Best sights for daniel defense ddm4v7

Been together for 4 years and I’ve been feeling this way pretty much since the beginning. Basically it will get bad, we have an argument, make up, be good for a while - then the cycle repeats. Every single time I bring up an issue in a non-confrontational way (without raising my voice, insulting him, ect) and/or I’m visually upset he gets defensive, mad, stops talking and completely shuts down. Sometimes he’d say that I attack him and him being angry at me is a normal reaction. In the past I’ve asked him not to do certain things that make me upset and he agreed to it, however I found out (not from him) the entire time he’s been lying and doing them behind my back. I chose to forgive him and stay and now I’m having hard time trusting him again. He does not do anything to gain my trust back except say he doesn’t do anything bad. I get suspicious and ask him to be as transparent as he can, but he still does the same thing he did in the beginning.
Everytime I bring up an issue he threatens to leave and says “I was serious when I said I’m going to pack my things, you know that? I don’t think you understand”. He says he feels happy when I’m not around and when I’m away, and tries to avoid me out of fear of me “staring an argument” (expressing my feelings). He says he has no empathy left towards me and he doesn’t get concerned whenever he sees me upset.
He lives at my place for free but buys and cooks food which is what we agreed on. Sometimes I think he is with me simply because I’m not demanding and he doesn’t need to put in a lot of effort (even though he says he does). We barely go out and when we do I organize the dates, and when I ask him what he thinks he says “I don’t know, don’t care that much. It was your idea”. For instance, we’d go on a picnic and I try to find the best spot for us to sit, he would get visually frustrated and say he doesn’t know and I should pick the spot faster. He never asks me how I feel about certain issues and only reassured me when I practically have to ask for it. He told me couple of times that if it wasn’t for my looks he would’ve left me a while go.
I want to leave but I know it will break me. I have no friends, my family is away and I was considering him my closest friend and family for the longest time. I have 0 confidence left, this relationship destroyed my perception of self. I want to start being happy with myself again and let go of the past so much. I know it’s not a good thing but I feel sorry for myself, and I genuinely realize that this is not a good thing for me and my mental health. I don’t think I’m strong enough to make a first step and let him go however. I don’t know where to start and how to be after the breakup.

Imo, Jeff trying to market the post-WAW seasons as the "new era" of Survivor is such a big crock of shit. Because they are portraying it as a game that has been completely renovated, whereas it has just been tweaked a little bit. 26 days and an almost completely stagnant format have promoted exactly what Jeff and production have been trying to avoid: predictability.
With the lack of a swap in three seasons and only three people swapping this season, it guarantees that every contestant is only going to know a maximum of five other people at the merge, with the more likely numbers being 2-4. At the mergatory, Yam Yam and Carolyn had only met Carson and Josh, and they both had no desire to work with one. On top of that, because the players are not expecting a swap, they are preparing for that scenario. Which means that they are more likely to stick by their initial alliances in the pre-merge. Because they have a better idea of what those are like, what they stand for and what their tendencies are. We saw this in 44, those three stuck to each other and while there were conversations about breaking them up, they ultimately did not. While there was waivering, there is a big difference between talking and actually following through.
IMO, there is one person every season that exemplifies the values that Jeff tries to pump into the new era. These values are: fluid alliances, advantages, aggression and unnecessary flash. In their defense, they typically go relatively far, but I do not think they could ever win. This season, Danny was that player for me and it was shown in his desperation to eliminate Frannie. I can see the rationale for Tika and Ratu to get Frannie out, won two immunities very early, smart woman who has that nerdy likability to her. But, who is she working with outside of Danny and Heidi? Because not only did the Tika 3 stick together like glue, but so did Ratu. Despite Brandon being pissed at Kane for the first tribal, he still stuck with him and Ratu to the end. If Frannie leaves, she needs to win out, which is no guarantee. Frannie needed Soka, especially with Matt being eliminated by a series of unfortunate events.
At the time of Frannie's elimination, Ratu only had two people left and Tika still had their three. Going after literally anyone on Tika at this point would have been the smarter move. Since Frannie and Carolyn seemed close, going after Yam Yam or Carson would probably be the smarter move, and going after either of them would be a win for Soka. In keeping Frannie, not only does Danny keep his numbers up, but he also has another person who can win challenges and better ensure that the threats on Tika and Ratu (particularly Tika) go home. If you want Frannie out, it would have been best for him to vote her out at 5 or try to get her out in fire. But nope, he banked on fluid alliances and it bit him in the ass. Without Frannie, his only solid alliance was Heidi and because he was the physically strongest male of the season, it does not shock me in the slightest that Tika was able to convince Ratu to eliminate him right after.
Humans, for the most part, inherently do not want to be in ultra chaotic environments. Most people want predictability. In a strategy game, predictability is one of the most important aspects of an ally. Because it enables you to better curate your strategy for your current situation. I think this is why Carson, who is clearly a very intelligent man, wanted to take Yam Yam and Carolyn to the end, despite both of them not being major goats, when he could have tried to take people like Jaime and Heidi, both of which seemed to not play that great (Carolyn deserved votes over Heidi and this is not up for debate imo). Because he knew Yam Yam and Carolyn were more likely to stick to him, whereas the other women left at six could have easily targeted him given the opportunity.
A large part of how the game is played is influenced by the previous few seasons. The biggest instance of this imo is that the MvGX cast saw Cambodia before leaving and not Kaoh Rong, because the gameplay was so similar. From then on, because super fan nerds saw this, liked it, and were getting casted at a higher rate, wanted to better emulate that game because at the end of the day: while everyone is there to win, you don't want to be bored. Plus, with the 26 day format (obligatory it sucks comment), Jeff has been promoting that the everyone needs to play a more fast paced strategy. People see that and think: "ok, big moves time". Plus, to add onto this, the people that play the more aggressive game generally get a more positive edit and feedback from Probst (see: Aubry vs Michele).
But, what this does is give the people less time to bond. Less time to form personal and strategic partnerships. In 44, we had all three of the original tribes stick together until the end. In 42, we had the Taku 4 dominate until the final 6 before turning on each other. The Taku and Tika alliances are two very similar alliances imo were all of them were solid players with winning paths. There was no dead weight in either group. The only difference was that Maryanne saw that her chances of winning were not great, which is why she voted out Omar and Lindsay in subsequent votes. Then there was 41, which had 4 of the original Luvu tribe in the final 6. In addition, they had Ua and Yase who were working together initally before being splintered from within. 43 definitely deviates from this the most, but this season still had Jesse and Cody, as well as Karla and Cassidy, two duos from the same original tribe who worked together for a while. But, this season is the only one to feature significant cross tribal lines after the merge.
I think that Jeff is incredibly out of touch, which is not an unpopular opinion here. But I just think it is absolutely baffling that he can watch every single season in real time, watch the editing and the finished product and think "my perspective is correct always" (just need to say: my perspective is not always right either. I was so fucking confident that Ricard was going to win 41 that I probably would have wagered my buff collection on it). Jeff, if what you thought was right, Russell wins Samoa, Aubry wins Kaoh Rong and Rob is a five time winner. He continues to push this "new era" when the people who are dominating are implementing a ton of old school strategy with some modern takes on it.

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People seemed to like the first one I did so I thought I'd do a second now I finally finished AW2. (That last mission is a bitch by the way.)
Andy: The strain of a second war had tired him. He had hoped that after the events of 1, all he'd need to do are practise drills. So when the war was finally over, he dedicated himself to improving Orange Star's early warning systems. If Black Hole rises again in another land, they'll know.
Max: Max decided that, with his extensive knowledge of tanks, he could probably improve the Neotank even if it was already technologicaly advanced. His idea of "add 300 more gun turrets to it" was however shot down by R and D, who said they'd be lucky to add 5.
Sami: Sami decided to do a recruitment drive for Orange Star after the events of the war. She figured the best way of doing that was to do more humanitarian work in the war torn nation. It did wonders to both fixing up the place as well as getting more people to join.
Nell: Having seen the devastation that Black Hole had caused not once, but twice, Nell decided that it would be better for an alliance between the four nations to become more official, on the offchance that they rise again under Hawke. While talks between the four leaders have not progressed past the naming stage yet, she is hopefull for progress. Her sister is still too young to join the army, but seeing Nell attempting to acheive the impossible has only inspired her further to do so.
Hatchi: Confident that he can leave Orange Star's fate in the hands of the youngen's now, he decided to keep enjoying his beach hut and business. Do not ask how he got Sturm as a hirable CO for outside the campaign. You do NOT want to know how he pulled that off. Also he might have to kill you.
Olaf: After seeing his hometown devastated in the war, Olaf was distraught. As part of the negotiations for Nell's upcoming allaince, he requested funds to repair his wartorn nation. They were granted, and Olaf also spent his own resources, even putting in hos own physical effort, to repairing the city and other places hit by the Black Hole army. The town square has been restored to it's former glory. Everyone agrees it's pretty nice.
Grit: Grit decided it would be a good idea to try and figure out if any of the resources Black Hole stole were left over, or if they were all spent. Turns out that Sturm had been keeping a horde of them in a secret base on the offchance he did in fact need to retreat and go for Round 3. Grit donated his find to the negotiations for an alliance
Colin: for his part in the war effort at such a young age, Colin was award the Medal of The Bear, one of Blue Moon's most highly venerated war medals. Not long after, he received a complaint from his men about the shoddieness of their equipment and being thrown into the meat grinder, and how it was bad for moralde. Colin listened ... kind of... and had a arcade room installed in every base. Morale has risen by 20%, but they still would have prefered guns that work.
Eagle: The saying "Great minds think alike" is an accurate one, as, much like Andy, Eagle decided to improve Green Earth's early warning systems AND their defenses, reasoning that since they got hit the hardest by Black Hole, they needed to be better prepared for next time. Every town now has it's own air base. In times of peace, they even put on air shows and fake dogfights.
Drake: Drake meanwhile did a complete overhual of Green Earth's navy, reasoning pretty much the same. He also put forwards the idea of a submersable repair drone for fixing ships up on the fly, but was told that was basicaly impossible, especialy for the already submersable submarines.
Jess: The war over and her homeland safe, Jess went back to her studies abroad. The head of the faclity was annoyed as all get out due to the fact that she had left without any warning, during the middle of a important class, and knocked over and destoryed a valuable teaching tool on the way out... but relented when told the situation. She is in great student debt for the broken tool, but is content.
Kanbei: Kanbei, while absolutely willing to form an allaince with the others, is possibly the main reason it is still in the planning stages, His request to call the alliance "Kanbei's United Army" being repeatedly declined. However, it's not all bad from him, as he is also adamdent on getting every soilder in this new united allaince the best equipment and training possible. The soilders love him for it, but both demands are slowing down talks.
Sonja: Sonja, realising the greatiest threat in their campaign was the genious scientist Lash, begain her oqn quest: to either hunt down and kill Lash, or recruit her for Gold Comet. Honestly, after her little taunts dug a bit too deep into her soul, she was not sure which. However, despite her best efforts, she did not succed in locating her. Apparently she hid herself much better then Sturm ever did.
Sensei: After a breif trip to some remote isle for a holiday, Senset thanks the old guard for taking part in the war, and asked Kanbei to increase their pensions dramaticaly for thier effort. Such was agreed. Now Sensei can afford a nice traditional house by the beach. AND hire a jazz band for events!
Flak: Annoyed at one too many failures from him in the campaign, Hawke demonted Flak back down to private again. However, while he may have been useless as a CO, his time as such made him too effective as a private, showing cunning and ruthlesses greater then compatriots. In the end, Hawke repromoted him, deciding that a weak but well treat CO was better then a competant and power hungry up and comer.
Lash: Lash decided to go aground, taking the effort of rebuilding by doing so from a hidden location with her Lashbots. She actualy loved the rebuiilding process more then the devastation it caused, a revelation that surprised her, even if she could not yet admit it to herself. Ironicaly, Sonja DID find her one time, but Lash, desperate and out of tricks, pretended to be one of her Lashbots in the vain hope she'd just go away. Somehow, against all odds, it fucking worked. Sonja will never know how close she came...
Adder: being terrified after the threats made to him by Sensei, Adder also decided to go to ground. Having built himself a hidden panic room in the middle of nowhere with some spare resources, he fled, waiting for the order from Hawke to rebuild. However, when he got to his panic room... someone had already been there, and left a gun with one bullet and a note: "It's a better option then ruining people's homes and meeting me again, sunny." Adder kept the gun, planning to shoot the old fucker with it if they DO meet again.
Sturm: Sturm is dead, but the fear of someone somehow reviving him once more, dcespite that seemingly being impossible, was so great that the allaince agreed to take his body (Or rather, the dirt where his body was before being vaporized) and scatter them across both lands. They hope this will be enough to make sure that Sturm never rises again.
Hawke: Hawkes whereabouts are unknown...

I just had my honeymoon (originally scheduled for Jun 2020). My wife and I are in our early thirties. It’s my wife’s first time in japan while it’s my fourth. I’ve benefitted immensely from stalking Tokyo travel reddit and would like to return the favour. I’ll provide some of my tips and observations to the end (skip to the end if the itinerary doesn’t interest you), some of which I think haven’t been mentioned before.
Thank God pretty much everything went to plan, and my wife thoroughly enjoyed the trip. We spent 12 days in Japan, most of it in Tokyo and 2 nights in Kawaguchiko. Many people were surprised to know that we’d be spending most of our trip in Tokyo, but I thought it was just fine because Tokyo had a lot to offer. My wife and I aren’t big on visiting shrines or tick tourist hotspots off a checklist. We don’t shop much, but we did a lot of it simply because it’s Japan and we bought lots of quality-of-life items (not fashion) for ourselves and others. Given how much my wife really enjoyed the trip, I think others with similar interests could find something helpful too.
Pre-trip planning

• Other than the hotel & flights, I booked the highway express bus to Kawaguchiko one week prior.
• Decided on the airport limousine bus to bring us from the airport to the city a few days prior.
• Studio Ghibli tickets booked one month in advance. International tickets were quickly sold out, so we used a free VPN to get onto the Japanese site which had more tickets & timings available. Simply Google translate the entire page.
• Booked a cooking class on cookly months prior.
• Did Visit Japan QR two days prior. It takes some time so do it earlier rather than later.
• Added all places of interests in a Google list, and all food places in another Google list. I tried the custom Google maps at first but didn’t feel the UI was easy to navigate.
• Planned itinerary based on location proximity, and also highlighted parts that were interchangeable in case we wanted to switch it up (which we did).

Planning during the trip

• The Google maps foods list was always just for consideration: if we had time or were craving something. We didn't hard-code food places into our daily plans. But when food was the primary activity (e.g. visiting Tsukiji market), we'd determine to visit particular food stalls. Otherwise, just needed to do a cursory Google review check on whether a random food place is worth eating it. As a principle, we didn't want to spend time unnecessarily queuing for food.
• I'd plan the next day's itinerary the night before, considering fatigue, interest, and proximity. I would create a brand new Google maps list for the next day, including potential food places.

Day 0 (Wed) - Arrival at Shinjuku Airport- Arrived in Haneda late, about 11. Clearance was quick but baggage took 30mins. I had no choice but to cancel my airport limousine and take the metro to our hotel in Shinjuku.- I tried Apple wallet’s Suica at first. It worked seamlessly but felt that a physical metro card was just faster so I eventually switched over.- Reached after midnight, so do let your hotel know in advance if you anticipate arriving at odd hours.
Day 1 (Thurs) - Shinjuku exploration- Originally planned to visit Tsukiji on day 1, but given that we arrive late the previous night, agreed with my wife to change the plan and spend the first day doing the Shinjuku itinerary.

• Walked to a popular Tsukumen place at 11. Queued for 20mins and it was an interesting experience as there were lines of people standing right behind watching you eat. Wife said it was her best Tsukumen ever!
• Sekaido for art supplies: My wife does art so it was a haven for her. We spent a few hours there!
• Tokyu Hands Shinjuku: but two floors were under renovation.
• Omoide Yokocho: A quick walkthrough. Many tourists.

Day 2 (Fri) - Kappabashi St., Fabric Town, Akihabara

• Kappabashi Dougu Street: looked at kitchen supplies and to find a nice knife! (Do research on what knife you need beforehand).
• Fabric Town: My wife just passed a seamstress exam so she eagerly anticipated visiting fabric town, we spent a few hours in Tomato.
• Akihabara (Animate, Bic Camera, Gyukatsu Don): It was drizzling the entire day so it was not the most comfortable lugging that many bags around a wet Akihabara in the evening. Wife wasn’t interested but I wanted to let her experience this unique culture. Had dinner at a popular gyukatsu don (beef cutlet that you’d have to cook yourself). It was fantastic and I had never eaten it. But it was a long one hour wait.

Day 3 (Sat) - Cooking class in Shinjuku, Shibuya

• Private cooking class in Shinjuku: Our host was great! We were invited into his cosy house and he taught us how to make Okonomiyaki, Yakisoba, and a Japanese salad. My wife absolutely loved the experience of getting to know a local and understanding his life story, Japanese culture, and some of his horror stories of guests. We got more food recs from him to understand where the locals really ate at.
• Shibuya 109: Paid $5 for a drink to have a bird’s eye view of the Shibuya crossing. It was Saturday so the people crossing was at its full force. Even if you think this is touristy, it’s amazing to see that many people like little ants crossing a street. There are several nice locations here to take some artsy shots.
• Ishibashi Music Shibuya: absolutely loved the vibe in this music store. Back home, I’ve been thinking about getting a particular keyboard but never got a chance to try it. I was able to play this particular one undisturbed and feel totally comfortable. Bought a few Japan exclusive guitar picks as gifts.
• Shibuya Tokyu Hands: This was amazing. I thought Shinjuku Tokyu Hands was the flagship store. So I only stumbled into this because I urgently needed to pee and someone said Tokyu hands had toilets. We were confused as its name was rebranded to simple Hands with a new logo. This is the Tokyu Hands to go. Each floor had 2 sub-floors so that’s a ton of floors! Lots of quality-of-life improvements one could get from this store. My wife got a buckwheat pillow.
• Shibuya Loft: After Sekaido, I didn’t think there was much to look at. But Loft was very different. Similar to Tokyu hands but seems more modern and fashionable. Worth visiting together with Tokyu hands! It also had packaged food available! It was late and my wife and I concluded that we didn’t have to to explore all the floors and that we’d return to Shibuya again.

Day 4 (Sun) - Komazawa Church, Harajuku, Shibuya

• Church in Komazawa: not a tourist activity, but we linked up with some partners from our home church and attended service at a little church held in a nursery. It was an amazing and encouraging experience.
• Harajuku: Way too crowded. I had anticipated this as it was a Sunday, but thought to just try. Takeshita street was so packed my wife feared there would be a trample risk (it wasn’t that bad). We did queue 20mins for pretty tasty crepe. After checking out all the recommended streets (e.g. cat street, uru-harajuku), my wife simply felt that she couldn’t stand the Harajuku crowd and the vibes. So we decided to go back to Shibuya again!
• Shibuya JINS: I didn’t mention this but previously in Shinjuku and Shibuya, I had been checking out recommended optical shops in the vicinity. I had something in particular in mind. Japanese-made glasses are highly-rated, but I couldn’t find something at the right price-point. At JINS, I found a design I liked. Though not made in Japan, it cost me less than 5000 yen. Took them 1 hour to make it. For some reason I loved the vibes at Shibuya, and I earmarked it to return again later.

Day 5 (Mon) - Tsukiji Market, Ginza Muji/Uniqlo, Tokyo station

• Tsukiji market: wanted to arrive before 8 and was 30m late. But the crowds weren’t that bad either. Everything we tried was lovely. Potato/corn fishcakes, strawberry mochi, tamago, wagyu beef, uni inarisushi, unagi. But the star was Masa burger, which we waited till 11am to try. By then, the tourist buses had come and the streets were packed. But Masa burger was in a corner and we were their first customers. The fried codfish burger + homemade ginger ale was so well done and packed with such fresh and interesting salads! It so so good we had it twice.
• Ginza Uniqlo/Muji: we wanted to take a look at some of Uniqlo’s exclusive items. Apparently they do have exclusive t-shirts for each region (e.g. Harajuku, Shibuya, Ginza). They tend to be collaborations with well-known food places in the area. However, they were always white in colour and not made-in-japan-quality. Muji was a disappointment, not a lot more than the usual.
• Tokyo Station Ghibli & Tenugui: Went to Tokyo station to check out the Ghibli store and to look for a particular traditional tenugui (Japanese towels) store as my wife were hunting these down to give as gifts.
• Shinjuku Ichiran & Mister Donut: We returned to Shinjuku for Ichiran ramen, specifically at 5+pm. No crowds at all. Yummy! We then saw a Mister Donut, and recalled news in our home country that when it first opened, people queued 5 hours for it. We thought to try it to see what the fuss was all about. Cash only, but the donuts were wonderfully textured and not too sweet. My wife doesn’t like sweet stuff, but mister donut really hit the sweet spot (no pun intended).

Day 6 (Tue) - Tokyo National Museum, Fabric town revisit, Akihabara revisit, Ochanomizu

• Tokyo Tokyo National Museum: We had a good time learning about Japan’s early history, and discovered that so much that we know of Japan resulted from Chinese/korean influence.
• Fabric town & Akihabara revisit, Ochonomizu: We decided that this was likely the right time to go back for items we missed out on or didn’t have time to see. My wife went to fabric town while I went to Akihabara’s Yodaibashi camera, which I felt to be better and with more varied things than Bic Camera. I then went to Ochanomizu to look at more music and sport shops. We met up again at Shinjuku for another Gyukatsu Don before heading to mister donuts again.

Day 7 (Wed) - Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, Mori Museum, Ginza Wakamatsu, Shinjuku

• Shinjuku Gyoen Garden: lovely large garden grounds. We spent almost an hour just lying under a tree and watching clouds float by. Wife was doing some rough sketches of the garden. We had mister donuts from last night for breakfast.
• Mori Museum: Saw the exhibition of Heatherwick studios, which was inspiring and educational. Paid for the rooftop access to have a quick view of Tokyo from 50-ish floors up.
• Ginza Wakamatsu: Because of one of the Uniqlo-ginza-exclusive t-shirts, my wife was curious about this traditional Japanese dessert. So we gave it a check and realised it’s been around for more than a century. There was a short line (mainly Japanese elderly). The shop interior transported us back decades. It felt surreal eating a dessert that the Japanese ate centuries ago. It’s certainly doesn’t excite and overwhelm one’s taste buds immediately as modern desserts do. But there’s an old charm to it.
• Shinjuku Okadaya fabric: Returned to Shinjuku as my wife wanted to check out another of their famous fabric stores. Prices were more expensive than fabric town, but somewhat different items.

Day 8 (Thurs) - Kawaguchiko

• Bus to Kawaguchiko: Packed light to Kawaguchiko, and forwarded our remaining luggage to our post-Kawaguchiko hotel in Tamachi. The Shinjuku hotel staff were very helpful. I was merely inquiring on how luggage forwarding was done, but he picked up the phone, called my Tamachi hotel to confirm the booking, and prepared the documents for me. All I had to do was roll my luggage the next night to them and make payment. Booked a 7:45am bus to Kawaguchiko and managed to catch a glimpse of Mount Fuji when we were on our way there!
• Cycling In Kawaguchiko: We lugged our bags to our hotel and headed out again. My wife was quite hesitant about cycling overseas and I was also worried it’d tire her out too much. I debated between cycling or simply taking the sight-seeing bus. Eventually felt it worth it. We unexpectedly walked by an e-bike place and decided - why not? Neither of us had tried an e-bike before and that could reduce the effort required for my wife. So we did and boy was it fun! It took a while to get used to the e-bike but it really reduced a lot of effort up the hills! I barely sweat. Kawaguchiko had pretty narrow roads so it wasn’t the easiest to cycle. But I had plenty of road-cycling experience back at home so I was not very deterred. We borrowed helmets from the e-bike place but saw that we were the only tourists that wore them.
• Kubota Itchiku Art Museum: Cycled here knowing that this museum would interest my wife. It had a garden that was free entry and it was beautiful! The pond had a singular vibrant-coloured Koi swimming in it. The Museum requires tickets. My wife was so enthralled by it. I was kinda sick of museums so I told her I’d wait for her outside. Wife took about 45m inside and even bought a heavy hard-cover book of Itchiku Kubota’s kimono art :/
• Momiji Corridor: was just 50m away. Still beautiful with only green leaves, but I’d imagine it would be majestic in Autumn/Spring.
• Oishi Park: Many beautiful flowers! It’s a pity that it had been cloudy the entire day, and Mt Fuji was not visible. That would have made the cycle perfect. Park was crowded with tourists.

Day 9 (Fri) - Fuji Q Highlands, Shimoyoshida Honcho St, Batting Cage
Planning for Fuji Q & Morning Jog: I didn’t plan to go to Fuji-Q highlands before the trip. Always felt it a bit of a waste to visit amusement parks overseas. That’s until I realised that Fuji Q had some of the most exciting, (I mean world-record-holding) rollercoasters in the world. Perhaps not anymore, but that intrigued me enough, because most amusement parks only had 1-2 coasters. Problem was that wife is terrified, and she said cycling on the streets of Kawaguchiko was like a coaster ride for her. So I decided I would reach at opening time, and buy time by paying for the fast passes and try their top three coasters. The night before, we felt that we had to make decisions on our itinerary as it was our last day at Kawaguchiko. If Mt Fuji wasn’t visible, go to Oshino Hakkai, if it was, we could try going to Shimoyoshida to get a nice picture.

• I took a morning jog that morning and my jaw dropped when I saw Mount Fuji towering over Kawaguchiko. I raced back to tell my wife (about 6am) and we both trekked up to a viewing spot to enjoy the view. This made it more urgent to not spend too much time at Fuji Q as we didn’t know how long Mt. Fuji would be visible for.
• Fuji-Q Highlands: Was absolutely amazing. Yes, I blew a lot of cash here buying fast passes for the three available coasters. But they were some of the craziest coasters. Took Eejanaika, Fujiyama and Takabisha. Total time it took probably a little more than 1 hour with the express passes. It was so good but so fast; I have little memory of it, except that there was a 90 degree climb to the top for Takabisha and I had a beautiful view of Mt. Fuji while climbing to the supposed world record of 79m for Fujiyama. Had more time to take a few other rides, and enjoyed all the Naruto statues around for fun photo-taking. What I really enjoyed about the park was that it was mostly filled with Japanese tourists; in fact, there was a Japanese school having an outing there. It was nice to see excited students running about.
• Shomoyoshida Honcho St: This destination was simply to take the famous street view of Mount Fuji with Japanese shops lined in the foreground. It’s not easy to get to, and there was quite a walk. We noticed there weren’t much people around, and most shops were closed. But when we reached the destination, there were many tourists right at the particular traffic light. So much so there was a grumpy Japanese traffic police person managing the crowd. We saw the worst of tourists that day. People were disobeying traffic laws and just running in the middle of the road just to get a shot. We chanced upon a hidden udon shop and it felt like we were transported back to the 50’s! It was super old school, people sat on raised platforms, and several elderly customers were watching the tele while eating. There was only one udon option available, with free cabbage top-ups. We learnt that the shop had been around for 73 years.
• Batting Cage: I had never played baseball/softball and my home country doesn’t have a baseball culture. Yet I had seen batting cages in Japanese drama and always wanted to try. Loved it! My technique was probably pretty bad! I did well at first but as I tried faster balls, I tired out and failed to hit any haha. We ended the day eating ramen outdoors with a view of Mount Fuji.

Day 10 (Sat) - Kichijoji, Ghibli Museum, Kichijoji Jazz bar
Woke up before sunrise for a run and to attempt to catch a sunrise picture of Mount Fuji. Streets were completely empty. Even ran to the famous Kawaguchiko Lawson for a picture. Headed back for an onsen bathe (note: we never used the hotel bathroom, and always went for an onsen bath throughout our stay in Kawaguchiko). Took a 7am bus to return to Shinjuku.

• Kichijoji: Arrived at Kichijoji at about 10. Wife really loved the vibes there. We we tried the Tsukuba suisan fish cakes which were really tasty, and my wife was intrigued that a line had formed at the adjacent store named Ozasa. Apparently they sell traditional Japanese desserts and locals would go there as early as 5am to get a ticket. So we queued and managed to get three boxes worth of the snacks! Tried the Amane Taiyaki fish-shaped bean paste snacks, another traditional dessert. It was a small lovely old shop.
• Ghibli Museum: Requires a long walk through Inokashira park. Ghibli was fantastic. Many people have been saying recently that it’s over-rated, and that it doesn’t cater to foreign crowds and most things are in Japanese. We similarly struggled with that at first. But we found out that if you asked the staff, they actually had English language exhibition booklets ready for every exhibition! That was a revelation. And we managed to understand almost all the exhibitions by asking the uniformed staff (except the short film, which had minimal dialogue anyway). I mentioned this to one foreign group and they were really grateful for that. But I saw that many other foreigners that probably came earlier were just bored or simply going crazy at the Ghibli shop. My wife bought the museum book (which also has English explanations of each exhibit), and we understood Miyazaki’s vision for the museum - to make it suitable for kids and adults, with no pre-determined route, allowing for play, exploration, to help people be inspired by the artists’ process. Through that, we saw that everything in the museum was intentionally designed, all of the exhibitions, cafe, shop, and garden. Reading that helped me appreciate and enjoy the museum much more.
• Roaming Kichijoji and Some Time Jazz bar: My wife and I split up to roam kichijoji. I checked out some sports shops and saw that their prices were lower than Ochanomizu. We reconvened for dinner at Sometime Jazz bar. I’m picking up Jazz piano but had never been to a jazz bar. Booked it one day before, but was sad that our table position only allowed us to see some of the drummer and the pianist’s expression. Still, it was a very cool place and we had a wonderful time. We only sat through the first half of the performance that night. Note that there are seating charges, so that + dinner added up to quite a lot. But we rationalised that this was akin to paying for a performance. Checked into our hotel in Tamachi.

Day 11 (Sun) - Tokyo Sky Tree, Shinjuku, Back to Kichijoji, Shibuya
It was a crazy day where we simply hit the places we wanted to revisit regardless of proximity. Headed to Tokyo Skytree in the morning to check out another Ghibli store. If you’re not going to the Ghibli museum, this is probably the best store available. Headed to Shinjuku to try curry udon, then to Kichijoji to try satou beef balls and dangos and to make some purchasing decisions on some sports equipment. Then we ended up at Shibuya (my favourite place!) to the mega Don Quijote and Tokyu Hands to shop for gifts for others. It was a lovely end to our trip!
Day 12 (Mon) - Back home
Best trip ever, says my wife.
Tips for travellers

• Spread out your itinerary: I originally planned to front-load all the must-see tourist stuff and leave the remaining days for shopping. But in May, Ghibli Museum was closed for two weeks so we had no choice but to schedule it at the end of the trip. That was a better arrangement. It felt that each day was distinctly different, and we could remember the highlight of each day. Also, be specific about where you want to go. Don’t simply put locations like - Visit Harajuku, or visit Shibuya crossing.
• Plan your itinerary in consideration of weekend crowds: Places like Tsujiki market, Ghibli Museum, Fuji-Q Highlands and other stuff are likely going to be very crowded on weekends. If you want to shop in Harajuku or Shibuya, try to avoid weekends. I opted to put the cooking class and ‘less-exciting’ Museums on weekends.- Use your telco’s roaming or get an e-sim: My wife and I split up on several occasions, so we already knew the pocket wifi was out of the question.
• Carry more cash than you think you need: In my experience, the cash-to-card ratio was about 40:60. Considering that all metro card top-ups require cash, you really need more cash that necessary. Sometimes even bigger restaurants are cash only.
• Bring foldable tote bags, and use lockers where necessary: If you’re buying stuff, packing them in tote bags makes it easier. Bigger shops will charge you for bags. All stations likely have lockers and they are really affordable and convenient.
• Travel light by planning to do laundry: I only brought four sets of clothing, and we did laundry every 3-4 days or so. It’s really convenient, about 200 yen per 30m wash, and another 200 yen for a 1h dry. It’s worthwhile to check if your hotel has coin laundry available.
• Buy wisely: Many people say the kind of things available at places like Don Quijote or Uniqlo are mind-blowing. Fact is, most of them are made in China or elsewhere. Almost 95% of the items we saw in Daiso were made in China. In fact, many items in Kappabashi street were made in China. You’re more likely to get value for money by buying a made in Japan item. Sometimes the shop will highlight if a product is Japan made. But other times, you have to scrutinise the fine print. Learn to look out for these three words in Kanji: 日本製. This is where the camera function of Google translate is immensely helpful. This was not available or widely publicised when I last visited Japan years back in 2016, so use this tech to your advantage and scrutinise the fine print!
• Plan your toilet trips if possible: If you know you’re headed to low-rise areas like Tsujiki, Fabric town where it’s just shop after shop, it’s going to be hard to find a toilet. Make sure you relieve yourself beforehand at the train station. But if you still need to go, try to find a multi-storey building and chances are, there’ll be toilets available there.
• Avoid queuing for food by timing right: In general, I found that most popular food places that required queuing had queues mainly consisting of foreigners. I wonder if this is because of the reddit/youtube/google maps review effect (not a lot of Japanese review on Google I think). Simply put, almost all food places open at 11am, so be there at 11, or have early dinner at 5pm and perhaps you may avoid the queuing.
• Scrutinise Google maps to figure out the different train types: for daily travel, there are local, rapid, and express trains. Local trains stop at every station. Rapid skips a few, and express trains likely only stops at key location. They make a big difference to travel time, and to your comfort. When Google maps recommends a route, scrutinise the detail to ensure what kind of train they are recommending. It gets confusing at the station as the platforms on your left and right may end up at the same location, but one could be a local train and the other an express train.
• Learn just 2 essential phrases: I know it may feel weird to some, but just learn to say thank you in Japanese (arigato gozaimasu). The other essential word is - summimasen - excuse me/sorry. Useful for if you need to exit a crowded train, or if you need to get someone’s attention. We survived with just these two phrases. As our cooking teacher told us - it’s better to say something in Japanese than say nothing at all. For the rest, you can use Google translate app’s picture function.
• Other misc tips: as mentioned, bring trash bags. Some shops explicitly tell you not to walk around and eat their food. So the solution is to finish the snack in front of the shop, and say, “summimasen, can you help me to throw this trash?” That helped us avoid carrying trash around a lot. As a traveller, you’re gonna get a lot of carbs (a bowl of udon + a bowl of rice....?) and fried food. Try to go to the basements of shopping centres and get yourself some fruits. Also, if you exercise regularly like me, you'd be concerned about getting some exercise. I did pre-trip research on pools/gyms/parks to visit. But visited none of them. I settled with a daily morning routine of 100 squats and 100 pushups. That and walking an average of 18k steps daily helped. I actually lost some weight somehow.

Observations

• Drinking culture in Japan: we saw quite a few drunk people in the streets. Some of them at the parks. I had never really seen drunkards much in my home country (it could be because I don’t stay out late). When we walked by a bar area with our cooking instructor, he told us some of the people in them had been there overnight.
• The Japanese sleep late: when we arrived, we were still on the train to our hotel at 11:50pm. But the train was still packed with salarymen in suits and many others. In fact, it seemed the later it was, the more crowded the trains.
• Foreigner influx and how they stick out: there were way more foreigners this time than the last I visited Japan. I tended to feel very uncomfortable when large groups of foreigners were around. I had to tell myself not to be hypocritical as I was a foreigner myself. But I suppose one reason is that there were many inconsiderate foreigners. Speaking loudly, making brash comments, and just not behaving like visitors. We saw a foreign couple snuggling each other on a picnic mat in a park full of families. And they chose a spot right next to the footpath. Many foreigners also leave unkind Google reviews for places just because it’s not up to their expectations. I get it, we worked for our holiday and are paying customers, and there is often an innate tendency to feel entitled or complain when something isn’t up to our expectations. But I think it helps to remember that we are like visitors in someone’s home. Be self-aware, don’t speak loudly, note the traffic customs, where to stand on the escalators, how to behave etc.
• Japanese men have great hair: the Japanese men’s hairstyle feels frozen in time. I didn’t see the typical Korean-inspired center-parted hairstyles in Asian guys nowadays. And balding men were a small minority somehow. As someone whose hairline is slowly receding, I was envious to see many Japanese men have wavy long hair deep into their 60-70s! My wife commented that the women's hairstyles were more or less the same - dyed, curled etc. But the men were rocking so many styles!
• Physical shopping still matters: as the days went by, my wife and I began to covet the "made-in-Japan" label, we realised that we hadn't done such window shopping in years since online shopping became prevalent. I also recall people commenting that you could get these goods online anyway, so why bother shopping in Japan. Well, window shopping makes comparison easy, it allows you to ask for recommendations, and enables you to know the items's size, feel, and look on you (if buying fashion items). It also makes discovery of new items possible. I'm not a huge shopper or a foodie, but in Japan, it's worth it to be one. I suppose it's a blessing in disguise that our honeymoon got delayed 3 years, as we now know our post-marriage lifestyles and the items we'd need in the kitchen/around the house.

Good evening people of reddit. Yesterday I ordered my first dagger, this one (if you cant pull up the link its the full size s with threaded barrel), and just had a couple of questions/confirming some info.

1. I wanted to confirm that it was compatible with most Glock gen 3 parts (specifically looking at putting in an apex trigger later)
2. I like to run safariland holsters like the 6378RDS on my range belt/home defense belt and with the threaded barrel Im not sure if I would order the 19x holster or the 17. I know that with most kydex holsters they have an opening that allows the threaded barrel to go through but with the Safariland the barrel rests on a post at the end of the holster and length can prevent it from working.

Thank you for answers and have a good evening!

Dearest Sister is a supernatural horror film directed by Mattie Do, released in 2016. Hailing from Laos, the movie combines elements of horror, drama, and social commentary to create a chilling and thought-provoking experience. This article delves into the storyline, themes, and critical reception of "Dearest Sister.

1. Plot Summary : "Dearest Sister" follows the story of Nok, a young woman from a rural village in Laos who moves to the capital city to care for her wealthy cousin, Ana, who is losing her sight. As Nok becomes entwined in Ana's life, she discovers a mysterious ability to communicate with the dead through her cousin's eyes.

Driven by greed and a desire for a better life, Nok starts exploiting her newfound gift for personal gain, connecting with the spirit world to gain insider information about the stock market. However, as her actions become increasingly manipulative, Nok unleashes a series of supernatural events and confronts the consequences of her choices.

1. Themes and Social Commentary: "Dearest Sister" explores several themes and social issues. It delves into the disparity between urban and rural life, examining the challenges faced by individuals who migrate from impoverished areas in search of opportunities. The film also tackles greed, materialism, and the corrupting influence of wealth, as Nok's pursuit of financial gain leads her down a dangerous path.

Additionally, the movie addresses the traditional beliefs in Laotian folklore and the interplay between the spiritual and material worlds. The supernatural elements highlight the presence of spirits and ghosts in everyday life, questioning the boundaries between the living and the dead.

1. Cinematic Style and Visuals : Director Mattie Do expertly crafts a haunting atmosphere in "Dearest Sister," utilizing slow-burning tension and atmospheric visuals. The film showcases the natural beauty of Laos while juxtaposing it with eerie and unsettling scenes. The cinematography and lighting contribute to the overall sense of unease and uneasiness throughout the narrative.
   
2. Critical Reception : "Dearest Sister" has received critical acclaim for its unique storytelling and compelling performances. The film marks the first time a horror film from Laos has gained international recognition, and it was selected as Laos' official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 90th Academy Awards.
   

Critics have praised the movie's ability to blend horror with social commentary, emphasizing the themes of greed and the clash between tradition and modernity. The performances, particularly those of Amphaiphun Phommapunya as Nok and Vilouna Phetmany as Ana, have been widely acclaimed for their authenticity and emotional depth.
Conclusion: "Dearest Sister" is a gripping supernatural horror film that not only provides scares but also explores social issues and cultural beliefs. It showcases the talents of director Mattie Do and the strength of Laotian cinema on the international stage. With its atmospheric visuals, compelling storyline, and thought-provoking themes, "Dearest Sister" is a must-watch for horror enthusiasts looking for a unique and haunting cinematic experience.

Thing to include: Crispy honey generation area. Two large cauldrons which, when filled above a certain mark, bleed off top liquid down pipes into a central mixing cauldron where crispy honey can be made and harvested. Experiment w/ tube running underneath cauldron to be the one carrying lava, such that player can stand in the honey-filled central cauldron and safely mine crispy honey blocks from there. 

Things to include: Blue, glowing pink, glowing orange, and rusty red moss (emphasis on rust moss if nothing else). 

Thing to add: In picture 1, the main temple has a breathing chamber with a jellyfish bowl on top of it (there's another one on the opposite side of the screen but it's harder to see here). It's a 4 block wide upside-down "cup" suspended by chains. Houses and larger rooms inside the hell base could use these both for decoration and to hang heart lanterns/mana star lanterns inside of. 

Me (25 M) and my girlfriend (24 F) have been in a relationship for 1.5 years and we both love each other a lot. We are also in a long distance relationship for the last year due to our job locations. We do meet every 3 months.
When we are in the same city, we have lots of stuff to do. Cook together, shop together, go on dates, be intimate, watch a movie sometime. But the moment she goes away, everything starts to fall apart. We stop talking to each other to a level that I get to know about important events in her life through our common friends.
Our hobbies/likings don't match either. I am a big time movie and TV geek while she is more into arts and crafts. We have only one hobby in common, trekking, which I have tried to do together as much as we can. But again the big question remains, "What would we talk about if we eventually get married?". We are at the age that a marriage seems very likely but I just don't feel I can keep going throughout my life talking to a person who doesn't have a clue what I am rambling about.
In my defense, I have tried to help her open up about her hobbies, likings and inclinations. I have tried to learn more about those topics but she still doesn't talk much. When I try to have conversations about something they are quickly dismissed by remembering some chores that she has to complete in the next minutes.
I guess I am expecting deep conversations every once in a while, on any possible topic tbh, but all I get are two or three line conversations. She cannot hold a conversation with me. The moment I challenge any idea or put forth a differing opinion, she either gets offended or she stops the conversation.
I don't see any way I can make this relationship work through shear will. But, since I love her and she is a fundamentally good person, I want to try my best and would be greatful if internet strangers could lend me some of their wisdom in this matter.

eg14000 — 05/13/2023 2:59 PM
Nuggets about to sweep the Lakers. Cry about it
​
Laker Fan — 05/13/2023 3:10 PM
I am not concerned about the nuggets
I was more concerned with the warriors and grizzlies
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eg14000 — 05/13/2023 3:12 PM
Warriors had major chemistry issues. Grizzles were Young and injured. Denver is about to Crush the Lakers.
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Lakers Fan — 05/13/2023 3:13 PM
bruh you must not remember when the lakers beat yall last time and the team was worse
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eg14000 — 05/13/2023 3:13 PM
Bruh that was 2 MVPs ago
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Lakers Fan — 05/13/2023 3:13 PM
AD is too fast and skilled for Jokic
No one on Nuggets can guard lebron
Reaves and D Lo cooking yall
Schroder will have jamal murray locked up
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eg14000 — 05/13/2023 3:14 PM
AG can guard old man Lebron . He just got done Guarding KD
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Lakers Fan — 05/13/2023 3:14 PM
Yeah and KD was dropping like 46 on yall
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eg14000 — 05/13/2023 3:14 PM
"Schroder will have jamal murray locked up" Listen to yourself
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Lakers Fan — 05/13/2023 3:15 PM
schroder locked up curry
You think he cant guard murray
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eg14000 — 05/13/2023 3:16 PM
Didn't curry average 27/5/7?
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Lakers Fan — 05/13/2023 3:16 PM
With like his worst shooting percentage ever
From 3
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eg14000 — 05/13/2023 3:17 PM
schroder is a terrible off ball defender. He is going to give up Layups against Jokic
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Lakers Fan — 05/13/2023 3:17 PM
That didn’t even make sense
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eg14000 — 05/13/2023 3:19 PM
in basketball. There is this thing called a "cut".... it's how Jokic averages a Triple double. If you can't guard the cut you can't guard Jokic. The Lakers have no ability to guard Cutters at the level of Denver.
​
Lakers Fan — 05/13/2023 3:19 PM
Lmao
Okay bro
Youll see
Dont blame refs after either
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eg14000 — 05/13/2023 3:20 PM
The Lakers are going to get crushed so hard the Refs won't be able to do anything
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Lakers Fan — 05/13/2023 3:20 PM
Okay
Im not concerned
​
GAME ONE NUGGETS VICTORY
May 16, 2023
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eg14000 — 05/16/2023 10:01 PM
Lakers played a lot better than I thought they would. Still lost. They have no chance against the best player in the World
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Lakers Fan — 05/16/2023 10:02 PM
i love that all you nuggets fans dont see how fucked you are with these adjustments made lol
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eg14000 — 05/16/2023 10:03 PM
LMAO you think Rui on Jokic is going to save you???????
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Lakers Fan — 05/16/2023 10:03 PM
yes
because AD helps
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eg14000 — 05/16/2023 10:03 PM
(ROFL Emoji)
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Lakers Fan — 05/16/2023 10:03 PM
laugh now cry later
who you putting on ad
LOL
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eg14000 — 05/16/2023 10:04 PM
AD is hot and cold. He always has been. He had a great game tonight. Could go for 15 points next game.
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Lakers Fan — 05/16/2023 10:09 PM
he will be hot because jokic plays 0 defense
im not debating basketball rn enjoy the 1 win

I have been getting back into shape. Former 20-40 mile trail runner, but now have kids and I am restricted to about 3 days per week training, mostly on roads nearby. I am looking for a running program, maybe one of the automatically calculated ones online. Here is some background info:
52 years old. Just self tested vVO2Max at 6:10 min per mile (treadmill, heart monitor). I used to be below 5 min. Have been losing weight, target is about 8% lower weight. Very good running mechanics, have never had a running injury. Usual shoes, Vaporfly. Pretty happy with them. Available nearby: flat quiet road, hills up to 12% grade, school track, treadmill that goes to 12.5 mph. Resting pulse 48, max 192. When in my best shape, resting goes to about 42. Can train very hard. Do not like long slow runs (8+ miles) unless excellent scenery.
My recent training has been only 2x per week (mostly time constrained). 6-8 x 200m sprints, 4 x 1 mile intervals. Thus, probably need to add one longer run per week.
My goal is to get below 5 minutes for a mile and about a 17:30 5k. I estimate about half of the improvement will come from weight loss.
Do you have suggestions for a running program that would fit in 3 days per week? I remember places like Daniels seemed think you had a ton of time available 5-6 days per week.
Thanks.

Hello, I've been working on revising an old magic system to fit with a new story, and I wanted to get some feedback on if my system works well or not. It's a long one, but feel free to hit me with any questions/comments/criticisms about it! Please excuse the inconstent capitalization though, I'm working on it.
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An Occultists’ Guide to Boundaries
All of reality is built on boundaries. A boundary is a metaphysical container for both the physical matter and the concepts defining an object. For example, imagine for a moment a ball sitting on a table. Now imagine an invisible skin, wrapped tightly around the entire surface area of the ball, encapsulating all the information and properties of the ball. Now imagine that invisible skin suddenly disappeared, leading the concepts that once filled it to just drift away. They might be infused into the table, making it ‘bright red’, or ‘round’. They could get into the air making it ‘bouncy’ or ‘safe for children ages 2+’. The stuff that makes the ball would still be around, but the ball itself wouldn't. For an object to exist, it must be distinct from the things around it. Without boundaries separating ‘thing’ from ‘thing’, the whole universe would be just one big ‘thing’.
This is the basis of Occult practices. Being an occultist starts with the manipulation of boundaries, as the space within them is where magic is performed. That is why, when an occultist begins their studies, the first power they gain is usually simple telekinesis, as manipulating the position of a boundary is good practice. We tend to call those who never move past that stage ‘espers’ or ‘psychics’ or something of the same effect, and even though they are just scratching the surface of what the occult can do, they can get to be fairly powerful.
A basic, widespread (but not universally applicable) law of boundaries is that they have a natural resistance to being manipulated, which is in most cases tied to the surface area of the object. An interesting application of this is that there is functionally no difference in trying to telekinetically move a cardboard box and a solid steel cube of the same size. However, when it comes to destroying a boundary, the difficulty of doing so is all in the ‘complexity’ (this is hard to define, but it will make more sense later) of the object. Stronger occultists will be able to destroy or create more complex phenomena at larger scales.
Since the creation, destruction, and manipulation of boundaries is a fundamental skill for occultists, many different exercises have been devised to help expand a beginning practitioner's skill in doing so. One popular one is trying to destroy the boundaries of small objects, such as playing cards or snack foods, and quickly capturing all the escaped concepts by creating a spherical boundary around them. This can lead to some delightfully non-euclidean objects, especially when you destroy and re-capture the concepts of two different objects into one boundary, but it is a very dangerous way to practice. One could end up not capturing the concepts in time and end up turning themselves ‘easily tearable’ or ‘appetizing to ants’ without the knowledge of how to reverse that.
The analogy of a weightlifter in training may be the most appropriate since an occultist’s ability will grow like a muscle over time, only one that doesn’t plateau in strength. But like any muscle, they will get tired if they go on too long, which will greatly increase their chances of causing an accident.
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Reality and You
Reality is everything that is real. Every object, entity, or phenomenon that exists and is not fictional is a part of reality. If you can measure it, it's real. There aren’t very many other ways to describe this, but humans generally have a solid grasp of what is real and what is not due to being real themselves. However, not all parts of reality are equal.
All magic happens inside a boundary wherein reality is measurably degraded. There is a special, magical, and incredibly complex machine that can measure the ‘level’ of reality within a boundary. The baseline level, the level wherein everything that isn't the occult takes place, was set to be 10 on the Non-Reality Scale (the NRS for short), and anything below that is magic.
But why would one want to degrade reality? Hypothetically, when someone is pouring themselves a cup of water, they would prefer a fresh, clean glass, to one that hasn’t been washed in years. This is because they want to avoid contamination. Spellwork has the same idea, where to pour what they want into a boundary, the occultist first has to ‘wash’ everything they don’t want out.
That is not to say that less reality is always better. A reality that is too low level can mess with spellwork, or cause a dangerous accident if the boundary is flawed. This is because to complete the final step of the casting, one must reintegrate their degraded reality back to the baseline (that is, if they want anything more than an intangible illusion). The extent to which one would want to degrade reality fully depends on what they want to do with the boundary they are creating. For example, one did not want to use it for drinking, but it would be perfectly fine to use it to water a houseplant. And most people would not be bleaching out a clean cup before drinking from it, even if it has a bit of dust in it. In the same way, in most cases, an occultist does not need to purge absolutely everything from their boundary, and will instead want to selectively degrade reality to a certain level.
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Mana, the Soul, and Concepts
A Concept is the abstract idea of the matter within a boundary. For example, the boundary of the ball I described earlier contains the physical matter of the ball, but it also contains the Concept of the ball. The Concept can be imagined as an index of every piece of information about the ball, with each piece being called an Attribute. Attributes of the ball’s Concept could include its weight, size, bounciness, flammability, or any other property that one could measure from the ball. Being a Concept and being an Attribute are not mutually exclusive, and it is relative to what the caster is referring to at the moment. Technically, all Concepts are Attributes of the Universe, which contains everything, so it's best to think of each Concept as a part of a greater whole, which is in turn made of smaller parts. With this comes the idea that a concept cannot be created or destroyed (of course, there are those annoying exceptions), only constructed and deconstructed.
The basis of spellwork is simple. Create a boundary, degrade its reality, fill it with a bunch of Attributes to form the Concept of the phenomena you want to create, reintegrate reality, and presto, you have a spell. This process is fundamentally the same for most spellcraft, making a well-practiced occultist very versatile. However, it is the complexity within each of these steps that requires research to understand, skill to navigate, and training to pull off.
Every living thing has a boundary, and every living thing has a Concept. Except for living things, we tend to call the Concept a ‘soul’. There is no real difference, and there is a constant debate over what has a soul. Bacteria are generally deemed soulless, robots and magically animated constructs have been rhetorically argued to have souls, and there is debate around what stage of birth or death does the soul of a corpse become just a Concept. But it is generally agreed that living humans have a soul, and within the soul, there is an Attribute called mana. Mana is the fuel that is required to perform anything to do with the occult. Manipulating boundaries, degrading and reintegrating reality, and working with concepts all require mana.
Almost everyone starts with a very low amount of mana. Most humans only have enough to perform small miracles in moments of great stress, such as a parent being able to lift a car to save their child or a firefighter obtaining enhanced perception in a burning building. Mana, however, can be grown over time like a muscle. After continuous depletion of one's mana reserves, the maximum amount that can be ‘refilled’ during rest increases.
There is a widespread standard for measuring how much mana one has. It requires a half-inch diameter, clear glass marble enchanted with a Concept that causes it to output light in a manner directly proportional to the amount of mana poured into it. An occultist can push as much mana as they can into it and measure the irradiance of the light produced by the marble with a photometer to find their maximum output.
Besides mana, the soul also contains Attributes for one's familiarity with other Concepts. Concept familiarity determines how well an occultist can summon, read, or build a concept. Familiarity is gained in several different ways. For example, an occultist skilled in the art of pyromancy may be a grad student who’s spent many sleepless nights studying thermodynamics and exothermic reactions, a person from an icy village who spent a lot of time near the fireplace as a child, or a serial arsonist who thinks fire is incredibly beautiful. All of these people would be familiar with the Concept of fire. In other words, research, experience, and passion are all equally valid ways to gain familiarity with a concept.
There are three ways to get a concept into a boundary. The first way is to summon it, using one's will to draw in a concept and use it directly during spellwork. This is generally considered the best method for any occult performance for various reasons, as its only real downside is that it requires a very high level of familiarity with the Concept one is trying to summon. However, it requires no material components to pull off and does not produce any backlash (an important idea that will be explained later). This is why most mages choose to spend their life within one field of similar Concepts, increasing their familiarity with a small group of Concepts, trading some versatility to be able to pull off Concept summoning efficiently.
On a side note, there is the popular idea of the ‘four elements’ system of magic. While the idea of earth, air, fire, and water being base elements of the universe has no real truth to it, the fact that they are things one commonly interacts with and are fairly visual makes them perfect for summoning.
The next way to obtain a Concept is through reading. This method takes an object that has a desired Concept or Attributes, destroys its boundary, and adds said Concept or Attributes into the spell. Reading allows an occultist to work with a Concept that they aren’t familiar with, although they should have some level of familiarity if they want to work with it safely. Unfortunately, reading requires you to destroy a material component and leads to backlash. The result is that spellwork done with Concept reading needs more preparation than summoning, and may require rare or expensive materials. The amount of material destroyed, however, does not matter when trying to read a Concept, so long as it is enough that the occultist can reasonably focus on it. For example, if one was trying to read the Concept of gold, the casting will be the same with a few specks of the stuff as with an entire bar.
The final method, Concept building, is the least. Building requires a mage to take several different Concepts and use them as Attributes to construct an entirely new Concept. For example, the Concept of ‘the superpower of human flight’, which doesn’t exist naturally, could be built using the Concepts of ‘weightlessness’ and ‘propulsion’ and ‘human will’. Building has all the drawbacks of reading compounded, so it is very rarely used and requires great skill. But the power to make fiction reality, even more so than any other type of magic, is incredibly appealing, and many occultists spend their entire life trying to bring a permanent concept into the world.
Concepts are not completely objective. For example, a modern person likely associates the color black with things like death, darkness, or despair. In ancient Egypt, however, the color had a more positive connotation, being associated with fertility and festival, since black soil, not white, is where one could grow the crops. Concepts work similarly, and different ones can have different meanings to different people from different cultures and backgrounds. It is completely unknown how modern magic continues to work with so many different ways of looking at the same Concept.
​
And Now for the Bad: Backlash
Once again, imagine a ball sitting on a table. Remember how I said destroying its boundary could lead to the table and air around it lead to the table and air around it obtaining some of its properties, or as we now know to call them, Attributes? This is also how I described some of the side effects of improperly doing the ill-advised boundary exercise from the boundary section.
Both of those are simplified examples of backlash.
When an occultist performs a Concept reading, they are picking out the Attributes they want and exposing the rest to outside reality. If left uncontained, the rest of the Attributes will diffuse into other nearby boundaries, giving the caster’s surroundings (and likely the caster themself) properties that they likely do not want. This is a backlash. Worse, as the free Attributes look for a new boundary, they randomly and chaotically deconstruct themselves into simpler Attributes (for example, the attribute ‘fire’ may deconstruct into ‘heat’ and ‘light’), multiplying the number of Concepts diffusing over time, increasing the scale and chaos of the event.
The resistance of an object's boundary to being destroyed scales somewhat on the complexity of the Concept it contains, and therefore, more complex objects that would cause bigger backlashes are naturally harder (as in they require more mana) to destroy. This acts as a sort of natural safeguard for the occult, stopping just any aspiring wizard from accidentally rending cities uninhabitable or wiping large swaths of land off the map.
Be they geometric shapes or runes in an unknown language, the main purpose of a magic circle (or any shape for that matter) is to contain and safely dispose of backlash. Over time, occultists have found ways to take common aspects and successfully break them down into their most harmless components, allowing them to be dissipated safely, and history has provided a good base for the backlash of just about any spell to be properly contained, with a bit of research. A very skilled occultist will be able to properly command backlash to harness it and enhance their spells, controlling the decay of Concepts to find simpler Attributes needed for the main spell or to set off smaller secondary spells to support the original.
Another way of dissipating backlash is with somatic action, or using one’s body in the same fashion as a magic circle. The danger of this should be clear, but it allows the caster to dissipate backlash without having to prepare a magic circle.
​
Reintegration and Types
The last part of any occult spellwork is normally the easiest. You just have to stop trying. For sorceries and rituals, firing off a spell is just like firing a bow. If creating a spell boundary is notching the arrow, and gathering Concepts is pulling back and aiming, then the final casting is simply letting the arrow fly as it will. There is some skill involved with the speed and grace of an occultist's mental disengagement, but for the most part, reality itself will do most of the job as it brings one's Concepts back to a level 10 NRS and makes the phenomenon ‘real’. This means that after one creates their fireball, all they have to do is bring it into existence and define its parameters, and throwing it costs no extra mana on your part. That also means that a fireball, once thrown, cannot be altered or taken back unless one creates a completely new boundary to counter it.
I mentioned sorceries and rituals. Those are two of the three ‘types’ (not to be confused with ‘schools’) of the occult.
The first is sorcery, the stereotypical form of magic. Sorceries use summoned Concepts and don't require materials or magic circles or somatic actions. If you see a wizard concentrate for a moment, and something weird happens afterward, you saw a sorcery.
Next are rituals. Magic circles, material components, somatic gestures, and multiple casters are all hallmarks of this type, and it includes anything that creates a new boundary but isn't sorcery.
Lastly, there is enchantment. Enchantment either creates an instant phenomenon on another material, or a permanent artifact meant to be used repeatedly. The idea is, that the spellwork one does is not within a completely new boundary, but is done by adding or removing Concepts from a pre-existing boundary. For example, an occultist could permanently add an ‘unbearably cold’ concept to the blade of a sword, or instantly change the enemy's skeletal system to be ‘highly combustible when submerged in blood’.
​
Schools and Applications
There are quite a few ‘schools’ of the occult, general categories occultists put spellwork into. Schools can include things like ‘divination’, ‘necromancy’, or ‘war artifice’.
An example of a specific school of magic is called ‘name sympathy’. Almost all human souls have a ‘name’ Attribute, as it is standard practice to name your children in modern times. One’s name generally is one of their most prominent Attributes, so it is not a difficult task to target a person by using just their name. This is where the school of name sympathy shines, using traces of one’s person to find out their name and affect their soul directly. Sometimes this is used for good and is especially effective when used in conjunction with the ‘healing’ school of magic. Most times, though, it's used for magical murder.
Immortality is not a school of magic per se, since it is just one Concept, but that concept is so hard to build that it takes as much research and effort as any real school. The thing about immortality is that it is very hard to balance. The human body is made up of millions of small parts, all of them living and reproducing and dying constantly. Sure, one could just enchant themselves with the Concept of ‘life’ and apply their mana, but that would immediately give them cancer in every organ. And since there are no real immortal creatures to read the Concept from, in practice, an occultist seeking immortality has to build the Concept from the ground up, and doing so has taken so long and has been failed by so many that most believe that it's completely impossible.
An occultist may completely copy a concept into another boundary. That is called conjuration, one of the other greatly researched struggles of the occult. In most spells, the physical material attached to the Concept within the boundary is left out. When an occultist tries to completely recreate an object with mass or energy, (for example, if you were trying to use gold to make more gold), they are trying to add more matter to the universe than there originally was. And they will accomplish this, thoroughly breaking the law of conservation of mass. However, reality hates when its laws are broken, and it will attack the conjured object, destroying it completely within moments. The whole problem with conjuration is trying to make it work long enough to be applicable for anything more than its primary use for split seconds of attack or defense in the middle of battle, especially given how mana intensive it is. A promising line of study has involved trying to create an equal amount of ‘dark matter’ at the same time as the actual conjuration, balancing out reality.
​
All About Artifice
Artificing is another application of the occult, but it is an expansive field that warrants a section of its own. It is generally defined as using enchantment to permanently imbue an item with a Concept.
Artifacts are the most accessible way to use magic. Unlike sorceries and rituals, which require magical knowledge and practice to use, the only real requirement for activating an artifact is to push mana into it yourself. And since everyone with a soul has at least a small amount of mana, anyone can pick up an artifact and use it with minimal training. A good example of this was the ancient Greek phalanx, which was not only the name of the military formation, but also what they called the combined magical gear used by the people in it, comprised of animated spears that automatically targeted vital points, shields that inflicted magical fear, and helmets that stopped arrows in their tracks.
Potions are another example of artifice, though technically they belong to its subschool, alchemy. A potion is any ingestible, magical liquid that gives a beneficial effect to the drinker when they apply mana to the unmetabolized quantity of it within their bloodstream. Solids versions of this concept are called boluses, and gasses are generally deemed too hard to work with. Potions can only be activated by the drinker, meaning there are not many ways to create alchemical poison without convincing one's victim to course mana through their own bloodstream.

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/ThrowraHusbandDoesnt
(OOP has since deleted her account)
My husband(38M) doesn't think I(39F) love him
Originally posted to relationship_advice
Original Post May 22, 2023
For reference, let's call my husband Jack and my daughter Lily. Jack and I've been married for about ten years, dated for five, and have a four year old. Overall we've had an absolutely wonderful relationship Sure occasionally we hit a rocky spot but we always recovered stronger than ever. Most of our friends look at us as the ideal couple too. I've never doubted that he loves me and I've tried my best to reciprocate it, even when he wasn't home often during our first five years of marriage, he came back home after that since he got a promotion. We have great communication and I already am planning on how to approach this with him but a second opinion would be nice just in case someone else already dealt with something similar.
Yesterday he was doing some very acrobatic exercise in our backyard. He does this every day even when he's almost delerious from fever, which was hilarious to see. I joked that he'd leave me to become a monk. He just froze for a second and responded, 'maybe, after Lily grows up'. Sure this could just be playful ribbing but I had a bad feeling in my gut and kept poking at him. He almost fell down, which is very odd since he has excellent balance, made me leave so he could focus on his stuff. That especially made the feeling even worse.
The rest of the conversation happened at dinner. The gist of what he said is something like, "the signs are all there". He mentioned that we haven't been as romantic or intimate as of recent. He even said something about less attraction on my end, which isn't true. Then mentioned 'weeks of silence', I don't remember this happening at all.
frequent absence, I haven't been going out much except with my friends for dinner dates. Which isn't often just four times a week for now. Something about initiation. The only one that somewhat made sense was how I was cutting couple time for friend time or game time, which doesn't happen all that often. I can only count two or three times last week where I did that and we still had an hour or so out of planned three or four to spend together so he shouldn't have an issue. What he aiad next honestly broke my heart and I almost started crying right there.
"I don't think you love me as much as I do you, but that's fine. We'll raise our kid, grow old and exist till we die. I already have a few hobbies that make me happy. I can't make you responsible for all my happiness, that would be unfair"
And he said that with the most deadpan expression ever, like we were talking about the weather or how our day went. I tried to make him understand that this hurt me but it didn't seem to land at all. He just kept staring at me blank faced and I honestly felt terrified. Afterwards we slept in the same bed after he put Lily to sleep and cuddled like normal which was so jarring to me. I've put a lot of work into keeping us together, so to hear this from him has hurt me deeply.
It's even worse because what he describes sounds exactly like his parents. They're two old bitter people who stayed together to raise him and still stay together for god know why. I've never seen them be loving towards one another and only once towards him. He was always very particular about that stuff and said he never wants to have something like that. A few years ago he said that he was so glad we weren't like that and that he was so lucky to have someone who actually loves him and won't spontaneously stop because folded clothes wrong. Which made me fall in love all over again to know how much I meant to him.
And then there's all that's tuff he said and I honestly can't remember soemthing like not talking to him or silence. But I remmeber how his mother used to forget things. Like she'd do soemthing wrong, get that wrong thing pointed our and then forget it ever happened. One time she was saying something about how my kind of people are less likely to succeed in business and should become a housewife, which is wierd because she's a lawyer and he certainly hasn't said anything like that and is very proud of my passive income stuff.
My husband called her out on it stone faced like yesterday and defended me, I didn't like that he said that I made more than him at the time cause I was afraid his mom would say something, but she backed down after that. She forgot about that incident a day later. Couldn't recall that lunch or what we did or anything sound that one hour period. He didn't want to subject me to that but I insisted since family is pretty important to me so we went back a few times. This same thing has happened at least two times, the target switching to him, I'm proud of him for standing up to her and she can't remmeber any of it. Eventually I got a begrudging approval from her, his dad didn't care too much and was, 'Whatever makes you happy,' from the start, which was nice.
I'm crying my eyes out at a friend's house, I wanted to take Lily with me this morning but she was in the middle of some class with Jack helping her do some activity the teacher gave them so I just went on my own. I feel so heartbroken right now and I don't know what could have happened to make him think this way. I've been having a great few years since he's been home the last five or so years and lightened th e load on taking care of Lily.
What happened? Does anybody have expeirence dealing with something like this? This is a complete breach of my trust and I'm hurting so much from what he said, any advice is helpful. I plan on returning at lunch and dinner for Lily's sake but I'll try to talk to him after I've settled for a day.
Tl:dr Husband of 10 years doesn't think I love him anymore and we have a 4 year old. Has anyone dealt with this before and how did you deal with it?
Edit 4hrs in: I've cancelled my plans for this week and told my friends nothing about why. One of my close friends who is very friendly toward any husband, asks for him every time I go to their houses, and spoils and plays with my daughter then suggested it was my Husband and said he was controlling and other things. I told to stop but she didn't and nobody in the group did anything to stop her. Some even joined in.
I've cut them all off, can't believe this. .
.
. Edit 5?Hrs in:
Working on what to say tonight, also working on replacing friend time with date nights. Somebody said I have to "Make him fall in love with me again", that's a goal.
.
.
. Edit 7 hrs in: Went back home, mostly finished the list of things to say. Found him repeatedly smashing his shoulders into a tree and actually denting it. Lily was watching and eating ice cream. She seemed tired but didn't want to go inside yet.
I'm making dinner tonight.
Update May 23, 2023
Screenshots of since deleted update
This went better than expected. I wish I could say there were tearful embraces and we spent a passionate night rekindling our marriage in record speed like in a lifetime movie. But no. Still, this is what I'd say is one of the best case scenarios.
Firstly, I'll clarify from the other post on a few things I've noticed that people are getting blatantly wrong. Most seem to think that I:
Are gone without him several nights a week - 2-3 times max four was a unique case and I mistated that.
Don't initiate sex - I'm the only one initiating and I get turned down half time time which, as you can imagine, is doing wonderful things to my self worth. I literally have to spend minutes 'convincing' him to get any more than 3 times a week.
Cancel plans with him regularly for friends - I want to say no but I'm beginning to doubt my own judgement.
He isn't invited out that often to friend night - He is invited to every single friend night, he just prefers not to come.
Affair - I'm not going to parties or clubs or anything like that,that a hard boundary I set for him as well, the get togethers and dinners are usually held a few houses down at my former friend's house. A ten minute walk away.
Are seemingly disinterested in him, his interests or your family life. - I don't even know how to respond to this I'm tired.
Why are you laughing at him being delerious and still having the will to train? - I was next to him with a towel, a inflatable fall bed and water. He would literally drag himself with his fingers to train if he could, I think I'm entitled to a little chuckle after that much safety prep.
Now onto the update
That could've gone better but I can say with confidence that I've done everything I could when it came to yesterday.
Dinner was very good Jack and Lily loved their meals and afterward I did what a commenter suggested and asked Lily
"Do you love mommy?", she answered yes.
"Do you love daddy?" the yes was bigger.
"You think daddy loves mommy?" another adorable yes.
"You think mommy loves daddy?"
Silence.
I felt like I got slapped. I'm not sure if it showed on my face because Jack immediately came between us and rubbed her hair. He gave a very loud, boisterous 'Of course she does,' picked her up and carried her to bed while tickling her.
Pretty sure I was still reeling from that revalation but I snapped out of it. Weirdly enough he seemed annoyed when he got back, which is strange since he rarely ever shows something like that. Anyway I remembered my points and pretty much unloaded everything in a half blubbery mess.
I said that I was sorry for everything. That I got too caught up with old friends and I was blinded by all the activities and catching up and get togethers that I didn't realise how much time I was cutting from our plans and our time and family. I was sorry for leaving thud morning and trying to make this about me when he's trying his best for our daughter. 'I've been a bad partner I know.'
I told him that I really appreciate that even if he has doubts he's still willing to be true to me and I'm proud of him for having the courage to communicate because it really needed to be said and how I couldn't imagine how hard that was for him.
That I wouldn't be associating with that group again because I realised what they really thought of him and that I was stupid not to have realised it earlier.
That I know I hurt him and broke his trust and I'm sorry he had to go through all of this and that I never noticed because I was too caught up in my life when I should've been caught up in our lives and I'm sorry. That we should be a team and that I don't only want to stay together for Lily but I want him. If he had anything else to say or any doubts to please say it because I'll geniuinely listen this time and won't get defensive.
Cue handholding over table
That I do really care for him and I was so so sorry that I haven't shown it recently and to please just give me a chance. Just one chance, that's all I needed. To give me the the opportunity to show that I love him.
He just took a few breaths and said general issues that I pretty much initially dismissed. The intimacy was because I apparantly rushed it every time and it felt less like making love and more being a living, breathing dildo. That hurt a lot, I swear I felt chest pain right there and I don't understand what I did to possibly make him feel that way. He mentioned how little I spend on Lily as well and that he'd been trying to get us together more often, only to have me come home tired half the time.
He also said that it would be a while before he trusts me enough to say anything that might "send you running to your friends", which hurt considering the fact that I gave them up for him but I mostly understood where he was coming from now that I wasn't feeling attacked by what he said. It sitll hurt when he added, "You'll change for a week or two then change right back and forget it ever happened."
I told him that was fine and all he had to do was let me show him how much I care.
All in all that was great. All the planning paid off and it felt like a weight was off my chest. I even did the small gestures of comfort stuff during it like holding hands and meeting eyes. I could almost see a little change in his expression, mainly the eyes. He was blank faced throughout the whole thing but I could tell he was fighting to not break down since he rarely trembles. One of his tells is when his fingers start to spread out like some silly claw shape, that certainly didn't happen before. I knew there was hope!
I've already booked a babysitter on his free day and have a reservation for a fancy restaurant that he likes. He agreed to go out with me with a small nod and I honestly felt ecstatic. I immediately hugged him and even though he was a bit stiff at first he returned it! It's been a while since we've felt together now that I think about it and the feeling is different and bubbly.
We went to sleep in the same bed and got excited when he held my neck and brought us closer and stared my eyes while touching foreheads. Then disappointed when he just went to sleep there.
I know it'll be a long road and if everything goes well I'll touch on how my needs could be met a bit better. Sex seems to be off the table because as a commenter said, "you pestered him while he was stressed so much that it's a chore to him now and forcing it will only cause resentment". If he initiates, great, I'll try every now and again and not neg him if he doesn't seem into it. I've realised that my ego really took a hit when he refused when I initiated and that I had to beg him other times just to feel loved by the only person whose opinion matters when it comes to my body. We both have work to do, expecially when it comes to communication and I'm already looking for a therapist or counselor who fits our criteria. Also got the books recommended to find our love languages and making this work.
Since this morning I've tried my best to initiate regular cuddling, which he seems to prefer over sex at the moment, also little hugs from behind whne he's cooking or kisses and pecks make him jolt him sometimes. I don't know how I could've missed this. He even turned his cheek to the side one time but that might've been by accident. He's been very receptive otherwise and our daughter seems to be happier for it.
Might update one more time at the end of the week and that should be it. Thanks for everyone who helped me come up with points and what to do.
And to all those people who say he should leave me. Seethe. It isn't happening.
Tl:dr Second chance!
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

I had visited once as a kid, as I have family in a small town in Baden-Wuttermberg. We flew in to Stuttgart then drove down to their town, and spent some time seeing things nearby like Hohner and other sights in the area, but that was more of a 'spend time with family' trip than sightseeing.
My cousins and I are all adults now, and I know that one lives in Leipzig and the other in Berlin. I'd like to visit them, and see what can be seen in eastern Germany, but this would be my first time planning such a trip myself. This is all planning stages for now, as I need to know when they are free to visit, but I would either visit this summer before mid August or in SeptembeOctober time, depending on what everyone's schedules are.

1. Would it make sense to fly direct in to Leipzig/Berlin, or would it be much different time/cost wise to fly in to whatever's the cheapest city for international flights then take a train in? I'm not sure what the best airports are for Americans flying in (if there's much difference), or how far there are from stations that have the high speed connections. Being in America, I'm also not used to the idea of reliable train service, but if it makes sense I would consider riding the high speed rail as part of the experience of the trip personally.
   
2. Is having cash necessary or would I be fine going mostly cashless? I would keep a few hundred euros on hand anyway for emergencies, but I'd prefer to just use my card that has no forex fees and so I don't have to keep track of bills. Also, would getting cash at the airport be fine or would it be better to get it somewhere else? When I visited Japan the forex rates at the airport were as good as anywhere else, but that may not always be the case everywhere.
   
3. Would it make sense to see things outside of those cities? Berlin and Leipzig would be the main things to see, since that's where my cousins are, and I know both are rich with history and things to see and do. In terms of time in country, I am thinking a minimum of 10 days in country, since I rolled over a good amount of PTO from last year. If possible, I would like to see some sites that would be outside of those two cities. Off the top of my head, Wittenberg and Prague would be neat for historical reasons. If possible, I feel like it would be important to see one of the camp memorials in Germany or in Poland. But I'm not sure on the feasibility or logistics of making such trips from where my cousins live.
   

Those are my main thoughts for now.

It was called disassociation, the change in my life had been so traumatic that I just... kind of existed, largely doing things on autopilot, only engaging in things when necessary.
I hadn't wanted to be a Kobold, part of me kept thinking, 'this isn't real, I'm going to wake up any moment now'. But I never woke up to anything but this reality. Rather than tackle this like a normal, sane person, I just withdrew and didn't engage.
"Hello, I'm Ruuk." I said. "I haven't exactly been here the past year and some."
The way everyone welcomed me to the warren, not like a stranger finally being accepted, but as a family member who was gone for far too long- It felt good to just... connect.
While I sequestered myself to my shack on the edge of town, the warren had been organizing, fixing things up, just generally working their asses off to make things as comfortable as possible for people. The result was kind of an anachronistic mess, but it worked. Roads had been turn up and repaved, taking a mess of a car-reliant town and streamlining it so people could actually walk from place to place.
The Artificers had taken cars apart and reused the tools to make a tramway that was convenient for everyone. Why bother with cars when half of us can't even reach the pedals? With the restructuring of the town building by building, done simply because it needed to be done, the surrounding houses could be utilized more efficiently.
The reason why my house was largely untouched was because it was still my house, there was no committee ruling that demanded I give it up. It was understood that I'd know what I wanted to do with it when I was finished being a hermit.
Well, more than a handful of people suggested I just have a full-on mage tower, I realistically didn't need that much space, and even then, the things I wanted to keep were so few that having an entire four-story house to myself with more rooms than I realistically needed.
"Besides, when you get to Level 15, you can create your own demiplane." Tudru, the Fighter, remarked.
The plans for such a hypothetical mage tower put it toward the center of the town, just north of the central tramway. It would be convenient to get to me, and it would be convenient for me to go anywhere.
"Plus, well, we've been wanting you to be the Sorcerer on the Council." Goss, the Sorcerer, remarked.
"The what on the what?" I asked.
The Council, as I understood, was comprised equally of Humans and Kobolds. Kobolds with a set Class were put into a position to discuss the needs of the town. No matter who it was, no matter the Class, there was a representative, even if they were the only one present.
There was no Sorcerer Councilor yet, in spite of us being fairly common.
"Why me?" I asked after being given a significantly less truncated explanation.
"Because you're the most competent one out of all of us, are unbound by preconceived notions of how things work." Goss replied. "I mean, I would have never thought of using Magic Missile on that boulder, or staggering the hits like that so nobody got hurt."
I rubbed the back of my neck. "I mean, anyone could have done it." I said.
"The fact of the matter, Ruuk, is that most of us have assumptions based on a bunch of books in a situation that we still don't really understand. I choose to believe that another world has made contact with ours, and we're the ones burdened with responsibility. That doesn't mean I am correct."
They further broke down expectations.
"I am in charge of infrastructure." Rekka, the Artificer, spoke. The goal was to transform the town into an entirely self-sufficient place. Since we were still technically under quarantine, we couldn't get supplies in or out, not without the government allowing it through. The dissemination of magic items and technology that was essential to our continued existence hinged on understanding where to put it and how to ensure it was used correctly.
Barbarians and Fighters- in spite of Kuvli and Tudru being the only ones- were in charge of town defense.
"We work in tandem to find the best solution to a threat." Tudru said. "While thus far purely theoretical, we have options for if and when monsters show up. Let's not forget the Dire Rat that came out of the mine."
"Dire Rat?" I asked.
"Big fuckers." Kuvli said. "Ever seen a nutria? That fucker you killed was even bigger."
It was understood that if monsters came about, we would need weapons. Artificers took care of that, we had a small cache of magically enhanced swords ready and available, as well as every gun in town somewhere where people could grab and react.
Bards, when we would eventually get one, would be in charge of communications and entertainment. With the quarantine in place and us having no actual income at the moment, short of going out and stealing shit, we were largely on our own with what we already had.
"I am in charge of ensuring the town's spiritual needs are taken care of, and the adjudication of our laws." Galax stated. "Given the high probability of Gods existing, and the likelihood of demons, ghosts, and other beings eventually showing up, This includes discerning which deities are existent, and which ones are not. So far, we've only had minor to moderate luck with divine magic. Prayer is necessary for it to work, as we have to explicitly petition our Gods for it every long rest."
"Aren't you biased toward Bahamut?" I asked.
"Of course." He said. "Any anyone who comes to the Temple is welcome to hear anything I have to say on the matter. The biggest problem is figuring out how it all relates."
Next was Merti. "We Druids are in charge of ensuring this town's sustainability and harmony with nature." She said. "That includes recycling materials, ethical and sustainable logging, hunting, farming... Essentially, as long as it pertains to nature, it's our duty to ensure we don't shoot ourselves in the foot."
"Well, while you're busy speaking for the trees, we're responsible for going out there and making sure nothing is coming to kill us. That and getting meat." Tatla spoke. "We're also in reserve in case of a combat situation, we defer to our Fighter and Barbarian for that."
"When we get a Rogue, they will focus on security. As the closest thing we've got to that, I've got plans set up for establishing a wall around the town, just outside the Anomaly, so that people can't just waltz right in, and to prevent any wild animals or hypothetical monsters from getting in." Nakk the Locksmith who might actually be a Rogue said. "And for the record, I've tried everything I can think of to awaken to a Class, and I'm reasonably certain Rogue isn't one." He paused. "That being said, I am offering lockpicking lessons to anyone who thinks it might help."
"Considering we just share and share alike, I don't think we need to worry about our Rogues." Someone I wasn't familiar with yet said.
The way Nakk reacted to his statement, avoiding his gaze, made me wonder why he reacted that way.
"Nakk, why do you look guilty?" I asked.
He looked at me with wide eyes, and for a tense moment, it seemed like he was about to run. I walked up to him and gently put my hand on his shoulder. "It's better to get it out now, rather than later."
He looked away. "I... I've been overcharging everyone since I moved in." He said. "On top of that, I've used my skills as a locksmith to steal from people."
He expected us to get angry, and a fair number of us did.
"Honor and Correction to the enemies of Justice and Good." Galax spoke, "Nakk, is the confession you have spoken true?"
"Y-yes." Nakk said softly.
"When you moved here, was it your intention to steal from us?"
"No." Nakk said. "I just- I had some bad debts, I was trying to escape, start a new life. But then they found me, told me if I didn't pay off the debt, they'd make me regret it. So I stole, but no matter how much I took, the debt never seemed to shrink. When we were all transformed, I was so happy because I could finally escape. They couldn't possibly hurt all of us, and with the quarantine..."
"Nakk." Galax spoke. "Is it your intention to atone for your crimes?"
Nakk nodded. "Yes."
"Then I shall ease your burden, that you no longer are swayed into such temptation." Galax took a pouch out of another pouch on his belt. "This is powdered silver." He said, several eyes widened, clearly understanding the significance of this. "Bahamut, Grandfather of Dragons, Grand Master of Flowers, Justicemaker. Before me stands a penitent soul seeking to atone for his sins against his fellow people. If he hides from you, you are the one who shall bring him into the light. If he hides his face, you are the one who shall reveal it. If his tongue betrays him against his people, you shall be the one who frees it from evil machinations."
He threw the powdered silver upon Nakk, and as he did so, he roared.
"NOMAG SVABOL UI WHEDAB RANNOX EKESS MITNE!"
The silver flashed with brilliant light that, somehow, didn't hurt to look upon, and then Nakk was engulfed in flames. Before anyone could panic, the flames swirled as if caught in a whirlwind and flew into Nakk's open mouth.
For a moment, Nakk was suspended in the air, and then he fell onto his feet, then onto his hands and knees. He gasped for breath, faint wisps of silvery fire escaping his open maw.
"What the fuck just happened?" Kuvli asked.
"That was the Atonement spell." A Player remarked. "You touch a willing creature whose alignment has changed, and if you're powerful enough, you bring them back to their original alignment. In this case, maybe neutral leaning toward evil back to good."
Galax nodded. "You have caused suffering to your people, Nakk. I have firmly put you back on the path to righteousness. You will no longer fear the reprisal of your warren, but will openly accept it. You will no longer hesitate, you will do what is necessary to make amends. Though I can do this as many times as I deem necessary, for you, this is but one chance. In the guidance of Bahmut, go forth and sin no more."
"I will. Thank you." Nakk said.
"I do not need thanks, I am simply the one who interceded on your behalf. Zhin mrith filkiati."
With that out of the way, the meeting resumed.
"Ruuk, as the Sorcerer Councilor, you would be responsible for the responsible use of magic. As every Sorcerer has unique spells, there is a level of versatility that the Warren can use. It would be your duty to advocate for your fellow Sorcerers, to ensure we do not end up taking advantage of them for our own selfish desires." Rekka said. "What do you say?"
I gave it some thought, then nodded. "I'll do it." I said.
What the Council does, as I learned, is convene every week to go over current events and how to deal with them, and occasionally plan ahead on hypothetical situations. We were each paired with a Human who was chosen by other Humans to serve as their representative on specific matters.
My partner is Dave. Dave is a Pagan, he practices magic as a form of spirituality. He is also, currently, the only Human with any level of magical skill, being able to use magic items fairly easily without it blowing up in his face.
"The only reason why I'm not a Kobold is because I want to be an Elf." He said. "I'm hoping that learning more about the Anomaly on the magical end of the spectrum of scholarly pursuit will allow us to do that." He paused. "I will also settle for Dragonborn. You and Galax are currently the best chance of either."
"Why would we want to do that?" I asked.
"Well, presently, only Kobolds are capable of magic, meaning that Humans in the Forgotten Realms are different from us."
"The what?"
"Common setting for D&D." He said. "Now, back when this was all make-believe, Earth was mentioned as being existent in the D&D multiverse, meaning that something decided to mess with us." He paused. "Look, from what I've been able to gather, Earth is in a part of the Prime Material plane that has very weak connections to other planes, we lack magic because of this. However, we are currently in a dome of sustained magic-"
"It's actually a relatively short column." I corrected.
"-which means something has connected us, and specifically us." He finished.
"Alright, so this raises several presumptions, like the notion that someone did this to us for a reason. Do you have any ideas as to what that reason would be?"
"Interplanar invasion, the astral plane bleeding into ours, maybe we're crashing into another plane, maybe a wizard got lucky. We don't have enough information."
I sighed. "Look, let's just get some work done."
We got started on requests, most of them were just questions on if a certain spell was viable for use, some were requests to run experiments with certain spells. With Dave and I debating back and forth, we got them done by the end of the day.
​
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[←Chapter 47] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 49→]
The blade forging left Sorore exhausted, the failure left her frustrated, and the cold gave way to fear as the night drew closer. As day faded into dusk, she reflected on a morning that had been as full of ups and downs as the mountain paths they’d travelled. The very fact that she had been able to use magic, that it had crashed from the realm of fairy tales and church warnings into the very real everyday occurrence was already an earth shattering experience.
Then she’d moved water with a thought, seen monsters fall from the sky, and watched the paladins cleaving them in two. Her head spun with the strangeness of it all, the sheer onset of fanciful things blurring and mixing together with reality. She began to wonder what else might be true, of the fairy tales in the myth she had heard on the seas in her father’s ship. Of the old folk stories of Erratz, often dismissed as nothing more than old wive’s tales.
A new world had opened up before her, and she wasn't sure to be fascinated or terrified of it. Certainly the paladins didn't want any part of it, and they certainly didn't want her to be involved. And from everything she knew of the church scripture, they were absolutely right. She felt the danger, the power of the matter, and knew that it was only a small fraction of what it could do. She even felt a certain degree of fear towards the masked man in the black robes, as respectful as he had been as a tutor.
At least he didn't use a switch to reminder of when she had failed.
But even in the murk of her disquiet in that moment, she also felt a smouldering frustration underlying it. The knife had been hers, her project, her duty, and she had resolutely failed to craft it. Part of her shifted the blame elsewhere - it was a new technique she had picked up over the course of an afternoon. Efrain himself had said as much, even going as far to say that he hadn’t expected her to do it.
Now that was something she didn’t like at all. When people expected her to fail, despite all her efforts.
However, that resolution meant little now, given that she had been excused from the effort. At least now the mage had the basic shape to work on. She let her hand drift on the rough stone walls of the church. Thousands of individual perfections, many thousands of years old, the stone functioning despite it. Perhaps it would be enough, the basic, overall function, but she recalled all the pittances and channels carved in her vision of the knife.
She knew what was driving the doubt. It was curiosity, that sticking bug that clung to her, despite all her prayers to the contrary. She just couldn’t seem to shake it, despite the ‘assistance’ of church teachers when it reared its head particularly high. She had expected the snap across the palms from Efrain when he drew that piece of wood. It had been a relief when he’d tossed it over his shoulder.
The thought was an unworthy one, she immediately considered. She should’ve been grateful to the various priests and scholars who’d spent years teaching the twins. Some had even prepared their entire lives, just on the chance they’d meet the beloved Bequeathed. If they were strict, then so be it, it was for the sake of preparing her and Frare for their duties.
The church was once more a buzz of activity as people prepared for the night ahead. She and Lillian found their way to the altar, attracting only minor glances. The villagers clearly had gotten used to their presence, although some offered a respectful and perhaps wary gaze for Lillian. One of Frare’s eyes opened as they approached, but he quickly returned to his half-rest leaning on a pillar. Aya was still very much asleep, chest gently rising and falling under the furs where Sorore had left her.
Sorore sat on the wide steps, put her chins on her hands, and began to think. It was a rather dangerous proposition, considering her recent failure. She had a tendency to ruminate on them, and often her twin would find her staring plaintively before loudly disrupting it. This time was no different, as before anything but impotent frustration could boil over, he plopped down behind her back.
“Stop that,” he said, “I can hear your teeth beginning to grind.”
She leaned back to lie upon his lap, despite the admonishment she heard in her head about proper sitting position. His eyes were closed again, and she followed suit, letting the minutes wile away as night crept into the word. She was shaken out of this reverie by a loud pop and Aya’s yelp. The girl was both mid yawn and bright red as both the paladins and the twins turned to look at her. She insisted that she was fine, and took to straightening her clothes subconsciously.
It was a mere temporary distraction for Sorore, who was largely engrossed in considering the knife. Rather than merely wallowing in her problems, she was invested in its function. She could almost see the stone parting before her, revealing the source of that smothering cold behind the door. Maybe if she had tried one more time, maybe if she reduced the complexity of the form, then increased when she got the basic shape. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
It was all of very little use. She was inside her head once again, at a complete loss of what to do. Maybe, within the grand archives of Angorrah, the answer was contained in a dusty scroll. Some offhand fact or technique of forging, long forgotten in the darkness of the shelves. But these were several weeks of travel away, and she wasn’t sure that she’d see the next sunrise. So then, what could she do to get them to bridge that gap? Just one more day, that’s all they needed, to hold out until the next sunrise.
Nothing. That was the simple truth of it - she was a lost little girl in a small village surrounded by terrible things. The thought was not a comforting one, and she wriggled, trying to nestle deeper into the legs of her twin. Aya by that point had come to sit down beside them, looking greyer as the dark came on. No wonder, for she knew she all felt the chill roll forward as the fog waxed in the night.
Another meal of common fare came and went, though Sorore noted that many soldiers were taking care with it. Perhaps it was common practice, to relish what very well may be your last meal. For her part she found it rather difficult to keep it down, the coming dread of the hours ahead offsetting her appetite.
The faces of the paladins had settled into that implacable, stoney cast once more. They quietly rebandaged their injuries, readjusted their armour, and set to sharpening their great blades with long deliberate strokes. Sorore idly thought that their sleeping faces were significantly more pleasant, if rarer to see. Thus it was that they crossed over into the late afternoon, where the light was quickly fading.
“I would like to take one last little walk,” Aya spoke up, “before… you know.”
The paladins looked up, their eyes twisting with barely veiled misapprehension at the request.
“My lady…” Lillian began.
“We can’t,” Niche said, “Not now. Not so close to dark.”
“Just barely outside the door,” said Aya, “Just so I can see something other than the church. Just to stretch my legs.”
The paladins looked at each other, looked back, and set their faces.
“Well, I suppose it can be accommodated,” Lillian said, “only just outside the church, and only for a few minutes.”
Her tone warned of dire consequences if these conditions should not be strictly adhered to. The children all collectively nodded and the party of five set out past the doors. The barricades within the church had grown in size and strength, at least as far as Sorore could judge. The villagers, under the supervision of the soldiers, had proven diligent in the daylight hours. She could only hope that it would be enough for the onset of the creatures, should they breach the church.
She had a dread certainty that it would indeed be breached, sooner or later. Though she hadn’t heard of any specifics, whispers of just how many of the things lurked outside were passed around. It was a small stroke of fortune that the windows were narrow and ensconced in stone. The last thing they needed was one of the flying beasts to crash through the glass.
The faint red-pink cast to the grey outside was beginning to fade into blackness as the sun shrank. Occasionally, the banks of fog would strip away, revealing the abominable silhouettes standing still past the wall. They would close just as quickly, removing any clarity, and leaving only the icy fear in its place. The remaining soldiers and villagers watched them with anxiety and exhaustion.
The garden around the front of the church was almost non-existent. Most of the flowers had been trampled either in preparation for or during the course of the battle. The only things left relatively untouched were the central beds around the side of the church, which grew produce for its tenants. Some trees still stood, showing minimal damage from the fog and its creatures.
The five ducked under the boughs of the closest one to the doors. The additional chill brought by its shade was a trifling concern at the present. The green, muted as it was by the overcast sky beyond, was a lively anchor in the cold, dead mists. Such was the comfort of the place that Soroe let herself lean back onto the bark of the tree and eyes drift closed.
The trunk was solid, a comforting sensation that seemed to offset the malevolence of the fog.
Enough so that Sorore began to wander the netherworld of half-sounds and sights that characterised pre-sleep. They all wandered with her, some staying, some peeling off, guided by their own demented logic. Little and less was coherent, but it took her away from the horrible reality of what lurked a few hundred steps away all the same.
She fell deeper into this other-state, letting the visions wash over her as the real world slipped away. Time became a mercurial concept, which led her to question when exactly everything had settled. But settled it had, into a hazy blackness which the eye could not pierce. There, in the distance, a bright ribbon of twisting warm color glowed. A piece of fresh-forged metal perhaps, the day’s task going straight to her head. Or maybe it was the remnants of another dream that day, one that was already a blurry memory.
From a great distance, she heard a crash, unmistakable in its ringing clarity. A forge hammer singing out a song of its own, for now merely a rhythm. It shifted in tone as it rang out through the abyss once more, adding progression, then melody, all written in singing steel. Sorore’s fingers began to drum out the sequence on her thighs as she felt it reverberate through her. Then, with a sliding screech, she was left alone in the half-dream, with nothing but darkness remaining.
Still, the bright memory of the song remained, and in the darkness another voice took shape. It was a deep, rich, and handsome sound, that spoke of a confidence of such immensity that you were convinced its wielder could do anything. Sorore had never heard the likes of it before, either on the docks, or in cities, or on the open waves.
“Come now,” it said, “this little thing is giving you trouble?”
Sorore’s eyes slowly open, pulling her from the dreamscape back into the dreariness of the real. Aya had her knees pulled to her chest, leaning back into the trunk. The paladins, tired but alert, scanned the endlessly shifting banks of fog.
Sorore had a fleeting impression that the answers were just beyond the pale mists. Maybe something would come through, parting it like thin curtains, and impart the inspiration she needed. Or maybe a whole set of schematics will drop into my lap from the sky, she thought with dark irony.
The vision was quickly fading into the abyss of forgetfulness. Perhaps Aya had shared it once more with her, but she was in conversation with the paladins. Not wanting to interrupt, Sorore looked at her outstretched legs. Past them were a handful of leaves that had fallen despite the summer of the valley, with a couple long decomposed to nothing but their skeletons.
She reached out to grasp at the leaves, looking at the yellow-grey veins that raced across its surface. The large ones spread from the central stem and the hundreds of smaller capillaries that interconnected them. Holding up to the sky, she screwed her face, trying to discern the details of this piece of nature. After a few moments of tepid stillness, the clouds parted for just a moment, letting a ray of sunlight lance down to catch their hill in its beam.
For a second, the leaf seemed to glow, shimmering like metal catching glare.
And Sorore had her inspiration.
With that, she sprang to her feat so fast that one of the paladins almost jumped. Both looked around with questioning and slightly alarmed expressions. Sorore didn’t have much of an answer - in fact her mind was going so fast that she could hardly even articulate the solution that had been revealed to her.
“The- the- the-” she said, snapping her fingers, trying to put words to the idea, “I know what to do. I need to find him.”
“Find who? The mage?” asked Lillian.
The fiery certainty of the thought sent Sorore tramping out onto the grass, leading to calls from the paladins to slow down. She didn’t bother to wait for them, consumed by this need to find the mage, the knife, to try again.
The forge was more or less empty, save for the few labourers packing up the tools and ferrying them into the church proper. With a furious set of questions, she gleaned that he’d vacated the premises some time ago. The paladins called for her to stop as she doubled back, but she couldn’, not now.
The scenery seemed to blur as she rushed through the church doors, past the bustling barricades, and to the captain’s tables. A somewhat perturbed Damafelce told the young girl that Efrain had been seen entering the door at the end of the church. With that, Sorore broke out into a run, past the altar, through the door and down into the darkness of the Catacombs.
She stepped out onto the sand floor, the members of her party at her heels as she tried to seek out the path to the black wall. She stumbled more than once as she felt her way along in the darkness, fortunately with no skeletal interruptions this time. Down the stairs and into the long corridor she came, the smothering cold increasing as she pushed forward.
As she had surmised, Efrain was there, just about to start whatever process pried apart the stone. The tip of the blade was raised, pressed into the stone above his head. He turned at the approaching footsteps, cocking his head at the lack of isolation. Sorore didn’t even wait for him to say something, instead thrusting out her head for the crude metal knife.
“ I know- I can- I can do it now,” she said, breathless from the long run from the surface.
Delicately, Efrain removed the metal from the stone, and looked down at her. There seemed to be a questioning quality to the look, at least as far as she could read the emotionless mask. He looked at the cat, then back to the girl, and then to the rest of her party.
“How?” he said, “ If I let you undo this, we may not have enough time to recreate it before the attacks begin.”
“Leaves,” she said, putting a hand on the wall to steady herself as her lungs complained, “it- was the leaves.”
“The… leaves?” he said, “ All right. Stop, take a few breaths, and start from the beginning.”
And so she did, explaining how she sat under the bows of the trees, the half-awake dreaming, and the skeleton of the leaf.
“I got it. I was trying to build the whole thing out myself, all at once,” she said, stumbling over her words, “instead of letting nature do what it wants. The metal wants to come together - I don’t need to force it into its final shape. I just need to build a- a-”
She snapped her fingers at the air, trying to reach past this new blank as Efrain regarded the knife.
“You want to build a frame,” he said, “and let the metal fill in the rest of the empty space.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he turned over the knife, hilt first, to the girl.
“Well then,” he said, “let’s hope you know what you’re doing.”
She did, or at least she hoped she did this time. Within moments, the metal was flowing over her hands like a cold stream, but instead of trying to sculpt it, she began to spin filaments outwards. Like the skeleton of the leaf, little veins of metal stretched outwards, stopping abruptly, and folding back into themselves. If it had been hard before, it was now brutal, the smothering cold dragging at every attempt to shape the material.
Hands trembling, sweat beginning to bead on her forehead, she managed to split the metal into dark fingers. All she had to do was resist gravity and prevent it spilling over the imaginary bounds of the shape. From those dark fingers, snaking vines spread out and connected with each other. Slowly, slowly, branching and arcing, they filled in the skeleton she’d created and fused.
The final product wasn’t altogether too different from what they’d created during the afternoon. The shape, a heavy chisel tip, tapering out to twin furls like a plough, a longer tang. Sorore, half blind by stinging salt, didn’t fail to notice swirling furrows spreading across its surface. She had no idea how she’d managed to etch those designs, or perhaps the metal remembered, just as the stone did.
“Well,” said the mage at last, “suffice to say, I am impressed. Now, hold it up.”
She did so, despite the exhaustion of her arms, the tip wavering as his finger touched its point.
There was a rush of something, extending over the surface of the blade, stopping just short of her hand. It was like a coat of mail had been pulled taught, the links aligning at the same time, snapping together in a regular structure. From the tip of the chisel, down to the tang, the metal shuddered and settled. By the time it disappeared under her grip, it was rigid as any steel tool.
The mage gently took it from her, holding the blade up to that little flickering light above his head. Flicking it this way and that, he seemed to find whatever he was looking for, and pressed the tip to the wall. Sorore, despite her fatigue, was practically exploding with excitement. She’d done it, not only conquering the task, but she was about to see what was behind those dark walls.
Then, before he pressed the blade into the stone and drew it down, he paused.
“Paladins,” he said, voice quiet, “it would be best to take the children back into the church.”
Lillian frowned and put a hand onto her hilt as she stared at the door.
“What?” said Sorore, aghast, “ But I-”
“No buts,” said Efrain, “we don’t know what’s behind this door. It may be dangerous, it may not. But I strongly suspect it’s not something you would want to see. Very well done, little one, but this is something I should deal with on my own.”
The tone of academic authority was not an unfamiliar one to Sorore. But unlike in virtually all other occasions in her life, she attempted to object. Before she could speak more than a few words, Lillian took her by the shoulders, her mind apparently made up. All three of them were carted up the stairs as barely contained rage began to bubble up inside her.
“Do you think we should…?” said Niche, gesturing to the surrounding stone.
“No, not yet,” Lillian said, “putting aside everything else, we still might need him.”
Niche nodded and said no more.
They had made a steady pace, overtaking half the hallway as the scream of metal on stone echoed out. It was followed by a grating rumble as presumably the doors opened. If the temperature below the surface was cold when they came, the resulting drop was freezing. The mist that rose up behind them whispered things in long mournful sighs as the surroundings began to buzz with what must’ve been magic.
Then, from up the stairs there was a long, terrible wail.
[←Chapter 47] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 49→]

Barber’s Star, 2382

Captain Jayme Dawson sat at the centre of the bridge of the destroyer NFNS Anders T. Christian and grinned to himself with a proprietary satisfaction at his crew’s performance during the drill he’d just run them through; tensions along the border had been growing for months, and he’d be damned before he’d give his people anything less than their best chance at survival. Destroyer Squadron 193, part of the task force sent to defend Barber’s Star, was picketing the system and watching the hyper limit. The Christian’s closest fellows, her sister ships Invincible and Redoubtable, were each a quarter of the way around the system in different directions, millions of kilometres away. Were she to encounter any trouble, the Christian would be on her own for hours.
Dawson saw his sensors officer stiffen in her seat, and rose an eyebrow. “Share with the class, Ensign?” he asked, pulling up the tactical plot on one of his own displays…and nearly had a much more unseemly reaction. Even as she was reading out the situation in a shaking voice, he was running through his options in his mind. “Th-three light cruisers just jumped in, Sir. They aren’t broadcasting any identification—power spike. They’re raising shields.”
A corner of his mind noted how much professionalism she managed to regain by the end of her report, but he had more important things to worry about. Those cruisers were not supposed to be in-system, and clearly had intentions far from peaceful. “Comms, get word to Admiral Miranda and broadcast the standard challenge. Ops, get me shields, and bring the weapons up; looks like we won’t be able to get out of this one if they turn out to be hostile.”
The look he gave at his crew was the grin of a cornered wolf. When they returned it with similar expressions of their own to the beat of the General Quarters alarm, he felt a strange assurance they wouldn’t disappear into the black alone.
​
Admiral Carmen Miranda listened to the briefing with an incredulity she couldn’t hide even behind the habitual snacking she partook in. After she squawked her distress, the Christian had engaged the cruisers and her signal had abruptly cut off. She’d made the obvious and prudent assumption Dawson had been defeated and his ship destroyed and sent a small force out to reconnoitre the area. Expecting to find the wreckage of a destroyer, they’d found a field of debris surrounding three light cruisers floating dead in space. Lifeboats screamed for help. The enemy’s lifeboats. He’d sent his report off to FLEETCOM at Charlemagne. The raiders had been defeated, themselves…but where was the Christian?
​

Barber’s Star, 2495

NFMS Hera’s Dream wallowed through normal space, as was the merchant ship’s wont and lot in life. The uneventful flight had left the Second Mate Sammy Ortega, officer of the watch, yawning. He hated routes like these, and glanced at the plot with a well-hidden resentment; Nine (the creatively-named ninth planet of the system) was on the outskirts of the Barber’s Star system, and it left him and his captain’s ship vulnerably near the hyper limit for nearly two-thirds of the trip. The perfect place to get jumped by pirates. Still, though, the system had grown into a defence nexus since the War of ‘82, and it needed the precious metals Hera’s Dream carried. It also meant that Fleet ships weren’t exactly rare in the system.
None of that, however, was much consolation when four pirate ships lit off their drives and began to burn hard to intercept the ponderous fleet supply ship travelling with no protection but the light asteroid shielding that allowed it to travel at a small percentage of light speed. Even before Johny Nelson, the man sitting at the sensor console, could give his trembling report, red icons littered the plot as the pirates’ fire-control radars swept across the unarmed ship’s hull.
“They’re hailing us, Sammy,” Nelson said quietly, the shake in his voice flattening into a disbelieving facsimile of a person’s speech.
Gritting his teeth, Ortega told him to accept the signal. A slovenly face grinned back at him through the command chair’s display when they made the connection. “Cut thrust and prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be met with force,” he stated, then grinned savagely and licked his lips. “A lot of force.”
The connection closed even while the overwhelmed second mate opened his mouth to respond; before he could turn to the wide-eyed woman at the helm to order their acceleration halted, to give in to the pirate’s demands, Nelson stiffened. “Another contact, Sammy,” he reported. “I don’t think it’s a pirate—the vector’s all wrong. And she’s fast, Sammy.”
“A fleet patrol?” Ortega asked.
“No IFF,” Nelson replied.
“Get her on the horn, Johny,” Ortega ordered.
“Nothing on the comms…huh? That’s weird,” Nelson said, then leaned forward. A strange dread filled Ortega; why wouldn’t she answer hailing? Nelson’s eyes widened. “She’s got her shields up, Sammy!” he exclaimed.
The plot said she had enough power to be a destroyer, but even a true warship of her class should be cautious about engaging this many pirates! On she came nonetheless, shields glowing a curiously menacing red. On she came, hundreds of thousands of kilometres from either the Hera’s Dream or any of the pirate ships. On she came, speeding toward the centre of the pirate “formation.”
When the first beams reached out, Ortega reflected on the courage of that single ship. It was a rare thing, shown by very few even within the navies protecting the disparate human planets. Even as he snapped orders to the woman at the helm, who obeyed in a sort of fugue state incurred by the stress of the situation, he contemplated the stranger’s fearless behaviour.
Like a tiger to its meat, he thought to himself.
The unknown ship flew incredibly; Ortega thought that the helmsman must’ve lived that ship, for how she pirouetted and slipped mere metres aside to avoid the pirates’ beams. Never did that ship fear their guns or numbers, and when their beams inevitably impacted, the entire bridge crew of the Hera’s Dream cringed, expecting those ruby-red shields to collapse. To their astonishment, they held strong, and hot lances of fury struck out from that unyielding bubble, rending the aether. The crew could only watch and shake their heads as this strange, astounding ship cut the pirates to bloody shreds.
Just as quickly as the stranger had shown up and begun to fight the pirates, then the fighting was all done; the pirate fleet was shattered, and the unknown ship had won. Ortega instructed Nelson to attempt to hail the stranger again to thank them, but once again their hailing went unanswered.
“She’s matching velocity,” Nelson reported, his voice filled with the awe and stunned surprise the rest of the crew were feeling. She pulled alongside close enough the hull-mounted cameras could get a good look at her when she dropped her shields.
When she did, the only sound on the bridge was that of three souls collectively inhaling.
The hull of that strange ship was irrevocably marred by the scars of some long-ago encounter; thirty holes ran clear through her, and a large gash left one side missing much of its hull panelling. Every spacer aboard the Hera’s Dream looking knew, without a doubt, that when the ship sustained those grievous wounds everyone aboard had died.
“Mr. Ortega,” the helmswoman said, finally gaining her voice. When his eyes met hers, she gave him a shell-shocked grin. “Have you ever heard the tale of Dawson’s Christian?” she asked, then pointed at the monitor. Ortega was confused for a brief moment, before his eyes returned to the feed and widened.
Painted in white lettering across what seemed to be the only surviving hull space on their side, they could see the ship’s name…Anders T. Christian. That realisation seemed to course through not only them, but also the stranger; instead of flying away, though, the hull itself began to fade from reality before their very eyes. The stunned, silent crew of the Hera’s Dream laid witness to the grizzly sight that was the view of the outer compartments of the shattered ship. Bodies laid askew, floating in the zero-G vacuum, limbs burned off by the edges of beams or torn off by flying shrapnel.
Mercifully, further detail was hidden by the dead crew’s shipsuits.
The bulkheads began to shimmer from perception as the bridge crew aboard Hera’s Dream began to tremble.
The last thing to slip from view were the bones…dead white bones of Jayme Dawson and his crew.
There are stories of the Dutchman, the Celeste and Barnham’s Pride, stories of the Horseman and the Lady at his side…

Kuiper Yard, Sol, 2500

“...but the tale that chills my spirit,” Ortega finished, “and I swear to God it’s true, is the tale of Jayme Dawson and his crew.”
The spacers sitting around the table shared disbelieving glances, but in their years since working aboard Sammy Ortega’s ship, they’d never heard him tell any tall tales. Besides.
It was comforting to know that merchants had a protector.
Even if it was just a vengeful ghost.
————————————————————————————
ِ A short story I wrote based on the song Dawson's Christian. Highly recommend y'all give it a listen. Critique is welcome.

It’s kind of scary to even admit this, but I’m hoping that if any community on Reddit can empathize both with where I am and where I want to be, it might be this one.
I adopted a kitten in summer 2021. I was living alone, deeply struggling with depression and dissociation, and having a lovely living creature in the house with me has helped a lot. Her mom was a feral cat who wandered into someone’s backyard, and she needed a safe home. She’s my baby, and I tell her that probably ten to twenty times a day. I tell her I love her, and we slow blink at each other a lot when we’re both chilling. She gets the fanciest dry food, good vet care, spends a couple of hours a day on my lap on average, sleeps with me at night, all winter she has a heating pad going on her chair. We have meowing conversations with each other. I say all this somewhat defensively, to give some evidence to support the idea that I love her and care for her well most of the time.
But what do I actually do about the times when I resent her, get frustrated with living with her, or even wish I hadn’t adopted her? A lot of my healing at this point has to do with re-associating to the negative emotions of fear, anger, jealousy and resentment that I have been pushing away for most of my life in pursuit of being “good”. I am trying to stop telling myself that I can’t have those feelings or that I’m bad for having them, but I don’t know what to do with them when I actually accept them and let myself feel them.
For example, she is having some diarrhea right now from trying out a new food, and she is not doing a great job of cleaning her own butt afterwards, unless you count wiping poop and anal gland secretions on my rugs and bedspread as doing a great job. It’s making the house smell a little like poop all over the place, and in between my washing machine being broken and my rugs being colorful and patterned enough to hide the stains so I can’t quite find them, it feels like everything is contaminated with poop and will never be clean enough again. Usually I can deal with the fact that there is litter scattered all over my floors and it’s unpleasant to walk around in bare feet despite mitigating this with a litter mat and a rug near her box to capture the scatter, but today it’s bringing up a lot of frustration and missing the days when I only had to deal with my own, decidedly less scatological mess.
I feel for her- it’s rough on anyone, human or animal, to have tummy problems, and it’s not like I can explain to her that she’ll feel better soon or if she stays sick I’ll take her to the vet, or ask her to wipe herself on some particular towel or cloth I can wash instead of a rug. I tried shutting her out of my room last night when I found two more big wipes of poop on my bedspread, and she does sleep in the living room sometimes, but then when she was at my door in the middle of the night I felt bad and let her in.
I’m struggling this weekend with some other emotional things- feeling lonely, and feeling really uncertain in my relationship with my therapist, the one person I see every week- but otherwise, I started ketamine therapy a month ago and it’s been really successful. I’ve been able to do more, care for myself, even start to think about the future in a way that was simply impossible a month ago. But I’m afraid of these feelings causing a backslide, which to some degree might be inevitable as a pendiculation of growth and then some contraction or difficulty as part of the healing process.
It also scares me because she’s kind of like a practice child to me, and I’m terrified that I would have these feelings about a potential future human child as well, which I really want someday in my life. If I can’t deal well with them, in thirty years, will my kid be posting on a futuristic cptsd forum about their mom feeling resentment towards them? Is that something I can prevent? Is that something everyone has to deal with in some sense, a cost of existence that every once in a while, the people responsible for caring for you will feel it to be a burden? Or is that something I need to overcome and not feel or express if I’m to be a (good? perfect? acceptable?) parent?
I would really appreciate responses from people who are fully responsible for another living creature’s life. Please be kind- I feel vulnerable in sharing these darkemore difficult feelings, and I really am trying to do the best by myself and by my baby.

I just finished watching the Eastern Conference Finals and can't get this thought out of my head:
Why the hell aren't teams using big men in the modern game?
Before you jump to answer it's because old-school big men aren't fast enough to guard the lanky guards who can drain threes, hear me out.
Imagine Shaq out there in the game I just watched. He outweighs anyone on the court by 100 lbs, he's taller than everyone by at least 3-4", and he takes up about 10 sq. feet.
Let's break this down by offense first: If you pass him the ball, he will score 1-on-1 95% of the time against the little dude guarding him. If you double him, he'll score 60-70% of the time. If you completely collapse on him, that frees everyone else up for a great motion offense. And if you foul him, then the fouler better be expendable because he'll soon be out of the game.
To summarize, Shaq on offense in today's game is the closest thing to an unstoppable force in basketball.
Now, Shaq on defense is a bit trickier. He has to guard the 5th best shooteslasher on the opposing team, likely out at 3. Even worse, his man is going to either be setting many screens or running off screens, so Shaq switches and he's too slow to keep up so his new man--probably the best shooter on the opposing team-- hits a wide open three or cuts to the basket for an open layup.
I'm assuming modern basketball has deemed Shaq (aka any old-school big man) on defense too much of a liability to take advantage of his play on the other end. I'm also assuming these same people see 3s as far more valuable than 2s.
But there are ways to make up for his weakness on defense. 1. Run zone defense. 2. Don't switch screens. 3. Some future genius basketball coach's method.
It seems to me that somebody should be able to figure this out. The advantages of a modern big man against tiny guys jacking up 3s is laughable. It's a no-brainer to me.