The last Playstation I owned was PS1.
Finally jumped to PS5 having spent the last three generations on the Xbox.
Go to setup a PlayStation account, and I says my email address has already been used. I think this is odd, as I don't recall ever having done this. I get the password reset email, and follow the link. Neither my DOB or Security Question seem to work to validate.
Because I don't think I ever setup a PlayStation ID, the chat rep was not very helpful.
But wait! I own a Sony TV. I try and backdoor my way in by thinking I can reset it there, because maybe they're linked. Surprise! They are...so it pushes me right back into the PlayStation account password utility.
I can't imagine someone setup an account using my email address at some point. I've never had a Gmail breach. So I must have done it at some point (probably?). Is there a way I can recover and use my actual email address for my account? Will I get a different result calling in, or is that wasted time?
It's my email, damnit! I want to use it and enjoy my PS5!

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I know this has been talked about before, but I felt like most theories I've read about Daenerys' prophecies don't make sense to me. Especially the 333 prophecy.
Three fires must you light… one for life and one for death and one to love…
I believe these fires she lights refer to magical fires. The popular theory for the fire to light is the pyre that created the dragons. I agree with this.
The fire for death I believe will occur like in the show, in which Daenerys lights the khals and crones that do not submit to her afire to untie the hordes under her rule. It makes sense. It shows her dominance, which the Dothraki respect.
The fire for love I believe to be a fire sacrifice she will make to have a baby with Jon Snow. This could be any number of fires she sets when she invades Westeros. The reason for this is due to the other prophecy made in the first book:

When the sun rises in the West and sets in the East. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return and not before

So far this all seems pretty standard consensus in the fandom, and it that make sense to me. But now here's where I feel most people give confusing theories:
Three mounts must you ride… one to bed and one to dread and one to love…
The popular theory is that this refers to lovers, but that makes no sense for a variety of reasons. Daenerys has already had numerous lovers, and it all seems inconsequential for a prophecy to be like, here's some people you'll fuck or marry or whatever. She already fucks more than 3 people, and she didn't just marry Drogo to bed. The mount to bed is Silver, but she's not fucking the horse. She mounts Silver and jumps over a fire in order to move on through the ceremony and bed Drogo. It's treated as a big moment in the books. It’s the first moment in the story in which Dany overcomes fear and begins to take control over her destiny. Silver becomes her spirit animal in many ways, and its death in book 2 is heartbreaking for her. This is her first mount, representing her first leap into adulthood.
The mount to dread is Drogon. She learns to ride Drogon at the end of Dance, and it's incredibly taxing, violent, and bloody. She abandons peace and compromise and has chosen Fire and Blood. Daenerys will ride Drogon to unite the Dothraki. Drogon is the Stallion Who Mounts the World. This is the scariest leap into adulthood, and it leads to pain, suffering, and filth. It relates to losing her innocence and desire for peace.
The mount to love is the most unclear, but she will have to mount another animal in order to love. This must have to do with Jon Snow. My guess is that she rides Ghost while Jon rides one of her dragons. But this will lead to her conceiving a living child with him no doubt.
Three treasons will you know… once for blood and once for gold and once for love…
The popular belief is Daenerys will be betrayed, due to Daenerys herself thinking this in the books, but it really doesn't make sense.

“The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah the second. Would Reznak be the third? The Shavepate? Daario? Or will it be someone I would never suspect, Ser Barristan or Grey Worm or Missandei?” – (Daenerys I, ADWD)

The previous parts of the prophecy are about things Daenerys must do, so there's no reason for the third part to be any different. Plus, she's already been betrayed more than three times by multiple people. It seems clear that Daenerys will be the one doing the betraying. The clearest hint that its Daenerys being the betrayer is clearly spelled out in Daenerys X of DWD when she talks to a vision of Viserys.

"Only when you woke the dragon. I loved you."
“You sold me. You betrayed me.”
"No. You were the betrayer. You turned against me, against your own blood. They cheated me..."

This is a fitting conclusion to Daenerys' arc in DWD. The whole book she is paranoid and thinking about how to achieve peace and avoid conflict, but in this chapter she realizes she must embrace her true nature of Fire and Blood, and that it really is herself that is the betrayer. Her whole arc is about starting as an indecisive innocent girl and becoming an assertive conqueror.
The treason she will know for blood was Viserys. What's interesting is that Viserys says that she turned against her own blood, meaning the treason was not to get blood, but the one betrayed was her blood.
The treason she will know for gold seems to have not happened yet. Daenerys will commit treason against someone that represents gold or where gold plays a significant role. She will need gold to go to Westeros. Gold wins wars. I suspect it could be Tyrion or whoever ends up being her Master of Coin. It could also be someone in Qarth such as Quaithe or Xaro.
The treason she will know for love means Daenerys will betray someone she loves or she will betray someone else for her love. It definitely relates to Jon. Many say what happened in the show could occur, in which Daenerys burns King's Landing. Maybe she promises Jon she won't, but she does anyways. Another possibility is Daenerys may willingly sacrifice herself to stop the whitewalkers. Maybe she knows she is Nissa Nissa and bares her chest for Jon. Maybe she promises Jon that she will not sacrifice herself, but she does anyways to save him and the realm.

[←Chapter 47] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 49→]
The blade forging left Sorore exhausted, the failure left her frustrated, and the cold gave way to fear as the night drew closer. As day faded into dusk, she reflected on a morning that had been as full of ups and downs as the mountain paths they’d travelled. The very fact that she had been able to use magic, that it had crashed from the realm of fairy tales and church warnings into the very real everyday occurrence was already an earth shattering experience.
Then she’d moved water with a thought, seen monsters fall from the sky, and watched the paladins cleaving them in two. Her head spun with the strangeness of it all, the sheer onset of fanciful things blurring and mixing together with reality. She began to wonder what else might be true, of the fairy tales in the myth she had heard on the seas in her father’s ship. Of the old folk stories of Erratz, often dismissed as nothing more than old wive’s tales.
A new world had opened up before her, and she wasn't sure to be fascinated or terrified of it. Certainly the paladins didn't want any part of it, and they certainly didn't want her to be involved. And from everything she knew of the church scripture, they were absolutely right. She felt the danger, the power of the matter, and knew that it was only a small fraction of what it could do. She even felt a certain degree of fear towards the masked man in the black robes, as respectful as he had been as a tutor.
At least he didn't use a switch to reminder of when she had failed.
But even in the murk of her disquiet in that moment, she also felt a smouldering frustration underlying it. The knife had been hers, her project, her duty, and she had resolutely failed to craft it. Part of her shifted the blame elsewhere - it was a new technique she had picked up over the course of an afternoon. Efrain himself had said as much, even going as far to say that he hadn’t expected her to do it.
Now that was something she didn’t like at all. When people expected her to fail, despite all her efforts.
However, that resolution meant little now, given that she had been excused from the effort. At least now the mage had the basic shape to work on. She let her hand drift on the rough stone walls of the church. Thousands of individual perfections, many thousands of years old, the stone functioning despite it. Perhaps it would be enough, the basic, overall function, but she recalled all the pittances and channels carved in her vision of the knife.
She knew what was driving the doubt. It was curiosity, that sticking bug that clung to her, despite all her prayers to the contrary. She just couldn’t seem to shake it, despite the ‘assistance’ of church teachers when it reared its head particularly high. She had expected the snap across the palms from Efrain when he drew that piece of wood. It had been a relief when he’d tossed it over his shoulder.
The thought was an unworthy one, she immediately considered. She should’ve been grateful to the various priests and scholars who’d spent years teaching the twins. Some had even prepared their entire lives, just on the chance they’d meet the beloved Bequeathed. If they were strict, then so be it, it was for the sake of preparing her and Frare for their duties.
The church was once more a buzz of activity as people prepared for the night ahead. She and Lillian found their way to the altar, attracting only minor glances. The villagers clearly had gotten used to their presence, although some offered a respectful and perhaps wary gaze for Lillian. One of Frare’s eyes opened as they approached, but he quickly returned to his half-rest leaning on a pillar. Aya was still very much asleep, chest gently rising and falling under the furs where Sorore had left her.
Sorore sat on the wide steps, put her chins on her hands, and began to think. It was a rather dangerous proposition, considering her recent failure. She had a tendency to ruminate on them, and often her twin would find her staring plaintively before loudly disrupting it. This time was no different, as before anything but impotent frustration could boil over, he plopped down behind her back.
“Stop that,” he said, “I can hear your teeth beginning to grind.”
She leaned back to lie upon his lap, despite the admonishment she heard in her head about proper sitting position. His eyes were closed again, and she followed suit, letting the minutes wile away as night crept into the word. She was shaken out of this reverie by a loud pop and Aya’s yelp. The girl was both mid yawn and bright red as both the paladins and the twins turned to look at her. She insisted that she was fine, and took to straightening her clothes subconsciously.
It was a mere temporary distraction for Sorore, who was largely engrossed in considering the knife. Rather than merely wallowing in her problems, she was invested in its function. She could almost see the stone parting before her, revealing the source of that smothering cold behind the door. Maybe if she had tried one more time, maybe if she reduced the complexity of the form, then increased when she got the basic shape. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
It was all of very little use. She was inside her head once again, at a complete loss of what to do. Maybe, within the grand archives of Angorrah, the answer was contained in a dusty scroll. Some offhand fact or technique of forging, long forgotten in the darkness of the shelves. But these were several weeks of travel away, and she wasn’t sure that she’d see the next sunrise. So then, what could she do to get them to bridge that gap? Just one more day, that’s all they needed, to hold out until the next sunrise.
Nothing. That was the simple truth of it - she was a lost little girl in a small village surrounded by terrible things. The thought was not a comforting one, and she wriggled, trying to nestle deeper into the legs of her twin. Aya by that point had come to sit down beside them, looking greyer as the dark came on. No wonder, for she knew she all felt the chill roll forward as the fog waxed in the night.
Another meal of common fare came and went, though Sorore noted that many soldiers were taking care with it. Perhaps it was common practice, to relish what very well may be your last meal. For her part she found it rather difficult to keep it down, the coming dread of the hours ahead offsetting her appetite.
The faces of the paladins had settled into that implacable, stoney cast once more. They quietly rebandaged their injuries, readjusted their armour, and set to sharpening their great blades with long deliberate strokes. Sorore idly thought that their sleeping faces were significantly more pleasant, if rarer to see. Thus it was that they crossed over into the late afternoon, where the light was quickly fading.
“I would like to take one last little walk,” Aya spoke up, “before… you know.”
The paladins looked up, their eyes twisting with barely veiled misapprehension at the request.
“My lady…” Lillian began.
“We can’t,” Niche said, “Not now. Not so close to dark.”
“Just barely outside the door,” said Aya, “Just so I can see something other than the church. Just to stretch my legs.”
The paladins looked at each other, looked back, and set their faces.
“Well, I suppose it can be accommodated,” Lillian said, “only just outside the church, and only for a few minutes.”
Her tone warned of dire consequences if these conditions should not be strictly adhered to. The children all collectively nodded and the party of five set out past the doors. The barricades within the church had grown in size and strength, at least as far as Sorore could judge. The villagers, under the supervision of the soldiers, had proven diligent in the daylight hours. She could only hope that it would be enough for the onset of the creatures, should they breach the church.
She had a dread certainty that it would indeed be breached, sooner or later. Though she hadn’t heard of any specifics, whispers of just how many of the things lurked outside were passed around. It was a small stroke of fortune that the windows were narrow and ensconced in stone. The last thing they needed was one of the flying beasts to crash through the glass.
The faint red-pink cast to the grey outside was beginning to fade into blackness as the sun shrank. Occasionally, the banks of fog would strip away, revealing the abominable silhouettes standing still past the wall. They would close just as quickly, removing any clarity, and leaving only the icy fear in its place. The remaining soldiers and villagers watched them with anxiety and exhaustion.
The garden around the front of the church was almost non-existent. Most of the flowers had been trampled either in preparation for or during the course of the battle. The only things left relatively untouched were the central beds around the side of the church, which grew produce for its tenants. Some trees still stood, showing minimal damage from the fog and its creatures.
The five ducked under the boughs of the closest one to the doors. The additional chill brought by its shade was a trifling concern at the present. The green, muted as it was by the overcast sky beyond, was a lively anchor in the cold, dead mists. Such was the comfort of the place that Soroe let herself lean back onto the bark of the tree and eyes drift closed.
The trunk was solid, a comforting sensation that seemed to offset the malevolence of the fog.
Enough so that Sorore began to wander the netherworld of half-sounds and sights that characterised pre-sleep. They all wandered with her, some staying, some peeling off, guided by their own demented logic. Little and less was coherent, but it took her away from the horrible reality of what lurked a few hundred steps away all the same.
She fell deeper into this other-state, letting the visions wash over her as the real world slipped away. Time became a mercurial concept, which led her to question when exactly everything had settled. But settled it had, into a hazy blackness which the eye could not pierce. There, in the distance, a bright ribbon of twisting warm color glowed. A piece of fresh-forged metal perhaps, the day’s task going straight to her head. Or maybe it was the remnants of another dream that day, one that was already a blurry memory.
From a great distance, she heard a crash, unmistakable in its ringing clarity. A forge hammer singing out a song of its own, for now merely a rhythm. It shifted in tone as it rang out through the abyss once more, adding progression, then melody, all written in singing steel. Sorore’s fingers began to drum out the sequence on her thighs as she felt it reverberate through her. Then, with a sliding screech, she was left alone in the half-dream, with nothing but darkness remaining.
Still, the bright memory of the song remained, and in the darkness another voice took shape. It was a deep, rich, and handsome sound, that spoke of a confidence of such immensity that you were convinced its wielder could do anything. Sorore had never heard the likes of it before, either on the docks, or in cities, or on the open waves.
“Come now,” it said, “this little thing is giving you trouble?”
Sorore’s eyes slowly open, pulling her from the dreamscape back into the dreariness of the real. Aya had her knees pulled to her chest, leaning back into the trunk. The paladins, tired but alert, scanned the endlessly shifting banks of fog.
Sorore had a fleeting impression that the answers were just beyond the pale mists. Maybe something would come through, parting it like thin curtains, and impart the inspiration she needed. Or maybe a whole set of schematics will drop into my lap from the sky, she thought with dark irony.
The vision was quickly fading into the abyss of forgetfulness. Perhaps Aya had shared it once more with her, but she was in conversation with the paladins. Not wanting to interrupt, Sorore looked at her outstretched legs. Past them were a handful of leaves that had fallen despite the summer of the valley, with a couple long decomposed to nothing but their skeletons.
She reached out to grasp at the leaves, looking at the yellow-grey veins that raced across its surface. The large ones spread from the central stem and the hundreds of smaller capillaries that interconnected them. Holding up to the sky, she screwed her face, trying to discern the details of this piece of nature. After a few moments of tepid stillness, the clouds parted for just a moment, letting a ray of sunlight lance down to catch their hill in its beam.
For a second, the leaf seemed to glow, shimmering like metal catching glare.
And Sorore had her inspiration.
With that, she sprang to her feat so fast that one of the paladins almost jumped. Both looked around with questioning and slightly alarmed expressions. Sorore didn’t have much of an answer - in fact her mind was going so fast that she could hardly even articulate the solution that had been revealed to her.
“The- the- the-” she said, snapping her fingers, trying to put words to the idea, “I know what to do. I need to find him.”
“Find who? The mage?” asked Lillian.
The fiery certainty of the thought sent Sorore tramping out onto the grass, leading to calls from the paladins to slow down. She didn’t bother to wait for them, consumed by this need to find the mage, the knife, to try again.
The forge was more or less empty, save for the few labourers packing up the tools and ferrying them into the church proper. With a furious set of questions, she gleaned that he’d vacated the premises some time ago. The paladins called for her to stop as she doubled back, but she couldn’, not now.
The scenery seemed to blur as she rushed through the church doors, past the bustling barricades, and to the captain’s tables. A somewhat perturbed Damafelce told the young girl that Efrain had been seen entering the door at the end of the church. With that, Sorore broke out into a run, past the altar, through the door and down into the darkness of the Catacombs.
She stepped out onto the sand floor, the members of her party at her heels as she tried to seek out the path to the black wall. She stumbled more than once as she felt her way along in the darkness, fortunately with no skeletal interruptions this time. Down the stairs and into the long corridor she came, the smothering cold increasing as she pushed forward.
As she had surmised, Efrain was there, just about to start whatever process pried apart the stone. The tip of the blade was raised, pressed into the stone above his head. He turned at the approaching footsteps, cocking his head at the lack of isolation. Sorore didn’t even wait for him to say something, instead thrusting out her head for the crude metal knife.
“ I know- I can- I can do it now,” she said, breathless from the long run from the surface.
Delicately, Efrain removed the metal from the stone, and looked down at her. There seemed to be a questioning quality to the look, at least as far as she could read the emotionless mask. He looked at the cat, then back to the girl, and then to the rest of her party.
“How?” he said, “ If I let you undo this, we may not have enough time to recreate it before the attacks begin.”
“Leaves,” she said, putting a hand on the wall to steady herself as her lungs complained, “it- was the leaves.”
“The… leaves?” he said, “ All right. Stop, take a few breaths, and start from the beginning.”
And so she did, explaining how she sat under the bows of the trees, the half-awake dreaming, and the skeleton of the leaf.
“I got it. I was trying to build the whole thing out myself, all at once,” she said, stumbling over her words, “instead of letting nature do what it wants. The metal wants to come together - I don’t need to force it into its final shape. I just need to build a- a-”
She snapped her fingers at the air, trying to reach past this new blank as Efrain regarded the knife.
“You want to build a frame,” he said, “and let the metal fill in the rest of the empty space.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he turned over the knife, hilt first, to the girl.
“Well then,” he said, “let’s hope you know what you’re doing.”
She did, or at least she hoped she did this time. Within moments, the metal was flowing over her hands like a cold stream, but instead of trying to sculpt it, she began to spin filaments outwards. Like the skeleton of the leaf, little veins of metal stretched outwards, stopping abruptly, and folding back into themselves. If it had been hard before, it was now brutal, the smothering cold dragging at every attempt to shape the material.
Hands trembling, sweat beginning to bead on her forehead, she managed to split the metal into dark fingers. All she had to do was resist gravity and prevent it spilling over the imaginary bounds of the shape. From those dark fingers, snaking vines spread out and connected with each other. Slowly, slowly, branching and arcing, they filled in the skeleton she’d created and fused.
The final product wasn’t altogether too different from what they’d created during the afternoon. The shape, a heavy chisel tip, tapering out to twin furls like a plough, a longer tang. Sorore, half blind by stinging salt, didn’t fail to notice swirling furrows spreading across its surface. She had no idea how she’d managed to etch those designs, or perhaps the metal remembered, just as the stone did.
“Well,” said the mage at last, “suffice to say, I am impressed. Now, hold it up.”
She did so, despite the exhaustion of her arms, the tip wavering as his finger touched its point.
There was a rush of something, extending over the surface of the blade, stopping just short of her hand. It was like a coat of mail had been pulled taught, the links aligning at the same time, snapping together in a regular structure. From the tip of the chisel, down to the tang, the metal shuddered and settled. By the time it disappeared under her grip, it was rigid as any steel tool.
The mage gently took it from her, holding the blade up to that little flickering light above his head. Flicking it this way and that, he seemed to find whatever he was looking for, and pressed the tip to the wall. Sorore, despite her fatigue, was practically exploding with excitement. She’d done it, not only conquering the task, but she was about to see what was behind those dark walls.
Then, before he pressed the blade into the stone and drew it down, he paused.
“Paladins,” he said, voice quiet, “it would be best to take the children back into the church.”
Lillian frowned and put a hand onto her hilt as she stared at the door.
“What?” said Sorore, aghast, “ But I-”
“No buts,” said Efrain, “we don’t know what’s behind this door. It may be dangerous, it may not. But I strongly suspect it’s not something you would want to see. Very well done, little one, but this is something I should deal with on my own.”
The tone of academic authority was not an unfamiliar one to Sorore. But unlike in virtually all other occasions in her life, she attempted to object. Before she could speak more than a few words, Lillian took her by the shoulders, her mind apparently made up. All three of them were carted up the stairs as barely contained rage began to bubble up inside her.
“Do you think we should…?” said Niche, gesturing to the surrounding stone.
“No, not yet,” Lillian said, “putting aside everything else, we still might need him.”
Niche nodded and said no more.
They had made a steady pace, overtaking half the hallway as the scream of metal on stone echoed out. It was followed by a grating rumble as presumably the doors opened. If the temperature below the surface was cold when they came, the resulting drop was freezing. The mist that rose up behind them whispered things in long mournful sighs as the surroundings began to buzz with what must’ve been magic.
Then, from up the stairs there was a long, terrible wail.
[←Chapter 47] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 49→]

Why Do We Need Vpn for Whatsapp in Dubai?

In Dubai, the use of a VPN for WhatsApp may be desirable for the following reasons:

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2. Privacy and Security: Using a VPN encrypts your internet traffic, including your WhatsApp messages and calls. This helps protect your privacy and secures your communications from potential eavesdropping or surveillance by ISPs, government agencies, or other third parties.
3. Accessing Blocked Content: In some cases, the UAE government may block access to certain online content or websites. If WhatsApp is affected by such restrictions, using a VPN can help bypass these blocks and allow uninterrupted access to WhatsApp services.
4. International Calling: If you wish to make international calls using WhatsApp from Dubai, you may encounter higher costs or restrictions. By using a VPN, you can connect to servers in other countries where international calling rates may be more affordable, enabling you to make cheaper or unrestricted calls.
5. Overcoming Network Limitations: VPNs can also help overcome network limitations, such as bandwidth throttling or congestion. If you experience slow or unreliable WhatsApp performance in Dubai due to network constraints, using a VPN may improve connection speeds and stability.

Best VPN For Whatsapp In Dubai

CovermeVPN is a reliable and affordable VPN service that helps you stay anonymous and secure online. With CovermeVPN, you will get the best services at a cheaper rate. The key features of CovermeVPN is given below :

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• Encrypt Your Internet Traffic
• No Log Policy
• Kill Switch Mood
• Unblock Websites And Access Geo-Restricted Content
• Prevent ISP From Tracking Your Online Activities
• Protect your online privacy and security
• Dedicated IPs In Six Countries such as United States,United Kingdom ,Canada, Singapore, Germany,Australia
• 5 Simultaneous Connections in your device.
• 7 Days Money Back Guarantee

Motivation — A Close Reading of Tea Time

"I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking: maybe six feet ain't so far down?"
Nimander Golit
Chapter V of Weathered
2002 BS
Click Here for the Introduction to the essay series.

Prelude to the Close Reading

Why, hello there, again. It’s been a few weeks but I promise that this endeavor is still moving forward. For those that don’t know, this essay is a part of a collection I’ll be putting together which investigates the Eleint, their blood, and sorcery within the Malazan shared secondary universe. We’re still laying down our foundations, and today we’ll be covering a sequence of scenes in Chapter 8 of Toll the Hounds.
My intentions were to cover all of the scenes in a single post, but that has proven itself to be difficult. As such, I’ll cover the first scene in this sequence in this post. There’ll be one or two follow-up posts.
There are ten scenes that are in this sequence:

1. Nimander 1
2. Desra 1
3. Desra 2
4. Skintick 1
5. Desra 3
6. Nimander 2
7. Desra 4
8. Kedeviss 1
9. Nimander 3
10. Kedeviss 2

I’ll be approaching these scenes (including the one discussed today) through a few lenses.

A ringing of bells.

In his musings on writing, Erikson discusses the notion of a bell. I’ll let him speak for himself.
In the scenes we’ll be looking at, some of the bells that I believe are used are (and not all of these are represented in this first particular scene):

• Past versus present — ancestors/parents vs. living/children
• How others see us, and how we see others
• The word ‘beast’ and its many meanings
• The words ‘child/children’ and their many meanings
• The relationships between gods and mortals
• Portals/thresholds

Existentialism.

Particularly the genealogy of continental philosophy that led to Sartre’s existentialism and the shared/adapted/bifurcated philosophies of his contemporaries (such as de Beauvoir, Camus, and Merleau-Ponty). This wasn’t my initial intention when I decided to use this sequence of scenes as a launch pad into my collection of essays. However, the beauty of close-reading is that you go into a text with a hypothesis seeking evidence and support, and then end up with new insights.
Some of the concepts that will be brought up are:

• Anxiety
• Facticity and transcendence; Authenticity and bad faith
• The Look/Gaze and being-for-others
• The Absurd and Revolution
• Perception

Genre conventions as grammar.

Particularly, we’ll look at Erikson’s use of genre conventions from the likes of Gothic literature and Weird Fiction — namely the Sublime, cosmic horror, and the Weird — as the subtle language used to convey tension that is congruent with some of the other subtexts. If these grammars are subverted, we’ll try to point that out too.
We will later delve more into Malazan’s literary genealogy in other essays, but I want this lens to be present during the reading to see how Erikson aligns or subverts these genre conventions.
We’ll be using Professor Michael Moir’s YouTube lectures on Weird Fiction as reference.

What the fuck is happening?

This is a question about plot that I will answer at the end of all of the scenes, but keep it in mind as we go through. It has less to do with existentialism and Gothic literature and more on what Gothos was trying to do during these scenes.

Pre-TtH Context

We first meet Nimander and his siblings (unnamed) in House of Chains on Drift Avalii. By Bonehunters, they had left Drift Avalii and ended up at Malaz City, where they then joined Tavore Paran’s fleet while fleeing Malaz City. In Reaper’s Gale, we find the siblings had been ‘adopted’ by Sandalath while they traveled to Lether with the Malazans. Phaed wanted to kill Sandalath. Nimander stopped Phaed from killing Sandalath. Withal (Sandalath’s husband) throws Phaed out a window. The murder is taken as a suicide. The siblings intern Phaed and then meet Clip, who offers to lead them to Anomander in Black Coral via Kurald Galain.
This gets us to Toll the Hounds, where Nimander is being haunted by Phaed. They’ve left Kurald Galain and are now on Genabackis (but not yet to Black Coral). Nimander fears the future meeting his father and the rest of the Tiste Andii. The siblings and Clip ‘stumble’ on Morsko, where Clip is curious about its cult of the Dying God. A ritual takes place there. Nimander and Skintick are nearly enthralled, but are saved by Aranatha (and thus Mother Dark herself). The group then find Clip, who is in a coma. They collect him, and set off in a wagon to follow the Dying God’s priests to Bastion. Along that journey, the siblings stumble upon the High King, Kallor, who reluctantly chooses to not kill them and instead travels with them.
The sequence of scenes in Chapter 8 that we’ll be discussing follows some time after Kallor joins the siblings.
Now that the administrative stuff is out of the way, let’s dive into the first scene.

Nimander 1

Rum-induced memories.

We start this sequence thrust into Nimander’s introspection on ‘rage’ as a breaking of a vessel, impossible to fix. He recalls Deadsmell’s musings that ‘rage in battle’ was a gift while the two drank rum. Rum that awakened memories once ignored by Nimander.
(Note: in Scene 2, we’ll see Desra’s view of Nimander, and we’ll see that Nimander’s ruminations on rage here are what inform Desra’s view of him, and not in the way that Nimander’s doubt imagines.)
In the previous post, we discussed memories and their decay. So much of this series and the lore surrounding it is driven by the memories of ancient beings. Nimander is younger with respect to ancient beings (but ancient nonetheless), and even he struggles with his memories. Perhaps this is a result of the traumas he’s experienced with respect to his being in diaspora and perceived abandonment by his father (a symmetry itself with Rake’s — and the Tiste Andii as a whole — relationship with Mother Dark).
He recalls the rum lighting “a fire in [his] brain, casting red light on a host of memories gathered ghostly round the unwelcoming heart.” He reminisces on the time after Kurald Galain (but before Drift Avalii) and his father’s emotional indifference. He recalls the pranks him and his kin would pull on Endest Silann; the arrival of Andarist and his arguments with Anomander. It is unclear what the arguments were — if you’ve read Forge of Darkness, you might be able to infer what’s likely, but I’m curious if the argument is Andarist asking to take the siblings and Anomander refusing, or Anomander asking Andarist to take the children and Andarist was reluctant? Was the argument about Anomander thrusting the Hust blade, T’an Aros/K’orladis (i.e., Vengeance / Grief), onto Andarist or did Andarist already possess the blade? We don’t know exactly to my knowledge, but it’s fun to speculate.
Regardless, Nimander recalls, like a certain inscribed hearthstone, there was peace. Andarist was to take them all through a threshold, a portal elsewhere (as mentioned, portals end up being a rung bell, so pay attention). Nimander remembers Endest’s weeping as the children were pulled through a “portalway into an unknown, mysterious new world where anything was possible.”
Andarist raised the Tiste Andii children on that portal’s other side, on Drift Avalii. We know (or can infer) that this was a task to protect the Throne of Shadow, but Nimander and his kin didn’t understand this as children. But Andarist led them with his pragmatism, he ensured they learned how the world was. With our knowledge of Kharkanas, this is so powerful. We know Anomander’s hubris was abused as a motivating factor for Hunn Raal’s despicable acts. We know that Andarist likely lacks children of his own in response to this, and so his taking on guardianship over the children of his brother — that very same brother that rejected Andarist’s grief in favour of vengeance (and materialised in the T’an Aros/K’orladis dichotomy) — is a stark, challenging, and ultimately selfless decision.
But this pragmatism created child soldiers. The collision of reality’s necessity to survive and carry out the duty of protecting the Throne of Shadow came at the expense of what little remaining childhood innocence Rake’s brood still had (even as a people on the run, exiled from their home due to a sociopolitical schism). Andarist became a stern teacher, juxtaposed to the echoes of Endest’s gentleness. “The games ended. The world turned suddenly serious.” Nonetheless, the Tiste Andii siblings grew to love Andarist.
Nimander continues his introspection:

See a bored child with a stick — and see how every beast nearby flees, understanding well what is now possible and, indeed, probable.

This reminds me of a general rule of advice: ‘never fuck around when a child has gun.’ Tiste Andii or not, children can be cruel especially when mixed with unknown doses of trauma and violence. Regardless, I want to call attention here that this notion of children and beasts are each bells rung. To Nimander, Andarist “unleash[ed] them, these children with avid eyes.” He “had made them good soldiers,” ones that know rage.
Vessels broken.
As such, from his own experience, Nimander suspects that the Dying God is a child. He speaks to the dialectic between gods and their worshippers (another bell rung):

The mad priests poured him full, knowing the vessel leaked, and then drank of that puerile seepage. Because he was a child, the Dying God’s thirst and need were without end, never satiated.

The group stumbles on desiccated bodies staked among fields: dried up, tapped of their libations. This speaks to a particular exploitation between mortal and god, symbolised literally as worshippers feeding a god to then become the harvested. This perpetuates the Dying God’s power to accumulate more worshippers via addictive kelyk. The language here shows that the Dying God has stumbled upon a sort of cheat code, an exploitation of the god-mortal dialectic that allows him and his priests to arbitrage power. Like a cancer that, via the law of large numbers, is equipped with the mechanisms to divert a body’s resources to it while it slowly destroys the body.
The scarecrows being in fields is such a perfect choice of this analogy: things to be harvested. A product, a commodity — a thing with both use-value and exchange-value, for our Marxians out there. I believe Erikson has said that he was thinking of oil here, and that is fine by itself, but I do like the mirroring to Eucharistic transubstantiation in Catholicism (due to my being a very-very-lapsed Catholic). Especially with wine, an extremely addictive substance, transcending into God’s blood to cleanse us as cannibalistic sacrament.

Dal Honese burial practices.

Nimander sees these fields as “bizarre cemeteries, where some local aberration of belief insisted that the dead be staked upright, that they ever stand ready for whatever may come." This makes him recall some shipwrecked Dal Honese on Drift Avalii. He thinks on the ancestor cult and burial practices of Dal Hon: literally constructing their homes with their dead in the walls as both material and essence, the building stretching out with additional rooms as time moved on and kin died.
This reminds me of the Neolithic proto-city, Çatalhöyük, found in Anatolia within modern-day Türkiye where ancestors have been found to be buried beneath platforms in living quarters. See: Chapter 6 of The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow.
With or without intention, I like to view this ritual via an existentialist lens, particularly Sartre’s notion of the Look. To Sartre — in contrast to other phenomenologies — being is in flux, some path of a given chaotic double-pendulum switching to and from poles of being-in-itself***\**¹* and being-for-itself***\**²*. The Look, to Sartre, is a sort of symmetry breaking — a realisation by being-for-itselves that decentralises it, the sudden awareness of its being an object, an Other, to Other consciousnesses.
A heuristic often used to showcase Sartre’s notion of the Look (or Gaze) is that of a voyeur peeping through a keyhole into someone’s room that hears a noise down the hall. Regardless if that noise is from another person (another being-for-itself) or not (say, the house settling), the subjective voyeur suddenly objectifies themselves, collapsing the chaotic pendulum from being-for-itself (nothingness as "no thing-ness") to their facticity — their being-in-itself, their thing-ness — whose meaning to Other being-for-themselves is relative to a separate centre than the voyeur’s own.
To Sartre, the resulting anxiety experienced snapping from subject to object is a proof against any nihilistic approach to solipsism. The fact that we can Other our own being-for-itself means that we can also recognise being-for-itself external to us since those we Other too can Other us as we Other ourselves. The reflexivity as a result of the Look is evidence against solipsism to Sartre.
As a result, this Dal Honese practice is a cultural self-burdening via Sartre’s Look by literally having your ancestors clay-filled bodies decentralise your subjectivity and externalise you as an object that can be judged by its facticity. This results in a sort of collective Dal Honese being-for-others, Sartre would argue. This isn’t inherently good or bad to existentialists, but it does necessitate a calculus that discerns if the living descendants are authentically expressing their freedom with each moment they accept this practice, or if they are living in bad faith.
Regardless, though, this is a haunting of the Past. This haunting isn’t something that is only important to existentialism or other philosophical traditions (such as post-structuralism — see: Derrida’s hauntology), but to the genre conventions and tropes of Gothic horror and its descendants (such as cosmic horror, weird fiction, and their influences on sword and sorcery, etc.).
There are mappings (some more subtle than others) between the Sublime and the existential anxiety and dread experienced in phenomena similar to the Look. The experience of looking upon the vastness of the sea, of stumbling upon an ancient statue, of learning of the size of the universe — which are described as the Sublime, the Weird, or Eldritch in some literary traditions (e.g., Romantic, Gothic, Horror, the Weird, etc.) — are the same experiences that are often analysed in continental philosophies using words such as angst/anxiety/despaiabsurdity/alienation.
Nimander goes on to further expose the relationship between this Dal Honese ancestor cult and inter-tribal conflicts that lead to deaths and stolen bodies that leave physical voids in Dal Honese architecture. He muses how this physical representation of wounds begets a cycle of vengeance (a cultural tradition, a product of facticity and bad faith): “blood back and forth,” he says. He mentions that this cycle is what pushed the shipwrecked Dal Honese from their homes, an act of revolt and perhaps even authenticity to Sartre. Eventually the Dal Honese recovered and “paddled away — not back home, but to some unknown place, a place devoid of unblinking ghosts staring out from every wall.”
I love that Erikson has this whole little short story in this scene, especially in the contrast of its being some rum-induced reflection by Nimander on his own past’s haunting of him and his siblings. Moreover, these Tiste Andii are travelling with Kallor, the Undying Unascendant: a being-for-itself that literally manifests the past’s haunting on the present — a man cursed, jaded, who carries the past with him wherever he travels. All of these together show that one’s freedom can have one flee (even be redeemed — which balances with other plotlines in TtH), but that doesn’t necessarily — nor sufficiently so — annihilate the past.

Finding a tower.

After this, Nimander’s reminiscing is interrupted by his hearing Kallor nearby (like a footstep in a hallway). Kallor comments on the use of the corpses and notes that the flora “[is] not even native to this world, after all.” Nimander replies that the corpses are being used for saemankelyk. The mention of the plants not being native to this world should orient the reader back to the Weird, especially since it brings upon a sense of unease, an Othering — the house settling that again serves to reduce both Nimander and the readers to our thing-ness
‘The past’ versus ‘the present’ versus ‘the future’ (and their hauntings of one another) bubble up again with some banter between Skintick and Kallor about the state of things. Kallor states ‘nothing changes.’ Skintick counters ‘it keeps getting worse,’ to which Kallor claims is but an illusion.
I find this dialogue to be a comical little conflict between Kallor’s perceived-postmodern, nihilistic judgement of the state of things being inert versus Skintick’s pseudo-Rousseauian, inverted-Hegalian, modernist grand narrative of things getting worse.
Again, it alludes to a haunting of the past on the current generation. Interestingly, this is a trend within the Book of the Fallen in general: not as an espousing of the ‘old vs. young’, but Erikson’s decentering/challenging/deconstruction of that binary. Think of Raest in GotM; Menandore, Sukul and Sheltatha in RG; Karsa in HoC; the Witness trilogy. He does this via a sort of Ancient's Hubris colliding with its differences to the Present’s Ingenuity, and this being dual to the Present’s Naivety colliding with the Ancient Wisdom.
Kallor eventually hits a sore spot with the Tiste: he brings up Rake. Unlike the Dal Honese whose freedom had them flee the cultural practices of letting their ancestors haunt both literally and figuratively, Nimander and his siblings were pulled/pushed away from their father (and people) as children — by what very well could be their father’s request. The Tiste siblings are haunted by Anomander’s active absence. Their continued distance from their father isn’t an act of expressing their freedom against an Ancestor’s Gaze — it isn’t an act of revolution — it is their facticity and a source for their Othering of themselves. We often see this from Nimander’s POVs up to and including this sequence.
Kallor sniffs out this weakness and presses upon the wound. Nimander gets flustered and retorts. To which Kallor responds:

'Anomander Rake is a genius at beginning things. It’s finishing them he has trouble with.'

Damn, Kallor.
Also, I didn’t need my ADHD called out so harshly, dude. What the fuck.
Without diving into what Erikson was dealing with while writing this book, this hits hard for Nimander, and is an interesting commentary nonetheless. His father, Anomander, is the leader of a diasporic people who’ve been without home, without a centre, for 400,000 years. I think Kallor’s words hurt Nimander so much because the Tiste siblings don’t know Anomander’s current plans nor have they experienced the "settling-down" from the unveiling of Kurald Galain in what is now Black Coral. They are unaware of Rake’s teleology for his people, for himself even. Regardless, we see again and again that Kallor isn’t just a strong skirmisher, his words cut nearly as well as his blades.
Kallor goes on to confirm that he knows Rake before the group notices a ruined tower among the alien plants and scarecrows. Kallor says its Jaghut. Kallor trudges forth indifferently, pushing corpses out of his way as he bee-lines it to the ruined tower. I don’t think such a sequence of action has ever described Kallor’s whole raison d’être and modus operandi so well: just a man seemingly indifferent to the corpses in his path as his will pulls him forward.
We get a small interaction between Skintick and Nimander that reveals Skintick’s acuity in reading Kallor’s take on Rake. Kallor sees their father as an equal (it isn’t just the readers that need to be keen to subtext, characters do too).
Skintick offers the idea of sicking Kallor on the Dying God, hoping he “decid[es] to do something for his own reasons, but something that ends up solving our problem.” I like the use of “deciding to do something for his own reasons,” as this aligns so well with authenticity in existentialism (and the absence of some absolute morality for authenticity).
As Nimander approaches the tower behind Kallor, both Nimander and the readers get a great sense of horror, the weird, the uncanny, and the sublime with how Erikson describes the scenery:

Drawing closer to the ruin, they fell silent. Decrepit as it was, the tower was imposing. The air around it seemed grainy, somehow brittle, ominously cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.
The highest of the walls revealed a section of ceiling just below the uppermost set of stones, projecting without any other obvious support to cast a deep shadow upon the ground floor beneath it. The facing wall reached only high enough to encompass a narrow, steeply arched doorway. Just outside this entrance and to one side was a belly-shaped pot in which grew a few straggly plants with drooping flowers, so incongruous amid the air of abandonment that Nimander simply stared down at them, disbelieving.

Nimander notes an incongruity of this place — its aesthetic of abandonment juxtaposed with a curated garden. “The cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.” This evokes a certain unsettledness to Nimander (and thus, the reader). These genre conventions are sources of tension and anxiety, similar to non-diegetic violins building up to a real or false jump-scare in a slasher flick.
Arrogantly, Kallor chooses to go out of his way and insult the presumed Jaghut within the tower. Classic Kallor. The Jaghut replies “nothing changes,” resulting in Kallor shooting Skintick and Nimander a “pleased smirk.”

Tea time, but before falling into a rabbit-hole and not after.

Before Kallor can announce himself, the Jaghut lists off Kallor’s titles, his facticity. Kallor’s reputation precedes him and there’s an asymmetry here in which the Jaghut knows who Kallor is but Kallor doesn’t yet know who the Jaghut is. This is our first hint that this meeting isn’t serendipitous, and is instead an intentional interaction with regards to the plot. And if this Jaghut knows of Kallor, does he know those who Kallor travels with? Who is this Jaghut’s intended audience among those options?
I also like the play here with facticity: the Jaghut lists out things about Kallor, but is Kallor some sum of those thing-nesses? How many are true, how many are manufactured myths? It’s an act by this Jaghut to Gaze upon Kallor, to show to Kallor that he’s being seen. It’s a deliberate tactic to destabilise and decenter Kallor: an offensive.
We as readers are informed of Kallor’s limitations from the Azathanai curses via Draconus, K’rul and Nightchill, but these limitations on Kallor don’t necessarily restrict his freedom until Kallor allows them.
We get a flash of Jaghut humour and guest rites — this ancient dismisses Kallor while inviting everyone in for tea. Interestingly, Erikson has this Jaghut use the proper noun of ‘Others’ which lends me to think that an existentialist lens hasn’t been the worst pick (not that ‘Othering’ is strictly existentialist by any means).
So, we’ve had corpses drained dry for kelyk, alien plant-life, a ruined tower of an unknown age stumbled upon beyond the urban, a preternatural creature to Nimander and his kin (something they’ve maybe only witnessed a handful of times) and then we get this description:

The air of the two-walled chamber was frigid, the stones sheathed in amber-streaked hoarfrost. Where the other two walls should have been rose black, glimmering barriers of some unknown substance, and to look upon them too long was to feel vertiginous — Nimander almost pitched forward, drawn up only by Skintick’s sudden grip, and his friend whispered, ‘Never mind the ice, cousin.’
Ice, yes, it was just that. Astonishingly transparent ice–

I love this. First: “it was just that” screams “no it isn’t” to anyone paying attention to the words Erikson is using to make the reader uncomfortable. We know: Jaghut + Ice = Omtose Phellack. The atmospheric setting here is directly being called out in not just a sublime way, but his description has an added layer of horror to Omtose Phellack.
Erikson uses “vertiginous,” giving both Nimander and us a sense of vertigo, being decentred and unoriented. This isn’t too different from descriptions found in works like Vandermeer’s Annihilation or other New Weird authors. This ice wall calls to Nimander, draws from him feelings of unknown when he’s caught himself staring for too long — emphasis on staring.
For all intents and purposes, this ice wall is a thing, a being-in-itself, neither active nor passive. But its effect on Nimander is similar to the Dal Honese ancestors’ Gaze — this ice wall objectifies him, calls to him, evokes his being-for-others, and emotionally alienates him. The pull Nimander feels is his submitting his being-for-itself with the freedom of those that Gaze upon him. A justification of his facticity, his bad faith. This will be important later.
Eventually we get this awesome line from the Jaghut host:

’Once, long ago, a wolf god came before me. Tell me, Kallor, do you understand the nature of beast gods? Of course not. You are only a beast in the unfairly pejorative sense — unfair to beasts, that is. How is it, then, that the most ancient gods of this world were, one and all, beasts?’

There’s so much going on to unpack in this paragraph.

• He’s called Kallor a beast, but says his doing so is unfair to beasts (damn, this ice orc just roasted Kallor).
• It calls back to Nimander’s thoughts on children wielding sticks and beasts fleeing as a result. With or without knowing it, this Jaghut is calling Kallor a child, too, in the pejorative sense, unfair to children.
• He says the first gods were beasts, but does he mean these early gods were explicitly Beasts (in essence, not the pejorative sense) or that they were beast-like akin to the pejorative sense used on Kallor (or some combination of both)?
  • Interestingly, we know that this wolf god is possibly an Azathanai d’ivers from FoL — with this knowledge, would Fanderay and Togg count as a Beast-as-literal-beast beast-god?

Later, again, we get this Jaghut saying Others as a proper noun, and then the Others are called Tiste Andii.

‘Ah, and what of the Others with you? Might not they be interested?’
Clearing his throat, Skintick said, ‘Venerable one, we possess nothing of worth to one such as you.’
‘You are too modest, Tiste Andii.’
‘I am?’
'Each creature is born from one not its kind. This is a wonder, a miracle forged in the fires of chaos, for chaos indeed whispers in our blood, no matter its particular hue. If I but scrape your skin, so lightly as to leave but a momentary streak, that which I take from you beneath my nail contains every truth of you, your life, even your death, assuming violence does not claim you. A code, if you will, seemingly precise and so very ordered. Yet chaos churns. For all your similarities to your father, neither you nor the one named Nimander — nor any of your brothers and sisters — is identical to Anomander Dragnipurake. Do you refute this?’

Above, the Jaghut goes on to describe genetics, but also calls out the fact that they are children of Anomander — dude definitely knows more than he’s leading on, that’s for sure, and is winking directly to us readers, seemingly going over the heads of both Kallor and the Tiste. Also, the bit about chaos in blood will come up again and again in later scenes and later essays.
Moreover, we see that the Jaghut says that which he scrapes "contains every truth of you, your life, even your death" — our genetics are facticities, among our thing-nesses. "Yet chaos churns," the Jaghut rebuts. That chaos in our blood is a source of our "no thing-ness," from which we may express our freedom against the determinism of genetics — of facticities — and transcend.

For each kind of beast there is a first such beast, more different from its parents than the rest of its kin, from which a new breed in due course emerges. Is this firstborn then a god?’

I love this for two reasons. One, it speaks to a criticism of the assumption that a prime-mover is necessarily divine. But, through the existentialist lens, it’s a challenge and criticism of the presumed Authority of Genealogy. Jumping back to the early musings on ancestry: if ancestors haunt us and dictate our facticity as a result of suppressing our being-for-itself, then where does that chain of dictating/suppressing end? And is that terminus also an Authority above all generations below it just due to its being something new, something sufficiently different from its own genealogy, its ancestors ‘behind’ it?
I also like the subtext of trauma as hereditary here with the double entendre behind ‘beast’, we can think of this Jaghut as asking if the primordial source of generational trauma has authority over its descendants? What does this dialogue mean for Nimander and his siblings and their place with respect to their father and the rest of the Tiste Andii people? Does this inform an analysis of Nimander’s chaotic double-pendulum between being-in-itself, being-for-itself, and his being-for-others?
A huge thing I would like to point out here, too, is that neither Skintick, Nimander, nor Kallor have used the Tiste Andii’s names, yet this Jaghut knows them by name. Kallor could deduce they were Rake’s children, but he didn’t know their names. Even though Skintick showcased an acuity to subtext when considering Kallor’s opinions of Rake, he doesn’t catch onto this subtlety. This Jaghut not only knows of Kallor, he knows of Nimander and his siblings. The evidence that this meeting isn’t serendipity continues to build.

‘You spoke of a wolf god,’ Skintick said. ‘You began to tell us a story.’
‘So I did. But you must be made to understand. It is a question of essences. To see a wolf and know it as pure, one must possess an image in oneself of a pure wolf, a perfect wolf.’
‘Ridiculous,’ Kallor grunted. ‘See a strange beast and someone tells you it is a wolf — and from this one memory, and perhaps a few more to follow, you have fashioned your image of a wolf. In my empires, philosophers spewed such rubbish for centuries, until, of course, I grew tired of them and had them tortured and executed.’

This sequence of dialogue is fantastic and reminds me of arguments foagainst the strong/weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis/es. We see the Jaghut musing on a seemingly prescriptive Platonic idealism that Kallor interrupts with a more descriptive, pragmatic, empirical framework in which he follows with a jest of torturing and executing philosophers (remind me to never live in the Kallorian Empire).
Kallor speaks as if his words contradict the Jaghut and show the assumed idealism to be wrong. But, by Kallor’s own argument, the Jaghut’s words of ‘pure’ and ‘perfect’ are just as empirically contingent to one’s memories as ‘wolf’ is. The combinations of signs and symbols language users use give flesh to those signs’ and symbols’ own meaning — but bury that meaning beneath the flesh by doing so. The concept of a ‘perfect wolf’ (i.e., ‘perfect’ + ‘wolf’) emerging from one’s own contingency with the notion of ‘perfect’ and ‘wolf’ is entirely possible without that imagined ‘perfect wolf’ being actually some idealisation, i.e., some Platonic Perfect Wolf.
The Jaghut responds with laughter to Kallor’s absurdity: both in his misinterpretation of the Jaghut’s musings as well as the nature of Kallor’s brutal reaction to those that question things he finds to be rubbish. This pairs well with Skintick’s future POV in this sequence, but the contrast between Kallor and this Jaghut is entertaining nonetheless. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish when Kallor is telling the truth about his brutality or if his mutterings are just words congruent to his reputation.
The two then have a pissing contest. We find out the Jaghut was in disguise — I don’t have the evidence or time here to say, but there are ideas that this particular Jaghut is a d'ivers and it is fucking awesome even if untrue. The discussion here points to some T’lan Imass’ Jaghut War. It being the Kron, I’m inclined to wonder if there is a relationship with the bones Karsa stumbles upon in HoC (where he and his war party find Calm).

Skintick squatted to pick up two of the cups, straightening to hand one to Nimander. The steam rising from the tea was heady, hinting of mint and cloves and something else. The taste numbed his tongue.

Don’t take candy from strangers tea from Jaghut, people.
We find out that Raest is this Jaghut’s child. We find out that this Jaghut took on 43 T’lan Imass and a Bonecaster, killing them all. This is a threat rallied back against Kallor’s assertion that he’s killed Jaghut.

Teeth bared, Kallor bent down to retrieve his cup.
The Jaghut’s left hand shot out, closing about Kallor’s wrist. ‘You wounded that wolf god,’ he said.

Oh shit. What follows is one of the first times I can recall that Kallor is scared. Contrast with his earlier treatment of Rake as equal.

'Oh, be quiet, Kallor. This tower was an Azath once. Shall I awaken it for you?’
Wondering, Nimander watched as Kallor backed towards the entrance, eyes wide in that weathered, pallid face, the look of raw recognition dawning. ‘Gothos, what are you doing here?’
‘Where else should I be? Now remain outside — these two Tiste Andii must go away for a while.’

The revelation: the Jaghut is none other than the Lord of Hate himself, Gothos. You can understand why Kallor, always so arrogant, submits to Gothos and listens to his instruction.
Immediately after the reveal, Skintick and Nimander succumb to the effects of whatever extra ingredient Gothos had slipped into their tea. We get this final sequence:

Nimander’s eyes were drawn once more to the walls of ice. Black depths, shapes moving within.
He staggered, reached out his hands–
‘Oh, don’t step in there–’
And then he was falling forward, his hands passing into the wall before him, no resistance at all.
‘Nimander, do not–’
Blackness.

Again, the readers eyes are drawn along with Nimander's to the icy, abyss-like, objectifying, Gazing threshold. Here's where the sublime and the weird really flavour the setting in this scene.
There's a bell’s echo here from the start of this scene: this sequence starts with Nimander discussing the uncertainty related to moving through a portal with Andarist away from the rest of his kin, a breaching. During these final lines of this first scene, we get a tension between us and the unknown, between what has happened and that-which-is-to-come, between what we’ve imagined about Malazan’s cosmos and some contorting of those assumptions. What’s beyond the veil decentres not only Nimander in its draw and pushing him to being-for-others, but it decentres the readers too. Hic sunt dracones, terra incognita, the sublime, the enigmatic, the terror. We’re made to feel small and inconsequential by this icy threshold.
It isn’t mysterious because it evades our Gaze like other fantastical things (e.g., many renditions of some archetypal tricksters found within various folklores), instead it invites our Gaze eventually since It Gazes back (almost Nietzschean).

Thoughts

Calling back to the genre conventions, this extended scene is one that definitely plays with the established conventions of Gothic literature and its descendants. Constantly, Erikson hits us with tension sewn into his choice of words in Nimander’s ruminations, his angst associated to diaspora, the notion of Dal Honese ancestors gazing upon their descendants from clay walls, absent ancestors that too haunt the same, the fields of scarecrows as desiccated (and harvested) bodies of worshippers, the alien plant-life, the ancient Jaghut tower, the ice threshold. Each of these (and those unmentioned) add onto to the dissociation (de-centering) of both Nimander and us, the readers. Each of us seem small and inconsequential to the dynamism of the cosmos: everything we know, including that of what we already know about the Malazan universe (and our own) can be challenged. We’re each just travellers who have stumbled upon a shattered visage in the desert that reads: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
This stands in contrast to — almost a revolution against — the modalities one can garnish from the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment that favour an almost religious rationalism and positivism. This is why I believe (and hope I have shown) that the existentialist (and those schools of thought peripheral to it) lens is apt. The genealogy of Gothic literature serves as a grammatical sandbox that gives way to exploring the things that existentialism tries to frame in its study, such as the dread and anxieties — the nothingness (no thing-ness) — of being.
Not only are the Dal Honese clay-filled ancestors present to alienate the reader by entertaining a certain ‘exoticism’ (by the readers’ juxtaposing such practices against what we consider ‘normal’ — here's where Sartre is applied to White or Male Gazes), but they are there as conduits for understanding how Nimander is affected by Others, by their Looks — his siblings, his absent father, his dead uncle, Kallor, Gothos, and the icy threshold — even if this ‘othering’ is one done only by Nimander onto himself (the house settling perceived as a footfall). This becomes more important in the scenes that follow.
So, how does this relate to the Eleint, dragonblood or sorcery? If you want to know now, please read ahead in the text — i.e., he future scenes in this sequence in Chapter 8 of TtH — you’ll find out. Otherwise, I’ll attempt to provide more clarity in the follow-up post(s). Until then, I just want put forth some questions:

• Are the Eleint actually dragons in the usual fantastical/conventional sense, or are they something different, something alien, something terrifying, something that evokes horror?
• If meaning-making (and, as such, essentializing) — according to my reading of existentialism — is a choice of ascribing/burying the Real with its facticity, what does this mean for K’rul’s warrenification and the birth of sorcery? What does this mean for aspecting, particularly for the Eleint and the Azathanai?

Beyond those questions (which align with my grander narrative shared in this collection of essays) — in regards to the plot, I think it is smart to continue asking, ‘why has Gothos ensured that Anomander’s children and Kallor would stumble upon his tower?’
¹ the facticity of what can be understood as objective states ascribed to things, including social constructions — thing-ness — e.g., how things are thrown into the world, a mode of existence that simply is, the contingent being of ordinary things, such the language(s) one speaks, one’s occupation, etc.
² the mode of existence of consciousness that stands in contrast to being-in-itself, “no thing-ness”, that which negates being-in-itself

MODESTO COMMUNITY ACTION ASSOCIATION has announced that they are moving forward in development for the community wide effort at batting the escalating issue of unhoused and under housed folks in the area.
Since 2014, the Modesto Community Action Association has worked with various agencies and advocacy groups to build better, more accountable programs that provide real results to this problem. The group consists of both clients and providers of these services, which we feel often need to be given perspectives more often of those who actually use these programs and services.
Our goals include a drop in center and this project, Tiny Home Village.
Our outreach is done with many people who are involved in the daily struggle to survive. We are in touch with people who are dying to be active and involved, yet have no clue where to start. We seek to unite these people in the effort to make real and lasting changes in the waya service is provided and the responsibly we have to fellow human kind to give a hand up, not out, if we have those means.
This is a three phase plan that will identify and attempt to develop a plot of land we can have through either a partnership with a landowner or real estate agent, or with the city or county, using the resources of locally based doners to build a small community of affordable tiny houses and provide the homes as long term solutions for housing.
Each would be equipped with appliances and the community would be secure, with 24/7 on site security and manager who would be also living on site. The units would require the eventual occupants to provide in kind labor and solict financial assistance, to contribute to the effort. Residents will have a case manager and a plan towards self sufficiency, with check in required to be able to stay. There would be no restriction on length of tenancy, and rent would be adjusted to the work hours they contribute to the ongoing effort to keep the community solid.
Tenants meeting every week. On site manager On site security Fully equipped 200-300 square feet units for individual or family. Phase one - demo units (4), community outbuildings, and garden, and staff units.
Family units are larger, up to 340 sq feet. Individuals can be placed in one of three 150-300 sq feet units prr initial design and budget estimate.
The current goal is to raise the funds to raise funds. A funding campaign will be available online soon. We will seek the backing of both government grants and private donations. The committee is going to start meeting on Zoom (see schedule). We are going to be expecting to appoint the replacement of our founding Board member, Lola Kennedy, who passed away after a long illness last month.

Current business. - One of the best addiction treatment centers in CA. Best in the Silicon Valley (we have several decent competitors in Marin County and then the rest of the competiton is in Malibu)
Small. High End. 6 bed residential/inpatient + 30 seat outpatient. ~30 fte employees/contractors. 6m/y rev.
INITIAL PROBLEM: Vast majority (95%) of people calling us we can not service at our current pricepoint/location and we refer out. Even rather decent insurance policies. Insurance wise - Out of Network. We primariy can only accept PPO policies from people working for Big Tech.
SOLUTION: Open quite a bit larger, cheaper to run per bed, facility while providing great clincal care. ~30-40 bed. This been on my plate for a while. So in preparation I secured decent in-network contracts to fill the beds once it opens. This would at worst 3x revenue.
COMPETITION: Larger facilities, even in the immediate area in the exist. I humbly believe that we can run circles around them as far as good clinical services and still make money. I have spoken to several owners. My idea of quality that people in recovery deserve is a level or two higher.
Paths to getting a 30 bed going
1) Buy an apartment building and convert it. ~4-6 m if in San Jose area. - Hard to get SBA loan (they dont like RE) to do this as a conversion requires conditional use permit. Plus I would prefer it to be "nicer" than your run of the mill apt with 11-15 units, even nicely converted.
2) Buy a motel/hotel and convert it. SBA allows around 5m, but one of the hotels that I like is around 7m. Another around 9m.
Last I spoke with SBA lender they were more interested in me finding an already running "larger addiction treatment center" to take over. But for me the "treatment center" part is nearly irrelevant. Most sell without RE.
What are some creative ways to look for this financing that is larger in size than SBA 504?
Thank you

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 64%. (I'm a bot)

SEOUL-North Korea on Tuesday confirmed plans to launch its first military spy satellite in June and described such capacities as crucial for monitoring the United States' "Reckless" military exercises with rival South Korea.
The statement came a day after North Korea notified Japanese authorities that it plans to launch the satellite sometime between May 31 and June 11, and that the event may affect waters in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and east of the Philippines' Luzon Island.
Since the start of 2022, North Korea has test-fired about 100 missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland and a slew of launches it described as simulated nuclear attacks on targets in South Korea.
"(North Korea's) military reconnaissance satellite No. 1 to be launched in June and various reconnaissance means due to be newly tested are indispensable to tracking, monitoring, discriminating, controlling and coping with in advance in real time the dangerous military acts of the U.S. and its vassal forces," he added.
North Korea's satellite launch would use long-range missile technology banned by past U.N. Security Council resolutions, although previous missile and rockets tests have demonstrated North Korea's ability to deliver a satellite into space.
South Korea warned Monday that North Korea will face consequences if it goes ahead with its launch plan in violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban the North from conducting any launch using ballistic technology.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: North^#1 Korea^#2 military^#3 satellite^#4 launch^#5
Post found in /worldnews.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

Hello and welcome to my post! This prompt takes place in a Modern Realistic world that is taking an AU spin after the beginning of the rp, but we can change some details of the real world to fit better such as names or new individuals in governments (obviously like a new princess, if you play her, rather than IRL one). This rp is based around War, Special Operations, Politics, Espionage, Romance, Mystery and more and can depict adult themes so please be of-age in your jurisdiction! Your character is up to you! I can gladly help make one, but, the way this rp is set up with intertwining plots means your character can be partially in-the-know about one part and come to learn and uncover the rest hoping to save the world! Below is the 'start' of the initiative, and if you wanted you could be... a drone operator who saw part of what happened to the plane... or the princess who (if you play her) survives the attempt on her life. We can find a way to work you into the mentioned events going on in the world. Anyway, I role play on Discord and if this interests you, please reach out!
~~
A long delicate hand extended across the custom made Roche Bobois Executive desk with masterfully blended darkened steel and glass, curving around into the shape of a crescent moon. It's owner had a chuckle over that every time they saw it, knowing it was on a bit too on the nose but not minding the small joke. Their hand picked up an old rotary phone that was linked to a sister device just 15 feet to their west, where their secretary sat, "Nightshade" The Executive identified them-self to the phone
A moment of pause, a female voice responded from the other end, "All preparations complete, Nightshade. Operation Zephyr, Operation Crimson Jewel, Operation Mirage, Operation Ember Storm, and Operation Shadow Orchid" The females voice said to the phone
"Proceed with all, then proceed with Operation Equinox Ascendant" The executive responded before hanging up the phone.
A moment of silence followed the secretary as she replaced her own phone on the receiver and took a breath in. Her mind wondered about Nightshade as it had for the last four years since she received this unique job offer. She had never seen her boss, nor does she know what Nightshade sounded like as the voice was scrambled every time they spoke. Even worse, she didn't even know Nightshade sat just 15 feet to her east all these years. She picked up her phone, dialing the officers of Nox to relay the orders to proceed from Nightshade in the order she had asked them previously. Zephyr, Crimson Jewel, Mirage, Ember Storm, and Shadow Orchid...
~~
Major Jacob Hurthwing of the United States Airforce adjusted himself in the seat of his, as yet, unnamed and top secret state of the art Multi-role Fighter Jet while his stomach rumbled. It was 3pm and he was hungry. He had been told that this fighter put the F-35 Lighting II to shame with its superior Stealth Capabilities, Ground Attack Armaments, and Maneuverability and because of this it was exceptional in its handling and disbursement of G Force other than on the pilot, and it had taken him a few weeks to get used to the control scheme. Everything was controlled from his helmet or the unique control stick which was more like an advanced glove connected right to the plane that seamlessly linked his movements. However, as much as he was in awe of what he called a Seventh Generation Fighter... He was equally in awe over the view he had from the cockpit. To his east was the mighty Himalayan Mountain Range and below him was lush green valleys, deep gorges, and pristine rivers meandering through the terrain. Cascading waterfalls punctuated the verdant hillsides, adding a touch of ethereal beauty to the scene. Valleys dotted the terraced fields, vibrant with the hues of cultivated crops, reflecting the agricultural livelihood of the Bhutanese people. He was on practice runs, evading and testing the capabilities of the fighters stealth ability, which had been wildly successful. He had yet to be spotted by any of the Asian countries he had flown over, from teasing the China border to over India and north. It was a gorgeous day with clear skies and he had just checked in with the USS Harry S. Truman in the Persian Gulf who had advised him to return to deck, but, he figured he could slip in a few more minutes of this view as he adjusted his course... Suddenly, the cockpit of the Fighter flashed red as his HUD displayed at least fifteen different warnings, most of which he could ignore but two he could not... Unsafe weather conditions... and Connection Lost. He hardly had a moment to think about how to fix the situation before his seat ejected, without his desire to do so, but his cockpit remained closed. His neck broke instantly as it hit the strong composite metal, and with his lifeless corpse, the plane began banking to its new destination...
~
4,800 miles away six individuals sat within the back of a Route-master, known more locally to Londoners as a Boris Bus or New London Bus. It was the classic red double Decker redesigned for the modern day, and the men loaded Kalashnikov's as they knelt below the high sides of the second and first deck levels. The bus took a turn on Dacre St just a few blocks away from Buckingham Palace and saw their target. An unmarked, visually unremarkable vehicle driving on the opposite end of the road and coming their way, just as they had expected. While the car was unremarkable to the world, the driver of the Routemaster knew how to identify it with its exceptionally strong tires and had a low profile from the weight of the armor plating that was hidden within. It was an armored car being used to ferry the Princess of England on her way to an unplanned and unscheduled stop just halfway across London but the bus driver knew the car would never make it, as he had been given the proceed on Crimson Jewel... As the vehicles drew closer to one another, he yanked his wheel to the side, and the two vehicles collided to a loud crushing stop, for the bus was modified as well. Behind the driver, the six men in masks opened the windows of the bus and aimed down at the Princesses' vehicle. Its armor had been compromised by the impact and the windshield began to splinter as dozens of bullets hit it. One of the men pushed a Panzerfaust 3 from the busses window, aiming the rocket launcher at the car. He wasn't supposed to fire it yet, ideally, they captured the princess... but should the police arrive to soon... Oh well...
~~
Operation Mirage occurred in the early morning in Michigan, USA. A lone Nox operative had already slipped inside one of the worlds foremost digital security services and major supplier to the US government and had laughed to himself at how simple it had been to do so. Monotony and Peace had ruined the guards who stood watch and had been waiting for the shift change that occurred at 5am just moments ago, and he had no need to obscure the cameras for when he reached the server room... He could erase and loop the videos... as he gained unrestricted access to their systems...
~~
"That's it?" The nox operative asked his officer, known as Phantom. "That's it" Phantom responded ever so simply. They had spent the past week preparing for this operation and the young operative couldn't believe that kicking it off was so lackluster and so simple. Of course, preparing hadn't been simple. They had been all over Mallacoota and the Coopracambra National Park of Australia setting up caches of fuel that they were sure could not be found nor traced back to them. It had to seem like an accident, after all. It was 7pm as Phantom took one last long drag of his cigarette, looked out over the national park... and flicked it into the fuel trail at his feet before the two left.
~~
It was similarly 5am for Operation Shadow Orchid, and the officer in charge had seemed almost disappointed that it would be nothing more than a drop off... and he had been going through ways of making it more interesting in his head. An arrow with a message? No, too archaic... A Grenade launcher through the window? No, too modern... In the end, he decided to go with a timeless classic with a unique twist... It was two hours later that the US Senator awoke next to his wife. He rolled over to hug her, as he always did, but when he did he felt something slide on his chest. His eyes opened to see a manila envelope with a note on it suggesting he keep quiet and wait for more contact. Attached to the note, however, was a Polaroid of him and his wife asleep in bed just two hours prior. Inside the envelope were pictures of him and his many... Mistresses... Something he would do anything to keep quiet
~~
With that the operations had been completed, or started, and operation Equinox was all set to begin...

My tenants moved out last month and as I had done my walkthrough. I noticed that the dishwasher overflowed and flooded in the basement. After confronting the tenants and getting a timeline, they told me it happened "4 months ago".
I ended up having to hire a contractor to come and take a look, see the damages and treat the mold under the counter as well as above the drywall in the basement. We had to replace the dishwasher (we tried to repair it but we couldn't get it to function properly), treat the mold, and replace the drywall, carpet, repaint the ceiling.
As per the lease agreement. I am allowed to use the security deposit that they have provided me with to make the necessary repairs. This used up majority of the deposit and some. Among other things, there were some HoA violations that they were responsible, I had no problem taking care of things like repairs that needed to be done but one thing was powerwashing the driveway/stairway/surrounding wall of stairs which I expensed them for, and I was being reasonable with the pricing, only charged them for rental of the powerwash, gas and time. which totalled to 150$ as it way beyond normal wear and tear.
I sent them this update within a timely manner as dictated by the lease. They respond back asking why I charged them for these and I politely referenced the lease agreement on each paragraph and section of their responsibility. I received a scathing response from them with derogatory and profane remarks. I thought I was being reasonable. They were great tenants over the past 8-9 years. They did breach one of the agreement on the lease regarding a second pet but we peacefully had a discussion about it. They notified me promptly when other appliances had issues and I was on top of getting them replaced.
What should I do? As of right now, I haven't responded back to his message.
TIA

Normally I'm a 2-bag traveller: 40L backpack, ILE Travel Pack as of late, &15L-40L shoulder bag, usually a TB Western Flyer or ILE Arid Duffle
Well, for an upcoming trip I need a max size check-in bag (dimensions sum = 62, 70lb weight limit) so what to get? I have some old B&R experience here, but was looking for "the one" and here's what I came up with:
Softside vs Hardside
For me there is very little reason to get a hard side for check-in:

• Annoying clam-shell opening, though some like B&R are 80/20
• Can shatter
• Get beat to hell looking real fast
• No security advantage (due to TSA locks)
• Heavier

Soft-side bags avoid most all of these downsides and my 15 year old B&R softside check-in has been to 3 continents many times with zero problems, so I was pretty set on no hard side but nevertheless here are my research findings:
Rimowa
80% owned by LVMH. Unless you're flying private, why? The aluminum *will* get dented and will look like crap almost instantly, the poly is the same, but less so. Some call this damage "patina" though IMO it's more using the wrong tool for the job. They also have a nice internal compression system.With that, these are the best rolling bags BY FAR, so for carry-on I would ABSOLUTELY get an Original Cabin aluminum ... but I don't have a roller for carry-on soooo.... Rimowa has a deal with (Porsche &) Lufthansa so you might get some size flex there if you're over-size / weight. Lifetime limited warranty ("RIMOWA’s lifetime guarantee does not apply to cosmetic wear and tear, misuse or abuse, damages caused by negligence or accident by any third party, particularly flight or transport damages.")
TUMI
100% Owned by Samsonite. Their new hardsides have some Rimowa-beating features like soft-fall handles and latches that sound like a g-wagon, plus their divider system is great and makes storing/retrieving a laptop from a packed bag easy, though this only matter for carry-on. Also excellent rolling, though not quite up to Rimowa's level. Great softside options, partnerships with racing brands like Ducati & McLaren. 5 year limited warranty, with a LOT of complaints. "For years two through five, we do not cover damage caused by airlines or other transit damage"
Briggs & Riley
100% owned by United States Luggage Company (private) with the 2nd brand being Solo. This is not the fashion/luxury brand like the other two and will be under-the-radar so if you care about bling, this isn't your brand. Of the 3, B&R has the best warranty, i.e., full lifetime "simple as that" including self-repair kit options for broken wheels etc which is handy if you want to be proactive and carry, say, spare wheels with you. The B&R wheels around well but a somewhat worse experience than either Tumi or Rimowa; not bad, just not the cloud Rimowa is. B&R also gets dinged for wiggly handles, though they claim this is a feature to prevent sticking and I tend to agree as other German engineered products I own have this same "feature" and explanation from the engineers. B&R bags are ~10%-20% cheaper, but also lack luxury feel features like the soft-return handles and baller latches. In general B&R feels like the best normal product whereas Tumi and Rimowa feel like luxury products, for better & worse. One killer feature of B&R is the handle on the outside so you can pack flat - awesome! B&R co-brands with Jet Blue and have a "simple as that" lifetime warranty ("Our simple as that® guarantee means if your bag is ever broken or damaged, we will repair it free of charge, no proof of purchase needed, no questions asked.")
AWAY
Private female-owned startup of former Warby Parker employees who may sell. Of the cheaper priced (eg., Monos, Beis, Travel Pro, etc) hard-side check-in bags, Away is the best quality at a great price. While everything about the bag is far Away (get it??) from the first 3, maybe you don't want or need those features and so $400 gets you a great bag, albeit with fewer features (I'm ignoring the battery). Away partners with other startups like Harry's and has a damn good warranty, limited lifetime, but less limited than Rimowa/Tumi.
** TLDR and In Conclusion *\*

• Rimowa is luxury, and the best wheeling bag, period, however prone to damage and getting a bit long in the tooth feature-wise. Not check-in material IMO.
• Tumi is mostly luxury, and has great luxury touches like their handles, latches, and handle, but their warranty is janky with many complaints (e.g., new ruined bags not covered)

Thus, IMO, both of these brands are carry-on only
​

• Briggs & Riley is a basic looking bag built about as tough as you can get with the ability to travel with spare parts, and the soft-side can take a ton of abuse and not look worse for it thus making for a dependable check-in bag

Overall, I've ordered 2 B&R check-in size softside bags as they seem the most able to absorb bag smasher abuse and give me the option to field repair them.
I typed all of this up because I have nobody else to tell & you're the only people I know who may care.

.