Here he the original post for context:
https://www.reddit.com/amiwrong/comments/13q0yxq/i_46m_got_into_a_discussion_with_my_gf_45f_that/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I got so many supportive comments on the original post and I can't begin to tell you all what it meant to me. Believe it or not it made the break up a little less traumatic knowing I had a few thousand people behind me (even if they were all strangers). So thank you to all of you. I also got quite a few requests for updates and a lot has happened in the last few weeks since the brake up so I thought I would share for those who care to know.
So the gf (now "ex" gf which she will be referred to as from this point on) was calling me constantly over the next week. It was bordering on harassment. She would apologize over and over and say that she loved me and no longer felt like I raped her and she just wanted to be with me again, etc. I told her repeatedly that while I wished her no ill will, I just felt like we weren't meant to be and she would be better off finding someone less rapey than me. (ok I was harboring a little resentment that may have come off a tad immature at times).
At one point I told my daughter (28f and not from the ex) everything about the break up and what she said about me raping her at the wedding.
If I may digress a little for just a moment, I would like to explain. My daughter was born when I was 17. I pretty much raised her on my own. Her mom was very flakey and was rarely around. But in all fairness, she was only 18 so she was just young and not ready for a child. Not that I was anymore ready, but I knew somebody had to be the parent. So I think because we were so close in age, my daughter and I have a very close bond. We pretty much tell each other everything and no subject is off limits. For example, I was the first person she told when she gave her 1st blow job and then again when she lost her virginity. How many daughters do that?
Because we are so close, my daughter has always been very protective of me. I didn't introduce her to most of the women I dated while she was growing up but the couple that became serious relationships she met and let's just say she wasn't very warm and welcoming to these women. But she was older when I got with my ex and while my daughter was not the most friendly to her upon meeting her, eventually they became pretty tight.
So after telling my daughter all about it (in hindsite it may have not been the smartest move I've ever made) she became so angry that she called my ex (I didn't know she did this nor did I condone it. But how could I be angry with her for standing up for her old man?) She offered to arrange my ex's face for cheaper than a plastic surgeon would and also to remove any teeth to prevent any toothaches she may get in the future. Although she wasn't quite that polite about it if you smell what I'm stepping in.
So my kid and I were sitting on my couch having a couple beers and shooting the shit when the cops knocked on my door. The ex called them and reported my daughter for threatening her. They charged her with a misdemeanor for the threats but they didn't arrest her or put her in jail. Needless to say she wanted to make a visit to my ex after that but I was able to talk a little sense into her.
Later that same night I got another call from my ex with more of the crying and the "I'm sorries" and she wanted to just forget everything that has happened and she no longer feels like I raped her and she just wanted us to be together again. She asked if she could come over to talk and she alluded to us having sex, I guess thinking I am just a dumb ass man and the offer of sex would have me forget that she accused me of rape and tried to have my daughter arrested. (And yes I know my kid should not have threatened her but I don't care. That's my kid and right or wrong I've always got her back).
I told the ex that I was not interested in talking nor was I ever going to be sticking my dick in any of her holes ever again. (I'm sorry for the crudeness but that's the way I talk in real life and especially when I'm angry). I asked her to please stop calling me and just let me live my life in peace.
I hoped that would be the end of it but as we all know, hope springs eternal but was not to be my luck. At about 3 am I awoke to something that normally I quite enjoyed waking up to but this night I was not pleased. She had broke into my pad (well she didn't really break in. I forgot to get her key from her when she moved out so she let herself in) and knowing that I always sleep naked, she came into my room and was sucking my dick.
Like I said, normally that would have been awesome but this time I was infuriated. I started screaming at her to get the fuck out of my house before I call the cops on her like she did my daughter. It was actually the closest I've ever come to hitting a woman. I'm proud to say that I was able to hold my composure enough to keep myself from doing it as I have taught my daughter from the time she was 5 years old that she NEVER allows a man to put his hands on her more than once. If a man ever hits her she should find away to get away from him and come find me and I'll take care of it from there. So I could never allow myself to be the one to hit a woman. I would never want my kid to think I was a hypocrite and that is the only reason she didn't get punched in her teeth.
She started crying and begging me to please talk to her so I'm ashamed to say I did grab her by the arm and walk her out of my room to the front door only to find some friend of hers sitting on my couch. I guess the ex's car was not running so she got a ride from this friend. So now I'm standing in my living room, stark naked, yelling for them to get the fuck out of my house. Which woke up my daughter, who was sleeping in the spare room because she had too much to drink and I didn't want her driving.
My daughter comes out of the room with a baseball bat because she didn't know who I was yelling at and she thought we were getting robbed. When she saw who I was yelling at she actually tried going after the ex and her friend but I was able to stop her and got her to go into the bedroom so as to not have to see her old man in that state. I ordered my ex to get the fuck out and told her I better never hear from her again.
Next morning I have off from work so my daughter and I are eating breakfast and talking about going to get new locks for my house later when I get a knock at my door. My daughter answered it and low and behold it is 2 detectives. My ex apparently was now trying to have me arrested for raping her. I couldn't believe it. Well, I guess I could believe it, but it was still a shock none the less.
They said that she had called and told them she wanted to report me that I raped her and that it was regarding an incident in a hotel room after attending a wedding and they were there to ask me some questions.
Now believe me when I tell you that I'm not a man that just readily cries in front of people, much less total strangers. But for some reason that I couldn't explain, I just started crying. I wasn't balling like a little girl or anything but there were for sure tears in my eyes, and I was unable to hold them back. Being about as embarrassed and ashamed as a man can be I excused myself to the bathroom. I pulled myself together and washed my face. I gave myself a stern talking to about crying like a pussy in front of total strangers. And I started heading back out to the living room. I got as far as the hallway when I heard my daughter, half yelling, obviously crying herself, telling the detectives basically what a bitch my ex is and that I didn't rape her that we were just drunk and had sex and it was my ex that initiated it in the first place.
I walked back into the living room, tears and blubbering behind me and told my kid that I would handle my business from here and to please excuse herself to the bedroom.
Once she had left the room the female detective asked me if that was really what had happened and I told her it was. They thanked me for my time and they left. A few hours later my phone rings and it is the same female detective. She told me that they went to my ex's and asked her to go further into detail about what happened. They asked her were we both drinking and she admitted that we were. They asked her had I forced myself on her while she told me no and surprisingly she told them no, that she was in fact the one who initiated the sex. The detective then asked her if she was the one that initiated it then how exactly was it that she was feeling like I raped her. She said that she was drunk and a woman cannot consent to sex while she is drunk so if a man has sex with her then that is rape.
The detective said she had to keep herself from laughing out loud. She then told my ex that she didn't know where she was getting her info from but she explained that it is illegal for somebody to have sex with another person if that person is so intoxicated that they are unconscious, or just unable to effectively consent or deny consent. She said that what happened between her and I was nothing more than two people having consensual drunk sex and if she wanted to be technical about it, since my ex is the one that initiated the sex, consent wouldn't even fall to her. It would fall to me and so if anybody was committing rape in that situation it would have been her, not me. But the fact is nobody raped anyone.
Then the detective said my ex got huffy and asked her how could she possibly have been the one committing rape since not only was I the man, but I had an erection and a man cannot be considered raped if he has an erection during the act .
The detective told her that she wasn't sure where my ex was getting her information from, but that she was wrong in every thing that she was saying and that she should be a little more careful about making police reports and spouting off what essentially equates to nonsense because she could have done some serious damage to somebody else's life under the right circumstances.
I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to hear all that stuff that this detective was telling me. I really wish I could have been there to see my ex's face when she was informed of all this, although I know that is just childish and petty on my part.
Then the detective said something else that I was not expecting. She told me that my daughter had told her about the night before when I woke up to the ex sucking my dick. She asked me if it was true and I said yes. The detective told me that if I wanted to, I could report that as a sexual assault and she would be arrested. They would probably just release her on her own recognizance, but she would still have to go to court and if found guilty she would have to register as a sex offender.
I couldn't believe it. I really thought about it, but I have no desire to ruin my ex's life. I just want her out of mine. But you can bet I had fun telling my ex what the detective told me and I used it to tell my ex if she ever contacts me again that I would do it. And also, she needed to have the charges on my kid dropped. But if she did that, had the charges dropped and then never contacted me again, I would not report her for sexual assault. She agreed. And I can't be happier .

Last weekend, due to fast spreading of weird skin rash and unusual foot joint pain which made me losing ~90% of walking ability (I can only barely standing by holding something), I was unable to go for medication without calling 119 (I am on 2/F of a detached house I don't think there can be any other option for me).
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Called 119 first time, didn't expect that they don't have anyone can speak English??!! But anyway ambulance mem came and grabbed me. I heard from them that most likely they will just treat my pain to allow me to walk then will be discharged, this was expected and I am looking for clinic to visit in coming few days.
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In hospital I showed them that I had actually visited another doctor a day ago about my skin rash so just need to focus on how to make my feet to stop feeling painful then I can go. Soon I was told the joints are good and they did not find a way to make the pain stop, during inspection they found that I was having fever as well. The medical intern seemed to be lost and went to get a senior. The senior came and checked, also have no idea about my situation, and at that time my fever wasn't stopped even with acetaminophen injection. Since it's already night time and my fever was non-stop, I was asked to stay in hosipital for a night and wait for blood test result to see what happened. And of course I am fine with that (I was worrying how to go back home if I got kicked out from hosipital under that condition).
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Following day I saw a group of doctors came in to my room, also with quite a lot of medical interns, I hope they can tell me something from blood test but result was negative, no finding, no conclusion. And without painkiller my fever just won't stop, even I was given antibiotics. More doctors bringing their fellow practicing one to check my case. I was wondering if my case can raise interest to them?
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Later they told me that they suspected me getting rare diseases that they've never seen, and arranged more blood test for bacteria culture, body CT scans to look for tumour, skin biopsy, X-ray, HIV/TB test, etc....and during those days they still didn't find a good way that can stop me from getting high fever. I still remember there was a few nights that I slept with a few pillow sized cooling pad because the daily limit of acetaminophen was hit already and they cannot give me NASID continously.
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On the 4th day finally pathologist should have found some evidence from my skin biopsy but they need to make sure I have no self immue disease so I had to wait for another doctor to confirm from an university. The verdict was presented to me on 5th day, it's also a group of doctors and try to explain me that my case matches SWEET Syndrome which is a rare syndrome in dermatology (was told by someone that's 1.7 cases out of 1M population???) since I have no any blood related disease nor tumor and no cause can be found.
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During all those days, every day there must be senior doctors bringing their interns (and they take notes!), I still remember the small surgery of skin biopsy there were 10 people in the operation room! Oh well but at least they got the conclustion eventually and now their head of dematology becomes my main doctor and continue the treatment with their team.
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Now it's my time to study how to pay the hospital charge with insurance, it looks complicated.

Welcome to Fuse Life Roleplay. Fuse Life Roleplay (FLRP), is a new community that is based around storytelling by the community. We are currently using vMenu, but will be rolling out a vMenu Hybrid in the coming weeks. Our aim in the community is to tell stories and have long term tales told by our community members. Fuse Life Roleplay is the perfect place to start your story today.
We have many things to offer!
Los Santos Police Department (Currently closed; will talk about people joining to start it up)
Blaine County Sheriffs Office Application Status - OPEN Sheriff: Justin Clark
BCSO is a department that focuses on the Blaine County area. They focus on Keeping the Citizens of Blaine County Safe! They do what, they do best, stopping crime, keeping the streets safe. BCSO Has all sorts of fun in the name. They Got Sub-Divisions such as K-9, S.W.A.T, Air & Marine Support Units and much more to offer! The Sheriff's department is looking for someone like you to join today as a Deputy! Put that shiny badge on and put the good out in the streets of San Andreas! Showing what it means to be apart of Law Enforcement! Join the Blaine County Sheriff's Office with Sheriff Justin Clark and his High Command as well as Command Team! We look forward to seeing you in state. ~Sheriff Justin Clark
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The San Andreas State Troopers' primary role is to enforce state laws and maintain public order within the State of San Andreas. We are law enforcement officers who work at the state level in San Andreas, with jurisdiction over the entire state, from Paleto Bay to the Port of Los Santos. Our agency is responsible for enforcing state laws, maintaining public safety, and providing various law enforcement services. Our responsibilities are ensuring the safety of the citizens, patrolling highways, and responding to various emergencies and incidents throughout San Andreas. It is the mission of the San Andreas State Troopers to safeguard the lives and property of the community we serve, to reduce the fear and incidences of violence and crime, and better public safety while collaborating with the state’s many diverse communities to improve resident’s standards of living. Our mandate is to do so with the highest level of honor, integrity, safety, service, and security, while at all times conducting ourselves with the highest ethical standards to maintain public confidence. Join the San Andreas State Troopers today and make a better tomorrow. Safer roads, safer people.
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Don't like filling out applications and then leaving the server because you don't like it? Fuse Life Roleplay has a program called Guest Features. This means ANYONE can join our server! However, they will have limited permissions. These are limited to pistols, melee weapons, certain vehicles, and a few other things. The Guest Features in Fuse Life Roleplay is to let people come in and experience the server and community. What are you waiting for? Start your story today!
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It's an idea we've been talking over in our playgroup. In short, it would make mirror services near useless, as you could only do it once, and it stops you from ever continuing crafting on the original item.
A lot of people seem to have a big problem with mirror services, and GGG seems to have a big problem with players getting near-perfect gear. This change would severely limit the amount of perfect "mirror tier" items in the game, and force more people to craft good/great items instead.
You could even make Mirrors more rare, and introduce a lesser Mirror that had this effect, and keep the original Mirror as is.
Anyway 2 dollars a pound.

Background: I have been living in Perth for about 2 years now due to work purposes and what I notice is that most people in the public has the tendency to ignore crime committed by Indigenous people. For example, if a non-indigenous person attempts to harrass other people such as screaming at them for no apparent reasons in public places, that person would either be kicked out by security or told by someone else to stop immediately. But this is not the case if the harasser is of Indigenous descent. There is always this weird "silent atmostphere" where everyone is just kind of trying their best to pretend it doesn't happen.
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What I am trying to do: so this makes me curious about Indigenous crime in Australia in general so I decided to do some Google search about it. I tried searching for "Aboriginal and Indigenous crime and violence in Australia" and (amazingly) there aren't any meaningful sources of information out there! The top results displayed by Google only show random information about Indigenous hardship, culture, history and the like - which is irrelevant to the information I am seeking. The only useful piece of information that I found on Google was an ABC News article discussing research done by the Australian Institute of Criminology - but that article was like 13 years old!
I then limited my search time frame down to 5 years interval and it seems like most of the information about Indigenous crime was kinda stopped or ceased to exist from 2008-2010 onward. This brings me back to the original question: Is this type of information censored by the Australian Government? Why did they only start censoring it from 2008-2010 onward and not before this? Is there a transparent source of information about Indigenous crime that I can search for?
Thank you!

In Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, Astoria-bound N runs via the R from Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr to Canal St from Jun 10 - 12, Sat 12:01 AM to Mon 5:00 AM
In Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, 96 St-bound Q runs via the R from DeKalb Av to Canal St from Jun 10 - 12, Sat 12:01 AM to Mon 5:00 AM
Trains stop at DeKalb Av, Jay St-MetroTech, Court St, Whitehall St-South Ferry, Rector St, Cortlandt St and City Hall.
Note: At Canal St, uptown N, Q stops at the R platform during this time.
What's happening?
Track maintenance

Part 1 - https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/11ovngn/i_play_a_game_they_call_sleep_points_every_night/
Previous Part - https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/13deva8/i_play_a_game_they_call_sleep_points_every_night/
When I got home from school, even though I knew the clock wasn’t literally going to try to eat me alive like it always seemed to want to on weeknights, I still watched it intensely, dreading every minute that passed. Even though this had all been what I was hoping for over the course of the last week and a half, going through with everything I would need to do to meet up with Anastasia at her hour in the middle of the night still seemed way scarier than just dealing with the clock’s nightly threats against my life which, by that point, had become something of a routine for me.
At 11:00 PM, my parents looked like they had gone to sleep. I would wait another hour as Anastasia had advised. I would leave at midnight. And that wouldn’t be a problem since it was a Friday night, and my clock wasn’t going through its usual changes. By that time, the clock hadn’t started glowing or even turning the slightest shade of red.
When midnight did come, the clock was still in the same state as it was at 11. My parents were still asleep. They hadn’t even gotten up for a bathroom break. I turned on the kitchen lights, hoping it wouldn’t wake my parents up. It didn’t. I went to the kitchen table to take the keys to my father's truck. They weren’t there. I had no idea where else to look for them.
I tried looking all around the kitchen and living room. I checked mom and dad's bathroom. Nothing. I didn’t know how I would make my way to Anastasia’s house now. I could just picture her, spending all night at her back door, waiting for me to show up, without me ever coming. Maybe I'd find the keys tomorrow. But that seemed like a fat chance since dad wasn't gonna be driving anywhere tomorrow.
I wouldn't have him to find them for me. It looked like I’d have to wait a whole nother week on any answers now.
I had recently invested in a new watch. I had some allowance money left over from when I was a kid. My school has a little gift shop with small things like school-themed wristwatches, so after my last class of the day, I stopped by and picked up a College High watch so I could check the time without needing to look at the clock in my room or at my phone. I'm bringing this up because at around this point I was watching with increasing anxiety as time was passing by. According to the watch, the time now was 12:30 and I still didn’t have any access to my father’s car.
I was already feeling hopeless enough, just thanks to that fact, but then I remembered that I still didn’t even know how to get to Anastasia’s house.
Since I still didn’t know where the keys were and it didn’t look like I’d find them any time soon, I figured I’d take a break from looking, and go on my phone to look up her address on google maps. I knew I shouldn’t have been using my phone since it was apparently super important not to let it die. I figured it must've been one of those rules like keeping my head under the blanket when The Sandman showed up, along with the rest of my body. But I would only need my phone for a few minutes. Just enough time to look at google maps and sketch out a rough map of the route from my house to Anastasia’s.
The first thing I noticed when I typed in her address was that, thankfully, her house wasn’t too horrendously far away from mine. It would just be a 4-mile drive. So hopefully this meant that, if push did come to shove, I could still just walk there if I had too. I’d probably be late, but that would be better than not showing up at all. So, I at least had that as a back-up plan if nothing else. But it would still be risky. It would take a lot of time to walk there, and then to walk back. Maybe mom and dad would be up after all was said and done. Maybe they’d hear me coming back inside the house, regardless of how I made it to Anastasia’s. Maybe I’d wake up Anastasia’s parents too.
Since I only had an hour and thirty-five minutes left, I had no time to worry all that much about any of this though. I had to get to work, jotting down the path to Anastasia’s house. I would turn left out of my driveway, stay on that road for about a mile and a half, then turn right and stay on that road for another half-mile, then turn left for another mile, and then left again for a final fourth mile.
Another thing I noticed was that Anastasia lived out in the middle of absolute nowhere. I thought I did too, but Anastasia’s house was on a whole nother level of out there.
Fortunately, that meant I’d be driving pretty much exclusively on backroads, so it would literally be impossible to take a wrong turn after I made my first turn out of the driveway and the next right turn after that after about a mile and a half. It also meant that I would be pretty much guaranteed not to run into any other drivers, especially at that time of night. But I guess her remote address explained why she didn’t have the internet connection she would need to do a video call.
Since it was a quarter to 1 by that point, after I found out how to drive to her house, I put on all the layers I could find, took the flashlight that my mom had given me for the walk I had went on during the week prior, and started trying to walk over there, without my parents’ car, despite her recommendations. Even though it was four miles by car, I wouldn't have to worry about staying on the road if I just walked there. If I walked in a straight line, I could get there in just over 2 and half miles or so. I had decided to leave, not out of the front door, but out of the door in the hallway that led to the garage. That door made less noise than the front door.
Unfortunately, I started to get the sense that I hadn’t thought this plan through when I realized I would still have to open the garage door in order to make my way into the outside world. Which, yeah, made considerably more noise than the front door. But then I realized it didn’t matter, since I was gonna have to open the garage door anyway if I wanted to get the car out of the garage and onto the road. So, I had still made the right decision. Except no I hadn’t, because I had just remembered that I still didn’t have the car keys, and so I was supposed to be ditching the whole car idea anyway and had just randomly forgotten about all of that.
I know that all probably sounded pretty messy and wasn't very easy to follow, but maybe someone else reading with ADHD can relate. But anyway, confusing thought processes aside, I walked out the front door and started making my way to Anastasia’s on foot. It really was freezing though. I really did wonder if I could actually make it all the way to her house.
Before I even made it to the end of the driveway, I began to change my mind and decided driving really would be a more reasonable alternative. Obviously, the backroads wouldn’t even be close to snow plowed. But the snow only looked to be about maybe 6 or 7 inches deep, which was still driveable enough with the snow-proof tires that my dad had on his truck. This level of snow isn't all that uncommon around here, so those tires are pretty much a must-have for anybody living in deathly cold climates like us.
So, I could still drive despite the snow, albeit only very slowly what with how much the snow would slow me down. But I was supposed to be driving slowly anyway because I was only 14 and didn’t have a license. But I still couldn’t drive without those keys. Then I remembered I still had my bike in the garage. It was supposedly “all terrain”, so hopefully that meant it could handle the snow. I went into the garage, got my bike out, and tried riding it. Unfortunately, the tires on that bike weren’t even close to capable of handling the snow. I tried pedaling as hard as I could but hardly got anywhere before falling over. I had a feeling this would probably happen. It seemed like a dumb idea but, since I didn’t want to steal my dad’s truck and I couldn’t even seem to find his keys anyway, I figured it was at least worth a shot.
I was just about to say “fuck it” and try meeting Anastasia again on some other night when, just as I had put my bike down in the garage, I had seen that my dad had left behind his keys in the key slot of his car door. Apparently, the reason that they weren’t where they usually were was because my father had locked the truck and just forgot to take his keys with him. I turned the key sticking out of the driver’s side door and it opened. So I really could get inside of his truck after all.
I put the key into the ignition and then put it in reverse. The truck made quite a bit of noise when its ignition started, so I had just hoped that I hadn’t woken up my parents with that. Luckily, my garage is on the other side of the house from where my parents sleep, so the sound did at least have a long way to travel. Once I started backing the truck out of the garage and into the driveway, I ran into another problem. Since the roads weren’t plowed, they were just as snowy as anywhere else. So even with the rearview mirror, I had no idea where my driveway stopped and the road started. I figured I would just keep backing up until I felt like I’d gone far enough.
Far enough came sooner than expected though. Eventually, the car had very clearly backed into the grass, meaning I had backed up too far. Fortunately, I saw that I hadn’t veered too much out of the straight line I was trying to go in, because driving in reverse meant I could see the truck’s tracks right in front of me with the help of the headlights. The car fell onto the grass from back to front. So that meant that the road was now directly in front of me. Since I needed to take a left from my house if I was facing away from it, and I was now facing the opposite direction given that I was looking right at it, that meant that I now had to make a right turn in order to still be going in the right direction.
I took a moment to make sure my logic was right and, once I felt confident, I turned the truck right and then tried to feel for where the road was based on how well the truck was able to move. Eventually I was able to drive relatively smoothly, so I took that to mean that I was back on the road. I tried to angle myself properly so that I wouldn’t wind up veering off the road again. Now and then I would wind up driving myself off the road. But since I was only going like 5 miles an hour, I was able to catch myself before the car wound up falling into any ditches or something.
Since the road was entirely empty, I eventually made the decision to just drive in the middle of the road. Or at least, wherever I thought the middle of the road was. That way, I’d limit the likelihood of driving myself off the right edge.
After about 20 or 30 minutes of driving painfully slowly, I finally saw the sign for my first turn. Since all the turns I was making were fairly sharp ones, they were basically all 90 degrees, there were road signs that I could use to gauge when I should turn without needing to see the road itself. So I still knew when to do it, even though I couldn’t see the road under all the snow and I couldn't use GPS since my phone had to stay on the charger at all costs.
But the snow still made those sharp turns very difficult to make. So I had to start all my turns pretty far ahead of where they actually would’ve been in the road. Naturally, I wound up driving off the road when making literally all of them. But I was always able to work out where the road was supposed to be soon enough. I guess since people are more likely to veer off the road when making turns as opposed to when they’re driving straight, there didn’t seem to be any ditches around all those sharp turns, thankfully enough.
After I made that first turn, I checked my watch. It was now a quarter after 1. I still had 50 minutes to go. I wasn’t making great time, but I had still made it about a third of the way in only about 25 minutes. If I kept up the pace, I’d be there after just under an hour of driving. Which would put me there a little bit after 2 AM. So, pretty much exactly at 2:05, the time we agreed on.
I kept on driving incredibly slowly for what felt like forever. Finally I had made my last turn, and after a bit, I could see lights from the houses off the side of the road in the distance. I figured that this must be the neighborhood Anastasia lived in. If you could even call it a neighborhood. The houses were so hugely spaced out that it hardly even made sense to say you had neighbors. But then, she really did live out in the middle of nowhere.
Every time I passed by a house, I got out of the car and looked for an address with my flashlight. This slowed me down, but it still ensured that I would be headed for the right house. I kept the slip of paper with her address on it since I knew that, without that sheet, I’d absolutely forget which address was hers. I was actually pretty pleased with myself for having thought ahead like that. I usually didn’t. I guess I still usually don’t, if I’m being honest.
I was worried that this whole procedure of getting out of the car to scope out for an address every time I passed a new house would make me late. But fortunately, Anastasia’s house was the third house I came across on that street. So thankfully, I didn’t wind up having to check that many houses and it only cost me maybe another 5 minutes. When I checked my watch, I found I had actually arrived sooner than I had thought. Even with checking every house I had come across up to that point for the address, it was only 1:50.
I had made it with 15 minutes to spare. That meant I had made that last two thirds of my trip in about the same amount of time that I had spent on my first, meaning I had wound up going twice as fast. I suppose as I had gotten comfortable with driving, I sped up the car a little without even realizing it. Doubling your speed sounds like it should be a huge difference, but when you’re only going from 5 miles per hour to 10, I guess it must be pretty hard to notice.
Since I had so much time left and the weather outside was still hellishly cold, I stayed in the truck with the heater blaring. After a couple of minutes, I noticed an ominous red light glowing out of the side of the house. That seemed off to me since surely that couldn’t have anything to do with Anastasia’s clock. It wasn’t a weeknight and even if it was, it was still well past midnight. I remembered what she had told me about how I was still on Stage One. Maybe the fact that she was on a much later stage had something to do with what I was seeing. The fact that I was still on Stage One did, after all, seem like it had something to do with the fact that I was only threatened by the clock on weeknights.
My curiosity had gotten the better of me, and so I braved the cold and snow to go check out what was happening. There was a window on the side of the house. The curtains were left open so with the red light blaring from it, I could see inside fairly easily. Especially since the house was only one story, so it wasn’t like the window was too high up off the ground for me to see through, either.
My fears had been confirmed. Upon looking into the room, I could see exactly where the red light was emanating from: the clock on the nightstand. The face inside was as clear as ever. Every feature slowly growing, approaching the glass in front of the clock’s face. But it wasn’t looking at me. It was very clearly directing its vile and hateful gaze at the person under the covers.
The person had her head covered underneath the blanket, so I couldn’t directly tell who it was. But I figured it had to be Anastasia. For one, there was no way in hell anybody else in her family was playing Sleep Points too. I mean, what are the odds of that? And for another, the room pretty clearly looked like it belonged to a teenage girl about Anastasia’s age. Everything looked like it was pink and had all kinds of frills to it. I even noticed some boyband poster on the other end of the room. If this wasn’t the most stereotypical teenage girl’s room, I had no fucking clue what was.
Finally, 2 o’clock had come. I could see why she had told me 2:05. I had never seen the monster from the clock break out. I had always had my head under the covers whenever it happened. But since this was Anastasia’s clock and not mine and since the face in the clock was staring her down and not me, and since I had entire wall separating me from the thing, I guess I somehow managed to muster up the courage to watch the monster in action.
Suddenly, the hands and numbers of the clock’s face began to almost melt into the monster’s face. It had broken out of the sheet of glass holding it back. But that seemed to be the only thing that was broken. The rest of the actual clock remained pretty intact as the unspeakable thing from within started to slither out of the clock and onto the floor. Since the hands and numbers were still on its face, it kinda looked like they had been imprinted on it like some kind of tattoo artwork. It very quickly expanded in size and let out this unholy screech that I could hear very loudly even from behind the window. But Anastasia was still sleeping very peacefully. Totally motionless like nothing at all was going on.
It prowled around her bed, looking for the slightest sign of motion. It looked almost skeptically at her. As if it could tell whether she was really sleeping or not. And God only knows what would’ve happened to her if she wasn’t. Eventually the monster seemed satisfied with what he saw and shrunk himself down to his original size. He slid back into the clock and as he did so, there was one last glow of red light. The glass had been restored. It was now 2:01.

Compiled by u/zhilia_mann and extensively revised by u/Loleeeee.

Reminders for Dust of Dreams

Notes on half a book

Dust of Dreams is an odd read. It hasn't seen the reconsideration that Toll the Hounds has; it's ranked ninth in our last reader survey. The Author's Note at the beginning spells out some of the reasons:

Dust of Dreams is the first half of a two-volume novel, to be concluded with The Crippled God. Accordingly, if you’re looking for resolutions to various story-threads, you won’t find them. Also, do note that there is no epilogue and, structurally, Dust of Dreams does not follow the traditional arc for a novel.

He's not kidding. But that's not the whole story.
DoD does have a climax, but it feels more like the mid-book climax that is Y'ghatan in The Bonehunters chapter 7. It's monumental, it changes things, but it doesn't reach out and incorporate disparate storylines or tie together themes. It also arrives incredibly suddenly and catches me off guard even when I know what's coming.
More generally, DoD takes its time. Erikson continues to lean in to the slow character moments that characterize Toll the Hounds, but now does so with the urgency dictated by the imminent conclusion of the series. Theme drives DoD as much as plot -- to the extent that some readers like to claim that basically nothing happens.
There are two specific things to look out for as you read. First, there's a specific plot that seems very odd if you don't catch one hint in the prologue. In order to not give away the game, u/kashmora and I have decided to discuss that plot in more detail under spoiler tags in order to maintain a balance between spoon-feeding the reveal and actually having something to say.
Second, there's a notorious event in chapter 15. It's effectively foreshadowed and won't come as a huge shock, but it's brutal. If any previous sexual violence has bothered you, this is guaranteed to turn your stomach. It's handled respectfully, but it's vile. As the chapter approaches, we will likely give lines and timestamps to stop and then restart reading if you feel you just can't do it.
I genuinely like Dust of Dreams (and, unusually, tend to rate it over The Crippled God). But it's an experience.

Characters

Since Dust of Dreams picks up largely where Reaper's Gale left off, we have a somewhat limited cast of new characters. That said, a) we continue to expand on the Lether continent and b) we're bringing back characters we haven't seen since The Bonehunters.

Gods and Ascendants

Elder

• Errastas: The Errant, Master of Holds. Likes to "push" and claims that to be his nature.
• Kilmandaros: Primarily known for pummeling her problems into dust. Mother of Sechul Lath.
• Sechul Lath: Knuckles, the Lord of Chance and Mischance. He, like his mother, seems to have extra joints and a horizontally hinged sternum.
• Mael: Bugg, Tehol's one-time man-servant and now Ceda, Chancellor, and Treasurer. Also the god of the sea.
• Ursto Hoobutt and Pinosel: Ancient gods of beer, wine, and fertility.
• Olar Ethil: Goddess and Soletaken Eleint Bonecaster of the T'lan Imass.
• Togg and Fanderay: The Wolves of Winter, gods of war and current occupants of the Beast Throne. Worshiped by the Perish Grey Helms and, before their destruction, the Grey Swords under Toc Anaster.
• Grizzin Farl: An ancient god, now disappeared.
• Tiam (or T'iam, or Tiamatha): Goddess of dragons.

New Gods and Ascendants

• Hood: You remember Hood, right? The Jaghut god of death that just died himself?
• D'rek: The Worm of Autumn, goddess of decay.
• Dessembrae: Lord of Tragedy. Divine aspect of Dassem Ultor.
• Shadowthrone and Cotillion: God of Shadow and the Rope, Patron of Assassins. Schemey plotters.

Letherii

• Tehol (the Only) is now the King of Lether
• Janath Anar is his Queen
• Brys Beddict titled a Prince now, Commander of the Letherii Army
• Aranict a promising High Mage, Atri-Ceda

The Wanderers

• Last: An ex-Letherii farmer. Lived with his father after his mother died when he was young. A big but meek fellow.
• Asane: A meek Letherii woman. Talked down upon by both Nappet & Sheb.
• Sheb: An ex-convict. Sentenced to what amounts to a death sentence, he survived prison, though was significantly changed for it.
• Rautos: A man with scant few memories, reminiscings of his wife, and a familiar name.
• Taxilian: An architect from the city of Taxila, Seven Cities, also with a familiar name.
• Nappet: Another Letherii ex-convict. He's a bully.
• Breath: A Letherii witch that's filled with spite & thoughts of drowning.
• The Ghost: An unnamed character that can move between the Wanderers at will. Has peculiar memories, though is presumably incorporeal.

The Refugium

• Rud Elalle: Son of Menandore and Udinaas, growing up very fast (think Silverfox).
• Ulshun Pral: A leader of the Bentract Imass of the Refugium. Son of Onrack T'emlava and Kilava Onas.
  • Seren Pedac: Acquitor and budding mage of Mockra, Trull's widow.
• Udinaas: Former slave to the Sengar household and former confidant of Rhulad. Dark, cynical, but way too insightful.

The 14th and its Allies

Malazan Leadership

• Lostara Yil: Former Red Blade, former lover of the Claw Pearl, now Tavore's right hand in T'amber's place. Trained in the Shadowdance.
• Blistig: Former commander of the Aren Guard, now Fist under Tavore.
• Kindly and Pores: The notorious captain and his long-suffering lieutenant, and/or Master Sergeant, and/or Quartermaster.

Marines

• Keneb: Fist who led the defense of Froth Wolf and Silanda in Malaz City. Detached to the Marines.
• Faradan Sort: Keneb's second in command. May have stood the Stormwall in the past.
• Bottle, Cuttle, Smiles, Koryk, Tarr, and Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas: Fiddler's squad. Bottle is still a mage who can control animals and Corabb is still Oponn's favorite. 4th squad, 9th company.
• Gesler, Stormy, Sands, Shortnose, Flashwit, Uru Hela, and Mayfly: Gesler's squad, almost entirely composed of heavies. 5th squad, 9th company.
• Hellian, Touchy, Brethless, Balgrid, Tavos Pond, Maybe, and Lutes: Hellian's squad. Hellian is a drunk and has arachnophobia. Touchy and Brethless, her two corporals, have served under her since way back in Kartool. 8th squad, 9th company.
• Thom Tissy, Tulip, Ramp, Jibb, Gullstream, Mudslinger, and Bellig Harn: 12th squad, 9th company under Thom Tissy.
• Urb, Reem, Bowl, Hanno, Saltlick, and Scant: 13th squad, 9th company. Urb earned his own squad after dragging Hellian out of Y'ghatan, an event she still periodically wants to kill him over.
• Pravalak Rim, Honey, Strap Mull, Shoaly, Sinter, Kisswhere, and Lookback: 4th squad, 3rd company.
• Badan Gruk, Ruffle, Skim, Nep Furrow, Reliko, and Vastly Blank: The heavily Dal Honese 5th squad, 3rd company. Nep Furrow is a bush warlock, who talks in an incomprehensible accent.
• Primly, Hunt, Mulvan Dreader, Neller, Skulldeath, and Drawfirst: 10th squad, 3rd company.

New Bridgeburners

• Hedge: previously dead, now seemingly alive, Bridgeburner.

Other Soldiers

• Cord, Shard, Limp, Ebron, Crump, and Sinn: 7th squad, 9th company, largely former Ashok Regiment. Sinn is a traumatized girl and high mage. Crump's actual name is Jamber Bole, High Marshal of the Mott Irregulars.
• Balm, Deadsmell, Throatslitter, Galt, Lobe, and Widdershins: This humble writer's favorite squad, the 9th, 9th company. Deadsmell is a mage of Hood. Throatslitter's laugh can nearly kill all on its own.
• Masan Gilani: Dal Honese heavy and excellent rider. She has... other charms. Technically in Urb's squad?

Civilians

• Banaschar: Former high priest of D'rek, the Worm of Autumn. Stole the entire temple coffers after D'rek killed her followers (except Tayschrenn and Banaschar himself).
• Withal: "Foreigner" from The Bonehunters and the Meckros blacksmith who made Rhulad's sword for the Crippled God.
• Sandalath Drukorlat: Tiste Andii wife of Withal. First killed long ago, her soul was released by the Crimson Guards traveling with Seren Pedac in Midnight Tides. She was restored as a companion for Withal and it didn't go well at first. Now they're married, so something worked out?
• Grub: Keneb's adopted son. Walked the Chain of Dogs. Now the only friend of Sinn. Has a knack for saying prophetic things. Oh, and there's an epigraph in House of Chains (Chapter 19, if you're curious) that identifies him as a future First Sword of the Malazan Empire.

Khundryl Burned Tears

• Warleader Gall: still headed by him
• Hanavat: his wife

Perish Grey Helms

• Mortal Sword Krughava: Fifty-odd years old Mortal Sword of the Wolves of Winter (you may recall that Toc held that title in conjunction with Krughava).
• Shield Anvil Tanakalian: Shield Anvil of the Grey Helms. Homesick, young, and with some curious ideas about his role.
• Destriant Run'Thurvian: Destriant of the Grey Helms. Befriended Fist Keneb in the Bonehunters. Doesn't hold Tanakalian in particularly high esteem.

K'Chain Che'Malle and Associates

We meet a surviving nest - Ampelas Rooted - headed by Matron Gunth'an Acyl. She is guarded by J'an Sentinels (Bre'nigan), K'ell Hunters (Sag'Churok, Kor Thuran, Rythok) and Shi'gal Assassins (Gu'Rull). Her One Daughter is called Gunth Mach who was last seen cutting down Redmask at the end of RG, along with Sag'Churok.

The Snake

A group of refugee children on the run from Kolanse, marching through hostile lands and suffering from hunger and thirst. The train is led by the oldest/tallest boy among them, called Rutt. He carries a baby called Held. His second in command is Badalle, who is also our main Snake POV character. Other notable children among them are Saddic who follows Badalle and commits her poems to memory; Brayderal who seems pale inspite of the harsh sun.

The Shake

• Yedan Derryg: Half-brother to Yan Tovis. Known for a chiseled jaw.
• Yan Tovis: Preda at Shake Tower, also called Twilight.
• Pully and Skwish: Ancient Shake witches.

White Face Barghast and Associates

• Onos Toolan: Warleader of the White Face Barghast. You may note, technically not Barghast.
• Hetan: His wife. Daughter of the late Humbrall Taur.
• Cafal: Hetan's brother and Great Warlock of the White Faces.
• Setoc (of the Wolves): Known as Stayandi. A Letherii child and sole survivor of Redmask's attack in Reaper's Gale. Now a wolf-born child with an innate connection to wolves.
• Maral Eb:Chief of the Barahn clan of the White Faces
• Sekara (the Vile): It's in the name, really.

T'lan Imass

• Nom Kala: Bonecaster of the Brold T'lan Imass.

The Bolkando

• Chancellor Rava: Chancellor of the Bolkando Kingdom. Is oddly attracted to Felash. Is also in his seventies while Felash is fourteen.
• Conquestor Avalt: Military commander of the Bolkando Army with the glaring exception of the Evertine Legion. A decent military commander and he looks the part.
• Queen Abrastal: also called Firehair, commands the Evertine legion, co-ruler of the Bolkando lands
• Princess Felash: 14th daughter of Queen Abrastal, deemed the cleverest by her mother, 14 years old, away from the kingdom on a diplomatic mission.

Forkrul Assail

There are Pures, Watered and Shriven. The Pures are - as the name suggests - pure-blooded Forkrul Assail. The Watered are hybrids of Forkrul Assail and other races - often humans - while the Shriven refer to any race that doesn't have enough Forkrul blood to be considered Watered. The Shriven are essentially the slave caste of the Forkrul.

Other

• Icarium: Half-Jaghut son of Gothos. Cursed to forget but immensely powerful.

Wait, what's going on again? What you need to know to start reading.

The Malaz 14th - now Tavore's Bonehunters - invaded the Letherii Empire, ostensibly as a punitive expedition against the Tiste Edur raiding on Imperial lands (namely, Sepik). At the same time, due to machinations by Tehol Beddict, in conjunction with the Malazan invasion, Letherii society was in intense upheaval which ended in a defacto revolution placing Tehol at the head of the Kingdom of Lether.
In a similar timeframe, Icarium Lifestealer activated a strange machine with far-reaching consequences, one of the many among which being levelling an entire city block and killing - among others - Taxilian, Senior Assessor, Taralack Veed, and Rautos Hivanar.
The Errant was bound to Feather Witch through a temple sanctified in his name, and though he eventually won out - drowning Feather Witch in the fetid waters beneath Letheras - he lost his eye. The loss of power stings, and due to a combination of factors, the Errant craves a return to his ancient power. Also, Brys Beddict has returned to the world of the living.
There's a whole lot of skykeeps within the Imperial Warren, as well as a handful of dragons nailed to crosses throughout the books - among them, an "otataral dragon" as witnessed by Pearl & Lostara in House of Chains, and Sorrit, a dragon aspected to Serc, as found by Icarium & Mappo in the Bonehunters.
Redmask failed - and died - in whatever quest the K'Chain Che'Malle set to him, and it seems they're getting desperate.
Silchas Ruin set off to attack Letheras but was beaten back - chiefly by a few well-placed cussers to the face. "Fucking dragon."

Geography

We mostly stay in the continent of Lether but now we also include the Eastern end called Kolanse. Here is a fan made beautifully rendered map of all the places we encounter- done by u/joshuabbutler
Note: Given the extensive Dramatis and the convergence of dozens of threads in this pre-final book, we are stopping the intro here. We plan to update more and expand this further as we keep reading.

I've gone ahead and listed down all of the 'fatigues' I've encountered during my time with D4. I'm around level 85, and feel pretty confident in the list below. Feel free to add your own perspective to Fatigues you've felt, or offer your opinions in contrast to mine below. D4 is an amazing first step for an ARPG to take, and I really think they've got the 'bones' to make something good. Addressing some of these sources of fatigue would, ultimately, be what I'm looking for in future content updates.

1. (Design Decision) Looking at Renown and knowing I'll have to repeat this grind next season.
2. (UI/UX) Picking up Normal/Sacred gear when I'm using Sacred/Ancestral. No way to loot filter.
3. (UI/UX) Plucking lower tier gems out of my already-limited equipment tab.
4. (UI/UX) Seeing Plants/Ore/Salvage tab and knowing gems could have just fit in a tab like that.
5. (Design Decision) The amount of CC that outright stops the flow of the game.
6. (Design Decision) A Dodge button with no immunity? Why am I not unstoppable for its duration?
7. (Bug?) An inconsistently triggered ~1 second of locked animation at the end of my Dodge.
8. (Balancing) Standing in boss AOEs and taking negligible damage. At least make damage ramp.
9. (Balancing) Only a handful of monsters that represent a threat (even less excluding CC)
10. (Game Feel) Horse maneuvering and inconsistent dips in momentum when clipping collisions.
11. (UI/UX) The amount of unnecessary text in a Sigil's Dungeon Affixes with advanced tooltips on.
12. (UI/UX) No quick macro option to toggle advanced tooltips on/off when I want them.
13. (Design Decision) Finishing a quest and getting a single rare or cache of... rawhide...
14. (Level Design) Thinking I'm done with a dungeon and seeing ANOTHER chamber to clear.
15. (Level Design) Dying and checking how aggressively far back my respawn is in dungeons.
16. (Level Design) Not wanting to do dungeons out of fear of tedium in their tasks/backtracking. POE maps are procedural and easy to progress through. Revisits to the game optimize.
17. (Level Design) Dungeon names and level sections have no identity / feel random / repetitive.
18. (Design Decision) Knowing that at most, a new season will let me choose what class to play, but my agency over what I play is broadly defined by the legendary affixes that drop for me. I felt less agency over my build than I would in a roguelike like Hades, and felt punished for trying to play the build I /wanted/ to play (playing storm druid and have only gotten wearbear uniques...).
19. (Design Decision) Lack of agency in hunting for gear. Selling/salvaging does not fill me with the feeling that my bad gear is being converted into a potential future for good gear - crafting is too limited.
20. (Design Decision) Seeing a white or blue item on the ground and knowing there's no reason for it to be there beyond 'that being a thing arpgs have'. Decisions like this feel as if they've been made to check off the box of what a Diablo game should be, with no real thought into how they fit into the core gameplay loop.
21. (Design Decision) - Level Scaling - Sifting through five levels worth of new gear, hoping to find affixments that speak to the build I'm currently running and finding nothing. Meanwhile, the rest of the game has become significantly harder and I am forced to adapt to the curve and slot on a chest piece I don't want to. The game does not feel like a power fantasy of feeling stronger - it is in fact the inverse of that. Every level, I feel weaker, and I have little agency over the interactions I have with that curve. Breakpoints in uniques and paragon board capstones are the only significant breakpoints along the lvl 50-100 grind.
22. (Design Decision) - The game is filled with tedium and backtracking, and I'm not even on my second character yet. Exploring the world once? Cool. But ARPGs are about making repeat navigations as fun and seamless as possible. The joy on new playthroughs comes from optimizing your navigation. Yet I am not excited about the prospect of doing this all over again next season. Cooldowns on 'making my horse run fast', only to have my speed clipped is frustrating. Roadblocks are frustrating. The time to navigate to a static dungeon I've already been to is frustrating. Knowing I'm faster when mounted and then having to slog it on foot through a dungeon is frustrating. Clearing a chamber, thinking I'm done, and then seeing I have to eliminate every foe in a new chamber is frustrating. Having to backtrack to the next chamber zone after finishing that floor's objective is frustrating. The amount of time I've spent in D4 not playing an arpg is frustrating. At the very least let me teleport to the next chamber in a dungeon when I've cleared its objectives, or give me a 'keystone' to drop near chamber exits that I can tp back to.

As it stands, a single full playthrough of D4 from 1-100 is exhausting. I am not finished, and I am already convinced I do not want to level another alt. Experimentation and payoff for the time I've invested in an ARPG is important to the power fantasy involved, yet I dont feel a sense of agency. I am playing a game that seems to actively does not want me to play a stormwolf druid due to the nature of both power and identity predominantly dropping from loot. The lack of crafting options to further shape gear into the playstyle I want is, also, lacking. I am greatly looking forward to seeing how they would incentivize players like myself to return, because unfortunately, I don't see myself replaying this game again.

… how much is killing an angel in a god’s temple using the blood of the head-god person going to cost them?
The first option: not at all. The group has done some pretty bad things in all campaigns with no retribution. But I think Mercer has his limits.
The second option: it’s cursing time! All of team B gets a curse effect that is almost, if not completely impossible to remove. Funny, but maybe too harsh for a long campaign.
The Third option: a more down-to-earth thing. With the gods tied up fighting the big bad, All representatives of the Dawnfather if not the entire pantheon become enemies of team B. They could join up with Luidinus, but then become enemies of several past characters from C1 and C2 (if not all of them. Remember, even non-god allied characters would prob get peeved about the torturing/kidnapping of their friends).
The fourth option: Repentance. The team does/promises something to cool the Dawnfather’s anger, like say stopping the bad guy or their souls become devoured.
The fifth option: Civil War! Two characters from team A have already sworn alliance to their gods, one of which is the dawnfather. At the very least it’ll be a way to slim down the guest character ranks.
What do you think will happen (anything generic like “the players will decide” or “it’s their game” will not be accepted)?
Bonus consequence: the entire village of simple country folk get wiped out by a militant religious order who’s temple was just destroyed. That’s why you don’t tickle the dragon’s tail, folks, no matter how justified you are.

My bf was driving my new car (arrived only 3 months ago) on downtown one-way streets and a grey Nissan sedan tried to turn left on the center lane. My dashcam recorded how that grey Nissan accelerated and sideswiped my car and went away without a stop.
My bf called the police. The police came and took some pictures and gave him his business card and a number…which we guess is the case number?(first time calling 911)
I was at work and didn’t know until very late…file a claim to my insurance but I’m not sure if I will get covered since my collision deductible is quite high and not sure if this applies to uninsured motorist.
Just wanna ask can the police here find that car? I have my dash cam video which showed pretty much everything except can’t read the license plate…we can even tell what state that plate was. Lived here for almost a year but never interacted with the STL police.

Yesterday I was found guilty for my traffic tickets of ”tint being too dark” and my license plate light not working. The citations were $20 each.
I posted bail like within a week of receiving the citations, I agreed to go to trial not for me to get back my $40 but because the unfairness of the tickets (should have been warning) and the lack of evidence. AGAIN THIS IS NOT TO TRY TO GET MY $40 BACK.
Late one night, as I was driving, a police car began following me. After a few minutes, they pulled me over because my license plate light wasn't working. It was my first time being stopped, and I'm only 23 years old. The officer also mentioned that my car's tint was too dark, but when I asked him to measure it, he refused and relied solely on his subjective judgment. I found this to be unfair. The officer requested my driver's license and proof of insurance. Unfortunately, I didn't have them with me, but I did have my out-of-state ID. Surprisingly, the officer accepted it and said he would check if I had a valid driver's license. Upon his return to my car, he asked my passenger for their ID. My passenger, rightfully so, declined to provide it. The officer left and returned with another officer, who also asked my passenger for identification. Once again, my passenger refused, and the officer mentioned the need to identify them for our safety and to ensure they had no outstanding warrants. It was an uncomfortable situation. Ultimately, the officer gave up and returned to his car. He came back with three tickets: one for the license plate light, one for the tint being too dark (despite no concrete evidence), and one for not having proof of insurance (which was quickly dismissed). He then insisted we call someone for a ride since we couldn't drive away without insurance. It felt as though they were doing their best to make things difficult for us. During the court proceedings for the tint violation, I found myself as the sole defendant. To my surprise, the prosecutor approached me and expressed their opposition. Being unfamiliar with the legal process, I felt nervous. The officer took the stand and shared his experience working for the city. When asked if he could determine tint darkness by sight alone, he confidently affirmed his ability. He then recounted his version of the traffic stop. When it was my turn to testify, I explained that this was my first time being stopped and emphasized my clean driving record. I mentioned how I had requested the officer to measure the tint, but he declined, relying solely on his subjective judgment. I argued that given the circumstances, the violations should have warranted warnings rather than citations. Although I briefly mentioned a possible connection to my passenger's refusal to show ID, the judge indicated that it was not relevant. Surprisingly, the judge advised me to consider the tickets as warnings due to their $20 value. This made me question why fairness and justice were not the primary considerations. In the end, I was found guilty of the tint violation, despite the lack of objective evidence. This outcome left me contemplating how the cost of a citation seemed to outweigh the principles of fairness and justice.
I have come up with a script i would try to follow during my appeal, i need it reviewed by legal peeps, idk.:
I stand before you today to appeal the decision rendered in my case regarding the tint ticket citation. I firmly believe that errors were made during the proceedings, and I am here to assert my rights and fight for justice. When I mentioned that this ticket should have been treated as a warning, the judge stated that I should consider them as warnings since the citations were only $20. I want to emphasize the importance of the principles at stake. It is not merely about a $20 fine; it is about the fundamental principles of justice and fairness that should guide this court's decision. I firmly believe that the significance of a case should not be measured solely by its monetary value. Each case, regardless of the amount involved, deserves a fair and impartial consideration based on the principles of justice and the rule of law. Such statement compels me to wonder how many others may have been deemed "guilty" based on the financial value of their tickets rather than the merits of their cases. The comment made by the judge regarding the triviality of the amount in question gives rise to concerns about the fairness and impartiality of the proceedings. The issuing authority relied solely on subjective observations and the officer's claimed expertise gained from years of experience. However, experience alone does not grant someone the ability to accurately measure tint darkness with their naked eye. The human eye is not a calibrated instrument, and its assessments are inherently subjective and prone to error. I would like to emphasize that I am not present here to provide proof regarding the compliance of my tint with legal limits. The responsibility of establishing the validity of the citation lies with the issuing authority. Neither the officer's visual assessment nor the video proof can substitute for concrete evidence. Without the availability of objective measurement tools like tint meters, the claims made remain unsubstantiated and lacking in credibility.
I implore this honorable court to consider the principles of justice and fairness. Should a citation be upheld based on mere speculation and subjective judgment? Should we accept the notion that years of experience magically grant someone the ability to measure tint darkness accurately? Today, I stand not just for myself but for everyone who values due process and believes in the importance of evidence and objectivity.

Source
I'm Iskarel. I maintain the PvE Thief builds and guides on Snow Crows
With a PvE perspective, I'm going to run through the changes, discuss their impact, and talk about current meta builds and how they're impacted.
Want the build-by-build cliff notes? Skip to the bottom, search for "tl;dr"
I know this is a lot. Think of it as a reference document.
A LOT has changed. The builds aren't unrecognizable but the texture has changed almost across the board.

Flanking is Dead (for most endgame bosse)

To make them more reliable in endgame PvE content, all effects that benefit when the player strikes from the flank or from behind now always apply their benefits when striking defiant foes.

Not all players know that "flanking" or "from behind or the sides" just means—don't be in front of the target.
Ever used a build with Thief runes? Just don't stand directly in front of the target.
What fewer players will know is that there's a small set of skills that actually need you to be ~180-degrees behind your target.

• Thief Backstab (deals double damage from behind)
• Thief Sword Stealth Attack (only dazes from behind)
• Ranger Greatsword Hilt (dazes from the front, stuns from behind. This basically doesn't matter in PvE)
• Mesmer Downstate phantasm (deals more damage if the phantasm hits from behind. Hey it's like a Thief!)

Which way does Keep Construct face when it descends back to the arena after the orb-rift-push phase?
Which way does Sabetha face during her Flame Wall?
I'm not going to answer these questions because the answers don't matter anymore! This skill expression is now gone.
Just backstab from any angle.
Ah but "defiant foes"? What isn't included there?
Can you backstab Primordus in the Harvest Temple strike if your group stays on the left vs right side, when looking from the center towards the dragon?

You would have to be on the right side. The left is the dragon's face.

Which way does Conjured Amalgamate face?

When approaching CA's platform, it is facing to your right. This also applies to the hands. Stand on the left side of the platform, and "above" the hands (closer to the portal leading away from this encounter).

Which way do the hands on Adina face?

2 o'clock (north), 5 o'clock (northwest), 7 o'clock (south), 10 o'clock (southeast)
No, I don't know why.
Just use your rifle and pierce two hands with Spotter's Shot + Death's Judgment! That's better than remembering these facing positions.

These are non-defiant "prop" type enemies. Also included here is Drakkar, the Octovine, and Tequatl. IIRC.
BTW Drakkar is made up 17 prop pieces, and you can only cast Deadeye's Mark on one of them. Don't play Deadeye here, you're trolling yourself. :D

Acrobatics Mental Gymnastics

Yeah this ain't it, chief. This is still a defensive and mobility-oriented traitline.
The damage modifier in Endless Stamina can't compete with Deadly Arts or Critical Strikes, even when combined with the Power in Swinder's Equilibrium.
The other stuff is maybe interesting for solo open world champions but Shadow Arts is already quite capable at that, and Condition Thief has a lot more toys to work with when solo compared to Power.
It's something but this traitline still feels ironically directionless.

Improvisational Theater of War

Interesting! We can now use this traitline predictably, resetting the cooldown of all or utility skills. On the surface that's good because it means we'll always get value out of the reset...unless our skill uses are staggered. More on that later.

Mag Bomb Delenda Est.

Currently this skill's damage-per-cast-time is roughly double that of Daredevil Staff 2, Weakening Charge. Notably, the cast time is short because it pulses damage.
The coefficient we have on the wiki, drawn from the Game's API, is 4.10. ANet lists a 1.50 (per hit, so 4.50 total) nerfed to 0.70. So... Uh...
Let's say Throw Magnetic Bomb's damage is nerfed to 50% of its current damage. Or there about.
So next patch, one Throw Magnetic Bomb is close to the damage of one Staff 2, but the damage comes out over time (during our Assassin Signet burst) and the cast animation is faster than Staff 2.

But is it worth losing Executioner?
Probably not. Executioner is approximately 9.52% damage on a fight that spends 50% of its time above 50% target HP and 50% of time below (due to Ferocious Strikes).
That's a lot of damage to be made up by another use of a stolen skill!

Daredevil's Bound to be Good

Bound: Increased power coefficient from 1.75 to 3.5

This ratchets up the damage of our dodge so that it beats the damage-per-cast-time of Punishing Strikes (skill 1 part C) and Staff 5, while still losing to Staff Strike and Staff Bash (skill 1 parts A/B), Staff 2, and Fist Flurry/Palm Strike.
This damage increase is valuable because

• (A) it makes dodging better for damage, on top of the damage modifiers provided by Havoc Specialist and Bounding Dodger
• (B) if we get excess endurance from our helpful allies, burning it off to maintain our modifiers hurts our DPS less on the future patch.

Auto chain go brrrr

Staff Strike, Staff Bash: Increased power coefficient.

... Uh oh.
This increase the DPS of the first and second part of the chain well beyond the last hit.
The optimal DPS rotation now involves interrupting the chain after the 2nd hit.
That's not easy to do on most professions, which have a limited number of viable interrupts, but we're Thief, baby!
Staff Strike, Staff Bash, Weakening Charge. Repeat. Throw in a Fist Flurry. Save your Palm Strike. Yeah. This sort of thing.
Calculations done by REMagic42 ( training-accident-36 ) show the following

• new auto chain interrupt rotation: 40,252
• old benchmark rotation: 38,593

A not insignificant DPS increase provided by this (unintended?) balance predicament.
You could just not do this. That's up to you. The build is getting buffed by ~4,000 DPS next patch but it still has all the old problems. Don't know those? Read here

Let's Get Physical (Lights out, follow the noise)

Various Physical Skill cooldown reductions

These are neat and strictly a positive.
Left, a great player who provides benchmarks for Power and Condition Daredevil, already tested Condition Daredevil with cooldown-traited Impairing Daggers and found them simply worse in group content vs Devourer Venom. You can read more on his benchmark.
So the Impairing Daggers cooldown reduction (CDR) doesn't matter to us.
A cooldown reduction for Channeled Vigor would've been cool!

This skill basically gives you a get-out-of-jail-free dodge if you're ever scared that burning all your dodges for Havoc Specialist will leave you vulnerable. You can get a dodge with Withdraw on a shorter cooldown but that travels backwards from your facing direction which can be scary.
This skill is also very useful for maintaining Lotus Training uptime when playing Condition Daredevil. If you can't keep hitting the boss with your auto-attack chain and F1 Steal, you will run out of endurance and lose your condition damage buff. Use Channeled Vigor to maintain buff uptime when you can't hit the boss. (This tip comes from Left!)

Impact Strike is still worse defiance-bar to cooldown ratio vs Basilisk Venom, but any improvement is nice. This skill is good when you can't guarantee all hits of Basilisk Venom will hit your target, or when you need to CC more frequently than Basilisk's cooldown allows.

Death-onate Plasma and "Boon Thief"

Farewell, Boon Thief. Without Quickness, we can no longer role-compress all those shiny boons in Plasma into a Quickness Build.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the damage of Detonate Plasma will not be worth its cast time purely from a DPS perspective, especially on a Condition Build, but you might still get some boon uptime from Daredevils on fights like Matthias and Twin Largos' Kenut.
You can now permanently sunset your Celestial/Ritualist gear for Boon Thief. Will you use it for Alacrity Specter later? I don't now, I don't know how much Alacrity is given by that trait. We'll talk more later. :)

Also Icebrood Saga exists

These really don't matter. Unstable Reagent is maybe a DPS increase, I don't have a log with it for cast time.
This is NOT Unstable Artifact BTW. That skill is still worth using for both Power and Condition DPS.
Cursed Artifact is like throw-Plaguelands, and an Ethereal field at that. It's free real estate on the Condition Build.
Time in a Bottle is squad-wide alacrity AND quickness. Take that, Chronomancer! It's only found in Cold War and randomly in EoD strikes. :)

Dumbed-down-eye

Deadeye Stolen Skill splash support

Stolen Skills now grant their beneficial effects around the caster.

These are mostly "splash" uptimes of boons, but you can also get superspeed and a modest heal. Neat! Deadeye providing a token amount of squad value beyond its DPS and CC output.

Deadeye Malicious Intent buff

Malicious Intent: Increased Malice gain from 1 to 2 in PvE only

This is actually big!
Firstly, this increases the damage dealt by the lower difficulty Be Quick or Be Killed Dagger Deadeye rotation (if you've ever heard someone described Dagger Deadeye as 5111151115111, that's this).

1 more Malice pip after each Mark and Stealth attack boost the damage modifier of Malicious Backstab. I don't have a quick estimate for this increase yet.

Secondly, this is wonderful for the Dagger-Dagger Maleficent Seven rotation.

All Power Dagger skills (Heartseeker, Dancing Dagger, Cloak & Dagger) are single-damage packet skills (with the exception of Dancing Dagger when bounced from your main target, to another enemy, and back to your main target). This means they have only one chance to score a crit, and thus only one chance to earn 2 Malice instead of 1.
Power Thief derives 15% critical chance from Critical Strikes' Keen Observer trait, which demands the player stay above 75% HP. You won't have 100% uptime of this trait in many raid fights, especially if your healer is slacking. If the current Dagger Deadeye benchmark was performed at 75% player HP, without drastically altering gear to accommodate for the missing critical chance, the benchmark could lose up to 12,000 DPS!, dropping it nearly into support territory.
This Malicious Intent buff gives you a safety cushion for one of those Initiative skills to score a non-crit, making the rotation more robust in endgame encounters. It does NOT reduce the minimum number of Initiative skills needed to reach maximum Malice: that is still 3 with Malicious Intent and 4 without. It does reduce the maximum needed by 1 skill, which is also great!

Quickly Fire For Effect

This trait no longer requires a target to grant boons to allies.

Er, it doesn't require one right now. Specifically, if you Mark a target, you can use your F2 and gain boons even if your stolen skill is obstructed by terrain. If you have your enemy targeted while outside 1,500 range you will get an out of range error that stops you from casting F2, but simply untargeting the enemy will let you use the skill to get boons. If you are obstructed or out of range, you don't hit the target.
I assume what this means is that if you do NOT have a marked target, you can cast a cantrip to get a new F2. That's cool and rather handy for the new Quickness build.

Shadow Flare isn't real, it can't hurt you

Shadow Flare: Reduced cooldown from 30 to 20 seconds. This skill only damages once instead of pulsing. Activate the flip-over Shadow Swap to trigger another damage instance from your original location.

Deadeye dumbed down. Navigating self-reveal with pulsing damage skills on DPS Deadeye has been a hallmark of modern builds for several years—Shadow Flare for Power, Thousand Needles for Condition.
That problem is now eliminated for Power. You don't need to know the timing, you don't need to know where to throw Shadow Flare. Just Do your backstab, cast Shadow Flare for one damage packet, cast it again, go for another Backstab. No fuss, no skill expression, no frustration, no learning curve.
I don't like this change, I understand why other people like this change. I think it's dumb to change this. If you don't like self-reveal, consider not playing the class that uses Stealth and Revealed for its DPS output.

Fun in the Chamber

One in the Chamber: This trait now also increase the damage of F2 Stolen Skills in addition to its previous effects

In case anyone is unfamiliar with Deadeye—it doesn't have access to any core Stolen Skills. No Mag Bombs here!
This is a nice perk. The important thing is that this trait gives us an extra F2 charge every time we use a Stolen Skill...That's for Quickness.
This trait is also valuable to Condition Deadeye builds (particularly since there's a 4/9 chance they get a stolen skill that applies damaging conditions!) and to Power Pistol-Pistol Deadeye. See more of that here.

Binding Shadow, my beloved

Binding Shadow - Reduced cooldown from 30 to20 seconds in PvE.

Cool! I love—

This skill now immobilizes marked targets instead of knocking them down

Oh. Uhhh it already immobilized them. I assume it immobilizes them more? That sucks, this was an amazing breakbar skill, particular on Condition Deadeye where it applied several poison stacks (natively, and via Panic Strike with Immobilize) and gave an extra F2 charge from One in the Chamber.
It's lower cooldown on boonstrip which is neat? Matches No Pain No Gain time in Fractals, I suppose.
Just use a Power Mesmer, they passively breathe boonstrip.

Quickness Deadeye builds

Three options!
Oops! All cantrips

This option will spam out cantrip like nobody's business to meet the voracious demand of Might uptime.
Fire For Effect grants 8 stacks of Might for 12 seconds. The with-Alacrity cooldown of Cantrips are: 16 (Binding Shadow, Shadow Flare), 20 seconds (Malicious Restoration heal), 25 seconds (Mercy, Shadow Gust). When using Mercy, the cooldown of F1 is effectively the cooldown of Mercy, plus minimally the cast time of the F2, plus the cast time of F1 again.
So some of our Might is locked behind 25+ seconds. Building for 100% Might Duration would be devastating for our DPS output. We could cover 100% Might uptime with a single trio of F2 casts anyway—Binding Shadow, Malicious Restoration, Shadow Flare—but that would not take tactical advantage of the natural Deadeye's Mark cooldown.
Instead, we'll cover Quickness with two sets of F2 casts, staggered across the duration of our Might stacks. Left has an old benchmark demonstrating this technique.

So that's our 24-might upkeep option. It's not pretty, and it's Cantrip spam. ANet said we wouldn't have this in the game anymore.
Well, what if we don't have to generate Might?
Then we have two options:
3 cantrips with no Improvisation

This option will maintain a burst of 24 might as we apply quickness, or we can space out the stolen skills to maintain at least 8 stacks indefinitely. Sounds pretty good!

Improvisation

We'll probably still be using Shadow Flare because it's just good damage, and Improvisation selects for builds that use active utility skills, not passive signets. We might even be able to use Malicious Intent instead of One in the Chamber for this build, earning us more damage on Malicious Backstab.

So we have options.

Quickness Deadeye weapon options (We don't have those! )

Maleficent Seven is the only equalizer at work that allows bad weapons to do somewhat okay, and without that, we're back to shopping with the to the usual harsh restriction of "the best single skill out of all these weapons crushes the validity of all other options".
Stealth attacks? Naw, just spam F2s without Malice.
"Filler" initiative skills used to build up to an Initiative reset at max Malice? Nope, don't care, whatever has the best initiative-to-damage ratio is what we're running.
Thief Dagger is about matched with Thief sword for auto attack damage but Dagger is home to the centralizing Cloak & Dagger → Backstab combo. This does huge damage from any direction—flanking is gone!
Sword, by contrast, suffers a DPS loss when using any dual wield skill, Headshot, or Black Powder. The only DPS gain skills are Cloak & Dagger (but the stealth attack for sword is BARELY worth using, you could actually just cast Cloak & Dagger twice in a row and do just as well), and Sword 2...without using the return-to shadowstep. Meaning Sword 2 has a 15-second cooldown. Just to do slightly more than the auto-attack.
Need CC? Pack an off-hand pistol and fill time with auto-attacks, they're very good.
What about Pistol?

It's just weaker.

Shortbow?

It sucks really bad against single targets.

Rifle? This is the sniper spec!

It sucks if you don't have Maleficent Seven for infinite Initiative and either stealth utility skills or Silent Scope to unlock Death's Judgment.

Specter, rant about single-target/ally-target support

Ally-targeted scepter skills now also grant a lesser effect to additional allies in a radius around the target.

I don't know why ANet is so obsessed with single target support for PvE Specter, but they'll learn its untenable eventually. They've been gradually walking back the single target focus ever since release, and we are now about 15 months past Specter's official release and coming up on 2 years since it's beta.
Ally-targeting is clunky.
Single-target support is nonviable. We have encounters that apply arena damage to all players, and each player in the squad can take damage from the same AoE and it's the healer's job to keep the whole team up.
A "lesser effect". Reduced duration? Great, what's the point of that? You might as well just make it all the reduced duration.
Does "splashed" Shadow Sap not even grant protection to the other allies? Great, we won't use it.
Hopefully this will just be something like reduced Barrier or Healing, and the Boons are intact, but it's already been confirmed by the new member of the design team, Trig, on a Twitch Stream (Mighty Teapot's?) that Endless Night will not give Quickness to "splashed" allies.
Maybe this skill shouldn't give quickness at all. Why is the design team not skill splitting? What are they afraid of?

The Dark Side of Scepter Splash

If you paid attention to Specter during its beta testing, you might be aware of a very weird build that used Endless Night (Scepter Pistol dual wield beam skill that granted quickness and 7-packets of Barrier to 3 allies, if you could pierce through the allies).
This rotation was initially theorycrafted by Left when Specter was first showed off. I did some early proof-of-concept on the build, then Left took it over and improved it to around 51,000 DPS.
That's a lot of damage!
Watch that video briefly, and notice how I swap between the enemy and my allies, applying one skill to the target then the Endless Night beam to my allies.
When Specter applies barrier to an ally, they receive a stack of Rotwallow Venom, which applies a short-duration stack of torment to a single enemy just like normal venoms.
Each cast of Endless Night back then was 21 applications of Rotwallow Venom, with more Torment duration than we have now.
ANet killed that build back during beta by making the beam target a single enemy, nerfing the quickness application, nerfing Rotwallow Venom duration, nerfing Specter's Torment damage modifier, nerfing Consume Shadows to require charging up.... The list goes on.
Why do I bring this up?

Scepter Autos on Allies

Currently the scepter auto chain applies 54 seconds of Torment (in the form of multiple stacks). If the scepter auto chain can instead apply barrier to 3 allies, then this balloons to 72 seconds without Strength of Shadows, or 108 seconds with Strength of Shadows.
Yes.
The auto-attack chain will be twice as strong when targeting allies, vs targeting the enemy.
Endless Night is not worth using against an enemy target, but it might be worth using on allies. This rotation won't have room for auto attacks, so I'm not pinning any hopes to this.
No, the optimal damage rotation will probably be Twilight combo, Siphon, and Shroud skills on the enemy, then filling time with Scepter skills on allies. We will probably spend less time in Shroud because those autos are just so cracked...

Second Opinion, moving away from Consume Shadows

Ever since beta all forms of Specter have run Consume Shadows—Alacrity, DPS, Heal. This is because Consume Shadows can apply barrier to allies, giving them Rotwallow venom. The other adept traits are purely defensive, so they're not used by the DPS and Alacrity builds...and Consume Shadows is an extremely potent healing tool. So potent, it's been nerfed repeatedly!

Charged time reduced from instant to 4 seconds, maximum shroud cut by more than 50%, conversion ratio reduced from 100 to 50%

Second Opinion will grant bonus Condition Damage, more with a Scepter. This should be, at minimum, +80/+80, which will beat the ~800 DPS provided by perfect Rotwallow Venom application from Consume Shadows.
Perfect?

If your allies are too injured and Consume Shadows only heals them overflowing into Barrier, you won't give them Rotwallow.

Traversing Dusk no longer gives Alacrity

This is just a heal trait now. That's just what it does.

Shadestep is the new Alacrity trait

Oh. Uh. I'll keep it quick.

1. This reduces our gameplay from 2 separate rotations with their own quirks and different Shroud lengths, to 1—the DPS rotation.

How do you give alacrity? Just go into shroud and push buttons.
How do you do DPS? Just go into shroud and push buttons.
Alacrity Specter's Well cooldowns were inaccessible inside Shadow Shroud because we inherited a shroud, not just a kit like Druid's Celestial Avatar or Holosmith's Photon Forge.
Druid Spirits off cooldown while in CA? Don't care, you can push em.
Specter wells off cooldown while in Shadow Shroud? You might be gaining DPS from shroud skills, or healing from Consume Shadows, but you're losing Alacrity uptime. Is that tradeoff worth it?
Doesn't matter anymore. Just do the benchmark DPS rotation.
You're too slow? Then your alacrity uptime will suffer. You need to be on pace with going in and out of shroud, just like the DPS rotation. Difference is, if you're bad at this, it's going to frustrate other people.
This is not the hardest rotation in game to optimize and you of course have the option to make it easier with Ritualist gear (which you should do anyway if you plan to still run Consume Shadows, will be a two-fold personal DPS loss).

\2. Ever been kicked out of Shroud by incoming damage in a raid/strike/open world meta? No more Alacrity uptime for you. Better refill your Shadow Force quickly—and Larcenous Torment generates Shadow Force FAR more slowly than Traversing Dusk

Fun fact: Traversing Dusk's 1% Shadow Force per ally in your shadowstep scales indefinitely, not just up to 5 players. That gives you colossal Shadow Force generation in crowded metas and even raids.

Want to use your Siphon on ally? No you don't, that's valuable Shadow Force generation you need to maintain tempo for Alacrity.
Again, you can wear Ritualist gear to soften this loss.
Want to have the utility of Well of Bounty? Well, previously that utility was tied to your Alacrity uptime, your DPS uptime (lingering outside shroud for Well of Bounty was a loss), and your healing output (Traversing Dusk, and maintaining tempo in/out of Shadow Shroud for Consume Shadows).
Now you can take Well of Bounty and have it on demand, at a DPS loss.
Previously you could have just take advantage of the long Stability duration to cast this well early, or delay it slightly to cover the mechanic.

How much DPS will ANet allow this build to have?
We don't know. And now it's DPS is very closely tied to the DPS build because they're doing nearly the exact same thing.
This has never happened to Firebrand, trust me.

tl;dr It's dangerous to read all that up there! Skip to here!

Condition Daredevil

Unchanged by Impairing Daggers cooldown reduction

Power Daredevil

Buffed to ~38.6 if you do the old rotation.
Buffed to 40.2 if you do the new degenerate 1a 1b 2 1a 1b 2 rotation that interrupts our auto chain.
Still screwed by all the usual stuff.
Mag Bomb damage normalized. Cool. Still amazing utility on that skill.

Boon Thief

Dead. Deadeye killed it.

Power Dagger Deadeye

Much easier to play. Splashes some cute boons onto its subgroup, at random. Have to see if Shadow Flare is still worth using. Hopefully, right?

Power Rifle Deadeye

Silent Scope uses Shadow Flare, I hope that's still worth using.
No need to flank with Premeditation Rifle is nice. Swapping Impact to an Accuracy sigil (or not doing that, and losing crit chance) was ~1,200 DPS loss, so that's avoided. I don't mind losing flanking here that much because Flanking wasn't make-or-break adrenaline pumping like dagger. It was just a boring loss.

Quickness Deadeye

I hope you like pushing 5 and 1 a whole lot because that's almost all this is. Also pushing cantrips for F2 charges to provide quickness.
It will play okay, but pretttttttttty similar to utility-spam builds that people hate, with the added bonus of casting TWO skills for every application of quickness.
You can tune this to your liking BUT

IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MANY WAYS THIS GAME'S ENEMIES CAN APPLY REVEALED TO YOU THEN YOU'RE IN FOR A TREAT WHEN YOU PICK UP QUICKNESS DEADEYE NEXT PATCH :D

It won't really prevent you from applying quickness but it will tank your DPS and fracture your soul.
One of us. One of us!
This is getting no changes, by the way. It'd be a huge amount of effort from the studio's programmers for one elite spec, for one profession, largely in one game mode (instanced PvE), with a small player base.
Probably just not happening. Not a question of "want to", it's a question of resource management AND doing this right.
Remember stealth-tanking Old Lion's Court? Because they didn't apply Revealed, then they only applied Revealed once and Deadeye just Shadow Melded out of it?

DPS Specter

Buffed by Second Opinion, dubiously buffed by targeting allies with the auto chain.
You can still run Consume Shadows for team healing/barrier.

Alacrity Specter

I don't know. Presumably the shroud skills will allow us to provide at least 50% uptime with a non-degenerate rotation (one that doesn't have us spending all our time in shroud). Said degenerate rotation is naturally policed by the fact our shroud absorbs incoming damage.
Will it run Consume Shadows? Not for optimal damage anymore.

Alac Share Specter

Just change your grandmaster from Strength of Shadows to Shadestep and do the normal rotation. Should do at least 50% uptime, unless Alac specter is just nonviable and can't maintain Alacrity.

Has anyone else noticed that cell phone service in Bushwick/East Williamsburg has been horrible to non-existent the past week or so? My friends and I have Verizon, and near the Jefferson L stop, troutman street, the Brooklyn mirage there was no service. We’ve always had full service in these spots so wonder what is going on?

If you dont pick Bluewater Villager and make your own custom, whats stopping you from making main hood sims have their home lot a business or owning community lots there. It is not like the hidden neighborhoods that provide population (Pets for the stray Dogs, Cats, and even Wolves, Exotic Destination for the tourist and locals, Weather for the Garden Club, Hobbies for the hobby lots which you can visit, and Magic for the Witches of Good and Evil). I could say the same for Downtown cause you can make the Clubs, Restaurants, and other venues but you wont get to see Sims with make-up, Vampires walking around, Gypsies, and Ms. Crumplebottom. Well maybe the Shopping District could add more customer sims but the mainhood townies could fulfill those roles.

[Tw mentions of disordered eating]
I almost relapsed again tonight.
But my boyfriend just has a way of knowing these things. I swear, it's like magic. He doesn't even KNOW that I self-harm, but he seems to always know when I need him. He messaged me just as I picked up my blade. Said some sweet things, completely unprompted, which helped me to calm down. The whole issue is I was feeling unwanted, unloved, useless and worthless because of some dumb stuff my mom did. But he made it feel better, just by showing me the tiniest bit of fucking love.
Which is why I'm so fucking worried. My mom is starting to revert back to her old ways again. Yelling. Treating me not so great. She's started turning the WiFi off so I can't speak to my boyfriend, (We're currently long distance unfortunately) and my phone contract runs out soon, which means mobile data can't save me. If the WiFi goes off, that's it.
It's scary. I'm finally starting to get back on my feet. Starting to appreciate the fact that I'm still alive. I haven't attempted suicide in a whole month. A MONTH. Going from multiple attempts a day to a whole month without one was hard. But my boyfriend just makes me feel better.
He's the only person in the world who is genuinely nice to me, and does things for me without holding it against me after, or using it to justify doing bad things to me. He makes me feel safe, and for the first time in fucking forever, I feel happy. But only when I'm talking to him.
And I'm scared. My mom is being really snappy. Says I'm in my room too much. That it's all my boyfriend’s fault, and I talk to him too much. Because of the damn time difference, we BARLEY talk. Two hours a day is all we usually get, because of time limits my mom has enforced. And now she's saying that I'm isolating myself again and it's all his fault.
I'm not isolating myself. I'm just struggling to sleep at night, so I've been sleeping during the day. I don't have school, and I have nothing to do, so I don't see what the big deal is. It's exam season. I'm drained as hell and so, so tired. I've got one more exam to go, and then maybe I can try to shift my sleep patterns. But now I'm too focused on studying and planning and trying to scrape by and pass at least SOME of my exams.
And even if I was, it wouldn't be because of him. She won't stop making comments on what I'm eating and my body. About my scars too. She doesn't realise, even if she's complaining that I've lost weight (I haven't lost anything) or that I'm not eating enough, it can still be fucking triggering to be constantly reminded of the way I look and that people are paying attention to what I eat and what my body looks like. And when she mentions how my scars are fading it's even worse.
Her solution to my problems?
She said she's going to take my xbox (which I paid for) my TV, my computer, and my phone away from me if I don't spend time with everyone, dont start socialing more, don't stop sleeping during the day, and don't start eating properly. I've told her before all of the noises from all of my siblings really triggers my sensory issues and stresses me out, but she said I need to grow up and deal with it. And now I'm panicking slightly, because the only way I can keep in contact with my boyfriend, is online.
I'm worried if I can't talk to him he'll get bored of me and leave. And the thought of losing him, pushes me closer and closer to relapse. My mom said she's going to take everything from me if I don't clean my room, socialise, eat properly and basically act 'normal' and I'm freaking out here. I'm on the edge of a massive breakdown. If my mom does go through with her plan, then I'm definitely going to spiral.
Without my boyfriend to talk to, without him to distract me and show me that at least SOMEONE cares about me, I'm going to be all alone again. I'm going to relapse. I'm going to lose everything I've been working for and it's not fucking fair. I just want to run away at this point. I've finally found something good, someone who makes me want to live, makes me want to stay clean and makes me feel like I'm WORTH something, and my mom wants to take it away.
I'm just so scared. He's my everything. I know it's wrong to need a person so bad, but putting it bluntly, I get treated like shit most of the time. So when someone is nice to me, with no adverse motivations, no using it against me, just kindness, decency and understanding, it feels so magical and special I swear to god.
He makes me feel Wanted and Needed and Important and Loved. And I never get to feel those things. People always want something. But he doesn't. He just cares. He cares, and doesn't ask for anything in return. He doesn't make me do things I don't want to and justify it by bringing up things he's done for me. If I don't want to do something, he tells me it's okay and I don't have to. If things go wrong he doesn't tell me its all my fault. Even when it IS my fault. He just says we shouldn't dwell on it and we should move forward.
I just- he's so fucking nice to me. He makes me want to live. But my mom wants to take that away from me and I don't know what to do. There's no way I can fix my eating by tomorrow. No way I can fix my sleeping habits or clean my room in a day. And no way, without relapsing can I force myself to interact socially with people when I'm so fucking tired and drained.
I wish I had someone to help me. I would tell my boyfriend, but he has really bad anxiety and worries about my wellbeing too much already. Sometimes he has panic attacks because he gets so worried about if I'm going to be okay after hearing some of the stuff my family has done. I don't want to ruin his mental health over this. I'm just frightened and upset and frustrated. I just don't know what to do.
I don't want to go back there. Back to the constant suicide attempts, the cutting every morning and every night, the going days on end without eating. I'm finally starting to get better, and my mom is going to rip it all away. I'm so scared.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I come to you today with a heavy heart and a message that must be shared. The end of days is coming.
We have all heard the prophecies of the book of Revelation and the signs of the times that Jesus spoke of. Wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, famine, and disease are on the rise. The world seems to be spiraling out of control, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed and hopeless.
But as Christians, we must remember that our hope is not in this world. Our hope is in Christ, who conquered death and promised to return one day to make all things new.
We must also remember that the end of days does not mean the end of the world. It means the end of the current age and the beginning of a new one. A time when Christ will reign supreme, and all things will be made right.
But until that day comes, we must be vigilant. We must stay true to our faith, even when it's difficult. We must love our neighbors, even when they don't love us back. We must pray for our leaders, even when we disagree with them.
And we must share the good news of Christ with those who have yet to hear it. For when the end of days comes, it will be too late for those who have not accepted Christ as their Savior.
So let us not be afraid of the end of days. Instead, let us embrace it as a time of hope and anticipation. A time when we will finally see our Lord face to face and be with him forever.
May the peace of Christ be with you all. Amen.
As I sit here listening to the preacher's words, I can't help but feel completely detached from everything he's saying. It's like I'm watching a movie, but I'm not really there.
I used to be a devout Christian, but lately, something in me has changed. I feel like I'm going through the motions, but my heart isn't really in it.
The thought of the end of days doesn't really faze me anymore. In fact, sometimes I wonder if it would just be easier if it all ended. The world is so messed up, and I don't see how a loving God could let all this suffering happen.
I used to pray every night, but now I don't even know what to say. It feels like my faith has been drained out of me, and I'm left feeling empty and alone.
I know I should be seeking help or talking to someone about this, but I feel like no one would understand. My friends and family are all strong believers, and I don't want to disappoint them or be seen as a failure.
So, I continue to go through the motions, hoping that one day my faith will return. But as time goes on, I become more and more convinced that it's gone for good.
The end of days no longer holds any significance to me. It's just another event in a world that's already lost its meaning. And I don't know if I'll ever be able to find my way back to the faith that once gave me hope and purpose.
As I watch the news of the plague spreading across the world, I feel a sense of sadness and despair wash over me. The world is already so broken, and now this?
I used to believe that God had a plan, that everything happened for a reason. But now, I can't help but feel like we're all just pawns in some cruel game. How could a loving God let something like this happen?
Despite my doubts and questions, I still find myself praying. But it's more out of habit than anything else. I don't even know who or what I'm praying to anymore.
As the days go on, the situation worsens. People are dying left and right, and the world as we know it is falling apart. And yet, I still don't feel the sense of urgency or fear that I know I should.
Maybe it's because I've already lost my faith, or maybe it's just a defense mechanism. But I can't help but feel like this is all just a part of the cycle of life and death. We're born, we live, we die. It's all inevitable.
As I watch the world around me crumble, I can't help but wonder what the point of it all is. If there is a God, why would he let his creation suffer like this? And if there isn't, then what's the point of anything?
I know that these are dark thoughts, but I can't help but feel like I'm just being honest with myself. The end of days no longer holds any significance to me, because it feels like we've been living in the end of days for a long time now. what is faith but a mask we all wear. I think this as the mobs of people pull me from my home and hoist me onto a crudely built cross As I hang there, my arms stretched out and pain coursing through my body, I wonder if this is what it means to be faithful. To suffer and die for a belief that may or may not be true.as I hang here from this cross I can only describe it as an excruciating pain. My body feels heavy and every breath I take is a struggle. My hands and feet are nailed to the cross, and the blood is slowly trickling down my limbs. The heat of the sun beats down on me, and the sweat drips into my eyes, blurring my vision.
As the hours pass, my strength begins to fade, and I feel my life slipping away. I know that my death will be in vain. I offer nothing but hate and pain to those who have condemned me, and I ask my so called Father in heaven why he would allow this.
But as the mob below me cheers and jeers, I can't help but feel like this is all pointless. What does it matter if I believe in God or not? Does it really make a difference in the grand scheme of things?
I used to think that faith was a beautiful thing. That it gave people hope and purpose. But now, all I see is the violence and hatred that it can inspire.
As my vision starts to fade and my breathing becomes shallow, I wonder if I made the right choice. Was it worth it to hold onto my disbelief, even if it meant dying for it?
But in the end, it doesn't matter. Whether I lived or died, the world would keep turning. People would continue to believe what they wanted, and others would suffer for it.
As the light fades from my eyes, I take comfort in the fact that I stayed true to myself. That even in the face of death, I refused to wear the mask of faith.In my final moments, I feel a sense of release. The pain fades away, and I am enveloped in hatred and darkness. coughing blood spews from my mouth, as it falls to the ground to causes a hellish earthquake felt across the planet As the blood spills from my lips and hits the ground, I feel a surge of power coursing through me. It's as if all my pain and suffering has been transformed into something greater.
The earth shakes beneath me, the ground cracking and splitting open as the energy radiates outwards. People scream and run in terror as buildings topple and the very fabric of reality seems to fray.
But even in the midst of this chaos, I can't help but feel a sense of peace. I know that this is the end of my journey, that I have finally found my purpose.
As the last of my strength leaves me, I close my eyes and surrender to the darkness. And in that moment, I know that my legacy will live on. That the world will never forget the sacrifice I made, and the power that I unleashed.
For better or for worse, I have changed everything. And even in death, I will continue to shape the world around me.
Dark tendrils erupt from the ground and wrap around my body, I feel a sudden jolt of pain, followed by an overwhelming sensation of heat. The ground opens up beneath me, and I'm pulled downward into a swirling vortex of smoke and fire.
As I descend deeper into the underworld, I feel my body transforming. My flesh falls away, replaced by something darker and more powerful. I am reborn as a ruler of the damned, my eyes glowing with an unholy light.
The denizens of the underworld bow before me, recognizing my power and my authority. I am a master of the shadows, a lord of the abyss. And as I survey the landscape before me, I know that I have finally found my true calling.
No longer bound by the limitations of mortal flesh, I am free to explore the darkest corners of the universe. I am free to unleash my power and my wrath upon those who would dare to challenge me.
And as I bask in the glory of my new existence, I know that I will never again be bound by the petty concerns of the living. For I am now a creature of the night, a harbinger of doom, and a ruler of the damned. With my newfound power, I rise up from the depths of the underworld and make my way back to the world of the living. My mission is clear - to seek out those who had wronged me and make them pay for their sins.
As I walk among the living, I am a shadowy figure, barely visible to mortal eyes. But those who have wronged me can feel my presence, and they tremble in fear.
One by one, I seek out my enemies, and I strike them down with the force of my wrath. They scream and beg for mercy, but I am beyond mercy now. I am a creature of vengeance, and I will not rest until they have all been punished.
As I continue on my quest for revenge, I realize that my power has no limits. I am stronger than any mortal, and I am immune to their feeble attempts to stop me.
And so I continue to wreak havoc on those who have wronged me, until finally, I am satisfied. My revenge is complete, and I can finally rest.
But even in death, I am still a ruler of the damned. And should anyone ever cross me again, they will know the full extent of my wrath.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I come to you today with a heavy heart and a message that must be shared. The end of days is coming.
We have all heard the prophecies of the book of Revelation and the signs of the times that Jesus spoke of. Wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, famine, and disease are on the rise. The world seems to be spiraling out of control, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed and hopeless.
But as Christians, we must remember that our hope is not in this world. Our hope is in Christ, who conquered death and promised to return one day to make all things new.
We must also remember that the end of days does not mean the end of the world. It means the end of the current age and the beginning of a new one. A time when Christ will reign supreme, and all things will be made right.
But until that day comes, we must be vigilant. We must stay true to our faith, even when it's difficult. We must love our neighbors, even when they don't love us back. We must pray for our leaders, even when we disagree with them.
And we must share the good news of Christ with those who have yet to hear it. For when the end of days comes, it will be too late for those who have not accepted Christ as their Savior.
So let us not be afraid of the end of days. Instead, let us embrace it as a time of hope and anticipation. A time when we will finally see our Lord face to face and be with him forever.
May the peace of Christ be with you all. Amen.
As I sit here listening to the preacher's words, I can't help but feel completely detached from everything he's saying. It's like I'm watching a movie, but I'm not really there.
I used to be a devout Christian, but lately, something in me has changed. I feel like I'm going through the motions, but my heart isn't really in it.
The thought of the end of days doesn't really faze me anymore. In fact, sometimes I wonder if it would just be easier if it all ended. The world is so messed up, and I don't see how a loving God could let all this suffering happen.
I used to pray every night, but now I don't even know what to say. It feels like my faith has been drained out of me, and I'm left feeling empty and alone.
I know I should be seeking help or talking to someone about this, but I feel like no one would understand. My friends and family are all strong believers, and I don't want to disappoint them or be seen as a failure.
So, I continue to go through the motions, hoping that one day my faith will return. But as time goes on, I become more and more convinced that it's gone for good.
The end of days no longer holds any significance to me. It's just another event in a world that's already lost its meaning. And I don't know if I'll ever be able to find my way back to the faith that once gave me hope and purpose.
As I watch the news of the plague spreading across the world, I feel a sense of sadness and despair wash over me. The world is already so broken, and now this?
I used to believe that God had a plan, that everything happened for a reason. But now, I can't help but feel like we're all just pawns in some cruel game. How could a loving God let something like this happen?
Despite my doubts and questions, I still find myself praying. But it's more out of habit than anything else. I don't even know who or what I'm praying to anymore.
As the days go on, the situation worsens. People are dying left and right, and the world as we know it is falling apart. And yet, I still don't feel the sense of urgency or fear that I know I should.
Maybe it's because I've already lost my faith, or maybe it's just a defense mechanism. But I can't help but feel like this is all just a part of the cycle of life and death. We're born, we live, we die. It's all inevitable.
As I watch the world around me crumble, I can't help but wonder what the point of it all is. If there is a God, why would he let his creation suffer like this? And if there isn't, then what's the point of anything?
I know that these are dark thoughts, but I can't help but feel like I'm just being honest with myself. The end of days no longer holds any significance to me, because it feels like we've been living in the end of days for a long time now. what is faith but a mask we all wear. I think this as the mobs of people pull me from my home and hoist me onto a crudely built cross As I hang there, my arms stretched out and pain coursing through my body, I wonder if this is what it means to be faithful. To suffer and die for a belief that may or may not be true.as I hang here from this cross I can only describe it as an excruciating pain. My body feels heavy and every breath I take is a struggle. My hands and feet are nailed to the cross, and the blood is slowly trickling down my limbs. The heat of the sun beats down on me, and the sweat drips into my eyes, blurring my vision.
As the hours pass, my strength begins to fade, and I feel my life slipping away. I know that my death will be in vain. I offer nothing but hate and pain to those who have condemned me, and I ask my so called Father in heaven why he would allow this.
But as the mob below me cheers and jeers, I can't help but feel like this is all pointless. What does it matter if I believe in God or not? Does it really make a difference in the grand scheme of things?
I used to think that faith was a beautiful thing. That it gave people hope and purpose. But now, all I see is the violence and hatred that it can inspire.
As my vision starts to fade and my breathing becomes shallow, I wonder if I made the right choice. Was it worth it to hold onto my disbelief, even if it meant dying for it?
But in the end, it doesn't matter. Whether I lived or died, the world would keep turning. People would continue to believe what they wanted, and others would suffer for it.
As the light fades from my eyes, I take comfort in the fact that I stayed true to myself. That even in the face of death, I refused to wear the mask of faith.In my final moments, I feel a sense of release. The pain fades away, and I am enveloped in hatred and darkness. coughing blood spews from my mouth, as it falls to the ground to causes a hellish earthquake felt across the planet As the blood spills from my lips and hits the ground, I feel a surge of power coursing through me. It's as if all my pain and suffering has been transformed into something greater.
The earth shakes beneath me, the ground cracking and splitting open as the energy radiates outwards. People scream and run in terror as buildings topple and the very fabric of reality seems to fray.
But even in the midst of this chaos, I can't help but feel a sense of peace. I know that this is the end of my journey, that I have finally found my purpose.
As the last of my strength leaves me, I close my eyes and surrender to the darkness. And in that moment, I know that my legacy will live on. That the world will never forget the sacrifice I made, and the power that I unleashed.
For better or for worse, I have changed everything. And even in death, I will continue to shape the world around me.
Dark tendrils erupt from the ground and wrap around my body, I feel a sudden jolt of pain, followed by an overwhelming sensation of heat. The ground opens up beneath me, and I'm pulled downward into a swirling vortex of smoke and fire.
As I descend deeper into the underworld, I feel my body transforming. My flesh falls away, replaced by something darker and more powerful. I am reborn as a ruler of the damned, my eyes glowing with an unholy light.
The denizens of the underworld bow before me, recognizing my power and my authority. I am a master of the shadows, a lord of the abyss. And as I survey the landscape before me, I know that I have finally found my true calling.
No longer bound by the limitations of mortal flesh, I am free to explore the darkest corners of the universe. I am free to unleash my power and my wrath upon those who would dare to challenge me.
And as I bask in the glory of my new existence, I know that I will never again be bound by the petty concerns of the living. For I am now a creature of the night, a harbinger of doom, and a ruler of the damned. With my newfound power, I rise up from the depths of the underworld and make my way back to the world of the living. My mission is clear - to seek out those who had wronged me and make them pay for their sins.
As I walk among the living, I am a shadowy figure, barely visible to mortal eyes. But those who have wronged me can feel my presence, and they tremble in fear.
One by one, I seek out my enemies, and I strike them down with the force of my wrath. They scream and beg for mercy, but I am beyond mercy now. I am a creature of vengeance, and I will not rest until they have all been punished.
As I continue on my quest for revenge, I realize that my power has no limits. I am stronger than any mortal, and I am immune to their feeble attempts to stop me.
And so I continue to wreak havoc on those who have wronged me, until finally, I am satisfied. My revenge is complete, and I can finally rest.
But even in death, I am still a ruler of the damned. And should anyone ever cross me again, they will know the full extent of my wrath.

[←Chapter 63] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 65→]
In a rare moment, Sorore was actually having a nice dream, a normal one, one could even say. She was back home, in that moderately seized house in Erratz, laying on her mother’s lap. She could even hear the gentle sound that the needle made as it went in and out of the cloth. It was peaceful, pleasant, surrounded by familiar sound and smells, though her sight was blurry and confused.
It was not to last, as the sound of rushing water overtook all else, until she was forced awake by its unrelenting pace. When she sat up, rubbing her eyes in the broad bed, she released that it wasn’t the sound of water, nor was it relegated to her dreams. There was a commotion outside people talking in hushed but harsh tones.
Neither Lillian, nor Aya were within the room, and she wondered if they were having an argument. That wouldn’t be good - she’d watched them have the spat earlier, and that dispute didn’t need much worsening. Sorore crept to the door to the outer hallway - she loved how they slid to create whole new rooms. It was something she’d have to think about more she decided as she pulled it open and realised several things at once.
One, there were a whole lot of armoured figures in the hallway, at least four, maybe half a dozen. Two, the balcony door was open, and Lillian was currently arguing with one of them, Aya standing by looking like a mining explosive had gone off right next to her. Three, her brother and Niche had just emerged out of the room beside, and Niche was about to draw his sword at the sudden intrusion.
For a moment, she panicked, her mind going completely blank. Her mind raced with visions of bloody aftermath, and a chase through the city, back to the dinner she’d had with all those nice people.
“Oh, hello!” she blurted, drawing the surprised stares of several of the men, “who might you be?”
There was an instant of shocked silence between all parties.
“Nobody do anything!” called the man who was out on the porch, “We are representatives of the sand-shell legion, on behalf of the matriarch of the Eisen. We have come to retrieve her granddaughter.”
Niche lowered his hand from his sword belt, but Sorore could tell that he was ready to fight on a moment’s provocation. She also noticed that Kieren, in the same gown she’d worn to the square was standing in the stairwell. The woman looked so nervous Sorore thought she might fall over and down the stairs.
“Let’s move to a less cramped area,” said the captain, in a tone that brook no argument.
Eventually, it was sussed out, though not without considerable resistance on part of the paladins, that they were to meet in the great hall. As they sat, they were brought simple drinks of milk and honey, flavoured with something else that Sorore could not quite place. The two paladins looked like pacing cats, constrained on their chairs, arms crossed and eyes hard.
“Under no circumstances can we give one of ours into you custody,” said Lillian, locked in a match with the captain.
“Within the city, you are under the authority of the guard, no matter who you are. If the matriach has sent for this girl, then we have our orders.”
“As do we, captain,” said Niche, “to protect and guide each of these young women and… man, unto the holy lands of Angorrah.”
One of the guards flanking the captain whispered something in his ear.
“She’s not going to like it,” the captain said, then heard something else.
“Very well. Bloodshed before the Festival would be unwise. We have enough of that already. Right then, one of you paladins, assuming you are who you say you are, shall come with us and the lady to be received by the Eisen. I cannot say it’s likely you will have a happy reception. They will expect you to come unarmed.”
The paladins were bristling at the implied threat, and several hands were already dangerously close to their sword belts. Sorore gripped the mug that she was being offered, before Aya sat up and proclaimed to the group.
“Leave two of your men with us, then,” she said.
The captain’s eyes furrowed.
“I don’t wish to second guess you, my lady,” he said, “but why would I do that?”
“Trust,” Aya said, with a side long look at Lillian, “simple. If you leave your men with us, you can’t simply waltz off with me and my friend. Plus, it gives us men who know, and can quickly get around the city, so they can find you whenever they need to.”
The captain considered, and nodded.
“Very well my lady. Two men will be left for the disposal of your party members. But you shall have to come with us, immediately.”
“Me as well,” said Lillian.
“As you wish,” he said, “but you must disarm yourself. That is non-negotiable.”
Lillian was fuming, but unbuckled her belt and handed her armaments to Niche. The legionaries surrounded them, and departed with them out the front of the pyramid. They were left in front of the roaring fire, Kieren sitting beside them holding a considerably more full glass of the amber coloured alcohol.
“You said that this-” Niche began, his face reddened, “you sold us out!”
“Sold you out?” said Kieren incuriously as she swirled the glass around, “sold you out?”
The woman slammed down the glass on one of the nearby table, somehow not breaking it in the process.
“Maybe, you should of told us that you had the granddaughter of Aystara godsdamned Eisen in your retinue? No, forgot that little detail?”
“Okay, can we get this over with?” said Frare, picking at his nails.
“What?” said both the paladin and the trader, staring at the temerity of the youth.
“Blah, blah, we’ve all kept things from eachother,” he said, “so let’s all move on. Who is this ‘Aystara’? Why is she important?”
While Niche gaped at the casual ease from which Frare dismissed the turbulence, the trader seemed to settle.
“Only one of the two most powerful people in the city, young man,” she said, downing a shot from the glass, “between her and Edmund Poutash, it’d be easier to list what they don’t own. The docks, the schools, the farms… if you want an import or export licence? You go through her. You want to own a ship bigger than a rinky-dink fishing boat? You go through her or Potash.”
She finished the glass, and reached for the decanter, and stopped herself.
“And you waltz into the city, and conveniently forget to mention that you have her granddaughter, who hasn’t been in the city ever, if I remember correctly. To say she’d be furious that you didn’t bring the young lady before her immediately would be an understatement. And worse, you dragged us into it.”
“She must be awfully mean - you had nothing to do with us. You just hosted it.”
The woman blinked at the boldfaced remark, and Sorore delivered a good kick to his shins to drive the point home.
“No, no,” she ultimately said, “no I don’t think she’ll do anything to our family, if she believes us. She’s not unreasonable. At least, so I’ve heard. I’ve only met her once, and that was for a brief time. As for what she’ll do to you...”
She gave a pointed look at Niche.
“You tried to hid her granddaughter from her, maybe unintentionally, maybe not. If I were a betting woman, which I’m not, I would say that means trouble. If you want my advice-”
“I don’t,” said Niche, crinkling his noise.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Frare, before he howled at another kick.
Sorore’s face was burning with indignation and embarrassment. This was all too much.
“If you want my advice,” Kieren pressed on, “you’d go find and talk to your commander immediately. I could fetch for him if you wish - I know where Amicio’s home is.”
Niche, through narrowed eyes and clenched teeth, acquiesced.
“Good, now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some letters to send,” she said, “of course, though this has earned you no small amount of displeasure from certain peoples, we’ve been instructed to provide you with house and board for as long as it takes to sort this out. You are still welcome guests and you will be treated as such.”
The tepid truce struck, the children were sent back up to their rooms. Sorore tried to sleep, and managed no more than half an hour before she was woken by her brother.
“The commander’s here,” he said, “he wants to talk to us.”
The commander, looking very tired, but light of step than Sorore had ever seen him, waited by the fire. He was talking with Kieren and the two remaining legionarries in the fast-paced trading tongue of the city, but stopped when he saw the girl come downstairs.
“My lady,” he said, “it seems there’s been a huge misunderstanding.”
She realized that it was his manner of dress which was throwing her off. Instead of his usual worn and thoroughly practical travelling clothes, he wore the long flowing silks of orange and cream. It suited him, matching his calm personality.
“What misunderstanding?” she said.
“Well, we had no idea that our own Aya was the granddaughter of Aystara Eisen herself. I was surprised as anyone. Of course, I knew she was an Eisen, from her mother.”
He looked at Kieren, who looked like she was about to fall asleep.
“But I never imagined that she was a direct descendent of the main house. I thought she was part of the branch, not necessary to cause any fuss, especially during the preparation of the festival. Ah!”
He slapped his head to indicate his shock at the realisation.
“What a terrible mistake I’ve made,” he said, patting the woman’s arm, “this is all on my horrendous lack of judgement. Here’s what’s going to happen, one of these gentlemen and trader Amicio will be vouching for me at the gate. I’m going to the Eisen estate and having a friendly chat with the matriarch, to clear up this misunderstanding.”
Sorore felt at last some suggestion that someone around the city knew what was happening and what they were going to do.
“Here’s what I need you and your brother to do,” Naia said, “I want you to wait and enjoy the hospitality of the madame of the house.”
The term seemed to flatter Kieren, who flushed at the complement. Or that might’ve been the drink, Sorore wasn’t entirely sure.
“Niche, you take care of them. I expect that I might be at the estate for the rest of the night, and possibly onto next afternoon. Things are always so chaotic around the Festival. There’s no reason for you not to attend the festival opening tomorrow, if you can.”
“You want us to attend a festival?” said Niche in disbelief, “right now?”
“Well, not right now, it hasn’t started yet,” said the commander, “but, if Kieren would graciouslly agree to take you as guest of honour, you’d have excellent seats. If that’s not too much to ask, especially after our little debacle.”
Kieren nodded, and affirmed that she wouldn’t mind at all, if the matter was going to be soon cleared up. Sorore was now certain that it wasn’t just alcohol.
“Great. You’re all taken care of, now I’d better explain myself. If you wouldn’t mind,” he said, pointing to the quarter full glass, which Kieren handed to him. The commander downed it all in one, rolled his shoulders, and smiled.
“Don’t worry. It’ll all work out in the end,” he said, “in fact, I would say to enjoy yourselves, as much as you can. And best go back to bed, unless you want to be sleeping during the festival, which, I assure you from experience, you do not.”
Before they could say anything, the commander had swept by them, vanishing out of the front of the pyramid.
“You should heed him,” said Kieren, picking up the decanter and the glass and moving towards the kitchens, “if you’re stuck here for the time being, you might as well enjoy it And that starts with getting good sleep.”
“Last time you said that, we woke up to armed guards,” Niche said flatly.
“Well, I assure you, I’m not boring enough to do that a second time. It would be assassin’s from across the streets, who approach over the rooftops.”
“Do they actually exist?” asked Frare, suddenly excited.
“Oh, I’m sure,” said Kieren as she stowed away her drinking equipment, “but not tonight. Go get some sleep sir paladin, and you two young ones as well. You’ll need it.”
Sorore was cajoled up the steps, Frare coming up after her. Niche seemed placated enough for the time being, though he was clearly unhappy with the outcome. The pleasant dreams neglected to revisit for a second time, but at least the sleep was uninterrupted. When Soroe next awoke, it was a young handmadein, pulling open the screen doors.
“Good morning, my lady,” she said, “how did you sleep?”
“I- well enough, I suppose,” she said, stretching and yawning, before quickly covering her mouth.
The maid had the presence of mind not to notice as she revealed the bright sunlight streaming through the open balcony.
“It must almost be midday!” Sorore exclaimed, leaping out of the bed as she tried to straighten herself.
The maid chuckled as she finished opening up the room.
“Not to fear, my lady,” she said, “it’s customary to sleep into the early afternoon. The Festival does not start until just before sunset, afterall. In fact, you might be earlier than many of the household.”
“Oh,” Soroe said, feeling rather foolish, “Um. Well, I guess I’ll get dressed.”
“Of course. I’ve left out some clothes for you. Madame Kieren suggested that you try clothes from our city. I hope you’ll love them. Do you bathe?”
Sorore wrinkled her nose at the prospect. What kind of question was that?
“Of course I do,” she said.
“Well, there’s a place to bath at the bottom of the pyramid. If you wish to bath alone, you should go now - I’ll bring you clothes for you to change at the waterfront.”
“You bathe together here?” Sorore said
“In the mornings and evenings,” she said, “we do not bring water up into the house if we cannot avoid it. To the stone goes the sea, and to the home goes the sky.”
She looked around, then leaned in with a smile.
“Also, water is very troublesome to carry up all those flights.”
“So just come down to the waterfront?” she said, gathering up what spare things she needed.
“Just follow me, my lady,” said the handmaiden, picking up a pile of clothes and leading her down the stairs.
They emerged onto an inset pool carved into the pyramid interior. A smooth stone deck, with benches and chairs and stacks of towels, as well as several large paper screens, presumably for changing. Sorore was glad to see they were alone, at least for the time being.
At the handmaid, Kiroe’s, direction, she stripped down naked and plunged into the pool. The water was a perfect temperature - cold enough to dispel the last of the grogginess, warm enough to be pleasant to float in. She swam around for a bit, constrained by the relatively small volume, while Kiroe prepared her outfit on the deck.
“Do you mind if I join you?” came a voice from the other end.
Kieren slipped out of a thin morning dress and stepped into the water. Sorore swam over and came to stand beside her.
“Is there any news? About Aya and the commander?” she said, a little too quickly.
Kieren, who’d been sinking into the water with a sigh of contentment, opened one eye.
“Straight to business? Perhaps you are better suited to the city than I thought.”
Sorore tried to smile, but her concern was betrayed, judging by the woman’s softening of expression.
“My knowledge is limited. My uncle is serving as our representative for now. Sounds like your commander was at least allowed to make his case to the Eisen. He made note of one other companion of yours.”
“Oh? Who?” she said, pushing out into the pool, feeling the water surge over her shoulders.
“A man in black clothes,” she said, “who hides his face behind a mask. He was there for the meeting.”
“The mage?” said Sorore, before considering that she maybe shouldn’t have mentioned it.
“A mage?” said Kieren, before submerging herself in the water.
She tossed her hair back as she came back up, spraying water in a neat arc.
“Well, that explains his odd demeanour,” she said, “now, regrettably, that’s all the time I have today for bathing. I will see you at the festival.”
“Hello cousin! May I join- oh,” came a voice from the steps leading out.
It was Ivers, dressed in nothing but a loose robe, which was already half-way off his body, sculpted with muscle from hauling rope and tackle. Sorore stifled a gasp and turned away, trying not to redden.
“I can come back later,” he offered.
“Do you mind?” Kieren said to Sorore, “if you do, it’d be best to finish soon and let others bathe.”
“No, no,” she said, waving her host away.
Kiero had warned her, after all. It would be best to become accustomed to the strange ways of this beautiful city. Besides, it’s not like she hadn’t bathed before in the company of men her age back home. She cursed herself for being so self-conscious, and forced herself to turn around.
“Are you sure? I can leave if you want, it’s not-” Ivers began.
“No, it’s fine. It’s fine,” Sorore said, smiling at him, “it’d be good to have companionship.”
“Well, then, Ivers, I trust you’ll behave yourself,” said Kieren rising from the water.
“Of course, cousin,” Ivers said, casting his eyes to the floor.
Sorore tried not to take a wicked pleasure at the blush that crept across his dark complexion.
“Oh, one more thing,” whispered her host, bending over to the girl, “it’s considered polite to not look when they’re outside the water.”
Kieren laughed at Sorore’s own furious blush as she made for one of the poolside changing screens.
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The lead-up:
So far I'm finding the bypass mode to be the "best" for my tastes, for a number of reasons ...many will disagree with this opinion, but they don't have my ears, my musical preferences, my exact hardware setup, or my listening room.
I prefer neutral systems and like the sound of my sources enough that I don't want to alter them in any way.
I'm offering my perspective, because lots of "I like" and "best sound" verbiage has been tossed around in regard to the sound of this component, all of which is irrefutable (since it's opinion), but not something that we will all agree on and frequently pretty vague, so I'm going to make an attempt at being a bit more descriptive, it's probably not going to be a revelation for anyone, but I'll try anyway.
This post is covering use with only two tubes and it's based on just a couple of days ownership and a handful of listening sessions, I'll update the thread as my impressions become more informed/opinionated and when I have more tubes to review (they're coming).
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The system:
All electronics are on a Target welded steel rack, the top shelf is accurately leveled for TT use.
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Rega Planar 2 with 3x large IsoBearings replacing the original hard rubber feet
AT-120E MM cartridge (aligned using Mo-Fi Geo Disc system, 1.8g tracking force, anti-skate adjusted using inner groove method)
AQ Wildcat to phono preamp 1.5m
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Parasound P/PH-100 phono preamp
AQ Diamondback to Saga+ .5m
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Cambridge Audio Azur 851N streameDAC
Media supplied via ethernet cable through a local network hub (1GB), from Serviio software on a dedicated Win 11 mini computer, all data is stored on 1TB 2.5" SSD (not a system volume)
AQ Viper to Saga+ .5m
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Schiit Saga+
AQ Viper to amp 1.5m
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Adcom GFA-5400
AQ Gibraltar to speakers, single bi-wire configuration, spade lugs at all positions 8ft.
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PSB Stratus Gold i, upgraded with doubled AQ Type 4 cable run from crossover to woofer and individual runs of AQ CV-4 from crossover to midrange and tweeter
Speakers sit on 4x hockey pucks each
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Music sources include CD rips made with Exact Audio Copy at 16bit/44kHz in FLAC format, as well as downloaded FLAC files in 16 or 24 bit depth, 44, 48 and 96kHz. The one record I played was a 12" LP promotional maxi-single, this was definitely not made from a 2nd (or higher) generation stamper as it was distributed in very limited numbers, it also has some big bass, which is the other reason it was chosen.
Formats were electronica, rock, folk, jazz and ambient, instrumental and vocal music (both male and female vocal). No classical music was harmed in the making of this review.
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The listening:
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My take on the stock tube (an anonymous Soviet era 6H8C unit that looks identical to some Sovtek branded units available from retailers as NOS and billed as 6SN7GTs (though some sources claim they're GTB spec), is that it's absolutely awful fresh out of the box ...but had improved to the point where it's moderately competent after running several hours and got even a bit better running over night.
The good is that it isn't at all noisy (this preamp is quieter than many solid state units, when in buffer mode), has OK image depth and localization, doesn't gloss, soften or harmonize over the music overtly and runs very cool.
The bad may be things that a lower end systems or poor source material might not event reveal, but there *is* quite a bit to criticize, as it collapses the sound stage width by about 20% and depth by 30% (referenced to bypass/passive operation), it also has a sort of soft halo or circle of confusion that surrounds all the voices and instruments making them larger than in bypass, as well as adding a noticeable "wooliness" to them. On top of that transient attack is softened and decay is largely lost in the soft haze... for reference, this is a pretty nit-picky criticism, and the "haze" is hard to describe, since it isn't an audible noise floor ...it's kind of like; if the bypass mode has empty black space surrounding all the instruments, then the tube has a soft charcoal gray as the backdrop. It actually sounds like a slight compression effect. Last and in my opinion, most unforgiveable, is that it softens and slightly inflates bass (only emphasizing maybe 50 to 150Hz, which masks overtones and reduces perceived detail?), while suppressing true sub-bass (my speakers have useable output below 25Hz and the room reinforcement takes that even lower, so I hear this effect clearly on a lot of tracks).
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The other tube is a 1940s(?) National Union 6SN7GT, with black "silvering" inside the upper portion of the envelope. It's used, but has *perfect* triode balance and gm measures at more than 100% of new spec. This tube sounded similar to the supplied tube (*after* that one had broken in!) when cold, and stopped audibly "improving" after about two hours of use. It runs somewhat hotter than the tube Schitt supplied, but still nothing like higher power output tubes.
This tube shares in small part all of the failings of the other, but only in *very* small doses, maybe 20% or less as noticeable as with the 6H8C. It also has an *ever so slight* euphonic sweetness, but it's not overt the way that many tube gain stages are. I expect that some systems might not resolve the differences between the bypass and buffer modes with this tube in place, losing both the good and bad properties in their own lower resolution and tonal coloration (effectively rendering the tube buffer transparent). The sub-bass deficit and less than black background still bother me, but are both much less objectionable than in the 6H8C. The NUs sonic signature, subtle as it is, is even useful in taming the sound of some bad recordings, since the ever so faint reduction in resolution and softer, sweeter presentation counter a portion of the harshness. Some listeners will undoubtedly feel that this makes the tube "better" than bypass.
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Phono listening gave the same results as digital media, but didn't reveal the sub-bass issue (since there usually isn't any on an LP), the slight bass lift and softening was heard though.
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Now some comments on the passive/bypass mode: it's virtually indistinguishable from a direct connection to the Cambridge streamer: detail, stage width/depth, image placement, tonal balance, all fully intact as well as dynamics and the amazing slam and drive that this component delivers (which it does without any compromise to the subtlety of the music). An A/B/X with matched levels might reveal *something*, but turning off, cable swapping, then powering up again between listening, leaves me with the feeling that all I did was swap remotes, not add or remove a component from the chain.
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I have a theory about the sub-bass effect when in the tube buffer mode: it's that the Saga+ effectively reduces the output impedance of the Cambridge unit (despite being created to *improve* that parameter), which in turn compromises the bass drive... The streamer has a fairly beastly 46ohm output impedance, while Saga+ is 180ohms (really very respectable). It's not like my cables are reactive, or the Adcom is a tough load to drive, but I think it may be just enough to have caused the suppressed sub-bass output.
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That's all for now.