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The PV Hobby Horse, a small cargo ship in the manufacturer’s default medium grey, sat at one end of the docks. Mid-bulk transports took the other occupied slots, while the big ships were loaded by drone on the opposite side of the station.
Sidra Boston, captain of the Hobby Horse and professional bounty hunter, found herself facing a trip back into aslodzhin space to fulfill a promise. The trip was going to cost. Any other species’ space, she’d find someone that needed a small cargo delivered, but not so the aslodzhins. They already had her and her ship registered as a private vehicle for the purpose of bounty hunting, and their rules were as strict and inflexible as their carapace.
On a whim, she checked for any bounties put out by the aslodzhin courts. That she found one surprised her; the fact that the bounty was so low it wouldn’t even cover docking fees didn’t. Still, the skip was reportedly on this station, and it saved her a few credits.
Sidra wandered the station, stopping in the first eatery she encountered. They did a passable burger and fries, but the milkshake tasted like sweetened sludge, and was undrinkable.
She paid for her meal and looked at the warrant again. The hikarin female shouldn’t be difficult to find. Hikarins were tall, often well over two meters, thin, fine-boned, furry, and had six limbs, sometimes walking on four, sometimes on three and sometimes on two. The center two limbs were long and strong enough to act as legs, yet they had grasping feet-hands. This station, in human space, had few hikarins, and even fewer with the rare, orange fur of her bounty.
Finding her quarry was easier than expected. She sat against the wall in the main concourse and held a sign asking for food or assistance to get to Lizshak, a world in aslodzhin space.
Sidra didn’t have any weapons or cuffs on her, but thought she’d give it a try. “Minsahee?” she asked.
The hikarin nodded. Her large eyes were sunken, her fur a matted and dull orange-brown beneath crusted clothes. “Can you help me get home?”
“Minsahee, I have a warrant for your arrest for failure to appear before the aslodzhin court. You can come with me quietly, or I can go back and get my cuffs and shackles and we can do this the hard way.”
Minsahee’s eyes filled with tears. “You mean, you’ll take me to Lizshak?”
“I wasn’t planning on going that far, but I’ll get you to aslodzhin space, Station 47, and the court will take you wherever you’re meant to stand trial.” Sidra extended a hand to help the hikarin to her feet.
She was too weak to walk on two limbs, instead leaning over to walk on four, and even then, her steps were unsteady. Sidra put an arm around her and was surprised at how bony the woman felt under the fur.
“Do you need a doctor?”
Minsahee leaned against Sidra. “No, I’m just tired.”
Sidra didn’t see a need to put the hikarin in the cell built into the cargo bay, and instead offered her a bunk in an unused cabin. “I’m trusting you not to be stupid,” she said. “Remember, I could take you on my worst day and your best, so don’t make me lock you up.”
Minsahee said nothing. Instead, she lay on the bunk, once again on the verge of tears.
Sidra grabbed a meal bar from the pantry and gave it to her with a jug of water. “There’s a washroom right next door if you need it. Once we’re in the hyper lane I’ll have time to answer any questions.”
At least the return trip to aslodzhin space would be quiet. She’d spent the last two weeks with a crippled turgen in the cell, cursing her every minute he was awake, until she finally snapped, “You wouldn’t stop! You threatened to kill the hikarin you’d already hurt, and the aslodzhin officer, and me! How was I to know you can’t walk or stand without the use of your tail, anyway?”
The court was at first reluctant to pay the bounty, given his condition. Once they saw the bodycam footage, though, they relented.
This was a strange one, though. She’d picked up skips in various states of injury or illness, but never one that seemed on the verge of starving to death.
Once they were in the lane, course plotted in, she returned to the cabin Minsahee was using. The door was still open, and the empty wrapper for the meal bar was folded neatly and laid next to the pillow on the bunk. The hikarin had drunk half the water and was sleeping curled up in a ball.
Sidra closed the door and slept in a chair right outside it. It wouldn’t do to have the gal try to sneak to the cockpit and reroute the ship to Lizshak.
When Sidra woke a few hours later, Minsahee was still asleep. She heated up a can of potato-leek soup with ham and filled a bowl for herself. It was just as she started on her meal that Minsahee entered, carrying the half-empty water jug and meal bar wrapper.
Sidra looked up at her. “You hungry?”
Minsahee nodded and Sidra got up and poured the other half can of soup into a bowl, put a spoon in it, and set it on the table opposite herself. She sat back down and nodded at the bowl.
The hikarin got the message and sat to eat. She ate as if it was the last meal she’d ever get. Still, she only managed to eat half of it.
“Thank you, Captain.”
“So, Minsahee, why Lizshak?”
“I have—had a home there. Maybe I can go back to my job after I serve my time.”
“Your warrant didn’t say anything about your crime. You mind telling me?”
“Not a crime, a civil infraction.” Minsahee still held on to the meal bar wrapper until Sidra pointed at the recycler where she finally deposited it.
“What was the infraction, and how much time are you facing?”
“Mandatory three standard days for failure to appear for an appointment to have my signature notarized.”
Sidra’s spoon stopped halfway to her mouth which hung open. She set the spoon back in the bowl. “Say that again?”
“I was closing out a lease, which required a notarized signature. I had an appointment at the court notary but had to leave the day prior for Amherst station where you picked me up.”
“Why is that?”
“My hemi-brother was injured and in intensive care there. He was my only remaining family.”
Sidra sighed. “Was. I take it he didn’t make it?”
Minsahee shook her head. “I spent every credit I had getting there and had no way back.”
“How long were you on Amherst?”
“I don’t know in standard days, but seventy-one human days.”
“Shit.” Sidra went back to eating her soup. “Do you feel a little better with some food in your belly?”
“Yes, Captain. Thank you again.”
“I’m going to lay out a few simple rules on my ship. One: never enter the cockpit unless I tell you to. Two: never cycle an airlock unless I tell you to. Three: Clean up after yourself. That includes putting your leftovers in the fridge over there and finishing them later. I hate waste. Four: if you’re using the washroom, flip the switch just inside the door up, so I know you’re in there, and flip it down when you leave.”
“Yes, Captain, I will do those things.”
“As long as you don’t break the rules, you can call me Sid. Is it okay if I call you Min?”
Minsahee nodded. “Yes, I’d like that.”
Sidra stood up and cleaned up her dishes. “Not rules, but a few helpful things. If you want to wait to eat when I eat, that’s fine, but if you’re hungry, don’t be afraid to come in and feed yourself. Drinking water is available from the labeled tap over there. First aid kit is right there, too, but there’s nothing in there to make me go night-night or get you high. If you need to, feel free to use my shampoo. I take it you haven’t had a good wash in a while, right?”
Minsahee looked down at the table. “Right.”
“Hey, don’t be embarrassed. It’s not your fault. Social Services on Amherst should’ve done something to help.”
As Minsahee put her leftovers in the fridge, Sidra flopped down on the sofa and started up a holo series. She hadn’t been able to pay any attention with her last passenger, so it seemed like a good time to catch up.
She heard the shower start and stop several times. At least she knows how to wash without wasting water, Sidra thought. During quiet parts of the holo she could hear pained grunts and sharp intakes of breath from the cabins.
Sidra paused the holo and went to check on Minsahee. Her door was open, and she was trying to untangle bright orange fur with her fingers. Her clothes lay in a pile beside the bed.
Sidra grabbed a comb and brush from the washroom and tapped on her door. “Would you like some help?”
“I don’t want to be a bother—”
“Nonsense. You can throw those clothes and the bedsheets in the sterilizer and come sit in the galley with me. I’ll work on your back while you work on your front.”
“But I’m naked.”
“So? See anyone else around here?”
Minsahee picked up the clothes and sheets and put them in the machine that Sidra pointed to. It started automatically, and she followed Sidra back to the galley.
“I’m gonna sit on the sofa, just sit on the floor in front of me and I’ll get started on your back.”
Once they’d settled in, Sidra resumed play on the holo and began to comb the mats out of the hikarin’s fur. She was careful not to pull too hard, instead treating it as she did the rescue cat she’d had years before.
“Captain, why would you do this for me?”
“I told you, Min, call me Sid.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Maybe I just don’t want the court to think I abused you on the way.”
Minsahee shook her head. “That’s not it. You could’ve brought me in exactly as you found me, and they wouldn’t care. So why, Sid?”
“Most of the time my job’s pretty lonely. I guess it’s just nice having a skip that isn’t trying to run, or kill me, or anything of the sort.” She laughed. “You’re the first bounty I’ve ever picked up that wanted to go serve your time.”
“I can’t get work until I do,” she said, “so I should.”
Once Sidra had worked out the mats on Minsahee’s head, back, and upper arms, she handed the comb to her and began to brush out those areas. All the while, the two watched episode after episode of the holo.
They stopped partway through the evening to eat; Minsahee reheating and finishing her soup and Sidra making herself a sandwich. Even though her clothes were clean, Minsahee didn’t rush to dress. When Sidra had finished with the brush, Minsahee took over, brushing her forelimbs and legs, chest, belly, and neck.
As one of the holo episodes ended, Sidra stopped it and stood. “I’m going to shower and go to bed. If you want to keep watching you can, just no spoilers.”
“Spoilers?”
“If you watch more episodes, don’t tell me what happens. I like to find out for myself.”
“I think I’m just going to finish brushing out my legs, and then go to sleep myself. I’m not ready to put clothes on with how good my fur feels right now. Besides, I think the show’s more enjoyable with a friend.”
Sidra nodded and left the galley. A friend, she thought, is that how she sees me? The sterilizer was on the way to the cabins, so she pulled out the sheets and clothes, made up Minsahee’s bed, and laid her folded clothes in the center of it. The four-sleeved top had a large rip on one of the lower sleeves, but Sidra didn’t have any way to repair it.
She stepped into the shower, wet herself down, scrubbed, and rinsed quickly. She walked out carrying her clothes and wrapped in a towel. Minsahee waited for her just inside the door of her cabin. “Thank you again, ca—Sid.”
“Get some sleep, Min.” Sidra dropped her clothes and the towel in the sterilizer on her way by and lay down to sleep in her own cabin. She knew for sure now that Minsahee wasn’t going to sneak onto the bridge or try to strangle her in her sleep.
The next morning, Sidra pulled the treasure she’d picked up on Amherst out of the pantry. Two real potatoes. She’d planned on gorging on home fries, but since she had company, she’d share. Shit, she thought, company? I thought I was hauling a skip.
As she finished chopping the potatoes, she answered herself aloud, “No, she’s a good woman. She just missed an appointment, we all do. It’s the bugs that are the baddies here.”
“Did you say something?”
Sidra jumped, knocking the knife off the counter. It landed on her foot, leaving a long gash. “Ow, shit!”
“Lay down and elevate your foot,” Minsahee said with more force than Sidra thought her capable of. She pulled the first-aid kit off the wall and dropped down next to Sidra. In a matter of seconds, she’d cleaned the wound, and begun pulling out the suture kit. “I’m sorry, Captain, it’s deep and it needs stitches.”
“What was your job?” Sidra asked.
“Second-rank-emergency-trauma-physician-first-class,” she answered, as she sprayed a numbing agent on the injury.
“Aslodzhin titles. That would be like, what, an ER doctor in human space?”
“Similar,” she said, while stitching up Sidra’s foot. “The only things we don’t do are those we pass off to surgeons or specialists.”
Within a matter of minutes, Sidra’s foot was stitched and bandaged, and Minsahee helped her to the sofa where she could lie down and elevate her foot. Only after she was settled did she notice that besides tending her wound, Minsahee had cleaned up the blood, tidied up the suture and bandage packages, and repacked the first aid kit.
“Thanks, Min. Or I guess I should say Doctor Minsahee.”
“There’s no need for that. But I will have to take care of you for a few days. You need to stay off that foot as much as possible.”
“Ugh.”
“What were you preparing to cook?”
“I was going to make us some home fries. The potatoes are chopped and ready.”
“I don’t know what home fries or potatoes are, but if you talk me through it, I can make it for you.”
As Sidra lay on the sofa, eating home fries, she looked at the hikarin woman seated in the chair across from her, savoring them, taking her time.
“You know, Min, I think these may be the best home fries I’ve ever had. I don’t know whether it’s the potatoes, the cook, or the company.”
“Like I said, everything’s better with a friend.”
“We’ll have to do this again.”
“When I finish my time?”
“That sounds like a plan. I can hang around and wait a few days for you. Maybe even find some potatoes there on the station…wouldn’t that be something?”
Minsahee cleaned up the mess in the galley and made sure Sidra had water close to hand. “I’ll go make sure the cabins and washroom are clean. If you need anything, call.”
“They’re clean enough. Let’s watch some more of this series.” The next episode started, and Sidra looked at her foot, then at the hikarin woman curled up on the floor watching with her. She’d always worked alone, but maybe she could do with a doctor on board…or even a friend.
Reedsy prompt: Write about two people striking up an unlikely friendship.
Original Post

- Absolute Vanilla Anarchy Survival -
-> avas.cc <-
AVAS stands for Absolute Vanilla Anarchy Survival. The server tries to get as close to the vanilla Minecraft experience as possible, with no moderation and minimal modification. Hacking, griefing, and exploiting are all allowed and encouraged.
The server will update to the latest versions when they are available but is still accessible from clients back to 1.9. All the features available in the vanilla version are also available on the server. We do not fix vanilla bugs and exploits if they are in the current version of the game and do not affect the stability of the server. We do not punish players for using cheats and griefing. Our plugins are only used for server maintenance.
IP: avas.cc
Version: 1.19.3 (joinable from 1.9)
Server features:
- Map: October 2020
- Complete freedom to use the flight and movement modules, unlike most other anarchy servers.
- Unique dupe system. When you vote for AVAS, you get points which can be used to dupe a held item stack.
- Active Discord community with lots of "friendly" players.
- No "Pay to win". Donors receive only cosmetics that do not affect gameplay.
Server limitations:
- Movement speed is limited to 40 blocks per second in the Overworld and 36 blocks per second in the Nether Roof to avoid filling up server disk space and lagging the server when moving fast.
- You cannot destroy indestructible blocks. We want the End to be open and the bedrock to be out of circulation since those things are not vanilla.
- Written book size is limited to mitigate book bans.
- VPN use is prohibited for non-donors.
Exploits:
You are allowed to abuse any exploit you can find (except godmode and block breaking). If a dupe works in the vanilla release of the game, it will almost certainly work here. We do our best to keep all vanilla exploits unpatched for as long as they are available in the latest official release of Minecraft. We use Paper for stability, so to prevent unwanted exploit patches, we only update when necessary. We also try to unpatch any Paper-specific patches that are unpatched by Mojang, but if there's a crucial update to Paper and it patches a vanilla exploit, that's just the way it is.
Hacks:
Do whatever you can get to work. We don't mess with anything besides speed hacks, and that's only when TPS is already bad.
—
If you want to build a big base, blow up someone else's base, create your own empire or kill new players, create map-art or just be a toxic person, try avas.cc.
The server version is 1.19.3, however you can play on clients as far back as 1.9. Please note that when playing on clients running versions earlier than 1.17, world height may not work properly.
Links:
Website: https://avas.cc/
Discord: https://avas.cc/discord
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/AVAS/
Wiki: https://avas.wiki/
Specs:
- AMD Ryzen™ 9 5950X - 128 GB DDR4 ECC - 16 TB HDD - Dedicated hardware

Demographics: Rising senior, first gen, Latino male living in LA county with a below-average hs, and eligible for free-lunch
Intended Major: Aerospace Engineering
SAT: 1450 (retaking and aiming in the ballpark of 1500+... not too worried since my target/reach schools are test optional or test blind)
UW GPA and Rank: 65/611... I'll put my 2nd Sem GPA for each year since it best represents how much I was able to make of a given year:
9th - 2.8, 10th - 3.86,11 - 4.0
Hook: Without getting into the personal details, I experienced some devastating family issues when I was little that left my family super financially unstable until about 2 years ago and it resulted in me growing up without my dad and although I did well n middle school, I collapsed from academic exhaustion my freshman year. I then transferred to a different hs sophomore year where I got my bearings and set myself up for when I transferred to a new high school and started developing my passion for math. It got to the point where I finished my prerequisites for Calculus in the same summer and joined Calculus at the third high school I transferred to. I've never had much, but I'm still squeezing water from stone with every chance I get.
TLDR: comeback story where reaching for oppurtunities helped me discover improve and my interests(of which I left a lot out to keep this from paragraph from dragging on too long).
DE:
10th: College Algebra, Trig/Precalc (both in summer)
11th: Statistics (Spring), Intro to Info Sci, Geology (both in summer)
12th (planned): Multi Var Calc, Differential Eqs, and Linear Algebra
AP:
10th: CSP (5)
11th: CSA, Calc BC, Spanish Lang, Chem
I was forced to self study CSA, Spanish, and Chem since the teachers either quit or didn't care to teach the material fast enough to be ready for the AP test. Chem was the worst cuz the teacher had only made it to unit 2 of 9 by the end of the first semester TwT
12th (planned): Gov, Lit, Physics 1
Awards: I only have sports related ones like CIF (swim and cross country) and recognition for placing in the top 5 for my swim events in my league.
Extracurriculars:
Church Volunteering: 1000+ hours total between two churches. Most of it was in the church I grew up in and I started doing it in January 2020 after the last guy stepped down. To keep in accordance with COVID policies once the pandemic kicked up, I'd stay for 3 services all day every sunday before things tapered into 2 services a day and eventually into the regular 1 service. I'd also be volunteering at the Friday mini-services every week and prepping things for the main service. I was essentially the IT guy for my church, being the first responder for issues with the church's hardware (ie projector and computer) and software (the propresenter used to control the preacher's slides and lyrics during the first part of the service). I was also the "guy in the chair" responsible for actually controlling which slides/lyrics would be displayed during services. Aside from the main services, I was regularly setting up events for all sorts of events in the church like helping my mom decorate for the kids' church camps or setting up and taking down supplies for conferences taking place at my church. After I moved away from that area and to a new church, I was recommended by my original pastor to my new one and I'm performing the same role, albeit differently since I'm rotating with other people every Sunday, but I'm still responsible for training new people and I've pushed the new church to improve it's software to propresenter from their software that hasn't been updated in years and I'll also be responsible for training people in using it. I'm also going to be responsible for doing lyrics + slides control during bigger district services which include people from all over the county. This is the longest EC to explain since it's the one I've invested the most into by a light-year and what I've made the biggest impact with.
Swim: 2 seasons (JV in 10th, Varsity in 11th, Captain in 12th)
XC: 1 Season [11th] (I was only with them for ~2 weeks because of the timing of my transfer to this high school, so I was only JV, but I still qualified for CIF and would've been varsity had I been able to join earlier)
CyberPatriot: Co-Captain of the team in it's first year and made it to the states round
Robotics: Programmer and team made it to Worlds (FRC)
Mathlete: smaller club I joined to participate in local competitions
Tutor: Mostly in Trig and Algebra 2
LOR: My Calc teacher is going to be most helpful for Caltech since she herself is a Caltech alumni and she'll be able to brag about me a fair bit since I was the only junior in her BC class (everyone else was a Senior and it took some convincing to my counselor to let me skip AB, which is what every other junior was doing for Calculus). I'm also going to try getting one from my pastor at the church I grew up in since he's been like a dad to me and he's a pretty big figure in the Apostolic Assembly (the national organization my church is a part and of which my pastor's been the president and is currently the secretary).
Schools: UCLA, USC, Caltech, MIT, CSULA, CSUB, CSULB

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Lots of thanks to u/Killsode-slugcat for helping me work through this chapter with editing.
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Memory transcription subject: Tevri, Venlil Romanticist
Date [standardized human time]: August 11, 2137
With eyes still closed, I stretched my legs and arms, paws pushing up against the inside of my sleeping bag. A sigh of contentment escaped my mouth.
I let the world in—light falling down in shafts that struck my still-waking eyes. No trees were around to provide cover from the rising sun that hung low in the east. The sounds of life surrounded me, occasionally being broken up by particularly strong gusts as well as a hint of something else.
My head turned to that hint, who still slept somewhat soundly off to my side. Last night Jack had set up his own sleeping bag less than an arm’s length from my own, citing our lack of a fire as the reason to gather closer to each other.
He tossed and turned, occasionally, muttering incoherently. At least he’s found some rest. After carrying me for over half of yesterday, he had certainly earned it.
It was actually quite surprising how well he had managed it all. His slim build compared to other humans that I had seen was betrayed by a hidden strength and incredible endurance. I suppose millions of years of evolution tends to allow such a thing.
Some part of me still felt bitter about what he had done the night prior to our last, but it was clear to me that his apology was sincere. I gave a quiet snort. He probably wouldn’t have carried you on your shoulders if he wasn’t at least somewhat sorry.
The covers of my too-big bag were thrown off and I sat up, holding my knocked knees with my paws.
Rocky rolling hills with low-grown shoots of grass lightly waved towards me. The nearby mountain range looked down upon us with its well-kept snow despite the summer season. Even three days of standing beneath them didn’t eliminate their wondrously looming presence.
I reached over to my nearby pack and grabbed my pen and journal. I clung to every thought that passed its way through my mind, marking them down the old fashioned way. There was something special about writing my feelings down on something physical rather than some pad or computer. It felt real in comparison to the alternative.
It was incredible to me how one of, if not the most dangerous planet to be found within known space was simultaneously one of the most fantastically beautiful worlds I ever had the pleasure of setting foot on. What a travesty it would have been had the federation actually managed to glass the biosphere. Ironically it had been the Arxur that prevented such a disastrous outcome. Those same savages had…
“Gah!”
Jack shot upright from where he had lain. He heaved harsh breaths, chest rising and falling as though he had just sprinted up the incline of a hill. I looked on with alarm, but didn’t think to disrupt the startled man. His eyes stared down at the dirt in front of him as he hung his hands between his legs.
“You okay?” I asked. He whipped to look at me like he had forgotten I was there. Slowly, he turned back to face the dirt. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He took a curt sniff and ran his hands across his face as he took a deep sigh.
He was lying.
The restless sleep, the violent rise into consciousness, the obvious distress within those wild eyes—all signs of nightmares. It had been years now since I last worried about such things, but I knew all too well how difficult they were to deal with.
A thought, as intrusive as it was unwelcome, pushed its way through the crowded thoughts of my mind, forcing my heart to skip a beat. What would be enough to scare a predator—human—to scare a human within their dreams? Instantly, I shoved it back from wherever it had come. He needs you right now, just like how you needed her.
I gently crawled over to the distraught man and set a paw on an arm while he leaned forward. At my touch, he turned his head towards me, staring with those forward-facing eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.
A slight snarl of a smile crossed his face, but no answer came. Jack stood up and stretched his arms outward, leaning back and forth.
“C’mon, let's pack up and head out. S’always good to start out early.” He extended a hand down to me where I sat still. How could he just brush something so terrifying off so easily? My tail flicked absently I guess they always have been a rather resilient species. Why should they be any different mentally? I relented to his proposal, grabbing his hand and allowing him to pull me upright.
Breakfast—much like last night’s meal—consisted of dry pre-prepped rations. Without surrounding trees from which drywood could be scavenged, we were left fireless. The ‘breakfast bars’ as Jack called them were a sufficient substitute for warm food. Every meal with the human increased my interest in the cuisine of his species. I hadn’t imagined it would all be so wonderfully varied and delicious.
The bar itself was chewy, made of oats, filled with dried fruits and sweetened by sugar. Each bite gave a satisfying crunch as my taste buds reveled in the impeccably delightful taste.
After hydrating and filling ourselves with calories, we set off once more on the trail.
This time, I was actually able to walk properly, though less than an hour after we departed, I was left wishing that Jack could scare me sleepless again—that way I could guilt him into carrying me.
While we continued, I walked without thinking much about the placement of my paws. I worried for my human friend. His mind was clearly plagued by something terrible, but the answer of what continued to evade me. The only lead I had were my own experiences, and in chasing that lead, my mind wandered back to the past.
As I was dragged from our home without protest, Devra lambasted our parents. Velnik cowered to the side as he watched the ordeal, helpless with widened eyes. Dad practically had to peel my sister away from mom as I was shoved into our vehicle. The echo of her shouts faded away.
It was the first time my parents admitted me for predator disease screenings.
An iron grip held my hand and led me forward through the stark featureless halls of the facility. A glance over my shoulder revealed my parents walking along. They dared not to risk a look in my direction. Tears welled at the edge of my eyes as the echoes of distant screams shocked my ears and flooded my brain with fear-chemicals.
My tail wrapped around my body and my ears bent towards the ground. Why did they want to throw me in here with the monsters? All I did was explore.
The facility worker threw me in a chair within a purely white room other than the single large black wall. From the ceiling hung a projector that faced one of the three white surfaces. After the worker left, my eyes floated through the room, narrowing at a sight that practically screamed of its existence. Dark lines were scrawled into the furthest corner of the sterile chamber.
I didn’t have the time to think about its implications when the screen clicked on and the lights dimmed, enhancing the image before me.
The metal chair fell backward with me in it, creating a resounding clang that bounded back and forth across the walls.
My hands slipped and slid across the slick floor, carrying my body backwards. This scramble led the wall to smash against my back. Without a thought, my claws joined the countless other marks of those who had come before me.
A towering, onyx-shaded visage of the malevolent beast prowled beyond the edge of my vision, obscured by tears of terror that practically blinded me. The blood-orange eyes glowed greedily and its mouth was stuck in a perpetual snarl. Viscera of a horrifically familiar color dribbled down its chin from where the meat was in the Arxur’s razor-sharp teeth.
With a click, the sanguine show moved forward to yet another horrific display. Another click. Another. One more. Click. Click. Click. Silence.
My eyes were as raw as my bloodied paws. Their scraping and scrabbling joined me with the other souls who had faced this same experience. When the lights flicked on and the worker came back to collect me, I curled up trying and failing to back away. She stood me up, patting me down before pulling me from the room. Everything was a collective white blur, compressed into a single moment of unfocused voices until I heard the vehicle’s door slam.
The ride home was silent as I leaned my head against the padded surface of my seat. Shallow breaths rose and fell from my chest while Mom and Dad stared ahead. They hadn’t looked at me once since we left the facility—or even talked to me—since we left the facility.
Among the many questions I had, one clung to the surface of my mind before being swallowed by its sea of screams. Why?
When at last we arrived at home, I barely even noticed. Only when the door to the passenger cabin flung open did I somewhat rise from my stupor. A sudden surprise wrapped around me and pulled me from the car, dragging away from my supposed guardians.
In an instant, I was rushed to my room and placed upon the familiar comfort of my bed before being coated by two layers of warmth; one was the plush cloth of a blanket and the other the fluffy warmth of my sister’s fur. “It’s ok, Tev. You’re home. You’re safe.” My empty eyes had no tears left to give, so Devra lent me hers.
You’re home. You’re safe.
“Tev? Tevri?”
My repeated name yanked me from the memory. Ugh, I’ve got to stop wandering off like that.
“You in there sheep?”
With a grumble, I responded. “I told you to stop calling me that.”
Jack uttered a mischievous chuckle. “C’mon, let's get over this next hill then break for lunch. Sure seems you could use a rest.” Despite it going unnoticed moments prior, I now felt my heart pumping hard and each breath heaved just as harshly. A short break will probably do me some good.
Together, we crested the hilltop and sat down both our packs and ourselves. I greedily lapped up water from my bottle while the man beside me calmly took several swigs from his own canteen. The food he grabbed was a pair of packaged items that he called ‘pasta salad.’
The small noodles were coated in a layer of creamy sauce and mixed with a variety of colorful vegetables that I didn’t recognize, but just like everything else cooked up by these humans, it was delicious. The sweet, creamy sauce contrasted nicely with the savory taste of the noodles and the soft texture of the pasta paired with the lovely crunch of the vegetables made for a wonderful meal.
As I munched on my food, the wind lazily played with my tail. My heart drummed onward, steadying into an agreeable rhythm before finally, my breathing leveled out.
A field of purple flowers greeted us, climbing and falling with the rolling land. Down below us was the river we had loosely followed, bordered by nondescript bunches of shrubbery. Rapid white waters splashed up and against rocks, breaking the flow and sending up spray.
When together we finished our food, we sat there, enjoying the world around us. “So, Tevri,” as Jack spoke, I met his forward eyes, “we’ve been out here for two days now and I still know next to nothing about you. Why don’t you tell me a bit more ‘bout yourself.”
The sudden question caught me by surprise, but I tried my best to answer anyway. “There isn’t much to tell. I write stories and poetry about the nature of worlds I’ve visited.”
“Well, you must be one hell of a writer to throw around money like you do.”
At the compliment, I felt a rush of warmth to my face. “I—”
Jack’s calm demeanor became one of surprise in an instant. “Is your face ‘sposed to do that?” A pair of my paws clapped to my face, trying and failing to hide the spreading orange.
“Y-yes!” I squeaked. “It’s p-perfectly fine.”
“Huh, right.” He didn’t sound convinced in the slightest. “Well, uh, what about your family? You’ve met mine already, why don’t you tell me about yours?”
Just as the orange began to fade away, a shroud of mist met my eyes and my voice sunk with my ears. “I’d rather not.” The whiplash of jumping from a sense of contentment, to embarrassment, to sad longing was jarring to say the least.
“Ah.” He held his silence for a moment, allowing the blowing breeze and the distant rush of water to fill the space between.
“I’m sorry.”
“S-sorry? Sorry for what?”
Jack gave a huff. “You know it's funny really. You Venlil, us Humans. I never really saw it before, but even just a few days around you, it’s shown me just how similar our people really are.”
Again, wind and water.
“If it means anything, I’ve felt your loss.”
What?! How does he know? How could he possibly know?
He must have picked up my confusion before he responded. “After the battle of Earth I got used to hearing that answer of yours.”
Oh.
Jack rose, swinging his pack around his shoulders. “C’mon sheep, sun’s not getting any higher. Let's get going.”
“YOU—!” The dour mood was immediately washed away by my guide’s hearty laughter. Again with the emotional whiplash.
It was amazing how easily he managed to do that. Try as I might, I couldn’t stay mad at him. As I shook my head, I followed my guide’s motions and grabbed my bag to join him.
For a while we walked quietly, but once again, Jack tried to strike up a conversation. “So, you mentioned you’ve visited other worlds. What were they like?”
I gave the human equivalent of a shrug with my tail. “Some were better than others, but for the most part, they were quite beautiful.”
“You have any favorites?”
My ears perked up. “Oh yes! The sky cities of Nishtal were incredible. Dwelling among the clouds, it was a rather uplifting experience.” Jack groaned with a smile still on his face.
“That might be one of the worst puns I’ve ever heard.” In response, I simply chuckled.
“Nishtal, huh?” The smile on his face faded. “That’s the world of feathered sacks-of-shit, right?”
“What? The Krakotl? Don’t be dense now, they aren’t all that bad.”
Jack scoffed. “That’s easy for you to say. They didn’t try to wipe the Venlil from existence.”
“If they succeeded during the battle of earth, they very well could have. Not that it matters anymore. Nishtal’s skies are clouded by the ash of their once-lush swamps and their cities have been plucked from the skies. Their world died.”
Jack gave a gruff grunt. “What goes around comes around I guess.”
I was genuinely shocked at what I heard. The anger that began to bubble within me was not the same lighthearted stuff from earlier. “How can you say something like that?”
“They brought it upon themselves,” he barked.
“That bastard Kalsim was the one who brought destruction to his people and you know it. Billions of Krakotl were killed or captured by betterment. Can you honestly tell me, or even yourself, that any species deserves such a fate?”
Silence.
“No. No I guess I can’t” Mentally, I gave a sigh of relief.
With my tail, I gave him a gentle flick. “The Krakotl are functionally endangered now, you know? They may have killed a billion humans, but for each life taken, tens of their own were paid.”
My voice began to choke. “I had—have—friends among the Krakotl. If you think that the mourning you humans experienced was harsh, I just want you to think; how would you feel if less than a percent of your people survived death or capture”
These words of mine were followed by an air of silence. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but something I had said clearly struck a chord with the man. Unlike me, Jack seemed to ground himself in reality, but for the first time since I met him, his distant unfocused eyes made it clear enough that his mind was elsewhere.
The remainder of the day flew by beneath this same blanket of silence.
We passed from the wide grassy knolls into a sparse forest that was more brush than tree. The trail led beneath their branches and through the tall shrubbery, rarely veering one way or the other.
When we eventually stopped to make camp for the evening, the sun was still slightly above the horizon. The campsite was similar to the one we had stopped at on our first day. An old steel fire-pit was set in the middle and a steel food container lay to the side.
Even as we set up, the cold quiet remained.
Progress was slow. Jack usually did the majority of the work, but tonight, his movements were taken with less purpose than I was used to. More than once, his hands fumbled, dropping something only for him to robotically reach down and pick it up again.
Once he did finally unpack his belongings, he left to find wood for the fire. At least this time, I found myself less frightened than when he had last done so. The deafening silence of my thoughts was more disconcerting than the idea of any hunters prowling nearby.
Whatever I had said, it didn’t just strike a chord. No, this had shaken him. Not even those nightmares of his had affected him this deeply.
In much the same way that I hadn’t wanted to talk about my own family, it was clear that whatever this was, he had no desire to elaborate further. I did find it odd however that only after mentioning the near-annihilation of the Krakotl did he seem to change. Perhaps it had to do with whoever he had lost? If this was the case, then I couldn’t fully blame him for his hatred towards the Krakotl. Grief is a powerful accelerant for the fires of rage.
On the other paw, my poor heart broke for the poor avians. So many lost. So few left. When the news had arrived back on Venlil prime, I devoted every moment possible to comforting my grieving friends; to Dualo, Oqui, Icatl and Haiula.
For some though, the grief of their new reality was too strong. Several of my dear friends had been unable to overcome that grief. My ears fell and my head bowed. If nobody else would remember them, I would ensure I never forgot them. They deserved that much.
Despite the clouds looming over my mind, my ears perked up at the sound of footfalls and I turned to see a bundle beneath Jack’s arms. Minutes later, a brilliant blaze burned before us.
It felt good to have a fire again. The protective warmth felt like a familiar embrace. From my pack, I grabbed the same blanket my guide had lent me the day before and wrapped it across my body.
While I found myself shrouded in comfort, Jack prepared our food above the pit. It was yet another warm meal of packaged food. The smell of spice wafted up to the tips of my taste buds as he stirred it about with a metal ladle.
The clink of utensils against our metal bowls rose above the crackling flames. Their sun still peeked out from behind the trees, though soon enough, it fell and with it, came the night’s chill.
Countless stars that you simply didn’t get to see on Venlil Prime appeared in the night sky. A glance told me that I wasn’t the only one impressed by their appearance. My wide field of vision managed to capture nearly the entire sky. I wonder, which of those stars is home?
A gust of wind blew by sending shivers down my spine. The effect of the Wendigo’s story hadn’t been completely lost on me, but the terror it inspired had at least died down to a manageable amount. Staying near to Jack certainly helped.
Speaking of him, I’d had enough of this silence.
“Hey Jack, how would you like to hear a campfire story?” I asked, tossing aside the quiet that had covered.
“Hmph. A promise is a promise. Didn’t really have a fire last night to tell a story ‘round did we. Guess it’s only fair to give you a chance.”
My tail gave a flick of excitement at his agreeance. “I must warn you, this is a bit less of a story and more of a poem. It’s one of the last few that I wrote before my travels across the Federation ended. It isn’t quite as long of a tale as that Wendigo story you told me, but it means a lot to me.
Jack gave a thoughtful nod. “Very well, I call this poem ‘The Wandrer’s Curse.’”
“Across the stars we wandrers go, not caring much for threat or foes, The skies we see are not our own, But from them wonder’s always shown.
From Nishtal’s clear and crystal skies, To Fahl where golden deserts lie, And ‘cross the cradle’s fruitful lands, Our own horizons do expand.
It is amidst these very sights, That we the wandrers oft delight, For friends we seek and friends we find, Across the worlds of species kind.
Thru mountains, oceans and the woods, Where those long past once walked and stood, The wandrers seek to find the past; A simpler time, no clouds o’er cast.
Despite the friends which we have made, The clouds above us cast their shade, Upon the surface of our minds, And seek our hearts with chains to bind.
It is our lot to flee from pain, Brought on by smashing, lashing rains. Til weary broken and undone, We fall with legs which fail to run.
But such is life—that beautiful thing, That brings one joy and suff’ring. So with this final cloudless verse, Remember thee, the wandrer’s curse.”
At the end of my poem, the crackling fire picked up where my words left off. My eyes raised to the heavens once more and I realized just how wonderful this life was. There was something truly sublime about existing right here during this exact moment; under the stars, surrounded by trees the whistling, beside a warm fire that staved off the cold.
Sharing it with Jack made it that much better.
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https://pix4free.org/assets/library/2020-12-13/originals/alaska022.jpg (Cover Image)
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Hello everyone, I have been with my s/o "Mike" for going on 6 years. Last year, we just put an offer in on a house & our relationship was really strong (or so I thought) He is a recovering alcoholic (but he would tell you he's not an alcoholic) anyways, while the offer was pending, he went to go hang out with his friend "Tommy". Tommy does not like me (political differences) and does not like the fact that my s/o is sober. Mike has always been the funny, big guy, who's everyone's entertainment, but his dad died extremely suddenly and it was a wakeup call for him as his dad was also an alcoholic. So between his passing, and my requests, he did quit drinking. Tommy has a family, wife and kids, but also has a drinking problem but has been very successful at staying sober for 90 days now. Anyways, last year, Mike went to Tommys house, and they had a few drinks, then Tommy decided to go to the bar & Mike agreed. Well, my other half, Mike, got extremely drunk and cheated on me. I remember waiting up for him and he walked in and was just like a different person. Whenever he is around Tommy, he acts so different. Extremely unrecognizable, even changes into a southern accent (we are in Canada) but he makes himself sound like he's from Texas, gives himself a draw and everything. The next morning, he eventually told me he cheated on me. And obviously I was so upset, crying, because I am a stay at home wife, I do all the cooking, cleaning, make his lunches, my life is completely catering to him and I had no idea how he could even do that. I asked him, don't you love me? And he said "I must not love you enough to make me not cheat" and for the last year, that line has burned me so deeply inside my soul. It haunts me. He promised to go to counseling (he never did because his work doesn't have much coverage for counseling) and then he promised to go to church, he never did. All he does now is work, hes rarely home. Maybe 2 hours, the rest he is at work, working tons of overtime. Today he told me that him and Tommy are going to the truck and tractor pulls, and I said you're not drinking are you? And he said he's having a few beers, I ofc tried to tell him no, to not drink, and he says that he works enough and deserves to "have a couple beers"... I can't help but be so hurt by this because if I ever cheated while under the influence of a substance, I would never touch it again, I would never take the gamble, but he just doesn't care it seems. I guess I never got over it, and I am so stressed, crying. This is the first time they've hung out since the cheating last year and I just feel like our relationship is worse right now than it was last year. I can't stop him, he will do what he's going to do. What do I do? Just sit here and wait for him to cheat again? Hope he doesn't cheat? I have no voice in this situation. Sorry for the long post. Just wanted to give some background on the situation. Thank you all & I am sorry for everyone going thru this.

TFA releases June 19th
TLJ in June
TROS somewhere later this year

Why later this year? This changelist is not final and can change, if you have feedback I would very much like to hear it, because it is a very difficult movie to get right. I am happy with how it is now, but its not great and many shots don't look good yet. I am also still trying to get certain changes to work, I began working on this one much later than TFA and TLJ and it is a slow process, that is why this one takes longer.

I would like to say before you read the changelist that I kept the planet killing Star Destroyers. As much as I don’t like the concept, when removed the stakes fall flat. The second act does not feel very hopeless and everything that happens feels more like an inconvenience than a real threat. Also, going forward, everything that Star Wars will release in the future surrounding the rise of Skywalker will have the destroyers be planet killing weapons. You can already see this in the Darth Vader comics for example. We see that Palpatine's plan will be written so that it was his back up plan for years before his first death at the death star. So that is why it stays in this edit.

Next up I have the changelist below, again, please give suggestions, tell me what you like and dislike, I will read all comments and consider everything and see if it works.
Here is my work in progress opening scene for anyone interested

Opening scene’s until the resistance meeting:

Added a new crawl, WORK IN PROGRESS, the original crawl is just awful
Added 6 new establishing shots for mustafar, slowing the opening scene down a bit, (Vaders castle, Two volcano eruptions, and Kylo Rens ship approaching) For the last shots Massive Thanks to Seize The Frame for sending me their original High Quality files, If you don’t know them, check out their amazing Fan Film here https://youtu.be/owrmLeX20CY
Added Vaders castle behind Kylo Ren as he holds the wayfinder
Changed Snoke clones to Palpatine clones
Moved the falcon scene to after the training
Moved the Leia and Luke fighting sequence to right after the Exegol scene extending it using deleted material from the documentary, this way the movie starts of ‘grander’ like the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga should, and it perfectly flows into the training scene with Rey and Leia, it also slows the start of the movie down a bit
Removed line “I’m gonna run the training course” and changed the order of the small dialogue, it feels more natural now
Removed Kylo Ren interfering with Rey’s training
Added a new vision for Rey, it is about Rey’s parents and her darkness, because that is her story this movie and this sets it up clearly
Added the falcon scene to after the training and before the falcon gets back to the base, it flows much better since they just talked about the falcon in the previous scene
Removed the chess scene, it is moved to the end of the movie
Added falcon leaving lightspeed
Removed Boolio
Removed line “Last shot maybe forever”, I honestly have no idea why Poe would say this, he is a good pilot and should be confident so if he is afraid to crash that is weird
Added a wipe to Rey reading the Jedi texts
Added a small scene showing the Falcon all in smoke, little bit less claustrophobic scene this way
Removed line “attacks start in 16 hours”, what happens in this movie can NOT happen in 1 day and it is weird to have the big final Skywalker movie play out in one day

The gang leaving until crashing in the sinking fields:

Removed line “It’s what you would do”, I feel like she says this because Carrie passed away, but for the sake of the movie IDK why she would say that
Added Kylo Ren’s vision to after the gang leaves the planet, this scene gives Kylo Ren a reason to rebuild his helmet, he feels guilty about killing han, he cant go back to leia, and rey refused him
Added Coruscant in the background of the First Order meeting
Removed lines “Well done and I like it” about Kylo Ren’s mask, it makes the first order less intimidating if they joke around
Removed line “That is an excellent name”, who says this??? She now immediately says Im Rey
Moved Kylo Ren finding out where Rey is to when they are in the vehicle with Lando, splits the scene up on a better point and thus slows the pace a bit
Removed Pryde looking suspicious to Kylo Ren, it only adds confusion to this cluttered movie, I want to keep is focused
Added pieces of the original much better speeder chase music
Colour graded some drone shots that look very different to other shots
Removed line “Ive seen that ship before”
Added instead two quick shots of young rey and the ship leaving
Removed line “Rey I need to tell you something”, it never pays off (I know Finn is force sensitive, but that is still hinted at without this line and removes confusion)

The cave with the snake until leaving Kijimi:

Moved the joke with Leia to remove dialogue about the “I need to tell you something”
Removed line “I don’t like bones”, it sounds very childish
Added sith whispers to the dagger
Removed line “this dagger has done terrible things”, we can hear through the screams
Removed Poe wanting to shoot the snake, he should trust rey and not be dumb
Removed a shot in Ochi’s ship, because it is used later
Added voice lines to the Knights of Ren giving them a personality
Removed a shot of Kylo Ren’s approaching ship, this way it is a bit more obvious that Finn senses something instead of the audience already knowing, and it makes the “Reveal” of Kylo Ren’s ship more exiting during the extended sequence
Added trailer shots, extending the Rey Kylo face off as long as possible
Removed the explosion of Kylo Rens fighter, he can’t survive it unharmed
Added the ship leaving Pasaana as Kylo Ren watches, slowing the pace down a bit
Changed line from “And me” to “Me” after Finn asks who sits on the throne, because in the vision it is just rey
Removed the Chewie reveal, but left in the Hux and Pryde scene, Hux is otherwise barely in the movie and in this scene he shows his annoyance of Kylo Ren
Added a shot that was removed earlier of Poe flipping some switches, it makes the scene flow better
Removed Finn shouting “LETS DO THAT”, why would he say it so happily after 3PO saying it is something bad, Poe now just says “I know a black market droid smith”, and 3PO turns around
Added a transition going to Kijimi
Removed line “I want to see your brain in the snow”, silence works better
Removed lines “You were a …”, they are under fire and it is a tense moment, why is there room for banter?
Removed line “Don’t Jakanka”, it is not very funny and Poe has absolutely no authority, it also makes Rey a bit more aggressive
Moved Finn and Poe dodging Rey, now they are startled of Rey’s aggresion instead of it being a joke
Removed the interaction between Rey and Zorri, Rey now just reaches out with her hand offering peace, no cliché badass line of I think you’re okay
Added a voice line to a Knight of Ren, they look for Rey
Added a remix of the Cantina band from A New Hope to the Kijimi bar scene
MIGHT BE DELETED IN FINAL CUT Added an extended scene showing the bar on Kijimi
Removed lines about R2D2 making a backup, it is cluttering the scene for no reason removing any consequences from the movie even before the memory wipe has even happened
Removed line “Sad” from D-O, why say sad during a sad scene, we know how to feel as humans
Added a small scene with D-O and Rey and the squeaky wheel, it is one of the few moments in this movie where we slow down and are with the characters and their feelings, it is a nice scene
Changed the colour of Kylo Rens fighter from red to yellow indicating his other fighter being destroyed and this being a new one

Everything on the star destroyer:

Removed lines “which way? I have no Idea follow me”, they now just shoot the two stormtroopers and it cuts to marching stormtroopers, they enter the destroyer with a big battle? Nobody else comes until Pryde sees the ship? Why follow Finn when he doesn’t know which way to go? It also builds a bit more rest in the movie when not every scene has a blaster fight or something like that
Rearranged the Chewie rescue to not have three people kill 20 or so stormtroopers
Removed line “Hey guys, and chewie laughing”, they are literally captured by 30 troopers and Poe was shot…
Moved Pryde telling to terminate Poe Finn and Chewie to before the Rey and dagger scene
Added Sith whispers from the dagger calling to Rey
Removed line “You are hard to get rid of”, Rey just ignores Kylo Ren now silence works better
Moved line “I never lied to you”. It’s a cheap retcon of TLJ, he now says it later in the scene and he seems more confident
Removed awkward stance after the first vision of rey during the duel
Removed line “rey, I know what happened to them” and added line “Rey, I never lied to you”, after Rey tells Kylo to stop talking
Removed the interruption of the Pryde and Poe and Finn and Chewie scene, we now have the focus on Rey and Kylo
Removed Kylo Ren asking Rey where she is again, and telling her she doesn’t know the story again
Removed line “she isn’t on Jakku”, its just dumb they didn’t find her after Rey’s mother says this
Cut a few frames to make Rey more aggressive after the second vision
Removed lines “you know why Palpatine wants you dead?”, instead Kylo ren says he has her now, Kylo Ren’s objective is to get Rey to join him so that is where his mind is at
Removed lines about Finn telling Rey something while under fire……….
Changed the colour of Kylo Ren’s starfighter to yellow
Reordered a few shots before Kylo tells Rey about Palpatine to not cross the 180 degree rule (This causes disorientation for the viewer)
Removed line “Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me”, the previous set up for this line was cut
Removed lines “you’re his granddaughter, and my mother was the daughter of Darth Vader”, we understand how bloodlines work and we are told three times in a few seconds Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter
Added line “But”, to bridge Kylo Ren’s sentence
Removed line “and take the throne”, now Kylo Ren just offers Rey to kill Palpatine together, it’s a much more tempting offer to her now

Death star 2 wreckage until resistance speech:

Removed lines “What is that? It’s the death star”, we can see that for ourselves
Added sith whispers to the dagger
Removed the dagger fitting on a place on the death star from where they are standing
Changed line “why is there never an R2 unit when you need one” instead of “Is every day like this to people like you? Madness”, we know 3PO’s memory is wiped, he doesn’t need to remind us like this, he can make a joke about R2 instead
Added more Sith whispers luring Rey to the dark side vault
Recut the Lightsaber fight, many little changes to fasten the pace, big changes are: Removed Rey and Kylo looking at the first wave while both having the opportunity to kill each other, Kylo Ren now instantly runs after Rey when she jumps, shortened Rey and Kylo looking at each other for a long time again, Removed Rey force blocking Kylo…….Most changes are to make Kylo Ren appear stronger and Rey more aggressive (thinking about adding music here)
Added the medal shot from the trailer
Moved line “I did want to take your hand, bens hand” to before healing, giving her the reason before and leaving Kylo Ren in silence after the healing
Changed Kylo Rens fighter colour from Red to yellow
Rearranged scenes to make it seem like there is more time passing instead of everything happening so fast
After Lando scene we go to ahch-to
We start at early morning on ahch-to and it slowly gets lighter indicating the passing of time
Added wipe and extra establishing shot with flying porgs, slows the pace down and shows porgs!!!
Added more Porg sounds than only one shot, now it feels like they live there again instead of being shown once
Added an extra establishing shot breaking the scene up between Luke catching the lightsaber and Rey and Luke talking
Luke’s hair is now thinner
Added another establishing shot slowing the pace down and indicating passing of time
Removed the flashback to Luke and Leia training, it is used at the beginning of the movie
The Finn and D-O scene is placed after the R2 and 3PO scene, now it feels like much time has passed
Removed Lines “Palpatine wanted Rey alive”, Palpatine wanted Rey dead the entire movie, even in TLJ Snoke wanted Rey dead, so it makes no sense to suddenly want her alive, he can change his plan now as he said to pryde, but he can not always have wanted Rey dead, now the big thing Finn wants to tell Poe is that they can get much information about Exegol through D-O

Exegol scenes and ending:

Changed the colour of every bolt fired from a star destroyer throughout the battle from green to blue because Pride says to fire Ion cannons
Removed Finn seeing the signal transmitter before Rey enters the sith cave, now the resistance just enters Exegol first
Added Finn seeing the signal transmitter to after Rey entered the wall thing, now we have a set up and instantly go to the signal transmitter
Removed Pryde ordering to change the signal to their ship, now Finn discovers it with us at the same time suggesting his Force abilities better
Removed lines “I never wanted you dead, I wanted you here”, same reasoning as before his original plan was not to want her alive in the movie and trilogy
Added voice lines to the Knights of Ren humiliating him
Cut some shots of Rey fighting the Red guards because the movie uses the exact same scene twice…
Added music during Palpatine discovering the Dyad of the Plagueis scene in Episode 3, as a callback
Made the Jedi voices louder
Added Jon h’s force ghosts during the final battle with Palpatine and Rey, now it is a conclusion to the Skywalker saga
Changed I am all the Jedi to I am a Jedi, and Recut the scene to not have it be the exact same as thanos vs iron man
Added coruscant to the victory montage
Zoomed the lesbian kiss in a bit, I feel like if you want to do it as Disney you also should have the balls to show it properly and not have it flash by far away in a shot
Added the chess scene to the Tatooine sequence, showing them moving on to the future together not just Rey
Added Ben Solo force ghosts, OF COURSE he should be there

ChocoPro 316: Chie’s Challenge In order for EGG TART to become a true tag team, they must become equals. Instead of fighting as Guardian and Protected, they must face off! Tonight’s episode features the Best Bros battling the powerhouse pair, Shin finding himself comfortably among the upper echelons in a veteran tag bout, and Super Asia Champion Hagane Shinno puts his belt on the line to get his partner, Chie Koishikawa, on the same level as himself. Can the Frantic Fencer prove her worth? Let’s Go, ChocoPro! We might also see a wild Nonoka again, be prepared!
🍫 CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK! ChocoPro 316 🍫 Best Bros (Mei Suruga & Baliyan Akki) VS Miya Yotsuba & Tokiko Kirihara, Shin Suzuki & Minoru Fujita VS Masa Takanashi & Sayaka Obihiro, Super Asia Championship: Hagane Shinno (c) VS Chie Koishikawa! It airs TOMORROW at 4 am EDT / 1 am PDT / 9 am BST / 5 pm JST. Live and Free on YouTube!
This link will be updated with a direct one when available

Don't forget to Adjust Your Volume, Wrestling is Loud!

Change the stage, escape the normal! ChocoPro is built different. Find out why wrestlers like it so much: Find a new home on the bleeding edge. (This is not your regular wrestling show.) Join us for this episode, or check out the back catalog of 17 wonderful Seasons on the Gatoh Move ChocoPro YouTube channel...260+ episodes with stories and pro-wrestling like you've never seen. New to the promotion? It features a roster of skilled veterans, rising stars, and wonderful guests fighting in the ChocoPro Arena: Ichigaya Chocolate Square. Subscribe for more content than just the live matches! (AEW Watch Alongs, Discussions, Interviews, Food Challenges, etc) Even if you can't catch it live, don't sweat it! It will still be available on the channel.

Best Bros (Mei Suruga 🍎 & Baliyan Akki ♠️)

VS

Miya Yotsuba 🍀 & Tokiko “Otoki” Kirihara 💃

Right There!

“Right There!” The Best Bros (Mei Suruga & Baliyan Akki) are one of the top teams of Ichigaya (and beyond, for that matter). “Big Apple Girl” Mei Suruga & the Zephyr of Ichigaya, Baliyan Akki, are always focused on the next achievement. Mei Suruga is trick pin specialist, torture expert, and all around menace in the ring. She has fantastic technical ability, and while the known Goblin might be a...bit rotten...she is honestly one of the most gifted talents out there! While Mei is the Ace of Gatoh Move, Akki is the Ace of ChocoPro. Baliyan Akki sets the bar for quality in Ichigaya. With striking features to match his surgical striking in ring, effortless (and intensely impactful) high flying techniques that will take your breath away, and silky smooth submissions (that will take theirs!), Akki will engrave himself in your memory. While they might be the opener this time, it won’t be long until this elite team finds glory once again. Regardless of the challenge, the Ace & the Apple will always deliver!
The Powerhouse Pair reunites! Rookie supernova and Ichigaya’s Lucky Charm, Miya Yotsuba, has been dazzling viewers lately with her surprising level of skill and determination! The mint-geared Rookie has a full-power style that pumps up the audience. Her slams and modified versions of her goblin teacher’s skills are absolutely fantastic. She is always growing through challenges way beyond her current level, so this grim task will be yet another step in her rapid ascent. She’ll be once again aided by fellow heavy striking enthusiast Tokiko “Otoki” Kirihara! Otoki is ChocoPro’s “Comaneci” shouting straight forward fighter. She’s sometimes showing off her comedic chops along side Anton in several forms of Black Comaneci, but outside of that brutalizing foes is her bread and butter! This kick-boxing, Judo throwing, Fourth Gen berserker can go toe to toe with the rest of the roster: even her seniors! Putting these two together fuels their respective berserk states, so this should be a blast. Let’s go, Lucky Comaneci!

Shin Suzuki 🍙 & Minoru Fujita 🐦

VS

Masa Takanashi 🍶 & Sayaka Obihiro 💙

Upper Echelons

Shin Suzuki has finally established himself among the best of the best in ChocoPro. This spunky technician found his true balance along side Choun Shiryu, but his overall power level has increased with his confidence. Expect his excellent fundamentals and incredible timing to lead this acrobat toward victory in any situation. While his ability is unquestionable, he will be testing that new attitude when taking on his ideal wrestler (who happens to be one of the champs he got the belt from!). Shin will be joined by Minoru Fujita, the exalted Vice Principle and fantastic pick up partner. Known for his accolades in singles, deathmatches, and especially tags (also his angelic singing voice), Fujita was once away from the Chocolate Square due to injury, but he’s finally back into the normal rotation! This bird loving brawler is still a terror with endless endurance...even if he looks a bit different now. His brawler style and high level of technicality make him a fierce (but also rotten) opponent. How will this rare pairing have improved with Shin’s rise to the top?
The Chef and the Drunk, together again! Sayaka Obihiro and Masa Takanashi are one of the most Veteran combinations you can get in ChocoPro! While both have been around since this new offshoot of Gatoh Move started, fate prevented them from teaming up often. (Also Obihiro being both a Chef and occasional member of the UMA Monster Invaders…) Obi is a charismatic scoundrel, able to do flashy pinning techniques that seem like magic. Her chops are on the same level as her boss and teacher, “the Oni” Emi Sakura! She brings with her a raw joy that is very engaging, and it helps that her move set is so flashy...not to mention that fiery gear! Masa on the other hand is pretty rotten, a counter-fighter with a knack for annoying his opponents. The Drunken Monkey's style is very technical and crisp, but he isn't afraid to go dirty! Don't be fooled by his laid back nature and swaying movements...Masa is a real threat. Between Masa's trickery and Obi's personality, this combination is a surefire thrill ride. Though Masa’s grudge about losing the belts in such a manner (due to Chrissy B’s injury) might lead to a bit more spice than you’re expecting...

Hagane Shinno ⚔️ (c)

VS

Chie Koishikawa 🏵️

SUPER ASIA CHAMPIONSHIP

Winter is cold and unforgiving. Hagane Shinno represents that freezing season with more than just his icy demeanor! This absolutely brutal striker has been nearly invincible in the series so far, having never been bested in singles combat! His solemn ferocity makes him an instant favorite among new fans...(with Hagane surprising most with his exceptional technical skill, emotionless demeanor, and explosive fighting style) while his byronic nature pairs well with his otherworldly beauty (canonically, thanks Emi!). This mysterious eccentric perfectionist has come out of his shell quite a bit since he paired with Chie Koishikawa in EGG TART, the cheery energy machine having even drawn a smile out of him! Hagane has had a long career, one that has been guided by his own stubborn & unflinching decisions. Every action is decisive. Every decision is final. While his unwavering will is one of the things that aligns him the most with Chie, there is an issue. He has decided that if EGG TART is going to progress and become a true team on the same level, he must force Chie to grow out of the “protected” and stop being her Guardian. He has granted her a challenge for his Big Blue Belt to test her growth, to see if she is truly up to the task of true synergy. This forced increase in chemistry will be brutal, but fruitful for them both regardless of outcome.
Chie Koishikawa has endless energy, boundless potential, and a destiny beyond what any of us can fathom. But is she capable of seizing that unique strength? Her charisma is unquestionable, the Frantic Fencer warming the hearts of fans across the world with her emotional outbursts and reckless style. Her desire is rock solid, her passion burning out of her far beyond what her body can take (even giving the former tag champions one of their greatest defenses). But there will always be another Mountain to climb. Baliyan Akki learned this when it came for him, but even Akki possesses something Chie does not: perfect synergy with his tag partner. Chie wants to ascend, she wants to be able to bring down stronger opponents both on her own and as a team with Hagane. But all of their battles have ended with her being the weak link, the downfall of the team. She has been training harder and harder, pushing herself further and further...but is it enough? Chie has finally earned a Super Asia Title shot, but in a unique way: She must prove herself in this match to be her Guardian’s equal. To stand beside him, instead of behind him. She will need to push beyond her limitations to succeed, to reach that next level. Chie must find a way to strike down a superior foe, to at least bring herself to be able to stand proud against him. Will her speed striking be enough? Can she outrun the cold? Can she find a way to harness her hidden talent of “too much energy”?
Good luck, Chie!
Come and see the wild creativity that produced Two of the Seven AEW Women's World Champions! (Both of which have appeared on ChocoPro!) You'll be wondering if you're seeing future champs, as well. ChocoPro is the Frontier of Pro Wrestling! Match after match of hard hitting, chaotic, fun bouts with a friendly online audience. We're quickly growing, and you're welcome to come along!
Here are some Frequently Asked Questions:

“What is this?”

ChocoPro is a free online promotion run by AEW's Emi Sakura, that takes place in the legendary Ichigaya Chocolate Square! It features a steady pace of live Episode releases, fan interaction, season long story arcs, and much more! A place where the turnbuckles are replaced with 14th floor windows, the ropes are often replaced with fans, unforgiving walls provide creative avenues for skills otherwise unthinkable, and you can take solace in knowing that the referees usually do nothing. While it might be a shocking change at first, the intensity and storytelling will leave you wanting more.

“Why are they fighting in ____?”

Short answer is that it is a cost effective, unique venue with a better availability schedule and allows the roster access for training. Emi Sakura has been using this place for a long time, and you might be surprised at some of the names that have used it (even outside of ChocoPro!). There are a few in-ring Episodes and Gatoh Move has in ring shows with crowds on the YouTube channel. Think of it like the Hart Dungeon but as a promotion, if that helps!

”What are the rules?”

While special match stipulations will usually be explained before the respective matches, the general rules of ChocoPro are simple. Pins only count on the Chocolate Mat and are not broken by the edge or Wall. Submissions usually only count on the Chocolate Mat, and ARE broken by reaching the edge or wall (sometimes ceiling...). Double pins and Double submissions are legal (and encouraged) in ChocoPro Tag matches, meaning cohesive teams will always have the advantage! Count Outs only exist if specified, since many matches stray from the comfort of the Chocolate Square into the streets (and the rest of the building itself!) There is a Time Limit for each bout (based on card placement and importance) and the Referee has discretion (even if they tend to do nothing most of the time!). Every Ref is different, some have different levels of bias and speed.

“How can I support them?”

Watch the show! Even if you can't see it live, the views matter! Like & Subscribe! You can join the Channel's membership for different tiers of perks...but also, you can buy single episode Sponsorship, Digital autographed photos, and more on their shop site as well as purchase shirts from PWTees (which features some great options!) If you'd like to donate or purchase a main wall sponsorship, you can via Paypal or Patreon...and don't forget to cheer for your favorites! (especially if you want to do a superchat!)

”How come there aren’t a lot of comments on the threads?”

ChocoPro is a YouTube show, meaning the discourse happens live...in the chat! Those that comment in the threads on here tend to do so in order to help new viewers that might be intimidated by the fast moving chat. Don’t be afraid to just dive in though, the community is friendly.

“Why are you posting this here? / Are you paid for this?”

This is a wrestling forum, and I'm trying to broaden the horizons of others! There is a lot of good wrestling out there...Plus growing the fan base means more people for me to joke around with! I honestly do believe this is what a lot of fans are looking for, even if it is too different for some! But different tastes are good. Variety is the spice of life. This is a labor of love (it really doesn't take that long) considering how much work they do to put on so many shows...for free!
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me on here or on Twitter, where I’m somehow still sick! ChocoPro is Energetic!
Season Tracker: We're 16/18 into Season 18! (Each Season is usually around 18 episodes)

“I’m sorry; we’re going to astral travel to a flea market?” Charlotte asked incredulously as she watched Genevieve and I set up a meditation circle under the shade of a towering old willow tree in my cemetery. “What if we want to buy something? How will we bring it back?”
“We’re not going there to shop, Lottie. Samantha’s finally had a vision about Emrys,” Genevieve explained.
The Veil between the Physical and Astral Planes is exceptionally weak in my cemetery, especially at night and on hallowed days. When I sleep there, my subconscious mind is highly receptive to all manner of revelations from the Spirit World. When I saw a Blood Moon rise on the night of May fifth, the same night as a penumbral eclipse, I knew that my dreams would be prophetic.
“I had a dream about him last Friday,” I expounded. “He’s at some sort of otherworldly marketplace, one that’s not connected to the Crypto Chthonic Cuniculi, so it’s mostly inaccessible to the Ophion Occult Order. In my dream, Emrys invited us to come and speak with him while we were lucid. He drew a sigil for me, the same one I’ve drawn in the middle of the mediation circle. He said that all I’d have to do is toss an Undying Rose – the earthly effigy of the rose Persephone used to steal a drop of his blood – into the sigil and it will become an astral portal to where he is.”
I held up the deep purple rose that I had cut from its bush earlier that day. I don’t know for certain where the roses came from, but my best guess is that they were made by the same Occultist who hallowed my cemetery to Persephone; Artaxerxes Crow. They have some connection to Emrys as well, since the only other time I saw someone else use one was when his avatar was summoned into the Physical Plane on Halloween 2020.
Knowing that Emrys wouldn’t dare to set foot in a place that was sacred to the Goddess who was ultimately responsible for his cosmic defeat, I gently tossed the rose into the middle of the sigil.
“He invited all of us?” Charlotte asked with an incredulous raising of her eyebrow.
“He said me and my coven. If he had just meant me or me and Genevieve he would have said that,” I replied. “You and Elam are coming too. I want as many eyes on this place as possible so that we don’t miss anything. We may not get an opportunity like this again.”
“And this is safe? Visiting some random flea market between worlds?” Charlotte asked.
“Samantha and I have visited the Underworld and come back no problem,” Genevieve reminded her. “So long as we’re bound to our bodies and Elam is bound to Samantha, we can come back anytime. Don’t worry; this is going to be a blast! Adventures like these are the best part of being a Witch.”
“The only reason you were able to go to the Underworld is because Samantha’s cemetery came with an astral portal in the back,” Charlotte countered, gesticulating in the general direction of the archway that was still partially visible behind the light spring foliage. “Other than that, when have any of us ever done anything useful with our astral projection? This is still a physical place, right? We don’t have any of our physical senses available to us when we astral project, and I get extremely disoriented trying to navigate the mortal plane with clairvoyance alone.”
“It is a physical place, but one saturated with astral energy and full of occultists and occult artifacts. It will be extremely illuminated to our clairvoyance,” I assured her. “Elam will also be there to guide us. As a ghost, he’s much more practiced at traversing the mortal plane in an astral form.”
Charlotte folded her arms over her chest and turned to look at Elam, who was leaning up against the willow tree as he waited for us.
“I don’t suppose you could go and scout the place out for us ahead of time?” she asked.
“I can’t go too far from Samantha, and definitely not across planes,” he said with a shake of his head. “But Eve’s right. Your astral bodies will be in no danger, and you can return here in an instant whenever you want.”
“But what about Emrys? Didn’t that book Leon gave you say that he’s some sort of soul-flayer?” Charlotte asked me.
“It did,” I admitted. “Keep in mind though, that book was written by his enemies. I want to hear his side of things before this conflict of theirs spirals out of control.”
“Any update from Chamberlin about that?” Elam asked.
“Yeah, he said that after he failed to purify the Sigil Sand, Ivy’s onboard with negotiating some kind of truce with Emrys,” I replied. “The Grand Adderman’s still reticent, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s running out of options. I need to find out if Emrys will agree to peace talks.”
“Um, I get that, but I’m still kind of hung up on him potentially flaying our souls,” Charlotte reiterated.
“If Emrys and the Ophion Occult Order go to all-out war, there’ll be a lot of collateral damage and innocent souls caught in the crossfire,” Genevieve told her, gently grabbing hold of her and looking her straight in the eye. “Samantha, Elam, and I are doing this because if there’s any chance we can put an end to this before it starts, then it’s our responsibility to try. You don’t have to come with us, Lottie, but you’re still a member of our coven. Samantha and I would both feel a lot better with you there to help us.”
“Arghhh! All right, fine! I’ll come with you,” Charlotte gave in, plopping her butt down on the edge of the meditation circle. “If we’re holding hands, that will help keep our astral bodies together too, right?”
“I believe it should, yes,” I smiled at her, sitting down and reaching out for her hand.
Genevieve lit the incense and her bong filled with the entheogenic Delphi Dream, before sitting down to join us. She took a hit from the bong before passing it to me, and then to Charlotte before setting it aside out of the circle.
“Start with taking a deep breath, completely filling the lungs, and holding it for five heartbeats,” she guided us as she took hold of each of our hands. “Exhale completely, and wait five more heartbeats before breathing in again. Eyes closed, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus on the astral energies flowing through you with each breath, gently aligning each chakra until those energies are enough to lift you up and out of your body.”
In unison with one another, the three of us slowly breathed in and out, ignoring the material world around us and focusing upon the task at hand. Eve was first, as usual, and because we were all holding hands, Charlotte and I felt her eagerly tugging us up to speed us along.
I opened my eyes, and beheld the dull and muted Physical Plane through my clairvoyance, everything outshined by the radiant forms of my coven mates. I noted that Genevieve had eschewed her normal skyclad form when astral projecting and instead wore a cloak like Charlotte and I.
“Are you worried this place might have a no shirt, no shoes, no souls, no service policy?” I teased her.
“I just don’t want to risk a confrontation over it. I realize how important this is,” she answered. “Though I’m not actually wearing shoes, now that you mention it.”
“Christ, look at the sigil Samantha drew!” Charlotte said, pointing down at the meditation circle beneath us. The sigil wasn’t just glowing but flowing as well, churning the Aether around it in a misty, spectral vortex. “It’s an astral portal, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah. It’s not stable, though. Good for one trip only,” Genevieve said with a delighted smile. “And Lottie, since we’re Neopagan Witches, try not to swear by Christ, okay?”
“Jesus!” she swore, both in defiance and in genuine annoyance.
“Elam! Elam, come join the circle! I don’t want to take any chances of severing our bond,” I instructed, letting go of Charlotte’s hand and waving him in between us.
Faithful Familiar that he was, he obeyed without hesitation. Despite my concerns, I think that he probably could have stayed behind if he had wanted. The fact that he was willing to follow me to an unknown otherworld without complaint really made me appreciate how devoted he was to me.
“We step in together on the count of three, got it?” I instructed, each of them nodding clearly in response. “One. Two. Three!”
We all extended our right feet into the vortex together, and the instant we did we were swept away, falling out of our own world and tumbling between the cracks of countless others. They weren’t real, I don’t think. At least, not as real as our world. They were potential realities, or realities that could have been once but now can never be, or fantasies that are so persistent in the minds of real people that in some sense or another, they become real themselves. I only saw glimmers of them, glimmers in nebulas made of primeval chaos and uttermost void.
It was outside of time, that place we travelled through, or at least we had no sense of it there. Our souls were haphazardly spat out upon a surreal landscape of earth, sea, and fire. Hilly plains of volcanic ash, incandescent calderas of lava and bubbling hot springs all intermeshed in a chaotic mosaic that didn’t seem to abide by any laws of geology or geography that I was familiar with. A strong but slow wind pushed fractal formations of dark silver clouds through a pale silver sky, illuminated by a single white orb which could have been either a bright moon or a faint sun.
While our spectral feet left no trace upon the ash we now stood upon, our presence nonetheless elicited a response from some of the local fauna. We were just able to catch a glimpse of some kind of shimmering scarabs burrowing themselves into the ash to escape the four otherworldly ghosts that had invaded their territory.
“Holy shit,” Charlotte murmured as we all gazed out upon the strange world we had found ourselves on. “This really isn’t on the Astral Plane. This is a real planet. This a real, alien planet! This is unbelievable!”
Genevieve glided over to one of the bubbling pools and peered into it, looking for any more signs of life.
“There’s some kind of bluish-grey algae growing on the rocks down there, and I think I can make out some small arthropods too. This planet’s alive!” she announced with glee, smiling and looking up at the alien sky.
Conjuring an astral approximation of my staff, I plunged it into a small mound of ash beside me. I watched curiously as the scarabs shot out in all directions, moving too quickly for me to get a good look at them, before scurrying back into the surrounding ash.
“These bugs can sense our presence,” I remarked. “How and why would clairvoyance evolve in insects on this world, and why would their first instinct be to flee?”
“Samantha!” Elam called out. “I think I found the Flea Market.”
We all gathered around him and looked where he was pointing. On a distant dune, we beheld the moulted carapace of a colossal insect, gleaming a brilliant, lustrous gold in the broken white light.
“That’s impossible!” Charlotte claimed. “That thing must be hundreds of meters long! No insect, no animal period could ever get that big on the Physical Plane!”
“It could be the Incarnation of some kind of Titan,” Genevieve suggested. “But… it’s dead. I can tell that even from here. It’s dead. It’s the corpse of a dead god, and now it’s being used as a swap meet with a punny name. Either whatever killed it just abandoned it, or…”
“Or is running the place,” I finished for her. “Well, we should see if we can find Emrys.”
In an instant, the world moved around us until we were at the entrance to the Flea Market. The colossal carapace was hollow inside, of course, and had been filled with a bustling city that looked like it had been created in the most ad hoc manner possible. There wasn’t a single straight street to be seen, and they converged with one another at random intervals. Stalls and buildings varied wildly in both design and materials, all imported from a plethora of different cultures across the planes.
Enormous shards of luminous glass levitated above the throng like a thousand Swords of Damocles, any or all of them seeming capable of succumbing to gravity at any moment. In the very center of the moulted husk dangled a great spiralling chrysalis or hive woven of iridescent silk, its function not being immediately apparent to me.
There must have been thousands of people there, and hundreds of merchants hawking their wares. Most of those who looked human still seemed a little off, like they were members of ethnicities that didn’t exist in our world. Some of the beings were near-human in appearance, many seemingly some kind of Fey or Seelie folk. There was even a small handful of people that weren’t remotely human at all.
The only thing they all had in common was that none were native to this world.
“Most of these people are here in person, aren’t they?” Charlotte asked.
“It would’ve been quite a feat for them to have built all of this while astral projecting,” Genevieve agreed.
“But if this place isn’t connected to the Cuniculi, then how did they get here?” Charlotte asked. “We’re on another planet, maybe even in another dimension. If getting here is beyond the Ooo’s abilities, then what sort of ungodly reality benders decided to turn it into a Flea Market?”
“Ladies, gentlemen, and any beings either too ancient and alien or too modern and alienated to settle on one or the other, come bear witness to one of the most astounding and atrocious abominations on this or any other world!” a fast-paced male voice rang out over the din of the crowd.
We turned to see a short, skinny, old-timey sort of carnival barker standing on a literal soap box, placed next to a large object draped in a black tarp.
“For the paltry price of a single three-headed coin, you can peer beneath the veil and behold with your own unbelieving eyes the mangled and mutilated monstrosity that lurks beneath!” the carnival barker continued. “But I must warn you, it is not possible to truly understand what dwells underneath without seeing it first! I cannot guarantee that you will still retain your sanity or will to live after witnessing the proverbial Mountains of Madness, for this low creature is truly like no other and serves only as a grim testament to the cruel sadism of the Lord Above! Anyone plagued by even the faintest lingering doubt as to their spiritual fortitude should not dare to even contemplate what might lie before me! But, for those brave, noble few who are truly dauntless of heart and incorrigible of spirit, I am proud to share with you this rare, unfathomable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness sublime –”
The carnival barker was interrupted by a man yanking the sheet off the object beside him, revealing it to be a mirror.
“Whelp, that was a hell of an Im14andthisisdeep post, eh?” Charlotte mused.
Genevieve and I, however, were far too stunned to be amused; not by the mirror, but by the man who had unveiled it.
“It’s him, Lottie. That’s Emrys,” Genevieve whispered.
We had only seen him briefly once before, more than two-and-a-half years ago, but he was far from what anyone would call forgettable. He was tall and gaunt, with literal blue blood flowing beneath translucent skin. His long, receding hair and regal beard were pitch black, and dark miasma wafted from his eyes, nose, and mouth. He was dressed in dark sable robes with three overlapping Ouroboros’s tattooed on his forehead, with a pair of ophidian pupils lying in the spaces between them.
What stood out the most to us were the six silver Ouroboros chains bound around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. These were the chains the Ophion Occult Order had made to limit the power of his physical avatar, and it seemed he had not yet found a way to free himself from them.
“Are you still here?” Emrys asked in exasperation, tossing the veil back at the carnival barker in disdain.
“…Possibly,” the strange man replied evasively. “But not definitively, for purely legalistic reasons.”
“I believe Mathom-meister was quite clear when he said that your rather pitiful chicanery wasn’t welcomed here,” Emrys reminded him.
“And who is he to judge chicanery from cutthroat, capitalistic competition? Should not the Flea Market be a free market?” the charlatan demanded. “And while we’re on the topic of commerce, I don’t suppose you have enough three-headed coins to pay for all the poor souls you have so discourteously exposed to my exhibit against their will? I’d hate to have to start shaking people down to get my due.”
“Hard to believe your own circus threw you out,” Emrys said with a sardonic eye roll as he tossed him a small medallion. “You get one coin. Take it and get out of my sight.”
The charlatan flipped the coin in the air thrice, presumably to confirm it actually had three heads. Satisfied with its impossible dimensions, he shoved it into his pocket.
“It will cover the trolley ride home, at least,” he acquiesced, stepping off his soap box and turning to face his looking glass. “A shame though you can’t see the genius in my little avant-garde performance piece here, Emmy. Even I know that the monster in the mirror is often the hardest to recognize.”
As the man reached to pick up his mirror, his reflection’s arms shot through the glass and grabbed him by the wrists, pulling him in. Emrys immediately tried to chase after him, but bounced off the glass as if there was nothing supernatural about it at all.
“Bastard!” he cursed under his breath, before turning towards us and giving us a small apologetic smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that rather pathetic display. Unfortunately, the few meeting places I know of that are relatively safe from any Ophionic incursion also attract their fair share of other annoying miscreants.”
“If it didn’t attract a little bit of everything, it wouldn’t be a Flea Market, would it?” I asked rhetorically. “Thank you, Emrys, for inviting us. I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
“And thank you for accepting. Samantha, Genevieve, it’s a pleasure to see you again, and a relief that you have not fallen under the auspices of the Ophion Occult Order,” he said with a gentle bow. “Elam, I remember you as well. Valiant but not reckless, you remained atop Pendragon Hill during my battle with the Darlings until your mistress was well out of harm’s way, and then you got the hell out of dodge yourself. Samantha couldn’t hope for a better Familiar. And Charlotte, any Witch that Samantha deemed worthy to induct into her coven is obviously someone whose acquaintance I am pleased to make. Welcome, all of you, to Mathom-meister’s Flea Market!”
“So this is where you’ve been hiding out the past two years?” Genevieve asked.
“Oh no. Far too Cosmopolitan for my tastes,” Emrys replied. “No, this is just a friendly place to meet those I consider friends – or potential friends, at least. I’d offer to show you around, but I know it’s difficult for you to astral travel for prolonged periods. Come with me to Mathom-meister’s house where we can talk freely, and we’ll discuss the situation with the Order.”
I gave him a small, single nod in response, and gestured with my staff that he should lead the way. He responded by pointing upwards, then vanished into his shadow form. When we looked up, we saw him waving at us from a balcony atop the great silken chrysalis.
We exchanged hesitant glances with one another, but ultimately followed him into the strange structure, moving from the ground to the balcony in an instant by will alone.
“How would an incarnate being get up here if they couldn’t fly or teleport?” Charlotte asked as she peered over the balcony’s teetering edge.
As though answering a summons, a humanoid creature apparated beside her in a flash of dark vapours. The hunched-back entity stood over six-and-a-half feet tall, and was clad in golden-brown erudite robes. Its squid-like skin was of a similar colour, and its entire face was a single gaping orifice that held a wispy, glowing orb in the center of its skull which I immediately recognized as its soul. A pair of long, fanged tentacles lined with pores and tendrils hung down from its head like a long, forked beard, and the seven digits shared by its two hands all bore wicked-looking talons, as did its two-toed, digitigrade feet.
“Not fly or teleport? What sort of pedestrian house guests do you think I entertain here?” the being asked wryly, its voice seeming to come from nowhere in particular.
Charlotte instinctively backed away from the creature and into the protective fold of our coven, but Emrys was quick to hold up his hand to plead for calm.
“Please, there’s no need for alarm. This is our host, Mathom-meister. He’s the only reason any of this is here in the first place,” Emrys informed us. “A year or two ago a companion of his unfortunately became one of the Darling Twin’s victims, and when he heard of my vendetta with them, he tracked me down; which is no small feat, I assure you.”
“It is for us. My people are a race of Planeswalkers. Traversing the many worlds of Creation is second nature to us,” Mathom-meister explained.
“I’ve… I’ve heard of your people, I think,” I said, softly and unsurely. “A friend of mine had an encounter with an artifact that gave her a vision of a race of strange and powerful sorcerers slaying their own god. I take it you’re the ones who slayed this Scarab Titan as well? That’s, that’s…”
“Horrifying, yes. That’s the idea,” he nodded. “You have nothing to worry about, young Witch. My people have no special interest in your world. This is purely personal. My friend is dead, and I want his murderers brought to justice; a goal which Emrys and I happen to have in common.”
“Feel free to share this information with the Ophion Occult Order, Samantha,” Emrys said. “I’d very much like for the Darling Twins to know what’s hunting them. Mathom-meister, please excuse me while I take my guests inside. We do have pressing business to discuss and their time is limited.”
The squid-cyclopes bowed gracefully, and my coven and I quickly scurried after Emrys as he led us inside through a towering hallway and into a large chamber that had been appointed as a living space.
I had thought that Emrys would want to speak with us alone, which was why I was surprised to see a young woman sitting cross-legged on a spongey yet chitinous object that I will for the sake of my sanity call a bean bag chair. Like Emrys, she was pale and blue-blooded, her choppy hair as black as coal. She wore a black robe and heavy black eyeliner, but these could not conceal the fact that she too had thin wisps of miasma emanating from her eyes.
“Is that your… daughter?” Charlotte asked, as baffled by her presence as any of us. The woman smiled warmly at the question.
“In a way. I was dead, and Emrys gave me new life. Now a part of the Outer Primordial Darkness he represents lives in me too,” she said serenely.
Hovering above her left palm were three small bluish-green orbs, lazily going around in a circle. They were translucent and held something inside them that I couldn’t make out, but the orbs themselves appeared to be melting and solidifying by the woman’s will.
“You’re Petra, aren’t you?” I asked as I cautiously approached her. “Chamberlin had mentioned that Emrys had taken an acolyte. I’m Samantha, and this is Genevieve, Elam, and Charlotte.”
“I know. The whole reason we’re here is to speak with you,” she nodded.
“The Ophion Occult Order calls me a soul-flayer, and I’m sure you were all wondering exactly what that meant before you came here,” Emrys said, standing proudly behind his acolyte. “Well, this is it. The Darkness Beyond is now a part of her, and a part of her now lives within the Darkness Beyond. She is not unchanged from what she was before, but neither has what she was been lost.”
“My interpretation of the term ‘soul-flaying’ was the complete removal of a person’s consciousness from their astral and physical bodies to be subsumed by your Darkness,” I countered. “They told me that what you’ve done with Petra here is just the limit of your power while you’re bound in their chains. Are you telling me that if your chains were broken, you wouldn’t be able to do any worse than this?”
“On my physical avatar? No. So long as my astral form remains chained and bound with the World Serpent, I cannot cleave a conscious mind from its astral substrate,” Emrys assured me.
“But that is your ultimate goal, isn’t it? Breaking the chains the Ophion Occult Order put on you is just a stepping stone to breaking the ones the gods bound you with?” Genevieve asked. “You’ve allied yourself with a literal god slayer. Do you expect us to believe that his people’s abilities aren’t something you intend to put to your own ends?”
“I don’t have an ultimate goal so much as I have a fundamental principle of opposing tyranny,” he claimed. “When I was a mere man, thousands of years ago, I was a tyrant. I believed that might made right so unquestionably that when my might began to fail me, the only thing I could think to do was to try everything in my power to restore it. This quest eventually led to me becoming one with the Darkness Beyond, which gave me not only the might I coveted but the wisdom I didn’t know I needed. It gave me perspective. It made me stronger than any human alive at that point but still let me realize how insignificant I was. It was humbling, and enlightening, and filled me both with remorse over my past actions and an impetus to use my newfound gifts to rectify them. I tried to overthrow the gods themselves which, in hindsight, was overly ambitious. I not only failed but had my soul devoured by the World Serpent, where it still resides to this day.
“I am not eager to bring the wrath of the gods down upon me once again. No, for now, I will be content to end the tyranny of the Ophion Occult Order. This is the message I’d like you to relay to them. If the Grand Adderman agrees to unbind my chains and step down from his post, I will spare his life. If he declines, I want the rest of the Order to know that I will show mercy to any who sides with me over him. I am willing to allow the Order to exist so long as it agrees to become more decentralized, democratic, and accountable. They will have to forfeit certain artifacts and individuals in their possession over to me, chief among them the Darling Twins, but I am willing to negotiate. If they aren’t, then I will overthrow the Grand Adderman by whatever means necessary and see the Order scattered to the four winds. It is entirely up to them whether or not the conflict between us escalates to full-on war. Have I made myself clear, Samantha?”
“I think so,” I said as I pensively considered everything he had said. “Why should they trust you to keep your word once your chains are broken? For that matter, why should we?”
He took a moment to consider his response, eyeing me over as though he was trying to divine something that would win over my trust.
“Samantha, you made a pact with Persephone to get your Spirit Familiar there; one where she swore by the River Styx. Is that correct?” he asked.
“It is,” I nodded.
“And in the years since, has Persephone ever broken that pact she swore to?” he asked.
“No, she hasn’t,” I replied.
“I may not be an Old God, but so long as my astral form remains bound by their chains, they have power over me,” he said. “Samantha Sumner, Hedge Witch of Harrowick Woods, I swear on the River Styx that I have spoken no lies to you today. I swear by the River Styx that I will abide by any Covenant that I and the Ophion Occult Order agree to in good faith and fair dealing that they do not break first. I swear by the River Styx that when my chains are broken, I will give you no cause to fear me or regret your trust in me.”
I gave a questioning glance to Genevieve, and then Elam, both of whom nodded in the affirmative.
“All right. An oath sworn on the River Styx is good enough for me. I’ll deliver your terms to Seneca Chamberlin,” I agreed. “I’m very grateful for the trust and respect you’ve shown for me and my coven, Emrys, though I can’t say I quite understand it. Out of all the guests that were there on the Hallow’s Eve you were summoned, why did Evie and I stand out to you?”
“The Ophion Occult Order deemed you worthy of inclusion in their cult, an offer you rejected on principle. You cheated Persephone, but you did it not to gain immortality for yourself but to save your friend from hell. You came here, thinking I could very well tear your souls asunder, but did so because you believed it was your duty to prevent needless suffering,” Emrys answered. “You are extraordinary in your craft, courage, and conscience, the latter of which especially stood out among the degenerates at that party. I do apologize if I frightened you at that event. I was a bit… irritable, given the circumstances. I’m glad we were able to meet again under more pleasant conditions.”
“So am I, Emrys,” I nodded. “I’m not sure exactly what this means or how relevant it is, but Seneca wanted me to tell you that he’s able to offer you the Dream Demon Red Ruck as a sacrifice.”
“Pffft. Tell him it’s hardly a sacrifice if I’m getting rid of a boogie man for him,” he scoffed. “In fact, now that you mention it, Ruck’s one egregore that might be of more use to me alive.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but we were suddenly interrupted by the rapid pounding of a gong somewhere down below. It seemed to be an alarm of some kind, as we could hear the panicked shouting and frantic racing of people either battening down or forsaking the Flea Market altogether.
Mathom-meister apparated into the middle of the room, his facial tentacles reflexively raised in a defensive position.
“Were you outside the market?” he demanded of us.
“The portal we came through deposited us a few miles outside of the market, yes,” I admitted.
“Damn,” Emrys cursed softly, though he sounded more frustrated than angry. “Meister, it’s not their fault. I knew they weren’t experienced Planeswalkers, I could have – ”
“It doesn’t matter!” Mathom-meister interjected. “They need to leave, now!”
“Why, what’s going on?” Genevieve demanded.
“The scarabs are swarming,” Petra explained. “Don’t feel bad; it happens often enough that they’re prepared for it.”
I wanted to press for more details, but I could hear the humming of a vast winged swarm steadily encroaching upon us.
“Don’t worry. Once you leave the swarm will disperse… eventually,” Emrys told us. “We’ve said all that need be said for now. Return home, and I’ll reach out to you again shortly, Samantha.”
Again, I wanted to object, but the swarm outside was growing louder and louder, and it occurred to me that we might not be completely safe from a biblical swarm of insects that could not only sense but evidently sought out souls.
This occurred to Charlotte as well, as she was the first of us to vanish and awaken back in her body. We could all feel the weight of her reembodied soul tugging on us to return with her. Genevieve immediately grabbed hold of my right hand and Elam my left, both of them refusing to leave before I did.
I spared one final glance at Emrys, lamenting that we couldn’t have had more time.
“I’ll relay everything you said to the Order. I’ll make sure they know you’re willing to negotiate a truce,” I vowed.
He gave me a gracious nod, and just as we heard the swarm start to pelt the exterior of the market, I forced my physical eyes open and was back in my body, still safely under a willow tree in my cemetery.
I immediately looked beside me to Genevieve, and saw that she was awake as well, and then around me for Elam, who seemed to be suffering a bit of spectral whiplash from being pulled back with me so suddenly, but was otherwise all right. Sighing with relief, I turned lastly to Charlotte, and saw that she was looking down at the mediation circle in dreaded horror.
Following her gaze, I saw that the Undying Rose was gone – spent, perhaps, in exchange for our passage – and in its place was the inert, and hopefully dead, body of one of the shimmering scarabs.

“I’m sorry; we’re going to astral travel to a flea market?” Charlotte asked incredulously as she watched Genevieve and I set up a meditation circle under the shade of a towering old willow tree in my cemetery. “What if we want to buy something? How will we bring it back?”
“We’re not going there to shop, Lottie. Samantha’s finally had a vision about Emrys,” Genevieve explained.
The Veil between the Physical and Astral Planes is exceptionally weak in my cemetery, especially at night and on hallowed days. When I sleep there, my subconscious mind is highly receptive to all manner of revelations from the Spirit World. When I saw a Blood Moon rise on the night of May fifth, the same night as a penumbral eclipse, I knew that my dreams would be prophetic.
“I had a dream about him last Friday,” I expounded. “He’s at some sort of otherworldly marketplace, one that’s not connected to the Crypto Chthonic Cuniculi, so it’s mostly inaccessible to the Ophion Occult Order. In my dream, Emrys invited us to come and speak with him while we were lucid. He drew a sigil for me, the same one I’ve drawn in the middle of the mediation circle. He said that all I’d have to do is toss an Undying Rose – the earthly effigy of the rose Persephone used to steal a drop of his blood – into the sigil and it will become an astral portal to where he is.”
I held up the deep purple rose that I had cut from its bush earlier that day. I don’t know for certain where the roses came from, but my best guess is that they were made by the same Occultist who hallowed my cemetery to Persephone; Artaxerxes Crow. They have some connection to Emrys as well, since the only other time I saw someone else use one was when his avatar was summoned into the Physical Plane on Halloween 2020.
Knowing that Emrys wouldn’t dare to set foot in a place that was sacred to the Goddess who was ultimately responsible for his cosmic defeat, I gently tossed the rose into the middle of the sigil.
“He invited all of us?” Charlotte asked with an incredulous raising of her eyebrow.
“He said me and my coven. If he had just meant me or me and Genevieve he would have said that,” I replied. “You and Elam are coming too. I want as many eyes on this place as possible so that we don’t miss anything. We may not get an opportunity like this again.”
“And this is safe? Visiting some random flea market between worlds?” Charlotte asked.
“Samantha and I have visited the Underworld and come back no problem,” Genevieve reminded her. “So long as we’re bound to our bodies and Elam is bound to Samantha, we can come back anytime. Don’t worry; this is going to be a blast! Adventures like these are the best part of being a Witch.”
“The only reason you were able to go to the Underworld is because Samantha’s cemetery came with an astral portal in the back,” Charlotte countered, gesticulating in the general direction of the archway that was still partially visible behind the light spring foliage. “Other than that, when have any of us ever done anything useful with our astral projection? This is still a physical place, right? We don’t have any of our physical senses available to us when we astral project, and I get extremely disoriented trying to navigate the mortal plane with clairvoyance alone.”
“It is a physical place, but one saturated with astral energy and full of occultists and occult artifacts. It will be extremely illuminated to our clairvoyance,” I assured her. “Elam will also be there to guide us. As a ghost, he’s much more practiced at traversing the mortal plane in an astral form.”
Charlotte folded her arms over her chest and turned to look at Elam, who was leaning up against the willow tree as he waited for us.
“I don’t suppose you could go and scout the place out for us ahead of time?” she asked.
“I can’t go too far from Samantha, and definitely not across planes,” he said with a shake of his head. “But Eve’s right. Your astral bodies will be in no danger, and you can return here in an instant whenever you want.”
“But what about Emrys? Didn’t that book Leon gave you say that he’s some sort of soul-flayer?” Charlotte asked me.
“It did,” I admitted. “Keep in mind though, that book was written by his enemies. I want to hear his side of things before this conflict of theirs spirals out of control.”
“Any update from Chamberlin about that?” Elam asked.
“Yeah, he said that after he failed to purify the Sigil Sand, Ivy’s onboard with negotiating some kind of truce with Emrys,” I replied. “The Grand Adderman’s still reticent, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s running out of options. I need to find out if Emrys will agree to peace talks.”
“Um, I get that, but I’m still kind of hung up on him potentially flaying our souls,” Charlotte reiterated.
“If Emrys and the Ophion Occult Order go to all-out war, there’ll be a lot of collateral damage and innocent souls caught in the crossfire,” Genevieve told her, gently grabbing hold of her and looking her straight in the eye. “Samantha, Elam, and I are doing this because if there’s any chance we can put an end to this before it starts, then it’s our responsibility to try. You don’t have to come with us, Lottie, but you’re still a member of our coven. Samantha and I would both feel a lot better with you there to help us.”
“Arghhh! All right, fine! I’ll come with you,” Charlotte gave in, plopping her butt down on the edge of the meditation circle. “If we’re holding hands, that will help keep our astral bodies together too, right?”
“I believe it should, yes,” I smiled at her, sitting down and reaching out for her hand.
Genevieve lit the incense and her bong filled with the entheogenic Delphi Dream, before sitting down to join us. She took a hit from the bong before passing it to me, and then to Charlotte before setting it aside out of the circle.
“Start with taking a deep breath, completely filling the lungs, and holding it for five heartbeats,” she guided us as she took hold of each of our hands. “Exhale completely, and wait five more heartbeats before breathing in again. Eyes closed, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus on the astral energies flowing through you with each breath, gently aligning each chakra until those energies are enough to lift you up and out of your body.”
In unison with one another, the three of us slowly breathed in and out, ignoring the material world around us and focusing upon the task at hand. Eve was first, as usual, and because we were all holding hands, Charlotte and I felt her eagerly tugging us up to speed us along.
I opened my eyes, and beheld the dull and muted Physical Plane through my clairvoyance, everything outshined by the radiant forms of my coven mates. I noted that Genevieve had eschewed her normal skyclad form when astral projecting and instead wore a cloak like Charlotte and I.
“Are you worried this place might have a no shirt, no shoes, no souls, no service policy?” I teased her.
“I just don’t want to risk a confrontation over it. I realize how important this is,” she answered. “Though I’m not actually wearing shoes, now that you mention it.”
“Christ, look at the sigil Samantha drew!” Charlotte said, pointing down at the meditation circle beneath us. The sigil wasn’t just glowing but flowing as well, churning the Aether around it in a misty, spectral vortex. “It’s an astral portal, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah. It’s not stable, though. Good for one trip only,” Genevieve said with a delighted smile. “And Lottie, since we’re Neopagan Witches, try not to swear by Christ, okay?”
“Jesus!” she swore, both in defiance and in genuine annoyance.
“Elam! Elam, come join the circle! I don’t want to take any chances of severing our bond,” I instructed, letting go of Charlotte’s hand and waving him in between us.
Faithful Familiar that he was, he obeyed without hesitation. Despite my concerns, I think that he probably could have stayed behind if he had wanted. The fact that he was willing to follow me to an unknown otherworld without complaint really made me appreciate how devoted he was to me.
“We step in together on the count of three, got it?” I instructed, each of them nodding clearly in response. “One. Two. Three!”
We all extended our right feet into the vortex together, and the instant we did we were swept away, falling out of our own world and tumbling between the cracks of countless others. They weren’t real, I don’t think. At least, not as real as our world. They were potential realities, or realities that could have been once but now can never be, or fantasies that are so persistent in the minds of real people that in some sense or another, they become real themselves. I only saw glimmers of them, glimmers in nebulas made of primeval chaos and uttermost void.
It was outside of time, that place we travelled through, or at least we had no sense of it there. Our souls were haphazardly spat out upon a surreal landscape of earth, sea, and fire. Hilly plains of volcanic ash, incandescent calderas of lava and bubbling hot springs all intermeshed in a chaotic mosaic that didn’t seem to abide by any laws of geology or geography that I was familiar with. A strong but slow wind pushed fractal formations of dark silver clouds through a pale silver sky, illuminated by a single white orb which could have been either a bright moon or a faint sun.
While our spectral feet left no trace upon the ash we now stood upon, our presence nonetheless elicited a response from some of the local fauna. We were just able to catch a glimpse of some kind of shimmering scarabs burrowing themselves into the ash to escape the four otherworldly ghosts that had invaded their territory.
“Holy shit,” Charlotte murmured as we all gazed out upon the strange world we had found ourselves on. “This really isn’t on the Astral Plane. This is a real planet. This a real, alien planet! This is unbelievable!”
Genevieve glided over to one of the bubbling pools and peered into it, looking for any more signs of life.
“There’s some kind of bluish-grey algae growing on the rocks down there, and I think I can make out some small arthropods too. This planet’s alive!” she announced with glee, smiling and looking up at the alien sky.
Conjuring an astral approximation of my staff, I plunged it into a small mound of ash beside me. I watched curiously as the scarabs shot out in all directions, moving too quickly for me to get a good look at them, before scurrying back into the surrounding ash.
“These bugs can sense our presence,” I remarked. “How and why would clairvoyance evolve in insects on this world, and why would their first instinct be to flee?”
“Samantha!” Elam called out. “I think I found the Flea Market.”
We all gathered around him and looked where he was pointing. On a distant dune, we beheld the moulted carapace of a colossal insect, gleaming a brilliant, lustrous gold in the broken white light.
“That’s impossible!” Charlotte claimed. “That thing must be hundreds of meters long! No insect, no animal period could ever get that big on the Physical Plane!”
“It could be the Incarnation of some kind of Titan,” Genevieve suggested. “But… it’s dead. I can tell that even from here. It’s dead. It’s the corpse of a dead god, and now it’s being used as a swap meet with a punny name. Either whatever killed it just abandoned it, or…”
“Or is running the place,” I finished for her. “Well, we should see if we can find Emrys.”
In an instant, the world moved around us until we were at the entrance to the Flea Market. The colossal carapace was hollow inside, of course, and had been filled with a bustling city that looked like it had been created in the most ad hoc manner possible. There wasn’t a single straight street to be seen, and they converged with one another at random intervals. Stalls and buildings varied wildly in both design and materials, all imported from a plethora of different cultures across the planes.
Enormous shards of luminous glass levitated above the throng like a thousand Swords of Damocles, any or all of them seeming capable of succumbing to gravity at any moment. In the very center of the moulted husk dangled a great spiralling chrysalis or hive woven of iridescent silk, its function not being immediately apparent to me.
There must have been thousands of people there, and hundreds of merchants hawking their wares. Most of those who looked human still seemed a little off, like they were members of ethnicities that didn’t exist in our world. Some of the beings were near-human in appearance, many seemingly some kind of Fey or Seelie folk. There was even a small handful of people that weren’t remotely human at all.
The only thing they all had in common was that none were native to this world.
“Most of these people are here in person, aren’t they?” Charlotte asked.
“It would’ve been quite a feat for them to have built all of this while astral projecting,” Genevieve agreed.
“But if this place isn’t connected to the Cuniculi, then how did they get here?” Charlotte asked. “We’re on another planet, maybe even in another dimension. If getting here is beyond the Ooo’s abilities, then what sort of ungodly reality benders decided to turn it into a Flea Market?”
“Ladies, gentlemen, and any beings either too ancient and alien or too modern and alienated to settle on one or the other, come bear witness to one of the most astounding and atrocious abominations on this or any other world!” a fast-paced male voice rang out over the din of the crowd.
We turned to see a short, skinny, old-timey sort of carnival barker standing on a literal soap box, placed next to a large object draped in a black tarp.
“For the paltry price of a single three-headed coin, you can peer beneath the veil and behold with your own unbelieving eyes the mangled and mutilated monstrosity that lurks beneath!” the carnival barker continued. “But I must warn you, it is not possible to truly understand what dwells underneath without seeing it first! I cannot guarantee that you will still retain your sanity or will to live after witnessing the proverbial Mountains of Madness, for this low creature is truly like no other and serves only as a grim testament to the cruel sadism of the Lord Above! Anyone plagued by even the faintest lingering doubt as to their spiritual fortitude should not dare to even contemplate what might lie before me! But, for those brave, noble few who are truly dauntless of heart and incorrigible of spirit, I am proud to share with you this rare, unfathomable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness sublime –”
The carnival barker was interrupted by a man yanking the sheet off the object beside him, revealing it to be a mirror.
“Whelp, that was a hell of an Im14andthisisdeep post, eh?” Charlotte mused.
Genevieve and I, however, were far too stunned to be amused; not by the mirror, but by the man who had unveiled it.
“It’s him, Lottie. That’s Emrys,” Genevieve whispered.
We had only seen him briefly once before, more than two-and-a-half years ago, but he was far from what anyone would call forgettable. He was tall and gaunt, with literal blue blood flowing beneath translucent skin. His long, receding hair and regal beard were pitch black, and dark miasma wafted from his eyes, nose, and mouth. He was dressed in dark sable robes with three overlapping Ouroboros’s tattooed on his forehead, with a pair of ophidian pupils lying in the spaces between them.
What stood out the most to us were the six silver Ouroboros chains bound around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. These were the chains the Ophion Occult Order had made to limit the power of his physical avatar, and it seemed he had not yet found a way to free himself from them.
“Are you still here?” Emrys asked in exasperation, tossing the veil back at the carnival barker in disdain.
“…Possibly,” the strange man replied evasively. “But not definitively, for purely legalistic reasons.”
“I believe Mathom-meister was quite clear when he said that your rather pitiful chicanery wasn’t welcomed here,” Emrys reminded him.
“And who is he to judge chicanery from cutthroat, capitalistic competition? Should not the Flea Market be a free market?” the charlatan demanded. “And while we’re on the topic of commerce, I don’t suppose you have enough three-headed coins to pay for all the poor souls you have so discourteously exposed to my exhibit against their will? I’d hate to have to start shaking people down to get my due.”
“Hard to believe your own circus threw you out,” Emrys said with a sardonic eye roll as he tossed him a small medallion. “You get one coin. Take it and get out of my sight.”
The charlatan flipped the coin in the air thrice, presumably to confirm it actually had three heads. Satisfied with its impossible dimensions, he shoved it into his pocket.
“It will cover the trolley ride home, at least,” he acquiesced, stepping off his soap box and turning to face his looking glass. “A shame though you can’t see the genius in my little avant-garde performance piece here, Emmy. Even I know that the monster in the mirror is often the hardest to recognize.”
As the man reached to pick up his mirror, his reflection’s arms shot through the glass and grabbed him by the wrists, pulling him in. Emrys immediately tried to chase after him, but bounced off the glass as if there was nothing supernatural about it at all.
“Bastard!” he cursed under his breath, before turning towards us and giving us a small apologetic smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that rather pathetic display. Unfortunately, the few meeting places I know of that are relatively safe from any Ophionic incursion also attract their fair share of other annoying miscreants.”
“If it didn’t attract a little bit of everything, it wouldn’t be a Flea Market, would it?” I asked rhetorically. “Thank you, Emrys, for inviting us. I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
“And thank you for accepting. Samantha, Genevieve, it’s a pleasure to see you again, and a relief that you have not fallen under the auspices of the Ophion Occult Order,” he said with a gentle bow. “Elam, I remember you as well. Valiant but not reckless, you remained atop Pendragon Hill during my battle with the Darlings until your mistress was well out of harm’s way, and then you got the hell out of dodge yourself. Samantha couldn’t hope for a better Familiar. And Charlotte, any Witch that Samantha deemed worthy to induct into her coven is obviously someone whose acquaintance I am pleased to make. Welcome, all of you, to Mathom-meister’s Flea Market!”
“So this is where you’ve been hiding out the past two years?” Genevieve asked.
“Oh no. Far too Cosmopolitan for my tastes,” Emrys replied. “No, this is just a friendly place to meet those I consider friends – or potential friends, at least. I’d offer to show you around, but I know it’s difficult for you to astral travel for prolonged periods. Come with me to Mathom-meister’s house where we can talk freely, and we’ll discuss the situation with the Order.”
I gave him a small, single nod in response, and gestured with my staff that he should lead the way. He responded by pointing upwards, then vanished into his shadow form. When we looked up, we saw him waving at us from a balcony atop the great silken chrysalis.
We exchanged hesitant glances with one another, but ultimately followed him into the strange structure, moving from the ground to the balcony in an instant by will alone.
“How would an incarnate being get up here if they couldn’t fly or teleport?” Charlotte asked as she peered over the balcony’s teetering edge.
As though answering a summons, a humanoid creature apparated beside her in a flash of dark vapours. The hunched-back entity stood over six-and-a-half feet tall, and was clad in golden-brown erudite robes. Its squid-like skin was of a similar colour, and its entire face was a single gaping orifice that held a wispy, glowing orb in the center of its skull which I immediately recognized as its soul. A pair of long, fanged tentacles lined with pores and tendrils hung down from its head like a long, forked beard, and the seven digits shared by its two hands all bore wicked-looking talons, as did its two-toed, digitigrade feet.
“Not fly or teleport? What sort of pedestrian house guests do you think I entertain here?” the being asked wryly, its voice seeming to come from nowhere in particular.
Charlotte instinctively backed away from the creature and into the protective fold of our coven, but Emrys was quick to hold up his hand to plead for calm.
“Please, there’s no need for alarm. This is our host, Mathom-meister. He’s the only reason any of this is here in the first place,” Emrys informed us. “A year or two ago a companion of his unfortunately became one of the Darling Twin’s victims, and when he heard of my vendetta with them, he tracked me down; which is no small feat, I assure you.”
“It is for us. My people are a race of Planeswalkers. Traversing the many worlds of Creation is second nature to us,” Mathom-meister explained.
“I’ve… I’ve heard of your people, I think,” I said, softly and unsurely. “A friend of mine had an encounter with an artifact that gave her a vision of a race of strange and powerful sorcerers slaying their own god. I take it you’re the ones who slayed this Scarab Titan as well? That’s, that’s…”
“Horrifying, yes. That’s the idea,” he nodded. “You have nothing to worry about, young Witch. My people have no special interest in your world. This is purely personal. My friend is dead, and I want his murderers brought to justice; a goal which Emrys and I happen to have in common.”
“Feel free to share this information with the Ophion Occult Order, Samantha,” Emrys said. “I’d very much like for the Darling Twins to know what’s hunting them. Mathom-meister, please excuse me while I take my guests inside. We do have pressing business to discuss and their time is limited.”
The squid-cyclopes bowed gracefully, and my coven and I quickly scurried after Emrys as he led us inside through a towering hallway and into a large chamber that had been appointed as a living space.
I had thought that Emrys would want to speak with us alone, which was why I was surprised to see a young woman sitting cross-legged on a spongey yet chitinous object that I will for the sake of my sanity call a bean bag chair. Like Emrys, she was pale and blue-blooded, her choppy hair as black as coal. She wore a black robe and heavy black eyeliner, but these could not conceal the fact that she too had thin wisps of miasma emanating from her eyes.
“Is that your… daughter?” Charlotte asked, as baffled by her presence as any of us. The woman smiled warmly at the question.
“In a way. I was dead, and Emrys gave me new life. Now a part of the Outer Primordial Darkness he represents lives in me too,” she said serenely.
Hovering above her left palm were three small bluish-green orbs, lazily going around in a circle. They were translucent and held something inside them that I couldn’t make out, but the orbs themselves appeared to be melting and solidifying by the woman’s will.
“You’re Petra, aren’t you?” I asked as I cautiously approached her. “Chamberlin had mentioned that Emrys had taken an acolyte. I’m Samantha, and this is Genevieve, Elam, and Charlotte.”
“I know. The whole reason we’re here is to speak with you,” she nodded.
“The Ophion Occult Order calls me a soul-flayer, and I’m sure you were all wondering exactly what that meant before you came here,” Emrys said, standing proudly behind his acolyte. “Well, this is it. The Darkness Beyond is now a part of her, and a part of her now lives within the Darkness Beyond. She is not unchanged from what she was before, but neither has what she was been lost.”
“My interpretation of the term ‘soul-flaying’ was the complete removal of a person’s consciousness from their astral and physical bodies to be subsumed by your Darkness,” I countered. “They told me that what you’ve done with Petra here is just the limit of your power while you’re bound in their chains. Are you telling me that if your chains were broken, you wouldn’t be able to do any worse than this?”
“On my physical avatar? No. So long as my astral form remains chained and bound with the World Serpent, I cannot cleave a conscious mind from its astral substrate,” Emrys assured me.
“But that is your ultimate goal, isn’t it? Breaking the chains the Ophion Occult Order put on you is just a stepping stone to breaking the ones the gods bound you with?” Genevieve asked. “You’ve allied yourself with a literal god slayer. Do you expect us to believe that his people’s abilities aren’t something you intend to put to your own ends?”
“I don’t have an ultimate goal so much as I have a fundamental principle of opposing tyranny,” he claimed. “When I was a mere man, thousands of years ago, I was a tyrant. I believed that might made right so unquestionably that when my might began to fail me, the only thing I could think to do was to try everything in my power to restore it. This quest eventually led to me becoming one with the Darkness Beyond, which gave me not only the might I coveted but the wisdom I didn’t know I needed. It gave me perspective. It made me stronger than any human alive at that point but still let me realize how insignificant I was. It was humbling, and enlightening, and filled me both with remorse over my past actions and an impetus to use my newfound gifts to rectify them. I tried to overthrow the gods themselves which, in hindsight, was overly ambitious. I not only failed but had my soul devoured by the World Serpent, where it still resides to this day.
“I am not eager to bring the wrath of the gods down upon me once again. No, for now, I will be content to end the tyranny of the Ophion Occult Order. This is the message I’d like you to relay to them. If the Grand Adderman agrees to unbind my chains and step down from his post, I will spare his life. If he declines, I want the rest of the Order to know that I will show mercy to any who sides with me over him. I am willing to allow the Order to exist so long as it agrees to become more decentralized, democratic, and accountable. They will have to forfeit certain artifacts and individuals in their possession over to me, chief among them the Darling Twins, but I am willing to negotiate. If they aren’t, then I will overthrow the Grand Adderman by whatever means necessary and see the Order scattered to the four winds. It is entirely up to them whether or not the conflict between us escalates to full-on war. Have I made myself clear, Samantha?”
“I think so,” I said as I pensively considered everything he had said. “Why should they trust you to keep your word once your chains are broken? For that matter, why should we?”
He took a moment to consider his response, eyeing me over as though he was trying to divine something that would win over my trust.
“Samantha, you made a pact with Persephone to get your Spirit Familiar there; one where she swore by the River Styx. Is that correct?” he asked.
“It is,” I nodded.
“And in the years since, has Persephone ever broken that pact she swore to?” he asked.
“No, she hasn’t,” I replied.
“I may not be an Old God, but so long as my astral form remains bound by their chains, they have power over me,” he said. “Samantha Sumner, Hedge Witch of Harrowick Woods, I swear on the River Styx that I have spoken no lies to you today. I swear by the River Styx that I will abide by any Covenant that I and the Ophion Occult Order agree to in good faith and fair dealing that they do not break first. I swear by the River Styx that when my chains are broken, I will give you no cause to fear me or regret your trust in me.”
I gave a questioning glance to Genevieve, and then Elam, both of whom nodded in the affirmative.
“All right. An oath sworn on the River Styx is good enough for me. I’ll deliver your terms to Seneca Chamberlin,” I agreed. “I’m very grateful for the trust and respect you’ve shown for me and my coven, Emrys, though I can’t say I quite understand it. Out of all the guests that were there on the Hallow’s Eve you were summoned, why did Evie and I stand out to you?”
“The Ophion Occult Order deemed you worthy of inclusion in their cult, an offer you rejected on principle. You cheated Persephone, but you did it not to gain immortality for yourself but to save your friend from hell. You came here, thinking I could very well tear your souls asunder, but did so because you believed it was your duty to prevent needless suffering,” Emrys answered. “You are extraordinary in your craft, courage, and conscience, the latter of which especially stood out among the degenerates at that party. I do apologize if I frightened you at that event. I was a bit… irritable, given the circumstances. I’m glad we were able to meet again under more pleasant conditions.”
“So am I, Emrys,” I nodded. “I’m not sure exactly what this means or how relevant it is, but Seneca wanted me to tell you that he’s able to offer you the Dream Demon Red Ruck as a sacrifice.”
“Pffft. Tell him it’s hardly a sacrifice if I’m getting rid of a boogie man for him,” he scoffed. “In fact, now that you mention it, Ruck’s one egregore that might be of more use to me alive.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but we were suddenly interrupted by the rapid pounding of a gong somewhere down below. It seemed to be an alarm of some kind, as we could hear the panicked shouting and frantic racing of people either battening down or forsaking the Flea Market altogether.
Mathom-meister apparated into the middle of the room, his facial tentacles reflexively raised in a defensive position.
“Were you outside the market?” he demanded of us.
“The portal we came through deposited us a few miles outside of the market, yes,” I admitted.
“Damn,” Emrys cursed softly, though he sounded more frustrated than angry. “Meister, it’s not their fault. I knew they weren’t experienced Planeswalkers, I could have – ”
“It doesn’t matter!” Mathom-meister interjected. “They need to leave, now!”
“Why, what’s going on?” Genevieve demanded.
“The scarabs are swarming,” Petra explained. “Don’t feel bad; it happens often enough that they’re prepared for it.”
I wanted to press for more details, but I could hear the humming of a vast winged swarm steadily encroaching upon us.
“Don’t worry. Once you leave the swarm will disperse… eventually,” Emrys told us. “We’ve said all that need be said for now. Return home, and I’ll reach out to you again shortly, Samantha.”
Again, I wanted to object, but the swarm outside was growing louder and louder, and it occurred to me that we might not be completely safe from a biblical swarm of insects that could not only sense but evidently sought out souls.
This occurred to Charlotte as well, as she was the first of us to vanish and awaken back in her body. We could all feel the weight of her reembodied soul tugging on us to return with her. Genevieve immediately grabbed hold of my right hand and Elam my left, both of them refusing to leave before I did.
I spared one final glance at Emrys, lamenting that we couldn’t have had more time.
“I’ll relay everything you said to the Order. I’ll make sure they know you’re willing to negotiate a truce,” I vowed.
He gave me a gracious nod, and just as we heard the swarm start to pelt the exterior of the market, I forced my physical eyes open and was back in my body, still safely under a willow tree in my cemetery.
I immediately looked beside me to Genevieve, and saw that she was awake as well, and then around me for Elam, who seemed to be suffering a bit of spectral whiplash from being pulled back with me so suddenly, but was otherwise all right. Sighing with relief, I turned lastly to Charlotte, and saw that she was looking down at the mediation circle in dreaded horror.
Following her gaze, I saw that the Undying Rose was gone – spent, perhaps, in exchange for our passage – and in its place was the inert, and hopefully dead, body of one of the shimmering scarabs.
_____________________
By The Vesper's Bell

“I’m sorry; we’re going to astral travel to a flea market?” Charlotte asked incredulously as she watched Genevieve and I set up a meditation circle under the shade of a towering old willow tree in my cemetery. “What if we want to buy something? How will we bring it back?”
“We’re not going there to shop, Lottie. Samantha’s finally had a vision about Emrys,” Genevieve explained.
The Veil between the Physical and Astral Planes is exceptionally weak in my cemetery, especially at night and on hallowed days. When I sleep there, my subconscious mind is highly receptive to all manner of revelations from the Spirit World. When I saw a Blood Moon rise on the night of May fifth, the same night as a penumbral eclipse, I knew that my dreams would be prophetic.
“I had a dream about him last Friday,” I expounded. “He’s at some sort of otherworldly marketplace, one that’s not connected to the Crypto Chthonic Cuniculi, so it’s mostly inaccessible to the Ophion Occult Order. In my dream, Emrys invited us to come and speak with him while we were lucid. He drew a sigil for me, the same one I’ve drawn in the middle of the mediation circle. He said that all I’d have to do is toss an Undying Rose – the earthly effigy of the rose Persephone used to steal a drop of his blood – into the sigil and it will become an astral portal to where he is.”
I held up the deep purple rose that I had cut from its bush earlier that day. I don’t know for certain where the roses came from, but my best guess is that they were made by the same Occultist who hallowed my cemetery to Persephone; Artaxerxes Crow. They have some connection to Emrys as well, since the only other time I saw someone else use one was when his avatar was summoned into the Physical Plane on Halloween 2020.
Knowing that Emrys wouldn’t dare to set foot in a place that was sacred to the Goddess who was ultimately responsible for his cosmic defeat, I gently tossed the rose into the middle of the sigil.
“He invited all of us?” Charlotte asked with an incredulous raising of her eyebrow.
“He said me and my coven. If he had just meant me or me and Genevieve he would have said that,” I replied. “You and Elam are coming too. I want as many eyes on this place as possible so that we don’t miss anything. We may not get an opportunity like this again.”
“And this is safe? Visiting some random flea market between worlds?” Charlotte asked.
“Samantha and I have visited the Underworld and come back no problem,” Genevieve reminded her. “So long as we’re bound to our bodies and Elam is bound to Samantha, we can come back anytime. Don’t worry; this is going to be a blast! Adventures like these are the best part of being a Witch.”
“The only reason you were able to go to the Underworld is because Samantha’s cemetery came with an astral portal in the back,” Charlotte countered, gesticulating in the general direction of the archway that was still partially visible behind the light spring foliage. “Other than that, when have any of us ever done anything useful with our astral projection? This is still a physical place, right? We don’t have any of our physical senses available to us when we astral project, and I get extremely disoriented trying to navigate the mortal plane with clairvoyance alone.”
“It is a physical place, but one saturated with astral energy and full of occultists and occult artifacts. It will be extremely illuminated to our clairvoyance,” I assured her. “Elam will also be there to guide us. As a ghost, he’s much more practiced at traversing the mortal plane in an astral form.”
Charlotte folded her arms over her chest and turned to look at Elam, who was leaning up against the willow tree as he waited for us.
“I don’t suppose you could go and scout the place out for us ahead of time?” she asked.
“I can’t go too far from Samantha, and definitely not across planes,” he said with a shake of his head. “But Eve’s right. Your astral bodies will be in no danger, and you can return here in an instant whenever you want.”
“But what about Emrys? Didn’t that book Leon gave you say that he’s some sort of soul-flayer?” Charlotte asked me.
“It did,” I admitted. “Keep in mind though, that book was written by his enemies. I want to hear his side of things before this conflict of theirs spirals out of control.”
“Any update from Chamberlin about that?” Elam asked.
“Yeah, he said that after he failed to purify the Sigil Sand, Ivy’s onboard with negotiating some kind of truce with Emrys,” I replied. “The Grand Adderman’s still reticent, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s running out of options. I need to find out if Emrys will agree to peace talks.”
“Um, I get that, but I’m still kind of hung up on him potentially flaying our souls,” Charlotte reiterated.
“If Emrys and the Ophion Occult Order go to all-out war, there’ll be a lot of collateral damage and innocent souls caught in the crossfire,” Genevieve told her, gently grabbing hold of her and looking her straight in the eye. “Samantha, Elam, and I are doing this because if there’s any chance we can put an end to this before it starts, then it’s our responsibility to try. You don’t have to come with us, Lottie, but you’re still a member of our coven. Samantha and I would both feel a lot better with you there to help us.”
“Arghhh! All right, fine! I’ll come with you,” Charlotte gave in, plopping her butt down on the edge of the meditation circle. “If we’re holding hands, that will help keep our astral bodies together too, right?”
“I believe it should, yes,” I smiled at her, sitting down and reaching out for her hand.
Genevieve lit the incense and her bong filled with the entheogenic Delphi Dream, before sitting down to join us. She took a hit from the bong before passing it to me, and then to Charlotte before setting it aside out of the circle.
“Start with taking a deep breath, completely filling the lungs, and holding it for five heartbeats,” she guided us as she took hold of each of our hands. “Exhale completely, and wait five more heartbeats before breathing in again. Eyes closed, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus on the astral energies flowing through you with each breath, gently aligning each chakra until those energies are enough to lift you up and out of your body.”
In unison with one another, the three of us slowly breathed in and out, ignoring the material world around us and focusing upon the task at hand. Eve was first, as usual, and because we were all holding hands, Charlotte and I felt her eagerly tugging us up to speed us along.
I opened my eyes, and beheld the dull and muted Physical Plane through my clairvoyance, everything outshined by the radiant forms of my coven mates. I noted that Genevieve had eschewed her normal skyclad form when astral projecting and instead wore a cloak like Charlotte and I.
“Are you worried this place might have a no shirt, no shoes, no souls, no service policy?” I teased her.
“I just don’t want to risk a confrontation over it. I realize how important this is,” she answered. “Though I’m not actually wearing shoes, now that you mention it.”
“Christ, look at the sigil Samantha drew!” Charlotte said, pointing down at the meditation circle beneath us. The sigil wasn’t just glowing but flowing as well, churning the Aether around it in a misty, spectral vortex. “It’s an astral portal, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah. It’s not stable, though. Good for one trip only,” Genevieve said with a delighted smile. “And Lottie, since we’re Neopagan Witches, try not to swear by Christ, okay?”
“Jesus!” she swore, both in defiance and in genuine annoyance.
“Elam! Elam, come join the circle! I don’t want to take any chances of severing our bond,” I instructed, letting go of Charlotte’s hand and waving him in between us.
Faithful Familiar that he was, he obeyed without hesitation. Despite my concerns, I think that he probably could have stayed behind if he had wanted. The fact that he was willing to follow me to an unknown otherworld without complaint really made me appreciate how devoted he was to me.
“We step in together on the count of three, got it?” I instructed, each of them nodding clearly in response. “One. Two. Three!”
We all extended our right feet into the vortex together, and the instant we did we were swept away, falling out of our own world and tumbling between the cracks of countless others. They weren’t real, I don’t think. At least, not as real as our world. They were potential realities, or realities that could have been once but now can never be, or fantasies that are so persistent in the minds of real people that in some sense or another, they become real themselves. I only saw glimmers of them, glimmers in nebulas made of primeval chaos and uttermost void.
It was outside of time, that place we travelled through, or at least we had no sense of it there. Our souls were haphazardly spat out upon a surreal landscape of earth, sea, and fire. Hilly plains of volcanic ash, incandescent calderas of lava and bubbling hot springs all intermeshed in a chaotic mosaic that didn’t seem to abide by any laws of geology or geography that I was familiar with. A strong but slow wind pushed fractal formations of dark silver clouds through a pale silver sky, illuminated by a single white orb which could have been either a bright moon or a faint sun.
While our spectral feet left no trace upon the ash we now stood upon, our presence nonetheless elicited a response from some of the local fauna. We were just able to catch a glimpse of some kind of shimmering scarabs burrowing themselves into the ash to escape the four otherworldly ghosts that had invaded their territory.
“Holy shit,” Charlotte murmured as we all gazed out upon the strange world we had found ourselves on. “This really isn’t on the Astral Plane. This is a real planet. This a real, alien planet! This is unbelievable!”
Genevieve glided over to one of the bubbling pools and peered into it, looking for any more signs of life.
“There’s some kind of bluish-grey algae growing on the rocks down there, and I think I can make out some small arthropods too. This planet’s alive!” she announced with glee, smiling and looking up at the alien sky.
Conjuring an astral approximation of my staff, I plunged it into a small mound of ash beside me. I watched curiously as the scarabs shot out in all directions, moving too quickly for me to get a good look at them, before scurrying back into the surrounding ash.
“These bugs can sense our presence,” I remarked. “How and why would clairvoyance evolve in insects on this world, and why would their first instinct be to flee?”
“Samantha!” Elam called out. “I think I found the Flea Market.”
We all gathered around him and looked where he was pointing. On a distant dune, we beheld the moulted carapace of a colossal insect, gleaming a brilliant, lustrous gold in the broken white light.
“That’s impossible!” Charlotte claimed. “That thing must be hundreds of meters long! No insect, no animal period could ever get that big on the Physical Plane!”
“It could be the Incarnation of some kind of Titan,” Genevieve suggested. “But… it’s dead. I can tell that even from here. It’s dead. It’s the corpse of a dead god, and now it’s being used as a swap meet with a punny name. Either whatever killed it just abandoned it, or…”
“Or is running the place,” I finished for her. “Well, we should see if we can find Emrys.”
In an instant, the world moved around us until we were at the entrance to the Flea Market. The colossal carapace was hollow inside, of course, and had been filled with a bustling city that looked like it had been created in the most ad hoc manner possible. There wasn’t a single straight street to be seen, and they converged with one another at random intervals. Stalls and buildings varied wildly in both design and materials, all imported from a plethora of different cultures across the planes.
Enormous shards of luminous glass levitated above the throng like a thousand Swords of Damocles, any or all of them seeming capable of succumbing to gravity at any moment. In the very center of the moulted husk dangled a great spiralling chrysalis or hive woven of iridescent silk, its function not being immediately apparent to me.
There must have been thousands of people there, and hundreds of merchants hawking their wares. Most of those who looked human still seemed a little off, like they were members of ethnicities that didn’t exist in our world. Some of the beings were near-human in appearance, many seemingly some kind of Fey or Seelie folk. There was even a small handful of people that weren’t remotely human at all.
The only thing they all had in common was that none were native to this world.
“Most of these people are here in person, aren’t they?” Charlotte asked.
“It would’ve been quite a feat for them to have built all of this while astral projecting,” Genevieve agreed.
“But if this place isn’t connected to the Cuniculi, then how did they get here?” Charlotte asked. “We’re on another planet, maybe even in another dimension. If getting here is beyond the Ooo’s abilities, then what sort of ungodly reality benders decided to turn it into a Flea Market?”
“Ladies, gentlemen, and any beings either too ancient and alien or too modern and alienated to settle on one or the other, come bear witness to one of the most astounding and atrocious abominations on this or any other world!” a fast-paced male voice rang out over the din of the crowd.
We turned to see a short, skinny, old-timey sort of carnival barker standing on a literal soap box, placed next to a large object draped in a black tarp.
“For the paltry price of a single three-headed coin, you can peer beneath the veil and behold with your own unbelieving eyes the mangled and mutilated monstrosity that lurks beneath!” the carnival barker continued. “But I must warn you, it is not possible to truly understand what dwells underneath without seeing it first! I cannot guarantee that you will still retain your sanity or will to live after witnessing the proverbial Mountains of Madness, for this low creature is truly like no other and serves only as a grim testament to the cruel sadism of the Lord Above! Anyone plagued by even the faintest lingering doubt as to their spiritual fortitude should not dare to even contemplate what might lie before me! But, for those brave, noble few who are truly dauntless of heart and incorrigible of spirit, I am proud to share with you this rare, unfathomable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness sublime –”
The carnival barker was interrupted by a man yanking the sheet off the object beside him, revealing it to be a mirror.
“Whelp, that was a hell of an Im14andthisisdeep post, eh?” Charlotte mused.
Genevieve and I, however, were far too stunned to be amused; not by the mirror, but by the man who had unveiled it.
“It’s him, Lottie. That’s Emrys,” Genevieve whispered.
We had only seen him briefly once before, more than two-and-a-half years ago, but he was far from what anyone would call forgettable. He was tall and gaunt, with literal blue blood flowing beneath translucent skin. His long, receding hair and regal beard were pitch black, and dark miasma wafted from his eyes, nose, and mouth. He was dressed in dark sable robes with three overlapping Ouroboros’s tattooed on his forehead, with a pair of ophidian pupils lying in the spaces between them.
What stood out the most to us were the six silver Ouroboros chains bound around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. These were the chains the Ophion Occult Order had made to limit the power of his physical avatar, and it seemed he had not yet found a way to free himself from them.
“Are you still here?” Emrys asked in exasperation, tossing the veil back at the carnival barker in disdain.
“…Possibly,” the strange man replied evasively. “But not definitively, for purely legalistic reasons.”
“I believe Mathom-meister was quite clear when he said that your rather pitiful chicanery wasn’t welcomed here,” Emrys reminded him.
“And who is he to judge chicanery from cutthroat, capitalistic competition? Should not the Flea Market be a free market?” the charlatan demanded. “And while we’re on the topic of commerce, I don’t suppose you have enough three-headed coins to pay for all the poor souls you have so discourteously exposed to my exhibit against their will? I’d hate to have to start shaking people down to get my due.”
“Hard to believe your own circus threw you out,” Emrys said with a sardonic eye roll as he tossed him a small medallion. “You get one coin. Take it and get out of my sight.”
The charlatan flipped the coin in the air thrice, presumably to confirm it actually had three heads. Satisfied with its impossible dimensions, he shoved it into his pocket.
“It will cover the trolley ride home, at least,” he acquiesced, stepping off his soap box and turning to face his looking glass. “A shame though you can’t see the genius in my little avant-garde performance piece here, Emmy. Even I know that the monster in the mirror is often the hardest to recognize.”
As the man reached to pick up his mirror, his reflection’s arms shot through the glass and grabbed him by the wrists, pulling him in. Emrys immediately tried to chase after him, but bounced off the glass as if there was nothing supernatural about it at all.
“Bastard!” he cursed under his breath, before turning towards us and giving us a small apologetic smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that rather pathetic display. Unfortunately, the few meeting places I know of that are relatively safe from any Ophionic incursion also attract their fair share of other annoying miscreants.”
“If it didn’t attract a little bit of everything, it wouldn’t be a Flea Market, would it?” I asked rhetorically. “Thank you, Emrys, for inviting us. I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
“And thank you for accepting. Samantha, Genevieve, it’s a pleasure to see you again, and a relief that you have not fallen under the auspices of the Ophion Occult Order,” he said with a gentle bow. “Elam, I remember you as well. Valiant but not reckless, you remained atop Pendragon Hill during my battle with the Darlings until your mistress was well out of harm’s way, and then you got the hell out of dodge yourself. Samantha couldn’t hope for a better Familiar. And Charlotte, any Witch that Samantha deemed worthy to induct into her coven is obviously someone whose acquaintance I am pleased to make. Welcome, all of you, to Mathom-meister’s Flea Market!”
“So this is where you’ve been hiding out the past two years?” Genevieve asked.
“Oh no. Far too Cosmopolitan for my tastes,” Emrys replied. “No, this is just a friendly place to meet those I consider friends – or potential friends, at least. I’d offer to show you around, but I know it’s difficult for you to astral travel for prolonged periods. Come with me to Mathom-meister’s house where we can talk freely, and we’ll discuss the situation with the Order.”
I gave him a small, single nod in response, and gestured with my staff that he should lead the way. He responded by pointing upwards, then vanished into his shadow form. When we looked up, we saw him waving at us from a balcony atop the great silken chrysalis.
We exchanged hesitant glances with one another, but ultimately followed him into the strange structure, moving from the ground to the balcony in an instant by will alone.
“How would an incarnate being get up here if they couldn’t fly or teleport?” Charlotte asked as she peered over the balcony’s teetering edge.
As though answering a summons, a humanoid creature apparated beside her in a flash of dark vapours. The hunched-back entity stood over six-and-a-half feet tall, and was clad in golden-brown erudite robes. Its squid-like skin was of a similar colour, and its entire face was a single gaping orifice that held a wispy, glowing orb in the center of its skull which I immediately recognized as its soul. A pair of long, fanged tentacles lined with pores and tendrils hung down from its head like a long, forked beard, and the seven digits shared by its two hands all bore wicked-looking talons, as did its two-toed, digitigrade feet.
“Not fly or teleport? What sort of pedestrian house guests do you think I entertain here?” the being asked wryly, its voice seeming to come from nowhere in particular.
Charlotte instinctively backed away from the creature and into the protective fold of our coven, but Emrys was quick to hold up his hand to plead for calm.
“Please, there’s no need for alarm. This is our host, Mathom-meister. He’s the only reason any of this is here in the first place,” Emrys informed us. “A year or two ago a companion of his unfortunately became one of the Darling Twin’s victims, and when he heard of my vendetta with them, he tracked me down; which is no small feat, I assure you.”
“It is for us. My people are a race of Planeswalkers. Traversing the many worlds of Creation is second nature to us,” Mathom-meister explained.
“I’ve… I’ve heard of your people, I think,” I said, softly and unsurely. “A friend of mine had an encounter with an artifact that gave her a vision of a race of strange and powerful sorcerers slaying their own god. I take it you’re the ones who slayed this Scarab Titan as well? That’s, that’s…”
“Horrifying, yes. That’s the idea,” he nodded. “You have nothing to worry about, young Witch. My people have no special interest in your world. This is purely personal. My friend is dead, and I want his murderers brought to justice; a goal which Emrys and I happen to have in common.”
“Feel free to share this information with the Ophion Occult Order, Samantha,” Emrys said. “I’d very much like for the Darling Twins to know what’s hunting them. Mathom-meister, please excuse me while I take my guests inside. We do have pressing business to discuss and their time is limited.”
The squid-cyclopes bowed gracefully, and my coven and I quickly scurried after Emrys as he led us inside through a towering hallway and into a large chamber that had been appointed as a living space.
I had thought that Emrys would want to speak with us alone, which was why I was surprised to see a young woman sitting cross-legged on a spongey yet chitinous object that I will for the sake of my sanity call a bean bag chair. Like Emrys, she was pale and blue-blooded, her choppy hair as black as coal. She wore a black robe and heavy black eyeliner, but these could not conceal the fact that she too had thin wisps of miasma emanating from her eyes.
“Is that your… daughter?” Charlotte asked, as baffled by her presence as any of us. The woman smiled warmly at the question.
“In a way. I was dead, and Emrys gave me new life. Now a part of the Outer Primordial Darkness he represents lives in me too,” she said serenely.
Hovering above her left palm were three small bluish-green orbs, lazily going around in a circle. They were translucent and held something inside them that I couldn’t make out, but the orbs themselves appeared to be melting and solidifying by the woman’s will.
“You’re Petra, aren’t you?” I asked as I cautiously approached her. “Chamberlin had mentioned that Emrys had taken an acolyte. I’m Samantha, and this is Genevieve, Elam, and Charlotte.”
“I know. The whole reason we’re here is to speak with you,” she nodded.
“The Ophion Occult Order calls me a soul-flayer, and I’m sure you were all wondering exactly what that meant before you came here,” Emrys said, standing proudly behind his acolyte. “Well, this is it. The Darkness Beyond is now a part of her, and a part of her now lives within the Darkness Beyond. She is not unchanged from what she was before, but neither has what she was been lost.”
“My interpretation of the term ‘soul-flaying’ was the complete removal of a person’s consciousness from their astral and physical bodies to be subsumed by your Darkness,” I countered. “They told me that what you’ve done with Petra here is just the limit of your power while you’re bound in their chains. Are you telling me that if your chains were broken, you wouldn’t be able to do any worse than this?”
“On my physical avatar? No. So long as my astral form remains chained and bound with the World Serpent, I cannot cleave a conscious mind from its astral substrate,” Emrys assured me.
“But that is your ultimate goal, isn’t it? Breaking the chains the Ophion Occult Order put on you is just a stepping stone to breaking the ones the gods bound you with?” Genevieve asked. “You’ve allied yourself with a literal god slayer. Do you expect us to believe that his people’s abilities aren’t something you intend to put to your own ends?”
“I don’t have an ultimate goal so much as I have a fundamental principle of opposing tyranny,” he claimed. “When I was a mere man, thousands of years ago, I was a tyrant. I believed that might made right so unquestionably that when my might began to fail me, the only thing I could think to do was to try everything in my power to restore it. This quest eventually led to me becoming one with the Darkness Beyond, which gave me not only the might I coveted but the wisdom I didn’t know I needed. It gave me perspective. It made me stronger than any human alive at that point but still let me realize how insignificant I was. It was humbling, and enlightening, and filled me both with remorse over my past actions and an impetus to use my newfound gifts to rectify them. I tried to overthrow the gods themselves which, in hindsight, was overly ambitious. I not only failed but had my soul devoured by the World Serpent, where it still resides to this day.
“I am not eager to bring the wrath of the gods down upon me once again. No, for now, I will be content to end the tyranny of the Ophion Occult Order. This is the message I’d like you to relay to them. If the Grand Adderman agrees to unbind my chains and step down from his post, I will spare his life. If he declines, I want the rest of the Order to know that I will show mercy to any who sides with me over him. I am willing to allow the Order to exist so long as it agrees to become more decentralized, democratic, and accountable. They will have to forfeit certain artifacts and individuals in their possession over to me, chief among them the Darling Twins, but I am willing to negotiate. If they aren’t, then I will overthrow the Grand Adderman by whatever means necessary and see the Order scattered to the four winds. It is entirely up to them whether or not the conflict between us escalates to full-on war. Have I made myself clear, Samantha?”
“I think so,” I said as I pensively considered everything he had said. “Why should they trust you to keep your word once your chains are broken? For that matter, why should we?”
He took a moment to consider his response, eyeing me over as though he was trying to divine something that would win over my trust.
“Samantha, you made a pact with Persephone to get your Spirit Familiar there; one where she swore by the River Styx. Is that correct?” he asked.
“It is,” I nodded.
“And in the years since, has Persephone ever broken that pact she swore to?” he asked.
“No, she hasn’t,” I replied.
“I may not be an Old God, but so long as my astral form remains bound by their chains, they have power over me,” he said. “Samantha Sumner, Hedge Witch of Harrowick Woods, I swear on the River Styx that I have spoken no lies to you today. I swear by the River Styx that I will abide by any Covenant that I and the Ophion Occult Order agree to in good faith and fair dealing that they do not break first. I swear by the River Styx that when my chains are broken, I will give you no cause to fear me or regret your trust in me.”
I gave a questioning glance to Genevieve, and then Elam, both of whom nodded in the affirmative.
“All right. An oath sworn on the River Styx is good enough for me. I’ll deliver your terms to Seneca Chamberlin,” I agreed. “I’m very grateful for the trust and respect you’ve shown for me and my coven, Emrys, though I can’t say I quite understand it. Out of all the guests that were there on the Hallow’s Eve you were summoned, why did Evie and I stand out to you?”
“The Ophion Occult Order deemed you worthy of inclusion in their cult, an offer you rejected on principle. You cheated Persephone, but you did it not to gain immortality for yourself but to save your friend from hell. You came here, thinking I could very well tear your souls asunder, but did so because you believed it was your duty to prevent needless suffering,” Emrys answered. “You are extraordinary in your craft, courage, and conscience, the latter of which especially stood out among the degenerates at that party. I do apologize if I frightened you at that event. I was a bit… irritable, given the circumstances. I’m glad we were able to meet again under more pleasant conditions.”
“So am I, Emrys,” I nodded. “I’m not sure exactly what this means or how relevant it is, but Seneca wanted me to tell you that he’s able to offer you the Dream Demon Red Ruck as a sacrifice.”
“Pffft. Tell him it’s hardly a sacrifice if I’m getting rid of a boogie man for him,” he scoffed. “In fact, now that you mention it, Ruck’s one egregore that might be of more use to me alive.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but we were suddenly interrupted by the rapid pounding of a gong somewhere down below. It seemed to be an alarm of some kind, as we could hear the panicked shouting and frantic racing of people either battening down or forsaking the Flea Market altogether.
Mathom-meister apparated into the middle of the room, his facial tentacles reflexively raised in a defensive position.
“Were you outside the market?” he demanded of us.
“The portal we came through deposited us a few miles outside of the market, yes,” I admitted.
“Damn,” Emrys cursed softly, though he sounded more frustrated than angry. “Meister, it’s not their fault. I knew they weren’t experienced Planeswalkers, I could have – ”
“It doesn’t matter!” Mathom-meister interjected. “They need to leave, now!”
“Why, what’s going on?” Genevieve demanded.
“The scarabs are swarming,” Petra explained. “Don’t feel bad; it happens often enough that they’re prepared for it.”
I wanted to press for more details, but I could hear the humming of a vast winged swarm steadily encroaching upon us.
“Don’t worry. Once you leave the swarm will disperse… eventually,” Emrys told us. “We’ve said all that need be said for now. Return home, and I’ll reach out to you again shortly, Samantha.”
Again, I wanted to object, but the swarm outside was growing louder and louder, and it occurred to me that we might not be completely safe from a biblical swarm of insects that could not only sense but evidently sought out souls.
This occurred to Charlotte as well, as she was the first of us to vanish and awaken back in her body. We could all feel the weight of her reembodied soul tugging on us to return with her. Genevieve immediately grabbed hold of my right hand and Elam my left, both of them refusing to leave before I did.
I spared one final glance at Emrys, lamenting that we couldn’t have had more time.
“I’ll relay everything you said to the Order. I’ll make sure they know you’re willing to negotiate a truce,” I vowed.
He gave me a gracious nod, and just as we heard the swarm start to pelt the exterior of the market, I forced my physical eyes open and was back in my body, still safely under a willow tree in my cemetery.
I immediately looked beside me to Genevieve, and saw that she was awake as well, and then around me for Elam, who seemed to be suffering a bit of spectral whiplash from being pulled back with me so suddenly, but was otherwise all right. Sighing with relief, I turned lastly to Charlotte, and saw that she was looking down at the mediation circle in dreaded horror.
Following her gaze, I saw that the Undying Rose was gone – spent, perhaps, in exchange for our passage – and in its place was the inert, and hopefully dead, body of one of the shimmering scarabs.

This post is long, controversial people and ideas appear below, I speculate at points, and there's a lot of acronyms, so a summary up-front: The Wilson/Davis meeting was real, the program Admiral Wilson told Dr. Davis about was real. It is the same program--Zodiac--that Lue Elizondo and Harry Reid ran afoul of in 2009, pointed in its direction by Dr. Davis. The program is so powerful in the US DoD that it managed to do what all organizations do when they feel threatened by a competitor: it "consumed" the UAPTF (successor to Harry Reid et al's AAWSAP), and re-org'd it ultimately as "AARO", to serve a role once filled by Project Blue Book: a public UFO debunking group to make the subject appear mundane. AARO, unknown perhaps to some or all working for it, is the public relations wing of the control group behind the cover-up, or is itself now an active arm of it. AARO should not be trusted. The control group guards the gateway to a reality wilder than imagination.
Intro
In May 2022 the United States held hearings on UFOs (9-min highlights).
In those proceedings, representatives of AOIMSG (later re-designated "AARO"):

Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense: Intelligence & Security
Scott W. Bray, Deputy Director of Navy Intelligence

...appeared publicly representing the then-recently re-organized program, succeeding the UAP Task Force.
The two gentlemen claimed no knowledge of any UFO program/s within the US Government in the years between AAWSAP (which officially ran from 2008-2012, and continued in some fashion through 2017 before being succeeded by the UAPTF) and the USAF's Project Blue Book (which closed in 1969).
They claimed no knowledge of well-known UFO incidents (which would have been in the files they inherited from UAPTF), claimed no communications attempts had been sent to unknown fliers in US airspace (Implies that unknowns--including Russian or Chinese--can enter and exit US airspace without challenge), showed a short video of a 'dot' in the sky claiming it was all they had to go on, and so on. Christopher Mellon said at the time: https://i.redd.it/8kr2wz2859091.jpg

But Mr. Moultrie's and Mr. Bray's testimony did not match information previously released, not limited to but specifically by Luis Elizondo, who once ran AAWSAP/AATIP: the predecessor to UAPTF, the program AOIMSG/AARO re-org'd from and the papers and materials of which they had in their possession.
We know that AAWSAP/AATIP and UAPTF shared at least some personnel (Dr. Eric Davis was a consultant to both programs, for instance), it is reasonable to think there was a continuity of data between programs as well, meaning that AAWSAP's data became UAPTF's, and in turn: AOIMSG/AARO's. Which leads me to ask why the representatives of AOIMSG/AARO seemed ignorant of data they should have had. I don't expect the people at the top to know everything off the tops of their heads, but one would think they'd have their resident nerds brief them before going before Congress.

So what did AAWSAP/AATIP know?
Though former director Luis Elizondo has often asked us to "read between the lines", limited in what he can publicly say due to the Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) he's bound by, his message becomes clearer when events are laid out in order, dots between them connected.
When comparing information from AAWSAP and Elizondo to the Wilson/Davis notes, parallels emerge and details bolster each other.
This has implications for the legitimacy of AOIMSG/AARO.
Part 1: Admiral Thomas Wilson meets "the gatekeepers"
The notes of the 2002 meeting between Admiral Thomas Wilson and Dr. Eric Davis:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190609152124/https://imgur.com/a/ggIFTfQ

Uploaded in 2019 by UFO researcher Grant Cameron, the Wilson/Davis notes were found in the personal papers of late NASA astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, after he passed in 2016.
The notes had been rumored to exist for over a decade prior. Edgar Mitchell discussed the story behind them on CNN's "Larry King Live" in 2008: https://youtu.be/unEzDmiHKic?t=80 (time-stamped)
The notes are one of the most controversial cases to appear in ufology in decades, with credible supporting and skeptical arguments alike. No less than John Greenewald Jr. (of The Black Vault) has speculated the notes were written for a film or TV show.
https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/the-admiral-wilson-leak-an-analysis/
I ask your indulgence as I respectfully disagree with Mr. Greenewald below.

The Wilson/Davis notes contend that Admiral Thomas Wilson (US Navy, now retired) met Dr. Eric Davis (of Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, NIDS, AAWSAP, and a consultant for UAPTF) in Las Vegas in 2002 for a confidential meeting at Davis's request. Davis tooks notes during the meeting, and those notes are what Grant Cameron eventually published online.
Admiral Wilson allegedly told Dr. Davis in that meeting about the admiral's attempt circa 1997 to gain access to a reverse-engineering program managed by at least one large American private defense contractor, and controlled via an unusual governmental Special Access Program, or SAP.
SAPs can serve as "umbrellas" for USAPs: Unacknowledged Special Access programs, which can themselves be umbrellas for even more secretive programs, programs that ultimately even the SAP Oversight Commitee has little or no window into. Like a "Russian doll" of secrecy.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Steven Greer (of CSETI) obtained a document dated 28 July 1991, said to be leaked from the Nellis Test & Training Range (NTTR) in Nevada:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230205091457/https://siriusdisclosure.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/NRO-Doc.pdf
This document listed a number of group code-names, warning each to suspend visible operations in light of an impending civilian UFO-researcher event in the nearby town of Rachel, Nevada, just to the north of the NTTR.

Dr. Greer, at that time in the mid-'90s working alongside Dr. Edgar Mitchell (Mitchell later distanced himself from Greer), met with Admiral Wilson around 1996, and showed him that allegedly leaked document from the NTTR.
Dr. Greer asked the admiral to see if he could, using his clearances and access, find anything about any of the code names on that list.
Two of the names on that list are MAJ and MAJI Ops. If legitimate, this would lend credence to the idea of some group with a name similar to "MAJIC" or "Majestic": extremely loaded terms.
Admiral Wilson searched the Pentagon Records Group, and found at least one of the names on that list (we don't know which): it was a Special Access Program within what was at that time the OUSDAT (at that time, the Office of the Under-Secretary of Defense for Acquisitions and Technology).
From the Wilson/Davis notes page 7, Wilson speaking to Davis in 2002:

They told me of a special projects record group not belonging to usual SAP - a special subset of the unacknowledged/carve-outs/waived programs - not belonging to usual SAP divisions as organized in '94 by Perry himself - set apart from rest but buried/covered by conventional SAPs

The admiral was concerned that the program he found should have been something he was aware of, if not in control of. But he had no prior knowledge of it at all.
He reached out to its leaders, and was grudgingly granted a meeting with three people who called themselves the gatekeepers, who reluctantly told him they represented a reverse-engineering program: that they had in their possession at least one intact vehicle "not made by human hands".
They were mostly concerned with how he found them and what he wanted. When he said he needed to be vetted in, they saw to it that the admiral was rebuffed and threatened--with loss of rank and pension--if he pursued the matter further.
Admiral Wilson has been contacted multiple times over the years since and has denied the Wilson/Davis notes each time, as he promised he would within the notes themselves.
In a 2020 interview with the NY Post's Steven Greenstreet, Dr. Eric Davis awkwardly refused to confirm or deny the meeting and notes. Judge for yourself, here is that clip, he reads to me as a man cornered:
https://np.reddit.com/UFOs/comments/pvwhsi/heres_the_deleted_video_of_eric_davis_talking/
Next I'm going to get into AAWSAP, and it's worth noting I feel that Dr. Davis was a consultant to that program. He reported to Dr. Hal Puthoff, who himself reported to Lue Elizondo.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211214190334/https://www.ufojoe.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/DavisHalLue.png (L to R: Puthoff, Elizondo, and Davis)
As all these people worked together and shared security clearances, they were freer to talk about certain topics than Dr. Davis appears in the video with Mr. Greenstreet above. This potentially has implications, for how and from where Elizondo might know where to look for "certain things".
Part 2: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the mysterious "other" UFO group
2008: AAWSAP's beginnings have been gone over many times, I'll summarize only. The New York Times article from December 2017 that revealed the program is here.
A brief summary of the origins of the program can be had here, in a somewhat neutral tone.
The program grew out of discussions between Las Vegas entrepreneur Robert Bigelow and the late Senator Harry Reid, and initially was led by Dr. James Lacatski with a focus on studying unexplained phenomena, including UFOs.
When Dr. Lacatski left the group, former counter-intel officer Luis Elizondo was brought in to lead the program.

I'm going to put aside the fact Mr. Elizondo met the head of a US Government UFO program that ran in the 1980s, which already makes AOIMSG/AARO's assertion there was no program between Blue Book and AAWSAP false. Mr. Moultrie and Mr. Bray had only to ask Elizondo if he knew of any other groups, but they apparently were incurious.
2009: Mr. Elizondo, the fresh director of AAWSAP, bumped up against a different group (not the one from the 1980s) within the US Department of Defense--a Special Access Program of some kind--which he and Sen. Harry Reid had reason to believe held deep secrets about the same kinds of subjects AAWSAP was looking into, specifically non-human-created technologies.
Not being a Special Access Program themselves, AAWSAP had no access to this other group's personnel, data, or materials.
Senator Reid, who was at the time the US Senate Majority Leader and one of the trio of senators (along with Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye) who'd gotten AAWSAP initially funded, tried to get AAWSAP (as "AATIP") re-designated a Special Access Program itself:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220515090232/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Reid_letter_2009_1532565293943_49621615_ver1.0.pdf
This would have granted specific AAWSAP personnel (as AATIP) the appropriate clearances to be vetted into this strange SAP they'd run into.
Senator Reid was rebuffed, and he, along with AAWSAP/AATIP personnel--including Mr. Elizondo and Dr. Hal Puthoff--was denied access to the other group and its materials. They shut out not only Elizondo (a trusted and decorated military veteran who already held top-secret clearances), but the Majority Leader of the United States Senate.
https://youtu.be/FMBpthoATFk?t=779
George Knapp (investigative journalist: KLAS Las Vegas, MysteryWire, Weaponized):

What was the intention, with making it (AAWSAP) into a Special Access Program?

Sen. Reid:

Well there are certain things that we had learned in our work, that there were places that we needed to go, that people had certain things, equipment, and other stuff, that we needed to see, and you couldn't do it unless you got, clearance from the Pentagon, and they wouldn't give it to us.

Knapp:

It suggests that there are other studies or programs, that might shed light on this mystery?

Sen. Reid:

Other programs, that have been done, and information they have, including different um, pieces of evidence.

Knapp:

...Do you know what those pieces are?

Sen. Reid:

No... um, I've just only heard rumors, and I'm not going to get into rumors.

Part 3: UAPTF, to AOIMSG, to AARO -- Stealing back the narrative
In 2012, AAWSAP was refused additional funding and officially closed, though the program continued in some fashion until Elizondo's resignation from the US Government and his joining Tom DeLonge's To The Stars in 2017.
After Elizondo went public, the US Government effort that had been AAWSAP/AATIP was ultimately reborn as the UAP Task Force (UAPTF), which eventually counted among its members UFO whistleblower David Grusch.
Under To The Stars, the current public UFO disclosure advocacy effort began, with Christopher Mellon acquiring and leaking three now-famous videos of UFOs recorded by US Navy personnel, the release of History Channel's Unidentified series, and a steady stream of press: the tone of which began to take the subject more seriously.
This began to apply pressure from the outside to the subject: by re-framing it as an aerospace integrity, safety, and national security issue, credible people like Mellon poked the US Government asking, "Why won't you take this seriously?"
This led to increasing serious interest in the topic not only by the public but by vocal members of the US Congress like Mike Gallagher and Tim Burchett, by respected journalists like Ross Coulthart. Stigma was chipped away at, new reporting avenues were added for US military personnel; progress seemed to be being made.

In response, I think the group Elizondo and Reid, and before them I believe Admiral Wilson, had encountered, did what any organization that feels another could become a threat to it does: they bought out the competition, consuming the UAPTF and making it their own.
In a December 2021 article for The Hill, Elizondo and Mellon each voiced concern over the re-org and move of the now former-UAPTF to AOIMSG (later re-branded AARO) under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security (OUSD(I&S)):
https://web.archive.org/web/20230205090354/https://thehill.com/opinion/international/583575-a-pentagon-ufo-cover-up-ex-officials-speak-out/
Elizondo:

"...If we want 70 more years of secrecy on this topic, then OUSD(I&S) is the perfect place to put it. They’ve had four years so far, and we have little in the way of efforts serving the public interest."

Mellon:

"...the inability of OUSD(I&S) to engage effectively on the [UFO] issue is why so little has changed or been accomplished since 2004."

With the newly-branded AARO in their pocket, the control group regained the upper hand. Instead of doing away with a government UFO office entirely, they would control the one that existed and through it shape the public narrative, getting disinformation back on track.
Part 4: Who is this "other" UFO program?
For decades there has been talk of an organization operating behind the scenes within the US Government on the UFO problem, from Project Aquarius, to the "men in black", to the Majestic 12.
In May 2021 UFO researcher Project Unity tweeted this brief exchange between UFO researchehistorian Richard Dolan and Lue Elizondo.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211029230827/https://twitter.com/TheProjectUnity/status/1395692929151291397

Richard Dolan: "Have you ever come across evidence that supports the reality of an organization, whether we call it MJ-12 or Zodiac?"
Lue Elizondo: "Sure, absolutely"
Richard Dolan: "Okay so I want to ask about Zodiac, I've got reasons for asking, is this something you have come across?"
Lue Elizondo: "Yes"
Richard Dolan: "So can I ask you what you can say about that?"
Lue Elizondo: "I cannot".

Like the devil of Earth myths, they've "had so many names".
They may no longer go by "Zodiac", but they almost certainly did as recently as 2009, in order for Elizondo to know that name, unless he heard it from Dr. Eric Davis (possible, even likely).
Zodiac is almost certainly the program Sen. Harry Reid tried (and failed) to get his people vetted into. I believe it's the same group (or a related silo) which denied Admiral Wilson access to their reverse-engineering program in 1997.
This group is either the current version of whatever it was Admiral Wilson found via the Pentagon Records Group, or it sits beneath it in hierarchy. Dr. Davis is likely the person who pointed Lue Elizondo in its direction, when Elizondo took charge of AAWSAP and started snooping around internally.
Zodiac is either the umbrella group itself, or one of several sibling programs (Unacknowledged SAPs) nested within a master SAP.
If it's a sub-program, it might be the reverse-engineering wing, compartmentalized apart from other silos. The other big candidate in this case could be crash retrieval.
The reverse-engineering program places recovered non-human technologies in private corporations (exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests), access to which is limited to strict "bigot lists" and protected by extremely punishing NDAs.
Progress on reverse-engineering is glacial if anything, but we will be shocked to learn what things we use in daily life have come from or were influenced by alien technologies.
People have been ruined or buried in unmarked graves for breaking ranks with the program/s. Favored aerospace and technology corporations have benefited from the relationship while their competitors have been bought out or ruined.
Military application of technologies takes all precedence.
Crash retrieval sounds straight-forward but I bet it has a lot of nuances, a lot of special skills and equipment. A global quick-response infrastructure is implied (meaning groups ready to deploy across the globe at all times. We don't want people flying out of Wright-Pat to get to a crash in say Australia, we'd want a team with the right equipment already in say Guam, ready to activate), with skilled/trained personnel and equipment standing by at all hours. The field personnel may be military or ex-military. National borders would seem to mean little and essentially violating other countries' territories a required part of the job.

Reverse-engineering, and crash retrievals, are likely not the only silos of the group.
Joe Murgia ("UFO Joe") interviewed Commander Will Miller, who is referenced in the Wilson/Davis notes.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221201140901/https://www.ufojoe.net/will-miller-complete/

Joe Murgia: When you say “Control Group” like you did in Leslie Kean’s book, do you mean an MJ-12-like group?
Will Miller: Yes, I’d opine that there are probably multiple “Control Groups”, each one covering certain aspects of the UFO/ETI issue; i.e. one probably covering crash retrievals & analysis, another covering collecting & analyzing reports of “encounters,” another related to overall oversight, etc. That’s just within DoD. Additionally, there are a limited # of DoD “contractors” who even have the technological capability to work this issue to include analysis, security, etc.

The other silos under the master umbrella program, compartmentalized apart from each other, could look like...
(This is me speculating wildly on what these other programs could contain information on, and should be taken with enormous grains of salt):

Biological remains, and what can be gleaned from them on the environments the beings evolved in; cell-structure, nutritional requirements, reproduction, ancestry/evolutionary history. Weapons applications of non-terrestrial biology.
Intelligence gathering on off-world organizations. Spying on those watching humanity, maybe even using stolen alien technology to do so. Implications of using ET tech to spy on terrestrial competitors, both corporate and national. Implications if any of our visitors turn out to be biologically human (meaning their ancestors were taken from Earth and a viable breeding population of humans is kept part of the alien society even now, identical to us, perfect spies).
Organic/machine interfaces - anything from physical control consoles, to mind/machine interfaces, to biologically-integrated technologies, purpose-grown artificial/synthetic life-forms, genetic engineering.
Xeno-linguistics and communications. Alien languages: spoken, written, computemachine language/s, and maybe things we don't have an analogue for (IE the oft-reported telepathy, either naturally evolved or technologically achieved).
Exo-politics - the nature of alien command and social structures (or lack thereof) and initiatives; policies on dealing with native life-forms (like us).
Terrestrial foreign power intelligence gathering - what do other countries know/have and what are they doing with it? Given the reasons for the cover-up (weaponization), this would seem of paramount importance to the overall program.
Recovered craft: testing and potential use thereof. As astonished as I feel writing this... have we taken recovered or reverse-engineered craft off-world ourselves? Do we use them for terrestrial espionage? A single alien craft, if useable by humans at all, could be a game-changing military asset, so I doubt this... but I can't call it "off the table".
New (to us) physics - imagine what someone capable of traversing the space between star systems (or "parallel realities" if one prefers) knows about the nature of reality, that we humans do not. As the late Carl Sagan once said, "To bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." Weaponization of ideas learned from alien understanding of physics (IE microwave or beam weaponry, gravity manipulation to achieve force fields, time distortions, or targeted gravitational disruptions).
Materials science - compounds or isotopes not found in the Sol system or even guessed at. Atomic or sub-atomic level engineering. Imagine trying to understand objects that came from industrial-sized fabricators with integrated particle acceleration capable of "3-D printing" anything from hand-held devices to entire starships in minutes using nothing but hydrogen and helium as building blocks, engineering from the sub-atomic on up with integrated quantum-computing in every atom of the device. The possibilities, as astounding as I find it, of 3-D printing custom-engineered living beings or exact duplicates of existing organisms.
Exo-computational devices and databases - consider what might be gleaned from understanding the alien version of a "computer". Imagine the data stored within: star charts, maps back to the point of origin or colonies and to every other inhabited biosphere within thousands of light years (or on a multi-galactic scale), medical data, historical data, entertainment like music or visuals, 3-D data storage including imagery and sounds from Earth's own past and/or countless other worlds under their observation. Not to mention insights into the minds of the people who made the technology: how they think and process data, at what speed, etc.

...and god knows what else.
Imagine if there's a silo that holds alien medical technologies: treatments or cures for diseases. The ability to re-grow lost limbs, to repair spinal damage or lost eyesight/hearing. Even if not applicable (yet) to human biology, the ideas that could come from this if shared with the medical community across Earth... all brought here incidentally in a "first-aid kit" aboard someone else's spacecraft. In defense of Zodiac, imagine the terrible weaponization potential.
Could we ever forgive these people for keeping secrets like this? For the crimes they've committed to do so? Even if they did what they felt was needed to protect national interests, at some point the base fact that we're not alone should belong to everyone. Because it really feels like what started as an attempt to hide technologies that could be weaponized if a competitor figured them out first has turned into "hiding everything we've done to hide that technology, and we can't mention aliens because that begs the question how did they get here, which brings us back to the technology", tech they don't know how to make more of.
Conclusion: Following "Lue's Clues", thoughts on and fear of the control group, disinformation, and questions
There is implication in information from Elizondo and Dr. Davis that there's been a clandestine organization controlling the UFO issue operating within the US Department of Defense for decades, a group which has repeatedly shielded itself from prying eyes. What they can't shield they reduce through propaganda to ridicule. If not in name or historical fact, this may as well be the Majestic 12 of UFO lore.
I write that name with a heavy heart, and with fear. People on these forums always snipe, "That's just what you want to believe," or, "Nobody wants to believe more than me, but c'mon".
I read those replies and every time think, "Do you know what you're saying? Have you read the Majestic documents? They're terrifying. Of course I don't want it to be real! I want it to be fake, like Robert Hastings said!" The reality they suggest is horrifying to me.
I've recoiled from, fled from, the possibility of the Majestic 12 for more than 30 years, since I first read the initial papers in Timothy Good's Above Top Secret in late 1989.
I with great trepidation read Stanton Friedman's TOP SECRET/MAJIC, hoping for some fatal flaw. I've read with interest (and often unease) these past few years everything Harry_is_white_hot--probably the lead researcher currently working on the topic--has put out about MJ-12. I keep hoping for that fatal flaw in the basic concept of a shadowy "men in black"-type group like this. No conspiracy can be that big and remain hidden, surely.
But objective reality is not influenced by what we want or would find more comfortable to be true; it simply is what it is.
That's not to say everything in the Majestic documents is real (I still hope to god it's not; they literally contain a directive on when to execute stranded alien beings to preserve secrecy), but the fact of a real organization filling that role--whatever its real history is--is for me no longer escapable after David Grusch.

I've had suspicions about AARO since its inception as AOIMSG, since the warning from Elizondo and Mellon about OUSD(I&S) in The Hill.
The re-org of UAPTF into AARO seems to me an attempt to regain control of the narrative after people like Elizondo and Mellon began to apply public pressure on the US Government to disclose what it knows about UFOs. What they can't keep secret, they ridicule: a powerful social tool.
For two decades, the US Air Force used Project Blue Book to gaslight not only the American populace, but the news media and the world, into thinking there was no "there" there in UFOs. That those of us interested in the topic were insane, to be socially ostracized, shamed, and shunned.
Blue Book was, it was later revealed by its former scientific advisor Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a public relations and propaganda program.
AARO is in its purpose no different, and will be the first place the news media turns to explain to them what is going on with the unfolding David Grusch story. Well, AARO or Neil DeGrasse-Tyson. Maybe Bill Nye.
The Grusch story is already being attached to the sensational Las Vegas "aliens in the backyard" tale - see ABC News Chicago, complete with X-files music! - scroll down the article to see them mention Mr. Grusch. Zodiac's tendrils in the press are twitching, and not even that much: just poke the bias toward mundanity they've nurtured in us for decades.
As the infamous quote goes:

"There's nothing to hide?"
"There's nothing to hide at all."

I don't know everything above and I'm absolutely very obviously speculating in places, on things I would once never have considered possible and which looked absolutely wild to my eyes even as I wrote them. I may stumble in some places but I think I've headed in the direction Lue Elizondo, Chris Mellon, Dr. Eric Davis, and others have pointed us in.
Mr. Elizondo's information, passed in pieces due to his NDAs, has been widely mocked as "Lue's Clues": deliberately mysterious and obfuscated. He's been derided as a grifter and con-artist, he's been doxxed, he's provided what he can at enormous personal cost to himself and his family. Stringing the information and hints that he's put out together, the picture not only becomes more detailed, it implies a conspiracy which in and of itself will be an ontological shock, beyond which lies even more shock, after shock, after shock.
If a nobody like me can read what Elizondo's getting at, why can't Mr. Moultrie, or Mr. Bray, or Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick for that matter? Do they not at least have questions? Are they so incurious? This is literally their job, at least on paper.
David Grusch has briefed AARO personnel on his extraordinary findings, and AARO still says, "We have no credible/verifiable indication of non-human intelligence." Saying little, they speak volumes.
The implications make me feel, appropriately I think: "somber".
I'll end with some brief thoughts from Lue Elizondo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jythx89ym38
Thanks for reading.

I (26F) have been with my boyfriend (34M) for about 5 years. He has had his own home for about 7 years and has always had roommates. I have been living with him full time since 2020 and recently completely moved all of my things in 8 months ago when my parents moved out of state. I do all the traditionally women things around the house like cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, making sure bills are paid on time, some lawn work and generally making the house feel like a home by decorating for holidays and repainting rooms in the house that need a little update but I do not pay any house bills. I am also in nursing school with about a year and half left and work full time in the medical field. We have 2 roommates, one in the basement and one on the top floor we share a bathroom. They do nothing around the house. I recently brought up the conversation of ask the upstairs roommate to leave as i thought it would be a good next step in our relationship and give us a little more privacy. I was not asking for it to next month but maybe the next 3 months or the end of the year. He flat out refused and said he has no interest in asking them to leave until i get my "big girl job" as a nurse and can "actually contribute" financially. This really hurt my feelings and made me feel like all the hard work I do around the house is not only unappreciated but undervalued. My boyfriend also owns his own business that i do things for like cleaning, helping with paper work and working when he is really in a pinch and i can help, im not expecting payment for my time spent there because i figured we are a team and im helping my partner out. I would other opinion and thought on it. Is the request to much? Is another year and half too long to wait? or should i cut my ties and move on?
I (26F) asked my boyfriend (M34) to get rid of one of the roommates in house and he is refusing.

I can't believe it.
So a No Somniel run pretty much means that during the run, all activities that are done in the Somniel are banned. There are several combat-related implications of this - no refining weapons (no early strong weapons like a Levin Sword until Ch. 11 for example and can only use base weapons), no engravings, no Bond Rings, no cooking, no activities, no Well, and no Arena. The early Steel weapons that you get upon going to the Somniel from an update are banned as well as the Heroes rewards (the Bond Rings and the weapons, Folkvangr, Fensalir, and Noatun). No Arena means that leveling up the bond rank of Emblems on each character will have to be done in the maps themselves and skill inherits are impossible. Reclassing is still possible, but more difficult now that you have to level up bond ranks in maps and because weapon proficiencies past bond rank 5 will need at least two maps with the Emblem Ring. No DLC either, but that doesn't impact me since I don't have it anyway. And while it's not a Somniel activity, I didn't have Network Connection enabled for the weapon drops, EXP, and other small benefits scattered on a map. I had finished a normal Ironman run with no big issues (one death, RIP Louis), but I went into this run fully expecting to lose it. An Ironman means no using the Draconic Time Crystal, so no rewinding my mistakes and every input I make is final. If a character dies because of my poor decisions or they get crit by the enemy, they remain dead.
Run casualties:

Chloe: Died in Ch. 6. Fog of war claimed another life. Chloe got hit by an axe fighter and a thief that I didn't have vision of. It was entirely my mistake to overextend with her when I could've just played it safe. I was going to use Chloe this run as an early carry before likely transitioning her to a more support based role if her combat couldn't keep up.
Yunaka: Died in Ch. 8. Overall, I think Chloe's death kinda snowballed the deaths in Ch. 8. Going into this chapter, I lost a character that was going to be one of my early carries. Lapis was Chloe's replacement, but I needed to get staff proficiency on her just in case I was going to pivot her to a support later (especially since I can't get staff proficiency for a long time after Ch. 10). Lapis therefore had to have Micaiah for several maps and I tried to continue using Marth on Alear on Ch. 8 instead as a carry. However, because of my poor timing of Engage attacks and just being badly positioned because I was unprepared for when Kagetsu and Zelkov started moving, I got myself in a situation that required me to hit a 65% to defeat Kagetsu. Missed the 65% and Yunaka died to him.
Framme: Died in Ch. 8. I didn't have Lodestar Rush or enough power in general to take down Ivy in one turn. But I had to start taking down her health bars eventually otherwise I would have game over'ed since enemies would've reached the target point. As such, almost all of my units were in range of Ivy at that point and she had free reign to choose whoever she wanted to kill. In the end, she chose to Killer Axe crit Framme to death (Framme would've died even without the crit).
Celine: Died in Ch. 10. I'm really mad at myself for this death because Celine died on turn one. I calculated how much damage she would take from the armor and pegasus knight on the left if they both hit her and concluded if Celine was next to Alear, she would live at 1 HP. Well, she didn't live at 1 HP because I didn't account for the Resonance damage from having Celica on her. And of course both the armor and pegasus knight hit their 50% attacks. Celine was my only early game carry because Chloe had died. And now she was dead on turn one of a difficult 2-part map.
Diamant: Died in Ch. 10. Got frozen by Hortensia and I couldn't get in range to Restore him without risking Alear's death to Hortensia's Dragon effective Luin. However, I did forget to have him equip a lighter weapon and because he had the armorslayer equipped, he got doubled by Hortensia and died. I don't fully remember if he could've lived if he wasn't doubled by Hortensia (because there were other enemies around him), but I'm still frustrated at myself for letting that happen. I don't know if it's just me, but I always have trouble with taking down Hortensia in this chapter; on my normal Ironman run, I had to resort to freezing her due to a lucky early Freeze staff from the Well, but alas, no such resources like that exist in a No Somniel run.

RIP Chloe, Yunaka, Framme, Celine, and Diamant.
The Final Team:
Some quick notes - the screenshot on the top has HP tonics already applied to everyone so subtract 5 if you want to see their true HP. That was the first thing I did when I went into the final map and then thought maybe I should screenshot everyone. The screenshot on the bottom has everyone with their Emblem Rings and full tonics applied to them.

Martial Master Alear (Lucina): I really like support Alear and having them as the Bonded Shielder has worked wonders in my previous playthroughs. I figured that I would need Alear's +3 flat damage for my carries and since they support everyone in the cast, they provide +10 hit for free as well. I chose to go with Martial Master Alear because my combat carries were going to be in several different class types and I wanted the flexibility to have 100% activation rate on Bonded Shield for all of them if the need arises. I also really like Chain Guard. As such, in early game, I fed Alear experience through Mercurius farming and then gave them Micaiah to get staff proficiency and to farm via Great Sacrifice. By Ch. 11, Alear was a Griffin Knight because I believe having Alear in a flying class in Ch. 11 is invaluable so you can quickly reach the point on the map to trigger Ivy, Zelkov, and Kagetsu to join you before you get overwhelmed by Corrupted with Emblems. After staying a few more chapters in Griffin (until I could give Alear Lucina after getting sword proficiency off of her on another character), Alear became a Martial Master and mainly Bonded Shielded or Chain Guarded. Not being able to Micaiah Engrave a Shielding Art to drive enemy hit rates close to 0% meant that I had to be more cognizant of where I used Bonded Shield. The enemy AI mostly decides which character to attack based on expected damage (combination of actual damage they'll do in a round of combat, how likely it is they'll hit, and their crit chance on you is also factored in). So when Bonded Shielding, I had to make sure that Alear was not going to get targeted and if they were, that they were not going to get killed from it. As such, it wasn't as simple as plop two units down and go to town deleting enemies, but it was still really strong nonetheless.

Stat Boosters: One Boots, one Seraph Robe, one Speedwing, three Dracoshields, three Talismans, two Goddess Icons

Wyvern Knight Amber (Lyn): For Amber, I was particularly cognizant of the fact that in my previous normal Ironman run, he sometimes had 90% hit rates in the endgame despite having a +hit rate engraving on his lances. That's why I decided to go with sword/lance Wyvern instead of axe/lance Wyvern even though it would've been easier to get axe proficiency on him (axe proficiency is at bond rank 2 on Leif while any sword proficiency requires at least bond rank 6, which means at least two maps worth of using a specific Emblem vs. just one). That decision really paid off. Amber was mostly using swords throughout the midgame of this playthrough because he wasn't getting 90%+ hit on lances even while I was activating his personal for +20 hit. I can only imagine his hit rates while using axes... it just spells disaster if a crucial attack misses in an Ironman (Yunaka's death...). If I saw Amber's hit rate really going into the gutter by the endgame, I was prepared to have him switch to Sniper and just kill fliers, but that never ended up happening especially after I used all my Secret Books on him (none of my other combat characters could use them since many of them capped dex and for those that didn't, they were accurate anyway). Amber remained good throughout even though by endgame, he rarely one-rounded enemies.

Stat Boosters: One Energy Drop, three Secret Books, one Speedwing

Warrior Kagetsu (Roy): I had my sights set on getting Kagetsu into Warrior despite Wyvern being easier to reclass into and still a strong class for him because I felt I needed the absolute best out of my units to get through this run (and I believe Warrior is Kagetsu's best class). Getting him into Warrior was a bit of an endeavor, but having to delegate an Emblem to Kagetsu wasn't going to make the game harder; on the contrary, it likely made things easier because Kagetsu is such a strong unit to start with. Kagetsu immediately got Lyn for Ch. 12 and 13 to get bow proficiency. This worked out for me in a lot of ways because Ch. 12 is an easy chapter so Emblem allocation isn't that important to get through the map. Plus, Lyn on Kagetsu for Ch. 12 doubles the Wolf Knights once you get two Speedtaker stacks so I found it quite nice having Lyn on him. And my strategy for Ch. 13 always involved Lyn on Kagetsu (see my chapter thoughts in the comments) anyway. Now, he's got bow proficiency just in time for Ch. 14, where Ike immediately goes on Kagetsu to get axe proficiency. And soon after, he's a Warrior and just snowballed from there. I was initially a bit worried about using axes at all in this playthrough considering their low base hit rates (I was prepared to pivot Kagetsu into Wyvern and have him use swords if I needed to), but Kagetsu had 100% hit rate with a Silver Axe often. His Longbow was accurate too (same base hit rate as Silver Axe). Overall, Kagetsu snowballed hard. And when I got Roy on him, and eventually the Binding Blade unlocked, he could clear entire groups of enemies by himself (cleared the entire top lane of Ch. 24 himself with just a healer nearby). After this run, I wholeheartedly believe Roy is Kagetsu's best Emblem and it reaffirms my belief that Warrior is Kagetsu's best class. He just hits so hard with axes and doesn't take much damage either. Wyvern's great for Kagetsu, but really, try him in Warrior if you get the chance. He won't need crits to one-round, only a Silver Axe. If he can cleanly one-round a ton of endgame enemies with just a base Silver Axe and no inherits on this kind of challenge run, actually forging a Silver Axe up a bit and maybe giving it an engrave should achieve similar or better results than what I got as I'm pretty sure my Kagetsu is about average strength-wise (+1 strength than average if I calculated correctly, he got two Energy Drops and is overleveled which is why his strength looks astronomical). My Kagetsu was speed screwed (speed and build were lower than average in the midgame) for nearly the entire run because he should've capped speed way before looping and he didn't cap until after looping in Warrior. That actually mattered a few times and it made me really miss having Speed+X on him, but it wasn't something I couldn't work around and he was a powerhouse regardless.

Stat Boosters: One Boots, one Seraph Robe, two Energy Drops

Mage Knight Pandreo (Marth): After I got Pandreo, I immediately gave him Lucina to get sword proficiency to switch into Mage Knight. He did pretty well in Mage Knight, but it wasn't until after getting partway through Ch. 17 (gave him Eirika so he got bond rank 3 for Bravery at that moment and got the Bolganone that Griss drops), where he really started to snowball. After that, he could consistently one-round a lot of enemies without help until Ch. 20. Unfortunately, that's when his speed cap in Mage Knight caught up and in the endgame, 31 base speed that is not quite enough without a bit of speed boosting from an Emblem considering I cannot inherit Speed+X. In the last couple of chapters, I mostly used Marth (sometimes switched to Eirika) on Pandreo. Marth has some +speed stat boosts innately and can boost damage as well if Engaged via Divine Speed providing an additional attack at 50% damage. Using Marth on a magic unit was something I did before when I played around and used Mage Knight Kagetsu lol It worked well then and it worked well now. This Mage Knight Pandreo's stats besides magic have actually been the least impressive I've had so far. I think his magic is maybe around +2 to +3 above average though (I forget what level I class changed him from High Priest to Mage Knight), which more than makes up for his other stat deficiencies. I'm just surprised he didn't cap dex or resistance by the end of the game when he usually does. Nonetheless, Pandreo was a powerhouse and carried the run like Kagetsu even though I couldn't just send him into a group of enemies without being covered by Bonded Shield and know he'll live whilst taking them all down (unless it's a group of enemies with Great weapons he can double, those are fodder to Pandreo).

Stat Boosters: Three Spirit Dusts

Warrior Merrin (Eirika): Unlike with Kagetsu, I didn't go through four whole maps of raising bond ranks up for Merrin to change classes. That's because she'll probably end up being able to change into Warrior by Ch. 18 if I did that. Meanwhile, if I just waited until Ch. 17 to get Leif back, I would have Warrior Merrin in time for Ch. 19. It's a one chapter lag for a huge team power difference from Ch. 14 through 17 as one of my stronger units wouldn't be able to use Lyn or Ike. Merrin mostly chipped as a Wolf Knight and even when I got her into Warrior, she still was chipping (occasionally, she would one-shot fliers with the Radiant Bow) because her damage wasn't good enough and she was under the level curve. Plus, her hit rates were shaky for a good amount of time. However, I wanted her to be more so I kept feeding her kills whenever I could and I gave her Eirika after I got Marth back. With Eirika, she could sometimes do some great damage with a Brave Axe (and Eirika's damage boost helped her hit some one-round thresholds with a bow on magical enemies, that's how low her damage output was). But once she got access to Sieglinde, she could finally one-round some endgame enemies due to effective damage.

Stat Boosters: One Speedwing

Thief Zelkov (Byleth): Bought a Short Knife just for him because I didn't want this unlucky guy to get randomly crit if he faced any combat, but in hindsight with all the luck that Byleth provides, maybe that wasn't necessary. Byleth on a covert gives +5 speed when Instructing and after a Goddess Dance and considering that I cannot inherit Speed+X on my characters, I knew I was going to need the speed buff since the speed thresholds get really high on Maddening. In the end, that speed buff wasn't needed for my primary carries (Kagetsu and Pandreo) until Ch. 20, but after that, it really was needed. Pandreo caps speed in Mage Knight at 31 (so with a speed tonic, Special Dance from Seadall, and Chaos Style activated, Pandreo can only naturally double enemies that are at 34 speed or below) and Kagetsu caps speed in Warrior at 35 (so with a speed tonic, Special Dance from Seadall, and while Engaged with Roy, Kagetsu can only naturally double enemies that are at 38 speed or below). From what I saw, enemy speed can reach up to 44 so that Instruct was absolutely needed so that they could double enemies up to 39 or 43 speed respectively.
Dancer Seadall (Sigurd): I don't think there's much to say about Seadall except that I put Sigurd on him because I only have one Canter to give out and having it on a dancer felt like the most useful. I can't use Override, but that's a small price to pay for the flexibility in positioning for Goddess Dances.
Sage Citrinne (Corrin): Citrinne replaced Celine's role as an early game carry after Celine's death. While she only really had one map to shine (Ch. 11), she really did shine in that map. I luckily had the foresight to get a melee weapon proficiency on Citrinne in case I needed to make her a Mage Knight. I could've promoted her to Sage, but I compared the stats and saw that Mage Knight Citrinne would double a lot of enemies on Ch. 11's map and that's what I needed at the time. Citrinne put in a lot of work that map, immediately one-rounding the first axe fighter (if not for Roy's Hold Out). I had Citrinne stay in Mage Knight for several chapters as she was my best option for a magical carry for some time (Pandreo was stuck in High Priest for several chapters while having Lucina equipped before he can reclass) and her performance was pretty good. If I kept using her for combat and gave her resources like Lyn, I feel she would've turned out great. But in the end, Citrinne reclassed to Sage once I got Corrin because she was one of my few units that could be in a Mystical class (no tome proficiency to work towards either for a long time) and pivoted into a support role after that (which was my intention with Celine once I reached that point). She was great nonetheless. Corrin on a Mystical unit is a tried and true combo that I really like because it means being able to debuff and freeze enemies in place from three range (especially important now that I don't have Canter), and the Fire Dragon Vein is the most useful one imo. In all honesty, I didn't use the Fire Dragon Vein much to ward enemies off. My combat carries were strong enough that I rarely needed it. As such, it was mostly spammed to raise Corrin's bond rank. But it was still great to have that option in my back pocket in case I needed it.
Griffin Knight Lapis: Lapis replaced Chloe, but not as well as Citrinne replaced Celine. I couldn't really use Lapis much in combat because she had to have Micaiah equipped to get staff proficiency in the early game. I think I messed up and didn't focus enough on leveling Lapis's bond rank with Micaiah because she had to keep Micaiah all the way until Ch. 11 to get the proficiency. But tbf to myself, I nearly lost the run on Ch. 8 so leveling up bond rank wasn't on the forefront of my mind. By Ch. 11, there was no real justification I could make to try to make her combat work. As like any other staff user, she did her job.
Cupido Fogado: I was unable to get Fogado off the ground in this playthrough. He was alright up to around when I did Roy's Paralogue as he could still one-shot the Wyverns there with a Radiant Bow even if his hit rates were in the 70s (had to just make sure to have a backup plan if he did miss, which he did a few times); but soon after that, I couldn't consistently find ways to have him contribute and he was left in the dust. I still brought him into the final chapter because maybe some of the chip damage he could do to fliers would help and I felt like I had enough staff users (he actually was helpful in two occasions on the final map!).
Lindwurm Ivy (Ike): I probably would've used Ivy as a carry if not for the fact that she faces crit from nearly every enemy. Her inaccuracy with tomes is a problem as well, but I didn't need her to chip too often. Essentially, no engravings to fix these issues meant she was relegated to staff duty. She did her job and I think throughout this playthrough she had higher offensive staff hit rate (Freeze, Fracture) than Hortensia most of the time, though it wasn't by a significant amount. After midgame, Ike eventually went on Ivy mainly because I have just one source of Reposition (I really missed not being able to put this skill on most of my support units) and I wanted it on a flier.
Slepnir Rider Hortensia (Micaiah): Nothing to really say about this as it's as standard and straightforward as can be. She and Citrinne had held a Surge tome just in case I needed someone with 100% accuracy to finish off an enemy (this did happen a couple of times this playthrough).
Griffin Knight Mauvier (Leif): He's a staff user that can luckily take a few hits because he did need to survive a few in my playthrough. I put Leif on him because Leif wasn't doing much on anyone else after the midgame. But then again, it didn't much on Mauvier either besides being used to Quadruple Strike the Dark Bishop on the final map.
Sage Veyle (Celica): I kinda messed up because I didn't realize Veyle had access to S tomes in her Fell Child class and the main thing I wanted to do was use her with Nova. I could've saved myself the trouble of reclassing, but in the end, it was okay because reclassing to Sage does increase Veyle's offensive stats. I do miss out on the Fell Child class skill (which is quite nice), but getting Celica Engage back is low priority anyway so the trade-off was fine. Since my team lacked a second source of magic damage, Veyle was helpful as someone who can do a lot of damage with magic. She didn't one-round a lot of enemies, but her performance was satisfactory.

Stat Boosters: One Seraph Robe, one Speedwing
In comments below, I detail my thoughts on the individual chapters if anyone's interested (starting from Ch. 6 since that's the first chapter where something actually happened and where I also had a clear goal in mind for the map). I never thought I would successfully complete this run so I don't have any screenshots to chronicle events from before Ch. 24-ish (also, I forgot to screenshot too many things). I unfortunately don't remember the exact details of the early/midgame chapters that well anymore, but I tried my best to recall whatever information I could. This is listed by the order I tackled the maps. A full turn count, playtime, and MVP list is here.
Edit: Fixed a few links.

May 2022 R1S preorder with Q3 delivery estimate—1st ever EV. I’m coming from a Range Rover L405 V8 (also briefly owned a 2023 Defender 130X). What features will I love about the R1S and what will I miss?
Some things I already noticed in no particular order.
Small things I’ll miss:

Soft close doors. This has been fantastic with a 4 yr old and 2 yr old when they’re sleeping.
Automatic lower tailgate. Hated the swing door on Defender. Wife has a late model X5 and while we LOVE the split tailgate, I find it really annoying that the lower portion is manual.
Quad zone climate control. Maybe this will be improved with OTA updates?
HUD. This isn’t that big of a deal but I do find it convenient on the Rover.
Rear entertainment with nav. 4yo loves watching the map.
No sun shade covering pano roof. Living in Houston, I’m a little apprehensive on this.
Road noise at pano roof. Our first drive vehicle had the cross bars and it was loud enough to potentially be a deal breaker. I’m hoping it was caused by the cross bars as we don’t plan at this time to have them on ours.
Apple CarPlay, and this is a big deal to us, but this has been thoroughly discussed.

Things I’m looking forward to:

Driver + and the ability for this to be improved over time through OTAs.
3rd row. We hardly used the 3rd row in the Defender 130 but with the kids getting older I think our 4yo will soon enjoy being in the rear. Plus we are getting close to the age where we may need to transport friends as well.
Rear seat fold down controls in rear. Defender controls were fully manual and these will be much better.
Rear cargo with 3rd row up is much better than the Defender was.

You can probably tell I’m still on the fence and need some convincing, but would love to hear what everyone has to say. TIA.

Hey all,
So let me start by saying my dreams are exhausting. There is always a different plot to the dream, sometimes is a continuation, like it picks up where it left off type thing.
That's pretty standard as far as i can tell. But whats really crazy is that for years, ever since i can remember, i have been dreaming of another world. It started small with my Memas old double wide, and gradually increased in size. I do not have control of my dreams but i consistently recognize my surroundings and remember there is a whole world attached to whatever part im in and i can teleport myself just by thinking of that place (again its unintentional). Now its so huge i have to map it in parts in the waking world.
In the north there is a desert city (think the first Assasins creed type city. In the city alongside the giant cliff wall in the back is a temple that goes deep into the earth and is filled with many creatures i have to fight to get past.
In the east is the coast, and the ruins of what was once a massive city, now its a shelled out crumbling place that is still at war even now. In the west is another coast, with a beach cabana resort, a giant dock, and the beginning of some cliffs where a group of bandit like individuals camp out that i run into when im flying around as a dragon.
In the south is a great forest with the tallest trees imaginable, and in the middle is a small hamlet village thing with small people inhabiting it (think gnomes or dwarfs)
In the center is the city, and surrounding it is jagged mountains and steep green valleys where many floating homes are clinging to the sides of the mountains. In the city is a historic downtown, with antique stores, bars, restaurants, a giant hotel skyscraper, many many tall buildings i dont yet know the purpose of. There is a mall, a school, a cemetary. There is country areas with big sprawling properties with cattle and horses. There is a giant park in the middle that i guess is a wildlife refuge cause there's gators in water. Etc etc etc
I keep discovering new places, like an apartment i apparently live in with roomates i apparently dont like, and and haunted mansion that i cant resist, that has many hidden rooms and passages. And to top it all off, a lot of the time i am fighting for my life, running from danger or attempting to rescue my friends/loved ones from whatever horror vists me at night. Sometimes ill even have dreams where i start on my world, and i get on my giant rubber duck float and feel the force of leaving the atmosphere, and the gut drops when i zoom into other planets to look at them from the sky. They have cities and spaceships and the colors are insane. This has regularly become a part of my nightly experience.
What is happening to me? Im really considering signing up for a sleep study, i can never get true rest anymore. I wake up drenched in sweat and exhausted because it feels SO REAL. Does anyone else experience this? Does anyone have any explanation or am i just going crazy?
I posted this elsewhere and got one reply that did really help me get it under control for a bit... but now? Its getting REAL concise. Im talking i had a dream yesterday that i was there and gathering my friends together at my dream apt so we coukd find out why things were messing up and dying/breaking down. Then last night, we go to the south, past the village deep into the mountainous woods and we decide to go down that giant sinkhole in there. Turns out theres a frigging UNDERCITY this whole time and we met the dude in charge. He stole one of my friends and cast the rest of us away in a tunnel of fire at first, and it turned into this bluish green tube and next thing i know im alone, my physical body is on the shore and im stranded in the water trying to get back to it on the boatdock side of the map.
Tldr: I have vivid dreams that exhaust me and I think im going crazy but its been way to concise for me to just drop it

Getting Rid of Most of My Flavors, Part 47
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Starting Flavor Count: 2,429 (down from 2,972)
TASK OR TRASH - Each flavor gets assigned at least one task or it goes in the trash.

FLAVOUR ART

Violet
Yup, that’s violet. It tastes very, very violet, without being perfumy. It’s sweet, too, with some chalky sweetness especially in the finish, like a violet candy. It will get a little laundry-soapish with too much, so start low, but it will turn anything floral-purple long before that happens. I don’t get anything I would call an off-note from this.
I need it to make more Mango Beauregarde TASK 1, to make a modernized remix of my old Paradise Cream recipe, and because I want to try Violet Hops, and Jazz Hands (while I still have some Holy Vanilla). There really isn’t much else I want to mix that uses it.

Waffles Vanilla
That is certainly a waffle. There’s a hint of vanilla baked in but I don’t know that it really warrants having vanilla in the name, it’s just a touch. It’s a bit doughy like it’s undercooked but considering how bad some other waffle flavors are, this is definitely one of the better ones. Although it tastes undercookied and doughy in the center and is overall a creamy feeling flavor, it has the nice crispy edges of a waffle. It is a bit nutty if I think about it too hard, around the edges, but I didn’t take hit and immediately go “nuts.” Since the OG INW Waffle is now long gone, I think this is probably my favorite waffle flavor. There isn’t really anything I want (or am able) to mix that uses it, so I’ll just start simple with an attempt at a waffle with butter and maple syrup.
Justwaffle V1 TASK 2

Co.	Flavor	%
FA	Waffles Vanilla	2
FA	Maple Syrup	1.5
VT	Butter Base	1
VT	Golden Syrup	1

Walnut
Walnut milk? Walnut water? I don’t know, but this flavor is wet. Juicy. Or at least, very moist compared to other nuts. I think that throws the accuracy off quite a bit, but it’s a little more walnutty than WF Walnut. It has that earthy, somewhat sharp top note that I expected from a walnut right up front, but a sweeter, much less distinct nutty thick body that also throws it off of walnut a ways. The whole thing was oddly wet. Could be very useful to combat the dryness that is so ubiquitous with nuts, without being tempted to do something gross like add cactus to them.
I’ll mix some more 2 Flavor Banger with twice as much nicotine as I usually use, perfect for when there’s an open bar. TASK 3

Watermelon (Red Summer)
Sort of like a very authentic watermelon, but not, because it’s so dry. I mean, wetness is like a watermelon’s most defining characteristic. It’s got water right there in the name. This is like freeze-dried astronaut watermelon. It’s also thin and just sort of has that natural watermelon top note minus all wetness and some of the sweetness that makes a watermelon a watermelon. It’s not a bad flavor, but it needs a lot of help.
I have a handful of recipes already in the queue that use this one. Of course I will not be tossing one of the components to the original Strap-On and several variations that I’ve already planned to try and/or try again. One that hasn’t been put on the list yet but will be there now: Fuzzy Strap-On. TASK 4

Whipped Cream
This is my #2 Whipped Cream (OoO is #1). It’s very milky, it manages to very clearly be a dairy product without tasting remotely rancid, like homemade whipped cream. Very full and satisfying, with a lingering milkfat feel like whipped cream. Just a touch of vanilla. It’s a somewhat soft and subtle flavor, lending it an airy, fluffy feel, but not at all drying.
Already picked out at least four recipes that use it, here’s a couple more.
Kahlua Coffee - SSA Tiramisu. If you’ve tried it, you know. TASK 5
hard furry creamy. This one is rated TV MA for coconut violence, but I think I can handle it. TASK 6

Whisky
Cheap scotch with a big splash of apple juice and a cherry in it. I guess it kind of tastes like whisky. Has a little boozy bite there. It has some peat moss in it that makes it tastes a little bit like cheap scotch but, with a weird and fairly prominent fruity sweetness, somewhere between an apple and a cherry.
I have to keep this (for now) to try Kopel’s Fireside recipe again, so I’ll keep it a little longer than than to try his Castle Longer as well. TASK 7

White Grape
Eating freeze-dried white grapes while wearing a little too much perfume. Very jammy sticky sweet and mostly tastes like white grapes, but vapes pretty dry, or at least not wet and juicy like a grape or grape juice. Maybe needs to be fixed with just a little cactus? But, not sure about that because it already packs quite a floral wallop and cactus might amplify that. There’s a little tart tannic grape skin note that’s appropriate but that musky and slightly bitter floral right on top is unfortunate. I’d use this maybe in a small dose to try to make a “purple” flavor taste a little more like a real grape, as well as add that nice jammy sweetness to it, but not for anything else. Almost certainly not as the main flavor in a mix.
Nothing that uses this is something I want to try, and it’s about time I threw something away this week. TRASH 1

White Peach
It really very accurately, almost freakishly, emulates the difference between a classic yellow peach and a sweeter, sugary white peach. However, it’s a little thin, and a little dry, and I get some throat irritation from it. Gets a bit too sharp and floral if taken up too high, and can overtake a mix while still not being especially bold.
Although it can be a little tricky to work with, this is one of the greatest peach flavors by comparison.
I need it for one of my all-time favorites, Blue Eyes White Dragon TASK 8
I’ve already picked out about eight recipes that make use of it, including two I hope to find time to mix up today. I’ll also try Yet Another Peaches and Cream - just four flavors that look great together. TASK 9

Wine Champagne
Careful with this one. I tried 3-4% shake and vape because my 2% steeped sample was fairly weak and was weird, like rotten grapes. Possibly this just needs to stay a soft, background-type flavor. 2% is not rotten, just fermented. Isn’t fizzy. It’s more like white wine than champagne. Sweet-tart, almost but not quite vinegary tartness. It tastes even more like white wine than FA White Wine, which is more of a brighter white grape flavor, and a good one at that. This tastes too fermented to just be a white grape juice flavor, it’s definitely wine. Kinda gross as a single flavor, but seems like it could make a nice base for any kind of fruit wine and I’ve tried a recipe with watermelon where it did exactly that very well.
Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine was the aforementioned recipe. I liked it very much when I tried it years ago, will give it another shot. TASK 10 It’s also in a Mango Champagne recipe I’ve already planned to try.

Wine White
Somewhere around halfway between a semi-sweet white table wine and white grape juice. Not floral at all. A little fermentedish, but not really boozy. Smooth. Lightly sweet. Not especially thin, more thick-ish. Not dry, actually slightly juicy. Really nothing to complain about here. Fairly light flavor at 1.5%, tastes like it could easily go higher % especially if it is to be the main flavor in a mix. Could easily pass for a bit of white grape flavor in a mix. Better than FA White Grape (that one’s too floral as well as a bit dry).
It’s not a bad flavor, but I can’t find a recipe I want to mix that uses it, and don’t feel inspired to create one. TRASH 2

Wow
Sort of tastes like a donut but more of a generic pastry, wrapped around a little bit of fruit that tastes distinctly red but not on point for any particular red fruit such as raspberry or strawberry. Sweet and complex, but also dry and thin, not a thick and rich pastry or especially gooey filling. Also, very slightly harsh. Maybe you could use it to build a fruit-filled donut, but both the donut part and the filling part will need a lot of help, and at that point it’s sort of a why bother type of situation unless maybe it’s a bridge-type of flavor, but arguably that’s not even something you’d want or need if you’re trying to get any separation between pastry and fruit layers.
I’ve planned to try Bite Me already because it looks fantastic, but had trouble finding anything else I really want to use WoW for. I guess I’ll try this Freak Show recipe, TASK 11, but I’m not super excited about it like I am for most of the recipes I link.

Ylang Ylang
I don’t think I’ve ever tried this. I’ll mix a sample at 0.75%. TASK 12

Yogurt
TRASH 3 Trash, with prejudice. One of the top 10 worst flavors I have ever tried. It tastes like a company of athlete’s foot-suffering soldiers marching through a swamp of Miracle Whip, except that that would be very wet and squishy and this is dry and chalky. Aftertaste like I barfed an hour ago and it came out my nose and I still have a case of the stinky burnies. Worst of all, this abomination is a reformulation of a delicious FA Yogurt flavor that is no longer sold.

Zen Garden
Dry sweet basil with some dry sage in the background. Very Dry. Has a slight woody quality.
Keeping it to try Coconut Thai Remixed. I couldn’t find another recipe that I want to mix, but this one for Gin Blossom by CheebaSteeba has interesting elements and I want to see what just this one small piece of a the recipe tastes like.
Zen Suckle V1 TASK 13

Co.	Flavor	%
TFA	Honeysuckle	2.5
FA	Aurora	1
FA	Zen Garden	0.75

Zeppola
It’s like you sprinkled a little spice blend on one of those powered sugar donuts to try to make it taste fancy. A cake donut with powdered sugar and an indistinct spice note like light nutmeg/cinnamon/maybe clove note. Indistinct warm spice note is not as prominent as it is in WF Deep Fried Pastry Dough but is quite present. Very sweet, dense, possibly fried (slightly oily mouthfeel but not a lot of greasy taste), not yeasty, cake donut because cake donuts get their rise from baking powder rather than yeast and there is no yeast here. A little dry. Lots of powdered sugar on top and in the finish, almost a sugar lips effect. People say the main or only problem with Zeppola is that it sticks out in a mix and they know when it’s in there… I think that’s more due to the spice note than any other defining characteristic. It’s a shame that’s in there because it would be so much better without it, but I know from recipes Zeppola can be a useful tool, even if it’s unfortunately not the Holy Donut Grail.
Most recipes that appear to pretend that weird spice note isn’t there or can be covered with just fruit donut really interest me at all, but if there is another spice added that probably covers it up/pulls it in a given direction, that’s another story. Cinnayum is one that I already plan to try, because it looks amazing.
Also:
On the subject of cinnamon rolls, Banana Cinnamon Rolls. TASK 14
Gooey Apple Pie - as long as 1% FLV Apple Filling is enough to make it just take like cinnamon and not that odd Zeppola spice, everything else here looks great. TASK 15
Double Glazed Apple Fritter, 1% WF Deep Fried Pastry Dough is sure to make it fritter-ish, but it looks like doubling down on odd spice blend. Hoping 1.2% Apple Filling saves this one. TASK 16

Note
Didn’t get rid of many flavors or give any updates this week, but I said I was going to get through the rest of FA and I’ve done that. Next week, I’ll dive into German Flavours. Definitely a bunch of trash there.

Note about the subreddit shutting down on Monday
When (if?) it comes back up, I’ll resume posting these here. In the meantime, I’ll continue posting them to my own profile, where I’ve already copy-pasted the first 46 installments. If someone has a better idea for where GRoMoMF can best trudge forward with or without Reddit, I’d be very happy to hear it.

New Flavor Count: 2,426

Big mike's bar rescue update 2020

r/MysteryDungeon: Fighting to the finish!

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VS

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Right There!

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Upper Echelons

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SUPER ASIA CHAMPIONSHIP

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“Why are they fighting in ____?”

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“How can I support them?”

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“Why are you posting this here? / Are you paid for this?”

FLAVOUR ART