing myself in my hobbies, finding fulfillment in playing games. That’s where I belonged. That’s where I felt like I was achieving something, where I was somebody. Still, it would have been nice to feel that out in the real world.
I wanted my life to mean something. Then she came around and snuffed my chances out. But then the dungeon core brought me back and gave me my chance.
"This is an opportunity to start over, to start fresh. I will do right by Alzera-Kar, but not because she gave me this gift. I want to help these tormented humans of Thalian because it’s the right thing to do. A voice for the voiceless, and power for the powerless. She brought me here to become a hero, and I’ll do just that. As for my own personal agenda, that’s secondary. I want that psycho to know what having everything taken away from you feels like! My life wasn’t the best life, but it was my life!”
“You sound motivated! Thadda’ boy!”
“I’m going to raise Senterra up from the grave, and I need you to tell me everything there is to know about getting stronger to do it.”
Read up to 50k words on Royal Road for free! (Daily Chapter Drops): https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/68588/the-lone-hero-cyber-initiative-an-isekai-fantasy
submitted by greywolfpub to HFY [link] [comments]
I stroked my chin at these selections. While armor looked tempting, I couldn’t afford it. Same with the 24 hour guide. A thorough immersive guide right now would leave me broke and naked.
Well, this choice was already set in stone for me, wasn’t it?
“One temporary guide, please,” I said a bit nervously. Though nothing happened. I pivoted my head to and fro, but nothing. Where the heck was my guide?
“Whoah! Full moon! Hello!” I heard a strong Italian Brooklyn accent over my head, realizing that I wasn’t alone. He was a metal orb with hummingbird wings, covered in etched lines and cybernetic crevices all over his metal plates.
I should have picked the clothes first!
I crouched over to cover my unmentionables and cried, “Simple gear, simple gear!” Immediately, I was given a wardrobe. Even had the entire Sailor Moon glowing light as I was dressed up head to toe: A dark cloak with a hood lined with fur, pants, gauntlets, a padded leather top, high leather boots, and a bag over my belt.
“Heh, kid, you don’t have to call out your selections. Not that I mind. That high pitched squeal was unpredictably hilarious.”
I scratched the back of my head sheepishly. “Heh, sorry about that. This is all very new to me.”
He zip-lined right in front of me, the sound of his wings buzzing making my eyes grow wider. He zoomed in on my face as if he was analyzing me features, then suddenly, a red dot appeared on him, and I fell on my ass.
The first thought that crossed my mind was a laser sight, and that was exactly what it looked like before a red scanning beam traced me left to right.
He chuckled. “Heh, you’re pretty skittish for a guy with those level 1 stats. Well, allow me to introduce myself, hero. My name is Devicho. That’s D-E-V-I-C-H-O. And I am your temporary guide, here to answer all of your questions!”
I got up off my ass and nodded. “My name is Silas.”
“Yeah, I got that from your stats.”
“Oh, right. Well, crap, where do I start?”
“I got ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes!?”
“Yeah, I know. But them’s the rules. It’s all the boss is allowing me.”
“The boss?”
“The dungeon core. Alzera-Kar. We call this hidden gem mother, as she is the creator of all things in the country of Thalian.”
“Wait, a dungeon core created all of this?”
“Oh boy, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Thalian is made up of five nations: Marviel, land of the fae, Dradersi, land of the dragons, Guedmar, land of the orcs, Dokumbe, land of the goblins, and finally, Senterra, the fallen land of the humans.”
“Fallen?”
His voice dipped. “Hey, listen kid, I’m not gonna sugar coat anything for you here. Senterra is gone. A barren wasteland from what I could tell. If there are any humans left, they are most likely in hiding, so the other races can’t find them. A little history lesson for ya since we are tight on time: long long ago, these five nations lived in harmony as one. That harmony was doomed to fall, as the dungeon core, our great mother, created more and more resources. Now you see, the dragons were selfish bastards. They thrived off of money, greed, and pride. They started the racial divide, and these five species segregated themselves. Walls separate some regions, while big bodies of water separated others. Now, with the way things were rolling, the dragons were on the top of the food chain, and the humans were on the very bottom of it. As expected, all the races started to take advantage of the weaker race, bullying them to no end. Wars broke and Senterra crumbled. I’m talkin’ mass genocide, kid. The savagery, the bloodshed. Oh, it was horrible. Alzera-Kar saw this and was very upset. To help these deprived and enslaved humans, she created cyber sense.”
“You mean that purple evil Kirby that I killed? That was one of them?”
“No, well, yeah, but that was a defective cyber sense. And I’ll explain how. Originally, cyber sense was a mechanism solely for humans. They are particles in the air, nano feeds that respond to humans around its perimeter. They are everywhere, essentially dominating all of Thalian. Now what they do is shape themselves into cyber gear to improve the biological functions of human beings. This gave humans the edge that they needed, but after the humans broke the shackles of the other Thalian nations, they became the bullies. More war, more bloodshed. At this point mother Alzera-Kar was stressed. Her creations were dying. Her creations were killing themselves off. She didn’t know how to contain this ceaseless war and divide. Under this intense strain and tension, her crystal structure shattered, breaking off in three pieces. Without this protection, her core is vulnerable, and open for influence. These three pieces were scattered all over Thalian, but as of late, three nations have those pieces, and kid, they are protecting them with their lives! Dradersi has one, Guedmar has the other, and Marviel has one, too. These three nations are in constant strife! When one nation has all three parts, they can locate Alzera-Kar, and make her do anything they want.”
I was speechless…
“In this vulnerability, the cyber sense that was enhancing humans through cyber gear started to create evil fleshy beings. I’m talkin’ monsters. Of all sizes! They are only detectable by humans, which is why most nations made sense out of keeping humans as detectors. Remember what I said about them practically squattin’ everywhere? Well, that didn’t change. These hideous freaks lurk around, and materialize at any given moment. They became sentient. The upside though is when you kill the stronger ones, you get a full blown cyber gear. Some lesser creatures drop some precious loot too, parts to build a full-fledged cyber gear. It is good to note that cyber gear only operates for humans.”
“I think I’m getting some of the pieces to this puzzle together, here. Was I sent here to restore Senterra?”
“You bet!”
“And find the three shards to help Alzera-Ker?”
“Boy, you caught on quick, didn’cha?”
“But I don’t understand. Why not snatch the shards herself? She is all powerful, right? She’s pretty much the god in this country.”
“Not when she’s unprotected. If mother could become defective when vulnerable, imagine how much harder it’d be for her to get those shards?”
“I guess you’re right…”
“Not only that, but those kingdoms who have her shards are keeping it on lock down. Warded I imagine. It won’t be easy.”
“Why me?” I asked honestly. “I understand her humans here are suffering, and she went out somewhere else to find a hero. I don’t know why she wouldn’t pick someone locally. So I have to ask, why a foreigner? And why me?”
“I guess she saw something special in you that she couldn’t find in her natives. But don’t feel too overwhelmed. You’re not the only hero she went out of her way to find.”
“You mean there are others?”
“Of course! This is an entire nation we are talking about, after all.”
“How can you be so sure? A girl and her titan hound hunted me down back in my home town.”
He paused and then asked me sternly. “What did this girl look like?”
“White hair, real model type bod. A few inches shorter than me. And her titan, a big brawny dude in armor, had a skull for a face.”
“That ain’t sound good.”
“You know her? Her name is Lucyna.”
He sighed. “She’s from, Dradersi, daughter of King Orelus. Usually, dragon-kins have horns on their heads, sometimes along their jaws too. And some scales on their skin. They can materialize wings for flight at will, and are physically strong by nature. Lucyna probably used a spell to disguise herself as a human to remove those features on Earth. What’s more bothersome than that though was she found a way to open a gate to your world, and managed to track you down…”
“Not only track me down, she killed me.”
“I don’t understand. How the heck are you here if she killed you?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I’d died and came back to life, isekai’d to this crazy fantasy RPG world.”
“You think this is wacky? You should hear what she thinks about people from Earth! Every race here was inspired by a planet from different galaxies. The plan was to make a cornucopia of races, but things started to get messy quick.”
“This mother seems to appreciate variety.”
“It has its goods and bads, as I’ve already mentioned. Which brings me back to Lucyna. This whole death business, it’s unsettling. And if she has access to Earth the same way mother does, you may very well be the only hero. Mother hadn’t started the recruiting process yet. She is still on the selection stage.”
“Then how did someone like Lucyna even know what she was planning?”
“Could be a precautionary step? Not sure. Lucyna is very smart. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a few steps ahead of her maker.”
“She’s on my hit list,” I said seriously. “Her and her dog.”
“Hey kid, slow down. You’re nowhere near her league! That dragon-kin is an elite, a royal one at that.”
“Then I’ll level up! Whatever it takes!”
“Kid…”
I wouldn’t expect anyone to understand. It’s not just a vendetta. All of my life I was invisible. I love my mom, but things changed when she started focusing on her career. She was hardly ever there. Dad was never around, either. He taught me to never take shit from anyone, use my fists when I have to, and never give up. That’s it. I was alone, in my own mind, in my own world. I became detached from everything, losing myself in my hobbies, finding fulfillment in playing games. That’s where I belonged. That’s where I felt like I was achieving something, where I was somebody. Still, it would have been nice to feel that out in the real world.
I wanted my life to mean something. Then she came around and snuffed my chances out. But then the dungeon core brought me back and gave me my chance.
"This is an opportunity to start over, to start fresh. I will do right by Alzera-Kar, but not because she gave me this gift. I want to help these tormented humans of Thalian because it’s the right thing to do. A voice for the voiceless, and power for the powerless. She brought me here to become a hero, and I’ll do just that. As for my own personal agenda, that’s secondary. I want that psycho to know what having everything taken away from you feels like! My life wasn’t the best life, but it was my life!”
“You sound motivated! Thadda’ boy!”
“I’m going to raise Senterra up from the grave, and I need you to tell me everything there is to know about getting stronger to do it.”
Read up to 50k words on Royal Road for free! (Daily Chapter Drops): https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/68588/the-lone-hero-cyber-initiative-an-isekai-fantasy
2023.06.06 23:48 DefenderOfMontrocity You heard this here first! Italian right wing army killed several Israeli and Italian mercenaries who wanted to start world war 3. Israelis were trying to plant bombs 40 miles from Milan. Swiss-Italians are not having it, bombs going off only 30 miles south from Gotthard Tunnel?Are you crazy Israel?
 | submitted by DefenderOfMontrocity to conspiracy [link] [comments] |
2023.06.06 23:13 AbhiN1289 Origin of Skanda
Below I shall briefly prove that Skanda/Murugan came from non-Vedic, i.e. Dravidian practices:
As briefly touched upon before, Skanda originated amongst the class of spirits called Grahas.
These Grahas are not to be confused with the nine planets. Graha comes from the Sanskrit root “grh” meaning to “seize”. These beings cause sickness by possessing or “seizing” a person.
The Rig Veda 1.161.1 refers to a female Graha called a Grahi.
“muñcāmi tvā haviṣā jīvanāya kam ajñātayakṣmād uta rājayakṣmāt grāhir jagrāha yadi vaitad enaṃ tasyā indrāgnī pra mumuktam enam ”
“By means of the oblation I set you free to live safe from undeveloped consumption and from royal sumption; and if the seizer has already seized him, then to you, Indra , and Agni , set him free”
However as much as the Graha is found early as the Rig Veda, they are not of Indo European origin.
One of the earliest nuanced mentions of the Grahas, including Skanda, are found in the Sushruta Samhita.
“Attentively hear me describe, Sushruta, the origin, cause and medical treatment of the diseases of infancy which are due to the influences of malignant stars (Graha) or demons as well as the characteristic symptoms by which each can be accurately diagonosed. The diseases number nine in all and are called Skanda-Graha, Skandapasmara, Shakuni, Revati, Putana, Andha-Putana, Shita-Putana, Mukha-mandika and Naigamesha or Pitri-Graha. 2–3” (S.S Uttara Tantra 2.25.2-3).// Translate this by kyself later.
These Grahas are said to cause grave sickness amongst infants. The Skanda Graha for example is described as follows in the same chapter:
“Swelling of the eyes and distorted features of the face and an aversion to the breast-milk are the indications of an attack by the Skanda-graha. The body of the child emits a bloody smell and one of the eyelids becomes fixed or motionless. The child looks frightened, closes his fists (as in a fit of convulsion) and moans a little. The eyes become highly rolling and the stool becomes hard and constipated. Alternate fits of fainting and consciousness, convulsive jerks of legs and hands like those in dancing, foaming (at the mouth), yawning and the passing of stool and urine with the passage of wind are the characteristic features of an attack by the Skanda-pasmara-graha. 5–6.”
Such beliefs of malignant spirits attacking children are prevalent even today amongst the rural folk of south India. However, disease demons are universal, so the non Vedic-ness of the Grahas, must be sought out. The origin of the belief in the Grahas is inferred from the rituals prescribed to appease them. Amongst the rituals there is this interesting paragraph:
“The physician (or any other person acting on his behalf) should bathe in the night and worship the god Skanda for three successive nights in the inner quadrangle of the house of the child or at the crossing of roads with various offerings, viz., garlands of red flowers, red flags, red perfumes such as Kumkuma, edibles of various kinds and newly harvested barley grains, Shali rice. A cock should be sacrificed on the occasion (to appease his wrath) and bells should be rung (for his propitiation). The water to be used for bath (in course of worship), should be consecrated by reciting the Gayatri Mantra and the sacrificial fire should be duly lit with (three, seven or ten) libations (of clarified butter). 6.”(S.S. Uttara Tantra 2.28.6).
The first motif is the use of red coloured items. We find parallels to this in early Tamil traditions of Murugan. Indeed Murugan in modern Hindu iconography is associated with the red color. We shall get into this later.
The other aspect of the ritual is the sacrifice of the cock. This is also accompanied later by the offering of meat and blood:
“The physician (or the votary officiating for him) should worship the presiding deity of the disease in a ditch (dug out for the purpose) with the offerings of both cooked and uncooked meat, fresh blood (of a goat), milk, and edibles prepared with the Masha pulse for the ghosts, and the possessed child should be bathed at the crossing of roads by physician observing the necessary fast, etc. with the recital of the following Mantra….”(S.S. Uttara Tantra 2.29).
Returning the the offering of the cock, it is curious that this animal is mentioned. The cock is featured in the Vedic ritual of Ashvamedha, but as an animal to be released alive. Moreover, the Manusmriti prohibits the consumption of the fowl.
“The mushroom, the village-pig, garlic, the village-cock, onions and leeks,—the twice-born man eating these intentionally would become an ou tcast.—(19)”(MS 5.19).
On the positive, we have the sacrifice of the chicken in Dravidian and tribal rituals.
In the Nellore District, the goddess of diseases Kateri is popritiated for safe child delivery. At the same time, she has a great thirst for blood. As Elmore recorded, the woman“, offers a fowl to Kateri , cooks the fowl and eats it . She then puts on the koka which has been offered to Kateri, and makes various offerings, especially the blood of more fowls” (Elmore pg 50).
Similarly, Kanaka Durgamma is popritiated when there is cattle disease, and each step of her worship involves the slaughter of a fowl. It is recorded by Elmore that in the ritual a woman is possessed by the goddess and starts asking for the blood of chickens, goats, sheep, or buffalo. When a person dies, the Gulgulias, a group of people in Eastern India, pour liquor down the copse. They then kill a chicken, burn it, and through the ashes into an irrigation tank to ensure the spirit is satisfied. Most of the offerings to these goddesses and spirits, however, tend to beof goats or sheep.
The Gonds appease wrathful spirits by offering usually a goat, pig, or a chicken depending on the god they are woshiping. For Bara Deo, a spotted he-goat; for Takkur Deva, 5 chicken and a pig. When a person dies, the third day after the funeral is called Tisra. On Tisra the chief mourner kills a chicken near a stream and cooks it with rice.
The Irulas also offer a cock to appease evil spirits.
Thus the use of chicken meat in the ritual to appease the Grahas are not of Vedic origin, and likey stem from Dravidian or Austro Asiatic sources. Interestingly, modern iconography of Skanda features him with the rooster as an emblematic animal. Puranic legend states that when Skanda killed Surapadma who hid himself as a tree, the two fragments of the tree became a peacock and a rooster. Perhaps the offering of the cock to Skanda led to him having the bird as one of his emblematic animals.
“It is impossible that the god springing from Rudra and Agni, with his exalted parentage would find pleasure in such a dangerous disease even out of childish frolic-someness and it has also been asserted by eminent authorities on the physical science that some unintelligent persons have been misled into holding, through a mistake due to the identity of the names, that the author of the disease under discussion (Skanda) is no other than the invincible Skanda”.
However, while trying to deny Skanda’s nature as a Graha, it fails to dissolve any trace of his malignant origin. Previously in the chapter, it is recorded that
“ Skandapasmara, the presiding deity of the disease named after him, was created by Agni, the fire-god (Vulcan). He is as bright as fire itself and is a constant companion of the god Skanda and is also known by the name of Vishakha”
The name of Graha having Skanda in it, as well as his association with Skanda, ironically end up echoing the deities' past. Ironically, in later texts, Vishakha is an epithet of Skanda. The chapter continues saying
“On the effulgent god Skanda’s being elevated to the leadership of the armies of Heaven, the presiding deities of those diseases waited upon him and with folded palms asked him about the means of their subsistence. The god Skanda in his turn, referred them to His Holiness the god Shiva for the answer, whereupon they went to the latter in a body and made the same query”
This narrative is found in the Mahabharata Aranyaka Parva Chapter 219. After Indra struck Skanda with the vajra, a part of his body split off and became Vishakha. Also from Skanda’s fiery body, came the Grahas which are made to torment women and children. The likely explanation for this distancing is that the cultured people didn’t like how their god could be malevolent, thus they tried to make him benevolent while not completely disregarding his origins. Narratives like those in the Mahabharata were an excellent way for the brahmanas of the Mauryan and Guptan era to accomplish that goal.
According to Iravatam Mahadevan, a scholar in Indus Valley and Dravidian studies, Muruku (i.e. Murugan) in early Tamil times was a departed soul or spirit that would possess a priest (Velan) or a maiden who then would dance frantically. Murugan was thus a wrathful formless spirit. However, he is said to be red and carry a spear. Evidently, the Velan wore red clothes and carried a spear. Bloody sacrifices also were offered for Skanda. The dance that the Velan would do to appease the spirit Murugan is called Veriyattal. The Velan was summoned to solve problems or even tell how wars would unfold. In the Veddah people of Sri Lanka believe in a spirit called Kande Yakkha. And in one recollection of their myth on Valli’s origin, Kande Yakkha was the substitute for Murugan. This may be from early contact between Tamilians and the Veddahas and thus establishes the spirit origin of Murugan.
According to Mahadevan, “Muru” is a PDr root meaning “to break” but is homiphonous with “mur” meaning “Young”. Confusion may have made Murugan youth. This may have influenced the iconography of Skanda in the North. But more likely is that Skanda got his youth from Agni and this tradition influenced his southern counter part.
I depart from the traditional view that Velan derives from Tamil “Vel” meaning spear. If we are to assert a Proto Dravidian, or even Proto South Dravidian origin, for Muruguab, it must be noted that Tamil “Vel” meaning spear has only a cognate in Malayalam. That is also because Malayalam is descended from Tamil. Thus Tamil “Vel” is not an original Proto Dravidian world. However the Tamil root “vel” meaning “sacrifice” is of Proto Dravidian origin, with cognates being in Telugu as well (Tel “Velpu” = “god”; “Velvi” = “Sacrifice”). Thus the Velan could mean “sacrificer”. Then from homophones, Velan got reinterpreted to mean “Spear man”, thus prompting Murugan to carry a spear. This spear then may have made him a war god. Of course this is speculation , and further Dravidian research is needed.
The reason Skanda and Murugan would be conflated is plain obvious. The deities are both wrathful spirits needing appeasement. In fact, both Skanda and Murugan may derive their similar attributes because they originated from the same tradition, making both traditions of Skanda and Murugan figuratively siblings. Iravatam Mahadevan taxes the origin of Skanda worship to the Indus Valley. One of the Harappan script signs he identifies is a curled up skeleton. The Proto Dravidian root he assigned the sign to was “Mur” meaning “twisted” or “shriveled up”. This is homophonous to the roots meaning “break” and “youth”, and the connection to the dead makes this sign a great candidate for evidence of Murugan or general spirit appeasement during the Indus Valley period. What may have then happened was the Dravidians bought the Murugan worship to the South while the people who stayed in the North introduced their beliefs to the Vedic people. Indeed the Tamil literature attributes Skanda to the Kurunji landscape, which is the mountainous regions of Ancient Tamilikam. Indeed amongst the Niligiri tribes, like the Irula, is spirit worship the norm.
The Sangam literature knew of the Vedic practices, suggesting that Northern traditions have been established in the south. This is is possible that the developments of Skanda in the North have been introduced during the Sangam period and influenced the conception of Murugan, at least in part.
References:
DRAVIDIAN GODS IN MODERN HINDUISM A STUDY OF THE LOCAL AND VILLAGE DEITIES O F SOUTHERN INDIA by Wilber Theodore Elmore.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40450839?read-now=1&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents - gonds offer to spirits several animals, but mostly goats and chickens.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40453635?read-now=1#page_scan_tab_contents - shaministic stuff about Austroasiatic tribes. Includes chicken use. //
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44141129?read-now=1&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents Skanda and Vishaka alluded as Mahabharata reference.
Skanda:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43483765...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24049041...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20297310...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1062666?...
https://rmrl.in/wp-content/uploads/20...
“Worship of Ancient Tamils Gleaned from the Tamil Literature” by Dr.P.Ganesan https://starlingdb.org/cgi-bin/respon...
\data\drav\dravet&first=161&off=&text_proto=vel&method_proto=sound_substring&ic_proto=on&text_meaning=&method_meaning=substring&ic_meaning=on&text_sdr=&method_sdr=substring&ic_sdr=on&text_tel=&method_tel=substring&ic_tel=on&text_koga=&method_koga=substring&ic_koga=on&text_gnd=&method_gnd=substring&ic_gnd=on&text_ndr=&method_ndr=substring&ic_ndr=on&text_bra=&method_bra=substring&ic_bra=on&text_notes=&method_notes=substring&ic_notes=on&text_any=&method_any=substring&sort=proto&ic_any=on https://webcache.googleusercontent.co...
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/ha...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3024...
https://www.academia.edu/12681396/BEL...
The Rise of Mahāsena: The Transformation of Skanda-Karttikeya in North India from the Kuṣāṇa to Gupta Empires Book by Richard Dewey Mann https://www.academia.edu/33546233/Ori...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20486646...
Early Cult of SKanda in North India: From Demon to Divine Son http://www.shanlaxjournals.in/pdf/ASH...
http://murugan.org/research/zvelebil.htm
http://kataragama.org/valli.htm
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24652468...
https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m03/m03228.htm Mahabharata, Skanda as Agni who is Rudra
https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m09/m09044.htm Shalya Parva origin of Skanda
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/29066/1/10731161.pdf
https://tulsidas-ram-books.weebly.com/uploads/2/1/7/4/21746472/devi_puran.pdf
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/39183392.pdf
https://books.google.com/books?id=05LXAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=mother
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/135436/1/Asher-Greve_Westenholz_2013_Goddesses_in_Context.pdf
submitted by AbhiN1289 to Dravidiology [link] [comments]
Skanda
The origin of Skanda or Murugan, as he is known in the south, is similar to that of Ganesha. In this section, the Northern version of Skanda and his Southern counterpart Murugan will be dealt with separately. For simplicity, Skanda will refer to the Sanskritic god of the North and Murugan will be used to refer to the Dravidian version of the south.As briefly touched upon before, Skanda originated amongst the class of spirits called Grahas.
These Grahas are not to be confused with the nine planets. Graha comes from the Sanskrit root “grh” meaning to “seize”. These beings cause sickness by possessing or “seizing” a person.
The Rig Veda 1.161.1 refers to a female Graha called a Grahi.
“muñcāmi tvā haviṣā jīvanāya kam ajñātayakṣmād uta rājayakṣmāt grāhir jagrāha yadi vaitad enaṃ tasyā indrāgnī pra mumuktam enam ”
“By means of the oblation I set you free to live safe from undeveloped consumption and from royal sumption; and if the seizer has already seized him, then to you, Indra , and Agni , set him free”
However as much as the Graha is found early as the Rig Veda, they are not of Indo European origin.
One of the earliest nuanced mentions of the Grahas, including Skanda, are found in the Sushruta Samhita.
“Attentively hear me describe, Sushruta, the origin, cause and medical treatment of the diseases of infancy which are due to the influences of malignant stars (Graha) or demons as well as the characteristic symptoms by which each can be accurately diagonosed. The diseases number nine in all and are called Skanda-Graha, Skandapasmara, Shakuni, Revati, Putana, Andha-Putana, Shita-Putana, Mukha-mandika and Naigamesha or Pitri-Graha. 2–3” (S.S Uttara Tantra 2.25.2-3).// Translate this by kyself later.
These Grahas are said to cause grave sickness amongst infants. The Skanda Graha for example is described as follows in the same chapter:
“Swelling of the eyes and distorted features of the face and an aversion to the breast-milk are the indications of an attack by the Skanda-graha. The body of the child emits a bloody smell and one of the eyelids becomes fixed or motionless. The child looks frightened, closes his fists (as in a fit of convulsion) and moans a little. The eyes become highly rolling and the stool becomes hard and constipated. Alternate fits of fainting and consciousness, convulsive jerks of legs and hands like those in dancing, foaming (at the mouth), yawning and the passing of stool and urine with the passage of wind are the characteristic features of an attack by the Skanda-pasmara-graha. 5–6.”
Such beliefs of malignant spirits attacking children are prevalent even today amongst the rural folk of south India. However, disease demons are universal, so the non Vedic-ness of the Grahas, must be sought out. The origin of the belief in the Grahas is inferred from the rituals prescribed to appease them. Amongst the rituals there is this interesting paragraph:
“The physician (or any other person acting on his behalf) should bathe in the night and worship the god Skanda for three successive nights in the inner quadrangle of the house of the child or at the crossing of roads with various offerings, viz., garlands of red flowers, red flags, red perfumes such as Kumkuma, edibles of various kinds and newly harvested barley grains, Shali rice. A cock should be sacrificed on the occasion (to appease his wrath) and bells should be rung (for his propitiation). The water to be used for bath (in course of worship), should be consecrated by reciting the Gayatri Mantra and the sacrificial fire should be duly lit with (three, seven or ten) libations (of clarified butter). 6.”(S.S. Uttara Tantra 2.28.6).
The first motif is the use of red coloured items. We find parallels to this in early Tamil traditions of Murugan. Indeed Murugan in modern Hindu iconography is associated with the red color. We shall get into this later.
The other aspect of the ritual is the sacrifice of the cock. This is also accompanied later by the offering of meat and blood:
“The physician (or the votary officiating for him) should worship the presiding deity of the disease in a ditch (dug out for the purpose) with the offerings of both cooked and uncooked meat, fresh blood (of a goat), milk, and edibles prepared with the Masha pulse for the ghosts, and the possessed child should be bathed at the crossing of roads by physician observing the necessary fast, etc. with the recital of the following Mantra….”(S.S. Uttara Tantra 2.29).
Returning the the offering of the cock, it is curious that this animal is mentioned. The cock is featured in the Vedic ritual of Ashvamedha, but as an animal to be released alive. Moreover, the Manusmriti prohibits the consumption of the fowl.
“The mushroom, the village-pig, garlic, the village-cock, onions and leeks,—the twice-born man eating these intentionally would become an ou tcast.—(19)”(MS 5.19).
On the positive, we have the sacrifice of the chicken in Dravidian and tribal rituals.
In the Nellore District, the goddess of diseases Kateri is popritiated for safe child delivery. At the same time, she has a great thirst for blood. As Elmore recorded, the woman“, offers a fowl to Kateri , cooks the fowl and eats it . She then puts on the koka which has been offered to Kateri, and makes various offerings, especially the blood of more fowls” (Elmore pg 50).
Similarly, Kanaka Durgamma is popritiated when there is cattle disease, and each step of her worship involves the slaughter of a fowl. It is recorded by Elmore that in the ritual a woman is possessed by the goddess and starts asking for the blood of chickens, goats, sheep, or buffalo. When a person dies, the Gulgulias, a group of people in Eastern India, pour liquor down the copse. They then kill a chicken, burn it, and through the ashes into an irrigation tank to ensure the spirit is satisfied. Most of the offerings to these goddesses and spirits, however, tend to beof goats or sheep.
The Gonds appease wrathful spirits by offering usually a goat, pig, or a chicken depending on the god they are woshiping. For Bara Deo, a spotted he-goat; for Takkur Deva, 5 chicken and a pig. When a person dies, the third day after the funeral is called Tisra. On Tisra the chief mourner kills a chicken near a stream and cooks it with rice.
The Irulas also offer a cock to appease evil spirits.
Thus the use of chicken meat in the ritual to appease the Grahas are not of Vedic origin, and likey stem from Dravidian or Austro Asiatic sources. Interestingly, modern iconography of Skanda features him with the rooster as an emblematic animal. Puranic legend states that when Skanda killed Surapadma who hid himself as a tree, the two fragments of the tree became a peacock and a rooster. Perhaps the offering of the cock to Skanda led to him having the bird as one of his emblematic animals.
The Distancing
As some scholars point out, as the cult of Skanda grew and the as spirit started becoming a full fledged deity, people weren’t happy with the relationship with the Grahas. Coming back to the Sushruta Samhita, the 32nd chapter of the 2nd Canto of the Uttara Tantra has this to say on the subject:“It is impossible that the god springing from Rudra and Agni, with his exalted parentage would find pleasure in such a dangerous disease even out of childish frolic-someness and it has also been asserted by eminent authorities on the physical science that some unintelligent persons have been misled into holding, through a mistake due to the identity of the names, that the author of the disease under discussion (Skanda) is no other than the invincible Skanda”.
However, while trying to deny Skanda’s nature as a Graha, it fails to dissolve any trace of his malignant origin. Previously in the chapter, it is recorded that
“ Skandapasmara, the presiding deity of the disease named after him, was created by Agni, the fire-god (Vulcan). He is as bright as fire itself and is a constant companion of the god Skanda and is also known by the name of Vishakha”
The name of Graha having Skanda in it, as well as his association with Skanda, ironically end up echoing the deities' past. Ironically, in later texts, Vishakha is an epithet of Skanda. The chapter continues saying
“On the effulgent god Skanda’s being elevated to the leadership of the armies of Heaven, the presiding deities of those diseases waited upon him and with folded palms asked him about the means of their subsistence. The god Skanda in his turn, referred them to His Holiness the god Shiva for the answer, whereupon they went to the latter in a body and made the same query”
This narrative is found in the Mahabharata Aranyaka Parva Chapter 219. After Indra struck Skanda with the vajra, a part of his body split off and became Vishakha. Also from Skanda’s fiery body, came the Grahas which are made to torment women and children. The likely explanation for this distancing is that the cultured people didn’t like how their god could be malevolent, thus they tried to make him benevolent while not completely disregarding his origins. Narratives like those in the Mahabharata were an excellent way for the brahmanas of the Mauryan and Guptan era to accomplish that goal.
Origin of Murugan
Murugan is the Tamil name for Skanda. The name literally means “Youthful”, the same way “Kumara” does. Murugan has an similar origin as his northern version, as a wrathful spirit.According to Iravatam Mahadevan, a scholar in Indus Valley and Dravidian studies, Muruku (i.e. Murugan) in early Tamil times was a departed soul or spirit that would possess a priest (Velan) or a maiden who then would dance frantically. Murugan was thus a wrathful formless spirit. However, he is said to be red and carry a spear. Evidently, the Velan wore red clothes and carried a spear. Bloody sacrifices also were offered for Skanda. The dance that the Velan would do to appease the spirit Murugan is called Veriyattal. The Velan was summoned to solve problems or even tell how wars would unfold. In the Veddah people of Sri Lanka believe in a spirit called Kande Yakkha. And in one recollection of their myth on Valli’s origin, Kande Yakkha was the substitute for Murugan. This may be from early contact between Tamilians and the Veddahas and thus establishes the spirit origin of Murugan.
According to Mahadevan, “Muru” is a PDr root meaning “to break” but is homiphonous with “mur” meaning “Young”. Confusion may have made Murugan youth. This may have influenced the iconography of Skanda in the North. But more likely is that Skanda got his youth from Agni and this tradition influenced his southern counter part.
I depart from the traditional view that Velan derives from Tamil “Vel” meaning spear. If we are to assert a Proto Dravidian, or even Proto South Dravidian origin, for Muruguab, it must be noted that Tamil “Vel” meaning spear has only a cognate in Malayalam. That is also because Malayalam is descended from Tamil. Thus Tamil “Vel” is not an original Proto Dravidian world. However the Tamil root “vel” meaning “sacrifice” is of Proto Dravidian origin, with cognates being in Telugu as well (Tel “Velpu” = “god”; “Velvi” = “Sacrifice”). Thus the Velan could mean “sacrificer”. Then from homophones, Velan got reinterpreted to mean “Spear man”, thus prompting Murugan to carry a spear. This spear then may have made him a war god. Of course this is speculation , and further Dravidian research is needed.
The Influences
Most scholars agree that it is the Northern Skanda that influenced the Southern Murugan. The priority for the North is evident from the fact that Tamil traditions say that Skanda is said to have been born in the North but decided to settle in the South.The reason Skanda and Murugan would be conflated is plain obvious. The deities are both wrathful spirits needing appeasement. In fact, both Skanda and Murugan may derive their similar attributes because they originated from the same tradition, making both traditions of Skanda and Murugan figuratively siblings. Iravatam Mahadevan taxes the origin of Skanda worship to the Indus Valley. One of the Harappan script signs he identifies is a curled up skeleton. The Proto Dravidian root he assigned the sign to was “Mur” meaning “twisted” or “shriveled up”. This is homophonous to the roots meaning “break” and “youth”, and the connection to the dead makes this sign a great candidate for evidence of Murugan or general spirit appeasement during the Indus Valley period. What may have then happened was the Dravidians bought the Murugan worship to the South while the people who stayed in the North introduced their beliefs to the Vedic people. Indeed the Tamil literature attributes Skanda to the Kurunji landscape, which is the mountainous regions of Ancient Tamilikam. Indeed amongst the Niligiri tribes, like the Irula, is spirit worship the norm.
The Sangam literature knew of the Vedic practices, suggesting that Northern traditions have been established in the south. This is is possible that the developments of Skanda in the North have been introduced during the Sangam period and influenced the conception of Murugan, at least in part.
References:
DRAVIDIAN GODS IN MODERN HINDUISM A STUDY OF THE LOCAL AND VILLAGE DEITIES O F SOUTHERN INDIA by Wilber Theodore Elmore.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40450839?read-now=1&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents - gonds offer to spirits several animals, but mostly goats and chickens.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40453635?read-now=1#page_scan_tab_contents - shaministic stuff about Austroasiatic tribes. Includes chicken use. //
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44141129?read-now=1&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents Skanda and Vishaka alluded as Mahabharata reference.
Skanda:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43483765...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24049041...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20297310...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1062666?...
https://rmrl.in/wp-content/uploads/20...
“Worship of Ancient Tamils Gleaned from the Tamil Literature” by Dr.P.Ganesan https://starlingdb.org/cgi-bin/respon...
\data\drav\dravet&first=161&off=&text_proto=vel&method_proto=sound_substring&ic_proto=on&text_meaning=&method_meaning=substring&ic_meaning=on&text_sdr=&method_sdr=substring&ic_sdr=on&text_tel=&method_tel=substring&ic_tel=on&text_koga=&method_koga=substring&ic_koga=on&text_gnd=&method_gnd=substring&ic_gnd=on&text_ndr=&method_ndr=substring&ic_ndr=on&text_bra=&method_bra=substring&ic_bra=on&text_notes=&method_notes=substring&ic_notes=on&text_any=&method_any=substring&sort=proto&ic_any=on https://webcache.googleusercontent.co...
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/ha...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3024...
https://www.academia.edu/12681396/BEL...
The Rise of Mahāsena: The Transformation of Skanda-Karttikeya in North India from the Kuṣāṇa to Gupta Empires Book by Richard Dewey Mann https://www.academia.edu/33546233/Ori...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20486646...
Early Cult of SKanda in North India: From Demon to Divine Son http://www.shanlaxjournals.in/pdf/ASH...
http://murugan.org/research/zvelebil.htm
http://kataragama.org/valli.htm
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24652468...
https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m03/m03228.htm Mahabharata, Skanda as Agni who is Rudra
https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m09/m09044.htm Shalya Parva origin of Skanda
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/29066/1/10731161.pdf
https://tulsidas-ram-books.weebly.com/uploads/2/1/7/4/21746472/devi_puran.pdf
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/39183392.pdf
https://books.google.com/books?id=05LXAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=mother
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/135436/1/Asher-Greve_Westenholz_2013_Goddesses_in_Context.pdf
2023.06.06 22:23 JoshAsdvgi THE ORIGIN OF WHITE-FISH
 | submitted by JoshAsdvgi to Native_Stories [link] [comments] THE ORIGIN OF WHITE-FISH An Indian who lived far in the north was so devoted to the chase that he was never at home for the whole of a day, to the sorrow of his two boys, who liked nothing so much as to sport with him and to be allowed to practise with his weapons. Their mother told them that on no account were they to speak to him of the young man who visited the lodge while their father was away, and it was not until they were well grown and knew what the duty of wives should be that they resolved to disobey her. The hunter struck the woman dead when he learned of her perfidy. So greatly did her spirit trouble them, however, that they could no longer abide in their old home in peace and comfort, and they left the country and journeyed southward until they came to the Sault Sainte Marie. As they stood beside the falls a head came rolling toward them on the earth—the head of the dead woman. At that moment, too, a crane was seen riding on the surface of the water, whirling about in its strongest eddies, and when one of the boys called to it, “O Grandfather, we are persecuted by a spirit; take us across the falls,” the crane flew to them. “Cling to my back and do not touch my head,” it said to them, and landed them safely on the farther shore. But now the head screamed, “Come, grandfather, and carry me over, for I have lost my children and am sorely distressed,” and the bird flew to her likewise. “Be careful not to touch my head,” it said. The head promised obedience, but succumbed to curiosity when half-way over and touched the bird's head to see what was the matter with him. With a lurch the crane flung off his burden and it fell into the rapids. As it swept down, bumping against the rocks, the brains were pounded out and strewn over the water. “You were useless in life,” cried the crane. “You shall not be so in death. Become fish!” And the bits of brain changed to roe that presently hatched to a delicate white fish, the flesh whereof is esteemed by Indians of the lakes, and white men, likewise. The family pitched a lodge near the spot and took the crane as their totem or name-mark. Many of their descendants bear it to this day. |
2023.06.06 20:20 willmagnify Notes on “A Tale of Two Cities: the development of early Arhada city states (0-500 AD)”, Part 1
Note to self 92,
I was researching the foundation of Arhada city-states, just to get a general sense of what they looked like, and I found a very informative and fascinating read. The name is "A Tale of Two Cities: the development of early Arhada city states (0-500 AD)" and it's supposed to be the early work of some important professor at the Horean International University. Unfortunately, I'm still banned from borrowing at the Uni's library because I've held that book on Early Ibandr for a bit too long – I'll just copy the abstract and some passages for future reference.
This chapter had a very nice drawing (It looked better in the book) that showed an estimate of the plans of Kamābarha (A) and Amadahai (B). Amadahai was smaller, but it had quite an impressive quay leading straight into the city. The Mound of Kamābarha, on the other hand, was perhaps the most interesting thing about the city: it's one of the few ancient sites that the author had studied with an asymmetrical mound layout. Overall, I found the differences in Tritonean urban planning and that of Early Ibandr quite fascinating.
submitted by willmagnify to DawnPowers [link] [comments]
I was researching the foundation of Arhada city-states, just to get a general sense of what they looked like, and I found a very informative and fascinating read. The name is "A Tale of Two Cities: the development of early Arhada city states (0-500 AD)" and it's supposed to be the early work of some important professor at the Horean International University. Unfortunately, I'm still banned from borrowing at the Uni's library because I've held that book on Early Ibandr for a bit too long – I'll just copy the abstract and some passages for future reference.
This essay analyses the emergence of the first large-scale polities within the Arhadan cultural sphere, putting together the writings of notable scholars and the archaelogical record at our disposal. The title, "A Tale of Two Cities” was chosen in reference to the sites of Kamābarha and Amadahai, two settlements which would continue to act as major actors in the region throughout the following centuries. Because of their prominence, these two cities have been chosen as case studies through which we will examine the political, cultural and social characteristics of Arhada city states in the formative period. Those first few post-dawn centuries see the emergence of other important centres, but these two examples prove to be the earliest, the most consistently documented and the only ones who maintained their preeminence in post-formative eras.[...]
The text is divided into three main sections: the first detailing the general characteristics of urban, social and political developments within the region, the second and third delving into the specific nuances that these developments acquire in Kamābarha and Amadahai, respectively.
I thank the department of Tritonean studies at the Horean International University for their help in procuring material for this research, and Dr. Amaha Geherun for her invaluable guidance and insight.
2.a Palaces, urban settlements and their spatial characters.[...]
Scholars of late Tritonean prehistory usually divide the development of Arhadan settlements in three main phases; the Stilt House Period (SHP), which lasted roughly until 750 BD, the courtyard house period (CHP), which covers the millenium between 750 BD and 250 AD and the palatial house period (PHP), emerging from 250 onwards, with the development of the first palatial complexes and the first signs of wide-reaching palace economies, large scale political networks of reciprocal exchange, and true suzerain-client relationships. These three periods are named after their defining building types: the main characteristic of the SHP, unsurprisigly the one for which we have less documentation, were the small, square wooden constructions built on stilts along the lake shores and wetlands, next to the paddies. This period is the longest, stretching from the early development of zizania, cattail and sagittaria cultivation; with the construction of more specialised agricultural works and the consequent emergence of a higher level of inequality within Arhada settlements, we shift to the CHP, wherein successful family units migrated away from the lakeshores into dry land and extablished a new building typology, the multifamily courtyard house, acting as a higher status dwelling. The palace is nothing more than the natural evolution of the Courtyard-house type: it is merely larger and with cellular buildings constructed within the confines of the courtyard. The general layout consists of three outbuildings: a shrine, where the clans held religious functions both for the families and for the community at large, a granary, where the harvest would be stockpiled for distribution in lean years, and a treasury, where specialised group of artisans, usually the women of the clan, created and gathered family hierlooms, which obtained a near-sacred value and acted as further insurance against difficult harvests (See chapter 4a).
The palatial typology is fairly standardised: the frame, the courtyard building, is usually two or three stories high, with the ground floor being dedicated to common rooms, the middle floor containing the apartments of the clanmen and women and the last floor, built under a steep thatch roof, hosting lower-status inhabitants: servants, guards, favourites. What is more variable, however, was the disposition of buildings inside; shrines especially assumed different typologies: the constant is in their verticality and consistent central-plan type. From pictographic and sculptural sources, we can also note that canopies, usually defined by square-plans with four columns at the four corners, were important places of gathering, where tobacco ceremonies and clan meetings were held in the hot summers of southern Tritonea.
While it's interesting to consider the palace as a singular architectural and typological phenomenon, no discussion about the palatial type is complete without a mention about its relationship with the city at large. Built atop a hill (the term Nabaradjân, 'house of the hill', is, in fact, synonymous with palace), it acted as a centripetal force for the expansion of villages and cities, with important buildings being constructed radially from the central point of the palace and all other houses, small scale orchards and other structures being built in between. As architectural types specialised and key public buildings began to be built outside of the confines of the palace – granaries first, then shrines and storehouses – the radial composition of cities began to be even more clearly visible – in later periods those secondary "nodes" would create other radial sprawling points. "Radial cities, early settlement patterns in Arhadaland", by Dr. Amaha Geherun, provides an in-depth study of the spatiality of early, late and imperial Arhada cities.Reminder to get that book as soon as I get paid this week – couldn't find it at the library.
This chapter had a very nice drawing (It looked better in the book) that showed an estimate of the plans of Kamābarha (A) and Amadahai (B). Amadahai was smaller, but it had quite an impressive quay leading straight into the city. The Mound of Kamābarha, on the other hand, was perhaps the most interesting thing about the city: it's one of the few ancient sites that the author had studied with an asymmetrical mound layout. Overall, I found the differences in Tritonean urban planning and that of Early Ibandr quite fascinating.
4.a Political Networks, the first states and the "Bead Bracelet" Structure.I had to copy the map in the book, because I was having a hard time visualising it. There was also a more schematic version of it. Apparently, villages owed "fealty" (though I'm sure that's the wrong word) to bigger villages wich in turn owed "fealty" to bigger ones. It wasn't really a feudalistic setup, though. Land belonged to the single villages, who cultivated it directly – but they were essentially client cities, providing labour or artisanal goods to their suzerain, provided they would keep their granaries full in lean years. Another quote on this, and some interesting notes on the contracts between polities:
With the growth of palaces, we can truly see the evolution of Arhada settlements change from villages, to cities, to city-states: each palace acted as a key driver for a city’s local economy; from within the various clans of the palace, the men of the clan oversaw and organised works in the paddies, allocating human resources and ensuring the harvest was safely stored in the granary. The women, on the other hand, handled the production of specialised crafts - pottery, textiles, painting and dye production being the most common ones - which would form the bulk of the treasury. This setup, which contributed to a general labour specialisation even outside the confines of the palace, greatly contributed to the growing influence of palaces in the surrounding sub-urban territory.
Archeological and archaeo-anthropological studies show that the early Zizania aquatica strains cultivated by Tritonean farmers were prone to failures, with some estimates indicating a one in six chance of failure. This insecurity was the main driver for the construction of granaries, and, later, the use of the palaces treasure as a sort of insurance against bad harvests. There is ample tangible evidence of extra-urban exchanges of luxury trade goods between palaces around the southern lakes - with them, came birchbark contracts (and, more rarely clay tablets), documenting the exchange agreements between villages. Sadly, we have very few documents of this kind, but just enough to get a clear picture of what these signified.
What looked like simple exchanges based on favours and giftgiving - which basically amounted to “I owe yous” with a precious gifts attached - quickly developed into more deliberate agreements. We find pictographic contracts detailing the exchange of zizania for corvée labour or zizania in exchange for a larger repayment over a period of several years. Often villages would repay their benefactor by providing labour until they were able to return the same quantity of zizania – other times, contracts operated over a fixed period of time. The maturation of these systems culminated in semi-permanent ties between villages and a construction of hierarchical client-patron relations. The short term contracts between polities, exchanging part of the harvest for corvées, valuable goods or interest on the repayment, became more and more drawn out, until finally long term relationships were established.
The term "Bead Bracelet network", introduced by Dr Lagor Daham in her seminal work "Early Political Relationships along the Southern Tritonean lakes: new models of political unity", is used to refer to these long strings of villages sharing some form political affiliation, each village being the client or suzerain of another one within the chain. The water-based agricultural tradition of Tritonea conditioned the developments of their urban centres as lines running paralel to the lakeshore, each with some influence over their adjoining woodland and wetlands: the creation of these ties would then follow these lines, creating complexes of neighbouring villages with varying degrees of freedoms and duties towards one other. these ties and contracts, which would be overseen by clan matriarchs, would connect all villages within a single network to the highest one.
In truth, most of these ties would not be very long lasting, and could break immediately if either of the parties was unable to maintain the foundational promises of the agreement. This usually resulted in small scale warfare in which the suzerain's victory would result in an even more restrictive contract and the clients victory would signify temporary freedom from the expansion of its neighbour's political influence. Kamābarha and Amadahai were the first to estabish stable and well-maintained networks of this kind, mostly due to the fact that their prosperous positions – Kamābarha in fertile and rich land, Amadahai straddled between two lakes, controlling trade and expanding at a fast pace along two lakesides – allowed them to maintain control over nearby polities thanks to the consistency with which they were able to provide their side of the bargain and distribute parts of their abundant harvest to their clients.[...]
The terms of the contracts themselves were extremely heterogeneous – and could be easily changed and misinterpreted. Being pictographic in nature, with imagery tied to Arhada proverb glyphs, they served more as visual aids to help the matriarchs remember the exact terms of a contract. It's a widely held belief that it's a need for specificity in birchbark contracts that led Arhada women to the development of true logographic writing in the following centuries.This note I found particularly interesting! I'll have to read more on that.
7. Trade and external relationsOne last bad drawing for today. I saw this map and I was truly impressed with how developed trade networks were at that time, especially for people who did not have horses or chariots. I'm afraid I'll have to read through second half of the book tomorrow, the library's closing now – end of note.
One final point to be made, before we delve into the specific configurations and internal histories of our two cities, has to do with trade systems within the Arhada cultural sphere. Arhadanists and scholars of Tritonean history speak of the Formative "Northern pottery", "Middle pottery" and "Southern pottery" schools: the Arhada territory fell squarely between the Middle and Southern areas, with Kamābarha being connected to the Kemithātsan polities along the southern shore of the Sihodjivôdjo (Middle school), and thus having an closer relationship to northern and western cultures into Xanthean territories, and Amadahai being connected instead to southern cultures such as the Zonowōdjon, beyond the lake, with whom they entertained relationships in a network that extended south, beyond Tritonea proper, in the territories of the Aluwa. As such, our two case studies present very different cultural traits and influences – it must be noted, however, that the deep interrelation of Arhadan cities through the connective tissue of the lakes serves as an avenue for the exchange and merger of these two very different cultural impulses.
The Arhada themselves were great exporters of finished products. Indigo dyes, pottery, hemp-cattail blend textiles and pecan oil, used both in cuisine and cosmetics, were ubiquitous items throughout Arhada territories; preserved fruits were common southern commodities; brass products from the zinc-abundant copper ores along the Green River, were Kamābarha's most valuable export. It's interesting, however, to analyse what was imported into their territories during this period, so that we can better track the changes in material culture throughout the early formative. Contact with the nearby Kemithātsan is evident in the spread of glazes in Middle Pottery school sites. Even in Souther Pottery sites we can begin to observe more Middle style artefacts, and we have evidence of kilns being built – many scholars believe these kilns were actually built by Kemithātsan artisans who relocated in the south. From the Kemithātsan they also obtained picked goods and wines, whose production was more specialised. Maple – a prised product in the south – was also obtained through northern trade routes.
Southern trade relationships were more tenuous at that time – Arhada groups migrated into Zonowōdjon lands around 500 AD, and while intermingling did occur at an early stage, we have evidence of a rather fraught relationship, with several Arhadan led attacks into the southern regions, certainly with the aim of clearing coastal land for more intensive agricultural production. Sanaboborôn, another formative site which would develop in the later quarter of the 1st millenium AD, emerged in the wake of these attacks, following different dynamics when compared the other early Arhada cities. This development, which lies outside the themes of this research, is brilliantly explored in another seminal work by Dr Lagor Daham, published in the collection of essays "Dawn of War: Martial history in formative Horea". While tensions and distrust with neighbouring Tritonean peoples slowed trade between the eastern and western southern lakes, polities such as Amadahai and Sanaboborôn found fertile ground with trade further down the continent. Crossing the Gorgonean-Tritonean mountain range they would encounter the Aluwa people – corals were an especially prised trade item, but spices such as peppers and citrus peel were also brought north, where they would enter the diets of elite Arhadans.