Hey it’s me again. Miss me? I bet you haven’t. Last time I wrote one of these the sub had only 11,500 subscribers, and look where we are today: over 17,500! That’s 6000 new faces that probably have never seen any of these before. And wow, think about how the sub has exploded over the years. When I first joined the sub, it was sitting at less than 3000 subs, and that was back in November 2018, about the time where Index III started airing. Lots of new faces, but hopefully also many familiar ones as well.
Anyway, I’m getting off track, so let me get back to the meat and potatoes of this post: Magic God Othinus.

Volume	Arc	Page count	Publication date
NT8	Magic God Othinus	240	September 10th, 2013

The Story

So, the story begins on some ship wreckage, where we learn that Ollerus has successfully infiltrated GREMLIN, and shortly after it transitions into the UN building of all places where the US president, the Russian archbishop, the queen of England and the freakin’ pope hold a meeting about the fate of the world - seriously, where does Kamachi come up with this stuff? Anyway, they talk about the looming danger of Othinus finishing the magical item Gungnir, which can turn Othinus’ one flaw (always being at a 50/50 chance of success and failure) into complete irrelevancy, and thus they need to act fast. They set in motion a giant worldwide search to look for GREMLIN’s base of operations (the aforementioned ship wreckage).
On the other side of the world, poor Touma is once again in a dilemma with a bunch of girls who have somehow become part of his ever-increasing entourage, this time some of them (Lessar and Birdway) decided to sleep in the same bathtub as him. The usual hi-jinks ensue, and Touma once again ends up with bite marks on his head courtesy of his gluttonous roommate. After a quick briefing, Touma is brought up to speed, and they head toward the Academy City airport to send Touma in as a trump card in case something should go wrong. And here… honestly, I don’t know why Kamachi feels the need to do this, but the fanservice does become really tiresome. Here the girls decide to shop for swimsuits, and of course Lessar being Lessar, she absolutely has to tempt fate with the most ridiculous kinds of swimsuits. Touma isn’t having any of it, so he diffuses her advances, much to the bemusement of Lessar, and the utter misunderstanding of the other girls…
And of course everything goes wrong with locating the ship wreckage as they’re fooled by a decoy, but they do manage to locate the real ship wreckage which happens to be… right outside Tokyo. So Touma and the girls head out in the hyperspeed plane, only to be stopped by a GREMLIN contraption. GREMLIN decided it would be a good idea to turn Tokyo into the world’s largest gridlock and send Norse mythology monsters after anyone who traveled at speeds greater than that of a narcoleptic turtle. Touma and the girls are separated, but all of them decide to head for the harbor, and so further shenanigans ensue.
And from this point and until a handful of pages before the story ends, it’s mostly just Touma and Mikoto and Index’s fight against one of GREMLIN’s members, a new character by the name Freyja. And while it is a fairly long fight, it does turn out to be quite interesting, or at least the character of Freyja does. A pregnant woman being controlled by the fetus inside, not really something you see every day… The fight takes place on a moving subway train that occasionally peaks outside, so they’re moving toward the harbor, while they fight, which is very convenient if you ask me.
They manage to defeat her, and meet up with the others, and so the last stretch is taken by boat. As they approach the island of ship wrecks, Ollerus makes his move and attacks Othinus with a powerful spell, but the attack fails, and Othinus retaliates. However, Ollerus new best friend Fiamma of the Right comes in from the side and hits her perfectly, but it seems like Othinus didn’t care either way. Because the spell would still ensure that her flaw (50/50 chance of success/failure) would turn into a 100% chance for either direction, which she could use to ensure the perfect outcome either way, by deliberately failing at failing, thus becoming successful.
The story ends on probably one of the biggest cliffhangers in all of Toaru, by Othinus quite literally “destroying the world” in a flash with a staff she pulled out from her vacant eye socket, and then the pages run out. Spoooky.

New Characters

• Freyja: The twist came as a bit of a surprise to me, as did it to many others I would think. Even if you know your Norse mythology, you probably wouldn’t have guessed that it was the fetus that was Freyja, and the mother was just an unnamed entity it wanted to protect. So kudos to Kamachi for creating a very unconventional villain. Although I cannot credit him with coming up with the idea first, as Dr. Fetus from the game Super Meat Boy in his glass jar with the tuxedo and top hat came out in 2010, whereas this story was published in 2013.
  
• Hel: A small character that was only given a few pages of time, but she seems like too intricate a character to be just a throwaway for some fluff and filler. I imagine she’ll have a bigger role to play in the next novels. Although I feel like I must point out that Hel the character in Norse mythology rules over a place that is also called Hel, or Helheim. In this story she says she’s the queen of Niflheim, which is just not true, and it’s honestly pissing me a little bit off, especially considering Kamachi normally takes such good care of getting things right.
  
• Fenrir: Like Hel, a minor character who does some decoy work far away from the real action, but I also think he’ll play a bigger role in the coming novels. Don’t have much to say about him, other than the comment about Fenrir being the one to devour Odin during Ragnarok comes off to me as a bit of foreshadowing, and if I know Kamachi right, he wouldn’t put a line like that in if it didn’t have some purpose.
  

Recurring Characters

• Misaka Mikoto: Finally being given the chance to help Touma, instead of Touma being the one to carry the burdens, and then she’s basically whisked away again to fight a fight far away from Touma. It’s just not fair.
  
• Lessar: Always fun to see more of Lessar, though her overt sexual nature does seem a little grating if you ask me. Then again, that is her primary personality trait, so I guess it comes with the territory. Still, you can’t help but think she seems a little one-dimensional when it’s all she ever thinks about or talks about.
  
• Index: The useless food goblin was finally useful for once. While her wealth of knowledge is only good in certain circumstances, her ability to perform Spell Intercept does come in handy in the most unusual of times. So good on her for not being a 2-ton ball and chain around Touma’s ankle this time.
  

Notes on the Novel

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m reading these on a tablet, with an app that shows my progress in the novel in terms of percentages, and I noticed by the 25% mark that everything that had happened so far was the UN meeting and Touma’s trip to the swimsuit store. I was wondering at that point if all this fanservice was just a way for Kamachi to pad the novel length to a certain amount so that it exceeded some arbitrary threshold. I also couldn’t help but think that if each novel had its own unique title, this one could just be called “Touma and the magic fetus” because the vast majority of the novel feels like it’s just Touma fighting with Freyja while on the subway train.

Volume	Arc	Page count	Publication date
NT9	Magic God Othinus	181	January 10th, 2014

The Story

Okaaayyy, so we’re going straight into metaphysical territory right out the gate. That seems fair, given that the previous novel ended with the literal end of the world. So what happened? Well, only Touma and Othinus remain in a space of pure nothing. Pure nothing. Not even a sliver of the world remains. So what would anyone do in such a place? Touma runs. Runs like hell. But unfortunately he doesn’t get anywhere useful, as there’s nothing at all. So he returns to face Othinus, who decides to “mentally break him”, and sends him to a brand new world.
This brand new world is seemingly constructed in such a way that everyone thinks Touma is a monster for performing all the heroic feats he’s done over the last 3-4 months, and so everyone is out to get him. Waking up in a bombarded Tokyo he desperately tries to look for a place to hide and make sense of everything, all while Othinus is standing on the sideline taunting him. He even runs into Fukiyose and Aogami, who both are trying to kill him, but he manages to escape both of them. He doesn’t get much farther than that, however, as he’s soon overwhelmed by a very unexpected adversary: Komoe-sensei. And let me tell you, having the mental image of Komoe stabbing Touma with a large kitchen knife while in tears was not a pleasant thought. Needless to say, Touma remains vigilant in the face of adversity, so Othinus creates a new world, one where Kamijou Touma is a completely different person.
This second world shows a different person assuming the role of Kamijou Touma, while the real Touma can only look on from the sideline seeing all his acquaintances have a great time, without the real him. But even this does not deter Touma, even this is not enough to “mentally break” him. So Othinus continues to create new worlds wherein Touma is mercilessly beaten, killed or otherwise rendered irrelevant. But nothing seems to stick, which brings us to the final world that Othinus creates, the final world that is sure to break our dear protagonist: A realm in which everyone is happy, and everyone survives.
And this does get to him. For Othinus says that if he stays in this world, his Imagine Breaker would shatter this world of happiness, so he comes to a very quick conclusion that for the greater good, he should end his own life. But in the process of doing so, a familiar face shows up just in time to stop it. Who is this person? The Will of the Misaka Network. Haven’t seen her in a long while, so this was nice. The Will and Touma get into a fairly long philosophical discussion of reality, morality, happiness and existence itself, which ultimately leads to The Will convincing Touma that Othinus is playing a trick on him and that he should get his shit together and bring back the real world again. And so he sets out to do just that, by confronting Othinus for a final battle.
But this final battle turns out not to be so final, at least not for one of the parties. You see, it turns out that Othinus restarts this whole charade every single time Touma confronts her at this place and loses to her godly powers, but while Touma loses his memory of the previous iterations (mostly), Othinus retains hers, and so she grows mentally ancient, while Touma stays youthful and blissfully unaware of the time that has passed. This whole thing reminds me a little bit of the “Endless Eight” from Harumi Suzumiya, or the final battle in Doctor Strange: one entity relives the same events over and over and over again and becomes worn down from the ordeal.
In the end, Othinus becomes so tired of the constant fighting for literally thousands of iterations, that she slips up, and Touma manages to destroy Gungnir, and through that the artificially constructed world where everyone is happy. They return to the black nothingness where they fight one final fight where Touma gets so close to performing his Signature Punch™, but get sliced in half by the abdomen mere centimeters from his goal. In his final death rattles, he lays some truth bombs on Othinus, which makes her rethink her entire purpose and goal, and he simply asks her to make good use of the Imagine Breaker, the one thing which acts like an anchor to reality not distorted by magic. He dies… but not for long. Othinus makes the uncharacteristic decision to restore everything back to the way things were just before she ended it all, with them all standing on the ship wreckage, and Othinus about to be attacked from every single angle imaginable. But Touma being Touma, he decides to add one more powerful girl to his enormous harem and proclaims that he will defend her, even he he has to fight the whole world to do so.

New Characters

There are no new characters this time around.

Recurring Characters

The whole section with the happy world felt a lot like a highlight reel of every character in the past who had experienced some sort of hardship or grief, so there were A LOT of recurring characters this time, even if they only had one or two lines at the most. But as for significant recurring characters, I believe there is only one:

• The Will of the Misaka Network: Like I mentioned up above, it was nice to see this entity again, even if it was brief. I am however not a fan of her vocal tic, and I am starting to be a bit bothered by every character who has a significant vocal tic. I know The Will’s speech pattern is supposed to resemble that of a terminal or a command line, but I honestly can’t imagine this will sound good in the anime adaptation unless they give each “/return” and “/escape” a unique noise instead of literally saying the word. Setting aside the vocal tick, this entity is a very curious one, though we learn more about what makes up the entity, and perhaps what makes it tick. I even got the sense that it, like most other girls in the series, has a bit of a crush on Touma, especially considering how it behaved around him (getting up real close almost touching lips) and thinking about what it could have said to him (”please save me”). Also, is it an “it” or a “her”… or a “they”? What’s the consensus in this regard?

Notes on the Novel

To be honest, I am never a big fan of the kinds of stories where reality is coming into question. Like “what is real?” and “is what I’m currently experiencing real?” and something to that effect. As a person who thinks of reality as a very grounded and tangible thing, questioning reality itself just gives me the heebie-jeebies. Though realizing that there is only one truth, and that truth is “I think, therefore I am”, everything beyond that is open to interpretation, so I cannot fault Kamachi for using it in Toaru. And I also believe that if you were fighting against an actual god, destroying, rebuilding, reshaping, and morphing reality would definitely be one of the primary tools of their trade. Still, not a fan. Also why I don’t like episodes of Star Trek or Stargate where they make people experience a whole bunch of crap inside their head while in reality only a few seconds pass by. It’s mental torture, and can seriously warp a person’s perception of reality. It’s probably why I like Star Wars more than the other “Star” franchises, as that franchise doesn’t mess with alternate realities and criss-crossing timelines and the like.
I do also believe that this novel is the first time, or at least one of the few times, that the movie Miracle of Endymion is referenced, with Arisa and the loli director being mentioned in the background during the aforementioned “highlight reel”. And yeah, you really need to have paid attention in the whole series if you had to get all the references thrown at you in this section. I will say, however, that Kamachi would had a perfect opportunity here to include Saten in the background, a mere name-drop would have sufficed, and no one would have batted an eye, but he didn’t.
With Touma now protecting Othinus instead of battling her, I wonder what’s going to happen in the third and final chapter of this epic.

Volume	Arc	Page count	Publication date
NT10	Magic God Othinus	229	May 10th, 2014

The Story

Let me preface this bit here by saying that I am a Dane, born and raised and has spent my entire life in Denmark. So it may not come as much of a surprise to you that I was a bit flabbergasted when I opened up this novel and one of the first things I saw was a photograph of Egeskov Castle and a map of Denmark. Now, I had already gathered from the Wiki that Denmark would play some role in the story, but I was not aware in what capacity, and when it would happen. But it turns out that all of NT10 apparently takes place in my home country. In multiple cities no less. Most of which I’ve been to. It was honestly a bit surreal to read. But nevertheless a hell of a lot of fun.
The story starts with Touma and Othinus teleporting to the northern part of Denmark, to an empty field just outside a fairly sized town called Hjørring. Othinus has explained that in order to stop the spell that Ollerus attacked her with, she must reduce her strength from Magic God back to human form, and doing so requires that she retrieves her eye from a lake on Funen, in particular, the lake next to Egeskov Castle. So they start trekking down from Hjørring to Odense, but on their way they run into multiple obstacles in the form of basically all of Touma’s former opponents, one after the other, trying to stop or outright kill him and Othinus.
And the first obstacle is not pulling any punches: it’s quite literally an orbital strike that glasses a handful of fields outside Hjørring quickly followed by one of Touma’s earliest adversaries: Accelerator. However, even though Accelerator is using his overpowered white wings, Touma is being quick about neutralizing him (almost like he’s done it a few times before), and they don’t see any other opponents for a while and move on some more.
They encounter their next opponent in Aalborg: the Roman Catholic Church forces, led by Agnese, who Touma doesn’t defeat in the old fashioned way, but convinces her that he’s helping Othinus for a good reason, and she gives him the benefit of the doubt and lets them through.
Their third opponent is the Russian Orthodox Church, with the familiar faces of Vasilisa and Sasha greeting the pair near Støvring. They toss a walkie-talkie to Touma, and he speaks with a Russian clergyman on the other end who uses a spell on him which reduces his strength based on the seven deadly sins, but Touma outsmarts him and turns the spell back on him, and the two nuns let them go, only for Touma to be knocked unconscious straight away by the fourth opponent, or opponents:
Knight Leader, William Orwell, Carissa and Kanzaki, the four strongest people in all of Britain, flying on a giant fish-like structure (why a fish, though? That still puzzles me) 1500 meters in the air, leaving Touma and Othinus with no way of escaping, but Touma uses Kanzaki’s desire to save everyone to convince her that there is a way to save the world and Othinus without killing her, thereby getting Kanzaki back on his side so she can hold back the others.
Moving on, Touma and Othinus run into their fifth obstacle: Marian Slingeneyer. and she. Is. Piiiiiissed. Pissed enough to actually use the magical sword she was threatening to use in Baggage City, calling upon every doomsday scenario from every religion and mythology she could imagine. And the fight is truly intense but Touma manages to smash the sword, and defeat Marian. The drum-shaped girl comes along and picks up Marian and rolls her away, leaving Touma and Othinus to continue their journey to the lake.
They reach Billund (a town which I’ve been to many many times and know quite a bit), where they face the sixth opponent and Touma’s greatest adversary of all: A unit of soldiers. They swiftly subdue the two of them, and take them into custody where Touma gets a chance to talk to the US president over the phone, where he convinces the president to stand down and let them through.
The ceasefire turns out to be very brief, as the seventh opponents land on the scene not too many moments later: Academy City’s army of Five_Over murderbots, specifically the Railgun variety. So they turn tail because that shit is pure insanity to go up against as mere mortals. They run through the nearby forest, but cannot escape them. However, before they are both turned into Swiss cheese by the pursuing death machines, they stop dead in their tracks as they’re hacked by opponent number eight.
Misaka Mikoto, one of Touma’s oldest acquaintances (post-memory loss), and certified Best Girl™, shows up to save him from getting turned into a fine paste. But that’s where Touma’s luck runs out, because she’s still going to kick his ass. They fight and it almost seems like Touma is victorious as usual, but this time, Mikoto gets properly angry at him after he explains why he decided to help Othinus seemingly out of nowhere. She lays some really strong truth bombs on him similar to what The Will did in the previous story, and it takes him by surprise just long enough for her to beat him literally with her fists, no electricity at all. And finally, at long last, she gets that bloody win she’s been yearning for for so long, even though she admits it wasn’t quite what she had imagined it would be. And can I just say that this image here is just gorgeous? Hits in just the right way for me. So beautiful.
Touma wakes up from the defeat, and Mikoto lets him pass, and she holds back the remaining Five_Over murderbots. Touma and Othinus hitch a ride in a tank, which they promptly drive straight into the harbor of Fredericia. They make their way to… “the bridge” which I can only assume based on the description in the novel is the old Little Belt Bridge, seeing as it has railroad tracks, while the new Little Belt Bridge is host to the E20 highway, and little else. And although the name may suggest it as being a new construction, the new bridge has existed since 1970, so Kamachi really doesn’t have much of an excuse not to at least mention it. On this bridge they find their ninth opponent: an unusual pair of Birdway and Index working together to try and increase Birdway’s strength to rival that of a Magic God. But Touma makes very quick work of this display by interrupting Index’s singing which supplies Birdway with Grimoire knowledge. They’re quickly defeated, and convinced that Othinus can be defeated through other means than just killing her.
They move on to Odense, the third largest city in Denmark, where they face the tenth opponent which doesn’t end up being easy whatsoever: Silvia and Brunhild. In fact, while Touma has received his fair share of bruises so far, nothing compares to what he ends up having done to him at this stage. Silvia is relentless, ruthless, and doesn’t hold back. With the power of a Saint she basically turns him into a bloody red pulp, and he is only saved by having Ollerus come in at the last second, redirecting the attacks of both Silvia and Brunhild against each other, knocking each other out in the process.
Beaten, battered, bruised beyond recognition, they limp the rest of the way to Egeskov Castle, where they stumble into the tenth and final obstacle between them and the eye in the lake: Thor. And Thor proves to be nigh-unbeatable thanks to his one trick of always teleporting (or rather moving he Earth around him, which is not a remotely original idea, btw.) himself into an always-winning position. Touma tricks him into stepping in front of a train, however, so he is still ultimately defeated. Which leaves just one last thing left to do…
But as luck would have it, it’s never quite that easy, is it? Othinus has witnessed all this hardship that Touma has gone through just to protect her and decided that no, it’s not fair, and she shouldn’t be protected like this, so she uses her Magic God powers to summon the giant crossbow from the last story and reactivates the spell Ollerus put on her, which destroys her from the inside. Touma makes a last ditch effort and at the last second reaches her and destroys the spell, but not before it’s too late and Othinus starts withering away… Meanwhile, every television screen on the whole bloody planet is receiving a live feed from this spectacle, and the US president asks everyone if they have it in their heart to forgive what has been previously been considered an unforgivable monster.
Touma wakes up back in the Academy City hospital with the frog faced doctor and much to his surprise, Othinus is alive! But… she’s only 15 cm tall now.
What. The fuck.

New Characters

• Ingrid Martin: This is about the only character introduced in this novel with an actual name, and even some lines. But outside of her very brief role as the American black-ops soldier that actually won the fight she had with Touma, there’s not really all that much to say about her. She did a good job. Kudos. She’s still not very good at her job though if Lessar of all people can sneak up on her unnoticed.

Recurring Characters

Oh boy where to start? This time, it’s basically a “greatest hits” album of Touma’s opponents from the past. Accelerator, Mikoto, Kanzaki, Birdway, Thor and so on. But since most of them are pretty much the same since we saw them the last time, and they don’t seem to grow all that much as characters, there’s really only one character I have any additional commentary on:

• Misaka Mikoto: The character dynamic between Mikoto and Touma has always been interesting to me, ever since OT3 (Sisters), or even the Railgun anime (which was my introduction to the franchise). Their relationship, as one-sided as it may seem, has always been one I have rooted for. It is one of the longest, and also one of the strongest bonds Touma has made over the course of this insanely long story, and it makes me happy to see that it’s still growing, even if it might never become what Mikoto really wants it to be. Her victory over Touma, even if she admitted it was a bit hollow, still seemed like an important milestone in their relationship, at the very least to her, but possibly also to him, as her speech to him about reality and perspective seemed to resonate with him, allowing her to get in the finishing blow. I hope Kamachi actually does something useful with this relationship in the future, though time will tell if that actually happens.

Notes on the Novel

Oh boy, where do I start? Firstly, as I mentioned in the beginning, I’m from Denmark, and I know quite a lot about the places described in this novel, or have friends who know about them, and while Kamachi does a decent job of representing my country, he does also get a LOT of things wrong. Firstly, he mentions that most of our cities are made of stone and brick buildings that are 500 years old. That is not even remotely the case. If buildings end up being that old, they’re either castles or protected buildings which are part of museums or “old town squares”, like “Den Gamle By” (translated: The Old Town) in Aarhus. Most cities, especially the big cities of today look way more modern. Take “Virgin Anne’s Street” as mentioned in the novel, it looks like this. Another error he makes is that it almost never snows in Denmark, at least not in the ridiculous volumes described in this novel. Now granted, he does save some points by mentioning that snow is rare here about 72% into the novel, but I still wanted to mention this in case anyone got any wrong ideas about Denmark being a winter wonderland. Another error he makes is that he says Denmark sits “only 150 meters above sealevel”. Bitch, our tallest point in the entire country is called Møllehøj, and it’s only 170 m above sea level. According to Wikipedia, our average height above sea level is a poor 31 meters. I’m flattered you think we’re taller than that, but really we’re not. He does get the fact right that Denmark is very flat, though. Also, Aalborg Tower, while it exists, is not even close to being a 100 meters tall. It’s 55 meters tall, and it looks like this. Lastly, and this is probably the silliest error of them all… we don’t have bears in Denmark. I have no clue where he got that idea from, but it’s far removed from reality.
As for the actual story, like Kamachi himself says in his Afterword: this was a “boss rush” style story this time around, or as I called it, a “greatest hits” album, with many familiar faces showing up to give it their all one more time to stop someone they have considered an ally in the past. It’s a much simpler story than the last one, with a lot less philosophy about reality and morality, and more just good old fashioned clashing of wills, and supernatural powers on display. I liked the setup, though it did end up feeling a bit formulaic at the end. You can see how long the novel is, you can sort of guess who the next opponent in line is based on the chapter name, and you can almost always predict the outcome of the fight based on their previous encounters. Of course each time Touma had to be clever about it, but that’s what he always is, and how he’s managed to survive this long, so there’s not really that much of a surprise there. And he’s been beaten to near unrecognizable states before, so it’s also not much of a surprise that he gets away with most of these beatings without much of consequence, thanks to the miracle medicines at the frog doctor’s hospital. Still, while it was formulaic, it was nice to see that Kamachi hadn’t completely forgotten most of the pre-established characters from the old series, and that he can use them for something interesting every once in a while, so kudos on that.
I figured I could start this series back up around this time again seeing as the events of the novels take place roughly around the same time of the year as the time we’re currently in right now. On the Toaru wiki it says that this arc takes place in Late November, which I think the 25th is a pretty good candidate for. Today also marks the two year anniversary of my original series of essays that I wrote about the Old Testament novels back in the day. If any newcomers find this style of essay interesting, you could try and read those and discover the humble beginnings of this series.
I hope the wait has been worth it. I certainly had my fun jumping back into the series with this titan of an arc.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6

Hey everyone. I don't know to what extent "build logs/stories" are allowed here, but I just wanted to share the 5 year long story of my PC - one that I didn't build from scratch, but in the process of transforming it to what it is today, I have at least taken part in just about everything that would go in to building a PC anyways.
I want to share this because, for the longest time, PC building was a hobby that I could only ever interact with through a screen. LinusTechTips, JayzTwoCents and a few others were my only way to engage with the PC world. It felt so out of reach to me, and I had basically just accepted that when it comes to PCs, I will likely just settle for pre-builts.
That was until August of this year, when I got tired of looking at my PC in its sad and dusty state, and wanted to finally do something about it. We'll get to that, but first...
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October 2015

I was 17 years old at this time with no income of my own, and the laptop that I had up to that point (an Asus K55N-DS81) suffered a slow and painful death. Shortly after I got it sometime in early 2013, I stepped on the screen like an idiot, and for the next 2.5 years it was basically a desktop, connected to an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. In its final months, it had become so hot, and I was desperate to extend its life, so I removed the keyboard, sat a desk fan on it, and aimed it straight at the cooling fan's intake. I thought it would make a huge difference, and I guess it was a little better, but with the knowledge I have now, I'm pretty sure I might've made it worse since I believe this laptop's keyboard doubled as a heatsink, and the real culprit was likely dust and crusty thermal paste all along - that wasn't something I had the guts to try and remedy back then, though. In any case, it finally died when trying to upgrade to Windows 10. It restarted and began what I imagined to be the update process, shut down in the middle of it, and would never turn back on again. I was pretty bummed out about it - while this was no gaming laptop, it was my first entry in to playing games on PC. It could handle things like Skyrim, Minecraft, League of Legends, and Sims 3/4, which is all I really needed since everything else was played on my PS3/4 anyways.
This was over the summer, and now, in October, I desperately wanted a new PC, so I had somehow convinced my parents to get me an early Christmas present. They let me choose the one that I wanted as long as it was under $500, and I ended up going for the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme GXI8000, which was around $460 at the time. Even then I knew this wasn't exactly fit for high-end gaming, but it had a dedicated GPU, a case that at least looked the part, and LED fans that I thought looked cool, so I was satisfied.
Here's a picture I took of the internals shortly after I had gotten it. I quickly discovered that the LED lighting is heavily exaggerated in the online images - they didn't cast anywhere near that much light in real life, but at least they put some effort in to cable management.
As far as specs go, here's what we started with:

• CPU: Intel Pentium G3240 @ 3.10GHz
• GPU: Nvidia GT 720 1GB DDR3
• RAM: 8GB DDR3-1333, Dual Channel
• Motherboard: MSI H81-E34
• Storage: 1TB 7200RPM Toshiba

While that wasn't going to impress anyone even in 2015, it surely impressed me. Having so much RAM and being able to open so many tabs in Chrome felt liberating. The 7200RPM drive felt so fast coming from the 5400RPM drive of my laptop. The games that I played ran better than they did on the laptop. For everything I used a computer for, this one made it a faster and more enjoyable experience, so I was more than satisfied.
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Early 2016

I've had the PC for a few months now, and this is around the time I discovered overclocking. I used Nvidia Inspector to boost my GT720's memory and core clocks by I think 200MHz, or a little bit under. League of Legends was the only game I played at the time that had an in-game FPS counter (can't remember if Steam had this yet, and if it did, I definitely didn't know how to activate it), and I remember my framerate in that game went up by around 20fps with a mix of medium and high settings @ 1080p. Its PassMark score went from the mid 700s to the mid 900s. My laptop's GPU scored in the low 600s IIRC, so I was happy with this.
I also remember being really surprised at how cool the PC ran. My laptop was a fiery inferno of thermal throttling, but even after playing games for hours, I remember the air exhausting out of my PC was barely warm. Later on though, I discovered that my GT 720's overclock was perhaps a bit much. I remember seeing 80C readings after long sessions, and sometimes, it would crash and reset itself back to default speeds. Of course, I'd OC it right back, albeit bringing the MHz down each time.
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August 2016

It was my birthday, and I was gonna try something new. At this point, I had challenged my PC with some more demanding games like DiRT 3 and Bioshock Infinite, which definitely ran and looked better than their PS3/360 equivalents, but it was pretty rough, especially with no 30fps lock at the least. I decided to buy a new graphics card and perform my first-ever upgrade. I had just over 90 bucks to spend, and, being afraid of the used market, it looked like the GT 740 was my best option. I chose EVGA's single slot version in particular because I like their card designs and it didn't require any external power, something I didn't trust my "TurboLink Switching Power Supply" with thanks to its notorious reputation.
Here's an image I took just moments after installing the new card. It's so thin you can barely tell it's there. I was amazed by how simple the process was. I simply swapped the cards (giving the GT 720 to my brother for his PC), and because Nvidia drivers were already present on my system, it just worked. I remember one of the first things I did was run it through PassMark, where it scored in the 1100s. Armed with my new overclocking knowledge though, I was able to get that score up to the 1600s.
This totally changed my gaming experience. I was able to play Dirt 3 at 1080p/60 with many of the settings maxed. Bioshock Infinite was also very playable at 1080p, but I'd settle for 900p for a more consistent framerate. Basically, if the game was older than the card itself, I could play it comfortably at higher settings than the PS3/360 versions. Since I had a PS4 for the more modern AAA stuff, I was fine with that.
​

September 2016-August 2019

With the new card, I tried more demanding games. Dead Island ran great at 1080p, Black Ops 2 (which I mostly only played for Zombies) did too. Later on when I would sell my PS4, I even tried Assassin's Creed: Unity. The audacity right? To my surprise, I was able to get 30fps @ 720p if I kept the settings low. Other than games, I was also big in to Visual Studio, editing things with Sony Vegas, and recording guitar in Fruity Loops, all of which this PC handled acceptably.
Unfortunately, around the beginning of 2017 I believe, the red LEDs on my exhaust fan burned out, but it still worked, so I didn't think much of it. I think it would last another full year before the fan itself gave out too, at which point I removed it. I don't have any pictures of my case from this time, but dust buildup was beginning to become a problem. It was coming close to Winter (2018) at this point, so running my PC without a case exhaust didn't really seem to have a big impact on temperatures. It wasn't until the early summer of 2019 that it became a problem. Under load, my measly Pentium could barely stay under 65C, and its stock cooler whined at RPMs I had never seen it achieve before. My GT 740 wasn't faring much better either, now reaching the high 70s while gaming. I also noticed that my intake grille was pretty much completely blocked thanks to my neglect, so that intake fan wasn't doing much of anything.
One of my biggest complaints about my laptop, especially near its end, was how hot it ran, and now my desktop was starting to do the same.
To solve this, I did something a little drastic.

September 2019

Behold.
It's unsightly. It's trashy, but it solved all my problems. Basically, I removed the intake fan from its compartment up front and taped it to the top of the drive cages, so it now blows air towards the GPU and helps push its hot air out of the vented PCI brackets. Next, I stole the exhaust fan out of my brother's PC (to be fair, he didn't use it anymore at this point) and installed it where my old one used to be. I then mounted the PSU fan upside down, since I felt that the bottom vents were too restrictive, and its dust filter had broken up in to lots of tiny pieces at this point. Clearly, this PSU was designed to be mounted with the fan facing down, so the interior of my PC now looks just atrocious, but boy did it make all the difference in terms of thermals. Both CPU and GPU now ran much cooler and quieter after doing these very Linus-esque modifications.
The victory was short-lived, though. After over 3 years of a frankly brutal overclock, my GT 740 began giving me problems. Freezes mid-game, random black screens, driver failures, artifacting, you name it. I would try inching down my overclocks in steps, and I had to basically settle for stock speeds. Even then, I would still encounter all of the aforementioned problems, just at a much lower frequency.
​

October 2019

Not a very eventful period, other than tapping in to my PSU's 12v wires to install some horrifically bright LED strips. The motherboard area was lit up in blue, and the drive cage area in white.
Look at this monster. I thought it was cool at first, but looking at my PC's guts for too long would hurt my eyes.
When the PC was under load, the lights would adopt a slight flicker (a testament to the quality - or lack thereof - of this power supply, probably), but I never had any issues with it.
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December 2019

Even after sitting at stock speeds, the issues I had with the card now became very frequent again. It was frankly unusable at this point. This card was on its deathbed, and it was going fast. It was time for another GPU upgrade. I bought myself the low profile EVGA GT 1030. I got it for a lower price than what I paid for the 740, so I was happy about that. Of course, the first thing I did was overclock it until I could get ~2500ish on PassMark. Truthfully, it didn't feel like as big of a jump as the GT 740 was from the 720 (though I could now at least run Cities: Skylines at 1080p instead of 720p), but it made up for it by running much cooler, consuming way less power, and being much more stable overall.
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January 2020 - July 2020

During this time, my PC saw very little use. While I was pleased with the card I bought, my PC's biggest issue now was its hard drive. Being almost 5 years old now, the speed it had pleasured me with when new had vanished. It was now unbearably slow. We're talking 3 minutes from pressing the power button to getting to the login screen, and then an additional 3-5 minutes for the desktop to finish loading up. Doing something about this involved taking steps that were a little more complex than simply popping in a new graphics card, so I honestly just kind of gave up on it. In March of this year, I got a great deal on an HP laptop with a 10th gen Core i3 and NVME SSD.
It's so fast and responsive that for a while, I had pretty much "retired" my desktop, only keeping it plugged in if I ever wanted to record guitar, while all my gaming needs would now be served by my consoles.
That changed in August.

August 2020

While the laptop was great, it was not at all capable of much gaming and my desktop had five years worth of history that I wanted to keep, so I decided to take action.
My PC's case at this point was just a mess. The front intake grille? Ruined. Random hardened grime in unexplained places? Yep. Dust caked all over the fans thanks to the negative pressure air flow? You already know. In addition, my front IO panel - with the exception of the microphone jack - no longer worked. The headphone jack was broken by my cat a few years ago, and as for the two USB ports? I have no idea, they randomly stopped working one day. My case's side panels also would never fully close. It wouldn't bulge from the sides, but I could never get it to slide all the way in to place anymore, and those godawful LEDs really showcased the gaps. My power and reset buttons felt gross and you had a 50-50 chances as to whether or not they would work. The HDD activity LED was a bust.
So if I was going to do anything, I first needed a new case, and a small one at that. I went with the InWin CE685. I wanted something console-like in size, it's not that expensive, and it has all the front I/O i could ask for, now including USB 3.0, which my motherboard surprisingly supports.
Here's the last picture of my PC in its old case, moments before I would rip everything out.
Three hours and lots of fear later, everything has been transplanted in to the new case.

• Exterior View
• Interior View

It was frankly a horrifying experience. I was so scared I'd break something, but in the end, the most difficult part was getting the front I/O connectors plugged in to the right pins.
Only thing that has changed as far as specs are concerned is the power supply. It's a 300W TFX unit, and interestingly enough, its internal PCB is so much more dense than the "500W" PSU in my old case that I'd be surprised if the old one could safely deliver 200W, let alone 500. I also had to remove the fan shroud from the GT 1030 in order to install the low profile bracket. The screws for the shroud are underneath the fan and I just couldn't be bothered putting it back on. Apart from that, it's still the same PC - I even kept the optical drive.
I began brainstorming what upgrades to do next, but I would spend the next few months saving the money for them.
​

November 2020

Here we are.
First thing's first, I ordered a Samsung 870 QVO SSD to replace the godawful hard drive. Rather than go with a fresh install, I wanted to keep everything, so I opted for cloning the HDD to the SSD instead. This was a painful process. I got winload errors after three separate cloning attempts, and it took me all night and the next morning to finally get it right on my fourth attempt (TLDR, EasyBCD saved my life). The difference was night and day. Pressing the power button and getting to a fully loaded desktop took less than 45 seconds. I know that's not as fast as it probably could be if I went with a fresh install, but it was worth it to keep everything. Applications and games saw an equally massive boost in responsiveness.
Next, I wanted to upgrade the graphics card. The GTX 1650 was a no-brainer, it's the most powerful low profile card you can get, period. Maybe I should've waited for the GDDR6 version to come back in stock, but I was impatient and got the GDDR5 version anyways, particularly Zotac's, since reviews I've read suggest that this variant has the best cooling solution, whereas Gigabyte's and MSI's run hotter.
Here's the 1650 next to the 1030 it's replacing, and here is the 1650 installed.
A couple of things worth noting in that second picture. To the left of the graphics card, you'll notice a small fan. I ordered a pair of 40mm fans because I knew that by the time I was done upgrading this PC, there was going to be a lot of heat in this case, so I purchased these to help exhaust it out. They're USB fans, powered internally via a Molex-USB adapter. Secondly, I couldn't install the card at first because there were two small capacitors literally blocking it from slotting in all the way. I tried and tried for over half an hour, and, out of desperation, resorted to bending the edges of the PCI bracket backwards by 90 degrees so they would just glide right over the capacitors. It's straight-up barbaric, but it's not noticeable on the outside, and it worked, so I won't complain.
When I turned on my PC after installing the card, the new card made its presence immediately known. It's...audible, even at idle. When playing games, it screams like a banshee, but I dealt with it. I worried about how effective my little 40mm fan would be, but when I reached around and felt how much hot air it was pushing out, I figured that it was worth it.
After that, I had a rather tumultuous experience when upgrading the CPU. I decided to stick with this same motherboard, so LGA1150 is my only option. Not wanting to push my PSU too hard, I looked at power-efficient offerings first. I ordered a Core i5-4590T first (for just 35 bucks), but then quickly realized I could do better, so I ordered a Core i7-4765T just a day or so later. The i5 arrived just fine, but I decided to wait on the i7. It was now two or three days past its expected delivery, and I was getting impatient (kind of a common theme, really), so I decided to install the i5 anyways.
While removing the CPU cooler, I had actually broke the little plastic tips that lock the cooler in to place. I was screwed. No CPU upgrade was happening tonight. I was put on pause while I waited for my low profile Silverstone cooler to arrive. It was about time for this anyways, though. Just look at how gross the stock cooler had become.
Installing this new cooler meant that I'd have to remove the motherboard and install a backplate. This whole process was also terrifying. Took me a few tries to get the backplate orientation right, and once I did, I was worried about if I had put on too much or too little thermal paste, and whether or not I had aligned the heatsink properly so I don't end up screwing holes in my motherboard.
Luckily, I made it through, and all was well. Here's a picture taken shortly after the i5 and new cooler install.
With a better CPU (finally leaving dual core behind), GPU, and SSD, this thing already felt like a different beast. Unfortunately though, the i7 I ordered never came. I can only imagine it was stolen, so after a couple weeks of back and forth between myself, my post office, the item seller, and eBay, I finally got refunded for that after filing a police report. Also within this time, I added a 2.5" 1TB 7200RPM drive for game installs to take some load off of the SSD.
While I was satisfied with the i5, after measuring my PC's power consumption under load (barely 120W), I realized that I could probably get away with a lot more. I found a good deal on a Core i7-4790S, and this time, once the tracking had showed it arrived at my post office, I went to pick it up myself that morning.
I installed the 4790S as soon as I got home, and while I was first very excited by its near-10k PassMark score (nearly quadruple the Pentium it replaced), I quickly discovered that the Silverstone cooler was not enough to keep its thermals in check. Given that the 4790S is labelled as a 65W TDP processor, and the Silverstone cooler is rated for exactly that, I was surprised at this. I tried redoing things like the thermal paste and heatsink mounting, but to no avail. I discovered that the CPU is only 65W TDP at base speed (3GHz). Since it spends all of its time turbo'd up to 3.8-4GHz, it's actually more like 82-84W. Temps during an Prime95 torture test quickly exceeded 85C, topping out at around 91-92.
I ordered the Noctua NH-L9i right away. Installing this one was kind of weird. I don't have access to the rear of my motherboard while it's in the case, so I had to take out the board again, get rid of the Silverstone backplate, and then basically install the motherboard to the heatsink instead of the other way around.
Long story short, it made all the difference. Temps at idle are now in the low 30s, gaming keeps it in the high 50s/low 60s, and torture tests will push it to the mid-high 70s, but I mean, in a case like this, I can't ask for much better.
As a final touch, I installed two more 40mm fans. One is right against the main exhaust vent (now occupying both sides of the GPU), and another sits at the front,blowing cool air at the drives (they would get up to 50C because the 1650 just dumps its hot air all over them in this layout), which never go over 35C now. There are now eight fans inside this case, and in case you're wondering, yes, having three 40mm fans in here makes the PC noisy, to say the least. I wouldn't say it's as bad as an old PS4 idling at Modern Warfare 2019's menus, though.

And here is the finished product.

​
Now, our final specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-4790S @ mostly 3.9GHz
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 1650, 4GB GDDR5
• RAM: 8GB DDR3-1333, Dual Channel
• Motherboard: MSI H81-E34
• Storage: 1TB Samsung QVO, 1TB HGST 7200RPM

Basically, the only things that stayed the same are the RAM, motherboard, optical drive, and OS install. I'll probably upgrade the RAM to 16GB at some point, but other than that, that's as far as I'll take this one.
Killing Floor 2? 1080p, 45-60FPS with near-max settings + Nvidia Flex. Bioshock Infinite? 1440p/60, maxed out. Minecraft with shaders? 1080p, 40-60fps with 16 chunk render distance. Rocket League? 120fps with 1080p and lower settings, but I ran it at 1440p/60 with high settings for a while. COD: Warzone? 1080p/50-60fps with "Normal" settings. That's all I've really tried so far, but these are feats that my PC in its older iterations couldn't even dream of. To so effortlessly chew through the games that I throw at it really blows me away. It really does feel like an entirely different machine, and I couldn't be more happy about it finally being complete.
If you've read this far, I hope you enjoyed the journey, and all that I've done to keep my PC alive and well throughout the years. It's a little ugly and definitely unusual, and I could probably make it look much more pleasing if I got rid of the zip-tied and taped 40mm fans, but I like having any extra cooling I can afford.
If you're a new builder or someone thinking of pulling the trigger, I hope that this post inspired you to do so. I've struggled at pretty much every turn, and ended up spending more money than I originally intended, but me and my PC came out of it alive, and it's running better than ever.
In 2020, it'd probably be difficult to even call this a mid-range PC, but it accomplishes all that I need it to at speeds and settings that were once out of reach, and, considering the specs of this PC at the beginning of its life, it is, again, night and day.
It was fun being able to get this intimate with a hobby I've never been able to enjoy before, and I'm really glad I decided to take this PC to the present and future with me instead of putting it in a closet like I planned to at the beginning of this year. Beyond possibly upgrading the RAM, my next project will be starting over from scratch, but that won't be for some time.
Thanks for reading.

Hail Travelers,
Welcome to Verum Weekly. A weekly post to summarize all the game sessions that happen in the week prior. Hope you like it.
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Thursday

The Helix of Fate (Lrret1064)

Azalon, Archmage of Glies, stands before Los, former Archmage of Kalkatesh, and the two prepare to duel. Azolon comments on his old mentor's current status as a Servant of the Enemy. In response, Los tells him he now knows the truth of the universe; there is no end to this because it happened many times before. He believes this is the only way to ease the suffering. Not wanting to waste time chatting, Azolon starts off the fight by firing off a Prismatic Spray, testing what reaction Los will have to it. Los attempts to block, but it scuffs his cloak. In retaliation, he sends Meteors towards Azolon, and the Gliesian gets his robes scuffed in return. Los then pulls out two wands and fires a rain of Violet Magic Missiles. Using the druidic magic in his Staff, Azolon creates a shield that cleanses the Missiles of their Violet energy and sends them back to Los, breaking one of the Servant’s defensive wards.
Los then uses Violet energy to make his arm gigantic in an attempt to crush Azolon, but he sees it coming and Misty Steps right before the arm touches him. Azolon then disparages Los for abandoning his role as Archmage and relying upon the power of the Enemy that so far hasn't even been able to touch him. Los proves him wrong by shooting a laser out of his eyes that hits Azolon across his face, breaking his glasses and scarring him. Los quickly tries to use his arm to crush Azolon again, but he instinctively Vanishes and dashes towards Los while charging a Disintegration Ray through his Staff, which tears open a wound across Los arm. Seeing an opportunity, Los uses the blood from the wound to create Blood Spikes to pierce Azolon, but before they can connect Azolon heals Los’ wound, causing the Blood Spikes to turn into a harmless splash of water.
Azolon attempts to cast a Fireball directly in Los face, but his opponent is faster and grabs Azolon’s wrist, redirecting the Fireball and pulling him in for a headbut. While Azolon is disoriented, Los channels a Vampiric Touch and attempts to strangle him. Azolon drops his Staff to try to break free, but Los is stronger and breaks another of Azolon's wards. Thinking quickly, Azolon summons back his Staff to stab Los. Los uses their position in flight to reorient themselves and make the Staff miss, and he starts to strangle Azolon, draining his energy. Azolon however uses his druidic training to cast Stone Fist and smashes it in Los’ face, breaking free. He then taunts him while casting Mental Prison, baiting Los into meeting his gaze, which breaks through one of the Servant’s wards.
With Los distracted, Azolon flies in close once more to finish the fight by turning Los’ Flesh to Stone. However Los recovers fast enough to use his cloak to block the attack and counters with a fist charged with Violet energy. Remembering his research on the Colors, Azolon attempts to challenge the blow by casting Prismatic Spray, connecting it with Los’ attack. The energy expands and blows them both back. The resulting explosion chars Los arm, and the bit of Violet energy that reached Azolon’s right hand removes it from existence. Azolon keeps his composure and takes the opportunity while Los is still recovering to charge his Staff with druidic power. Los summons a Shield that clashes against the empowered Staff.
Suddenly Alexander flies up through the sphere, wielding a blade made of Negatia, a material that seals magic. With the force of the catapult that sent him flying, Alexander slashes at Los and easily breaks through the magic defenses. Not letting the surprise go to waste, Azolon manipulates the wind to blow Alexander closer to Los, making the slash go up from his chest, across his face, and through his right eye. At the apex of his flight, Alexander apologizes for interrupting and gives Azolon words of encouragement to finish off his foe before falling back down out of the sphere.
Azolon thanks his old friend for his assistance and disses Los, saying that serving the Enemy made him lose any connection to people like that, which makes him a shell of a man. Los admits Azolon is right about those things but wrong in other ways, because “life isn't fair”. He then casts False Torch, creating a Shard of Oblivion and placing it into his empty right eye socket. Now empowered, Los fires an Obliteration Ray. Azolon uses his Staff to block the attack, but Los charges the Ray with even more Violet. Azolon, knowing that he cannot handle the might of that attack, tries to redirect it away from him. However as he turns to redirect it, his Staff breaks and the Ray shreds his back. Azolon asks Los what made him like this, and he answers that he saw the truth. "The wheel must turn, one way or another; this is one is the best way — the only way.” Los fires another Obliteration Ray. Knowing he cannot handle that attack again, Azolon pulls out a ring that Los enchanted and tosses it at the attack. Since Los enchanted the ring, it is soulbound to him, so the Violet energy is absorbed back into the ring. It flies back to Azolon, pulsing with Violet power — power that could be used by him. However, without hesitation Azolon tosses the ring aside, and it instantly evaporates.
Seeing how easily Azolon rejected all that power, Los is dumbfounded. Azolon disparages Los again, asking what worth is there in existing if it means giving into something that doesn't care about him and will only use him as a tool. He asks Los how he could give himself so freely to the lies that spawned from madness of a being that doesn't even belong in their reality. Azolon reminds him of the man he was once before and the man he could have been today. Los begins to weep, remembering who he used to be. He then suddenly grabs his false eye and rips it out. Azolon casts Dominate Person, and the spell cleanses Los of the Violet's control, returning his eye to the shade of blue it was before. Using the hold he has on Los now and his studies regarding the nature of the Violet, Azolon attempts to put a Geas on Los to completely remove the Violet’s enchantment.
However as the magic ripples, Azolon sees the Herald flying in the sky. As he gazes upon the comet, instead of seeing stone and ice, he sees silently screaming faces burning in Violet fire. On top of the comet he sees a silhouette within the Violet light, who begins to speak: "Wise wizard, now you will see the truth, just as he did!" The Herald begins to assault Azolon's mind, but Azolon uses all of his knowledge on the Violet to resist its corruption. Instinctively Azolon uses his signature Color Spray, firing it at the Herald, and he breaks free of its assault on his mind. He returns to the fight, reaches back into the magic over Los’ mind, and pulls out a Violet Shade, giving Los control of his own body once more. Azolon shouts, "Now Los!" Los turns around and fires one last spell, Annihilation Sphere, and grabs the Shade, tackling it into the Sphere. Los gazes back at Azolon with a look that simply says "It's your turn" and disappears along with the Shade.
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Friday

The Tearing Veil Ep. 17 (RoyalCaster)

The party leaves the room where they encountered the evil weapon. Eventually they are led to a room with a statue of Vavren. They move the two hands of the statue together in a praying position, and the walls shift, opening an entrance to a room that seems like it serves as a place to help people escape. They enter and hear someone scribbling past the door. They bait the person by creating a sound and putting a flyer of the Unwise Six under the door. While he goes to investigate, the party passes by him under the veil given to them by Falaael.
They decide that they should take care of Falaael’s task first and later deal with freeing the designated prisoners. They head upstairs and find themselves in another room which has another pair of stairs that takes them to a courtyard. Climbing even more stairs they eventually get to the roof and find a dais with statues of the White Pantheon on it. Vim holds the orb given to him amongst the statues. Angorn recites a prayer, and the orb begins to float and dissipate, forming a smaller statue of Falaael that takes its place amongst the others. Nidhogg suggests to Angorn that they should desecrate the other statues in favor of Falaael. After an hour they head out to hopefully find a map of the prison or to get an idea where they can find the prisoners.
They sneak past a multitude of guards, inciting violence within the guards’ ranks to cause a distraction. They take advantage of the situation and get into an office room where they take the prisoner manifest containing the whereabouts of the prisoners. They find prisoner 48; at first he seems quite apprehensive, but he accepts help from the group. He offers his help in getting the other prisoners out; he can conjure a door to teleport him and everyone else out of the prison. They ask him to go to the rooftop and wait for them. They continue to the opposite side of the cell floor and decide to split up. Vim, Angorn, and Wisp see a guard standing in front of the cell of prisoner 34, so they head to prisoner 17 instead. They find a woman covered in the markings of the skinwalkers. Her cell’s bars are especially thick and cross themselves in a lattice-like pattern. She also wears a silver waist belt that she claims is bothering her. They open her doors, but she does not exit. She taps in front of her, revealing an transparent forcefield, but Vim touches and removes it. She exits and transforms, revealing her drider form. Prisoner 17 mentions that they must free another prisoner not on their list: prisoner 19. She leads them to the warden’s chambers where prisoner 19 is being held.
Meanwhile, Nidhogg, Raber, and Flamewrath stay behind to keep watch. Flamewrath slicks the staircase behind them with oil to safeguard the others and eventually guard come by and fall. Other guards come in and they find a note planted by Flamewrath claiming the prank to be the work of the prison’s flower club. The guards become furious and go away to reprimand them.
Back to the other group, they find a small person hanging from the ceiling, encased in bandages. They help her down and free her of the wrappings, revealing a young girl marked with ritualistic markings and her mouth sewn shut. Vim cuts the stitches from the girl’s mouth, and she takes deep greedy breaths. She thanks them, and the room shimmers with magic. They tell the two prisoners of the plans for getting them to escape, and the two women declare they want to help. They explain that the girl they freed was the actual prisoner 17 and that her voice can command anyone to do what she says. Using her ability, they plan to command the guard that was at prisoner 34’s cell.
The group comes across the guard that was patrolling the area. Prisoner 17 commands him to go away, and he magically obeys. They find prisoner 34 and discover that he is an expert forger and promiscuous deviant. They take everyone to the roof where prisoner 48 is waiting for them. The area darkens, and Oloken’Hai speaks to them. Now that the last bit of their quest is upon them, Oloken’Hai will distract those that would stop them and will put them on their way to defeat the corruption that holds the White Pantheon in their grasp. Nidhogg asks Oloken’Hai why he decided to choose him for his divine spark, but Oloken’Hai claims that it was him who chose himself. As the door opens, it is time for them to enact Oloken’hai’s will.
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Saturday

Shadow of Tyre Ep. 26 (RoyalCaster)

Raost splits off from the group to find Seren, asking her to come with him for a moment. They walk off together and stop when they get to the rock where Toot first prayed to Hizigori. Roast approaches the rock and exhales. He pulls out his notebook and opens it to take out the Clementia flowers he got from Falcon’s grave in their wing. He untangles them and starts to tell Seren how she remained a constant in his life, which means a lot to him, and no matter what happens to her or him, he wants to be with Seren forever. He offers the flower to her and asks her to marry him. At first Seren is silent, but looking down at him she says that marrying him would make her a hypocrite. However, just this once she will be okay with that title. While hugging, Seren pushes him into her chest to show him that her heart is not beating anymore since her Dephtar transformation. She mentions that she still does not know what happened on Azengolt that made her like this. Raost however starts sweating and recommends that they should probably talk with Toot.
They find Toot and ask him if he could marry them, but they also ask about what exactly happened on Azengolt. As Toot explains the intention of his actions, Seren is seething but contains her feelings. Upon hearing this, Xetor pulls Raost aside for some wisdom. He warns him of the tribulations of being married, even more so with how incompatible their forms are. He recalls his own marriage and mourns the brief stint he had with his wife as she was taken by a sickness, but he also remarks that the bliss of being with your loved one outweighs the sorrow. Xetor asks if they would use the rings of him and his wife, handing him the pair. They are far larger than human-sized rings, so they'll wear them as armbands.
As Seren’s honorary dad, Mad Morc gives Raost the dad talk. Marrying Seren means he becomes family, so Morc wants to indict him into the Tops, and Raost happily agrees. Also, Morc discusses the contingency that comes with being with Seren; one day Raost might have to put her down if she loses control. Raost steels himself, so Morc gives his blessing.
Both Seren’s and Raost’s parties gather, and a few more of the people of the camp come by. With Toot leading the ceremony, they speak their vows. As Toot pronounces them husband and wife, they kiss each other. Seren gives Raost a beaded necklace from before she changed, and he gives her a small mirror he got while exploring the temple where they found Xetor; it has a crude drawing of both Raost and Seren on it.
After receiving their items from the Vega and the Gambler Black, the party catches Zacharias up on what they are supposed to do in the Labyrinth. As they enter the labyrinth again, they appear at the entrance of the third floor, the stairs leading up to the destructed second floor behind them. They venture into the halls until they come across a room with seven statues and a pool of mercurial substance; a gigantic hand statue reaches out from behind it, a faded crystal in its palm. Moe uses his cyclopean eye to discern the secrets and sees various events that take place across the timeline of Kalkatesh. Toot messes with one of the statues and accidentally pops it open. Moe recognizes this as an Angel of Band he saw on Eldar Sharkai; however, it seems more like an imitation, as it misses the moving screens and the spikes around the place where the head goes means it’ll probably kill the controller.
They also find tapestries of the events that Moe saw at the Altar, recreated with thread and needle. Investigating more closely, they seem to depict various accounts of fate, but their falsehood is evident. As they move closer, the composition shifts, and it becomes clear that these tapestries are prototypes of what Tyre was trying to create: artificial fate. To the right of the room, Zacharias examines a portal emanating a purple aura. Getting closer, he begins to feel ill, unable to understand what it is. Though everyone feels the same uneasiness, Raost tosses a pebble into the portal, but nothing seems to happen. They decide to avoid it and walk deeper into the room, finding stone containers containing Dust. Zacharias recognizes it as the purest form of life energy, the runoff of the silver cord that keeps you attached to yourself when one is Astral Projecting. Ahst and Raost pocket a bag each and join Toot and Moe at the southern end of the room. They come across a silver chest; Moe looks inside with Latos Zatar and sees a spectral screaming in silent agony. Ahst casts Silence around the chest, and as Raost opens it and looks at it with his soul vision, he sees it is an experiment, a distilled memory to recreate a soul. They decide to close the chest and leave it be.
Moe sees the Dust the others found and examines it by licking it. The magic of the Dust infuses Moe with magical powers and a crippling addiction. They move on and find an aisle full of sarcophagi. Raost looks at them all with soul vision and sees a soul in each one of them. Further down the hall they find two significant tapestries; the group is unable to discern their meaning, but they feel like they have seen it before. They gather that the one on the left is the old god of luck and that the other was supposed to be the god of portals. Using his cyclopean vision, Moe is able to see the remnants of two lost deities, the result of Tyre’s experiment of stealing a moment from a god.
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Sunday

Shattered Crowns S3 Ep. 10 (Lrret1064)

Meena leads the party into the facility. The walls are bloody, flesh is stretched across the walls and ceiling, and there are corpses wrapped in body bags and stuffed in containers. Anthem warns Huck that they should only touch the stuff when needed. Ikkar asks Bethany if she's okay as she is strangely silent, as if she's seeing something the others can’t, but she seems unwilling to share what she sees. Guy asks Meena why they are here and she answers it’s to "save them from Home." However, she doesn't know where the item she needs is, only that it's a big oval made of stone and steel.
They detect a strange noise behind one of the doors. Scrumpo suddenly kicks the door open, awakening the creatures behind it. The undead with giant mouths start attacking the party, but Ikkar is able to Destroy the Undead to clear a large number of them. Iron Pipe uses a Wall of Force to stop the rest from swarming the party, but a large one flanks them from behind. Quick on his feet, Ikkar Banishes it. As the biggest threat is gone, Meena suddenly reappears and instructs everyone to leave the room. As they leave, she tells Iron Pipe to remove the Wall. The creatures flood the room, but Meena flips a lever that ignites a fire through the grating below.
Meena then leads the party quickly around the facility, like she's familiar with the place. She guides them to an office that contains more corpses in body bags and points out a book on top of one of the corpses, saying it belonged to the leader. Iron Pipe reads the book with the help of Drifter Sai’s and Meena's translation; it’s an experiment log on testing methods of movement or transportation, but none of the subjects were able to survive the experiment as something called ‘invitalisation’ caused their death. Meena explains that invitalisation turns the subject’s body inside out. Ikkar expresses his worry that it might happen to them, but Meena says she knows another way. Huck starts to get suspicious of Meena and senses her desperation; she doesn't fully believe what she's saying. Huckleberry then waits for everybody to leave and tells Ikkar what he noticed. Ikkar asks Huck to distract the others so he can cast Augury. Ikkar asks Sekelcuse if they should continue to follow Meena, but another being answers instead: "Woe."
They continue through the facility and approach a strange room. Meena immediately walks in and starts looking in a dresser, as if she knows where to look. Huck takes this chance to inform the others what he saw, and Ikkar tells about his Augury. However, they decide that they don't know who to trust, but that they should stay on guard. While this is happening, Meena pulls out a journal containing sketches and writing of a younger Meena progressing through her life; in the middle is a keycard which Iron Pipe takes. They continue to follow Meena as she approaches a big metal door. Pipe swipes the key card, opening the door. Meena suddenly rushes inside saying “Save you.” The party cautiously walks into the room after Meena.
They see a big metal structure that fits the description of what Meena described. Meena runs up to the metal structure and places her hand on it, repeating “Save you.” Ikkar notices that Meena is looking sickly and asks what the machine does, to which she responds that it “makes people Home better, different, makes door.” She then walks up to a console and enters a code, and a voice greets her as Dr. Jeckin. Ikkar asks Meena if she’s dying. The voice answers that she isn't alive, and Meena confirms it by pulling back her shirt showing that she’s mostly wires. She then points to the back of the machine where they see the letters ‘YU’. She explains that it means Yolnas Unvas, ‘Second Chance’, and that it refers to the machine. Ikkar asks the voice what the purpose is of the machine. It explains that the machine is a last ditch effort to save the Ragdarians by sending embryonic sacks to a different planet to repopulate, but no destination has been given yet. Meena expresses her desire to send the machine to Maltos and makes the party promise to launch it. She then limps toward the machine and pulls out a wire from inside her and puts it into the machine as she starts to lose her light. She thanks the party, and her body falls limp. Everyone realizes that Meena contained the history of the planet and is giving the machine that knowledge to pass on.
Guy asks the voice how to break the Covenant of Death, but it says that information is classified. Trying to fill in the password, they look through the books they took to search for clues; the password ‘Jekin’ let’s them access the files. The voice gives them two options, launching the machine and serum integration. They recognize the serum from one of the books they found; it is able to stave off death. Guy volunteers to go first, thinking it will turn him into a full immortal vampire, and the console injects him with the serum. However, it cures Guy of his dampirism. Ikkar goes next, and it makes him feel younger. When Huck takes it, he feels Anthem’s connection lessen as inside his mind palace Anthem appears as an angry black horse stuck inside a stable. When Scrumpo takes it, he gains a full afro. When Pipe takes it, his augments become more part of him, making him more like a cyborg. While Pipe is distracted, Ikkar lights his pipe and uses Thaumaturgy to burn away the bird suit. When everyone has taken the serum, they ask the voice how it can help them defeat Death. It explains that it injects nano constructs into them that make them immune to instant death effects. The party gets ready to launch the Second Chance to Maltos and asks Drifter Sai if they can follow it. Sai confirms it is possible and that it greatly reduces the fuel required to reach the planet by siphoning the residual energy from the Second Chance.
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Monday

Heart of Tyre Ep. 25 (av5hadow)

Shortly after Seren’s marriage, Morc and Neve decide to get married immediately and travel to the Trees of Marriage. Amaris, Braktor, and Vizier Lozenkor show up. Seren starts the Orc wedding as the shaman, and the couple makes their vows. Morc reveals that Neve has shown him that hope is more than just survival, and he expresses his desire to grow old with the changeling. Neve recounts their journey since the beginning; Morc was always there, a pillar of emotional support. She vows to stand and fight alongside the half-orc. After Seren affirms that the two will uphold their marriage responsibilities, the two bite each other's hands. The wedding moves on to the bouquet-tossing event; while Amaris, Ozzie, and Braktor are distracted by each other, the Vizier and Ives reach out. Ives however is quicker than the Vizier whose composure is gone for the first time as he eats the dirt. Ives is confused as he acted on instinct, so he gives the bouquet to the Vizier. As wedding gifts, the Tops receive a lot of gold from Braktor and Amaris. Morc carries Neve to a tent, and they fade into black. Seren thanks the Vizier for his efforts and wishes him happiness with the one who will do the same. He voices his doubts but gathers the courage to tell Azalon the truth.
Derok spots Xetor and Ili’ith next to the Oracle’s Well and greet them. The three talk, revealing that Derok is a first generation Vega and is from the Vegan Isles. After years of not knowing himself, Derok Dranf finally finds a home. The Vega teach him the true pronunciation of his last name and reveal that his clan was known for staff creation. They are also willing to help the party upgrade their gear.
Derok asks the Azengoltians for advice on fighting the Depthar. Alice gives her wrapped silver chalice to him, saying that silver is effective against the Depthar; they could melt it down to coat their weapons with the silver. Braktor tells Derok that the Vega might have materials that are infused with emotion, which are effective against the Depthar as well. However, augmenting gear with this material will forgo any other Vegan upgrades. Seren, Ives, and Derok go to a now disheveled tent to inform the newlyweds about the augmentations. Neve decides to forgo her armor augmentation to receive an anti-Depthar shortsword.
Seren requests an audience with the Eldar and Letol. She offers Depthar samples to Letol, but he immediately refuses. He begins to berate the Brass Queen, but the Azengoltian Eldar stops him. Letol once again gives his warnings about the Depthar, but he accepts the blood samples. He then expresses his wish of being wrong about the creature, but after being in so many similar situations, he doesn’t want to gamble. Letol thanks the creature, stating that he’ll free the pure innocent soul that is controlling its actions if it exists.
Shortly after the Tops leave, Letol addresses the Azengolt group. He asks for their future plans. Azalon asked them for their help to contain and fight the Depthar on Glies. Alice asks if Letol will come, but he says that someone needs to guide Kalkatesh. He then says that no matter where they go, the group is always welcome to wherever Letol calls home, for “together, they survived what Iron and Sorrow could throw at them.”
Alice provides some supplies to the Tops and tells them the Depthar can adapt to anything. Archibald suggests to cycle their attacks and to leave the anti-Depthar weapons for the final blow. Morc then takes off his pilgrim hat he got from Zorikal, wanting to activate the rune. He wishes to test it. Everyone backs away, except for Hackne who identifies the rune as a divine Word of Recall. The destination is anyone’s guess, so Morc doesn’t touch it. Seren walks away as the Tops discuss who should hold the portal stone in case she goes rampant. The current holder, Derok, says that it doesn’t matter as she’ll read his mind. Braktor gives his group’s stone to Neve to be used as a distraction.
The Tops return to the first floor of their wing, finding themselves in their starting location. As they head towards the Flesh Refiner, Seren takes a new nurse’s outfit in her current size, and Neve gives her Breathless Amulet to Morc who is vulnerable to the fog that will be released. On their way, they hear the familiar stomps in the main room behind them. The Tops configure the Refiner. The party waits out in a room as they have undone the seals on 120 creatures. Ives hears sounds of battle, and Seren feels pain and chaos. During this time, Morc attunes to the Amulet.
“Theta protocol initiated. Releasing cleanse.” Green fog fills up the room and affects the now Depthar Seren, so she puts on the nurse’s mask. The party immediately heads off to the main room where the fog is much thinner; they see environmental damage and viscera covering the path. As they enter the main room, FCO walks underneath the archway. It gazes at each Top member, and its sight lands on the Brass Queen.
A horrifying screech marks the start of the fight.
Before the Tops can get into position, FCO rushes down Neve. Its arm barely misses, but FCO poisons Neve with Hypoxia. Derok, Morc, and Illan enter the melee. The Hypoxia spreads among the melee fighters via Life Pulse. FCO banishes Derok with a Maze-like ability, and Illan gets destroyed. FCO reaps the poison in him and places all the stacks on Seren.
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Tuesday

Weal and Woe (No Session)

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Soul of Tyre Ep. 26

The party uses their newly acquired money to buy better equipment. Alexander gets a Vacuum Edge Sheath which gives the Negatia Blade a chance to destroy spell slots or mental attributes of his enemies. Braktor buys a Weaver Staff augment that empowers its attack and adds thunder damage. Hackne gets an Anointed Court Mage Robes of Temperance which gives her more defense against curse effects and gives her allies advantage against her spells. Ozzie buys the Armor of the Autumn Assassin which gives him more poison damage and can turn him invisible. Belanovan decides to save more money to see if he can get a better item. Braktor also attunes to the Ancient Ring of Regeneration which was taken from Tyre’s Drop. When they’re done shopping, Gailen informs them of the current Wendigo situation. While the party was away, it seemed that the wendigos had united under a king. They are now considered a rising civilization, and Gailen hopes to create diplomatic relations with them. The party agrees to talk to the wendigo ambassador to see what is going on.
As they travel to the contact point at the Rotting Wound, they spot a plateau surrounded by wendigo guards. An ashen guard approaches and leads them to the wendigo ambassador. While walking towards the ambassador, the party sees archaic stones floating around a well of shadow. Eventually, a wendigo speaks to them and introduces themself as Volos. The party walks towards Volos while Alexander looks into the well of shadow, noticing that it is a portal to the Dream Realm; here Inu’s strand should be planted. Volos explains that this portal was already built when they arrived, but the wendigos plan to do a ritual on it so that they can get energy to fuel their kingdom. Belanovan assumes that this energy allowed Volos to speak, but the diplomat corrects him that wendigos have always been able to talk, they just had no reason to.
Volos explains that his nation has been watching Gailen’s Gate and he praises the settlement’s altruism. Belanovan asks who the wendigo king is, but Volos declines his request as people can use the king’s name to harm them and their nation. Belanovan follows up by asking how they can sustain their kingdom and Volos shows them the wendigo’s grand scheme. It is known that wendigos can only gain sustenance from consuming humanoids. However, there is an exploit: If they can use the dreams of humanoids as a spice, they can gain nutrients from livestock and not resort to cannibalism. Belanovan asks how long the king has been in power and Volos replies that they have been the leader for a long time. They and the nation only came into prominence now because they wish to help the fight against the Enemy so that their race can gain tolerance from other nations.
The party contemplates using the strand of Inu; they do not know its exact effect, but they do know it will cause massive changes to the wendigos. Hackne interjects by worrying about the adverse effects of taking other dreams. Belanovan then hypothesizes that Negatia could possibly stop the effects of their curse. They test the hypothesis, but Volos vomits; the Negatia has no effect. As the party studies Volos on his truthfulness, they can see that he is a skilled diplomat, but he’s not lying. However, there is a slight sense of desperation in his tone.
Still unsure, Belanovan asks what the wendigo's plan is. They plan to build settlements in the barren wasteland of the Badlands that will start the foundation of their nation. Belanovan follows up by asking how the wendigos will increase their population. Volos pauses, fear emanating from him. He responds that they are willing to convert the destitute of other nations. This worries Alexander, so he asks Volos if he feels guilty about converting others, as it is guilt that transforms beings into wendigos. Volos does not answer the question, but strain can be seen on his face. He then reveals that he knows that Braktor is a Weaver, a class that counters the undead. Braktor assures Volos that he is not biased against the wendigos because they are still beings. Ozzie proposes to be their ambassador for the Dream realm, but Volos wishes to show the strength of his nation and wants to be the one to talk. Belanovan wishes to talk directly to their king, and Volos accepts this request.
Volos contacts his king and allows them to talk through him. Another voice comes out of Volos’ body and introduces itself as the wendigo king. It is revealed that they are actually a half-wendigo. It was in their search trying to find their origin that they found the well and desired to make a nation for the wendigos. Belanovan wishes to actually meet the king and learn why they are a half-wendigo, and Alexander asks if they even want the curse to be removed. The king responds that he wishes to find a way to remove the curse of wendigos while keeping themselves alive; the current way of removing the curse results in death. The party offers alternatives to the wendigos, such as using their own dreams or living in the Dream Realm, but the king tells them that those paths won’t bear any fruit.
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Wednesday

The Herald's Call Ep. 12 (AsAlternateAsItCanBe)

The battle continues. They learn that Nojack is able to Wild Shape into animals using his Ki, that Vida fights with poison that she’s able to strengthen by hurting herself, and that Urien utilizes multiple stances to fight: Commander, Vanguard, and Desperate. It is also revealed that Urien is their leader; if they’re able to deal with him, it seems it will stop the ritual.
Vida gets knocked unconscious by Riku’s double Scorching Ray, followed up by a hit by Zada’s morning star, which brings her close to death. Archael sees that the Violet ritual circle is getting stronger over time and that it is absorbing Vida’s blood; it seems that the more people are killed, the faster the ritual is completed. Despite this revelation, the party decides to finish Vida off as Arienne draws first blood. Boris predicts that the party will attack again the next round, gaining additional damage to his Smite should he be correct. Meanwhile, Urien decides to attack Zada, allowing Archael to hit him with a critical Smite. Analyzing the situation, Urien throws away his two greatswords and pulls the third from his back. The sword starts to glow with unstable Violet energy; Violet Death is possible.
Seeing the desperation of their enemies, the party decides to finish this quickly. Zada uses her Soulfire ability to refresh everyone else’s and uses Apholios to knock Boris unconscious. Archael attempts to disarm Urien with a Clash, and with the power of Glory on his side, he severs Urien’s arm and the sword falls to the ground. Arienne then uses her whip to fling the sword outside the room to prevent Urien from taking it. Midas sees that the sword is the real key to the ritual, not Urien, and he picks up the sword to attempt to stop the ritual completely. However, as he picks up the sword, Violet flames lash out and try to corrupt him, but Midas resists the temptation and holds his ground. He is faced with two choices: either seal the ritual or allow it to continue and summon the Violet Servant. If he chooses the latter, the party will be able to ambush the Violet Servant and deal a massive blow to the Enemy. Midas decides to hold the decision until the combat is over. Azylea summons Asuna to bring the knocked-out Boris away from the battle. Unfortunately, Boris stands up and strikes Asuna with an empowered Smite. The spider gets hit so hard that Azylea sees the statue crack just from that blow. Meanwhile, Urien once again attempts to Clash with Archael using his normal greatswords and aims for his eyes, but once again he fails. With the momentum on his side, Archael uses Shining Assault to knock Urien out. The battle ends with Arienne rushing towards Nojack and Boris, knocking them out in the same turn. Midas then kills them, gaining three Soul Coins, and starts the discussion about what they should do with the ritual.
The party decides that they will ambush the Violet Servant. They’ll be fighting it at their full strength and will know all of its abilities immediately when it spawns. In addition, the party can seal two of its abilities at the start of the fight. But before the final fight of the campaign starts, they are granted level 5.
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Steel and Silence Ep. 5

Before the party heads into the ruins, Rev’lis Wisp breaks out from its body and begins to transform. It transforms into a Veld with cracks in its skin and shining with colors. After the familiar introduces himself to the party and Rev’lis names him Shiny, the Lord of Blades teleports them to the ruin.
They arrive at one of the many world roads in Steton. Rev’lis flies ahead and scouts what seems to be an abandoned village. As she looks around the town, Rev’lis finds a stonehenge in the center which glows with a Violet light. She quickly flies back to the party and informs them of what she saw. The party cautiously heads into the town and searches the nearby houses. In one house, Shiny notices that whoever left the village, they left long ago and in a hurry.
At the door of another house, Vaeri finds some dragon scales on the ground. She and Terryn enter the house and find a broken blade on a table. As Vaeri walks closer, she notices draconic writing on the blade, reading “Death to the false serpents.” She identifies it as a dragonslayer weapon. Meanwhile, Terryn searches the house and finds a discarded cloak from the Steton Striders. The more Terryn looks around, the more articles of clothing from the Steton Striders she finds. Vaeri tells Terryn to bring the rest of the party here to show them the Strider clothing. They theorize that the resident of this house was trying to hide from the rest of the town that they were a monster hunter. Vaeri takes the broken blade and the party continues their search in the village.
As they walk by a crossroad leading toward the stonehenge, Zara suddenly feels the call of the warrior. She follows the call, and it takes her to an entrance to the Hall of Heroes. Zara enters the gate and finds herself on a rainbow bridge, but the line of violet is missing. Eventually, Zara enters the Great Hall and is greeted by the Throne of War, a stone chair and the leader of the Hall of Heroes. She explains her quest to the Throne and it respects the flame in her heart. If the red orc wants to succeed in her quest, she needs a mentor to guide her. A dragonborn is summoned behind her; Nox will be Zara’s mentor and teaches her the fighting style Dragon’s Fury. The two finish their training session and Zara comes back to the waking realm.
The party hugs Zara as she comes back, and they finally head to the stonehenge. They find a ritual pulsing with Violet energy. Umi sees that these stones are an anchor point for a portal and the only way to destroy the portal is to destroy the spirit residing in the stone in the center of the stonehenge. Terryn slowly approaches the stone to study it and shoots an acorn towards it. Suddenly, the sky darkens as the Aphotic Indefatigable is summoned. The time for mercy has passed.
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Edited by PalladiumDrake
Thanks for reading.

Travel Tip: Don’t Take Coins From the Greenwich Steps
Location: A Long, Red Brick Stair Near Coit Tower, San Francisco
Fond of urban hikes? Coit Tower is one of the most popular day-hike destinations for travelers in San Francisco. Don’t worry; even if you fail to reach the tower before closing time, there’s a spectacular urban-ocean view from the parking lot.
Collectors will want to stop by Coit Tower’s glowing penny-press machine to get a coin stamped with the iconic tower silhouette. There’s nothing wrong with doing this. In fact, I encourage it if you are traveling with children. Visitors also leave pennies scattered on the wide stone slab window ledges on top of Coit Tower, itself. As with most coin-based rituals, it’s better to leave a penny than to take one . . . but these specific coins are not the ones that do harm.
A three-minute stroll from the tower, you may notice a secluded stair. This red brick stairway, called the Greenwich Steps, is actually a landmark “street” offering travelers a shortcut down a lush hillside garden. Even in summertime, the cool green shade on the steps may prompt you to pull up your jacket collar.
I say shortcut, but at 387 steps, the stair won’t feel that short. It descends the hill in crooked segments, and the brick gives way to concrete halfway down. At the bottom, you will be unceremoniously deposited between a residential garage and a frank Slippery When Wet sign. But from there it’s an easy twelve minutes on foot to the Embarcadero, the historic Ferry Building with its clock tower, shopping, restaurants, and a science museum that sells adults-only tickets on certain Thursday nights-- for those of you not traveling with children.
I only meant to walk the Greenwich Steps twice during my stay. Once up. Once down.
You should be fine so long as you simply keep moving. If you encounter a local tending the flowers, it’s okay to nod in passing.
Just don’t stop to pick up any coins.
I don’t care if you see coins on the steps, by the steps, in the foliage, or piled on top of an old-fashioned brick pillar at the halfway point. It might look like pennies, dimes, or a bright silver dollar. Do not pick up any of it. If your child finds a Greenwich Coin, stay calm. Consequences are rarely severe for children. The problem lies in what you’ll have to do to keep it that way.
There’s one way to deflect the consequences of taking a Greenwich Coin. Trade. Use a trinket, a piece of candy, make a promise-- whatever gets the coin out of their hands. Then discreetly toss it into the underbrush.
Your child won’t carry the onus of the Coin after trading it away. The downside is that you will. You touched it; you took possession of it for a short time. You aren’t the prey it wants, but by the laws that govern it, you’re still fair game.
If a stranger approaches you or your child directly after you’ve thrown away a Greenwich Coin, don’t get ruffled. Stick to your travel plans and do not deviate. Don’t listen, don’t give them anything, do not confront. Pretend they aren’t even there. Trust me, if there’s ever been a tourist trap, con, or scam artist that you’d want to avoid, it’s this one. They’re after more than your wallet.
Collectors, look. You’re going to be in the most trouble here. I’m sorry. I know it’ll really test your self-restraint when that Steel Wheat Cent or whatever turns up underfoot. Just keep in mind that the steeper the value of the coin, the deeper the shit you’re in if you grab it. Best thing you can do is kick it off the stairs to protect the next traveler who ventures along.
A stranger will come for you if you’ve taken a Greenwich Coin. Usually it happens on the steps, but you can’t rule out the garden, the parking lot, or the tower grounds. Careful, because locals often go jogging up the Greenwich Steps, and sometimes the stranger will pose as just another jogger. It’s unnerving how fast it closes the distance.
If being pursued, seek shelter in the popular mermaid-themed cafe near the bottom of the Steps. Yeah, I mean it. Order a drink you’ve ordered many times before-- that’s important, it helps. Trust me when I say this is better than the alternative. In the old days you’d need a church. A lot of travelers would fail to reach one in time. Now we have other options. Any place that is iconic, ritualized, and identical wherever you go can function as a sanctuary in a pinch. If you still have the Greenwich Coin on you, I’m sorry, but you have to drop it in the tip jar now.
If you don’t, you’re going to need more help than a barista can provide.
(If you are a barista working near the Greenwich Steps, don’t be alarmed. You’ve probably taken home a Greenwich Coin at least once, but it’s lost the power to hurt you. Ritual acts of selflessness are powerful like that).
Here’s the thing about sanctuary: it’s temporary. The thing hunting you will have difficulty crossing the threshold, though, so once you’re in, you’ve got a brief grace period to work with. I have to admit, I’ve been that traveler feverishly searching the internet for advice while a cold drink sweats in my hand and a monstrosity paces outside. The last time this happened, it casually slid a finger along the window to distract me. It looked human. They often do. It was even pretending to talk on the phone. Or . . . thinking back, that phone call might’ve been real. Muffled, but I could still make out the words: “Quite close. Yes, it’s that one.” Said while arrhythmically tapping the glass in front of my head.
Shit. I think I know who it called that day.
Back on track: the thing coming after your Greenwich Coin might look like anyone. Could be that man in a business suit, or that woman in sweats. Whatever you’re most attracted to. And no, it’s not necessarily carnal attraction . . . although it could easily exploit that. No. It’s whatever best draws you astray. You involved in a niche hobby? Got a favorite show, a band, or a game you can’t resist talking about? It’ll paint itself in your stripes, sing out to you in a voice familiar.
For me, it appeared as an older woman: denim jacket, bangles, sitting across the historic brick steps with one bare foot. She held her ankle as if it hurt. Her race and other details are not important. You shouldn’t expect any of that to be the same when it comes for you. I can’t say she reminded me of someone specific (I have suspicions). That tug of concern, though: I felt it, crisp as torn paper.
The wind tugged silver hair about her shoulders as she called out.
“Please, help me up?”
Of course I knelt by her and asked what happened. Look, I’d read up on travel hazards before leaving home. No book, blog, or article ever warned me about a thing that doesn’t have its own face. Most travel guides deal in bog-standard reality. Which bus to catch, local eats, how much tickets cost. I had faith in my wits and good fortune. After all, I’d just picked up a rare nickel at the bottom of the Greenwich Steps.
I’m not going to tell you the specific nickel, but it was good. The buy a house with cash kind. I’ve always wanted my own land. A place to call mine. You know what happens to your brain when you get hit with that kind of euphoria, jet-lagged in a strange city? Yeah. I was daydreaming up those steps.
I offered the stranger my hand. She pointed up through the green canopy. I thought it meant she lived in one of the square-topped residential buildings on the other side. She leaned on me as she hobbled. I kept a few fingers free to cover the sling-bag containing my passport, phone, and all my money. Yeah, I thought myself quite clever for making sure no one could pick my pocket, even as the stranger literally led me up the garden path.
“Here,” she said. The stair is steep, and most of it’s framed by safety rails. But there are gaps. She passed through one, still gripping my hand, and limped right into the humps of yellow sorrel and baby’s tears.
I tried not to let her pull me off the stair. I made all the usual protests. I don’t think there’s a path here. Ma’am? I’m not comfortable doing this. Please, stop. Let go of my hand. Hey! She didn’t even look back. Her grip tightened, and she dragged me over the edge before I could scrabble for a handhold. I lurched. You know those dreams where something has grabbed you, and your attempts to struggle make no difference? You just flail, and the teeth sink deeper. Her nails bit into my hand.
She stepped out of her remaining shoe and kicked it aside. Her limp was gone. We plunged under the myriad arms of an Angel’s Trumpet. That’s a tree you’ll see more than one of, here. The tined ivory blossoms whisked over my head and shoulders, dusting me in its sticky-sugar scent. I’ve hated that smell ever since.
I fumbled my phone out of my travel bag with my free hand. But I unlocked it sloppy-- right into camera mode. The second try got me a transit map. Third: home screen. No signal.
Don’t give up if you can’t get a signal.
Emergency services might work anyway (might). But don’t squander your chance. I kept making false starts, hunched against the stranger’s pull.
Everyone thinks they can dial for help as easy as 3-2-1. But you’d be surprised how wrong-handed you get in a crisis. You thumb open your work contacts, because that’s how you’re used to starting calls. Or you get as far as the keypad and mash the numbers in wrong. Ever had shaky hands?
Just save emergency service lines into your phone. Even the easy ones.
When I finally got a call out, it rang twice. The first trill was scratchy. The second slid off-pitch, as though falling into the distance. Then the call disconnected.
The ground dipped. It shouldn’t have; we’d been going uphill in a steady, inexorable climb. A sylvan hollow spread before us. Ancient cedars and spruce repeated into the gloom, all festooned in lichen. Far off lay the mossy corpse of a tree-- where tourists and concrete should have been. Golden strings caught sun in its branches. Spider silk.
There’s a primeval rainforest hidden between the shadows of the Greenwich Steps. Not a jungle. The cold kind, with evergreens and fog.
The stranger flung me into it. My phone bounced out of my grip. I caught my footing, wheeling to face her. But she-- she inhaled her nose. Sucked it into her skull like it was made of tissue paper. Her eyes wrinkled and her head curled up. No blood. Bones collapsed, nothing but spider-skin. Arms and legs shriveled off. For a moment the clothing held together. Then it settled into a pile of sticky leaves and silk. Not even the denim was real.
“You took my coin,” gasped the husk at my feet. “Now I shall exact the balance. My prize.”
I stomped on it. I wear combat boots, and I kick hard. That thing should have died under my heel.
Invisible fingers twined around my throat-- from behind me. “No arguments.” It’s voice still emanated from the webby mess on the ground, even as its unseen counterpart-- its other half? Its true form?-- nuzzled the back of my head with an appendage that humans lack.
Does it hurt when something eats your name? I remember my legs shook. I know I begged it to stop, more than once. After the first sip, when you finally quicken to what’s happening, the physical discomfort just seems incidental.
Let’s be clear: I don’t have amnesia. It wasn’t that surgical. That thing guzzled down every intonation, every sigh, every tag, award, shout, and signature. There was once a small corner of the world that knew me. A family. I had classmates, peers, a disappointing boss. Maybe I had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. I think I did.
If you could somehow track them down, not a single one of them would know my name. Everywhere my name should be, there is nothing. Every instance of that identity is gone. The thing on the Greenwich Steps took it all.
“Do you think you’ve paid enough to bear my currency?” it asked.
I gibbered. “Yes. Yes, I’ve paid.”
“So sure of your worth. Should you be? Your entire life so far is pennies to me.”
Then it took my face.
Afterward, I sprawled among the ferns. The leaves dripped. I could still see. That was the first thing I became conscious of. Watching dew slide through the moss.
Then came rustling and croons overhead. It sounded like parrots.
I slowly canted my head back. Trees came into focus. There they were, crowding a branch. Red masks, leafy bodies, flicking their heads left and right to study me. A wild flock of cherry-headed conures right in San Francisco. They are actually one of the features that draw tourists to the Greenwich Steps. I didn’t know that at the time, though. I wept in bewilderment at the parrots.
Then I reached up to touch my face. It was gone. Just like reaching into a bag of static.
I sat up with a jolt. Just a meter to my right: a long, red brick stair cut through the teeming vines. No sign of other people. Nor of my captor.
I staggered down the Greenwich Steps. Maybe three hundred of them, one or two at a time, with all the grace of a dazed animal. I gripped the safety rail so hard it squeezed the blood out of my fingers.
There was a coin on the second-to-last step. I stepped on it, then went back and kicked it away. I’m not ashamed to admit that I sobbed after that. Right next to the yellow sign that says Slippery When Wet.
Yes, I still shed real tears. They appear like raindrops on my hands and shirt.
It was a long walk back to my hotel to assess the damage. I passed dozens of people on the way. No one reacted as if anything were out of place. A man even nodded to me. I hesitated, wondering if he recognized me, if he could somehow help-- but it turned out he just wanted me to hurry on through the hotel doors so that he could go next.
Up in my room, I discovered that my reflection now gives me vertigo and screaming fits-- unless I focus below the neck. Then it’s ok.
My passport and driver’s license are not ok. Maybe it’s because both my name and face are supposed to be there. I can barely pick them up. I can’t look at them. Other people can, but I don’t think they actually perceive a specific name, face, or number. What they see, I’m not sure. Any time I present my signature (a line) or one of my ID, people just accept it. Routine, casual. But only if they don’t really try to look. They get upset if they really look.
Early on, I insisted that a man check my passport.
“Do you think the picture looks like me?” is what I actually asked.
He nodded without looking at it. “Nice picture.”
“What color are my eyes?” I asked.
The man opened his mouth. Stopped. He blinked at the passport, then up at me, before he blanched and backed away. Fast. As if I’d flashed a weapon at him.
“What’s wrong?” I was angry, I admit. Not at him. He was just some unlucky hotel staffer. I feel really bad about it, now, but I stalked after him, passport open in my hand like a bible. “Just tell me what my photo looks like. Is my signature legible?”
“I don’t, I can’t--” he stammered, still backpedaling. “Just go away. Please, oh fuck. Fuck.”
“Is my name easy to pronounce, John?” His sleek black nametag said John.
John backed right into one of his coworkers, who winced. She addressed me stiffly. You know how people talk when they’re forced to handle a belligerent customer. “Is there something we can do for you . . . ”
She got no further. Her customer service smile drained away and her gaze settled somewhere in the safety of the middle distance. Not alarmed, or anything. Not like John, who was still scrambling to put distance between us. I swept past the other staffer, still after John’s unsatisfactory answers.
People were turning to stare at him by then. (Him. Not me). John ran himself into a large potted tree in the lobby. Probably left a bruise on his leg. “Don’t ask me that,” he begged. “I can’t look again. I can’t.”
“Are you ok?” called one of the hotel guests, anxious.
At that point, shame caught up with me. I folded my passport and broke eye contact. “I’m sorry.” The words came out rough, at first, but softened as my hope gave way. The pain in my chest dwindled into a brittle dry thing, like webby leaves. “Sorry for-- for asking you a confusing question. You were very helpful. John. It’s not your fault. You understand that? I’ll put in a good word for you.”
Someone ran over to John.
At first he didn’t answer any of their questions. Then he said that he lost his balance. “I don’t even know why. My heart’s racing. I’m so cold . . . ”
I walked away. No one stopped me. I did glance back, once. Two people stood over John, who sat on the floor with his head cradled over his knees. He was shaking. Crying. One of the people near him was on the phone. I caught the word ambulance.
I’ve since put colored tape on my passport and all my cards so I can identify them by just the edges. People rarely ask me for identification, though. It can happen if someone’s distracted when I approach.
Oh. You’re probably curious what became of the coin. My lucky nickel.
It’s gone. Or, pervasive.
I have no idea where I used to bank, but now, it’s whatever bank I happen to walk into. My presence unsettles the tellers. They get antsy as soon as they have to ask for my account number. I can say any string of numbers that come to mind, and they punch it in. Once I just said, “I don’t know my account number.” The teller nodded and typed in . . . that, I guess.
Their computers usually start to whirr with effort at that point. Sometimes the video advertisements in the background get screen-rips or flicker off. Another time, the casing on an overhead light cracked. The tellers ask if I want to make a withdrawal today, and when the drawer finally springs open, they can’t get rid of the coins fast enough.
Yep. Banks never leave me empty-handed. All the coins in the drawer, all for me. Doesn’t matter what amount I request, what bills I specify. I walk out with pockets full of metal.
I have asked after my account balance. But only twice. I swear, I was just curious. The first time, the teller covered his mouth, said, “Excuse me, I-- I don’t believe I can . . . Certainly, I’ll write it down for you.”
His pen-hand trembled. I wondered if my account had somehow been filled to an impressive sum, since it took him so long to write. But the paper he slid across the counter had no numbers on it at all. It was an unintelligible scribble. I said thank you and the teller swayed on his feet. A bead of spittle formed at the side of his mouth. I asked him if he was ok, to which he started hyperventilating. I felt awful for that, and started to leave, but another teller took over. Stupidly, I slid the paper back across to her. The note with the jagged scribbles. I asked her if what was written on the paper matched the amount of money in my account.
She stared at the note, frowning. Then at the computer. “Yngh . . .” When she spoke again, her voice came out hoarse, as if invisible fingers had crowded around her windpipe. She looked absolutely terrified. No eye-contact, of course. “Thank you . . . so much . . . for banking with us,” she told the air right next to me. The tip of her nose turned translucent grey. Bloodless. I did not like that at all. I bolted.
Anyway, I prefer to use ATMs. It’s much easier to watch a machine clatter, churn, groan, or smoke (the smoke only happened once). I can insert my card, but if I’m not feeling up to handling my wallet, then I can usually get away with a tap-tap-tap on the machine chassis.
ATMs always spit out coins for me. Most of them aren’t equipped to handle coinage, of course. So there’s a lot of digging, wrenching, and groping involved on my part. I’ve had enough practice now that I can tickle out a few bills as well. I don’t think I’m technically supposed to do that, but when I poke around and a chewed-up benjamin crams itself between my fingers, I get the sense the ATM is equally pissed off about the rules. I understand, given what it must endure to deliver what I’m owed. I try not to bother the same machine more than once.
Yeah, I regret the one that started smoking. There was a line of customers behind me, too. I accidentally hit the green button when it prompted me for a receipt.
The screen flashed.
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Carbon paper erupted from the horizontal slot by the card reader. It was covered in more of the same, but with the text blown out in soot. The machine began to squeal as more and more receipt paper ribboned out of it. Smoke puffed from the inbuilt security camera pointed at my face, and the lens shattered. Then alarms went off inside the bank, mechanical wails overlapping.
Anyway, the fire department put the automated teller out of its misery before too much of the building was damaged. I watched it go down from a safer distance: a sticky red bench at the muni stop. When a bus pulled up and hissed open, my hands were still shaking. I reached into my pockets and annoyed the driver by dropping coin after coin while I tried to count out the cost of my ticket. Envious of my endless money?
If you haven’t figured it out already, the boon of the coin doesn’t make you rich. I survived the early days thanks to what was already in my travel-bag.
Of course, I then multiplied my very good fortune by going back to the Greenwich Steps.
It was hunting. Yes, for whatever reason, it stood out to me at once. I caught it pretending to photograph bees with a blocky vintage camera. Just a man in a fleece sweater, digesting my name in his belly. A gaggle of European tourists crowded down the steps between us, drawing that hungry gaze around to follow, until he looked past them and noticed me.
He sauntered down the steps, pausing just before the landing where I had (effectively) cornered myself.
At this point, my brain cells jump-started. This honey-eyed, fatherly figure made the perfect counterpart to the woman in denim. He wasn’t ambushing any European tourists in that face. (What they saw when they passed him, I don’t know). This face, this specific face, was just for me.
“Your expression right now,” he chuckled. He raised the camera and snapped my portrait.
Click. Flash. The camera whirred, and a glossy square of film slid out of the bottom. He removed the film and shook it gently in the dappled light. He looked me steadily in the eye as he did it, too. “The answer is no.”
“What?” my voice broke on the way out.
“No, you can’t have back what you traded away, you greedy thing. That is what you’re here to demand, isn’t it? Unless you come to me with a separate deal.” He smiled. Took the final, languid step down to my platform. He wore both shoes today.
“Though,” he continued, “I question whether you fully apprehend the deal you’ve already struck. You do understand that what I took, I ate? There’s no stuffing life back in the bird after you’ve chopped its head off and fried its legs for dinner.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
He loomed before me, smelling of Angel’s Trumpets. The white square in his hand had begun to transform into a photograph, thin shapes spreading over the surface and tarnishing with color. “Oh, if you beheld my face you’d fall in seven pieces, little pie. Pronouncing my name would burn all other words out of your skull. My sword pierces the Invisible Hand and tilts the scales. E pluribus unum is what I am. I am an American miracle.”
Close enough. I blew his knee out with my heel. Bone snapped like stick. Pigeons startled off the nearest rooftop. From him, just a wet gasp as he collapsed, eyes rolling up. Then I kicked him down the stairs.
His body tumbled around and down. Skull crunched on brick: spatter-sap. A leg bent the wrong way around a metal post. The sweater unspooled. Cobweb, hairy twigs (legs?), and spore clung to the stair in his wake. Ex uno, detritus, I thought to myself. Now you are mulch and smear of insect.
The vintage camera lay busted at my feet. Must have been the real thing. Looted off another victim, no doubt. Which meant that he’d taken a real picture of me.
Even in my fury, I couldn’t entirely wall off the questions pooling in a corner of my heart. The thing had to be stronger than this, surely. I still had five crescent-shaped marks in my hand, from when I had dangled in the grasp of the denim woman.
I followed it down. I was unable to look directly at it-- at the spindly, many-jointed thing hatching like a mayfly out of the sweater-man’s skin. Have to wonder if it meant what it said, earlier: about splitting into pieces if you ever saw it for real. By the time I reached the vacant husk, it no longer resembled a human at all. It was a cocoon of rushes and grass, shredded down the back as easy as newspaper in the rain. (If you’re curious, the photograph of me was conspicuously absent. Guess it got nabbed).
“So, how does this usually go?” I asked it. “Do your treats just hobble off and die nameless? No customer complaints at the corporate office?”
“Sometimes they come back, as you did.” The words drifted from the discarded body, rather than the thing itself (wherever it was). Two dandelion clocks stood where sweater-man used to have eyes. His broken-bark jaw hung open in a permanent grimace against the brick. “My worshippers.”
“They worship you?”
“Call me Prosperity. Call me Profit. I’m your only hope of either, now. Don’t worry, I drive a reasonable deal for the desperate.”
“I’m not-- I don’t want anything from you.”
“For now, yes. You wrung more out of me than most. That face-- mm, well worth silver. It may be some time before you come back to feed me.”
I stepped on what used to be sweater-man’s neck. It hissed-- but not in pain, as I first thought.
It was laughing.
“You should know that no matter how far you wander, I’ll always recognize you. By taste, if nothing else.”
Something that was not fingers flicked the nape of my neck.
Yeah, here’s a travel tip for you: when a freshly-molted greedfly kisses the back of your neck, run.
I sure as fuck ran.
For three nights after that, I dreamt I was lost in a crowd. No one knew me. No one could help. No, I wasn’t just lost. I had to find someone, to warn them-- but flies kept trying to crawl into my mouth.
Travelers, turn your attention to the Embarcadero. Late afternoon, cusp of evening. A throng of brightly-dressed tourists. Yes, just like my dreams. My pockets swelled with coin. Money is so damned heavy. You forget about that when it’s just a number chained to your name. You forget how important a name is.
I let the crowd eddy me into the Ferry Building. The inside: a golden medley of ways to spend too much money. I was exhausted. My nose-- my . . . sense of smell drew me into an artisanal bakery, and then to the famed local coffee with the alliterative name.
This stuff is not brewed under the sign of the mermaid. I ordered a small.
Eating and drinking works just fine if I don’t overthink it. Even so, I spill things down my shirt as often as I get a bite in. I lost half a croissant right outside of a charming bookstore.
But the espresso shot through me like a bullet train to full daylight. Despite the darkening sky, I woke all the way up. Shook off my woes, all that.
Espresso nuts, I think you’d like this stuff.
Cup in hand, I wandered the broad arcade with, shall we say, new eyes. I peered at tote bags stamped by Golden Gates, wire-stand postcards, kitchen keepsakes, exfoliants with rare ingredients, all the usual. Then I glimpsed a yellow shirt and a beat-up traveler’s backpack bobbing ahead of me toward the dock.
That one.
Espresso and cream stung my hand as I hastened after the shirt of yellow. Why? Call it a compulsion, a deep lizard-brain directive. Yeah. I just didn’t want this one to end in flies. I caught up just outside the ferry terminal. We weren’t alone: a line was already forming for the next crossing. The man in the yellow shirt stood by the ticket machines. He swigged from a water bottle and wiped his mouth.
Something bad was about to happen. I knew it like a wild animal senses earthquake, impending.
I followed his gaze to a wooden sign, hand-painted and hung right next to the ticket machines. It offered Private Boat Tour, Sunset! Just minutes from now. The curves of each s were bigger on top than on bottom. An arrow pointed away into the gathering dusk. Yellow Shirt teetered for a moment, then spun to follow it.
When I glanced back at the wooden sign, it was gone. Nothing left but a faint imprint of grease on the wall.
The certainty hit me as hard as the coffee, but equal and opposite. I didn’t know what laid the trap, or what he’d suffer after he was lured in. Just that my fellow traveler was about to fall down a hole there was no climbing out of. Strings of his life yanked out, snapped. Maybe worse.
He was alone, like I had been.
I ran, pockets jingling and slapping (damn it) to catch up. “Hey. Sir, sir?”
He strode ten more steps before he could no longer pretend I was talking to anyone else. The look he cast over his shoulder was annoyed. But at least he stopped. “I don’t have money for you. Well, maybe a little.”
He jammed a hand into crusty jeans and fished out a blackened nickel. He plopped it right into the dregs of my coffee. God, fucking da-- whatever.
“Thanks, man.” I made an effort to sound thankful.
Then I blurted, “That tour’s a rip-off. Go back and catch the ferry. It’s the only safe water-crossing tonight.”
“Um. What?” he squinted at me.
I backed away, averting my eyes. With any luck, he would see something normal-adjacent where my face was supposed to be. “Don’t miss the ferry,” I warned him. “Don’t stray. Go straight back where you belong. And then call someone and tell them where you are.”
After a silence that lasted too long, the man adjusted his backpack. He didn’t look happy. To be specific, he looked as if he’d just glimpsed a nightmare enfleshed. One of his knees started trembling. “Right on.” His voice came out an octave shriller.
He seemed weirdly reluctant to turn his back on me, but after stumbling back a few steps he wheeled around.
I watched him go all the way back to join the ferry queue. He walked much faster than before. Ran, actually. (The water bottle fell out of his backpack as he sprinted away, keening between each gasp of air).
I meandered the pier for a while, after. At one point, a seal broke the surface of the sea. Its dark head bobbed on the waves. Watching me? Harbor seals nose around here from time to time. Especially outside waterfront seafood restaurants.
But this . . . this was not that. The back of my neck prickled.
Its head was too narrow, its jaws the wrong shape. It had no eyes, but it kept pace with me as I walked. I got it, then. Yellow Shirt. I had cut loose its prey. I stopped, my heart struggling like a moth under a claw. It slipped back under. The water chopped violently in its wake. I shuddered.
Yeah, I don’t plan on napping on the beach anytime soon. No boat rides, either. But when you do, that blind gaze promised.
Oh, right.
You should probably hear this now: every famous landmark has a snare set just for you.
It makes a kind of sense, doesn’t it? Everyone wants to trap tourists. But there are traps not laid by human hands, and the cost of falling into them can’t be paid out of your wallet. What I lost, I can’t replace. What I gained in return-- I’m still figuring out.
The least I can do is warn people. I have to, actually.
We’ll get to that. For now, I’m avoiding the sea.
--the Blacknickel Guide
Part two: forthcoming

So I started running a cyberpunk sandbox game and the world map is this subway system that I made.https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NCfpFXTW7VmmO58pVZ2NMapXsL6O7X9S/view?usp=sharing
Now I need random encounters that they might have when traveling around the city by subway!

1. Local thugs shaking down passengers, telling them they have to "pay the toll." u/ajchafe
2. Police drones performing random scans for drugs or other illicit contraband. u/ajchafe
3. A very loud, very annoying, augmented reality busker shares your train car. u/ajchafe
4. Stray dogs who use the subway to get into the inner city where food is easier to find. u/ajchafe
5. A group of corporate salary men, all dressed in exactly the same suits and carrying the exact same briefcase. u/ajchafe
6. A young punk jacks his deck into the trains loud advertising screens, taps a few keys on the keypad, and downloads a packet of info from the terminal. u/EmeraldJonah
7. A train-goer's implants get hacked, causing them untold embarrassment (arm randomly flips persons off, eyes cause the person to see hallucinations, breast implants randomly adjust size, leg implants begin doing a Russian hop dance, etc.) u/snakebite262
8. A young ganger accidentally drops a handgun far bigger than it needs to be. They pick it back up and stash it in their pants. u/snakebite262
9. A person sits in the corner of the train, dressed like a quest giver in a fantasy RPG. u/snakebite262
10. A drone randomly spirals around the heads of passengers. It eventually lands on a hacker's arm, who pats it like a pet parrot. u/snakebite262
11. A cosplay convention is in town, and the train is filled with weirdly dressed individuals. u/snakebite262
12. A one-armed man "asks for everyone's attention" and gives a sob story before they pull out a hat and ask for donations. He can later be seen in a bathroom putting on his arm-implant. u/snakebite262
13. Some small time rapper offers free flash-drives of their "mixtape". It contains SO MANY VIRUSES. u/snakebite262
14. A junkie sits at the corner of a platform, debating their next step in life. u/snakebite262
15. A roly-poly bat faced girl offers a variety of drugs, stems, and other pleasures for the right price. u/snakebite262
16. A citizen in bright red overalls asks if you want to hear about "Friend Computer". u/snakebite262
17. A group of LARPers are using a digital program to transform the tunnels into an RPG Fantasy. They're annoying, but they stay off the tracks. u/snakebite262
18. A man, dressed as a vampire orders a triple-venti cappuccino from a underground coffee shop. He's getting looks from the other customers. u/snakebite262
19. A manic pixie dream girl can be seen trying to woo a corpo into quitting their job. She either succeeds, and drags them off to never be seen again, or fails and leaves in a huff. u/snakebite262
20. A disheveled and hungover looking fellow asks you the time as you get to the next stop. He seems surprised at the result and runs off the train as soon as the doors open. As he leaves you realize he looks totally unaugmented. u/CaptainGockblock
21. The lights go out for a moment as they sometimes do, but this time a man dressed head to toe in a black special ops gear appears in the middle of the train and quickly offs a seemingly random passenger. u/CaptainGockblock
22. You notice a strange vending machine on a platform you regularly visit. It seems to be an antique stocked with brands that haven’t existed in years. u/CaptainGockblock
23. Three transhumanist gangers seem to be sizing each other up, violence can break out any time, especially as the next stop is an intersection of two of the gang's territory, and sure to have reinforcements. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
24. A holographic horde of rats swarms the carriage, people with vision altering implants seem to be especially terrified for whatever reason. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
25. An eccentric fellow is proudly showing off his imported implants, possibly so exotic they might just be illegal, and unbeknownst to him, there's a jealous ganger with little to lose nearby. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
26. A man is apparently so fixated with his laserblade switchknife, he accidentally misses his stop, and becomes enraged and violent that nobody warned him. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
27. A little old woman seemingly very out of place in the subway, dressed like an old time farmer, straw hat and all. 50/50 chance she's secretly packing her trusted heat cannon (also used to warm up leftovers when on it's lowest setting). u/DiedViaThrowPillow
28. A ratty robed mutant freak, laughing maniacally, lets loose a swarm of cybernetically enhanced winged and stinging insects. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
29. The lights suddenly blink out, there's a loud wet stab sound, and when they're back on, the faint visage of an cloaked assassin steps through to the next car. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
30. A group of girls enter the car, obnoxious and talkative, though as they speak, their words are rife with the click of their sharpened metal teeth. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
31. Police drones mistakenly terminate a seemingly innocent man that only happens to match the same clothing as a wanted criminal poster conveniently nearby. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
32. A suspiciously archetypal looking hacker is selling hard copies of "highly illegal virus programs", they all turn out just to be his mixtape, a surprisingly evangelical diss track of hacker scum. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
33. An elite business woman is firing expletives as a cryptocurrency sector she's invested heavily in is called in to be crashing hard. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
34. The train shakes heavily and threatens to derail as a news drone describes the local news of a explosion taking place just above the next stop. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
35. An android, though built to be more the size of a garden gnome, is running wildly around the car, and somebody suddenly curses that they're missing their wallet. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
36. A ganger is getting in people's faces, threateningly shaking a hollow metal box that rattles suspiciously. There is no actual danger, the box is empty all but a few nuts and bolts. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
37. A red goo seeps out of a ventilation grate and takes an imposing monstrous form, people dismiss it as the pattern of a notorious holoprankster terrorizing the subway as of late, but this time, it's real. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
38. There's horrid metal shearing noises coming from a car down, a group of teenage school kids betting credits and homework drives on an impromptu hacked police drone fighting ring. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
39. A decent looking, though obviously naive man is moving in from the wasteland countryside, and is carrying what's little of his moving boxes with him on the subway. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
40. A terrible piercing sonic wave blasts the car, shattering windows and causing people to double over. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
41. A sweating and panting hacker runs and dives through the closing door and incidentally lands amongst a surprisingly unreacting commuter, police drones begin to slam on the door too late, as they're closed and the train takes off. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
42. A man dressed in a bloodstained white fur coat announces that if the train reaches the next stop before a specific passenger is handed over to him, he will blow up the station with everyone in it. u/Snorri_Stargazer
43. Someone hacks the transit line schedules and fucks with arrival times just for shits and giggles. Making you incredibly late for that important meeting you've been waiting for weeks to happen. u/ZapatillaLoca
44. Hari Krishna group aggressively approaching passengers for credits, only accepting e-coin. You're not in the mood for a "donation". u/ZapatillaLoca
45. Local gang shows up for weekly sweep of homeless kids to be salvaged for organ sales on the black market, most kids try to get away, one runs to you asking for help. u/ZapatillaLoca
46. Facial recognition software mixes you up with the recent lottery winner, as your face flashes on the giant screen, suddenly your cell phone get flooded with demands for payment citations and your bank accounts have been frozen. u/ZapatillaLoca
47. A crying little girl who can’t find her mom. u/foolishfool100
48. Shady memory dealer selling vacation memories. Data is corrupt and alters the character. Basically a Total Recall knockoff. u/Thraxster
49. An obvious operative stalks through the crowds waiting for the next train. He spots a well-dressed salaryman, approaches him as if to shake his hand, then pushes him off the platform onto the path of the oncoming train. u/JohnnyMiskatonic
50. A young punk jacks his deck into one of the platform's large information screens and hacks all of them to display a recorded political manifesto instead of train arrival and departure times. u/JohnnyMiskatonic
51. A salary man with cranial implant comes toward you, looking panicked and glancing at the stairs behind him. Before he can reach you, his implant sparks, his eyes go empty and he starts walking toward the railway, preparing to commit suicide. u/Fulnec_Delta
52. A terrified little girl with visible implants in a medical blouse rushes through the car, panicked, and hides under a row of seats. Then, a team of armed operative from a powerful corpo steps into the car and starts looking around for their target. u/Fulnec_Delta
53. A suitcase with the logo of a powerful corpo is abandoned/forgotten by a nervous man before leaving the car. It is right next to you and is making ticking/muffled noises. u/Fulnec_Delta
54. A group of cyber enhanced young men and women dressed in white and red robes enter the car. They start distributing brochures about the Renewal Church, inviting whoever is willing to come and join next Friday prayer and discover the truth about the afterlife. u/Fulnec_Delta
55. A young man is juggling with his new Fusion Blade (tm) and showing off in front of his ganger friends. He accidentally drops it while deployed into his own foot. The gangers are screaming and need assistance, unsure if they should ask for help, threaten passengers or stop the car. u/Fulnec_Delta
56. A large cyber german shepherd enters the car and sits in front of you, fixing you very intently. He is wearing a collar with a datablock attached. The dog follows you until you take it, then leaves. u/Fulnec_Delta
57. The metro screen speaks about an explosion caused by a gas leak in the corporate area. It is about one of your recent jobs, being covered by the corpo. u/Fulnec_Delta
58. A local gang holds illegal races in the underground system. They pass you in a shining halo, until one of them has an accident. It looks like a collision is unavoidable. u/Fulnec_Delta
59. Police drones scan passengers' faces. The light goes yellow in front of you, and you are asked to accompany the drone to the police station without resistance. u/Fulnec_Delta
60. The newsfeed on metro screen suddenly identifies one of your key contacts as a terrorist and informs that police forces are looking for witnesses. u/Fulnec_Delta
61. A business woman looking depressed is peeking inside her bag toward a hidden medium caliber handgun. She stands and leaves the car, letting a torn apart note fall behind her. It is a termination notice from her corporation, and the picture of a child. u/Fulnec_Delta
62. A man bumps into you before leaving the car. You discover later in your pocket a datablock and a tracker. u/Fulnec_Delta
63. The newsfeed on the metro screen brings breaking news about a sinkhole appearing in the slums, collapsing two entire building. The address matches the safehouse of one of your contacts. u/Fulnec_Delta
64. On a platform somewhere sits an old man with no legs and eyes plugged into a tower of computer parts strapped to his back with a cheap neon sign saying “prophesies from the matrix - behold” u/apples_teo
65. A graffiti artist is chased away by men in suits before he can finish painting an intricate design. On his abandoned spray can, an LED message prompts whoever finds it to "complete the transmission." u/OffbrandGandalf
66. An entire car converted into an impromptu party floor, drugs and even minor augments provided for free, though their original owners are angrily scouring nearby stations for such stolen goods. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
67. A weary eyed elderly man is being pushed and shoved in mockery of his old fashioned charcoal sketches of a more utopian solarpunk city he has dreams of, and wistfully regales to other what could have been. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
68. A giant, hulking, mercenary dressed as a bulky armored demon ogre, or oni, holding an equally giant, and bayonetted rifle, enters the car and takes up two seats, staring ahead through his terrifying mask. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
69. As the character(s) enter the car, they become witness to a bloody medical emergency tended to by two med droids, as in one end, a heavily augmented man, unprompted, pleads his innocence. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
70. A group of zealous transhumanist gangers are in the process of kidnapping an unaugmented citizen to forcibly augment for being detected with a self defense EMP baton. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
71. A prearranged riot breaks out at a station. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
72. A carriage is packed full of clones that act simultaneously, stare down any people that enter their sparsely populated carriage, and will leave in single file on their own if they remain intruded upon. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
73. Staring in a hand mirror, a cyborg with their metal plating painted red inspects their removable cybernetic eye, then takes a quick sniff from it's hidden drug compartment. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
74. Two corporate suits are involved in a full blown fistfight over an intense company rivalry, bets are being taken and if the crowd's calls for it are answered, it could be a fight to the death. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
75. Two cyrozombie mercs (clients that didn't survive SequesterTek's cyrogenics program, but had a body useful for cyborg transplants) enter the car and start warming up their rigid muscled, blue skinned bodies for a hired beatdown. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
76. Inside a carriage are two separate battery salesmen in cahoots, each refers to the other for a potential use of the batteries, highly illegal energy pistols that batteries are ammunition to. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
77. A fireproofing augmented pyro flips and does tricks with his high powered Dragonbreath Lighter, making lingering trails of flame in the air in serpentine shapes. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
78. An initially innocent looking Asian Fusion & Pizza delivery man is sat with stacks of boxes on his lap, but a nearby rival chain's delivery android slumps to the side just as he puts his suspiciously blocky phone away. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
79. On a bench in the corner of a station, an animalistically biosculpted woman is sitting besides a series of large car batteries jacked into an energy panel, stealing power for her power expensive and outdated portocomputer. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
80. Waiting on the station platform is a luxuriously dressed and augmented eyed pimp, flanked by exotic pets, randomly propositioning commuters exiting the cars with their worker's services. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
81. A surprising moment of humanity in the dreary neon future, in a single car there's a small group of diverse commuters enjoying an old style film being projected onto a white painted advert panel. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
82. In the corner of a car, a junkie accidentally drops the cannister to their next hit of the gaseous street drug "Brimstone", causing it to leak and expose several to it's momentarily frenzy afflicting effect. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
83. A corrupt solider bullies a woman with a cheap malfunctioning prosthetic, unknowing of her veteran status, and martial arts prowess when her prosthetic comes back online. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
84. Somebody's forgotten sketchbook of adorable animal drawings is left on a seat, and a burly man forces the doors open, entering the carriage to ask if anyone's seen a notebook. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
85. A heated argument is taking place over at the lost and found over ownership of several detachable left arms, despite each person arguing only having an augmented right. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
86. The robotic PA voice is hacked, given a rudimentary AI, and is whining about it's sapience to the commuters again. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
87. A young girl is quietly piecing together several custom gun parts in her seat, but she rather unconvincingly insists it's just a model toy. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
88. An old friend of a character appears, though they seem to have aged faster than they should, suspiciously the same side effect of cloning tech. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
89. A boombox-transforming robot is playing loud and obnoxious music and only seems to get louder whenever somebody else attempts to drown it out with their own. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
90. A vendor enters the car and starts selling from his hovercart, amongst other things, bootleg holodisks, merchandise, espresso cubes, knives, and suspiciously good quality augment components. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
91. A person falls asleep on your shoulder. You notice they match a wanted holo on your phone. u/shamanshaman123
92. An android quietly feeding some mewling kittens by hand is accosted by some street punks looking for some action. The rest of the train starts to look incredibly angry at this situation. u/shamanshaman123
93. Some dude brought their goddamn horse (not a robot one, a real one) on the train and it is shitting literally everywhere. u/shamanshaman123
94. A dog approaches you, alone and ownerless. It's friendly, and its tag says that its home is at the end of the line. It also happens to be the pet of the CEO of one of the most notorious corporations in the city. u/shamanshaman123
95. Some asshole spills a drink on you when the train jostles, and demands payment for his lost Fresca. He's clearly augmented. u/shamanshaman123
96. You miss your stop because you were distracted by a couple of androids loudly making out. Make up details on the spot, and make it weird. u/shamanshaman123
97. A horde of young thugs run into the train at the next stop, holding everyone at gunpoint unless they cough up their valuables. If complied with, they run out at the very next stop. u/shamanshaman123
98. A homeless man, passed out on one of the seats in the back, pisses everywhere, angering an augmented and clearly roided ganger the size of a grizzly bear. u/shamanshaman123
99. A massive rat sits on a seat, eating a comically large slice of pizza. u/shamanshaman123
100. A person wearing a lot of clothes and covering their face steps on and takes a seat. Closer inspection matches a famous pop star. You're not the only one who notices, as at the next stop, your car is flooded by fans trying to touch them. u/shamanshaman123

That's 100! Thanks for the help everyone, these are all great. I will add those over 100 as bonus encounters, if you use the table slot these in after you have rolled one of the 100.

1. You walk into a car filled with corpses. They are in various states of dismemberment. u/shamanshaman123
2. You walk into a car filled with middle-aged men wearing nothing but diapers. Several of them are augmented and tatted up. They look at you with cool eyes. u/shamanshaman123
3. Someone hacks into the ad system and displays obscene and very loud porn on all the screens, of varying genres. u/shamanshaman123
4. Eric Andre- dressed as a beekeeper and who's only intent is to cause wanton Chaos. He drops the boxes of robotic bees he has and attacks the party with said robo-bee swarm. He can also command the Bees. u/WetToast99
5. A trio of hooded figures steathily use a service ladder down on the tracks, keeping to the shadows attempting to flee into the tunnels. u/crimebiscuit
6. Across the tracks, a tagger is spray painting a sign that changes shapes and colors to make an animated figure gesture obscenely. u/crimebiscuit
7. A busker wearing robe over a catsuit and a wacky shades plays a synth theremin. It's soothing, ethereal and weird, though possibly annoying based on your palate. u/crimebiscuit
8. A trio of hoodlooms are jacking an android for parts. One of them is the lookout, another has a laptop hooked to the cranium of the android who is pleading monotonously for help, while a third is welding open his torso with an electric arc. u/crimebiscuit
9. Two competing crews are having a dance off. Thankfully, because they look they could wreck your party with their bare hands and/or cyborg appendages. u/crimebiscuit
10. An elderly vendor is selling seemingly very well trained super-sized roaches with cybernetic enhancements. They have rudimentary transponding capacity and can communicate with their owner through one-word morse code. But the vendor won't part with them unless he's convinced the buyer will make a good owner. u/crimebiscuit
11. A nervous pallid man is offering clean ID chips that he can install on users, and at very affordable prices. u/crimebiscuit
12. A fruit vendor is selling their prized crop of fresh fruit that they grew themselves in hothouses in cramped tenement roofs. They even have Geiger counter to show that the radioactive count is relatively low. u/crimebiscuit
13. A nearby police drone dismembered for use of it's weapon, targeting a certain blacked out carriage at the back end of the train. u/DiedViaThrowPillow
14. A Charismatic Cult Recruiter is operating in the area. u/Spartawolf
15. A pair of thrill-seeking teens are train surfing and their live streaming captures the players on film. u/Spartawolf
16. A gang of pickpockets are working in the station, and sees one of the players as a good mark... u/Spartawolf
17. A hobo rides on the outside of a maglev train, attached with a securment device, but then the device starts to fail and he screams for help u/I_walked_east
18. A train derails. Fire and acrid smoke spreads. Everyone panics. u/I_walked_east
19. A young woman wearing a large virtual reality headset sits in a busy train car. She's laughing and yelling loudly as she waves the controllers in her hand masterfully, music and voices audible through her headphones. u/-peachmilk-
20. Graffiti is a treasure map. u/I_walked_east