Gun xbox one backwards compatibility
/r/Xbox
2008.11.13 06:13 /r/Xbox
**Topics related to all versions of the Xbox video game consoles, games, online services, controllers, etc.**
2016.03.04 20:24 sad_xbox Xbox BC
Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X backwards compatibility news and discussions.
2016.11.09 12:50 Statzer_x XboxInsiderProgram
XboxInsiderProgram Subreddit
2023.06.03 17:40 Frozen_Thorn Running low on space.
 | I have 8 long guns with room for one more. I'm not entirely happy with this setup. Any ideas for improvement would be much appreciated. Thanks! submitted by Frozen_Thorn to guns [link] [comments] |
2023.06.03 17:39 CloudieW [PC][2009-2011][RPG Horror]
Disclaimer: This game happened in my dream today so it might just not exist. But I really really need to talk about it. But then again, I might be f**king tripping balls.
Platform(s): PC (Windows)
Genre: Physiological Horror
Estimated year of release: 2009-2011
Graphics/art style: Kind of like Corpse Party, but the art of this game was ahead of its time.
Notable characters: This School Girl, I never got her name in the dream but it's who you play as
Notable gameplay mechanics: Running around, picking up key items, messing with your mind
Other details: This shadowy black figure is chasing you throughout the game, it had a tall body and it was just pitch black with spiral white eyes with tints of bright yellow, and it always had a red mist around it. The school girl we play is portrait less so that you can easily insert yourself.
My dream started as me, the school girl in class with 20$ in my inventory, and it was used for this guy student, a owe-you-back deal. The school girl starts to freak out as the black figure stares at you from the door window, always smiling. (for easier sake we'll refer to the school girl as i,me.) i started to hallucinate as flashes of my past started to occur, the black figure chased me in this minigame as i then behead it using a knife then run off using a bike only to break my foot and ride on one pedal. i then fell off of an bridge, going into a huge lake. i didn't go in entirely as white birds picked me up and only to then get killed as i continued to run. the flashback ends and we're back in the classroom, we immediately run to the bathroom to puke, in a CG. knocking then starts on my stall as i'm ready to head out i open it to only see a janitor, i blink the janitor turns into the black figure, i ran out of the bathroom and start to shake uncontrollably, i blink again only to see that multiple of people are the black figure.
note: the game is also played in complete silence with only sound effects to accompany you.
i then appear my classroom again only to see that the game, used my deadname/gov name and referred to the other students as kids that've been with me since 6th grade weirdly. this boy, carson has a indicator that you're supposed to talk to him. i approach him and hand him his 20 bucks, he states that he doesn't want it without any reasoning, i spammed clicked him, and he just says no over and over with each button press. i looked to my left only to see the black figure once again, i jump. and stare into it's eyes as the flashback plays again, i didn't have to play it again though. im suddenly transported back into my bedroom that i have today, black figure is there again and i used the knife from underneath my pillow to cut its neck off, i pushed it as i run to my door only for the doorknob not to open, it was the secondary lock my dad had installed onto it , basically you just pull the metal part out of its holder. i unlock the door to see my mom with a knife and gun, she tells me to wait til it comes outside in the sun and we'll kill it. we started to stab the black figure and cut off its limbs and burn it in our ditch, the black figures head jumps at me and i woke up at 9:30am today with my heart beating.
that's all i have, again this game could not be real, and i might just have really bad nightmares and vivid dreams ro the point where i might need help. i never want to experience this again.
submitted by CloudieW to tipofmyjoystick [link] [comments]
Platform(s): PC (Windows)
Genre: Physiological Horror
Estimated year of release: 2009-2011
Graphics/art style: Kind of like Corpse Party, but the art of this game was ahead of its time.
Notable characters: This School Girl, I never got her name in the dream but it's who you play as
Notable gameplay mechanics: Running around, picking up key items, messing with your mind
Other details: This shadowy black figure is chasing you throughout the game, it had a tall body and it was just pitch black with spiral white eyes with tints of bright yellow, and it always had a red mist around it. The school girl we play is portrait less so that you can easily insert yourself.
My dream started as me, the school girl in class with 20$ in my inventory, and it was used for this guy student, a owe-you-back deal. The school girl starts to freak out as the black figure stares at you from the door window, always smiling. (for easier sake we'll refer to the school girl as i,me.) i started to hallucinate as flashes of my past started to occur, the black figure chased me in this minigame as i then behead it using a knife then run off using a bike only to break my foot and ride on one pedal. i then fell off of an bridge, going into a huge lake. i didn't go in entirely as white birds picked me up and only to then get killed as i continued to run. the flashback ends and we're back in the classroom, we immediately run to the bathroom to puke, in a CG. knocking then starts on my stall as i'm ready to head out i open it to only see a janitor, i blink the janitor turns into the black figure, i ran out of the bathroom and start to shake uncontrollably, i blink again only to see that multiple of people are the black figure.
note: the game is also played in complete silence with only sound effects to accompany you.
i then appear my classroom again only to see that the game, used my deadname/gov name and referred to the other students as kids that've been with me since 6th grade weirdly. this boy, carson has a indicator that you're supposed to talk to him. i approach him and hand him his 20 bucks, he states that he doesn't want it without any reasoning, i spammed clicked him, and he just says no over and over with each button press. i looked to my left only to see the black figure once again, i jump. and stare into it's eyes as the flashback plays again, i didn't have to play it again though. im suddenly transported back into my bedroom that i have today, black figure is there again and i used the knife from underneath my pillow to cut its neck off, i pushed it as i run to my door only for the doorknob not to open, it was the secondary lock my dad had installed onto it , basically you just pull the metal part out of its holder. i unlock the door to see my mom with a knife and gun, she tells me to wait til it comes outside in the sun and we'll kill it. we started to stab the black figure and cut off its limbs and burn it in our ditch, the black figures head jumps at me and i woke up at 9:30am today with my heart beating.
that's all i have, again this game could not be real, and i might just have really bad nightmares and vivid dreams ro the point where i might need help. i never want to experience this again.
2023.06.03 17:37 Hairy-Jackfruit-5180 1 (21M) have a long term gf (21F) but no friends plz help!?
So I moved to nyc when I was 18 and I met my gf and she we've been together for almost 3 years now. That before I met her I found a lil friend group that felt like my tribe but they all back stabbed me one way or another in time. Now it's been almost 3 years and I don't have any close close friends that I hang out with every week or even every two weeks. live with my gf now in the same apartment. I feel like this relationship is stopping me from making friends who actually want to spend a lot of time with me.
My gf is from nyc so she has plenty of friends and is always busy doing something fun with them. This makes me feel lonely and depressed because I mostly spend time inside working on side hustles.I try to make friends often but they never reciprocate the same energy back. So I've felt this lonely for about a year.
I told my gf about me feeling this lonely and feeling like it's backwards to have a long term love relationship without any long term good quality friends. I feel empty sometimes cuz I don't have a friend group to lean on.
She doesn't really say anything when I talked to her about it. I think she would rather keep the relationship while I stay lonely. While I would rather break up and force myself to find my tribe of friends. Plz give me any advice on what I should do. Because having a 3 year relationship with no friends around is just sad to me. I haven't met and kept friends I would have at my wedding Or important moments in my life.
submitted by Hairy-Jackfruit-5180 to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
My gf is from nyc so she has plenty of friends and is always busy doing something fun with them. This makes me feel lonely and depressed because I mostly spend time inside working on side hustles.I try to make friends often but they never reciprocate the same energy back. So I've felt this lonely for about a year.
I told my gf about me feeling this lonely and feeling like it's backwards to have a long term love relationship without any long term good quality friends. I feel empty sometimes cuz I don't have a friend group to lean on.
She doesn't really say anything when I talked to her about it. I think she would rather keep the relationship while I stay lonely. While I would rather break up and force myself to find my tribe of friends. Plz give me any advice on what I should do. Because having a 3 year relationship with no friends around is just sad to me. I haven't met and kept friends I would have at my wedding Or important moments in my life.
2023.06.03 17:34 JayID99 This Is My First Time Building a PC, Is Is It Good?
I will be using this build for gaming, as well as general use, such as watching videos and browsing the internet.
I'm looking for to get ideally 100 FPS at all times at FHD resolution with max settings to match with my monitor, but if it dips below 100 FPS, it is acceptable.
My budget is $1300 or $1400, but that is also for all the accessories that I'm going to buy with the PC, such as monitor, speakers, mouse and keyboard, etc. I would prefer to spend less, probably $1100 or $1200, ideally $1000, though I'm guessing that's probably not possible. Having to purchase Windows after everything else, really bumps the price up.
I am purchasing the parts in the USA.
PCPartPicker Part List
submitted by JayID99 to buildapc [link] [comments]
I'm looking for to get ideally 100 FPS at all times at FHD resolution with max settings to match with my monitor, but if it dips below 100 FPS, it is acceptable.
My budget is $1300 or $1400, but that is also for all the accessories that I'm going to buy with the PC, such as monitor, speakers, mouse and keyboard, etc. I would prefer to spend less, probably $1100 or $1200, ideally $1000, though I'm guessing that's probably not possible. Having to purchase Windows after everything else, really bumps the price up.
I am purchasing the parts in the USA.
PCPartPicker Part List
2023.06.03 17:34 Hairy-Jackfruit-5180 1 (21M) have a long term gf (21F) but no friends plz help!?
So I moved to nyc when I was 18 and I met my gf and she we've been together for almost 3 years now. That before I met her I found a lil friend group that felt like my tribe but they all back stabbed me one way or another in time.
Now it's been almost 3 years and I don't have any close close friends that I hang out with every week or even every two weeks. live with my gf now in the same apartment. I feel like this relationship is stopping me from making friends who actually want to spend a lot of time with me. My gf is from nyc so she has plenty of friends and is always busy doing something fun with them. This makes me feel lonely and depressed because I mostly spend time inside working on side hustles.
I try to make friends often but they never reciprocate the same energy back. So I've felt this lonely for about a year. I told my gt about me feeling this lonely and feeling like it's backwards to have a long term love relationship without any long term good quality friends. I feel empty sometimes cuz I don't have a friend group to lean on.
She doesn't really say anything when I talked to her about it. I think she would rather keep the relationship while I stay lonely. While I would rather break up and force myself to find my tribe of friends. Plz give me any advice on what I should do. Because having a 3 year relationship with no friends around is just sad to me. I haven't met and kept friends I would have at my wedding Or important moments in my life.
submitted by Hairy-Jackfruit-5180 to u/Hairy-Jackfruit-5180 [link] [comments]
Now it's been almost 3 years and I don't have any close close friends that I hang out with every week or even every two weeks. live with my gf now in the same apartment. I feel like this relationship is stopping me from making friends who actually want to spend a lot of time with me. My gf is from nyc so she has plenty of friends and is always busy doing something fun with them. This makes me feel lonely and depressed because I mostly spend time inside working on side hustles.
I try to make friends often but they never reciprocate the same energy back. So I've felt this lonely for about a year. I told my gt about me feeling this lonely and feeling like it's backwards to have a long term love relationship without any long term good quality friends. I feel empty sometimes cuz I don't have a friend group to lean on.
She doesn't really say anything when I talked to her about it. I think she would rather keep the relationship while I stay lonely. While I would rather break up and force myself to find my tribe of friends. Plz give me any advice on what I should do. Because having a 3 year relationship with no friends around is just sad to me. I haven't met and kept friends I would have at my wedding Or important moments in my life.
2023.06.03 17:32 HeadOfSpectre The Soldier
"Think of this as a chance at revenge," Sweeney said.
Revenge.
What a moronically quaint idea.
This jumped up little shit had come into my home, interrupted my retirement and here he was talking to me about revenge, as if he knew the first thing about what I’d seen, what I’d been through, why I’d quit.
Looking into his eyes, I knew he didn’t understand. I knew he couldn’t.
I've been hunting vampires for most of my life. I've killed more of them than I can count. But Clementine Di Cesare was no ordinary vampire. Hell, none of the Di Cesares were ordinary vampires, but even among them Clementine was… unique. She was the one all the others quietly feared. The one who was even spoken of with reverence by the Di Cesares masters, those twin Immortals who could not be killed by any weapon of this world. Seeking revenge against her was like seeking revenge against death itself.
“Revenge?” I repeated, with a dismissive scoff.
“You’re really going to tell me that after what she put you through, you don’t want revenge?” Sweeney asked.
“If you knew what she did to me, you’d know why I don’t want revenge,” I replied.
“Really? Sorry Franklin, but I don’t buy that. Look, I get it if you’re reluctant to jump back into the fight. I do. You of all people know just how dangerous the Di Cesare’s are. Especially ‘La Morte’.”
I looked over at him as he said that name. It rolled off his tongue so irreverently. To him, it was just a name. An alias assigned to some vampire he’s only heard of stories. He didn’t utter it with the respect it deserved, and I almost couldn’t be bothered to correct him. Any words spent on this small minded glory hound were probably wasted.
“Yes, I do know.”
“Which is why I need you,” Sweeney said. He almost sounded as if he were pleading with me. “Think of this as an opportunity to set things right… to put that vampire bitch in the ground where she belongs, and save God only knows how many lives in the process!”
I sighed.
He just didn’t get it.
“Mark my words, Mr. Sweeney, if you chase after Clementine Di Cesare, you’ll end far more lives than you save. She didn’t get a name like ‘La Morte’ for nothing. She earned it. Purchased it with the blood of the tens of thousands she’s sent screaming into the maw of Hell. She is not something you chase, Sweeney.”
“She’s a vampire,” Sweeney said dismissively. “She’s another enemy to destroy.”
“That’s what George Bundy said,” I replied. “Then not too long after, he died.”
“I’m not George Bundy,” Sweeney said.
“No. You sure as hell ain’t,” I agreed, before looking the kid in the eye.
He thought he was an up and comer, climbing the ranks of the Brethren. He probably thought of himself as some sort of badass vampire hunter too, when in reality he could never have so much as dreamed of holding a candle to the likes of Bundy… or hell, any of the men who’d died in Brazil.
“You should watch your tone with me,” Sweeney warned.
“Or you’ll do what?” I asked, “You ain’t going to frighten me with vague threats, boy. I’ve walked through Hell, trying to kill the Devil. What have you done?”
Sweeney bit his lip but didn’t respond.
“There’s nothing you can say or do that will intimidate me,” I said, before lighting myself a cigarette. I stared at the road outside of my porch, old memories flooding back to me before looking over at Sweeney again. He sat in his chair beside me like a sulky child. This was the man who wanted to destroy the Di Cesare family? Pathetic.
“Exactly how much do you know about the Brazil Job?” I asked.
“I know it was a failure. Clementine Di Cesare killed most of the men the Brethren sent out… all except for you. You were the only one good enough to beat her.”
“Good enough…” I repeated with a huff, “Hardly… whatever picture you’ve got in your head of some glorified battle, throw it away. Trust me, the Brazil Job was anything but glorious. It was a two hour long trek through Hell. And I didn’t beat Di Cesare at the end of it. I survived her. They’re two different things entirely.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Sweeney said.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” I sighed and took another drag on my cigarette.
This kid wasn’t going to leave until I made him understand… so I told him my story. I told him everything even though I knew he’d learn nothing from it.
***
I’d joined up with the Brethren Knights of St. Fontaine back in the 1980s to hunt monsters. Back then, it seemed like the best use of my skills. I’d done my tours with the army, but even after I got out, I was still looking for an enemy to fight. So naturally, once I found out that vampires were real, I set my sights on them. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time.
The Brethren Knights fancied themselves the descendants of the Knights Templar, and they insisted that their God given mission was to protect mankind from the things that lurked in the shadows. I didn’t really have much love for God at the time, but if the Bretheren were the ones fighting the monsters, then I was happy to tolerate the Jesus freaks in their ranks.
It was 1988 when we first heard whispers of the Imperium. A supposed cabal of vampires, trying to get them organized. At the time, it’d seemed too crazy to be true. Vampires generally went their own way, in my experience. At most, they might have a partner but other than they they didn’t really socialize with their own kind. But supposedly someone out there had the big fucking balls to keep them in line, and whoever they were, they scared the shit out of the Brethren.
They’d started targeting high profile vampires, trying to find someone who was involved in this ‘Imperium’, hoping that maybe they might get someone to talk. And it wasn’t long until they found someone who did.
From my understanding, the vampire they captured didn’t seem to know much about who was actually running the show. But they knew who their second in command was… and that was when I first head about the Di Cesare family.
The name was familiar to some of the higher ups in the Brethren, and I’d heard some stories. Not sure which were true, but the long and short of it was that the Di Cesare’s and the Brethren shared a bloody history, and didn’t particularly like each other too much.
George Bundy explained it to me like this at one point: ‘The Di Cesare’s are an old family. Most of them used to be witches, up until their Matriarch turned them into vampires. Now they’re a whole new kind of nasty. Far as I know, the only time anyone’s actually managed to kill one was about 200 years ago. Anyone who’s tried since has ended up dead, so most folks don’t even bother anymore.’
I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising they’d be involved in the Imperium, but the mere mention of their name ruffled some feathers higher up on the chain of command, and eventually they put out a kill order on them. Most of the Di Cesare’s were generally pretty hard to track down, but the top brass had a pretty good line on their matriarch, Bianca Di Cesare. Supposedly, she’d been spotted near the family’s private estate in Brazil and rumor had it that most of her daughters were there too.
Normally, the brass wouldn’t have sanctioned any kind of attack on them. The Di Cesare’s were already considered off limits, and attacking them at their private estate was considered damn near impossible. The estate was located in a small mining town outside of Manaus called Refugio de Julia, or just Julia for short. The town was fairly remote, being only accessible from a few backroads and most folks tended to avoid it, claiming they’d had various strange encounters in the area. Their accounts described unsettling pale figures with dark hair and large green eyes working in the mines, although some of the more disturbing stories we heard involved sightings of other creatures in the jungle surrounding the town. Massive spiders with humanoid faces, tending rotting corpses filled with stinging bees, giant howling beasts who tore through the forest, hunting prey, and beautiful women who would appear in the nearby towns, betwitching men into coming away with them only to reveal themselves as monsters who fed on the blood of their victims. Some had even claimed the Di Cesares themselves were such beasts… although those claims weren’t taken quite as seriously.
A skeptic might say the stories that surrounded Julia seemed like little more than just local superstition… but the Brethren had been dealing with the supernatural for long enough to recognize when something was probably real, and when it was probably fake and they knew damn well that most of the stories about Julia were probably true. None of them had ever dared set foot in Julia to find out for sure, since doing so would probably be suicide, but the theory was that the Di Cesares had created Julia as something of a refuge for other creatures. Other vampires, werewolves, arachne, karah and all sorts of other hellspawn. They offered them a home and safety in exchange for their labor in the mines. Hell, the name of the town more or less spelled it out.
Refugio de Julia
Julia’s Haven.
Julia had been the name of the only member of the Di Cesare family that the Brethren had ever killed, so I guess it was only fitting they named the town after her.
I honestly think using other creatures like them as a workforce was a bit inspired… since it made Julia damn near impenetrable. Reaching their estate at the far side of the town would have been impossible without being noticed by every creature of hell living in that town, and odds are they’d tear anyone apart long before they even reached the gates of the Di Cesare estate. And if one had the bright idea to approach the estate from another angle, they’d be trudging through miles and miles of rainforest to do so, only end up face to face with a massive stone wall that kept the rainforest out.
In effect - the Di Cesare estate was a fortress. Getting in would be no easy feat, to say nothing of confronting the vampires within. But with the fear of the Imperium gnawing at the back of their minds, the Brethren had finally set their minds to trying.
George Bundy had been the one in charge of planning the operation out.
I’d known Bundy before I’d joined up with the Brethren. Hell, Bundy was the whole reason I’d joined the Brethren. He’d been my CO a number of years back, and he’d earned his reputation as a hardass just about ten or twenty times over. Bundy was a gruff looking man with a bushy moustache and intense eyes. During the years I knew him, I don’t believe I ever once saw him so much as crack a smile. He only ever seemed to speak when he felt there was something he needed to say. Otherwise, he was usually dead silent.
He was somewhere in his late fifties back in 88. By all rights, he ought to have retired years ago. But he refused.
“I’m a soldier,” He said, when I asked him about it once. “That’s all I am. I don’t know what else to be.”
Bundy’s initial plan had been to hit the Di Cesare estate from the air. Come in fast and loud with a couple of helicopters and see how those vampires stood up to some good old American flak. The idea got shot down pretty quickly, so to speak. Apperantly, most if not all of the Di Cesares had cursed their own bodies, causing whatever wound one inflicted on them to appear on whoever it was who had wounded them. Going in guns blazing would have ended in a bloodbath… and not for them. There were also some concerns about drawing attention from Julia. With no conclusive data on just what they had living in that town, there was no guarantee we’d be safe in the air. A few eyewitnesses had described seeing giant nests in some of the trees in the jungle, supposedly consistent with the nests made by harpies.
Flying in guns blazing was out. So Bundy went back to the drawing board and what he came back with… well, it was ballsy, but it almost seemed like it just might work. During his reconnisance of the Di Cesare’s estate, he’d noticed a large but shallow tributary flowing into the amazon river that led right through the Di Cesare’s estate. Along the tributary was an abandoned water mill, that connected to the Di Cesare estate.
He’d suggested using the water mill to gain entry to the grounds, and from there, move on the Di Cesare’s. That plan had been approved, and Bundy had been allowed to handpick his team for the operation. He’d chosen fifteen men, all of them ex military, most of them having served under him before.
He’d told us we would be dividing into three teams of five men each. We would leave Manaus by boat, and land at three different areas near the tributary before making our way to the mill on foot, where we would regroup, before moving on the Di Cesares. The reason for the division was to ensure that if any of our teams ran into trouble upon making ground, the entire operation wouldn’t be compromised.
Team 1, led by Bundy himself would depart first and land to the west of the tributary. Team 2, led by a man named Ferdinand Hernandez would make land about fifteen minutes later near the mouth of the tributary and Team 3, to be led by me would land fifteen minutes later to the east.
On the day of the operation, I sat in my boat, watching as the other two left. It was twilight when we set out, and I remember that as my team and I carried out our final checks on our equipment, the only thing I felt was a familiar anticipation.
I’d hesitate to call it fear. Fear is what came later. Anticipation is the better word. I knew we could be walking into a tough situation… but I trusted Bundy. I trusted he’d run a smooth op. God knew, he’d done it a thousand times before.
The team assigned to me wasn’t anything particularly special. They were competent enough, but none of them would’ve been my first choices. Jack McMullen, for instance, who was about the same age as I was at the time. We’d both served under Bundy before, although while I respected Bundy, Jack was wholly devoted to him. I swear, if the man had told him to stuff a live grenade up his ass, Jack would’ve done it without a moments hesitation. I dunno if Jack simply saw him as the father he’d never had or what, but he damn near worshipped Bundy.
I can’t quite say the same for the other guys we had with us, though. One of them, some greenhorn by the name of Pearce Wilson struck me as an airheaded pretty boy who’d never actually had his boots on the ground before, while the other one, Scott Barber had left a bad taste in my mouth last time we’d worked together. Barber was capable… but he was violent. This was a kid with a hell of a chip on his shoulder, and it looked a hell of a lot like that Confederate flag patch he wore on his jacket. He wanted an excuse to shoot something, and I don’t think he cared what. Under most circumstances I’m not sure I would’ve fully trusted him with a gun.
The last one though, Joseph Feng… him I trusted. Feng was the one I knew the least about, and he didn’t seem much for conversation. But he handled himself competently enough and seemed to know when to sit down and shut up.
When Team 2’s boat was far enough away, we got the radio signal to follow. Barber was the one steering the boat, so I gave him the order to cast off and we ventured out into the twilight, unaware of just what was waiting for us out there.
***
We landed in our designated area fifteen minutes after Team 2 confirmed they’d touched down at theirs. Our landing was fairly uneventful. Feng, Barber, and I secured the boat before we radio’d Bundy to let him know we were in position. After that, it was just a matter of making it to the tributary.
As we ventured into the jungle, the world around us was quiet. There was wind, the whisper of the river behind us, and the sounds of animals. But little else. The river fell away behind us as we moved in single file toward the tributary, maintaining radio silence as we did.
It was about a half hour before we heard the gunshot.
Just one, echoing through the twilight. But it was enough to give us pause.
“The fuck was that?” I heard Barber ask. Immediately, the kid was on high alert, with his gun raised as if he were expecting every monster in Julia to come charging at us from all angles.
I just listened, waiting to hear if there was anything else. I half expected my radio to come to life, but it didn’t.
“Team 1, status?” I asked.
The radio crackled with static, but there was no response.
I tried it again, but still with no success. The radio was working, that much I was sure of. Something had to be blocking the signal.
“What’s going on?” Feng asked.
“Dunno,” I replied. “Comms are down.”
“Down?” Wilson asked, “So we’re flying blind out here, then?”
“More or less,” I replied.
“What do we do? Do we go back… if the comms are down…”
“Just because something’s jamming our signal doesn’t mean we’re made,” I said. “Relax. We keep moving for now. You keep your eyes wide open, and your head on a swivel. We’ll make it to the tributary and see if we can’t meet up with the other teams.”
I could tell Wilson wasn’t a fan of my answer, but I didn’t much care. We had a job to do, and I aimed to do it.
I pressed on without a further word and the others followed. Up ahead, I could hear the sound of running water and picked up the pace. I figured the tributary had to be close… and I was right.
I emerged from the brush into the stream, only to pause when I saw what was waiting for us in the water.
In the dying sunlight, it was impossible to mistake the bodies sprawled out on the rocks as anything else… and all I needed to do was look at their uniforms to know they were our people.
“Jesus…” I heard Wilson say under his breath. He froze up, lingering by the bank as I cautiously approached one of the bodies.
It belonged to a somewhat heavyset man with a thin mustache who I recognized as Hernandez. His eyes were still open, although lifeless and staring in different directions, and there was a clean hole in his forehead where a bullet had ended his life. The gunshot we’d heard earlier had likely been the sound of his death.
Looking at the bodies around him, I knew they had to be the rest of Team 2… although it was a little harder pinning down their cause of death. Some sort of bladed weapon, perhaps, judging by the state of them. I realized the odds were that they walked into some sort of ambush.
“What about Bundy and Team 1?” Jack asked, “Any sign of them?”
“No,” I said. “These bodies are all from Team 2… Bundy could still be ahead of us.”
“Then we need to keep going!”
Jack turned, heading up the stream and Barber was right behind him. Feng paused for a moment, thinking this over before following. Only Wilson remained.
“How do we know we’re not walking into a trap?” He asked.
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” I said before moving to follow the others.
“With all due respect, Sarge… that doesn’t sound like the best course of action!” Wilson argued, finally following me. “It sounds just like a good way to get killed!”
“Yeah?” I asked, “I’m gonna tell you an ugly truth, kid. That’s the job. Make your peace with it, and it’ll go a lot easier.”
Wilson didn’t like that answer either and trailed off behind me, watching as I continued upstream. For a moment, I half expected him to go back to the boat… but no. I dunno if he found his balls or just didn’t want to get left behind, but he started to follow us again.
I kept trying to raise Team 1 on the radio while we walked, although I still had no luck. The light above us slowly faded into darkness as we trudged through the water in silence, guns sitting comfortably in our hands and mosquitos biting at our necks.
It wasn’t until we lost Feng that I heard anybody so much as make a sound, and when we lost Feng… it happened almost instantaneously. One minute, he was at the head of the group, walking just ahead of Jack and I. The next, he was gone, only barely having the time to let out a scream as he fell into the river ahead of us.
The rest of us paused. Jack seemed to freeze and I pushed past him, calling out for Feng as I did. As punishment for my compassion, I almost went down after him. I only barely stopped myself from stepping on the slippery rocks that had helped send him to his demise.
I could see Feng’s body in the water, and I could see the blood pouring out of him. He twitched a few times, but I knew he was dead. The sharpened wooden spikes jutting out of him confirmed as much.
“What the hell…” Jack said under his breath, staring at Feng’s corpse in disbelief. “That’s a fucking spike trap!”
Yeah.
It was indeed a fucking spike trap.
I could see other spikes jutting out of the water ahead of us, just past a small dam of rocks that were just slippery enough to make it difficult to stop yourself from falling. Some of those spikes had other bodies on them… likely members of Team 1. I only counted two, although that still didn’t exactly bode well.
“They put a fucking spike trap in the goddamn stream…” Jack said, “Who the hell does that?”
“Somebody who’s expecting us to use the stream,” I replied.
“So they know we’re coming?” Barber asked.
“Clearly…” I replied. “And they’ve got a good idea on what our route is too.”
“Yeah, no shit!” Barber snapped. “Christ… let’s get the fuck out of here. There’s probably more fucking traps upstream!”
“Bundy’s orders were clear!” Jack argued.
“Bundy’s probably dead by now!” Barber replied, before looking at me. “Sarge, come on. You have to know this is suicide!”
“Suicide was part of the job description, was it not?” I asked.
“The job is to kill those fucking vampires, not to die in the goddamn process! We need to get out of the stream and into the woods!”
“Judging by the fate Team 2 met, I’m not sure the forest is someplace we want to be right now,” I replied.
“Excuse me?” Barber asked, “What the hell are you talking about, Sarge?”
“Five men dead, but only one gunshot. How did the rest die?”
Barber didn’t seem to be able to answer that.
“By now… yes. It’s clear we’ve walked into a trap. And yes, I understand that it makes sense to try and leave that trap… but I don’t know if we’ll be safer in the jungle. Something jumped Team 2. Cut them apart, and then shot Hernandez as a warning. They didn’t have to shoot him. They did it so we’d hear.”
“Your point being?” Barber asked.
“I don’t think this is just a trap, Barber. It’s a game. Stop playing, and you might just end up like our friends downstream.”
“A game?” Wilson asked, “Sarge, you can’t be serious!”
“From where I’m standing, we have a better chance of surviving in the stream,” I said. “Look, we’re at least halfway to the rendezvous point, and there have to be at least two members of Team 1 left. The safest thing to do right now is to follow them.”
“You’re off your fucking rocker, Sarge,” Barber spat, locking his eyes with mine. For a moment, I thought the boy was going to try and fight me. But no. He was wise enough to stand down.
“If you wanna get yourself killed, go right the fuck ahead. Just leave me out of it! Wilson, come on,” Barber said before trudging over to the edge of the stream. Wilson didn’t even hesitate, just looking back at Jack and I quietly before he disappeared into the forest with Barber.
“You’re not gonna stop them?” Jack asked.
“No,” I replied. “God willing, there’s a chance that pigheaded asshole is right… dunno how much of a chance, but a chance.”
“Then how come we’re not following him?” Jack asked.
“There’s also a chance he’s wrong.”
I turned, before making my way around the spike trap.
“Keep a slower pace,” I said. “Watch for traps.”
Jack hesitated for a moment, but he followed me without any further questions and we walked in silence for a little longer.
We heard nothing from the trees. Nothing that told us about the fate of Barber and Wilson. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not.
In fact, I don’t think we heard a thing until about a half hour later, when we heard the explosion.
It came out of almost nowhere, but ahead of us I could see a flash of light and hear the screams of men. On instinct, I found myself picking up the pace and could hear Jack behind me. In the low light, I saw a shape float past me in the stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was a severed human arm.
In the water ahead of us, I could see a figure clinging to one of the rocks and trying to pick himself up. I recognized him as George Bundy.
Jack was at his side almost immediately, trying to help the old man to his feet.
“Sir! Are you alright?”
Bundy just wheezed, before his legs gave out from under him. I helped Jack drag him to the shore so he could sit and rest for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking back at the stream.
“Grenade trap… I think…” Bundy panted, “Fucking tripwire… Popkov tripped it, I think…”
Popkov… odds are he was one of the two mangled corpses lying in the river a few feet away from us. It seemed they’d taken the brunt of the explosion, although Bundy still had some shrapnel in his arm that Jack was tending to.
“Christ… whole fucking ops gone to shit…” Bundy spat. “Team 2 got taken out just about as soon as they landed. Someone killed them and dumped them in the goddamn river. Lost half my boys to the fucking spike trap and half to this…”
He looked up at us, before spitting onto the ground.
“Guess you two haven’t done much better.”
“Hard to say,” I replied. “Two of ours took off into the woods, trying to avoid the traps.”
“Then they’re dead,” Bundy replied. “I’ve seen her watching us… always just up ahead, always from a distance… she’s seeing how far we’ll go. How much we’ll take…”
“She?” I asked.
“La Morte. Should’ve figured she’d be the one to greet us.”
“La Morte?” I asked.
“It’s Italian. Supposedly, she earned that name around the time the Di Cesares fled Venice. It’s funny, the Brethren like to act like the Di Cesares leaving Venice was some big victory of theirs, since before they did, they finally killed one of them… hard to call it a victory though, considering how many corpses they made before they fled. And most of them came from La Morte…”
Bundy winced in pain as Jack bandaged his arm before he continued talking.
“See… when the Di Cesare’s left Venice, one of them stayed behind. Clementine, the Scorpio sister. Guess she was unwilling to leave the fight unfinished… and according to the stories, the death toll she personally amassed in the years after the Di Cesare’s left Venice make the bodies they claimed during the Venetian Massacre a hundred and fifty years prior look like a pittance. The Brethren still occupying the city started to call her La Morte. Death. Cuz wherever she went, death followed in her wake… and it seems we’ve walked right into her open arms, haven’t we, boys?”
“You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.
“She’s a Di Cesare… and the shit we’ve seen out here… I don’t see any other Di Cesare setting those traps. It’s her. I’m sure of it. She’s watching us. Seeing how far we’ll go. Seeing if we’ll turn tail…”
“Should we?” Jack asked, and Bundy finally seemed to acknowledge him.
“Excuse me?” He asked.
“Should we? Look, sir… I’d follow you into the mouth of Hell, but right now, we’re down from fifteen men to three. Can’t say I’m optimistic about our chances right now. If this woman is half as bad as you’re saying she is, maybe it’s time we took a step back!”
Jack looked at me, hoping I might back him up, but I remained silent.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bundy asked.
“What I’m hearing here, is that as of right now, the vampire out there could kill us at any time. She hasn’t. Far as I’m concerned, that’s mercy. Maybe we should be taking it while it’s offered.”
Bundy stared at him, before chuckling. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him laugh.
“Just walk away, then?” He asked.
“Walk away, and come back better prepared!” Jack corrected.
“Walk away,” Bundy said again. “We walk away now, and there won’t be a chance to come back better prepared. We get one shot at this. One. Failure is not an option. We go in there and we kill them or we die. End of discussion.”
“And how exactly are we even supposed to kill them?” Jack asked, “That curse they have… bullets aren’t gonna do shit, sir!”
“Yours won’t, mine will…”
Bundy pulled his pistol from his holster. I noticed some sort of pattern crudely engraved on it.
“I’ve been doing some research… studied the curse they put on themselves… and I think I’ve found a way to break it. Not sure if it’ll work yet… but we get one chance to test it.”
Jack stared at the gun, then back at Bundy.
“Sir… do you hear yourself?” He asked quietly, “You can’t be serious… right now, even with that gun we don’t stand a chance in he-”
The gunshot echoed through the forest and made me jump. Jack’s voice died in his throat as he hit the ground.
Bundy stared at him for a moment, before huffing and holstering his pistol again. He draped his coat over his shoulders, before looking over at me.
“No room for failure, Frank,” He said calmly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared down at Jack’s body, my mouth hanging open slightly. When I looked back at Bundy, he was already back in the stream.
There was a tense silence between Bundy and I as I followed him along the final stretch of the tributary. He trudged on ahead, covered in sweat and straining with every step, but I could sense the quiet determination he had to see this through. Looking at him, you could’ve told me that George Bundy could wipe out the Di Cesare’s all by himself and I would have believed it in a second.
The night around us was full of sound, and each one drew my attention. I watched the forest, expecting to see some sign of La Morte watching us. But I saw nothing, except for what she wanted me to see.
“Mill’s just up ahead,” I heard Bundy say as we pressed on, although I noticed his steps faltering as he seemed to notice something in the trees above us. I stopped behind him, looking up before seeing what he saw, and when I saw it I felt my stomach turn.
I’d seen death before.
But what Di Cesare had left out for us… that was something else.
Pearce Wilson and Scott Barber weren’t dead.
But if they could have spoke, I’ve got no doubt they would have begged us to kill them. Wilsons pretty face was covered in blood and his pouty lips were parted as more trickled out of him. His curly blond hair was matted and I could see crimson there. Tree branches portruded from his ribs, while the loops of his entrails dangled out of his opened stomach. And Barber was in just about the same state, only he seemed to at least have the ability to turn his head to look at us.
I think he might have tried to speak, but the only sound he seemed to be able to make was a pained whimper.
“Jesus Christ…” I said softly.
“He had nothing to do with this,” Bundy replied. He took one last look at the two dying men hanging from the trees, before moving on.
“We should put them out of their misery, sir,” I said.
Bundy paused, before looking back at me.
“Don’t waste the ammo, Frank,” He replied. “They’re already dead.”
“Not yet they’re not!”
“Give them time. They chose to go into the woods. They can live with the consequences… for however long that lasts.”
With that, he left them. If I were a more compassionate man, I would have put them out of their misery. But no. Bundy moved on and so did I.
He approached the water mill, before examining it. It was an old building, made of stone that had long since been overgrown by moss, and sat right on the wall that separated the Di Cesares estate from the amazon. It hardly looked secure, even if the only entrance hadn’t just been an old wooden door secured with a padlock, finding a way in wouldn’t have been difficult. And it didn’t take much for Bundy to break through that door. All he needed was a couple of well placed kicks and it swung right open.
Drawing his gun, Bundy strode inside and I followed him.
“The Di Cesare’s will be in the main house,” He said. “We should find a way in through the back, try and catch them off guard. Main target should be the matriarch, Bianca. Her we should prioritize keeping alive… the rest are expendable.”
“Much as you are, I’m sure.” A voice called from deeper in the mill, and both Bundy and I froze.
I noticed movement on the floor above us, and through the shadows, I saw a tall woman watching us. She was dressed all in black, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail and the intense eyes of a soldier.
This had to be Clementine Di Cesare.
Bundy aimed his pistol at her, although she only barely seemed to notice.
“Only two of you left… I’m not sure the odds are in your favor,” The woman said. Her voice was low, calm and quiet.
“Only one way to find out,” Bundy growled.
“And only one way to walk out of this place alive,” Di Cesare countered. “You can put the gun down, turn and walk away. I won’t stop you. There’s no shame in living.”
“All the bodies you’ve left in your wake… that’s rich,” Bundy said.
“I don’t relish what I’ve done. I simply don’t know how to do anything else,” She replied. “Think about this, Bundy. Over my lifetime, there have been countless thousands who have come to kill me. All of them are dead, but I am not. Even if you could kill me… you could not kill my sisters. Not all of them. Not before they came for you.”
“Just you, would be enough…” Bundy said, before pulling the trigger.
I knew he’d hit her. I knew the bullet pierced her shoulder. But that woman… she didn’t even flinch. She simply dove out of the way before he could shoot again, taking cover and avoiding his next shot.
“Frank, upstairs!” Bundy snapped, “Flush her out!”
I went, trudging up the old wooden steps with my rifle drawn. Only to see Di Cesare vaulting over the railing and back down to the ground floor as soon as I made it up there.
Bundy shot at her again, only to miss for a second time. I saw Di Cesare’s arm move, and heard him cry out in pain. In the low light, I could see a dagger protruding from his shoulder. He stumbled back a step, leaving himself open for only a split second.
That second was all it took for Di Cesare to raise her own gun and fire just one shot.
George Bundy hit the ground without so much as a final scream. There was just a simple hole in his skull where she had shot him.
I felt my heart start to race faster. My eyes settled on Bundy’s gun, and I ran for the railing, vaulting it and dropping to the ground below with a thud. Di Cesare shot at me, and I felt the bullet tear through my leg. I reached out for the fallen gun and grabbed it before turning it on Di Cesare, only to find myself staring down the barrel of her own pistol. My finger rested on the trigger, but I didn’t have the guts to pull it.
"Kill me, and you will not see the sun tomorrow." She said, her voice still cold and calm.
“Killing you is part of the job…” I replied, but my finger still couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
“And is it worth your life?” Di Cesare asked. “You fail your mission either way.”
“And die with some goddamn honor…”
“There’s no such thing as honor. There is alive and there is dead. Choose.”
I knew what I was supposed to choose.
But my hands were shaking, as I stared into the face of death. My finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
The gun collapsed to the floor and Di Cesare kicked it away from me, before huffing and lowering her gun.
“Do not return,” She said softly. “Or next time, I will unleash a hell upon you that will make you beg for simple traps.”
She picked Bundy’s gun up off the ground, and then she was gone. After I finally picked myself up off the ground, I was gone too.
As I walked back along the stream… I passed the corpses of the men we’d left behind. Barber and Wilson, Jack, Feng, Hernandez, and his team. The flies were already feasting on them. Animals had already torn at them. And as I looked down at their cold corpses, I knew I had made the right choice.
I filed my report with the Brethren. Told them that Di Cesare had wiped us out, and a few months later I quietly retired. I never looked back.
***
“You walked away from her?” Sweeney asked in disbelief, “You had her dead to rights and you walked away from her?”
“I chose to live,” I replied. “Can’t say I regret the decision either. Because of the choice I made, I met my wife and had my kids. I’ve lived the life I had because I chose not to throw it away on some vampire.”
Sweeney just shook his head.
“You could have gotten the first confirmed kill on a Di Cesare in two centuries, and you threw it away you fucking coward! I could execute you for that!” I noticed his hand hovering over the gun on his hip.
“You could.” I replied, before quietly unholstering the pistol I kept at my side. I aimed it at Sweeney’s head.
He stared at me like a slack jawed idiot.
“Would you like to give it a try?”
“W-what…?”
“Would you like to give it a try, Mr. Sweeney? Or would you like to see the sun tomorrow?”
He stared down the barrel of my gun, and I already knew what his choice would be.
Sweeney took a step back. I saw his hand move away from his holster, and I lowered the gun with a huff.
“Thought so,” I said.
Mr. Sweeney left me without another word.
I knew he would not return.
submitted by HeadOfSpectre to TheCrypticCompendium [link] [comments]
Revenge.
What a moronically quaint idea.
This jumped up little shit had come into my home, interrupted my retirement and here he was talking to me about revenge, as if he knew the first thing about what I’d seen, what I’d been through, why I’d quit.
Looking into his eyes, I knew he didn’t understand. I knew he couldn’t.
I've been hunting vampires for most of my life. I've killed more of them than I can count. But Clementine Di Cesare was no ordinary vampire. Hell, none of the Di Cesares were ordinary vampires, but even among them Clementine was… unique. She was the one all the others quietly feared. The one who was even spoken of with reverence by the Di Cesares masters, those twin Immortals who could not be killed by any weapon of this world. Seeking revenge against her was like seeking revenge against death itself.
“Revenge?” I repeated, with a dismissive scoff.
“You’re really going to tell me that after what she put you through, you don’t want revenge?” Sweeney asked.
“If you knew what she did to me, you’d know why I don’t want revenge,” I replied.
“Really? Sorry Franklin, but I don’t buy that. Look, I get it if you’re reluctant to jump back into the fight. I do. You of all people know just how dangerous the Di Cesare’s are. Especially ‘La Morte’.”
I looked over at him as he said that name. It rolled off his tongue so irreverently. To him, it was just a name. An alias assigned to some vampire he’s only heard of stories. He didn’t utter it with the respect it deserved, and I almost couldn’t be bothered to correct him. Any words spent on this small minded glory hound were probably wasted.
“Yes, I do know.”
“Which is why I need you,” Sweeney said. He almost sounded as if he were pleading with me. “Think of this as an opportunity to set things right… to put that vampire bitch in the ground where she belongs, and save God only knows how many lives in the process!”
I sighed.
He just didn’t get it.
“Mark my words, Mr. Sweeney, if you chase after Clementine Di Cesare, you’ll end far more lives than you save. She didn’t get a name like ‘La Morte’ for nothing. She earned it. Purchased it with the blood of the tens of thousands she’s sent screaming into the maw of Hell. She is not something you chase, Sweeney.”
“She’s a vampire,” Sweeney said dismissively. “She’s another enemy to destroy.”
“That’s what George Bundy said,” I replied. “Then not too long after, he died.”
“I’m not George Bundy,” Sweeney said.
“No. You sure as hell ain’t,” I agreed, before looking the kid in the eye.
He thought he was an up and comer, climbing the ranks of the Brethren. He probably thought of himself as some sort of badass vampire hunter too, when in reality he could never have so much as dreamed of holding a candle to the likes of Bundy… or hell, any of the men who’d died in Brazil.
“You should watch your tone with me,” Sweeney warned.
“Or you’ll do what?” I asked, “You ain’t going to frighten me with vague threats, boy. I’ve walked through Hell, trying to kill the Devil. What have you done?”
Sweeney bit his lip but didn’t respond.
“There’s nothing you can say or do that will intimidate me,” I said, before lighting myself a cigarette. I stared at the road outside of my porch, old memories flooding back to me before looking over at Sweeney again. He sat in his chair beside me like a sulky child. This was the man who wanted to destroy the Di Cesare family? Pathetic.
“Exactly how much do you know about the Brazil Job?” I asked.
“I know it was a failure. Clementine Di Cesare killed most of the men the Brethren sent out… all except for you. You were the only one good enough to beat her.”
“Good enough…” I repeated with a huff, “Hardly… whatever picture you’ve got in your head of some glorified battle, throw it away. Trust me, the Brazil Job was anything but glorious. It was a two hour long trek through Hell. And I didn’t beat Di Cesare at the end of it. I survived her. They’re two different things entirely.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Sweeney said.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” I sighed and took another drag on my cigarette.
This kid wasn’t going to leave until I made him understand… so I told him my story. I told him everything even though I knew he’d learn nothing from it.
***
I’d joined up with the Brethren Knights of St. Fontaine back in the 1980s to hunt monsters. Back then, it seemed like the best use of my skills. I’d done my tours with the army, but even after I got out, I was still looking for an enemy to fight. So naturally, once I found out that vampires were real, I set my sights on them. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time.
The Brethren Knights fancied themselves the descendants of the Knights Templar, and they insisted that their God given mission was to protect mankind from the things that lurked in the shadows. I didn’t really have much love for God at the time, but if the Bretheren were the ones fighting the monsters, then I was happy to tolerate the Jesus freaks in their ranks.
It was 1988 when we first heard whispers of the Imperium. A supposed cabal of vampires, trying to get them organized. At the time, it’d seemed too crazy to be true. Vampires generally went their own way, in my experience. At most, they might have a partner but other than they they didn’t really socialize with their own kind. But supposedly someone out there had the big fucking balls to keep them in line, and whoever they were, they scared the shit out of the Brethren.
They’d started targeting high profile vampires, trying to find someone who was involved in this ‘Imperium’, hoping that maybe they might get someone to talk. And it wasn’t long until they found someone who did.
From my understanding, the vampire they captured didn’t seem to know much about who was actually running the show. But they knew who their second in command was… and that was when I first head about the Di Cesare family.
The name was familiar to some of the higher ups in the Brethren, and I’d heard some stories. Not sure which were true, but the long and short of it was that the Di Cesare’s and the Brethren shared a bloody history, and didn’t particularly like each other too much.
George Bundy explained it to me like this at one point: ‘The Di Cesare’s are an old family. Most of them used to be witches, up until their Matriarch turned them into vampires. Now they’re a whole new kind of nasty. Far as I know, the only time anyone’s actually managed to kill one was about 200 years ago. Anyone who’s tried since has ended up dead, so most folks don’t even bother anymore.’
I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising they’d be involved in the Imperium, but the mere mention of their name ruffled some feathers higher up on the chain of command, and eventually they put out a kill order on them. Most of the Di Cesare’s were generally pretty hard to track down, but the top brass had a pretty good line on their matriarch, Bianca Di Cesare. Supposedly, she’d been spotted near the family’s private estate in Brazil and rumor had it that most of her daughters were there too.
Normally, the brass wouldn’t have sanctioned any kind of attack on them. The Di Cesare’s were already considered off limits, and attacking them at their private estate was considered damn near impossible. The estate was located in a small mining town outside of Manaus called Refugio de Julia, or just Julia for short. The town was fairly remote, being only accessible from a few backroads and most folks tended to avoid it, claiming they’d had various strange encounters in the area. Their accounts described unsettling pale figures with dark hair and large green eyes working in the mines, although some of the more disturbing stories we heard involved sightings of other creatures in the jungle surrounding the town. Massive spiders with humanoid faces, tending rotting corpses filled with stinging bees, giant howling beasts who tore through the forest, hunting prey, and beautiful women who would appear in the nearby towns, betwitching men into coming away with them only to reveal themselves as monsters who fed on the blood of their victims. Some had even claimed the Di Cesares themselves were such beasts… although those claims weren’t taken quite as seriously.
A skeptic might say the stories that surrounded Julia seemed like little more than just local superstition… but the Brethren had been dealing with the supernatural for long enough to recognize when something was probably real, and when it was probably fake and they knew damn well that most of the stories about Julia were probably true. None of them had ever dared set foot in Julia to find out for sure, since doing so would probably be suicide, but the theory was that the Di Cesares had created Julia as something of a refuge for other creatures. Other vampires, werewolves, arachne, karah and all sorts of other hellspawn. They offered them a home and safety in exchange for their labor in the mines. Hell, the name of the town more or less spelled it out.
Refugio de Julia
Julia’s Haven.
Julia had been the name of the only member of the Di Cesare family that the Brethren had ever killed, so I guess it was only fitting they named the town after her.
I honestly think using other creatures like them as a workforce was a bit inspired… since it made Julia damn near impenetrable. Reaching their estate at the far side of the town would have been impossible without being noticed by every creature of hell living in that town, and odds are they’d tear anyone apart long before they even reached the gates of the Di Cesare estate. And if one had the bright idea to approach the estate from another angle, they’d be trudging through miles and miles of rainforest to do so, only end up face to face with a massive stone wall that kept the rainforest out.
In effect - the Di Cesare estate was a fortress. Getting in would be no easy feat, to say nothing of confronting the vampires within. But with the fear of the Imperium gnawing at the back of their minds, the Brethren had finally set their minds to trying.
George Bundy had been the one in charge of planning the operation out.
I’d known Bundy before I’d joined up with the Brethren. Hell, Bundy was the whole reason I’d joined the Brethren. He’d been my CO a number of years back, and he’d earned his reputation as a hardass just about ten or twenty times over. Bundy was a gruff looking man with a bushy moustache and intense eyes. During the years I knew him, I don’t believe I ever once saw him so much as crack a smile. He only ever seemed to speak when he felt there was something he needed to say. Otherwise, he was usually dead silent.
He was somewhere in his late fifties back in 88. By all rights, he ought to have retired years ago. But he refused.
“I’m a soldier,” He said, when I asked him about it once. “That’s all I am. I don’t know what else to be.”
Bundy’s initial plan had been to hit the Di Cesare estate from the air. Come in fast and loud with a couple of helicopters and see how those vampires stood up to some good old American flak. The idea got shot down pretty quickly, so to speak. Apperantly, most if not all of the Di Cesares had cursed their own bodies, causing whatever wound one inflicted on them to appear on whoever it was who had wounded them. Going in guns blazing would have ended in a bloodbath… and not for them. There were also some concerns about drawing attention from Julia. With no conclusive data on just what they had living in that town, there was no guarantee we’d be safe in the air. A few eyewitnesses had described seeing giant nests in some of the trees in the jungle, supposedly consistent with the nests made by harpies.
Flying in guns blazing was out. So Bundy went back to the drawing board and what he came back with… well, it was ballsy, but it almost seemed like it just might work. During his reconnisance of the Di Cesare’s estate, he’d noticed a large but shallow tributary flowing into the amazon river that led right through the Di Cesare’s estate. Along the tributary was an abandoned water mill, that connected to the Di Cesare estate.
He’d suggested using the water mill to gain entry to the grounds, and from there, move on the Di Cesare’s. That plan had been approved, and Bundy had been allowed to handpick his team for the operation. He’d chosen fifteen men, all of them ex military, most of them having served under him before.
He’d told us we would be dividing into three teams of five men each. We would leave Manaus by boat, and land at three different areas near the tributary before making our way to the mill on foot, where we would regroup, before moving on the Di Cesares. The reason for the division was to ensure that if any of our teams ran into trouble upon making ground, the entire operation wouldn’t be compromised.
Team 1, led by Bundy himself would depart first and land to the west of the tributary. Team 2, led by a man named Ferdinand Hernandez would make land about fifteen minutes later near the mouth of the tributary and Team 3, to be led by me would land fifteen minutes later to the east.
On the day of the operation, I sat in my boat, watching as the other two left. It was twilight when we set out, and I remember that as my team and I carried out our final checks on our equipment, the only thing I felt was a familiar anticipation.
I’d hesitate to call it fear. Fear is what came later. Anticipation is the better word. I knew we could be walking into a tough situation… but I trusted Bundy. I trusted he’d run a smooth op. God knew, he’d done it a thousand times before.
The team assigned to me wasn’t anything particularly special. They were competent enough, but none of them would’ve been my first choices. Jack McMullen, for instance, who was about the same age as I was at the time. We’d both served under Bundy before, although while I respected Bundy, Jack was wholly devoted to him. I swear, if the man had told him to stuff a live grenade up his ass, Jack would’ve done it without a moments hesitation. I dunno if Jack simply saw him as the father he’d never had or what, but he damn near worshipped Bundy.
I can’t quite say the same for the other guys we had with us, though. One of them, some greenhorn by the name of Pearce Wilson struck me as an airheaded pretty boy who’d never actually had his boots on the ground before, while the other one, Scott Barber had left a bad taste in my mouth last time we’d worked together. Barber was capable… but he was violent. This was a kid with a hell of a chip on his shoulder, and it looked a hell of a lot like that Confederate flag patch he wore on his jacket. He wanted an excuse to shoot something, and I don’t think he cared what. Under most circumstances I’m not sure I would’ve fully trusted him with a gun.
The last one though, Joseph Feng… him I trusted. Feng was the one I knew the least about, and he didn’t seem much for conversation. But he handled himself competently enough and seemed to know when to sit down and shut up.
When Team 2’s boat was far enough away, we got the radio signal to follow. Barber was the one steering the boat, so I gave him the order to cast off and we ventured out into the twilight, unaware of just what was waiting for us out there.
***
We landed in our designated area fifteen minutes after Team 2 confirmed they’d touched down at theirs. Our landing was fairly uneventful. Feng, Barber, and I secured the boat before we radio’d Bundy to let him know we were in position. After that, it was just a matter of making it to the tributary.
As we ventured into the jungle, the world around us was quiet. There was wind, the whisper of the river behind us, and the sounds of animals. But little else. The river fell away behind us as we moved in single file toward the tributary, maintaining radio silence as we did.
It was about a half hour before we heard the gunshot.
Just one, echoing through the twilight. But it was enough to give us pause.
“The fuck was that?” I heard Barber ask. Immediately, the kid was on high alert, with his gun raised as if he were expecting every monster in Julia to come charging at us from all angles.
I just listened, waiting to hear if there was anything else. I half expected my radio to come to life, but it didn’t.
“Team 1, status?” I asked.
The radio crackled with static, but there was no response.
I tried it again, but still with no success. The radio was working, that much I was sure of. Something had to be blocking the signal.
“What’s going on?” Feng asked.
“Dunno,” I replied. “Comms are down.”
“Down?” Wilson asked, “So we’re flying blind out here, then?”
“More or less,” I replied.
“What do we do? Do we go back… if the comms are down…”
“Just because something’s jamming our signal doesn’t mean we’re made,” I said. “Relax. We keep moving for now. You keep your eyes wide open, and your head on a swivel. We’ll make it to the tributary and see if we can’t meet up with the other teams.”
I could tell Wilson wasn’t a fan of my answer, but I didn’t much care. We had a job to do, and I aimed to do it.
I pressed on without a further word and the others followed. Up ahead, I could hear the sound of running water and picked up the pace. I figured the tributary had to be close… and I was right.
I emerged from the brush into the stream, only to pause when I saw what was waiting for us in the water.
In the dying sunlight, it was impossible to mistake the bodies sprawled out on the rocks as anything else… and all I needed to do was look at their uniforms to know they were our people.
“Jesus…” I heard Wilson say under his breath. He froze up, lingering by the bank as I cautiously approached one of the bodies.
It belonged to a somewhat heavyset man with a thin mustache who I recognized as Hernandez. His eyes were still open, although lifeless and staring in different directions, and there was a clean hole in his forehead where a bullet had ended his life. The gunshot we’d heard earlier had likely been the sound of his death.
Looking at the bodies around him, I knew they had to be the rest of Team 2… although it was a little harder pinning down their cause of death. Some sort of bladed weapon, perhaps, judging by the state of them. I realized the odds were that they walked into some sort of ambush.
“What about Bundy and Team 1?” Jack asked, “Any sign of them?”
“No,” I said. “These bodies are all from Team 2… Bundy could still be ahead of us.”
“Then we need to keep going!”
Jack turned, heading up the stream and Barber was right behind him. Feng paused for a moment, thinking this over before following. Only Wilson remained.
“How do we know we’re not walking into a trap?” He asked.
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” I said before moving to follow the others.
“With all due respect, Sarge… that doesn’t sound like the best course of action!” Wilson argued, finally following me. “It sounds just like a good way to get killed!”
“Yeah?” I asked, “I’m gonna tell you an ugly truth, kid. That’s the job. Make your peace with it, and it’ll go a lot easier.”
Wilson didn’t like that answer either and trailed off behind me, watching as I continued upstream. For a moment, I half expected him to go back to the boat… but no. I dunno if he found his balls or just didn’t want to get left behind, but he started to follow us again.
I kept trying to raise Team 1 on the radio while we walked, although I still had no luck. The light above us slowly faded into darkness as we trudged through the water in silence, guns sitting comfortably in our hands and mosquitos biting at our necks.
It wasn’t until we lost Feng that I heard anybody so much as make a sound, and when we lost Feng… it happened almost instantaneously. One minute, he was at the head of the group, walking just ahead of Jack and I. The next, he was gone, only barely having the time to let out a scream as he fell into the river ahead of us.
The rest of us paused. Jack seemed to freeze and I pushed past him, calling out for Feng as I did. As punishment for my compassion, I almost went down after him. I only barely stopped myself from stepping on the slippery rocks that had helped send him to his demise.
I could see Feng’s body in the water, and I could see the blood pouring out of him. He twitched a few times, but I knew he was dead. The sharpened wooden spikes jutting out of him confirmed as much.
“What the hell…” Jack said under his breath, staring at Feng’s corpse in disbelief. “That’s a fucking spike trap!”
Yeah.
It was indeed a fucking spike trap.
I could see other spikes jutting out of the water ahead of us, just past a small dam of rocks that were just slippery enough to make it difficult to stop yourself from falling. Some of those spikes had other bodies on them… likely members of Team 1. I only counted two, although that still didn’t exactly bode well.
“They put a fucking spike trap in the goddamn stream…” Jack said, “Who the hell does that?”
“Somebody who’s expecting us to use the stream,” I replied.
“So they know we’re coming?” Barber asked.
“Clearly…” I replied. “And they’ve got a good idea on what our route is too.”
“Yeah, no shit!” Barber snapped. “Christ… let’s get the fuck out of here. There’s probably more fucking traps upstream!”
“Bundy’s orders were clear!” Jack argued.
“Bundy’s probably dead by now!” Barber replied, before looking at me. “Sarge, come on. You have to know this is suicide!”
“Suicide was part of the job description, was it not?” I asked.
“The job is to kill those fucking vampires, not to die in the goddamn process! We need to get out of the stream and into the woods!”
“Judging by the fate Team 2 met, I’m not sure the forest is someplace we want to be right now,” I replied.
“Excuse me?” Barber asked, “What the hell are you talking about, Sarge?”
“Five men dead, but only one gunshot. How did the rest die?”
Barber didn’t seem to be able to answer that.
“By now… yes. It’s clear we’ve walked into a trap. And yes, I understand that it makes sense to try and leave that trap… but I don’t know if we’ll be safer in the jungle. Something jumped Team 2. Cut them apart, and then shot Hernandez as a warning. They didn’t have to shoot him. They did it so we’d hear.”
“Your point being?” Barber asked.
“I don’t think this is just a trap, Barber. It’s a game. Stop playing, and you might just end up like our friends downstream.”
“A game?” Wilson asked, “Sarge, you can’t be serious!”
“From where I’m standing, we have a better chance of surviving in the stream,” I said. “Look, we’re at least halfway to the rendezvous point, and there have to be at least two members of Team 1 left. The safest thing to do right now is to follow them.”
“You’re off your fucking rocker, Sarge,” Barber spat, locking his eyes with mine. For a moment, I thought the boy was going to try and fight me. But no. He was wise enough to stand down.
“If you wanna get yourself killed, go right the fuck ahead. Just leave me out of it! Wilson, come on,” Barber said before trudging over to the edge of the stream. Wilson didn’t even hesitate, just looking back at Jack and I quietly before he disappeared into the forest with Barber.
“You’re not gonna stop them?” Jack asked.
“No,” I replied. “God willing, there’s a chance that pigheaded asshole is right… dunno how much of a chance, but a chance.”
“Then how come we’re not following him?” Jack asked.
“There’s also a chance he’s wrong.”
I turned, before making my way around the spike trap.
“Keep a slower pace,” I said. “Watch for traps.”
Jack hesitated for a moment, but he followed me without any further questions and we walked in silence for a little longer.
We heard nothing from the trees. Nothing that told us about the fate of Barber and Wilson. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not.
In fact, I don’t think we heard a thing until about a half hour later, when we heard the explosion.
It came out of almost nowhere, but ahead of us I could see a flash of light and hear the screams of men. On instinct, I found myself picking up the pace and could hear Jack behind me. In the low light, I saw a shape float past me in the stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was a severed human arm.
In the water ahead of us, I could see a figure clinging to one of the rocks and trying to pick himself up. I recognized him as George Bundy.
Jack was at his side almost immediately, trying to help the old man to his feet.
“Sir! Are you alright?”
Bundy just wheezed, before his legs gave out from under him. I helped Jack drag him to the shore so he could sit and rest for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking back at the stream.
“Grenade trap… I think…” Bundy panted, “Fucking tripwire… Popkov tripped it, I think…”
Popkov… odds are he was one of the two mangled corpses lying in the river a few feet away from us. It seemed they’d taken the brunt of the explosion, although Bundy still had some shrapnel in his arm that Jack was tending to.
“Christ… whole fucking ops gone to shit…” Bundy spat. “Team 2 got taken out just about as soon as they landed. Someone killed them and dumped them in the goddamn river. Lost half my boys to the fucking spike trap and half to this…”
He looked up at us, before spitting onto the ground.
“Guess you two haven’t done much better.”
“Hard to say,” I replied. “Two of ours took off into the woods, trying to avoid the traps.”
“Then they’re dead,” Bundy replied. “I’ve seen her watching us… always just up ahead, always from a distance… she’s seeing how far we’ll go. How much we’ll take…”
“She?” I asked.
“La Morte. Should’ve figured she’d be the one to greet us.”
“La Morte?” I asked.
“It’s Italian. Supposedly, she earned that name around the time the Di Cesares fled Venice. It’s funny, the Brethren like to act like the Di Cesares leaving Venice was some big victory of theirs, since before they did, they finally killed one of them… hard to call it a victory though, considering how many corpses they made before they fled. And most of them came from La Morte…”
Bundy winced in pain as Jack bandaged his arm before he continued talking.
“See… when the Di Cesare’s left Venice, one of them stayed behind. Clementine, the Scorpio sister. Guess she was unwilling to leave the fight unfinished… and according to the stories, the death toll she personally amassed in the years after the Di Cesare’s left Venice make the bodies they claimed during the Venetian Massacre a hundred and fifty years prior look like a pittance. The Brethren still occupying the city started to call her La Morte. Death. Cuz wherever she went, death followed in her wake… and it seems we’ve walked right into her open arms, haven’t we, boys?”
“You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.
“She’s a Di Cesare… and the shit we’ve seen out here… I don’t see any other Di Cesare setting those traps. It’s her. I’m sure of it. She’s watching us. Seeing how far we’ll go. Seeing if we’ll turn tail…”
“Should we?” Jack asked, and Bundy finally seemed to acknowledge him.
“Excuse me?” He asked.
“Should we? Look, sir… I’d follow you into the mouth of Hell, but right now, we’re down from fifteen men to three. Can’t say I’m optimistic about our chances right now. If this woman is half as bad as you’re saying she is, maybe it’s time we took a step back!”
Jack looked at me, hoping I might back him up, but I remained silent.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bundy asked.
“What I’m hearing here, is that as of right now, the vampire out there could kill us at any time. She hasn’t. Far as I’m concerned, that’s mercy. Maybe we should be taking it while it’s offered.”
Bundy stared at him, before chuckling. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him laugh.
“Just walk away, then?” He asked.
“Walk away, and come back better prepared!” Jack corrected.
“Walk away,” Bundy said again. “We walk away now, and there won’t be a chance to come back better prepared. We get one shot at this. One. Failure is not an option. We go in there and we kill them or we die. End of discussion.”
“And how exactly are we even supposed to kill them?” Jack asked, “That curse they have… bullets aren’t gonna do shit, sir!”
“Yours won’t, mine will…”
Bundy pulled his pistol from his holster. I noticed some sort of pattern crudely engraved on it.
“I’ve been doing some research… studied the curse they put on themselves… and I think I’ve found a way to break it. Not sure if it’ll work yet… but we get one chance to test it.”
Jack stared at the gun, then back at Bundy.
“Sir… do you hear yourself?” He asked quietly, “You can’t be serious… right now, even with that gun we don’t stand a chance in he-”
The gunshot echoed through the forest and made me jump. Jack’s voice died in his throat as he hit the ground.
Bundy stared at him for a moment, before huffing and holstering his pistol again. He draped his coat over his shoulders, before looking over at me.
“No room for failure, Frank,” He said calmly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared down at Jack’s body, my mouth hanging open slightly. When I looked back at Bundy, he was already back in the stream.
There was a tense silence between Bundy and I as I followed him along the final stretch of the tributary. He trudged on ahead, covered in sweat and straining with every step, but I could sense the quiet determination he had to see this through. Looking at him, you could’ve told me that George Bundy could wipe out the Di Cesare’s all by himself and I would have believed it in a second.
The night around us was full of sound, and each one drew my attention. I watched the forest, expecting to see some sign of La Morte watching us. But I saw nothing, except for what she wanted me to see.
“Mill’s just up ahead,” I heard Bundy say as we pressed on, although I noticed his steps faltering as he seemed to notice something in the trees above us. I stopped behind him, looking up before seeing what he saw, and when I saw it I felt my stomach turn.
I’d seen death before.
But what Di Cesare had left out for us… that was something else.
Pearce Wilson and Scott Barber weren’t dead.
But if they could have spoke, I’ve got no doubt they would have begged us to kill them. Wilsons pretty face was covered in blood and his pouty lips were parted as more trickled out of him. His curly blond hair was matted and I could see crimson there. Tree branches portruded from his ribs, while the loops of his entrails dangled out of his opened stomach. And Barber was in just about the same state, only he seemed to at least have the ability to turn his head to look at us.
I think he might have tried to speak, but the only sound he seemed to be able to make was a pained whimper.
“Jesus Christ…” I said softly.
“He had nothing to do with this,” Bundy replied. He took one last look at the two dying men hanging from the trees, before moving on.
“We should put them out of their misery, sir,” I said.
Bundy paused, before looking back at me.
“Don’t waste the ammo, Frank,” He replied. “They’re already dead.”
“Not yet they’re not!”
“Give them time. They chose to go into the woods. They can live with the consequences… for however long that lasts.”
With that, he left them. If I were a more compassionate man, I would have put them out of their misery. But no. Bundy moved on and so did I.
He approached the water mill, before examining it. It was an old building, made of stone that had long since been overgrown by moss, and sat right on the wall that separated the Di Cesares estate from the amazon. It hardly looked secure, even if the only entrance hadn’t just been an old wooden door secured with a padlock, finding a way in wouldn’t have been difficult. And it didn’t take much for Bundy to break through that door. All he needed was a couple of well placed kicks and it swung right open.
Drawing his gun, Bundy strode inside and I followed him.
“The Di Cesare’s will be in the main house,” He said. “We should find a way in through the back, try and catch them off guard. Main target should be the matriarch, Bianca. Her we should prioritize keeping alive… the rest are expendable.”
“Much as you are, I’m sure.” A voice called from deeper in the mill, and both Bundy and I froze.
I noticed movement on the floor above us, and through the shadows, I saw a tall woman watching us. She was dressed all in black, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail and the intense eyes of a soldier.
This had to be Clementine Di Cesare.
Bundy aimed his pistol at her, although she only barely seemed to notice.
“Only two of you left… I’m not sure the odds are in your favor,” The woman said. Her voice was low, calm and quiet.
“Only one way to find out,” Bundy growled.
“And only one way to walk out of this place alive,” Di Cesare countered. “You can put the gun down, turn and walk away. I won’t stop you. There’s no shame in living.”
“All the bodies you’ve left in your wake… that’s rich,” Bundy said.
“I don’t relish what I’ve done. I simply don’t know how to do anything else,” She replied. “Think about this, Bundy. Over my lifetime, there have been countless thousands who have come to kill me. All of them are dead, but I am not. Even if you could kill me… you could not kill my sisters. Not all of them. Not before they came for you.”
“Just you, would be enough…” Bundy said, before pulling the trigger.
I knew he’d hit her. I knew the bullet pierced her shoulder. But that woman… she didn’t even flinch. She simply dove out of the way before he could shoot again, taking cover and avoiding his next shot.
“Frank, upstairs!” Bundy snapped, “Flush her out!”
I went, trudging up the old wooden steps with my rifle drawn. Only to see Di Cesare vaulting over the railing and back down to the ground floor as soon as I made it up there.
Bundy shot at her again, only to miss for a second time. I saw Di Cesare’s arm move, and heard him cry out in pain. In the low light, I could see a dagger protruding from his shoulder. He stumbled back a step, leaving himself open for only a split second.
That second was all it took for Di Cesare to raise her own gun and fire just one shot.
George Bundy hit the ground without so much as a final scream. There was just a simple hole in his skull where she had shot him.
I felt my heart start to race faster. My eyes settled on Bundy’s gun, and I ran for the railing, vaulting it and dropping to the ground below with a thud. Di Cesare shot at me, and I felt the bullet tear through my leg. I reached out for the fallen gun and grabbed it before turning it on Di Cesare, only to find myself staring down the barrel of her own pistol. My finger rested on the trigger, but I didn’t have the guts to pull it.
"Kill me, and you will not see the sun tomorrow." She said, her voice still cold and calm.
“Killing you is part of the job…” I replied, but my finger still couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
“And is it worth your life?” Di Cesare asked. “You fail your mission either way.”
“And die with some goddamn honor…”
“There’s no such thing as honor. There is alive and there is dead. Choose.”
I knew what I was supposed to choose.
But my hands were shaking, as I stared into the face of death. My finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
The gun collapsed to the floor and Di Cesare kicked it away from me, before huffing and lowering her gun.
“Do not return,” She said softly. “Or next time, I will unleash a hell upon you that will make you beg for simple traps.”
She picked Bundy’s gun up off the ground, and then she was gone. After I finally picked myself up off the ground, I was gone too.
As I walked back along the stream… I passed the corpses of the men we’d left behind. Barber and Wilson, Jack, Feng, Hernandez, and his team. The flies were already feasting on them. Animals had already torn at them. And as I looked down at their cold corpses, I knew I had made the right choice.
I filed my report with the Brethren. Told them that Di Cesare had wiped us out, and a few months later I quietly retired. I never looked back.
***
“You walked away from her?” Sweeney asked in disbelief, “You had her dead to rights and you walked away from her?”
“I chose to live,” I replied. “Can’t say I regret the decision either. Because of the choice I made, I met my wife and had my kids. I’ve lived the life I had because I chose not to throw it away on some vampire.”
Sweeney just shook his head.
“You could have gotten the first confirmed kill on a Di Cesare in two centuries, and you threw it away you fucking coward! I could execute you for that!” I noticed his hand hovering over the gun on his hip.
“You could.” I replied, before quietly unholstering the pistol I kept at my side. I aimed it at Sweeney’s head.
He stared at me like a slack jawed idiot.
“Would you like to give it a try?”
“W-what…?”
“Would you like to give it a try, Mr. Sweeney? Or would you like to see the sun tomorrow?”
He stared down the barrel of my gun, and I already knew what his choice would be.
Sweeney took a step back. I saw his hand move away from his holster, and I lowered the gun with a huff.
“Thought so,” I said.
Mr. Sweeney left me without another word.
I knew he would not return.
2023.06.03 17:31 littleun83 Companions missing-any way to get them back?
Sorry if this has been asked a million times already, but, my followers keep disappearing. It’s happened first to Lydia, and now to Jordis. Am I right in thinking I would get a letter from a messenger to confirm if they died? I’ve not had one for either and neither has returned to their respective homes. I’m playing vanilla Xbox special edition, is there any way I can get them back?
submitted by littleun83 to skyrim [link] [comments]
2023.06.03 17:31 Blubber28 Gathering Storm Round 2 - The results!
 | Good day to everyone! Here are the results for round 2 of the Gathering Storm competition. submitted by Blubber28 to SprocketTankDesign [link] [comments] First, I want to start off with an apology for taking so long. I wish I had been able to give the results sooner, but unfortunately, May was quite an eventful month for me. Finding the time to make this post has been difficult, as writing it takes up quite some time. But, alas here it is, and I hope you will excuse the long waiting time. I also want to quickly mention that the next round will take place at some point after the internal space rework has rolled out, likely somewhere in July. If you like these competitions, keep an eye on the subreddit by then, and consider participating in a different competition in the meantime :) With that out of the way, I do want to thank everyone who participated. I loved seeing some of you mention that getting the vehicle up to 50 km/h was quite a challenge, as that was exactly what it was meant to be :). Some of you have been in competitions before, while there were also some newcomers. With 8 participants, I feel like I am still able to rank all entries and give them a review. If we do at some point reach over 10, I may start to limit the number of entries discussed in the result posts, but I don't think we'll get there soon XD. I have changed the scoring again, making armour its own category (with less weight due to the nature of this round). It was somewhat clunky for me to properly adjudicate points to it as a subcategory of 'utility,' like it was previously. This system should be much better at rewarding additional protection overall. As always, I will also mention that while certain designs were better than others, I could tell that every single one had effort and thought put into it. In this particular round, you were asked to design an alternate universe Type 97 Chi-Ha, and I believe all (well, most, I'll get to that) designs offered an alternative worthy of consideration. With that out of the way, let's get into the meat of this post: The results! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8th place: The Type 97 "Zako" by u/benkavin. https://preview.redd.it/oevbdra65s3b1.png?width=1446&format=png&auto=webp&s=5ec59a26fbeb9347ae4f6b50be6a08f29e156ce4 This vehicle was certainly an interesting one to test out. I myself was quite surprised it ended up as the lowest ranked entry, as u/benkavin is quite a seasoned competition participant, ending up in the category top 5's of TEABAG several times. So, I will summarize why. As a quick disclaimer though, there is a method to the madness, and what I will say, I mean in a more playful manner rather than an offensive one. Please take that into consideration as you read the So, what is there to like about this tank? Several things, actually. It has a very low and generally small profile, which helps with its stealth. All this space is efficiently used, as all three crewmembers get the full cubic meter of space. Its engine is in the front, acting as an additional layer of protection, while the sprocket and transmission are in the back to spread the weight better. The radio antenna can be pushed out of the way when the turret turns, meaning it will not restrict turret movement. The suspension is simple (coil springs) and should be relatively easy to maintain. I also quite like the shape of this tank - especially the front part. It also clearly advertises that this is a light and nimble vehicle. Now, onto the less good parts. Some of the more observant among you may have noticed some flaws already. To start off with some visual/constructional flaws: The air vent in the direct front forms a weakspot, the exhaust blocks most of the driver's vision, and the protrusion at the back prevents the turret from rotating 360° and doesn't serve a particular purpose as far as I could tell. While the shape of the vehicle is quite nice in my opinion, it did lack any national decals or insignia. The suspension itself ingame is not well designed, and the vehicle bounces around on any bumps it crosses, so much so that I had to steer when driving over the testing bumps to stay on them. The backside protrusion blocks the cannon Needless to say, due to these flaws it scored quite low in the aesthetics and mobility categories. The armour protection was up to standard after a small revision, but not much more than necessary. In utility, it performed better in some aspects; it had 17° gun depression, 100% crew space, albeit for 3 crewmembers. There was one peculiarity where it rose above the competition, as it had a gearbox with only 5 gears in total (4f, 1r) to bring it up to the required 50 km/h. Still, it is sadly not enough to escape the last position. The pitch for this vehicle is quite short, but well made and nicely edited as pictures. While the limited length and the disclaimer at the end limit the salesmanship effectiveness, the rest makes up for it somewhat, meaning the pitch got a decent score overall. So, all this makes it the bottom-scoring entry for this particular round. And yet, with all this taken into account, this is one of my favourite entries. Now, you may wonder, why? Well, as I mentioned, there was a method to this madness. In one of the comments under the pitch Reddit post, our builder mentions the name means "Inferior Fish," and that this vehicle was designed by Chinese sympathizers in occupied Manchuria. This made me chuckle somewhat, as it puts a lot of the flaws into context. This also explains why the entry is at the bottom of the competition; it was made bad intentionally. It is the sprocket entry equivalent of purposefully failing a test, something that many people argue to be just as hard as succeeding on a test. So, with that, I take my hat off to you, u/benkavin, for purposefully creating a severely flawed vehicle and creating a decent pitch to try and sell it off to the invaders. While it did not win you the competition, I suspect that that was never the intent with such an entry. You can be very proud of your bottom score, as your vehicle excelled in what you made it to be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7th place: The Type 6 Ke-Ha by u/Face_Stabbed. https://preview.redd.it/2w34cgnn5s3b1.png?width=1245&format=png&auto=webp&s=fdb7b8a64d85c6e81ded502159d9dd730f005192 A returning participant from round 1, which is nice to see. This vehicle, while its overall score was low, has some interesting qualities. It had a decent score in utility, mostly due to the large amount of fuel it carries: 860l in total, more than any other vehicle in the competition, which would enable the vehicle to perform long-distance operations with ease. It also carried the most ammunition, with 186 37mm rounds in total. It gave its three crewmembers maximum space, and fulfilled the preferred 6-speed gearbox. It also features three machine gun mounts; two at the front and one at the back of the turret. It didn't score great in the aesthetics category. Not because I think this is an ugly vehicle by any means, but rather due to the lack of national characteristics. I like the angular shape of the front, the protrusion at the back of the turret for the radio and machine gun, and the sponson shape at the front and back. It also looks very believable; you can easily imagine three crewmembers sitting quite comfortably within this vehicle. However, it does not exactly look like a Japanese vehicle, neither in shape nor in the details. There are also no national decals of any kind present, meaning that there was a small point reduction there. Its mobility and armour protection scores were adequate overall, though this vehicle suffered somewhat from the steering. It felt quite sluggish, both at low and high speeds. This made driving it difficult at times. My advice is to have a stronger first gear. This generally improves steering, especially at low speeds. The frontal hull armour does offer great protection due to the angling, and will likely bounce most things the Chinese could throw at it. The pitch was well-written; it had a logical structure and laid out the vehicles' characteristics very well. From reading it, you can really tell that it was carefully designed. It also included a stat sheet, and was decent at salesmanship. While this is near the bottom in the ranking, this is by no means a bad vehicle. I recommend keeping in mind the country that you are designing for, and trying to make the best of the space available, as there was a lot of free room left in the vehicle. With that advice, I would not be surprised to see you rise up in future competitions, as this design shows you have a great foundation in your sprocketeer skills! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6th place: The Type 96 Te-Ha by u/Legodudelol9a. https://preview.redd.it/kbqq6klq5s3b1.png?width=1098&format=png&auto=webp&s=28c42bc65f983791c536d3bdc84095b8bc631685 Now, I cannot help but feel that this vehicle does look a little bit cursed, with the huge turret on the small hull. However, this is because it is re-using parts from existing designs submitted to other competitions. As refurbishing old tanks or creating designs using older parts wasn't out of the question in real life, I think it is an acceptable reason. Also, while it is not mentioned in the pitch, I do like to think that this is the reason the name is from the year before (Imperial Year 2596, or 1936 in the Roman years). Now, let's start with the review. This vehicle had a stellar score in utility, and scored the second highest in that category. From past experience, this seems to be a bit of a trademark for our moderator, as he's quite good at fitting a lot in a tight space. Or, to word it slightly less like an innuendo, he is quite good at using the available space. This tiny vehicle has 104 37mm rounds, 800l of fuel, nearly 20° of gun depression, maximum space allocated to four crewmembers, and three machine guns. The latter is also one of its flaws, however. Simply put, I think putting two machine guns that close to each other may make them nearly impossible to use, as they are likely in each other's way. The hull does also seem to be too small to realistically fit the driver and all the other hardware listed previously. Other than that, it does have the typical Japanese characteristics in its shape, especially with the asymmetrical turret. Its score in mobility was very mixed. It is the first vehicle reviewed here that managed to surpass the 50 km/h, topping out at around 50.8 km/h. It overcame all required obstacles and its steering was very smooth at all speeds, most likely due to the short length of the hull. However, it was the joint worst scoring entry on the obstacle course, together with the Type 97 "Zako." It suffered from the same issues; only three wheels with a very stiff suspension means that it just bounces around while trying to drive. It definitely lost out on a lot of points in that regard, but it was likely a necessary sacrifice to help cross the trench and climb the step obstacle. The frontal hull and turret armour are thicker than requested, making it quite durable in a hull-down position, which is complemented by the great gun depression. Other than that, the armour fulfills the requirements and not much more. The pitch was well-structured and laid out the details of the vehicle well, but sometimes it felt more like a technical summary rather than a sales pitch. While those details are important, they are not the main reason that makes the pitch stand out to potential buyers. All in all, I am once again surprised at all the utility that fits in such a small machine. A decent entry overall. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5th place: The Type 19 Ha-To by u/bonnibelio. https://preview.redd.it/xi96s76u5s3b1.png?width=1318&format=png&auto=webp&s=2bfd3373a075b11ae4727bcb6a26acf20376421b Now we get to the top five entries. This was the first submitted entry to this particular round, and by a first-time participant no less. This is a solid first entry overall. In fact, it managed to score a category win in the newly made 'armour' category. While this category had a lower weight this round due to the nature of Japanese tank design, it is no mean feat. Its frontal protection went up to 50mm effective armour in places, and this was not just on small spots. The lower and upper glacis, as well as the sponsons and the turret side were well protected. Even then, the actual thickness of the flatter plates was 25mm on the hull and 30mm on the turret. These are significant differences, meaning that even dedicated anti-tank guns of the time will struggle to penetrate the front at a long to medium range. Even on the sides, the plate behind the tracks is 25mm thick, meaning they too are tough to crack. This added armour did somewhat impact the top speed, but it did manage to get to the required 50 km/h. It was also able to climb all required inclines and had a very well set up twin-transmission for both acceleration and steering. However, while I tried my best to overcome the 0.5m step, I wasn't able to do it. I even tried it backwards, but sadly it refused to climb it, no matter the method. So unfortunately I had to deduct some points there. The pitch was well structured and had some great pictures to go along with it, but it was lacking in salesmanship and era-appropriateness. This is likely due to the text itself being quite short. Now I don't require an essay referencing historical documents, of course, but I would say this area has the most room for improvement. Why were the Japanese looking for a tank, and why should it be yours? What is it expected to face, and what does this vehicle bring to the table to meet that threat? Those kinds of questions should be answered in a solid pitch, and they are not. I think if you keep them in mind in the future, that they will be of great use in writing your future pitches. In terms of utility, the Type 19 surpasses some of the requirements. It gets some bonus points for the 700l of fuel, and in addition offers a good 18,0° of gun depression, four crewmembers with decent space, more than one MG mount, and 6 gears per transmission. The aesthetics were also good, though it did also miss out on some points here. So, first of all, this vehicle very much looks the part of a Japanese tank, especially with the turret. However, it does look much more like a late-war design rather than an early-war one. I don't think this is surprising given the great Chi-Nu replica that u/bonnibelio was also working on, but it does mean it loses a point for era-appropriateness. The turret and hull look nice, but the hull does feel a little squished to me. I think crawling in there would have been difficult at the very least. The design does make great use of crewparts and decals to decorate the tank, as you can see here: There are decals that decorate certain parts of the tank, like the cupola, the custom fuel port, the plates on the turret, and the protective bars around the exhaust. I've seen parts and decals been used as decoration many times, but using them in tandem like this is a great skill, and it is executed very well on this design. All in all, this design is a good entry, especially for a first-time participant. u/bonnibelio, you can be proud of your creation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4th place: The Type 4 Kin no Suisei (Ki-Su) by u/mei9k. https://preview.redd.it/4ksdtlrw5s3b1.png?width=1354&format=png&auto=webp&s=6844263ad430dcd46c1150896bd73dfe457f09c2 Another great entry from a first-time participant. Some of you may immediately see the resemblance to the old Type 89 I-Go (Chi-Ro) medium tank, the first domestic design by the Japanese. As it played a major role in the conquest of Manchuria in the early 30's, seeing a tank clearly evolved from that design for the later China campaigns is not out of the question. This vehicle had a shared top score in aesthetics. This is likely not a surprise if you take the time to look at the tank. It is a very unique looking machine, yet it makes sense given the history. It received top marks for national identity and a very high score for historical accuracy as well. I was also quite happily surprised to see the return of using placable plates for decoration, something that was much more popular back when rivets were not a thing yet in the game. And it looks great on this machine! The plates are all very neatly worked into the shape of the design. The turret has the typical round-ish shape with a machine gun sticking out the back, with nicely smoothed out plates. The hull, as mentioned, is very reminiscent of the Type 89 medium tank in its shape. In the pitch, it is said to be inspired by the cavalry riding horses, and one could see the resemblance. On top of the great shape, there is also plenty of details to look at, including custom wooden/bamboo boxes for stowage, access hatches for the engine, crew hatches in the turret and the front, and a special protrusion for the driver. I do imagine it may be quite tight for his legs, though, given how far forward the driver's visor is. Other than that, no major drawbacks were found aesthetics-wise. https://preview.redd.it/cd9k1pt66t3b1.png?width=1372&format=png&auto=webp&s=79945ed19a3b97bc684393bdaced6f40b8736554 And, well, they also made a variant with rust and decay, which looks pretty sick tbh: Freshly dug-up out of the mud While the looks were the best part of this machine, it is not its only quality. While the armour fulfilled the minimum and did not exceed it significantly in any place, the mobility score was also quite good. It manages to almost reach 51 km/h, so it was among the faster entries in the competition. It managed to overcome all necessary obstacles, and its steering was very smooth as well. Despite its strong suspension, the ride was relatively smooth over bumps - mostly because of speed and smaller roadwheels. Its utility score was on the lower side, which is not surprising given the small size of this tank. It carried the required fuel, ammunition, has three crewmembers at full space, and offers 17,0° of gun depression, and used the 57mm cannon, but that is all. Another strong point of this entry was the pitch. It is well structured, and takes the historical context of the designed vehicle's task into account. It lays out the details of the vehicle well and has good pictures to accompany it. A solid pitch and entry overall, especially for a first-time participant. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3rd place: The Nanakyū-shiki keisensha Kehe (Type 97 Ke-He) by u/Nicholpher. https://preview.redd.it/hn3a1co66s3b1.png?width=1311&format=png&auto=webp&s=7b25d85bba29faa48ef37583b21b9dd31e24859c Our bronze medalist is not a first-time competition participant, but is relatively new still. However, this did not stop them from making a killer entry. Just from a first glance, you can already tell that this is a nicely compact design, and from testing it I can confirm that it uses its space to the fullest. The top half of the scores in Utility were all very close, and this design was among them. Within this small machine, there is 800l of fuel, 6 gears, and four crewmembers at maximum space all cramped together. This entry also has the best gun depression out of all entries, sporting an impressive 19,8° on the 57mm anti-infantry cannon. It also has two machine guns; one in the mantlet for the gunner and another in the back for the commander. This makes it a well-rounded machine overall in the intended theater. It managed to get the category win in mobility, even though it was not the fastest entry. But as I was grading it, I found that several machines had some shortcomings of some kind. Some had a bumpy suspension, others had trouble steering, etc. This one just does everything good. It overcame all obstacles, performed a smooth ride on the testing bumps, and had great steering capabilities at all speeds. This was mostly due to a very well-tuned twin transmission. In essence, this vehicle shows that good mobility does not always equal great speed. With the great mobility score, it will not come as a surprise that the armour score was not the highest. Although there was increased protection on the hull rear and turret sides that the crew would appreciate, if only for morale. Aesthetics wise, this entry scored decently as well. There wasn't any particular subcategory where it over or underperformed in this regard. It had a good national identity and era-appropriateness score, and it looks decently realistic in shape as well (i.e. it looks like humans would fit inside). It makes great use of crew parts to add further functionality like the smoke launchers. It also features the two hatches for the two transmissions in the front, a great detail to add. Interestingly, it doesn't feature any national flags, but it does have several markings on it that look like production numbers or slogans. As such, I did reduce the points gained from the decals slightly, but it's still a positive score. Finally, we arrive to the pitch, which also had a good score overall. The presentation format is interesting, with the Japanese on top and English below. This did make reading somewhat harder due to the separation, but the text itself was well-written and well-structured. The various capabilities of the vehicle are laid out and highlighted, explaining some of the decisions made in the design process. The pictures were nicely framed, but I felt that the filter takes away a lot of the detail within, so it scored a little lower in that regard. Still, a solid pitch and entry overall, and a worthy receiver of the bronze medal. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2nd place: The Type 97 Ke-Ho by u/Cardinal_Reason. https://preview.redd.it/5jkkhxnnct3b1.png?width=1333&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0d5b7b7edc2d4a31f782321bbc34f6344559b92 Our silver medalist is also a relative newcomer, and like the previous entry they too did an excellent job. In fact, I found it quite interesting that they ended up receiving the highest score in two categories - an impressive feat! One of those was the utility category. The vehicle has the desired 800l of fuel covered, offers 19,7° of gun depression, has four crewmembers with maximum space allocated, the preferred 57mm cannon, 6 gears and even a whopping four MG mounts. The thing that pushed them ahead of the competition on top of all this was likely the extra ammunition, carrying 60 rounds of 57mm high-explosive rounds and 15 rounds of armour piercing. While I didn't find any information on this particular cannon firing anything other than high-explosive, the space for those shells still counts towards the total. In essence, this little machine has all the kit required for the operations in the vast space of China. This machine's armour fulfills only the requirements, with exception to the thicker plate of 25mm on the front of the turret, something that will effectively protect the crew in hull-down positions. This did make this vehicle one of the lighter entries, which is reflected in its excellent mobility score, coming in as a second in that category. This particular entry is the fastest in this round, reaching an impressive 52.6 km/h. It performed well in the other subcategories too, with the exception of the bumps, where it was plagued by a too soft suspension. This, in combination with the unevenly spread roadwheels, meant that it kind of bounced around and was hard to control. The steering was adequate, as the twin transmission wasn't perfect, and tended to slow down the tank significantly when steering. However, other than that, this vehicle performed great in terms of mobility. Aesthetics wise, this vehicle had a good score as well, coming in second after the joint category winners. It had a very high score in national identity, both in terms of shape and decals. It also had a good score in era-appropriateness. I don't think that one needs much explanation either. It is not difficult to imagine this vehicle in the Chinese theater next to a Type 95 Ha-Go. It is also nicely decorated with the Imperial flag and the Sakura (cherry blossom) decals. Finally, we touch on the other category win that this vehicle managed to secure: The Pitch. This particular pitch has received top marks in several subcategories, most notable in terms of structure and salesmanship. Seriously, at the end of the pitch all I could think was "Shut up and take my money!" It does a good job at laying out the specifications and details of this vehicle, and presents it in a way that is very persuasive, especially to the Imperial army. Touching on the situation Japan was in, their plans for the future, and how this vehicle was going to fit in those plans was what made me give it the top marks. On top of that, it also has nicely framed and edited pictures. The one thing that I missed was a stat sheet, but it did not cost you your well-deserved category win. It was very convincing and well thought-out, and it got your entry the well-deserved silver medal. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1st place: The Type 97 Ke-Ru by u/Drallo. https://preview.redd.it/23r9be5yet3b1.png?width=1300&format=png&auto=webp&s=d4d5c2a4593ea5330b27caafe7b3074c14a0eccd Our golden medalist, once dubbed 'Bargain-bin Lily' by our resident Minister of Military Expenditure himself, is none other than u/Drallo. This entry once again highlights that consistently performing well in several categories is the thing that wins you competitions like this. While he did also bag one category win, this entry did score second or third in most other subcategories. The one exception to this is the mobility, where this entry was fourth. It is still a good score overall, however. It managed to barely get the 50 km/h required, but performed good in all other aspects. It overcame all obstacles, was relatively comfortable over bumps, and had good steering capabilities. While it struggled somewhat with the higher speeds, it did accelerate very well, and got up to a decent speed quickly. While it did not excel in this particular category, it is certainly a mobile and maneuverable vehicle. It is mentioned in the pitch that "Your evaluation crew will find a nimble vehicle that does not fight or complain to its driver - it listens and obeys." After evaluating it I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. The lower mobility score can be easily explained when one looks at the armour of this machine. Coming in at 5.79 tonnes, it is among the heavier entries. This is because the hull and turret front are significantly thicker than requested, with armour effectiveness ranging from 30mm to 50mm in some places. This means that it will be able to shrug off even dedicated (small-calibre) anti-tank weapons at medium ranges, a great feat for a light vehicle. The hull rear and turret sides are also a couple of millimeters thicker. All this meant that this vehicle got the second place in terms of protection. It got its third place in the Utility category, bringing 800l of fuel and 78 rounds of 57mm ammunition into the fight. It also has an impressive 17,5° of gun depression and the desired 6 gears. It does have four crewmembers with limited space, particularly for the driver and gunner. Other than that, it had the preferred cannon and multiple MG mounts scattered around the vehicle, meaning it will be well-armed against the expected infantry. The pitch for this vehicle was also great, getting a close second place in that category. It scored high in salesmanship, details, and received the top marks for the many pictures. Each one is nicely framed and presented. There is even a leather cover of the official report! In addition, it provided a decent acknowledgment of the Japanese plans, helping with the era appropriateness score. Finally, a nicely made stat sheet gave us a good overview of the vehicle's capabilities. It will likely not come as a surprise that this vehicle was the other category winner in terms of Aesthetics. While the national identity score was somewhat lower, mainly due to the turret shape, all the other subcategories made up for it. It very much looks like it was designed in the late 30's, and the large turret actually makes it look like three people could fit in there. Most points came from the details, though. With many custom decals, grates, hatches, smoke launchers, and some well-placed spare parts, this looks like a vehicle ready for combat. https://preview.redd.it/a8lx4x7ilt3b1.png?width=1609&format=png&auto=webp&s=0aaf6090fe53ac9aeb645387dd7e97695d5f1393 There's just so much to look at on this vehicle - so many little details that make it as good as it is. I can only recommend to check out the pitch if you haven't already. The pictures he makes are much better and do this vehicle more justice than I could. All in all, it is a well-crafted entry for a well-deserved win. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And that concludes this particular round of Gathering Storm! Congratulations to the winner, and thanks again everyone for submitting your designs. While it took me much longer than I had hoped, I enjoyed testing and grading them. Keep an eye out in July for the next round, and let me know if you have any questions or comments. See you all hopefully next time! |
2023.06.03 17:29 meowkittycat93 Steam deck tips for anyone else stubborn enough to try.
Hello, first time posting here long time lurker. I kinda hoped over time a nice set in stone solution would present itself for Conan on steam deck (or that it could just proper support but meh) but i feel like somethings work and some things don’t work. Just wanted to list what works for me and could hopefully work for you.
So i’ll just be upfront with my preferred way to play which is in single player, and also in game mode to be able to suspend the software. The game seems to work a lot better if you just let go of the ability to suspend software in game mode and play in desktop mode. These tips are aimed mostly at anybody trying to play both in single player and also in game mode. If you are looking to play multiplayer and even on battleye supported servers a lot of the other guides out there should work just fine.
So some of the stuff is still the same as everyone else’s suggestions. I personally have my game installed in my SD card and have no idea if it would be improved on the SSD of the steam deck my guess is maybe.
As for the game itself what is currently working for me is to set use the force compatibility option and to use specifically proton GE 8-3. I tried the other options like experimental and 6.3-8 and other such ones and it just sadly did not work out.
Next same as before I added the following launch option
PROTON_LOG=1 %command%
From there for the initial setup, meaning you only should have to do this once, i switched to desktop mode and activated any mods i wanted to use from the steam workshop and activated some in the funcom launcher and some in the main menu of the game.
Then i launched the game and started off in single player and did the intro in desktop mode. After i was able to play i quit out and switched back to game mode.
Then i added the following launch option after the proton log one with just a single space.
-continuesession
that launch option skips the main menu and loads right into your game.
Here is the only finnicky part for me. At this point you should be able to launch the game and keep playing your single player save. However it very regularly and consistently takes me 3 start ups to get the game to work. i don’t know if this is just an issue in loading a game this size from the sd card or conan being conan. But i consistently have to start the game, let it get to the loading in screen, let it get stuck, close the game, open and again and try again basically for 2 failed attempts till it finally loads.
With the continue session launch option you do not have to press any buttons on the title screen. from pushing play game from the steam menu it’ll do everything automatically to try to load your save.
the key for me was to try multiple times despite the few times it would infinitely load. You’ll know it’s a failed boot if the progress stays put and if you have the fps counter on it’ll drop to 0 forever where as a successful boot it jumps around fps wise while loading.
That’s about it, i never had to uninstall battleye or anything. I hope this helps anyone else trying to play the game not only single player but also in game mode rather than desktop mode. Again, you’ll have a way easier time in desktop mode lol
currently at lvl 35 and going strong. i’ll update if anything changes with updates to game or steam deck
submitted by meowkittycat93 to ConanExiles [link] [comments]
So i’ll just be upfront with my preferred way to play which is in single player, and also in game mode to be able to suspend the software. The game seems to work a lot better if you just let go of the ability to suspend software in game mode and play in desktop mode. These tips are aimed mostly at anybody trying to play both in single player and also in game mode. If you are looking to play multiplayer and even on battleye supported servers a lot of the other guides out there should work just fine.
So some of the stuff is still the same as everyone else’s suggestions. I personally have my game installed in my SD card and have no idea if it would be improved on the SSD of the steam deck my guess is maybe.
As for the game itself what is currently working for me is to set use the force compatibility option and to use specifically proton GE 8-3. I tried the other options like experimental and 6.3-8 and other such ones and it just sadly did not work out.
Next same as before I added the following launch option
PROTON_LOG=1 %command%
From there for the initial setup, meaning you only should have to do this once, i switched to desktop mode and activated any mods i wanted to use from the steam workshop and activated some in the funcom launcher and some in the main menu of the game.
Then i launched the game and started off in single player and did the intro in desktop mode. After i was able to play i quit out and switched back to game mode.
Then i added the following launch option after the proton log one with just a single space.
-continuesession
that launch option skips the main menu and loads right into your game.
Here is the only finnicky part for me. At this point you should be able to launch the game and keep playing your single player save. However it very regularly and consistently takes me 3 start ups to get the game to work. i don’t know if this is just an issue in loading a game this size from the sd card or conan being conan. But i consistently have to start the game, let it get to the loading in screen, let it get stuck, close the game, open and again and try again basically for 2 failed attempts till it finally loads.
With the continue session launch option you do not have to press any buttons on the title screen. from pushing play game from the steam menu it’ll do everything automatically to try to load your save.
the key for me was to try multiple times despite the few times it would infinitely load. You’ll know it’s a failed boot if the progress stays put and if you have the fps counter on it’ll drop to 0 forever where as a successful boot it jumps around fps wise while loading.
That’s about it, i never had to uninstall battleye or anything. I hope this helps anyone else trying to play the game not only single player but also in game mode rather than desktop mode. Again, you’ll have a way easier time in desktop mode lol
currently at lvl 35 and going strong. i’ll update if anything changes with updates to game or steam deck
2023.06.03 17:28 BlueTiger1733 How do I Add this Minecraft skin to my Xbox one minecraft account I can’t seem to find a single video on YouTube Telling me how to So please tell me all I need is this image uploaded to my Xbox one some how
 | submitted by BlueTiger1733 to Minecraft [link] [comments] |
2023.06.03 17:27 Proletlariet Gex
If this weren't a video game, I'd be on my way to prison!
Gex
After the successive deaths of Gex's father and uncle, which happened to leave him a large inheritance, Gex entered a deep depression, unable to leave the house. He used his cash to buy himself a big TV and cable, and spent his days as a couch potato in front of the screen, a hopeless addict. One day, when he swallowed a special bug sent by the villainous Rez, he was pulled inside the world of TV. Now, with only his natural gecko abilities to help him, Gex goes on an adventure to defeat Rez and escape from TVland, all the while spouting off extremely dated pop-culture references.As a playable character in the game Mad Dash Racing, Gex is capable of performing any feat another character in his racer class (Dasher) can do, as well as any feat performable by the other two racer classes (Glider and Basher) as long as he’s carrying 10 green meteor chunks. Overview of racer classes from the manual. Feats that Dashers can perform will be marked with “MDR” for Mad Dash Racing while feats Gex would need ten meteor chunks to perform will be marked with “Tri” for “Tribrid.”
Gecko Abilities
Tongue- Snatches a bug out of the air with his tongue
- Picks up powerups with his tongue
- Pulls his entire body onto a platform with his tongue
- Pulls himself up onto a tree branch to avoid automatic fire.
- Pulls himself up to a tree branch twenty feet above his head to escape cannibals and a tiger.
- Pulls himself up to a conduit fifty feet above the ground to avoid an attack from Rez.
- Catches his fall and reels himself back up to a platform after Rez knocks him off it.
- In the first game, Gex can climb along any surface, including walls and ceilings
- From the second game onwards, Gex can only climb on specially marked areas
- Uses the suction-cups on his feet to cling to a tree against the blast of four tank shells.
- Invincibility
- Super speed that makes Gex leave afterimages
- Super jump that lets Gex jump high into the air
- Fire breath that incinerates foes
- Flaming aura that lets him light a fuse (Gameboy version)
- Ice breath that freezes foes In the novel, it pierces Rez’s chest and knocks him back into a pit of static.
- Multidirectional lightning breath that incinerates foes
- Spitting attack Uses it to knock Rez off a wire, make a car skid, and immobilize three gangsters.
- Temporary Herculean strength
- Temporary superhero strength which can shatter stone
- Bunny costume
- Space suit
- Caveman outfit
- Indiana Jones costume
- Police costume
- Winter clothes
- Firefighter costume
- Pharaoh outfit
- Army uniform
- Cowboy costume
- Akuji the Heartless costume
- Toga
- Pirate costume complete with peg leg
- Wrestling costume
- Tin Man costume
- Scuba gear
- Gangster outfit
- Lifeguard outfit
- Superhero costume
- Vampire costume that lets him glide through the air
- Red riding hood that lets him glide
- Robot suit that lets him glide In the novel, it makes him a transformer who can shapeshift into a bucket, a forklift, a jet plane or a helicopter with a rotor strong enough to chop up a heavily armoured giant robot.
- Sherlock Holmes costume that lets him analyze his surroundings and... shrink?
- Psycho Chicken: a chicken-shaped guided missile that homes in on foes and explodes.MDR
- Blob Bombs:, which are green glowing blobs that can be set down which explode on contact like mines.
- Bouncy Fruit: bouncing explosive projectiles shaped like fruit.
- Ribbon of Pain: A tron-like trail of energy that trails behind him, stunning anybody who touches it.
- Disco Ball: A shield that gives Gex temporary invincibility plus a speed boost.
- Freeze All: Freezes all other racers on the track, forcing them to struggle to escape with a button prompt.
Vehicles
Strength
General Strength- Diverts the path of a slow-moving rocket
- Holds onto a large firework as it flies into the air (Gameboy version)
- Holds onto a rocket as it flies through space
- Uses a mounted machine gun without experiencing recoil
- Hits a golfball so hard that it leaves a trail of fire when it lands.
- His tail whip attack is described as being able to dismember enemies and even disintegrate them
- Bashes through a large cluster of blocks with one hit from his tail
- Breaks metal containers
- Destroys a satellite dish
- Destroys a radio tower
- Breaks flying TVs
- Breaks giant dominos
- Breaks giant, evil pool balls
- Breaks a giant metal locker door
- Breaks a sarcophagus-themed wall covering
- Breaks the Ark of the Covenant (Gameboy version)
- Breaks the arms off a statue
- Breaks metal grates
- Breaks a brick house apart with repeated strikes
- Tail-whips a skull offscreen
- Tail-whips barrels
- Tail-whips and breaks strings that are holding up anvils
- Tail-whips a large mushroom (Gameboy version)
- Tail-whips a cooler of blood (Gameboy version)
- Tail-whips a sentient piece of machinery (Gameboy version)
- Tail-whips an Asian vase (Gameboy version)
- Tail-whips a set of double doors
- Tail-whips a bookshelf cover
- Tail-whips some giant bones
- Tail-whips a crystal power cell
- Tail-whips a sandcastle
- Tail-whips wooden boards
- Tail-whips tents
- Tail whips a car-sized boulder back at the cyclops who threw it, knocking them back into a mountain.
- Tail whips a desk into splinters.
- Sends Rez flying with a tail whip. Rez is very large and made of metal.
- Defeats a troop of alien warriors with his tail-whip.
- Defeats six ninjas at once with a roundhouse tail-whip.
- Sends Moo Shu Pork, a mutant cow/pig hybrid, flying with a kick, and is then implied to eat him. Moo Shu Pork is considerably larger than Gex.
- Knocks over a mech walker
- Deflects a thrown present out of the air hard enough to stun Evil Santa (Gameboy version)
- Dismembers a Frankenstein's monster
- Can defeat a dinosaur (Gameboy version)
- Activates a cannon by striking it (Gameboy version)
- Spins a gear to raise a large platform
- Spins a crank to pull out a bridge
- Rings the bell on a test-your-strength machine
- Tail slams so hard he shakes a mountain, causing part of it to collapse onto a cyclops.
- While giant, breaks apart a skyscraper with repeated strikes
- Shakes a giant tower inside a space station with a tail slam.
- Sends shockwaves through the ground with a tail slam, defeating two sumo wrestlers.
- Casually knocks aside robotic drones.
- Sends a roman soldier flying out of a chariot with a tail swipe.
- Knocks down a twelve foot tall cyclops.
- Knocks down a very large man with a tail swipe.
Mad Dash Racing
- Can defeat a Tremmel (a spikey headed monster) with one hit.MDR
- Can stun other racers and knock them into the air with a tackle.MDR
- Can smash through thick sections of foliage.Tri
- Can smash through rows of crates.Tri
- Can smash through a larger pile of crates.Tri
- Can destroy large underground roots.Tri
- Can destroy large stone tiki heads.Tri
- Can bash through cracked stone blocks.Tri
- Can smash apart a metal barricade.Tri
- Can smash apart a barricade made from large metal barrels.Tri
- Can smash through a large door.Tri
- Can smash through a cracked stone wall.Tri
- Can destroy a large rock spire.Tri
- Can destroy large stone boulders.Tri
- Can bash apart huge sections of rock.Tri
- Can beat Hex in a boss fight. Hex is strong enough to smash through huge stone walls and shrugs off a massive explosion in a cutscene and says he’s feeling “okay” afterwards. Although any playable character can play through Mad Dash Racing’s story mode and fight Hex, the cutscene for winning does change to reflect who you pickedMDR and there’s not really any canon for this game
Mobility
Agility- Can bounce using his tail
- Can jump surprisingly far
- Jumps from his chariot to another while in a race.
- Jumps from satellite to satellite in space, using his suction cups and sticky tongue to help him.
- Can clear long gaps with a karate kick
- Can do a one-handed handstand
- Can run, climb, and swimMDR very quickly.
- Can also climb arm over arm hanging from a net ceiling very fast.MDR
- Can perform a “Powerslide” while turning in order to charge up a burst of speed. In action.MDR
- Can grind quickly across thin surfaces like guard rails, vines, and ropes.MDR
- Can glide through the air a good distance by flapping his arms.Tri
- Counters an attack from a cow-pig hybrid with a pair of nunchuks, then disarms him.
- Dodges swings from Rez. Does it again.
- Runs while avoiding spear thrusts from cannibals chasing him.
- Jumps over a crowd of zombies, then dodges a knife-swing from a slasher villain.
- Can jump over a ninja's shuriken while fighting him (Gameboy version)
- Leaps out of a tank to avoid four enemy shells.
- Dodges gunfire from three gangsters.
- Runs away from a POW camp while avoiding gunfire from the guards.
- Ducks behind a car to avoid a driveby shooting.
- Can aimdodge automatic fire from a gangster’s tommygun.
- Can jump over a hunter's cartoon bullets while fighting him (Gameboy version)
- Can run around hunters with homing bullets (Gameboy version)
- Can move around slow-moving energy blasts
- Can dodge rocket blasts from Rez
- Avoids a bunch of homing missiles from Rez.
- Jumps onto a missile after it’s fired and steers it through a TV and into Rez’s chest.
- Deflects a thrown present out of the air hard enough to stun Evil Santa
- Can run extremely quickly after a golf ball he’s launched; in this case, covers about 180yds in a few seconds.
Durability
- Unhurt by jumping through glass
- Unhurt when the rocket he's riding blows to bits
- Unhurt by an impact that destroys the wooden crate he's in
- Deflects blue fireballs
- Gets slapped into the side of a building by Rez. Rez is strong enough to shake a huge tower inside a space station with one hand.
- Gets hit by Rez again, knocking him off a platform.
- Gets slammed in the skull by an FBI agent with a crowbar, although it knocks him out
- Gets pistol whipped in the back of the head by a mobster.
- Gets blasted into a wall by a robot’s beam attack.
- Gets shot by a giant robot and crashes into the ground hard enough to damage his jet-boots.
- Has an exploding bouquet of flowers go off in his face, blasting his head the wrong-way around.
- Gets thrown high up a mountain by a cyclops.
- Can crash through a large neon sign without slowing down.MDR
- Can be hurled a long distance from a catapult and hit the ground running.MDR
- As a mandatory section of a race course, falls from high up and hits the ground running.MDR
- Can be hit by a giant rolling boulder and is only stunned for a second.MDR
- Can take a hit by the Tremmel King in a story mode cutscene. As a Basher type racer, the Tremmel King is strong enough to smash apart large obstacles.MDR
- Can take hits from Hex during his boss fight. Hex is strong enough to smash through huge stone walls during scripted sections of the fight.MDR
- Can get speared by a floor spike trap and walk it off.MDR
- Can be hit by a swinging bladed pendulum and walk it off.MDR
- Can be blown up by a land mine and walk it off.MDR
- Can be burned by a spray of hot steam from a pipe and shake it off.MDR
- Can be burned by a jet of flame from a giant tiki and shake it off.MDR
Other
- In the first game, can spend an indefinite amount of time underwater
- Can spend an indefinite amount of time in space with no suit or air supply Same in the novel.
- Gets charged up with an energy that lets him activate jump pads
- Fucking murders people with a tommy gun
- Can kill ghosts
- His tail seems to be somewhat prehensile, picking up, unfolding, and putting on a pair of sunglasses.
- Carves an ice sculpture with tail whips (Gameboy version)
- Is pretty good at golf.
Hey, cool. I wonder what's on HBO...
2023.06.03 17:26 Particular_Log5679 Question about dino event colors
I have a question. Can you get the event colorful dinos (wild ones) without waiting for a event? I play on xbox.
submitted by Particular_Log5679 to ARK [link] [comments]
2023.06.03 17:26 HeadOfSpectre The Soldier
"Think of this as a chance at revenge," Sweeney said.
Revenge.
What a moronically quaint idea.
This jumped up little shit had come into my home, interrupted my retirement and here he was talking to me about revenge, as if he knew the first thing about what I’d seen, what I’d been through, why I’d quit.
Looking into his eyes, I knew he didn’t understand. I knew he couldn’t.
I've been hunting vampires for most of my life. I've killed more of them than I can count. But Clementine Di Cesare was no ordinary vampire. Hell, none of the Di Cesares were ordinary vampires, but even among them Clementine was… unique. She was the one all the others quietly feared. The one who was even spoken of with reverence by the Di Cesares masters, those twin Immortals who could not be killed by any weapon of this world. Seeking revenge against her was like seeking revenge against death itself.
“Revenge?” I repeated, with a dismissive scoff.
“You’re really going to tell me that after what she put you through, you don’t want revenge?” Sweeney asked.
“If you knew what she did to me, you’d know why I don’t want revenge,” I replied.
“Really? Sorry Franklin, but I don’t buy that. Look, I get it if you’re reluctant to jump back into the fight. I do. You of all people know just how dangerous the Di Cesare’s are. Especially ‘La Morte’.”
I looked over at him as he said that name. It rolled off his tongue so irreverently. To him, it was just a name. An alias assigned to some vampire he’s only heard of stories. He didn’t utter it with the respect it deserved, and I almost couldn’t be bothered to correct him. Any words spent on this small minded glory hound were probably wasted.
“Yes, I do know.”
“Which is why I need you,” Sweeney said. He almost sounded as if he were pleading with me. “Think of this as an opportunity to set things right… to put that vampire bitch in the ground where she belongs, and save God only knows how many lives in the process!”
I sighed.
He just didn’t get it.
“Mark my words, Mr. Sweeney, if you chase after Clementine Di Cesare, you’ll end far more lives than you save. She didn’t get a name like ‘La Morte’ for nothing. She earned it. Purchased it with the blood of the tens of thousands she’s sent screaming into the maw of Hell. She is not something you chase, Sweeney.”
“She’s a vampire,” Sweeney said dismissively. “She’s another enemy to destroy.”
“That’s what George Bundy said,” I replied. “Then not too long after, he died.”
“I’m not George Bundy,” Sweeney said.
“No. You sure as hell ain’t,” I agreed, before looking the kid in the eye.
He thought he was an up and comer, climbing the ranks of the Brethren. He probably thought of himself as some sort of badass vampire hunter too, when in reality he could never have so much as dreamed of holding a candle to the likes of Bundy… or hell, any of the men who’d died in Brazil.
“You should watch your tone with me,” Sweeney warned.
“Or you’ll do what?” I asked, “You ain’t going to frighten me with vague threats, boy. I’ve walked through Hell, trying to kill the Devil. What have you done?”
Sweeney bit his lip but didn’t respond.
“There’s nothing you can say or do that will intimidate me,” I said, before lighting myself a cigarette. I stared at the road outside of my porch, old memories flooding back to me before looking over at Sweeney again. He sat in his chair beside me like a sulky child. This was the man who wanted to destroy the Di Cesare family? Pathetic.
“Exactly how much do you know about the Brazil Job?” I asked.
“I know it was a failure. Clementine Di Cesare killed most of the men the Brethren sent out… all except for you. You were the only one good enough to beat her.”
“Good enough…” I repeated with a huff, “Hardly… whatever picture you’ve got in your head of some glorified battle, throw it away. Trust me, the Brazil Job was anything but glorious. It was a two hour long trek through Hell. And I didn’t beat Di Cesare at the end of it. I survived her. They’re two different things entirely.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Sweeney said.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” I sighed and took another drag on my cigarette.
This kid wasn’t going to leave until I made him understand… so I told him my story. I told him everything even though I knew he’d learn nothing from it.
***
I’d joined up with the Brethren Knights of St. Fontaine back in the 1980s to hunt monsters. Back then, it seemed like the best use of my skills. I’d done my tours with the army, but even after I got out, I was still looking for an enemy to fight. So naturally, once I found out that vampires were real, I set my sights on them. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time.
The Brethren Knights fancied themselves the descendants of the Knights Templar, and they insisted that their God given mission was to protect mankind from the things that lurked in the shadows. I didn’t really have much love for God at the time, but if the Bretheren were the ones fighting the monsters, then I was happy to tolerate the Jesus freaks in their ranks.
It was 1988 when we first heard whispers of the Imperium. A supposed cabal of vampires, trying to get them organized. At the time, it’d seemed too crazy to be true. Vampires generally went their own way, in my experience. At most, they might have a partner but other than they they didn’t really socialize with their own kind. But supposedly someone out there had the big fucking balls to keep them in line, and whoever they were, they scared the shit out of the Brethren.
They’d started targeting high profile vampires, trying to find someone who was involved in this ‘Imperium’, hoping that maybe they might get someone to talk. And it wasn’t long until they found someone who did.
From my understanding, the vampire they captured didn’t seem to know much about who was actually running the show. But they knew who their second in command was… and that was when I first head about the Di Cesare family.
The name was familiar to some of the higher ups in the Brethren, and I’d heard some stories. Not sure which were true, but the long and short of it was that the Di Cesare’s and the Brethren shared a bloody history, and didn’t particularly like each other too much.
George Bundy explained it to me like this at one point: ‘The Di Cesare’s are an old family. Most of them used to be witches, up until their Matriarch turned them into vampires. Now they’re a whole new kind of nasty. Far as I know, the only time anyone’s actually managed to kill one was about 200 years ago. Anyone who’s tried since has ended up dead, so most folks don’t even bother anymore.’
I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising they’d be involved in the Imperium, but the mere mention of their name ruffled some feathers higher up on the chain of command, and eventually they put out a kill order on them. Most of the Di Cesare’s were generally pretty hard to track down, but the top brass had a pretty good line on their matriarch, Bianca Di Cesare. Supposedly, she’d been spotted near the family’s private estate in Brazil and rumor had it that most of her daughters were there too.
Normally, the brass wouldn’t have sanctioned any kind of attack on them. The Di Cesare’s were already considered off limits, and attacking them at their private estate was considered damn near impossible. The estate was located in a small mining town outside of Manaus called Refugio de Julia, or just Julia for short. The town was fairly remote, being only accessible from a few backroads and most folks tended to avoid it, claiming they’d had various strange encounters in the area. Their accounts described unsettling pale figures with dark hair and large green eyes working in the mines, although some of the more disturbing stories we heard involved sightings of other creatures in the jungle surrounding the town. Massive spiders with humanoid faces, tending rotting corpses filled with stinging bees, giant howling beasts who tore through the forest, hunting prey, and beautiful women who would appear in the nearby towns, betwitching men into coming away with them only to reveal themselves as monsters who fed on the blood of their victims. Some had even claimed the Di Cesares themselves were such beasts… although those claims weren’t taken quite as seriously.
A skeptic might say the stories that surrounded Julia seemed like little more than just local superstition… but the Brethren had been dealing with the supernatural for long enough to recognize when something was probably real, and when it was probably fake and they knew damn well that most of the stories about Julia were probably true. None of them had ever dared set foot in Julia to find out for sure, since doing so would probably be suicide, but the theory was that the Di Cesares had created Julia as something of a refuge for other creatures. Other vampires, werewolves, arachne, karah and all sorts of other hellspawn. They offered them a home and safety in exchange for their labor in the mines. Hell, the name of the town more or less spelled it out.
Refugio de Julia
Julia’s Haven.
Julia had been the name of the only member of the Di Cesare family that the Brethren had ever killed, so I guess it was only fitting they named the town after her.
I honestly think using other creatures like them as a workforce was a bit inspired… since it made Julia damn near impenetrable. Reaching their estate at the far side of the town would have been impossible without being noticed by every creature of hell living in that town, and odds are they’d tear anyone apart long before they even reached the gates of the Di Cesare estate. And if one had the bright idea to approach the estate from another angle, they’d be trudging through miles and miles of rainforest to do so, only end up face to face with a massive stone wall that kept the rainforest out.
In effect - the Di Cesare estate was a fortress. Getting in would be no easy feat, to say nothing of confronting the vampires within. But with the fear of the Imperium gnawing at the back of their minds, the Brethren had finally set their minds to trying.
George Bundy had been the one in charge of planning the operation out.
I’d known Bundy before I’d joined up with the Brethren. Hell, Bundy was the whole reason I’d joined the Brethren. He’d been my CO a number of years back, and he’d earned his reputation as a hardass just about ten or twenty times over. Bundy was a gruff looking man with a bushy moustache and intense eyes. During the years I knew him, I don’t believe I ever once saw him so much as crack a smile. He only ever seemed to speak when he felt there was something he needed to say. Otherwise, he was usually dead silent.
He was somewhere in his late fifties back in 88. By all rights, he ought to have retired years ago. But he refused.
“I’m a soldier,” He said, when I asked him about it once. “That’s all I am. I don’t know what else to be.”
Bundy’s initial plan had been to hit the Di Cesare estate from the air. Come in fast and loud with a couple of helicopters and see how those vampires stood up to some good old American flak. The idea got shot down pretty quickly, so to speak. Apperantly, most if not all of the Di Cesares had cursed their own bodies, causing whatever wound one inflicted on them to appear on whoever it was who had wounded them. Going in guns blazing would have ended in a bloodbath… and not for them. There were also some concerns about drawing attention from Julia. With no conclusive data on just what they had living in that town, there was no guarantee we’d be safe in the air. A few eyewitnesses had described seeing giant nests in some of the trees in the jungle, supposedly consistent with the nests made by harpies.
Flying in guns blazing was out. So Bundy went back to the drawing board and what he came back with… well, it was ballsy, but it almost seemed like it just might work. During his reconnisance of the Di Cesare’s estate, he’d noticed a large but shallow tributary flowing into the amazon river that led right through the Di Cesare’s estate. Along the tributary was an abandoned water mill, that connected to the Di Cesare estate.
He’d suggested using the water mill to gain entry to the grounds, and from there, move on the Di Cesare’s. That plan had been approved, and Bundy had been allowed to handpick his team for the operation. He’d chosen fifteen men, all of them ex military, most of them having served under him before.
He’d told us we would be dividing into three teams of five men each. We would leave Manaus by boat, and land at three different areas near the tributary before making our way to the mill on foot, where we would regroup, before moving on the Di Cesares. The reason for the division was to ensure that if any of our teams ran into trouble upon making ground, the entire operation wouldn’t be compromised.
Team 1, led by Bundy himself would depart first and land to the west of the tributary. Team 2, led by a man named Ferdinand Hernandez would make land about fifteen minutes later near the mouth of the tributary and Team 3, to be led by me would land fifteen minutes later to the east.
On the day of the operation, I sat in my boat, watching as the other two left. It was twilight when we set out, and I remember that as my team and I carried out our final checks on our equipment, the only thing I felt was a familiar anticipation.
I’d hesitate to call it fear. Fear is what came later. Anticipation is the better word. I knew we could be walking into a tough situation… but I trusted Bundy. I trusted he’d run a smooth op. God knew, he’d done it a thousand times before.
The team assigned to me wasn’t anything particularly special. They were competent enough, but none of them would’ve been my first choices. Jack McMullen, for instance, who was about the same age as I was at the time. We’d both served under Bundy before, although while I respected Bundy, Jack was wholly devoted to him. I swear, if the man had told him to stuff a live grenade up his ass, Jack would’ve done it without a moments hesitation. I dunno if Jack simply saw him as the father he’d never had or what, but he damn near worshipped Bundy.
I can’t quite say the same for the other guys we had with us, though. One of them, some greenhorn by the name of Pearce Wilson struck me as an airheaded pretty boy who’d never actually had his boots on the ground before, while the other one, Scott Barber had left a bad taste in my mouth last time we’d worked together. Barber was capable… but he was violent. This was a kid with a hell of a chip on his shoulder, and it looked a hell of a lot like that Confederate flag patch he wore on his jacket. He wanted an excuse to shoot something, and I don’t think he cared what. Under most circumstances I’m not sure I would’ve fully trusted him with a gun.
The last one though, Joseph Feng… him I trusted. Feng was the one I knew the least about, and he didn’t seem much for conversation. But he handled himself competently enough and seemed to know when to sit down and shut up.
When Team 2’s boat was far enough away, we got the radio signal to follow. Barber was the one steering the boat, so I gave him the order to cast off and we ventured out into the twilight, unaware of just what was waiting for us out there.
***
We landed in our designated area fifteen minutes after Team 2 confirmed they’d touched down at theirs. Our landing was fairly uneventful. Feng, Barber, and I secured the boat before we radio’d Bundy to let him know we were in position. After that, it was just a matter of making it to the tributary.
As we ventured into the jungle, the world around us was quiet. There was wind, the whisper of the river behind us, and the sounds of animals. But little else. The river fell away behind us as we moved in single file toward the tributary, maintaining radio silence as we did.
It was about a half hour before we heard the gunshot.
Just one, echoing through the twilight. But it was enough to give us pause.
“The fuck was that?” I heard Barber ask. Immediately, the kid was on high alert, with his gun raised as if he were expecting every monster in Julia to come charging at us from all angles.
I just listened, waiting to hear if there was anything else. I half expected my radio to come to life, but it didn’t.
“Team 1, status?” I asked.
The radio crackled with static, but there was no response.
I tried it again, but still with no success. The radio was working, that much I was sure of. Something had to be blocking the signal.
“What’s going on?” Feng asked.
“Dunno,” I replied. “Comms are down.”
“Down?” Wilson asked, “So we’re flying blind out here, then?”
“More or less,” I replied.
“What do we do? Do we go back… if the comms are down…”
“Just because something’s jamming our signal doesn’t mean we’re made,” I said. “Relax. We keep moving for now. You keep your eyes wide open, and your head on a swivel. We’ll make it to the tributary and see if we can’t meet up with the other teams.”
I could tell Wilson wasn’t a fan of my answer, but I didn’t much care. We had a job to do, and I aimed to do it.
I pressed on without a further word and the others followed. Up ahead, I could hear the sound of running water and picked up the pace. I figured the tributary had to be close… and I was right.
I emerged from the brush into the stream, only to pause when I saw what was waiting for us in the water.
In the dying sunlight, it was impossible to mistake the bodies sprawled out on the rocks as anything else… and all I needed to do was look at their uniforms to know they were our people.
“Jesus…” I heard Wilson say under his breath. He froze up, lingering by the bank as I cautiously approached one of the bodies.
It belonged to a somewhat heavyset man with a thin mustache who I recognized as Hernandez. His eyes were still open, although lifeless and staring in different directions, and there was a clean hole in his forehead where a bullet had ended his life. The gunshot we’d heard earlier had likely been the sound of his death.
Looking at the bodies around him, I knew they had to be the rest of Team 2… although it was a little harder pinning down their cause of death. Some sort of bladed weapon, perhaps, judging by the state of them. I realized the odds were that they walked into some sort of ambush.
“What about Bundy and Team 1?” Jack asked, “Any sign of them?”
“No,” I said. “These bodies are all from Team 2… Bundy could still be ahead of us.”
“Then we need to keep going!”
Jack turned, heading up the stream and Barber was right behind him. Feng paused for a moment, thinking this over before following. Only Wilson remained.
“How do we know we’re not walking into a trap?” He asked.
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” I said before moving to follow the others.
“With all due respect, Sarge… that doesn’t sound like the best course of action!” Wilson argued, finally following me. “It sounds just like a good way to get killed!”
“Yeah?” I asked, “I’m gonna tell you an ugly truth, kid. That’s the job. Make your peace with it, and it’ll go a lot easier.”
Wilson didn’t like that answer either and trailed off behind me, watching as I continued upstream. For a moment, I half expected him to go back to the boat… but no. I dunno if he found his balls or just didn’t want to get left behind, but he started to follow us again.
I kept trying to raise Team 1 on the radio while we walked, although I still had no luck. The light above us slowly faded into darkness as we trudged through the water in silence, guns sitting comfortably in our hands and mosquitos biting at our necks.
It wasn’t until we lost Feng that I heard anybody so much as make a sound, and when we lost Feng… it happened almost instantaneously. One minute, he was at the head of the group, walking just ahead of Jack and I. The next, he was gone, only barely having the time to let out a scream as he fell into the river ahead of us.
The rest of us paused. Jack seemed to freeze and I pushed past him, calling out for Feng as I did. As punishment for my compassion, I almost went down after him. I only barely stopped myself from stepping on the slippery rocks that had helped send him to his demise.
I could see Feng’s body in the water, and I could see the blood pouring out of him. He twitched a few times, but I knew he was dead. The sharpened wooden spikes jutting out of him confirmed as much.
“What the hell…” Jack said under his breath, staring at Feng’s corpse in disbelief. “That’s a fucking spike trap!”
Yeah.
It was indeed a fucking spike trap.
I could see other spikes jutting out of the water ahead of us, just past a small dam of rocks that were just slippery enough to make it difficult to stop yourself from falling. Some of those spikes had other bodies on them… likely members of Team 1. I only counted two, although that still didn’t exactly bode well.
“They put a fucking spike trap in the goddamn stream…” Jack said, “Who the hell does that?”
“Somebody who’s expecting us to use the stream,” I replied.
“So they know we’re coming?” Barber asked.
“Clearly…” I replied. “And they’ve got a good idea on what our route is too.”
“Yeah, no shit!” Barber snapped. “Christ… let’s get the fuck out of here. There’s probably more fucking traps upstream!”
“Bundy’s orders were clear!” Jack argued.
“Bundy’s probably dead by now!” Barber replied, before looking at me. “Sarge, come on. You have to know this is suicide!”
“Suicide was part of the job description, was it not?” I asked.
“The job is to kill those fucking vampires, not to die in the goddamn process! We need to get out of the stream and into the woods!”
“Judging by the fate Team 2 met, I’m not sure the forest is someplace we want to be right now,” I replied.
“Excuse me?” Barber asked, “What the hell are you talking about, Sarge?”
“Five men dead, but only one gunshot. How did the rest die?”
Barber didn’t seem to be able to answer that.
“By now… yes. It’s clear we’ve walked into a trap. And yes, I understand that it makes sense to try and leave that trap… but I don’t know if we’ll be safer in the jungle. Something jumped Team 2. Cut them apart, and then shot Hernandez as a warning. They didn’t have to shoot him. They did it so we’d hear.”
“Your point being?” Barber asked.
“I don’t think this is just a trap, Barber. It’s a game. Stop playing, and you might just end up like our friends downstream.”
“A game?” Wilson asked, “Sarge, you can’t be serious!”
“From where I’m standing, we have a better chance of surviving in the stream,” I said. “Look, we’re at least halfway to the rendezvous point, and there have to be at least two members of Team 1 left. The safest thing to do right now is to follow them.”
“You’re off your fucking rocker, Sarge,” Barber spat, locking his eyes with mine. For a moment, I thought the boy was going to try and fight me. But no. He was wise enough to stand down.
“If you wanna get yourself killed, go right the fuck ahead. Just leave me out of it! Wilson, come on,” Barber said before trudging over to the edge of the stream. Wilson didn’t even hesitate, just looking back at Jack and I quietly before he disappeared into the forest with Barber.
“You’re not gonna stop them?” Jack asked.
“No,” I replied. “God willing, there’s a chance that pigheaded asshole is right… dunno how much of a chance, but a chance.”
“Then how come we’re not following him?” Jack asked.
“There’s also a chance he’s wrong.”
I turned, before making my way around the spike trap.
“Keep a slower pace,” I said. “Watch for traps.”
Jack hesitated for a moment, but he followed me without any further questions and we walked in silence for a little longer.
We heard nothing from the trees. Nothing that told us about the fate of Barber and Wilson. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not.
In fact, I don’t think we heard a thing until about a half hour later, when we heard the explosion.
It came out of almost nowhere, but ahead of us I could see a flash of light and hear the screams of men. On instinct, I found myself picking up the pace and could hear Jack behind me. In the low light, I saw a shape float past me in the stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was a severed human arm.
In the water ahead of us, I could see a figure clinging to one of the rocks and trying to pick himself up. I recognized him as George Bundy.
Jack was at his side almost immediately, trying to help the old man to his feet.
“Sir! Are you alright?”
Bundy just wheezed, before his legs gave out from under him. I helped Jack drag him to the shore so he could sit and rest for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking back at the stream.
“Grenade trap… I think…” Bundy panted, “Fucking tripwire… Popkov tripped it, I think…”
Popkov… odds are he was one of the two mangled corpses lying in the river a few feet away from us. It seemed they’d taken the brunt of the explosion, although Bundy still had some shrapnel in his arm that Jack was tending to.
“Christ… whole fucking ops gone to shit…” Bundy spat. “Team 2 got taken out just about as soon as they landed. Someone killed them and dumped them in the goddamn river. Lost half my boys to the fucking spike trap and half to this…”
He looked up at us, before spitting onto the ground.
“Guess you two haven’t done much better.”
“Hard to say,” I replied. “Two of ours took off into the woods, trying to avoid the traps.”
“Then they’re dead,” Bundy replied. “I’ve seen her watching us… always just up ahead, always from a distance… she’s seeing how far we’ll go. How much we’ll take…”
“She?” I asked.
“La Morte. Should’ve figured she’d be the one to greet us.”
“La Morte?” I asked.
“It’s Italian. Supposedly, she earned that name around the time the Di Cesares fled Venice. It’s funny, the Brethren like to act like the Di Cesares leaving Venice was some big victory of theirs, since before they did, they finally killed one of them… hard to call it a victory though, considering how many corpses they made before they fled. And most of them came from La Morte…”
Bundy winced in pain as Jack bandaged his arm before he continued talking.
“See… when the Di Cesare’s left Venice, one of them stayed behind. Clementine, the Scorpio sister. Guess she was unwilling to leave the fight unfinished… and according to the stories, the death toll she personally amassed in the years after the Di Cesare’s left Venice make the bodies they claimed during the Venetian Massacre a hundred and fifty years prior look like a pittance. The Brethren still occupying the city started to call her La Morte. Death. Cuz wherever she went, death followed in her wake… and it seems we’ve walked right into her open arms, haven’t we, boys?”
“You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.
“She’s a Di Cesare… and the shit we’ve seen out here… I don’t see any other Di Cesare setting those traps. It’s her. I’m sure of it. She’s watching us. Seeing how far we’ll go. Seeing if we’ll turn tail…”
“Should we?” Jack asked, and Bundy finally seemed to acknowledge him.
“Excuse me?” He asked.
“Should we? Look, sir… I’d follow you into the mouth of Hell, but right now, we’re down from fifteen men to three. Can’t say I’m optimistic about our chances right now. If this woman is half as bad as you’re saying she is, maybe it’s time we took a step back!”
Jack looked at me, hoping I might back him up, but I remained silent.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bundy asked.
“What I’m hearing here, is that as of right now, the vampire out there could kill us at any time. She hasn’t. Far as I’m concerned, that’s mercy. Maybe we should be taking it while it’s offered.”
Bundy stared at him, before chuckling. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him laugh.
“Just walk away, then?” He asked.
“Walk away, and come back better prepared!” Jack corrected.
“Walk away,” Bundy said again. “We walk away now, and there won’t be a chance to come back better prepared. We get one shot at this. One. Failure is not an option. We go in there and we kill them or we die. End of discussion.”
“And how exactly are we even supposed to kill them?” Jack asked, “That curse they have… bullets aren’t gonna do shit, sir!”
“Yours won’t, mine will…”
Bundy pulled his pistol from his holster. I noticed some sort of pattern crudely engraved on it.
“I’ve been doing some research… studied the curse they put on themselves… and I think I’ve found a way to break it. Not sure if it’ll work yet… but we get one chance to test it.”
Jack stared at the gun, then back at Bundy.
“Sir… do you hear yourself?” He asked quietly, “You can’t be serious… right now, even with that gun we don’t stand a chance in he-”
The gunshot echoed through the forest and made me jump. Jack’s voice died in his throat as he hit the ground.
Bundy stared at him for a moment, before huffing and holstering his pistol again. He draped his coat over his shoulders, before looking over at me.
“No room for failure, Frank,” He said calmly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared down at Jack’s body, my mouth hanging open slightly. When I looked back at Bundy, he was already back in the stream.
There was a tense silence between Bundy and I as I followed him along the final stretch of the tributary. He trudged on ahead, covered in sweat and straining with every step, but I could sense the quiet determination he had to see this through. Looking at him, you could’ve told me that George Bundy could wipe out the Di Cesare’s all by himself and I would have believed it in a second.
The night around us was full of sound, and each one drew my attention. I watched the forest, expecting to see some sign of La Morte watching us. But I saw nothing, except for what she wanted me to see.
“Mill’s just up ahead,” I heard Bundy say as we pressed on, although I noticed his steps faltering as he seemed to notice something in the trees above us. I stopped behind him, looking up before seeing what he saw, and when I saw it I felt my stomach turn.
I’d seen death before.
But what Di Cesare had left out for us… that was something else.
Pearce Wilson and Scott Barber weren’t dead.
But if they could have spoke, I’ve got no doubt they would have begged us to kill them. Wilsons pretty face was covered in blood and his pouty lips were parted as more trickled out of him. His curly blond hair was matted and I could see crimson there. Tree branches portruded from his ribs, while the loops of his entrails dangled out of his opened stomach. And Barber was in just about the same state, only he seemed to at least have the ability to turn his head to look at us.
I think he might have tried to speak, but the only sound he seemed to be able to make was a pained whimper.
“Jesus Christ…” I said softly.
“He had nothing to do with this,” Bundy replied. He took one last look at the two dying men hanging from the trees, before moving on.
“We should put them out of their misery, sir,” I said.
Bundy paused, before looking back at me.
“Don’t waste the ammo, Frank,” He replied. “They’re already dead.”
“Not yet they’re not!”
“Give them time. They chose to go into the woods. They can live with the consequences… for however long that lasts.”
With that, he left them. If I were a more compassionate man, I would have put them out of their misery. But no. Bundy moved on and so did I.
He approached the water mill, before examining it. It was an old building, made of stone that had long since been overgrown by moss, and sat right on the wall that separated the Di Cesares estate from the amazon. It hardly looked secure, even if the only entrance hadn’t just been an old wooden door secured with a padlock, finding a way in wouldn’t have been difficult. And it didn’t take much for Bundy to break through that door. All he needed was a couple of well placed kicks and it swung right open.
Drawing his gun, Bundy strode inside and I followed him.
“The Di Cesare’s will be in the main house,” He said. “We should find a way in through the back, try and catch them off guard. Main target should be the matriarch, Bianca. Her we should prioritize keeping alive… the rest are expendable.”
“Much as you are, I’m sure.” A voice called from deeper in the mill, and both Bundy and I froze.
I noticed movement on the floor above us, and through the shadows, I saw a tall woman watching us. She was dressed all in black, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail and the intense eyes of a soldier.
This had to be Clementine Di Cesare.
Bundy aimed his pistol at her, although she only barely seemed to notice.
“Only two of you left… I’m not sure the odds are in your favor,” The woman said. Her voice was low, calm and quiet.
“Only one way to find out,” Bundy growled.
“And only one way to walk out of this place alive,” Di Cesare countered. “You can put the gun down, turn and walk away. I won’t stop you. There’s no shame in living.”
“All the bodies you’ve left in your wake… that’s rich,” Bundy said.
“I don’t relish what I’ve done. I simply don’t know how to do anything else,” She replied. “Think about this, Bundy. Over my lifetime, there have been countless thousands who have come to kill me. All of them are dead, but I am not. Even if you could kill me… you could not kill my sisters. Not all of them. Not before they came for you.”
“Just you, would be enough…” Bundy said, before pulling the trigger.
I knew he’d hit her. I knew the bullet pierced her shoulder. But that woman… she didn’t even flinch. She simply dove out of the way before he could shoot again, taking cover and avoiding his next shot.
“Frank, upstairs!” Bundy snapped, “Flush her out!”
I went, trudging up the old wooden steps with my rifle drawn. Only to see Di Cesare vaulting over the railing and back down to the ground floor as soon as I made it up there.
Bundy shot at her again, only to miss for a second time. I saw Di Cesare’s arm move, and heard him cry out in pain. In the low light, I could see a dagger protruding from his shoulder. He stumbled back a step, leaving himself open for only a split second.
That second was all it took for Di Cesare to raise her own gun and fire just one shot.
George Bundy hit the ground without so much as a final scream. There was just a simple hole in his skull where she had shot him.
I felt my heart start to race faster. My eyes settled on Bundy’s gun, and I ran for the railing, vaulting it and dropping to the ground below with a thud. Di Cesare shot at me, and I felt the bullet tear through my leg. I reached out for the fallen gun and grabbed it before turning it on Di Cesare, only to find myself staring down the barrel of her own pistol. My finger rested on the trigger, but I didn’t have the guts to pull it.
"Kill me, and you will not see the sun tomorrow." She said, her voice still cold and calm.
“Killing you is part of the job…” I replied, but my finger still couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
“And is it worth your life?” Di Cesare asked. “You fail your mission either way.”
“And die with some goddamn honor…”
“There’s no such thing as honor. There is alive and there is dead. Choose.”
I knew what I was supposed to choose.
But my hands were shaking, as I stared into the face of death. My finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
The gun collapsed to the floor and Di Cesare kicked it away from me, before huffing and lowering her gun.
“Do not return,” She said softly. “Or next time, I will unleash a hell upon you that will make you beg for simple traps.”
She picked Bundy’s gun up off the ground, and then she was gone. After I finally picked myself up off the ground, I was gone too.
As I walked back along the stream… I passed the corpses of the men we’d left behind. Barber and Wilson, Jack, Feng, Hernandez, and his team. The flies were already feasting on them. Animals had already torn at them. And as I looked down at their cold corpses, I knew I had made the right choice.
I filed my report with the Brethren. Told them that Di Cesare had wiped us out, and a few months later I quietly retired. I never looked back.
***
“You walked away from her?” Sweeney asked in disbelief, “You had her dead to rights and you walked away from her?”
“I chose to live,” I replied. “Can’t say I regret the decision either. Because of the choice I made, I met my wife and had my kids. I’ve lived the life I had because I chose not to throw it away on some vampire.”
Sweeney just shook his head.
“You could have gotten the first confirmed kill on a Di Cesare in two centuries, and you threw it away you fucking coward! I could execute you for that!” I noticed his hand hovering over the gun on his hip.
“You could.” I replied, before quietly unholstering the pistol I kept at my side. I aimed it at Sweeney’s head.
He stared at me like a slack jawed idiot.
“Would you like to give it a try?”
“W-what…?”
“Would you like to give it a try, Mr. Sweeney? Or would you like to see the sun tomorrow?”
He stared down the barrel of my gun, and I already knew what his choice would be.
Sweeney took a step back. I saw his hand move away from his holster, and I lowered the gun with a huff.
“Thought so,” I said.
Mr. Sweeney left me without another word.
I knew he would not return.
submitted by HeadOfSpectre to HeadOfSpectre [link] [comments]
Revenge.
What a moronically quaint idea.
This jumped up little shit had come into my home, interrupted my retirement and here he was talking to me about revenge, as if he knew the first thing about what I’d seen, what I’d been through, why I’d quit.
Looking into his eyes, I knew he didn’t understand. I knew he couldn’t.
I've been hunting vampires for most of my life. I've killed more of them than I can count. But Clementine Di Cesare was no ordinary vampire. Hell, none of the Di Cesares were ordinary vampires, but even among them Clementine was… unique. She was the one all the others quietly feared. The one who was even spoken of with reverence by the Di Cesares masters, those twin Immortals who could not be killed by any weapon of this world. Seeking revenge against her was like seeking revenge against death itself.
“Revenge?” I repeated, with a dismissive scoff.
“You’re really going to tell me that after what she put you through, you don’t want revenge?” Sweeney asked.
“If you knew what she did to me, you’d know why I don’t want revenge,” I replied.
“Really? Sorry Franklin, but I don’t buy that. Look, I get it if you’re reluctant to jump back into the fight. I do. You of all people know just how dangerous the Di Cesare’s are. Especially ‘La Morte’.”
I looked over at him as he said that name. It rolled off his tongue so irreverently. To him, it was just a name. An alias assigned to some vampire he’s only heard of stories. He didn’t utter it with the respect it deserved, and I almost couldn’t be bothered to correct him. Any words spent on this small minded glory hound were probably wasted.
“Yes, I do know.”
“Which is why I need you,” Sweeney said. He almost sounded as if he were pleading with me. “Think of this as an opportunity to set things right… to put that vampire bitch in the ground where she belongs, and save God only knows how many lives in the process!”
I sighed.
He just didn’t get it.
“Mark my words, Mr. Sweeney, if you chase after Clementine Di Cesare, you’ll end far more lives than you save. She didn’t get a name like ‘La Morte’ for nothing. She earned it. Purchased it with the blood of the tens of thousands she’s sent screaming into the maw of Hell. She is not something you chase, Sweeney.”
“She’s a vampire,” Sweeney said dismissively. “She’s another enemy to destroy.”
“That’s what George Bundy said,” I replied. “Then not too long after, he died.”
“I’m not George Bundy,” Sweeney said.
“No. You sure as hell ain’t,” I agreed, before looking the kid in the eye.
He thought he was an up and comer, climbing the ranks of the Brethren. He probably thought of himself as some sort of badass vampire hunter too, when in reality he could never have so much as dreamed of holding a candle to the likes of Bundy… or hell, any of the men who’d died in Brazil.
“You should watch your tone with me,” Sweeney warned.
“Or you’ll do what?” I asked, “You ain’t going to frighten me with vague threats, boy. I’ve walked through Hell, trying to kill the Devil. What have you done?”
Sweeney bit his lip but didn’t respond.
“There’s nothing you can say or do that will intimidate me,” I said, before lighting myself a cigarette. I stared at the road outside of my porch, old memories flooding back to me before looking over at Sweeney again. He sat in his chair beside me like a sulky child. This was the man who wanted to destroy the Di Cesare family? Pathetic.
“Exactly how much do you know about the Brazil Job?” I asked.
“I know it was a failure. Clementine Di Cesare killed most of the men the Brethren sent out… all except for you. You were the only one good enough to beat her.”
“Good enough…” I repeated with a huff, “Hardly… whatever picture you’ve got in your head of some glorified battle, throw it away. Trust me, the Brazil Job was anything but glorious. It was a two hour long trek through Hell. And I didn’t beat Di Cesare at the end of it. I survived her. They’re two different things entirely.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Sweeney said.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” I sighed and took another drag on my cigarette.
This kid wasn’t going to leave until I made him understand… so I told him my story. I told him everything even though I knew he’d learn nothing from it.
***
I’d joined up with the Brethren Knights of St. Fontaine back in the 1980s to hunt monsters. Back then, it seemed like the best use of my skills. I’d done my tours with the army, but even after I got out, I was still looking for an enemy to fight. So naturally, once I found out that vampires were real, I set my sights on them. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time.
The Brethren Knights fancied themselves the descendants of the Knights Templar, and they insisted that their God given mission was to protect mankind from the things that lurked in the shadows. I didn’t really have much love for God at the time, but if the Bretheren were the ones fighting the monsters, then I was happy to tolerate the Jesus freaks in their ranks.
It was 1988 when we first heard whispers of the Imperium. A supposed cabal of vampires, trying to get them organized. At the time, it’d seemed too crazy to be true. Vampires generally went their own way, in my experience. At most, they might have a partner but other than they they didn’t really socialize with their own kind. But supposedly someone out there had the big fucking balls to keep them in line, and whoever they were, they scared the shit out of the Brethren.
They’d started targeting high profile vampires, trying to find someone who was involved in this ‘Imperium’, hoping that maybe they might get someone to talk. And it wasn’t long until they found someone who did.
From my understanding, the vampire they captured didn’t seem to know much about who was actually running the show. But they knew who their second in command was… and that was when I first head about the Di Cesare family.
The name was familiar to some of the higher ups in the Brethren, and I’d heard some stories. Not sure which were true, but the long and short of it was that the Di Cesare’s and the Brethren shared a bloody history, and didn’t particularly like each other too much.
George Bundy explained it to me like this at one point: ‘The Di Cesare’s are an old family. Most of them used to be witches, up until their Matriarch turned them into vampires. Now they’re a whole new kind of nasty. Far as I know, the only time anyone’s actually managed to kill one was about 200 years ago. Anyone who’s tried since has ended up dead, so most folks don’t even bother anymore.’
I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising they’d be involved in the Imperium, but the mere mention of their name ruffled some feathers higher up on the chain of command, and eventually they put out a kill order on them. Most of the Di Cesare’s were generally pretty hard to track down, but the top brass had a pretty good line on their matriarch, Bianca Di Cesare. Supposedly, she’d been spotted near the family’s private estate in Brazil and rumor had it that most of her daughters were there too.
Normally, the brass wouldn’t have sanctioned any kind of attack on them. The Di Cesare’s were already considered off limits, and attacking them at their private estate was considered damn near impossible. The estate was located in a small mining town outside of Manaus called Refugio de Julia, or just Julia for short. The town was fairly remote, being only accessible from a few backroads and most folks tended to avoid it, claiming they’d had various strange encounters in the area. Their accounts described unsettling pale figures with dark hair and large green eyes working in the mines, although some of the more disturbing stories we heard involved sightings of other creatures in the jungle surrounding the town. Massive spiders with humanoid faces, tending rotting corpses filled with stinging bees, giant howling beasts who tore through the forest, hunting prey, and beautiful women who would appear in the nearby towns, betwitching men into coming away with them only to reveal themselves as monsters who fed on the blood of their victims. Some had even claimed the Di Cesares themselves were such beasts… although those claims weren’t taken quite as seriously.
A skeptic might say the stories that surrounded Julia seemed like little more than just local superstition… but the Brethren had been dealing with the supernatural for long enough to recognize when something was probably real, and when it was probably fake and they knew damn well that most of the stories about Julia were probably true. None of them had ever dared set foot in Julia to find out for sure, since doing so would probably be suicide, but the theory was that the Di Cesares had created Julia as something of a refuge for other creatures. Other vampires, werewolves, arachne, karah and all sorts of other hellspawn. They offered them a home and safety in exchange for their labor in the mines. Hell, the name of the town more or less spelled it out.
Refugio de Julia
Julia’s Haven.
Julia had been the name of the only member of the Di Cesare family that the Brethren had ever killed, so I guess it was only fitting they named the town after her.
I honestly think using other creatures like them as a workforce was a bit inspired… since it made Julia damn near impenetrable. Reaching their estate at the far side of the town would have been impossible without being noticed by every creature of hell living in that town, and odds are they’d tear anyone apart long before they even reached the gates of the Di Cesare estate. And if one had the bright idea to approach the estate from another angle, they’d be trudging through miles and miles of rainforest to do so, only end up face to face with a massive stone wall that kept the rainforest out.
In effect - the Di Cesare estate was a fortress. Getting in would be no easy feat, to say nothing of confronting the vampires within. But with the fear of the Imperium gnawing at the back of their minds, the Brethren had finally set their minds to trying.
George Bundy had been the one in charge of planning the operation out.
I’d known Bundy before I’d joined up with the Brethren. Hell, Bundy was the whole reason I’d joined the Brethren. He’d been my CO a number of years back, and he’d earned his reputation as a hardass just about ten or twenty times over. Bundy was a gruff looking man with a bushy moustache and intense eyes. During the years I knew him, I don’t believe I ever once saw him so much as crack a smile. He only ever seemed to speak when he felt there was something he needed to say. Otherwise, he was usually dead silent.
He was somewhere in his late fifties back in 88. By all rights, he ought to have retired years ago. But he refused.
“I’m a soldier,” He said, when I asked him about it once. “That’s all I am. I don’t know what else to be.”
Bundy’s initial plan had been to hit the Di Cesare estate from the air. Come in fast and loud with a couple of helicopters and see how those vampires stood up to some good old American flak. The idea got shot down pretty quickly, so to speak. Apperantly, most if not all of the Di Cesares had cursed their own bodies, causing whatever wound one inflicted on them to appear on whoever it was who had wounded them. Going in guns blazing would have ended in a bloodbath… and not for them. There were also some concerns about drawing attention from Julia. With no conclusive data on just what they had living in that town, there was no guarantee we’d be safe in the air. A few eyewitnesses had described seeing giant nests in some of the trees in the jungle, supposedly consistent with the nests made by harpies.
Flying in guns blazing was out. So Bundy went back to the drawing board and what he came back with… well, it was ballsy, but it almost seemed like it just might work. During his reconnisance of the Di Cesare’s estate, he’d noticed a large but shallow tributary flowing into the amazon river that led right through the Di Cesare’s estate. Along the tributary was an abandoned water mill, that connected to the Di Cesare estate.
He’d suggested using the water mill to gain entry to the grounds, and from there, move on the Di Cesare’s. That plan had been approved, and Bundy had been allowed to handpick his team for the operation. He’d chosen fifteen men, all of them ex military, most of them having served under him before.
He’d told us we would be dividing into three teams of five men each. We would leave Manaus by boat, and land at three different areas near the tributary before making our way to the mill on foot, where we would regroup, before moving on the Di Cesares. The reason for the division was to ensure that if any of our teams ran into trouble upon making ground, the entire operation wouldn’t be compromised.
Team 1, led by Bundy himself would depart first and land to the west of the tributary. Team 2, led by a man named Ferdinand Hernandez would make land about fifteen minutes later near the mouth of the tributary and Team 3, to be led by me would land fifteen minutes later to the east.
On the day of the operation, I sat in my boat, watching as the other two left. It was twilight when we set out, and I remember that as my team and I carried out our final checks on our equipment, the only thing I felt was a familiar anticipation.
I’d hesitate to call it fear. Fear is what came later. Anticipation is the better word. I knew we could be walking into a tough situation… but I trusted Bundy. I trusted he’d run a smooth op. God knew, he’d done it a thousand times before.
The team assigned to me wasn’t anything particularly special. They were competent enough, but none of them would’ve been my first choices. Jack McMullen, for instance, who was about the same age as I was at the time. We’d both served under Bundy before, although while I respected Bundy, Jack was wholly devoted to him. I swear, if the man had told him to stuff a live grenade up his ass, Jack would’ve done it without a moments hesitation. I dunno if Jack simply saw him as the father he’d never had or what, but he damn near worshipped Bundy.
I can’t quite say the same for the other guys we had with us, though. One of them, some greenhorn by the name of Pearce Wilson struck me as an airheaded pretty boy who’d never actually had his boots on the ground before, while the other one, Scott Barber had left a bad taste in my mouth last time we’d worked together. Barber was capable… but he was violent. This was a kid with a hell of a chip on his shoulder, and it looked a hell of a lot like that Confederate flag patch he wore on his jacket. He wanted an excuse to shoot something, and I don’t think he cared what. Under most circumstances I’m not sure I would’ve fully trusted him with a gun.
The last one though, Joseph Feng… him I trusted. Feng was the one I knew the least about, and he didn’t seem much for conversation. But he handled himself competently enough and seemed to know when to sit down and shut up.
When Team 2’s boat was far enough away, we got the radio signal to follow. Barber was the one steering the boat, so I gave him the order to cast off and we ventured out into the twilight, unaware of just what was waiting for us out there.
***
We landed in our designated area fifteen minutes after Team 2 confirmed they’d touched down at theirs. Our landing was fairly uneventful. Feng, Barber, and I secured the boat before we radio’d Bundy to let him know we were in position. After that, it was just a matter of making it to the tributary.
As we ventured into the jungle, the world around us was quiet. There was wind, the whisper of the river behind us, and the sounds of animals. But little else. The river fell away behind us as we moved in single file toward the tributary, maintaining radio silence as we did.
It was about a half hour before we heard the gunshot.
Just one, echoing through the twilight. But it was enough to give us pause.
“The fuck was that?” I heard Barber ask. Immediately, the kid was on high alert, with his gun raised as if he were expecting every monster in Julia to come charging at us from all angles.
I just listened, waiting to hear if there was anything else. I half expected my radio to come to life, but it didn’t.
“Team 1, status?” I asked.
The radio crackled with static, but there was no response.
I tried it again, but still with no success. The radio was working, that much I was sure of. Something had to be blocking the signal.
“What’s going on?” Feng asked.
“Dunno,” I replied. “Comms are down.”
“Down?” Wilson asked, “So we’re flying blind out here, then?”
“More or less,” I replied.
“What do we do? Do we go back… if the comms are down…”
“Just because something’s jamming our signal doesn’t mean we’re made,” I said. “Relax. We keep moving for now. You keep your eyes wide open, and your head on a swivel. We’ll make it to the tributary and see if we can’t meet up with the other teams.”
I could tell Wilson wasn’t a fan of my answer, but I didn’t much care. We had a job to do, and I aimed to do it.
I pressed on without a further word and the others followed. Up ahead, I could hear the sound of running water and picked up the pace. I figured the tributary had to be close… and I was right.
I emerged from the brush into the stream, only to pause when I saw what was waiting for us in the water.
In the dying sunlight, it was impossible to mistake the bodies sprawled out on the rocks as anything else… and all I needed to do was look at their uniforms to know they were our people.
“Jesus…” I heard Wilson say under his breath. He froze up, lingering by the bank as I cautiously approached one of the bodies.
It belonged to a somewhat heavyset man with a thin mustache who I recognized as Hernandez. His eyes were still open, although lifeless and staring in different directions, and there was a clean hole in his forehead where a bullet had ended his life. The gunshot we’d heard earlier had likely been the sound of his death.
Looking at the bodies around him, I knew they had to be the rest of Team 2… although it was a little harder pinning down their cause of death. Some sort of bladed weapon, perhaps, judging by the state of them. I realized the odds were that they walked into some sort of ambush.
“What about Bundy and Team 1?” Jack asked, “Any sign of them?”
“No,” I said. “These bodies are all from Team 2… Bundy could still be ahead of us.”
“Then we need to keep going!”
Jack turned, heading up the stream and Barber was right behind him. Feng paused for a moment, thinking this over before following. Only Wilson remained.
“How do we know we’re not walking into a trap?” He asked.
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” I said before moving to follow the others.
“With all due respect, Sarge… that doesn’t sound like the best course of action!” Wilson argued, finally following me. “It sounds just like a good way to get killed!”
“Yeah?” I asked, “I’m gonna tell you an ugly truth, kid. That’s the job. Make your peace with it, and it’ll go a lot easier.”
Wilson didn’t like that answer either and trailed off behind me, watching as I continued upstream. For a moment, I half expected him to go back to the boat… but no. I dunno if he found his balls or just didn’t want to get left behind, but he started to follow us again.
I kept trying to raise Team 1 on the radio while we walked, although I still had no luck. The light above us slowly faded into darkness as we trudged through the water in silence, guns sitting comfortably in our hands and mosquitos biting at our necks.
It wasn’t until we lost Feng that I heard anybody so much as make a sound, and when we lost Feng… it happened almost instantaneously. One minute, he was at the head of the group, walking just ahead of Jack and I. The next, he was gone, only barely having the time to let out a scream as he fell into the river ahead of us.
The rest of us paused. Jack seemed to freeze and I pushed past him, calling out for Feng as I did. As punishment for my compassion, I almost went down after him. I only barely stopped myself from stepping on the slippery rocks that had helped send him to his demise.
I could see Feng’s body in the water, and I could see the blood pouring out of him. He twitched a few times, but I knew he was dead. The sharpened wooden spikes jutting out of him confirmed as much.
“What the hell…” Jack said under his breath, staring at Feng’s corpse in disbelief. “That’s a fucking spike trap!”
Yeah.
It was indeed a fucking spike trap.
I could see other spikes jutting out of the water ahead of us, just past a small dam of rocks that were just slippery enough to make it difficult to stop yourself from falling. Some of those spikes had other bodies on them… likely members of Team 1. I only counted two, although that still didn’t exactly bode well.
“They put a fucking spike trap in the goddamn stream…” Jack said, “Who the hell does that?”
“Somebody who’s expecting us to use the stream,” I replied.
“So they know we’re coming?” Barber asked.
“Clearly…” I replied. “And they’ve got a good idea on what our route is too.”
“Yeah, no shit!” Barber snapped. “Christ… let’s get the fuck out of here. There’s probably more fucking traps upstream!”
“Bundy’s orders were clear!” Jack argued.
“Bundy’s probably dead by now!” Barber replied, before looking at me. “Sarge, come on. You have to know this is suicide!”
“Suicide was part of the job description, was it not?” I asked.
“The job is to kill those fucking vampires, not to die in the goddamn process! We need to get out of the stream and into the woods!”
“Judging by the fate Team 2 met, I’m not sure the forest is someplace we want to be right now,” I replied.
“Excuse me?” Barber asked, “What the hell are you talking about, Sarge?”
“Five men dead, but only one gunshot. How did the rest die?”
Barber didn’t seem to be able to answer that.
“By now… yes. It’s clear we’ve walked into a trap. And yes, I understand that it makes sense to try and leave that trap… but I don’t know if we’ll be safer in the jungle. Something jumped Team 2. Cut them apart, and then shot Hernandez as a warning. They didn’t have to shoot him. They did it so we’d hear.”
“Your point being?” Barber asked.
“I don’t think this is just a trap, Barber. It’s a game. Stop playing, and you might just end up like our friends downstream.”
“A game?” Wilson asked, “Sarge, you can’t be serious!”
“From where I’m standing, we have a better chance of surviving in the stream,” I said. “Look, we’re at least halfway to the rendezvous point, and there have to be at least two members of Team 1 left. The safest thing to do right now is to follow them.”
“You’re off your fucking rocker, Sarge,” Barber spat, locking his eyes with mine. For a moment, I thought the boy was going to try and fight me. But no. He was wise enough to stand down.
“If you wanna get yourself killed, go right the fuck ahead. Just leave me out of it! Wilson, come on,” Barber said before trudging over to the edge of the stream. Wilson didn’t even hesitate, just looking back at Jack and I quietly before he disappeared into the forest with Barber.
“You’re not gonna stop them?” Jack asked.
“No,” I replied. “God willing, there’s a chance that pigheaded asshole is right… dunno how much of a chance, but a chance.”
“Then how come we’re not following him?” Jack asked.
“There’s also a chance he’s wrong.”
I turned, before making my way around the spike trap.
“Keep a slower pace,” I said. “Watch for traps.”
Jack hesitated for a moment, but he followed me without any further questions and we walked in silence for a little longer.
We heard nothing from the trees. Nothing that told us about the fate of Barber and Wilson. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not.
In fact, I don’t think we heard a thing until about a half hour later, when we heard the explosion.
It came out of almost nowhere, but ahead of us I could see a flash of light and hear the screams of men. On instinct, I found myself picking up the pace and could hear Jack behind me. In the low light, I saw a shape float past me in the stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was a severed human arm.
In the water ahead of us, I could see a figure clinging to one of the rocks and trying to pick himself up. I recognized him as George Bundy.
Jack was at his side almost immediately, trying to help the old man to his feet.
“Sir! Are you alright?”
Bundy just wheezed, before his legs gave out from under him. I helped Jack drag him to the shore so he could sit and rest for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking back at the stream.
“Grenade trap… I think…” Bundy panted, “Fucking tripwire… Popkov tripped it, I think…”
Popkov… odds are he was one of the two mangled corpses lying in the river a few feet away from us. It seemed they’d taken the brunt of the explosion, although Bundy still had some shrapnel in his arm that Jack was tending to.
“Christ… whole fucking ops gone to shit…” Bundy spat. “Team 2 got taken out just about as soon as they landed. Someone killed them and dumped them in the goddamn river. Lost half my boys to the fucking spike trap and half to this…”
He looked up at us, before spitting onto the ground.
“Guess you two haven’t done much better.”
“Hard to say,” I replied. “Two of ours took off into the woods, trying to avoid the traps.”
“Then they’re dead,” Bundy replied. “I’ve seen her watching us… always just up ahead, always from a distance… she’s seeing how far we’ll go. How much we’ll take…”
“She?” I asked.
“La Morte. Should’ve figured she’d be the one to greet us.”
“La Morte?” I asked.
“It’s Italian. Supposedly, she earned that name around the time the Di Cesares fled Venice. It’s funny, the Brethren like to act like the Di Cesares leaving Venice was some big victory of theirs, since before they did, they finally killed one of them… hard to call it a victory though, considering how many corpses they made before they fled. And most of them came from La Morte…”
Bundy winced in pain as Jack bandaged his arm before he continued talking.
“See… when the Di Cesare’s left Venice, one of them stayed behind. Clementine, the Scorpio sister. Guess she was unwilling to leave the fight unfinished… and according to the stories, the death toll she personally amassed in the years after the Di Cesare’s left Venice make the bodies they claimed during the Venetian Massacre a hundred and fifty years prior look like a pittance. The Brethren still occupying the city started to call her La Morte. Death. Cuz wherever she went, death followed in her wake… and it seems we’ve walked right into her open arms, haven’t we, boys?”
“You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.
“She’s a Di Cesare… and the shit we’ve seen out here… I don’t see any other Di Cesare setting those traps. It’s her. I’m sure of it. She’s watching us. Seeing how far we’ll go. Seeing if we’ll turn tail…”
“Should we?” Jack asked, and Bundy finally seemed to acknowledge him.
“Excuse me?” He asked.
“Should we? Look, sir… I’d follow you into the mouth of Hell, but right now, we’re down from fifteen men to three. Can’t say I’m optimistic about our chances right now. If this woman is half as bad as you’re saying she is, maybe it’s time we took a step back!”
Jack looked at me, hoping I might back him up, but I remained silent.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bundy asked.
“What I’m hearing here, is that as of right now, the vampire out there could kill us at any time. She hasn’t. Far as I’m concerned, that’s mercy. Maybe we should be taking it while it’s offered.”
Bundy stared at him, before chuckling. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him laugh.
“Just walk away, then?” He asked.
“Walk away, and come back better prepared!” Jack corrected.
“Walk away,” Bundy said again. “We walk away now, and there won’t be a chance to come back better prepared. We get one shot at this. One. Failure is not an option. We go in there and we kill them or we die. End of discussion.”
“And how exactly are we even supposed to kill them?” Jack asked, “That curse they have… bullets aren’t gonna do shit, sir!”
“Yours won’t, mine will…”
Bundy pulled his pistol from his holster. I noticed some sort of pattern crudely engraved on it.
“I’ve been doing some research… studied the curse they put on themselves… and I think I’ve found a way to break it. Not sure if it’ll work yet… but we get one chance to test it.”
Jack stared at the gun, then back at Bundy.
“Sir… do you hear yourself?” He asked quietly, “You can’t be serious… right now, even with that gun we don’t stand a chance in he-”
The gunshot echoed through the forest and made me jump. Jack’s voice died in his throat as he hit the ground.
Bundy stared at him for a moment, before huffing and holstering his pistol again. He draped his coat over his shoulders, before looking over at me.
“No room for failure, Frank,” He said calmly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared down at Jack’s body, my mouth hanging open slightly. When I looked back at Bundy, he was already back in the stream.
There was a tense silence between Bundy and I as I followed him along the final stretch of the tributary. He trudged on ahead, covered in sweat and straining with every step, but I could sense the quiet determination he had to see this through. Looking at him, you could’ve told me that George Bundy could wipe out the Di Cesare’s all by himself and I would have believed it in a second.
The night around us was full of sound, and each one drew my attention. I watched the forest, expecting to see some sign of La Morte watching us. But I saw nothing, except for what she wanted me to see.
“Mill’s just up ahead,” I heard Bundy say as we pressed on, although I noticed his steps faltering as he seemed to notice something in the trees above us. I stopped behind him, looking up before seeing what he saw, and when I saw it I felt my stomach turn.
I’d seen death before.
But what Di Cesare had left out for us… that was something else.
Pearce Wilson and Scott Barber weren’t dead.
But if they could have spoke, I’ve got no doubt they would have begged us to kill them. Wilsons pretty face was covered in blood and his pouty lips were parted as more trickled out of him. His curly blond hair was matted and I could see crimson there. Tree branches portruded from his ribs, while the loops of his entrails dangled out of his opened stomach. And Barber was in just about the same state, only he seemed to at least have the ability to turn his head to look at us.
I think he might have tried to speak, but the only sound he seemed to be able to make was a pained whimper.
“Jesus Christ…” I said softly.
“He had nothing to do with this,” Bundy replied. He took one last look at the two dying men hanging from the trees, before moving on.
“We should put them out of their misery, sir,” I said.
Bundy paused, before looking back at me.
“Don’t waste the ammo, Frank,” He replied. “They’re already dead.”
“Not yet they’re not!”
“Give them time. They chose to go into the woods. They can live with the consequences… for however long that lasts.”
With that, he left them. If I were a more compassionate man, I would have put them out of their misery. But no. Bundy moved on and so did I.
He approached the water mill, before examining it. It was an old building, made of stone that had long since been overgrown by moss, and sat right on the wall that separated the Di Cesares estate from the amazon. It hardly looked secure, even if the only entrance hadn’t just been an old wooden door secured with a padlock, finding a way in wouldn’t have been difficult. And it didn’t take much for Bundy to break through that door. All he needed was a couple of well placed kicks and it swung right open.
Drawing his gun, Bundy strode inside and I followed him.
“The Di Cesare’s will be in the main house,” He said. “We should find a way in through the back, try and catch them off guard. Main target should be the matriarch, Bianca. Her we should prioritize keeping alive… the rest are expendable.”
“Much as you are, I’m sure.” A voice called from deeper in the mill, and both Bundy and I froze.
I noticed movement on the floor above us, and through the shadows, I saw a tall woman watching us. She was dressed all in black, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail and the intense eyes of a soldier.
This had to be Clementine Di Cesare.
Bundy aimed his pistol at her, although she only barely seemed to notice.
“Only two of you left… I’m not sure the odds are in your favor,” The woman said. Her voice was low, calm and quiet.
“Only one way to find out,” Bundy growled.
“And only one way to walk out of this place alive,” Di Cesare countered. “You can put the gun down, turn and walk away. I won’t stop you. There’s no shame in living.”
“All the bodies you’ve left in your wake… that’s rich,” Bundy said.
“I don’t relish what I’ve done. I simply don’t know how to do anything else,” She replied. “Think about this, Bundy. Over my lifetime, there have been countless thousands who have come to kill me. All of them are dead, but I am not. Even if you could kill me… you could not kill my sisters. Not all of them. Not before they came for you.”
“Just you, would be enough…” Bundy said, before pulling the trigger.
I knew he’d hit her. I knew the bullet pierced her shoulder. But that woman… she didn’t even flinch. She simply dove out of the way before he could shoot again, taking cover and avoiding his next shot.
“Frank, upstairs!” Bundy snapped, “Flush her out!”
I went, trudging up the old wooden steps with my rifle drawn. Only to see Di Cesare vaulting over the railing and back down to the ground floor as soon as I made it up there.
Bundy shot at her again, only to miss for a second time. I saw Di Cesare’s arm move, and heard him cry out in pain. In the low light, I could see a dagger protruding from his shoulder. He stumbled back a step, leaving himself open for only a split second.
That second was all it took for Di Cesare to raise her own gun and fire just one shot.
George Bundy hit the ground without so much as a final scream. There was just a simple hole in his skull where she had shot him.
I felt my heart start to race faster. My eyes settled on Bundy’s gun, and I ran for the railing, vaulting it and dropping to the ground below with a thud. Di Cesare shot at me, and I felt the bullet tear through my leg. I reached out for the fallen gun and grabbed it before turning it on Di Cesare, only to find myself staring down the barrel of her own pistol. My finger rested on the trigger, but I didn’t have the guts to pull it.
"Kill me, and you will not see the sun tomorrow." She said, her voice still cold and calm.
“Killing you is part of the job…” I replied, but my finger still couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
“And is it worth your life?” Di Cesare asked. “You fail your mission either way.”
“And die with some goddamn honor…”
“There’s no such thing as honor. There is alive and there is dead. Choose.”
I knew what I was supposed to choose.
But my hands were shaking, as I stared into the face of death. My finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
The gun collapsed to the floor and Di Cesare kicked it away from me, before huffing and lowering her gun.
“Do not return,” She said softly. “Or next time, I will unleash a hell upon you that will make you beg for simple traps.”
She picked Bundy’s gun up off the ground, and then she was gone. After I finally picked myself up off the ground, I was gone too.
As I walked back along the stream… I passed the corpses of the men we’d left behind. Barber and Wilson, Jack, Feng, Hernandez, and his team. The flies were already feasting on them. Animals had already torn at them. And as I looked down at their cold corpses, I knew I had made the right choice.
I filed my report with the Brethren. Told them that Di Cesare had wiped us out, and a few months later I quietly retired. I never looked back.
***
“You walked away from her?” Sweeney asked in disbelief, “You had her dead to rights and you walked away from her?”
“I chose to live,” I replied. “Can’t say I regret the decision either. Because of the choice I made, I met my wife and had my kids. I’ve lived the life I had because I chose not to throw it away on some vampire.”
Sweeney just shook his head.
“You could have gotten the first confirmed kill on a Di Cesare in two centuries, and you threw it away you fucking coward! I could execute you for that!” I noticed his hand hovering over the gun on his hip.
“You could.” I replied, before quietly unholstering the pistol I kept at my side. I aimed it at Sweeney’s head.
He stared at me like a slack jawed idiot.
“Would you like to give it a try?”
“W-what…?”
“Would you like to give it a try, Mr. Sweeney? Or would you like to see the sun tomorrow?”
He stared down the barrel of my gun, and I already knew what his choice would be.
Sweeney took a step back. I saw his hand move away from his holster, and I lowered the gun with a huff.
“Thought so,” I said.
Mr. Sweeney left me without another word.
I knew he would not return.
2023.06.03 17:26 SatanicTriangle The "correct" way to append to container using output of a function
The problem is simple: I have a container, a std::map to be precise and filling it is complicated enough to be split into functions. How do I do that the right way? These are the approaches I was considering.
Is one of these the definitive answer? Are there other approaches?
submitted by SatanicTriangle to cpp_questions [link] [comments]
return a container
auto toAdd = getValues(); myMap.insert(toAdd.begin(),toAdd.end());this introduces at least one unnecessary copy - bad. I think it maybe can be solved with ranges but I prefer to keep the code C++17 compatible.
return argument
That one is pretty self explanatory - pass reference of a myMap to getValues.pass std::insert_iterator
Sounds like "the stl way" but...std::inserter(myMap,myMap.end());The iterator here does not matter which makes the code confusing but it has to be valid myMap iterator ({} doesn't work). I did get hooked on iterators recently though, so I am considering this.
Use temporary field
At least it keeps the map-filling functions code clean, can't say the same thing about the rest of the class.Is one of these the definitive answer? Are there other approaches?
2023.06.03 17:25 Bear_Brawlerr Looking to buy the game
Dead island 2s disk says that it’s for xbox series x, but will it also work for my xbox one ?
submitted by Bear_Brawlerr to DeadIsland2 [link] [comments]
2023.06.03 17:24 Nico2435 His (M,29) parents want him to have an arranged marriage, he is torn about me (F, 27)?
Hi guys, so I (F, 27) have been seeing this guy on and off for about a year now - let's call him S and he is indian (M, 29) , I am German. His father is a politician back in India and his family is somewhat in the spotlight in their locality. We met on a dating app and first we had 4-5 dates and then I felt we were too similar so I ended it. Looking back I think at that time I was recently separated and felt I needed someone extroverted.. it was a weird time for me, but I always said he's like the male version of me (and we were born on the same day!). The sex was always the most amazing I have ever had, anyways He was disappointed about it and I felt he was too relaxed like I wanted him to ask me out on dates so it felt like best decision at the time for me.
A few months later one night I asked S over for a hook up. We talked for hours and hours before we even hooked up and then this became a pattern. I felt really connected and compatible and asked him to go for a drink a few days later as I didn't want to only hook up but to date. On that night out, he told me that he likes me, but since the last time we had dated initially, his parents had since had a talk with him about getting married soon (arranged marriage). He said he could never take me back home.... more or less not because he didn't want to but he physically couldn't . He has always felt a lot of pressure from his family, as indian parents can be, and they forced him to study a certain thing etc.
I was so disappointed, but appreciated him being honest because from that night I had expressed I didn't want to only hook up but to date, and that's why he then told me this. I ended things and stopped asking him over. A few weeks later, I couldn't help myself and broke my boundary and asked him over, this became a pattern again for a few months. It's obviously been my choice but I guess I always knew he would say yes each time, he used to literally leave night outs with his friends to come over and meet me. If he even said no once, I would have felt rejected and never asked again but he never did that. I think I just always hoped one day he may go against his parents and fight for me in some way.
In February, I ended it again because I wanted more and didn't want to keep getting hurt by expecting things to change. I began trying to date others, and there was one night he saw me in a local bar on a date with another guy. He used to continue to interact with me on social media and message me but we never met up.
Fast forward to last week, I asked him to go for a drink after not seeing him for many months. It was great as usual, and the next day we hooked up. Things felt so different this time, like he was holding my hand during sex, everything was just so passionate and felt right. But I hate the feeling I have afterwards when he leaves, and I feel needy because all I want to do is see him again and have him be my boyfriend. Anyway 2 nights ago I decided I needed to put my boundary in place for good, I told him that I like him a lot and that his actions are confusing me. He opened up a lot and said that he really likes me but he is battling his head and his heart. His parents said they expect him to get married in 2-3 years and he doesn't know what to do. He was really hurt and upset when he saw me out with someone else, He likes me but feels obligated to do what they expect of him.It was a tough night, no real resolution. I even said if you don't think you can ever be with me just say it directly, be blunt, I would much rather that then you leave me in limbo each time, I want clarity. As he is not usually good at communicating and comfortable, he just became kind of frustrated and shut down during this conversation. It ended with him saying he needs more time, time for what I am not sure..
We haven't spoken since, I don't know what to do except leave him alone because I don't want to pressure him, but I don't understand why not just leave me alone and let me move on then. He kept saying him expressing his feelings that night made him feel small.
A little context, I love india and I've been twice last year for my own travels and heavily am involved in indian culture on social media.
TL;DR: He is under pressure of family obligations but has feelings for me.
submitted by Nico2435 to u/Nico2435 [link] [comments]
A few months later one night I asked S over for a hook up. We talked for hours and hours before we even hooked up and then this became a pattern. I felt really connected and compatible and asked him to go for a drink a few days later as I didn't want to only hook up but to date. On that night out, he told me that he likes me, but since the last time we had dated initially, his parents had since had a talk with him about getting married soon (arranged marriage). He said he could never take me back home.... more or less not because he didn't want to but he physically couldn't . He has always felt a lot of pressure from his family, as indian parents can be, and they forced him to study a certain thing etc.
I was so disappointed, but appreciated him being honest because from that night I had expressed I didn't want to only hook up but to date, and that's why he then told me this. I ended things and stopped asking him over. A few weeks later, I couldn't help myself and broke my boundary and asked him over, this became a pattern again for a few months. It's obviously been my choice but I guess I always knew he would say yes each time, he used to literally leave night outs with his friends to come over and meet me. If he even said no once, I would have felt rejected and never asked again but he never did that. I think I just always hoped one day he may go against his parents and fight for me in some way.
In February, I ended it again because I wanted more and didn't want to keep getting hurt by expecting things to change. I began trying to date others, and there was one night he saw me in a local bar on a date with another guy. He used to continue to interact with me on social media and message me but we never met up.
Fast forward to last week, I asked him to go for a drink after not seeing him for many months. It was great as usual, and the next day we hooked up. Things felt so different this time, like he was holding my hand during sex, everything was just so passionate and felt right. But I hate the feeling I have afterwards when he leaves, and I feel needy because all I want to do is see him again and have him be my boyfriend. Anyway 2 nights ago I decided I needed to put my boundary in place for good, I told him that I like him a lot and that his actions are confusing me. He opened up a lot and said that he really likes me but he is battling his head and his heart. His parents said they expect him to get married in 2-3 years and he doesn't know what to do. He was really hurt and upset when he saw me out with someone else, He likes me but feels obligated to do what they expect of him.It was a tough night, no real resolution. I even said if you don't think you can ever be with me just say it directly, be blunt, I would much rather that then you leave me in limbo each time, I want clarity. As he is not usually good at communicating and comfortable, he just became kind of frustrated and shut down during this conversation. It ended with him saying he needs more time, time for what I am not sure..
We haven't spoken since, I don't know what to do except leave him alone because I don't want to pressure him, but I don't understand why not just leave me alone and let me move on then. He kept saying him expressing his feelings that night made him feel small.
A little context, I love india and I've been twice last year for my own travels and heavily am involved in indian culture on social media.
TL;DR: He is under pressure of family obligations but has feelings for me.
2023.06.03 17:24 Environmental_Mud331 [FNV] Fallout New Vegas stutter that does not stop (unplayable)
The game will not stop stuttering, I've tried everything: (not all at the same time)
- installed tick fix
-set fps limit to 64
-reinstalled the game
- tried setting the fps clamp to 60
-Deleting all of my mods to see if one of them is the issue(nope)
The Game just will not function properly.
Just mods assorted is effected by it as well, I constantly am running even when I'm not pressing shift and it does not stop unless I close the game.
my load order:
FalloutNV.esm
DeadMoney.esm
HonestHearts.esm
OldWorldBlues.esm
LonesomeRoad.esm
GunRunnersArsenal.esm
ClassicPack.esm
MercenaryPack.esm
TribalPack.esm
CaravanPack.esm
YUP - Base Game + All DLC.esm
Functional Post Game Ending.esm
FCOMaster.esm
Vanilla Enhancements.esm
TLD_Travelers.esm
RedOnTheRocks.esm
NVStripOpen.esm
Project Nevada - Core.esm
Project Nevada - Equipment.esm
Project Nevada - Rebalance.esp
Functional Post Game Ending - YUP Patch.esm
Weapons.of.the.New.Millenia.esm
YUP - NPC Fixes (Base Game + All DLC).esp
Unofficial Patch NVSE Plus.esp
FOVSlider.esp
The Weapon Mod Menu.esp
High Frequency Murasama Blade.esp
EVE FNV - ALL DLC.esp
FCO - NPC Changes.esp
AshensAnimatedCargoPlane.esp
WeaponModsExpanded.esp
WMX-DLCMerged.esp
StripOpenMain.esp
DLC Enhancements.esp
Alternative Start.esp
ADAM Complete.esp
ADAM - MERGE.esp
GRA Scavenger Hunt Unbalanced.esp
JustAssortedMods.esp
Inventory Search.esp
MigNammo.esp
Project Nevada - WMX.esp
MoreMerchantCaps.esp
Max Level 255.esp
LonesomeRoadScorchedSierraPowerHelmet.esp
FCO - PathFixing Vanilla.esp
FCO - Race Addon.esp
Boacombat2glove.esp
boa ncrpahelmet.esp
Custom 47 Weather.esp
NukaCola-Ojo.esp
Functional_Dino_Thermometer.esp
Readius_NV.esp
Project Nevada - Dead Money.esp
Project Nevada - Gun Runners' Arsenal.esp
Project Nevada - Honest Hearts.esp
Project Nevada - Lonesome Road.esp
Fallout 1 and 2 ambient music v0.2.esp
shut up musicspeakers.esp
Project Nevada - EVE All DLC.esp
ProjectNevadaScorchedSierraPowerHelmet.esp
Real Recoil.esp
CASM with MCM.esp
WWP AR Series.esp
WMX-EVE-AllDLCMerged.esp
WMX-POPMerged.esp
B42Inertia.esp
FCO - GlowingOne.esp
FCO - OHSB NPC Edits.esp
The Mod Configuration Menu.esp
ADAM - Trooper Gloves.esp
YCS186 WW Spawn.esp
Weapons.of.the.New.Millenia.Cheat.Cabinet.esp
Weapons.of.the.New.Millenia.Leveled.Lists.esp
UniqueThinkTank.esp
B42Inspect.esp
Strip Lighting Overhaul.esp
1nivVSLArmors.esp
1nivPNSLPatch.esp
LeaveNoWitnesses.esp
submitted by Environmental_Mud331 to FalloutMods [link] [comments]
- installed tick fix
-set fps limit to 64
-reinstalled the game
- tried setting the fps clamp to 60
-Deleting all of my mods to see if one of them is the issue(nope)
The Game just will not function properly.
Just mods assorted is effected by it as well, I constantly am running even when I'm not pressing shift and it does not stop unless I close the game.
my load order:
FalloutNV.esm
DeadMoney.esm
HonestHearts.esm
OldWorldBlues.esm
LonesomeRoad.esm
GunRunnersArsenal.esm
ClassicPack.esm
MercenaryPack.esm
TribalPack.esm
CaravanPack.esm
YUP - Base Game + All DLC.esm
Functional Post Game Ending.esm
FCOMaster.esm
Vanilla Enhancements.esm
TLD_Travelers.esm
RedOnTheRocks.esm
NVStripOpen.esm
Project Nevada - Core.esm
Project Nevada - Equipment.esm
Project Nevada - Rebalance.esp
Functional Post Game Ending - YUP Patch.esm
Weapons.of.the.New.Millenia.esm
YUP - NPC Fixes (Base Game + All DLC).esp
Unofficial Patch NVSE Plus.esp
FOVSlider.esp
The Weapon Mod Menu.esp
High Frequency Murasama Blade.esp
EVE FNV - ALL DLC.esp
FCO - NPC Changes.esp
AshensAnimatedCargoPlane.esp
WeaponModsExpanded.esp
WMX-DLCMerged.esp
StripOpenMain.esp
DLC Enhancements.esp
Alternative Start.esp
ADAM Complete.esp
ADAM - MERGE.esp
GRA Scavenger Hunt Unbalanced.esp
JustAssortedMods.esp
Inventory Search.esp
MigNammo.esp
Project Nevada - WMX.esp
MoreMerchantCaps.esp
Max Level 255.esp
LonesomeRoadScorchedSierraPowerHelmet.esp
FCO - PathFixing Vanilla.esp
FCO - Race Addon.esp
Boacombat2glove.esp
boa ncrpahelmet.esp
Custom 47 Weather.esp
NukaCola-Ojo.esp
Functional_Dino_Thermometer.esp
Readius_NV.esp
Project Nevada - Dead Money.esp
Project Nevada - Gun Runners' Arsenal.esp
Project Nevada - Honest Hearts.esp
Project Nevada - Lonesome Road.esp
Fallout 1 and 2 ambient music v0.2.esp
shut up musicspeakers.esp
Project Nevada - EVE All DLC.esp
ProjectNevadaScorchedSierraPowerHelmet.esp
Real Recoil.esp
CASM with MCM.esp
WWP AR Series.esp
WMX-EVE-AllDLCMerged.esp
WMX-POPMerged.esp
B42Inertia.esp
FCO - GlowingOne.esp
FCO - OHSB NPC Edits.esp
The Mod Configuration Menu.esp
ADAM - Trooper Gloves.esp
YCS186 WW Spawn.esp
Weapons.of.the.New.Millenia.Cheat.Cabinet.esp
Weapons.of.the.New.Millenia.Leveled.Lists.esp
UniqueThinkTank.esp
B42Inspect.esp
Strip Lighting Overhaul.esp
1nivVSLArmors.esp
1nivPNSLPatch.esp
LeaveNoWitnesses.esp
2023.06.03 17:23 Proletlariet Crash - Crunch
"This is the creature who keeps sabotaging your master plan? Hah! You gotta be kidding. I'll exterminate this field rat in no time."
Following a string of defeats from Crash, Neo Cortex was forced to reveal his latest superweapon: Another bandicoot, but this one stronger than any of his other mutants, and mind controlled to ensure loyalty. While lacking in power, Uka-Uka released four masks with power over the elements to assist in this, each taking turns in assisting Crunch to take down the orange marsupial. None were successful, and following their final attempt an attack Crunch was freed from his mind control, being saved from an exploding space station by Crash and Coco. Thanking them for their help, Crunch became their adoptive brother, assisting them whenever Cortex shows up once again.
NT Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced
MOM - Crash: Mind Over Mutant
CTR - Crash Team Racing
CTR-N - Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
NK2 - Crash Nitro Kart 2
NK3 - Crash Nitro Kart 3D
TTR - Crash Tag Team Racing
BB - Crash Boom Bang!
Rok-Ko
These are capable of forcing open a door in the original game and remake.CTR-N
submitted by Proletlariet to u/Proletlariet [link] [comments]
Following a string of defeats from Crash, Neo Cortex was forced to reveal his latest superweapon: Another bandicoot, but this one stronger than any of his other mutants, and mind controlled to ensure loyalty. While lacking in power, Uka-Uka released four masks with power over the elements to assist in this, each taking turns in assisting Crunch to take down the orange marsupial. None were successful, and following their final attempt an attack Crunch was freed from his mind control, being saved from an exploding space station by Crash and Coco. Thanking them for their help, Crunch became their adoptive brother, assisting them whenever Cortex shows up once again.
Legend
W - Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of CortexNT Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced
MOM - Crash: Mind Over Mutant
CTR - Crash Team Racing
CTR-N - Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
- While Crunch doesn't appear in the original Crash Team Racing, he is a playable character in the remake with identical feats and abilities, and as such clips from said original game will be included.
NK2 - Crash Nitro Kart 2
NK3 - Crash Nitro Kart 3D
TTR - Crash Tag Team Racing
BB - Crash Boom Bang!
Strength
- Punches Cortex over a gapW
- Does one-handed push ups with his bionic armNK
- Holds Willie Wumpa Cheeks in the air with his bionic armTTR
- Curls a 150 lbs dumbbellNK
- Lifts a large weightNT
- Pulls a metal sheet up from the floor to block Cortex's blastsTTR
- Jumps over a gap into the backgroundW
Durability
- Repeatedly slammed to the ground by CrashMOM
- Gets shot by Crash's Fruit BazookaW
- Can be crushed flat in a kartNK
- In Boom Bang, characters can be run over by a trainBB
- In Boom Bang, characters can drop off a cliffBB
- Can have their kart blown into the airCTR
- Has a mass of TNT blow up around him, with several sticks of dynamite being in his mouthMOM
Elemental Enhanced
During his first four boss fights in Wrath of Cortex, Crunch has his abilities enhanced by one of the Elementals, four masks with control over a certain element.Rok-Ko
- Creates a boulder around Crunch for him to roll around inW
- Makes smaller rocks flaming for a while when he runs into themW
- Has a rockslide dropped on him by Aku-AkuW
- Turns Crunch into a large entity made of water that jumps a large distance back onto a platformW
- When spun by Crash, gets knocked over and immediately reforms on a platform further backW
- Releases bars of energy to attackW
- With one attack, causes a floating platform to sink if Crash is standing on itW
- Turns Crunch into fire and stone, chasing after Crash while throwing flaming boulders with a wall of fire in front of himW
- While running away, leaves small flaming rocks behind himW
- Hurt by Crash in a water-spraying mech that had been empowered by Aku-AkuW
- Crunch becomes a giant flying creature, crackling with electricity, capable of throwing a ball of energy from his hand. Like this, he can take a mass of shots from Crash's gliderW
- Releases a stream of energy from his other handW
- Shoots several energy balls from his eyes at onceW
- Makes energy descend from the sky onto CrashW
Karts
General- Jumps up a ledgeCTR
- Drops down a large distanceCTR
- All karts can take hits that blow them into the airCTR and crust them flatNK
- Capable of giving themselves boosts by driftingCTR
- Karts go faster when wumpa fruits are collected, and when ten are collected the items used are changed to be strongerCTR
- In Nitro Kart, the karts were modified to be able to drive along walls and ceilings in certain areasNK
- After driving alongside a teammate for a while, a Team Up meter fills and allows both racers to use unlimited items for a period on activationNK
These are capable of forcing open a door in the original game and remake.CTR-N
- Bombs which roll along the road in a straight line, exploding on contactCTR
- Homing missilesCTR
- Creates an electric shockwave around themNK3
- Releases a warp orb from Crash 3 that chases after the racer in first place, shocking everyone in their pathCTR
- Releases a tornado which targets first place, throwing any racer it meets up into the airNK
- Drops an oil slickNK2
- Beakers which cause anyone running into them to spin outCTR-N
- Crates of TNT which anyone running into needs to hop rapidly to remove before it explodesCTR-N
- Ice mines trap foes in a block of iceNK
- Static orbs short out circuits on karts, slowing foes down while changing their weaponNK
- Shields which protect against any one hitNK
- Speed boostsCTR
- N. Tropy's Clocks spin out and slow down all opposing racers for a periodNK
- Call upon Aku-Aku to speed up the kart and render them invulnerable for a bitCTR
Tag Team Racing Cars
- In Crash Tag Team Racing, all racer's vehicles can merge with each other and break apart again at willTTR
- Can drive through tree-shaped targetsTTR
- Have a variety of weapons with each car combination being able to swap between two, which can include wumpa fruit launchers and magnetic blasts
- Can be rocket propelledTTR
- Can launch items as large as pianosTTR
Other
2023.06.03 17:23 The-Courior 21[M4F]Cali/online-looking for a gaming gf
Hello to whoever reads this if anyone is to read it at all , My name is Roman im 21 and have been looking for some special in my life, I dont want to rant too long about me as we can learn about each other in time if intrested
Ive never had a gf and so I have no formal experience but if thats turns you away wish the best of luck
Im shy at first metting new people but open up when i get to know them
I love playing video games and played them all my life(xbox mostly some pc) plsyed them all my life and intrested to find someone with a simular intrest in them, if you dont like video games or arnt intrested in them I dont think it will work out.
I love music, movies , art, anime(big weeb), books/audiibooks and love to talk about them
Going to college for art classes
Im on the heavier side but activly trying to loose weight
Im always up to talk, message, send memes or whatever
I hope to meet up one day if we click
I hope to fined my special person , if you read this and are intrested type limelight in your response message or no reply
submitted by The-Courior to r4r [link] [comments]
Ive never had a gf and so I have no formal experience but if thats turns you away wish the best of luck
Im shy at first metting new people but open up when i get to know them
I love playing video games and played them all my life(xbox mostly some pc) plsyed them all my life and intrested to find someone with a simular intrest in them, if you dont like video games or arnt intrested in them I dont think it will work out.
I love music, movies , art, anime(big weeb), books/audiibooks and love to talk about them
Going to college for art classes
Im on the heavier side but activly trying to loose weight
Im always up to talk, message, send memes or whatever
I hope to meet up one day if we click
I hope to fined my special person , if you read this and are intrested type limelight in your response message or no reply
2023.06.03 17:22 Martin_TF141 Building my first pc (which I’m building for a friend)
Trying to build a pc for a friend, trying to stay under 1300 but he wants it to last a long time so I’m currently pushing his budget by a bit. I currently have two hard drives but i can probably remove one to save money. Also ran into some issues with the compatibility check on pc part picker with the cpu and mobo if they seem like a weird pick. Any recommendations on how to optimize the budget available?
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/JPwLhk
submitted by Martin_TF141 to buildapc [link] [comments]
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/JPwLhk
2023.06.03 17:22 KasaiSeikatsu Hi, does anyone know what model this flush is ?
 | The button broke, but I didn't find any compatible remplacement. I'm searching for the exact model so maybe I can buy a new one. Thanks a lot to anyone helping me with this! submitted by KasaiSeikatsu to Plumbing [link] [comments] |
2023.06.03 17:22 RaptureOfDarkness [WTS][ON] spring cleaning- VFC VP9, FMG9 kit, optics, misc parts, gear, and accessories
gear stuff
original slide and barrel for TM G18C only $30
original trigger $10
Guns Modify aluminum trigger $25
Guarder G26 steel barrel $40
Guarder G26 steel slide stop $10
WE G18C hammer assembly $30
Marui G17/18C frame rail $20
VFC VP9 stuff, $250 for everything, or see individual prices below
A bunch of aftermarket parts and duplicates. I have the following but not limited to:
GHK M4 high power nozzle BNIB $25
SureFire M600DF Scout Light FDE without ir filters) (BNIB) $60
INVG mount (metal, FDE) $50
Detonator Glock 18 "Cobra" slide and barrel set (sights and internals not included) $130
APS CO2 extended magazine for Glock $30
submitted by RaptureOfDarkness to airsoftmarketcanada [link] [comments]
- 2x repro MRB rigger belts, $30 ea
- 1x 5.56 repro esstac kywi pouch, $15
- 1x triple 5.56 repro esstac kywi pouch, $25
- 1x 9mm repro esstac kywi pouch, $10
- 1x small radio pouch, $10
- 2x misc pouches in OD $10 ea
- repro ops core RAC headset arm $20
- repro slickster plate carrier $60
- dummy strike plates, $15 for the large set, $5 for the side plates
- FAST helmet cover in SST camo $10
- random holster part with leg strap $10
- FMA maritime helmet L/XL (coyote brown) (worn time less than 1h). $50
- FMA multipurpose cover (CB). $15
- Repro Maritime helmet cover (ranger green). $15
- NVG shrouds. $15 for both.
- Counterweight pouch (multicam) $10.
original slide and barrel for TM G18C only $30
original trigger $10
Guns Modify aluminum trigger $25
Guarder G26 steel barrel $40
Guarder G26 steel slide stop $10
WE G18C hammer assembly $30
Marui G17/18C frame rail $20
VFC VP9 stuff, $250 for everything, or see individual prices below
A bunch of aftermarket parts and duplicates. I have the following but not limited to:
- original VP9 slide, barrel, and threaded barrel (no internals). $30.
- original VP9 slide and barrel, complete with internals. $100.
- original VP9 lower frame and magazine. $100.
- steel VP9 tactical slide and barrel set. $100.
- steel VP9 iron sights. $15.
GHK M4 high power nozzle BNIB $25
SureFire M600DF Scout Light FDE without ir filters) (BNIB) $60
INVG mount (metal, FDE) $50
Detonator Glock 18 "Cobra" slide and barrel set (sights and internals not included) $130
APS CO2 extended magazine for Glock $30